The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

[necron99]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

imo calling this "abuse of memes" obscures rather than illuminates. it's just abuse. period. or perhaps "financial abuse," reflecting the financialization of our whole political economy.

It is just abuse. Period. I'm with you there. Memes are just the toolkit.

But "abuse" is about as hard to judge as the word "memes". It'd be nice if we could just pass a law against "abuse" in general, but it'd be impossible to implement or for people to plan their business models around. The anti-abuse law would inevitably be abused!

I often used to say that people would be equally happy under a Communist system as they would under a Capitalist system -- if only nobody would abuse the system. Unfortunately that's not realistic. Abuse is the root problem.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

Beautiful example. Maybe we could pass a law to snip at this or that specific practice, but it wouldn't stem the gigantic tide of abuse of memes. Laws aren't useless, but they're not a viable answer in-and-of themselves.

We once had a perfectly adequate mechanism; competition. But today the investor is Wall Street, or as here, the "City" and they do not permit competition.

The answer is to accept that their model has completely failed and must now be replaced by something new; but, ultimately, exactly the same as once worked well. Good old fashioned arms length investment into a fully competitive industrial economy.

That will require everyone to stop placing their money in the existing institutions.

[jk]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

Beautiful example. Maybe we could pass a law to snip at this or that specific practice, but it wouldn't stem the gigantic tide of abuse of memes. Laws aren't useless, but they're not a viable answer in-and-of themselves.

imo calling this "abuse of memes" obscures rather than illuminates. it's just abuse. period. or perhaps "financial abuse," reflecting the financialization of our whole political economy.

[necron99]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

An Interview with Wendell Potter, Insurance Company Whistleblower

Beautiful example. Maybe we could pass a law to snip at this or that specific practice, but it wouldn't stem the gigantic tide of abuse of memes. Laws aren't useless, but they're not a viable answer in-and-of themselves.

[metalman]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

That's a great question. Yes, it has been going on for decades -- or probably centuries. But I wasn't suggesting this could be stopped, just pointing it out. I agree that laws would be useless to stop this process (you'll note I disagreed with EJ's offhand remark about a Constitutional amendment). As I wrote above, I would prefer to see everybody educated to recognize and understand the use of memes and PR. But our current educational system is obviously failing in this regard. I don't have any answers and I don't think the process is going to stop.

So, at the very least it's incumbent upon people like us -- everybody in these iTulip forums seems savvy and educated -- to point out and expose these memes and PR, to everybody else. Even if, as I do, I quibble with EJ's analysis of the "Climate Change" meme... the mere fact of identifying it as a managed meme, helps me and others to gain the necessary intellectual distance from it in order to evaluate such things more dispassionately.

An Interview with Wendell Potter, Insurance Company Whistleblower

When the former mouthpiece for two of the country’s largest health insurers starts spilling the beans on the secrets health insurance companies don’t want you to know, it’s time to start listening.
Private health insurers are completely beholden to Wall Street. Wall Street cares about one thing only: money. Not quality of care, not life expectancy, not access to medical treatment. Wall Street cares about money. And insurance companies care about Wall Street. This system is broken.
In this candid interview with Guernica, Wendell Potter reveals the deceptive tactics used by an industry that is totally devoted to defeating health care reform.

Guernica: During your time in the industry, you created health insurance front groups to mislead the public. Can you give me an example of one of these front groups?
Wendell Potter: When the Clinton plan collapsed [in 1994], there was an effort to pass legislation that would give enrollees in managed care more protections. The industry saw this as anti-managed care legislation, so they established a group called the Health Benefits Coalition. The Health Benefits Coalition, with the funding it got from the insurance industry, killed off the effort to get a Patient’s Bill of Rights passed. A more recent example of a front group I was involved with was trying to blunt the effect of [Michael Moore’s documentary] Sicko. Through a PR firm, the industry created a front group to disseminate misleading information about the healthcare systems featured in Sicko—particularly in Canada, the U.K., and France. This front group was set up specifically to try to counter [Moore’s positive depiction of them].
Guernica: What were your duties with these front groups?
Wendell Potter: To help form messaging and develop strategy with public relations firms. PR firms help create the front groups and serve as the back offices to get the work done. The insurance industry contributes advice and counsel and feedback, but the real work gets done by the PR firms that the insurance industry hires.
Guernica: Was it difficult for you to discredit a movie you felt was accurate?
Wendell Potter: It was very difficult. I was beginning to hate my job. I’d look in the mirror and say, “Who is this? How did this happen to you?” But I had a job to do and was being paid quite a bit, so I soldiered on. I wouldn’t have stayed as long as I did if I didn’t believe that the company I worked for was honest and trying to meet the needs of people. I believed I was making some kind of positive contribution. As I was climbing up the corporate ladder, I got to understand more about how the companies make money and how they are so beholden to Wall Street—both investors and Wall Street analysts—and the things that they do to meet Wall Street’s expectations.
Guernica: You worked in the industry for twenty years. It doesn’t seem like it should have taken so long.
Wendell Potter: You don’t really focus on it or understand the significance of it. I’ll admit I knew that Wall Street looked at the medical-loss ratio. I knew it was an important measure. I didn’t know until, frankly, very recently how important it was. As recently as fifteen years ago, the medical-loss ratio in this country was 95 percent. Since then, there’s been great industry consolidation to the point that now there are seven companies that dominate. They’re all for-profit. During the time that this consolidation, this shift to for-profit occurred, the medical-loss ratio has continued to drop. Now it’s around 80 percent. That means twenty cents of every dollar goes to something other than paying medical claims. Just fifteen years ago, ninety-five cents of every dollar went to paying medical claims. This trend is due to pressure from Wall Street. If a company misses Wall Street’s expectations—if the medical-loss ratio starts to inch up—the company will suffer. I’ve seen companies lose 20 percent of their stock value in one day by disappointing Wall Street with their medical-loss ratio.

