Author Topic: Fear and Loathing in La Jolla  (Read 1230 times)

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Offline BlueStateSaint

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Fear and Loathing in La Jolla
« on: October 13, 2008, 10:54:24 AM »
Yeah, I know it's a couple of days ago, and it's the New York Times, but it's also Ben Stein.  He seems to know his stuff . . .

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Everybody’s Business
Fear and Loathing in La Jolla

By BEN STEIN
Published: October 11, 2008


I lived with them on Montague Street

In a basement down the stairs.

There was music in the cafes at night,

And revolution in the air.


— Bob Dylan,

“Tangled Up in Blue”

A FEW days ago, I spoke to a large gathering of investors in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla, and was startled by the audience’s furious anger at the powers that be. The Wall Street-Treasury-Federal Reserve axis is hated, loathed and feared by these people, who were, as far as I could tell, largely Republicans, almost all well to do — or formerly well to do. They are in a state of extreme agitation about how the current mismanagement of our financial system has played havoc with their own personal financial situation.

In fact, they are among the angriest upper- and middle-class people I have ever seen. And the most frightened and worried. (In a way, they are now feeling the way ordinary workers have been feeling for years.)

And why not? With the experiment of allowing a major investment bank, Lehman Brothers, to simply vanish, leaving huge holes in the portfolios of many other financial entities, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, threw the financial system into chaos.

Yes, some people at Lehman undoubtedly did some bad things, but those kinds of people are found everywhere. Letting Lehman fail was almost incomprehensible. It took the federal government many decades, after the banking collapse leading to the Great Depression, to restore confidence in the financial system. Then, in one horribly misguided moment, Mr. Paulson, with the apparent agreement of Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, demolished that confidence.

The very last sentence of the article is telling . . .

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As the song goes, there is revolution in the air.

Ruh-roh!

The link is at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/business/12every.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

I found this article courtesy of UrbanSurvival.com . . .



"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

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Offline Jim

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Re: Fear and Loathing in La Jolla
« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2008, 06:33:58 PM »
Paulson and Bernacke have not handled this well at all and I doubt it will get much better.
My fellow Americans, there is nothing audacious about hope. Hope is what makes people buy lottery tickets instead of paying the bills. Hope is for the old gals feeding the slots in Atlantic City. It destroys the inner-city kid who quits school because he hopes he'll be a world-famous recording artist.

What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama?

One is a well turned-out, good-looking, and let's be honest, pretty sexy piece of eye-candy.

The other kills her own food.