American society is rapidly disintegrating. It is increasingly divided into the rich and poor, and those left in the middle are being squeezed like never before. It turns out there's not much opportunity for a better life in The Land Of Opportunity. Rip-offs by the financial "services" industry are now commonplace. So-called "white collar" frauds and other crimes are rarely prosecuted, with high-profile cases like Bernie Madoff being the exceptions that prove the rule. (Bernie ripped off the wrong people.) Thus the rule of law is effectively breaking down. I could go on and on describing this or that aspect of our society's disintegration.
In a declining society like ours the human capacity to be shocked by the outrageous events going on all around us every day becomes muted. People become inured (de-sensitized) to the ruthless, immoral behavior they experience or read about. They sink into cynicism, hopelessness and not-caring. This jaded, passive attitude is a form of self-protection. We shut down, we create an emotional distance between ourselves and provocative, negative stimuli. We more and more resemble battering victims who are no longer capable of feeling the anger and other emotions which are entirely appropriate to the situation. Mortgage fraud? Who cares? Goes on everyday. There's nothing to be done about the big banks, right? MF Global recently ripped off thousands of ordinary Americans who made the mistake of using them as a broker-dealer. Bank expert Chris Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics knows where money is.
"But please, to our friends in the Big Media, could we stop saying that we don't know the location of the missing $1.6 billion of client funds from MF Global? The money is safe and sound at JPM and other counterparties. As with Goldman Sachs et al and American International Group, the banks have been bailed out at the cost of somebody else. And the various agencies of the federal government are complicit in the fraud...
The effort by former New Jersey governor and MF Global CEO Jon Corzine to save his firm by stealing customer funds seems to warrant further discussion, yet instead we have silence...
In a decent society, this outright theft would be Front Page News. The authorities would not rest until Jon Corzine and his partners in crime were in jail. But America is falling apart, so we have to be content with insipid, weak nonsense like this from the Wall Street Journal.
The transfer is a sign of the chaos inside MF Global as panic deepened over the securities firm's bets on bonds of some European countries. MF Global employees were besieged by margin calls and demands for additional collateral. In the case of the $165 million, the transfer of money from the customer account resulted from a quick flurry of emails, the documents show.
It isn't clear who ordered MF Global's back-office staff in Chicago to move $165 million to the bank account at J.P. Morgan. Midlevel finance officials usually couldn't move such funds without direction from more-senior officials.
And lately we've learned that MF Global Is Still Set to Pay Bonuses (Wall Street Journal again).
Are you shocked? Feeling angry? Are you feeling anything?
I doubt it. You are accustomed to this sort of thing. It barely registers anymore. Unless of course you are among the victims, as doom forecaster Gerald Celente was.
I am not here to scold you, to tell you that you should be feeling angry. I am not going to lecture you today because becoming inured to this sort of outrage is perfectly understandable, it's a natural psychological reaction to being overwhelmed as I explained above. Still, I would like administer a small test if you're willing to take it.
On numerous occasions I have written about the deplorable student debt situation in the United States. By any moral yardstick, it is unconscionable that a society can become so fucked up that it sells its young people down the river as debt slaves. This is outrageous. Anger is the only appropriate emotional response. So monitor yourself as you watch the trailer for Default: the student loan documentary. Watch the whole thing (5:12). (And read this article about the film from Forbes.) Check out your own emotional responses. Don't intellectualize—that's a cop-out. Find out if you've got any gas left in the tank. Good luck.
I'm outraged that young people are allowed to get into college before learning how to speak w/o sounding like a fucking squeak toy. I used to get outraged at all of it. From the CIA running drugs to illegal covert ops to blah blah blah. I got tired to being labeled a 'conspiracy theorist' or, more recently, a doomer. I'm done with being outraged. I'm done with trying to wake people up. I've got a close group of friends who 'get it', and we're working to help each other and those in our community who need it. I feel bad for young people who got hoodwinked into the kolledge edamacation scam. BUT ITS NOT LIKE WE DIDN"T SEE THE SHIT COMING SINCE THE 1970s AND BEFORE. Punk Rock/DIY culture, the Green/Enviro movement et. al. (hell, for that matter, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, et. al. had is sorted in the 50's [and Woodie Guthrie in the 30's]) To all you stupid sub-urban sheep, wake the fuck up ! It is time for System-D.
Posted by: Lew Stewell | 03/22/2012 at 10:12 AM