I received this to start:
On May 10, 2009, at 4:36 PM, Dustin wrote:
I ran across these recent articles about the bailouts One, Two. Although I am not all that familiar with the author, I feel that his paper relates the general consensus of the alternative viewpoint quite well. These articles just barely scratch the surface and should be used as a jumping off point for further research.
I believe in freedom of thought, but seriously, send that to anyone who's remotely knowledgeable in economics and you are just going to get a laugh. I was composing my response to his email while reading the article and at some point I threw up my hands and said fuck it, this is going to take forever. The saner among you won't need the econ knowledge to appreciate the mile-wide breadth of the article and inch-deep explanations given.
So instead, I wrote this:
On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 12:45 AM, David wrote:
I would love to pick the articles apart piece by piece, but the fact is that whoever wrote this doesn't have the slightest actual knowledge of economic history or why certain events took place.
Seriously. Some of these conclusions are totally backwards. The articles mention actual events, but use them as backwards causality or false inference.
His response:
On May 11, 2009, at 12:56 AM, Dustin wrote:
If you do not want to explain yourself, could you point me to some sources that you trust that outline the paradigm that you support. Thanks!
Sure! okay, he wants to know more about economics during the great depression. I can supply sources!
On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 1:00 AM, David wrote:
A lot of the current system came out of the Great Depression, including the general consensus of how the Fed should act. A good place to start is a book by John Galbraith called The Great Crash. obviously a lot of his book is oriented around black tuesday, but it gives a lot of back story as to how the Fed got to be the way it did. From there, it might be worthwhile to look into the fundamentals of international economics (bretton woods, smoot-hawley etc) though I don't have a particular recommendation as to a secondary or compiled source.
honestly a lot of the stuff in the article could be refuted by just looking at data.
Instead:
On May 11, 2009, at 1:41 AM, Dustin wrote:
I'll buy you lunch if you can refute just a handful of the quotes, financial numbers or other facts, I'm sure there must be a couple easy straw men you could knock down in there somewhere!
Opinions are one thing, we're all entitled to our own, but to simply say you could refute something with ease, without actually doing so is intellectually lazy at best. I already know you don't know about the real system, the secretive elite round table groups and think tanks, i.e. the bilderbergers, club of rome, The council on foreign relations, etc... If you didn't even recognize most of their names, how would you know of their membership, their agenda, and the power they wield over the market place?
Anyway, in the meantime I will attempt to prove many of the points the author made and expand upon them by simply using offical government or think tank documents and speeches etc...
Oh, here's one, let's start with Ben Bernake's speech at Milton Friedman's 90th birthday party(which I watched live on C-Span when it happened btw) where Bernake essentially apologized for the great depression on behalf of the federal reserve by wrapping up his speech with the following line:
Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again.
(Note the irony) The speech itself covers all the details of course, and if you want to debate Bernake's redition of events, by all means, have at it.
Anyway, it's getting late, I'll shoot you a few more goverment docs in the coming days.
Night!
Wow. Lazy huh? Yeah, I'm lazy for spending four years studying a subject and then not wanting to waste my time refuting THE INTERNET. Especially when GenReg is burning up.
So I chose to ignore the insult and respond to what I think is a pretty reasonable and short explanation:
On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 10:26 AM, David wrote:
Bernanke was right to apologize for the Fed's actions during the great depression. a lot of their actions were counter to what should have been done. however, to infer that that somehow meant anything but a lack of knowledge on how to act (macro econ is still a mostly gray area) is silly.
I'm not talking about refuting the stuff about the illuminati. of course i cant refute that if i dont know about it. I was talking about the causal inference as in the above. You heard bernanke say something like that and adapted it to your knowledge of the situation.
Friedman was a pioneer in macro (along with names like Galbraith, Keynes etc) and it seems appropriate to thank someone for their work in such an important field. Im not sure its rational to instantly infer that he's talking about some secret society.
NEGADOG!
On May 11, 2009, at 12:41 PM, Dustin wrote:
I wish it was easy to understand and explain the Illuminati, but its not. There is nothing I can really say to help you see it more clearly, but I can point you to books that are considered to be excellent primers amongst the alternative research crowd, many of which are written by members/servants of the Illuminati.
What do you know about Edward Bernays? I've attached his well known book on propaganda.
How about Zbigniew Brzezinski? I must admit I wasn't very familiar with the guy until I saw this clip during my research of the events of 9/11 several years ago.
At that point I just laughed it all off and decided to not respond.
So there you have it. People really do think like that.
1 comment:
there are two possible ideas to explain this conversation into a realm of possibility.
one) Dustin knows you are knowledgeable on this subject and wanted to get your opinion, formed from influences of professors, other academics and "experts in the field" by reading their writings. he had some ideas as influenced by the article and wanted to see where they stand on terms of mass consumption. it is one thing to write an essay piece say for Newsweek or the like, but another to have a review of scholarship by professionals in the field.
option number two) Dustin is batshit crazy and a willing sheep to boot. if you or someone else had suggested to him prior of reading the articles in question, another work, perhaps the one mentioned about the origins of the great depression, then that would be the source that he would look to for all the answers, biasing his opinion from all others, and relegating them to - stupid and lazy-
in fact the issue remains that if he wishes to understand this topic, its origins, its standards of comparison, he needs to read and study more than just a few poorly written works. he needs a breath as well as depth of knowledge. he is the lazy one for not saying- hey ill look into these books, and oh by the way these are some i read, lets get on the same page and discuss the topics.
instead it descends into a glorified shouting match. mostly with him wanting to scream at you, and you hitting you fist to your head in exasperation.
that is my analysis as i so see it.
now refute and discuss!
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