Read the whole interview here.

[c1ue]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

You mention, c1ue, that these age-old scams are now taking place "only in a different environment", but that changed environment -- especially the electronic environment, where you're only as good as the T1 connection you can afford -- makes the difference between survival and death. Hence my example with the dinosaurs.

The point of the age-old scams is you simply avoid those areas.

Rather than attempt to out-scam the scammer, you choose areas in which the age old scams don't work - or at least are different. Having a T1 or not makes no difference if the actual behavior is dependent on information you cannot have access to - like the whole "Trading Places" scam.

Passive investing is very much a classic playground of the unscrupulous and inventive.

[necron99]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

For once, c1ue, we're on the same page! You raise a great point that the principles arent' new. And the financial predation didn't arise spontaneously, true. But it seems like we've reached the point of prominens ad absurdium. Everything's been so honed, exaggerated and refined that there's nowhere else left to go besides blowing up.

Humans and human values have effectively been priced out of the market, when you can't make a simple investment trade without monolithic computer servers fighting for the closest physical proximity to the Wall Street fiber optic lines, in order to skew your price.

Columbia Journalism Review

Two weeks after RS published it, Reuters broke a fascinating story that a Goldman computer programmer had left the firm, absconding with a huge piece of the code for its super-secret automated-trading platform.
The programmer was arrested in seemingly record time, but not before he uploaded it to a German server, leading the prosecutor to say this in arguing for a high bail:
> "The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways."
Which we and others have noted is a pretty astonishing statement. If “somebody” can use the program to “manipulate markets in unfair ways,” then Goldman can, too. And how would we know if it was? That stuff is a black box and I doubt regulators have ever been under the hood—or would know what to look for if they have.

Henry Blodget

The REAL lesson most investors should take away from the largest institutional insider-trading investigation in history is that competition in the global financial markets is so intense that it's basically idiotic to trade. ... What they miss is that their competition has all this information, too -- so it doesn't give anyone an edge. They also don't understand that, in addition to all this information, the folks they are competing with have millions and millions of dollars to spend gathering information that will never be published anywhere or appear on an screen or chart or graph.
One glance from a CEO in response to a pointed question can contain more information than 500 pages of SEC filings. One nugget of scuttlebutt about the status of an important contract can make you more money than 500 hours of studying charts and graphs. Most small investors don't understand that their competition gets this sort of information all day long.
In short, it doesn't matter whether the trading game is played on "a level playing field" (and of course it isn't.) The New York Jets will still destroy any high-school football team, no matter what field the game is played on.

...Blodget goes on to say that the only sane strategy is quiet, unassuming, long-term investments -- but the sharks keep invading those pools too. Besides, if you're chasing only the low-percentage, stolid returns, then poor national fiscal policy quickly swallows up your gains with its stealth taxes and inflation.

You mention, c1ue, that these age-old scams are now taking place "only in a different environment", but that changed environment -- especially the electronic environment, where you're only as good as the T1 connection you can afford -- makes the difference between survival and death. Hence my example with the dinosaurs.

[RebbePete]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

I think you may have inadvertently made one of EJ's main points for him - not
about climate change, but about the incredibly pervasive influence of P.R...
that is almost invisible, or so taken for granted that its not recognized as
such.

For anyone interested in some history, I recommend some research on
Edward Bernays. Its not conspiracy, it's a real live subject that has been
taught for many decades and is also part of advertising and marketing
"technology".

