(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
I understand that nothing can shock your inured souls, for I too am made dust by self-pulverization at the brazenness of the lies, the vacuum of accountability, and public indifference…
…but allow me, for the fourteen-millionth time, to insist that, “Nobody could have predicted” financial parasitism:
“Through all of my experience, what I never contemplated was that there were bankers who would purposely misrepresent facts to banking authorities,” Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, said in a phone interview. “You were honor-bound to report accurately, and it never entered my mind that, aside from a fringe element, it would be otherwise. I was wrong.”
Apex parasites cheat. Who knew? Certainly not the Supreme Parasite, whose poor psycho’s [conscience?] requires immediate defibrillation. Maybe a stun gun would do the trick.
However habituated I seem to be to their chronic lies, murder, and thievery, occasionally they throw me a medicine ball that hits my solar plexus just so, and I’m crumpled and breathless at the most ordinary thing.
Of all people! Dishonest bankers? Father! Take my soul to heaven, now!
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iykwim. It’s a tit-for-tat world, at best.
I’m convinced that Greenspan actually believes what he says. I’m also convinced that most people who work in Washington at senior levels genuinely feel they are doing the “right thing.” They see themselves as working for the good of the country, not just the thieves of the FIRE, military, medical, prison complexes. In fact, that’s what they are doing at least these days but most, in my experience (I’ve spent most of my life in and around Washington, DC sometimes within shouting distance to power) most people who go to Washington (other than politicians) see themselves as honorable and altruistic human beings and try to do the “right thing” and don’t steal office supplies.
Having said that, Greenspan’s father was a stockbroker in a simpler time when Wall Street had, at least, an internal sense of honor. I’ve spoken to a few retired Wall Street guys who just shake their heads at what the younger people have done to the Street.
Norman Mailer wrote or said something to the effect (when discoursing about the Gary Gilmore case) that everyone involved in the case felt they were all doing the right thing and that this is something that is generally true about Americans–that we all really believe that we are motivated by high morality unlike other peoples and thus the weird cult of American Exceptionalism. It also explains the weird attitudes of evangelical Christians who preach rigorous moral codes and then break them after a few drinks when their neighbor’s wife (or husband) looks mighty tempting.
Greenspan and the journalists who report on him share this tendency to see that they themselves and America is always on the side of the angels despite evidence to the contrary. Several people who I shared my skepticism about the official 9/11 events some years past said to the effect, “even if it’s true, I won’t believe what you say–I couldn’t live with myself.”