Commentary: Our American Pravda

If you have 15 to 20 minutes, please read the following article by the highly respected journalist, Ron Unz: Our American Pravda. Also read his a follow-up article, American Pravda: Barrels of Gunpowder and Sparks. I hope it to be well worth your time.

Unz describes several historical and current stories that have fallen by the wayside of the mainstream media. Many times, the media has failed to inform the public of all the facts. Sometimes, they just let the story die without investigating it's end, thus leaving the public to believe the early assumptions of the story are the end-all conclusions. Are the media just lazy, incompetent, deceitful, or only run with stories that serve themselves, their politics, and their bottom line?

Unz provides a few examples of stories that while they were occurring, were written off and discarded as being false or conspiratory. Through later review of the facts by academics, authors, and investigative journalists, it turns out that many of these stories were in fact true. However, because the early reporting disregarded some of the key facts, the original, incorrect narrative is still popular in the public psyche.

Jeffrey Sachs' Disgust of The Financial System

What a coincidence... dealer wins again!

As printed in the New York Post, during a conference at the Philadelphia Federal Reserve late last month, "Fixing the Banking System For Good", Jeffrey Sachs, a Harvard educated economist, current professor at Columbia University, and adviser to the World Bank and IMF, said, "What has been revealed, in my view, is prima facie criminal behavior... It’s financial fraud on a very large extent... There’s also a tremendous amount of insider trading."(1)

"Wall Street is full of 'crooks,' and it never properly cleaned up its act after the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008."

On May 2nd, the Wall Street Journal printed a follow-up interview, Jeffrey Sachs: Banking Abuses ‘Can’t Get More in Your Face’(2). Sachs believes that Obama and all politicians share in the blame as much as the TBTF banks.

On the way to fix it, he says, "I would put criminal enforcement number one, statesmanship number two and reduction of leverage as number three."

The people need to see in courts high-profile faces of those that are guilty, publicly getting prosecuted, and letting justice be served.

If you have 36 minutes, please watch the full speech here. It is extremely insightful and informative. It's not conspiratorial; it's reality. Economic fundamentals and ethics mean nothing. Money, by any means necessary, is everything.

It should be noted that Sachs is self-defined as being on the left of the political spectrum. This is not a Democrat vs. Republican issue, nor is it Left vs. Right.

In referencing foreign sovereigns, "I can only emphasize is the palpable anger and vulnerability felt is very, very high." Basically, they know they are getting taken to the cleaners, but are helpless to do anything about it." If trust of the United States erodes, so does our influence.


References:
(1)- http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/wall_st_criminal_behavior_Rg3GqOXPwjJqrYFWV0tyEJ
(2)- http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/05/02/jeffrey-sachs-banking-abuses-cant-get-more-in-your-face/

Keynesian Predicaments, Keynesian Crisis Management

As much as I theoretically follow the Austrian School, I recognize that we don't live in an Austrian School based economy; we live in a Keynesian world. Although I may disagree with the foundations of our Keynesian economy, I understand that for Keynesian predicaments, which is what we have, it may require Keynesian crisis management techniques. It would be difficult to know if Austrian theories would fix the Keynesian predicaments of today.

Our situation is one of crisis management, which is different than normal day-to-day management or growth management. It is like we are all on a bus that is swerving all over the road, perilously close to crashing. Our bus is out of control because the bus driver let his little kid take the wheel of the bus (deregulating banks via repealing Glass-Steagall, for instance). The kid acted irresponsibly (who in their right mind would have removed the driving age limit?) by having too much fun with the bus, going off-roading, popping the tires, and burning out the brakes. We are now in a predicament where we need to get this bus to safety. We may not have chosen to get on this bus, but at this point, it doesn't matter; we need to prevent it from crashing. The bus driver is trying fix things while the bus is out of control. At the same time, he is playing a movie over the ceiling mounted TV's to keep the passengers distracted and calm so as not to create panic. Once the bus stops, whether by crashing or by the heroic actions of the bus driver, that will be the point where can have a chance to question the overall safety of the bus. We can then decide whether we want to get back on the bus again, put age restrictions on minors driving buses back into place, or try a new bus altogether. There will be many options and even more opinions.