Nassim N. Taleb and Robert Shiller
The video above illustrates the gap between people 'in the know' as in knowing the shit is about to hit the fan, and people who are still sucking at their thumbs while waiting for mommy to come clean their nose. The tremendous divide in knowledge and understanding of the current societal collapse is astounding. Nassim N. Taleb, who describes himself as a "bottom-up libertarian" is another emergent voice of sanity and is taking a no-nonsense approach to the extreme situation we find ourselves in. He accurately says economics is not a science, echoing H.L Mencken who called it a dismal science. Sitting next to him is Robert Shiller, who can only be characterized as a very meek idiot. By comparing the economy to a game in which the referee is the regulator he reveals the lack of sophistication in his and most economists' thinking about the relation between the 'economy' and society. Showcasing his utter naiveté, he calls Bernanke "the great experimenter" and his hyper inflationary policy at the Fed "well intentioned." Shiller exemplifies exactly the type of morons who fill-up most of America's institutions. In the university, government, banks, basically any institution you name these clueless pinheads are running around making bad shit worse. Ignorance is not just in the peasantry anymore, in America the university elite are just as brain-dead about the role of dominant elites and their greatest instrument, a private central bank, as the slaves without a Ph.D
Shiller actually called the creation of the Fed a sign of economic progress, probably understanding it as an act of reason in a wild capitalist economy that preceded FDR's regulatory policies. Wild capitalism? I think the man has a wild imagination, maybe his brain needs to be regulated for the betterment of society. But Shiller is not a free thinker, he obviously does not understand the role of the Fed, or its structure, or the men who designed the Federal Reserve Act, and or even how it was passed in Congress. I'm not a fan of wild guesses but I'll take a risk of my own and guess Shiller isn't aware that the Federal Reserve Act was written by bankers on an island far from Washington and passed in the dead of night on Christmas Eve. But that's the American educational system for ya! The men with the Ph.D's in this society know less than the cab drivers. Cab drivers will take you down memory lane, while the economists yell go, go, go, stop looking back. Maybe we need to figure out how to better measure intelligence in society cause the current models aren't working. So much for degrees, the higher the ladder you get the more narrow and dumb your mind becomes.
I might seem a little hard on Shiller and men like him, but until they own up to their ignorance and gullibility I will not retract any statement. People, and I include experts with Ph.D's, have no more excuses. We can no longer point to propaganda for blocking our eyes when the facts are staring us in the face. Are we going to be rude and not say hello? Have we forgotten that reality is friendly only if you greet him immediately? We don't want to keep him waiting. The glaring facts about the nature and intentions of our financial rulers on Wall Street are no longer hidden from mainstream society, unlike two years ago. Today, there is all out corruption on display for even the blind to see. Ever since Bush, Paulson & co. decided to bail out the banks with taxpayer money, and then subsequently Obama's team continuing the same policies, America has been on a collision course. Some competent souls are speaking out against the direction the US government has taken in the 'economy' but very few of them hold public office. Most are authors, a few are congressmen, and some are very popular radio show hosts. This has obviously become a political and social crisis. The fraudsters on Wall Street did not merely cause a vast transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, their actions have resulted in the loss of even more confidence in the leaders and institutions of our society. There are no conscience and moral leaders with any power in our society. Social unrest and rioting is only a matter of time in America. Judgment day is at hand for a nation whose arrogance and ignorance has reached unbelievable, even apocalyptic, proportions.
I sincerely believe the people no longer have any excuses, they deserve what is coming to them. We all deserve it. I deserve it. I don't believe in collective punishment, but every once a while a catastrophic event is needed to wake the people up spiritually, enticing them to act in the present moment instead of holding off their instinct to rebel to some future date. We should all be marching tomorrow because of the emergency we are in. Throughout my whole conscious life I've lived with anxiousness and an anxiety about a future cataclysmic crisis. I have to gather my opinions thoughtfully so I can state what I feel more honestly. But I'll say this for now, it's easy to remain calm before the storm but we have to be calm in the eye of it. Men like Mr. Taleb who are currently perceived as crazy and flaky because of their constant warnings will be serene when the final hour arrives while the spineless and spiritless who prize their confidence and falsely believe the worst is over will scream themselves to sleep. The tables will be turned and I won't be surprised to see men like Shiller crawling under one.
