Human Sacrificers Circle the Wagons
The biggest news on Wall Street is that the Securities and Exchange Commission is coming after Goldman Sachs. They've been hit with fraud charges, so significant that today the Dow took its first hit in a while. Everyone who watches what's going on there at street level isn't surprised that Goldman Sachs is in the crosshairs, and some are a bit surprised that the SEC is actually standing up and pointing its shaky finger at the behemouth.
Slate writer Heidi Moore got through a manhole and looked around a bit underneath the street, and saw some very interesting things. Among all the stories in the web aggregate I look at, my attention was drawn to her piece: "It's Not Just Goldman--It's the Clients." Sure enough, you'll find that all of our huffing and puffing about rich guys being eeevil is woefully misplaced. We need to do a lot more huffing and puffing about
Ourselves.
The fault, dear Brutus, lies with ourselves. Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself, for that's deeper down in the waterworks.
As for Moore's expose, she eloquently identifies uber-hedge-fund-manager John Paulson as the guy who convinced Goldman Sachs to arrange his notorious mortgage short-sells that netted him nearly $4 billion for the year a while back. Not only was Paulson working it working it working it, but many many many others were too. Getting deeper under the street now, in places where the rats roam. (Oh, don't worry, we'll go even deeper for you horrorphiles...)
A couple of posts ago I'd pointed out that Ponzi king Bernard Madoff was just the stupidest of all those working it. I'd wondered if some would think that a bit too inaccurate because before our (and his of course) hindsight he wasn't so stupid. Look at John Paulson now. Will he get in trouble simply for deftly gaming us dumb saps? Isn't the taxpayer the stupidest one of all?
The answer to the true meaning of "stupidest" can only come from understanding the distinction between the World and the Kingdom.
Here's the World's definition of "stupidest," when it comes to people like Madoff and Paulson and every other value extractor: 1. Did a rotten job of lying. 2. It was so rotten the liar got whacked by Caesar.
Here's the Kingdom definition: Wicked as all hell.
Madoff is the stupidest on both counts. But everyone else who successfully works it is only stupid on the second count. And as long as people continue to have their earphones plugged into the Catholicist megaphone they'll always be striving to avoid being stupidest by the World's definition no matter how stupid they are by the second.
A classic example of this spiritual lunkheadedness is in the No. 1 bestseller, Michael Lewis' The Big Short. Lewis does a super job of slithering around underneath the street close to where the biggest fattest ugliest rats are, but the only reason everyone wants to read it all is to see how they can be as good a liars as the John Paulson's of the world.
The Los Angeles Times had an interview with Lewis printed in its Sunday Calendar section. Calendar section??? What's with that? I guess they put it there because they thought The Big Short was a good book or something, except there is indeed a special section just for books. I think it was there because it's all just part of the great show.
A major reason this is so is because Lewis says in his interview that lots of people are politically agitated. Of course they are, it's part of the show. "That energy leads to change," Lewis said. The only thing that'll change is the switching around of the people who do value extraction in the biggest chunks.
He spoke of the complicated financial innovation "machine," one that "ended up being fooled by its own deceit." There's the World all right, big fat ugly rats swimming in sewage with a whole bunch of other big fat ugly rats trying to see who can lie the best.
When you get down further under the earthenworks, you'll start to taste the hell of all this.
In that blog post about Madoff I'd mentioned that Jesus did speak boldly about it, but I'd like to add here the way in which Isaiah wrote it down. It wasn't just that people don't listen, that they just don't get it--he wasn't saying "Hey you guys, come on, you should really try to listen a bit more carefully."
No, he was actually writing what God told him to say, and essentially it was: "You go right ahead and keep on being lunkheaded. Go ahead, keep being idiots. Keep being stupid. Go ahead. And as you keep doing that, just watch your cities crumble and your land go to waste."
Those weren't the exact words, I know. But read them there, right there, sixth chapter of Isaiah, verses nine on. You tell me if they are really any different.
This is where the horror story gets good. In and around that place waaaaay under the street are the voices of those sworn to make people stupid. The voices that say Jesus is of no matter, that He's just a spiffy fairy tale character we hear boffo stories about on Sunday mornings. Voices that tell us all that's all nice and all, but we've really got to get right back to work it work it work it so we don't let other liars get the better of us.
Only when you see things from the Kingdom can you see the hell that this is.
The SEC and Michael Lewis and all the other apparently brave, brave champions of non-stupidity can't do squat to rescue us from that hell. They're all just doing the bidding of Company men executing the best value extraction by profiting from value extraction. Moore even closes her piece by gushing that all this sudden SEC stirring may actually get us closer to who's in charge. I split a gut when I read that. They're only willing to go a few feet below the streeet to look--there they won't come close to finding out.
What lunkheads. They're very very wealthy lunkheads, I must say. Guess that's cool.
