NP: No gov't; best gov't..from John Lanchester LRoB

[alice wellintown]

> Granted, I understand very little about how the financial system works, and
> to understand it would require much more study than I have time for, or
> maybe even ability to understand. I would also have to admit that I would
> rather have someone feed me stories that are easily digested and help prop
> up my pre-existing bias, and provide some entertainment at the same time.
> On the other hand, if I come across a chopped up corpse in the woods, I
> don't need to know what hacking methods were used to realize that a crime
> has been committed.

The truth is, as this is the the case with every other field,  it is
very difficult to gain this kind of knowledge from study alone. But
reading and/or listening to the Jim Cramer Crew and reading the NY
Times, and the further to the Left of the NYT you go, the worse it
gets, won't help you decide if the corpse in the woods belongs to a
victim of murder or any other crime. It looks like murder by hacking,
but if an expert comes and tells you it's not; that the corpse belongs
to a school that teaches people how to solve murders and that the
corpse was hacked-up like a test dummy as part of an in-the-field
exam, you might think you've entered the Twilight Zone or a bad Pulp
Fiction novel, but you'd have little chance convincing the expert that
the corpse belongs to a murder victim because you know little and the
expert is, well, an expert. It's not that basic financial literacy is
impossible to achieve. It's that people are simply not willing to
learn the basics. With Cramer screaming and Wall Street Week puffing
pipes and so on...the DOW, the Markets, people are too easily drawn in
to the circus of finance and ignore or avoid the nuts and bolts. Your
average dud on the street doesn't know that banks don't give people
mortgages but the other way around. Most folks can't or won't read a
credit card agreement. The agreements and contracts are what we need
lawyers, and specifically, lawyers who can read financial documents
for. One of the reasons JR is so damn funny is because Gaddis has
satirized the details in a way that still tickles the funny bones of
us ordinary folk; it's rather like Shakespeare in that his humor is
written for a several audiences. But entertainment is so much a part
of how we try to comprehend our world. Is Saturday Night the best
source of what is going on at Bank America? Well, if the corpse is a
murder victim, if all the bankers are crooks, and we can see that this
is as plane as the noses on our faces, well, sure Saturday Night will
do the job. We are, after all,  pragmatic people, no need to
complicate and fix what ain't broken, but the TV, the entertaining
history, is not the best tool for the job. So, I'm suggesting we learn
a bit more about how this world of money works because it does,
believe it or not, make our worlds go up and down and round and round
like painted ponies we're captive on the carousel of time...go round
and round in the circle game...