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

[nedtheguy]

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

redacted

[nathanhulick]

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

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.

But that's been going on for a long time, hasn't? Years ago when markets collapsed it was a panic, then in 1929, government assured that this would be no panic, it was merely a depression in the economy. It turned out so badly, that decades later there were so many negative connotations associated with that word, it had to be changed again, to recession.

Decades from now, perhaps, our grandchildren will hear stories about the great recession, and be happy their current economic crisis is only an inverted recovery, or some other term to signify the same thing, but lacking the same negative connotation.

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?

[lakedaemonian]

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

EJ Quote: "I'm talking about also dumping grandma, veterans, widows and orphans, small business owners -- anyone without an effective political action committee or high paid lobbying firm in Washington to aggregate campaign finance funds to protect them."

"Some day it will be widely understand that a tool of public opinion shaping that can be used to sell legislation and to start wars needs to be regulated by constitutional amendment."

I'm confused EJ...seriously confused.

Why would we need a constitutional ammendment to regulate the shaping of public opinion(which in my eye would require differentiating advertising/marketing focused on making me buy laundry detergent from marketing/advertising focused on making me support a conflict) when it would appear to me that if we had a constitutional ammendment outlawing private campaign contributions(or at least anything short of 100% donor blind contributions) to cut special interest groups off at the bloody knees would be simpler to develop and regulate as a piece of legislation(if not implement due to overwhelming special interest opposition).

After spending time in the 3rd and 4th world and seeing the terrible destruction tribal politics plays on their economies(get what you can for your tribe without any remorse before you are removed from power), how are we any different if we exchange their corrupt tribal politics for our corrupt special interest politics?

How exactly can a constitutional ammendment, acting as "Mom and Dad" to monitor and regulate what cartoons and advertising Little Billy constituent/consumer watches, fix what I believe to be the far more serious problem of the special interest sand undermining the foundation of the house.

I certainly don't dispute the incredible power of malignant, immoral, and unethical societal perception shaping....but isn't it a bit further down on the list compared with cutting special interests off at their political knees to allow constituents to take back the political process?

[Slimprofits]

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

Propaganda The Formation of Men's Attitudes (excerpts) By Jacques Ellul (1965)
worldcat library listing

worldcat library listing for 2004 reprint of Bernay's Propaganda
Bernay's The engineering of consent
Bernay's Crystallizing public opinion

[c1ue]

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

Even apart from the moral hazard, the complexity and high-tech, speed-of-light nature of modern financial scams makes it seem to me like it is inadvisable bordering on impossible these days, to make money from something you can't see and touch right in front of you.

None of these scams are new. All of them existed with the same mechanical principles, only in a different environment, in the past - sometimes very recent past.

The other item you're perhaps not addressing is that all those financial predators - their fangs and claws (toolbox) didn't arise spontaneously.

While I am not a conspiracy theorist, at the same time it is abundantly clear that the last 2 decades have seen a concerted rollback of protections passed in the Great Depression era combined with perhaps ideological, perhaps cynical cutbacks in regulatory powers and agencies.

[necron99]

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

Bingo on both counts!!

Even apart from the moral hazard, the complexity and high-tech, speed-of-light nature of modern financial scams makes it seem to me like it is inadvisable bordering on impossible these days, to make money from something you can't see and touch right in front of you. A completely solid, honest investment these days might get bought out by a Gordon Gecko liquidator start to finish in-between two issues of your quarterly prospectus. I think that smart investors these days will need to reverse another one from my list of meme changes -- from "profit" back down into "wealth" -- and focus on things that are intrinsically valuable, understandable, and tangibly beneficial again, rather than just numbers on paper outsourced to some distant land. And not from any sense of altruism. It's that, or die off.

To use a fanciful metaphor, the plains are filled with badass, hungry dinosaurs these days. No matter how quick of tooth and claw, how savvy you think you are, there's a bigger, faster dinosaur out there somewhere slavering to bite a chunk off of you. The ones who survived the Age of the Dinosaurs turned out to be, not the most aggressive or sharp-toothed beast, nor the best armored, but rather the small, timid mammals. The environment changed and the biggest, meanest creatures could no longer support themselves. Our Chicxulub meteor may have hit in late 2008. It probably took many years afterwards for the Tyrannosaurs to finally die off, but it happened.

[Thailandnotes]

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

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.

[necron99]

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?

[bart]

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

Your claim that Bush's pollster invented the phrase "Climate Change" in 2002 in some scheme to reframe the Global Warming debate to their evil ends has one obvious problem--the UN body studying Global Warming is called the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change--the IPCC...and it's been called that since 1988.

The phrase "Climate Change" actually originated with the enviro types because it's easier to find "change" than something specific like "warming".

Frank Luntz is a pollster and was simply telling his employer that the phrase "Climate Change" polled better than "Global Warming"--probably with Bush's Conservative base.

All politicans do this. That's why we've been listening to Obama drone on for the last few months about "Corporate Jet Owners" and "Millionaires and Billionaires" while the Republicans repeated "Obama's Blank Check" ad nauseum.

You're better than this EJ. There is no conspiracy here. Your claim is Denninger tin-foil quality stuff.

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

Edward Bernays - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I found this quite worthwhile too:
A very good short essay on "Unconscious Conspiracies".

[Mega]

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

Why do "They" hate Silver so much?..............what is it that worries them so much they feel the need to naked short it?
Mike

[Chris Coles]

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

Let's ask the right questions to get to the right answers. Our future is not about the fiscal deficit, at least not directly.

What are we going to do about the private sector debt left over from the FIRE Economy era?

How can the economy be restructured to reduce dependence on debt growth?

I look forward to reading EJ's answer to his own question.

[doom&gloom]

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

Okay, so the $64 Trillion dollar question is:

When do you expect interest rates to reverse?

Plain english answer appreciated!

[Slimprofits]

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

Debt ceiling deal passes. Fake "debt default" risk averted.

Stocks lose 2% and gold gains 2%.

The new (8/3/2011 - sun rises over Washington and New York) spin is that the markets are tanking because of the deal, not because of a lack of a deal, as was the spin last week.

[Revert2Mean]

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

Central banks have pretty much abandoned the notion of inflation targeting (those that had targets to begin with). Here in Australia, all the readings pointed to a need for the RBA to lift interest rates yesterday - inflation is well outside their comfort zone, the housing bubble is still fully inflated, unemployment is low, and the mining boom is funnelling huge amounts of money into the economy. But the RBA chose to sit on their hands and allow inflation to continue bursting outside their 2-3% target range.

[Thailandnotes]

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

It's Thailand's fault.

"(Reuters) - Central banks of emerging market countries such as Korea and Thailand have added more than $10 billion of gold to their reserves this year in a sign of waning faith in the West's benchmark bonds and currencies like the dollar and the euro."