Or hot depending on where you're the richest lunkhead.
_
I wrote a home page piece a couple years ago about the "finders keepers losers weepers" philosophy employed by John Paulson and all World inhabitants. For more about living up in the fresh air, that's here.
Slate writer Heidi Moore got through a manhole and looked around a bit underneath the street, and saw some very interesting things. Among all the stories in the web aggregate I look at, my attention was drawn to her piece: "It's Not Just Goldman--It's the Clients." Sure enough, you'll find that all of our huffing and puffing about rich guys being eeevil is woefully misplaced. We need to do a lot more huffing and puffing about
Ourselves.
The fault, dear Brutus, lies with ourselves. Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself, for that's deeper down in the waterworks.
As for Moore's expose, she eloquently identifies uber-hedge-fund-manager John Paulson as the guy who convinced Goldman Sachs to arrange his notorious mortgage short-sells that netted him nearly $4 billion for the year a while back. Not only was Paulson working it working it working it, but many many many others were too. Getting deeper under the street now, in places where the rats roam. (Oh, don't worry, we'll go even deeper for you horrorphiles...)
A couple of posts ago I'd pointed out that Ponzi king Bernard Madoff was just the stupidest of all those working it. I'd wondered if some would think that a bit too inaccurate because before our (and his of course) hindsight he wasn't so stupid. Look at John Paulson now. Will he get in trouble simply for deftly gaming us dumb saps? Isn't the taxpayer the stupidest one of all?
The answer to the true meaning of "stupidest" can only come from understanding the distinction between the World and the Kingdom.
Here's the World's definition of "stupidest," when it comes to people like Madoff and Paulson and every other value extractor: 1. Did a rotten job of lying. 2. It was so rotten the liar got whacked by Caesar.
Here's the Kingdom definition: Wicked as all hell.
Madoff is the stupidest on both counts. But everyone else who successfully works it is only stupid on the second count. And as long as people continue to have their earphones plugged into the Catholicist megaphone they'll always be striving to avoid being stupidest by the World's definition no matter how stupid they are by the second.
A classic example of this spiritual lunkheadedness is in the No. 1 bestseller, Michael Lewis' The Big Short. Lewis does a super job of slithering around underneath the street close to where the biggest fattest ugliest rats are, but the only reason everyone wants to read it all is to see how they can be as good a liars as the John Paulson's of the world.
The Los Angeles Times had an interview with Lewis printed in its Sunday Calendar section. Calendar section??? What's with that? I guess they put it there because they thought The Big Short was a good book or something, except there is indeed a special section just for books. I think it was there because it's all just part of the great show.
A major reason this is so is because Lewis says in his interview that lots of people are politically agitated. Of course they are, it's part of the show. "That energy leads to change," Lewis said. The only thing that'll change is the switching around of the people who do value extraction in the biggest chunks.
He spoke of the complicated financial innovation "machine," one that "ended up being fooled by its own deceit." There's the World all right, big fat ugly rats swimming in sewage with a whole bunch of other big fat ugly rats trying to see who can lie the best.
When you get down further under the earthenworks, you'll start to taste the hell of all this.
In that blog post about Madoff I'd mentioned that Jesus did speak boldly about it, but I'd like to add here the way in which Isaiah wrote it down. It wasn't just that people don't listen, that they just don't get it--he wasn't saying "Hey you guys, come on, you should really try to listen a bit more carefully."
No, he was actually writing what God told him to say, and essentially it was: "You go right ahead and keep on being lunkheaded. Go ahead, keep being idiots. Keep being stupid. Go ahead. And as you keep doing that, just watch your cities crumble and your land go to waste."
Those weren't the exact words, I know. But read them there, right there, sixth chapter of Isaiah, verses nine on. You tell me if they are really any different.
This is where the horror story gets good. In and around that place waaaaay under the street are the voices of those sworn to make people stupid. The voices that say Jesus is of no matter, that He's just a spiffy fairy tale character we hear boffo stories about on Sunday mornings. Voices that tell us all that's all nice and all, but we've really got to get right back to work it work it work it so we don't let other liars get the better of us.
Only when you see things from the Kingdom can you see the hell that this is.
The SEC and Michael Lewis and all the other apparently brave, brave champions of non-stupidity can't do squat to rescue us from that hell. They're all just doing the bidding of Company men executing the best value extraction by profiting from value extraction. Moore even closes her piece by gushing that all this sudden SEC stirring may actually get us closer to who's in charge. I split a gut when I read that. They're only willing to go a few feet below the streeet to look--there they won't come close to finding out.
What lunkheads. They're very very wealthy lunkheads, I must say. Guess that's cool.
Or hot depending on where you're the richest lunkhead.
_
I wrote a home page piece a couple years ago about the "finders keepers losers weepers" philosophy employed by John Paulson and all World inhabitants. For more about living up in the fresh air, that's here.
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