• "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and
  opinions of the [public] is an important element in democratic society. Those
  who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible
  government which is the true ruling power of our country."
  -- Edward Bernays
  (1891-1995) "Father" of modern public relations (PR) and director of the U.S.
  Committee on Public Information during World War I, on government propaganda.
  Source: writing in "Propaganda" from "Food & Water Journal'' (1928)
• "It is not necessary for the politician to be the slave of the public's
  group prejudices, if he can learn how to mold the mind of the voters in
  conformity with his own ideas of public welfare and public service. The
  important thing for the statesman of our age is not so much to know how to
  please the public, but to know how to sway the public.
  Those who manipulate
  this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is
  the true ruling power of our country."
  -- Edward Bernays (1891-1995)
• "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now
  possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them
  knowing it."
  -- Edward Bernays

Thanks! Excellent articles and video. I had read about the influence of psychology on marketing, but had never known who the pioneer was. Terrifying.

[necron99]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

It just seems that no matter what laws you pass, how can you stop people with an agenda from avoiding a term with negative connotation in favor of a new term?

That's a great question. Yes, it has been going on for decades -- or probably centuries. But I wasn't suggesting this could be stopped, just pointing it out. I agree that laws would be useless to stop this process (you'll note I disagreed with EJ's offhand remark about a Constitutional amendment). As I wrote above, I would prefer to see everybody educated to recognize and understand the use of memes and PR. But our current educational system is obviously failing in this regard. I don't have any answers and I don't think the process is going to stop.

So, at the very least it's incumbent upon people like us -- everybody in these iTulip forums seems savvy and educated -- to point out and expose these memes and PR, to everybody else. Even if, as I do, I quibble with EJ's analysis of the "Climate Change" meme... the mere fact of identifying it as a managed meme, helps me and others to gain the necessary intellectual distance from it in order to evaluate such things more dispassionately.

[Fiat Currency]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

Last week Amy Winehouse died, but so did Justin Allen 23, Brett Linley 29, Matthew Weikert 29, Justus Bartett 27, Dave Santos 21, Jesse Reed 26, Matthew Johnson 21, Zachary Fisher 24, Brandon King 23, Christopher Goeke 23 and Sheldon Tate 27. They are Marines who made the ultimate sacrifice last week for US. There is NO media for them and NOT ONE mention of their names. Please help honor THEM by reposting this..

People like to make fun of Canada's "colourful" hockey commentator Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada. However, for every fallen Canadian soldier in Afghanistan since 2002 - he shows their picture, tells their story, and names the fallen's loved-ones, while sending his condolences for "their ultimate sacrifice". All 157 of them. Politics-of-war aside ... a class act if you ask me. As in your list above - I am often saddened by their average age. Fight meme control.

[Slimprofits]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

This is what's making the rounds on facebook today. People have a sense that something is amiss with the mass-media, but they can't quite put their finger on it.

Last week Amy Winehouse died, but so did Justin Allen 23, Brett Linley 29, Matthew Weikert 29, Justus Bartett 27, Dave Santos 21, Jesse Reed 26, Matthew Johnson 21, Zachary Fisher 24, Brandon King 23, Christopher Goeke 23 and Sheldon Tate 27. They are Marines who made the ultimate sacrifice last week for US. There is NO media for them and NOT ONE mention of their names. Please help honor THEM by reposting this..

[Slimprofits]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

i question this "amotivational" model of the regular media. my first thought was about fox news: can anyone deny that fox news has an analytic framework or "context" in which it reports? one difference, of course, that fox news' context is implicit, and not subject to analysis by fox news itself. similarly, the financial news' constant astonishment at the occurrence of events long predicted here, itself represents a "context" being communicated to the readers. stuff happens. it's not that, for example, tbtf banks are deliberately distorting and exploiting their economic ecosystem. no, it's just that stuff happens and continually "surprises" the media. that "context" of ignorance is part of what the financial media is paid to promulgate.

excellent

[jk]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

itulip = fin-oligarchy false meme dis-assembly... truth reconstruction... profit... $$$

re eric's interview: eric says the blog provides an ongoing analytic framework - he uses the word "context"- that allow for understanding, and more importantly predicting, economic processes. he uses the example of the housing bubble. this he contrasts to the regular financial media who report isolated "events" and, by the way, continually deny that anything abnormal or dangerous or devastating is going on.

i question this "amotivational" model of the regular media. my first thought was about fox news: can anyone deny that fox news has an analytic framework or "context" in which it reports? one difference, of course, that fox news' context is implicit, and not subject to analysis by fox news itself. similarly, the financial news' constant astonishment at the occurrence of events long predicted here, itself represents a "context" being communicated to the readers. stuff happens. it's not that, for example, tbtf banks are deliberately distorting and exploiting their economic ecosystem. no, it's just that stuff happens and continually "surprises" the media. that "context" of ignorance is part of what the financial media is paid to promulgate.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

Well, I for one am rankled a bit by EJ's kinda selective use of the history of "Global Warming"/"Climate Change" as a meme. But I won't dispute it. I think he gets his point across, if we all can just curb our knee-jerk political responses. I don't wish to negate EJ's "Climate Change" meme example, but I submit that there are a lot of other memes we could discuss. And the sheer quantity of those changing memes bolsters EJ's case that they are a dangerous political tool in the hands of short-sighted carnies and sharpsters.
The re-branding of the Inheritance Tax from a penalty on the "idle rich", into a "Death Tax" punishment against mom-'n'-pop convenience store owners, for example, strikes me as meme management.
Over a period of many decades, the re-branding of "War" into "Defense" so that we can pretend we were forced unwillingly into it and it's harder to oppose.
The conflation of "Medicine" and "Insurance" into the term "Health Care", so that it appears like insurance and administration is a biological requirement to keep people well.
The name change from "Advertising" into "Marketing" to likewise pretend that Madison Avenue and image management personnel are an essential part of any monetary transaction.
The change from "News" and "Reporting" into "Media" in order to make journalism seem more neutral: it's not even there, it's just the agar, the 'media' that we're all swimming in... in the face of a growing 'media' trend towards bias and editorializing or even outright inaccuracy, error and falsehood.
And so on, and so forth.

One may have preferred the meme before or after the management; but I think the speed with which those memes changed, without corresponding changes in the fundamentals of each situation, argues for the existence of heavy-handed, deliberate management. What the remedy is, though, I really have no idea. A Constitutional amendment seems impractical and unworkable -- I wonder if EJ just tossed that comment out as metaphorical, illustrating the severity -- I would prefer to see people individually educated to resist meme manipulation, but obviously our education system isn't up to the task.

Meanwhile, I am struck with kind-of a larger philosophical question: is it possible to make money morally in such an economic climate? When investment, for the most part today, basically means buying up somebody else's debt, institutionally becoming a robber baron and joining those who use political clout to shift the risks of speculation onto the powerless. When market-based value creation is almost certianly foredoomed by the death of the consumer economy and looming resource scarcity, no matter how clever your idea is. And when even hoarding money under your mattress is futile, as the money shrinks and evaporates away due to poor fiscal policy. It just seems to me like one's choices are either to abandon morals, community and citizenship and go for the quick buck in the few moments remaining before the guillotine falls; or else to withdraw, spend that money to buy real things like land and gold and water and security, and just try to survive. At what point does the fiat money system itself become tainted from all the atrocities committed in its name?

Very good questions; perhaps the answer is to look at what is happening with the Arab Spring where ordinary people have reached their limits and have decided to say; STOP!

We should never discount our instincts where they tell us that something is wrong. That in turn leads to:

Originally Posted by necron99

And so on, and so forth.



1.) You left out the switch from "citizen" to "consumer."

2.) Your question of whether it's possible to make (invest) money morally should be something everyone wrestles with. Once upon a time, it was possible to know the owners of local banks who in turn knew and loved the communities they lived in and lent money to get good stuff done. You could buy shares of the bank, watch them grow, and feel pretty good about it.

That is a description of what we once knew worked well in every community. It is also the underlying concept of local community investment that I incorporated into my thinking on a set of rules for such investment which formed the basis for The Capital Spillway Trust during my conversations with the Bank of England in 1994. So in a very real way, the debate is at last returning to the fundamental basics and the instinctive reaction is to, at long last; believe that there must be a better way forward than what we have today.

[metalman]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

In terms of searching for memes and themes, I've found Google to have a couple of interesting resources:

http://www.google.com/trends- Google Trends to see what people are searching for on the web. It's interesting to plug in "Global Warming", "Climate Change", "Housing Bubble", "JP Morgan Silver Manipulation" or whatever trends you want to search on and see how many times these terms have been searched over time.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/ - Google Insights. Similar to Google Trends, but you can narrow category searches, look for different types of searches, and even add stock quote searches.

Data only goes back to 2004, but it's interesting to see how search trends rise and fall. Of course, companies have known tricks about manipulating Google search results for years, so I'm sure they are busy working on ways to make sure their (or their clients') interests appear in the list of the latest trends for Google, Twitter and other social media, as EJ has pointed out with the Wired story. One can only imagine the Terabytes of data that Facebook is amassing every day.

itulip = fin-oligarchy false meme dis-assembly... truth reconstruction... profit... $$$