Mind you, whenever I think of economics and finance, I get this "let me crawl to my hole because economists do calculus so much better than I" feeling that I just don't want to be bothered. Admitted, their reasoning skills go beyond that of the common mortal more concerned with whom the Pistons are going to pick up next season than with say, the relationship between international trade agreements and the deluge of economic refugees from Latin America.
Yep, financiers and economists are very "critical thinkers," just about as critical as most journalists for whatever Times or Journal of your choosing. Basically, they're critical about what they're supposed to be critical, for as long as it is permissible to be critical. Some may call this a criticality of convenience, which doesn't account for much, but it sure is "smart" if you wanna keep your job and keep everyone impressed with how astute you are for spouting the cliche du jour.
Remember how they waxed euphoric about Argentina's economy, which had pegged to the dollar in the early 90s, before they crashed it and went in to buy everything on discount? Do you remember how the rhetoric by the very same critical minds shifted overnight? Sure you don't, but I bet you remember the outrage over Janet Jackson's tit during Superbowl half-time. Admit it, tits are more interesting than economics.
Remember the praises for South East Asia (wherever that's supposed to be, because if isn't France or UK does it really matter anyway?), before the currency crisis initiated by George Soros-- whose name is still a bad word in Thailand? Do you remember what the critical crickets started chirping about "crony capitalism" and "transparency?" Never mind about the lives that were destroyed for the sake of buying things on the cheap.
I had the pleasure of eating dinner last month with an interesting collection of individuals. A very wealthy septuagenarian English couple (house in a fancy part of LA, flat in Paris, and cottage in Dampngloomfordshire, England) who blamed the Americans for the fall of colonialism--a development, by reckoning of the lively vocalizations of the wife, which definitely did not benefit Africa. Yes. They'd lived throughout Western and Southern Africa as well.
Among a few Frenchies, there was an Ivorean (a country so unimportant that he took it upon himself to right the situation by emigrating to Paris) in his 20s engaged to the daughter of the Parisian woman of the house. He is an engineer, with an engineer's analytical qualities: the kind of qualities that has him handling international accounts and thinking critically about the things he should be critical for as long as it is permissible. Despite the language difficulties (boor that I am for refusing to learn any European language), I was dazzled with his assessment of post-colonial Africa. He may have never read Fanon, Nkruma, or Ngugi, but he must have certainly been hip to the French version of critical publications like the Economist. The dazzle? Corruption. African leaders are corrupt and that's why the continent is mired in the problems it is. Again, there was a language gap, so the sexy French word du jour for "crony capitalism," which he no doubt knew, would have been lost upon me anyway.
If you haven't already fallen asleep, then I'm sure it's because you're still wondering when I'm going to get back to to the real critical issues, i.e., Superbowl obscenity, with a few illustrations. I understand and I'll try to indulge you if you just cut me a bit of slack while I explore the offal topic of cause-and-effect.
Even though the smart people know that what Rev. Wright said was "reprehensible, offensive, and downright unpatriotic," a similar conclusion is drawn by Chalmers Johnson in Blowback. The colonials, and by that I mean the normal everyday "innocent" people who support colonial ventures in the name of "protecting our freedom" (read: our wealth vis-a-vis their misery), shriek (not Shrek but that movie sure was entertaining wasn't it) and howl when the chickens of theft, chaos, and death come home to roost. Somehow, bombing the hell out of Cambodians, Panamanians, and Iraqis (to name but a fraction, remember my calculus is no good), is irreproachable. It is questionable whether the laws of cause-and-effect concur.
Many lefties conclude that several "isms" are motivating factors, particularly racism, for global economic policy. But if you disregard discrepancies in educational funding, prison sentencing, prison populations, capital executions, Guantanamo, life-expectancy, and intentionally accidental bombing of civilian targets, you really find that race has nothing to do with it. Furthermore, beyond the overall inappropriateness of applying race analysis under any circumstances, such spurious viewpoints would do little to explain what happened to Argentina, which unless the smart people didn't get the memo, is the most European country of the Americas, certainly Latin America.
Beyond this, the sentimental simpers of race-cardists would hardly explain formation of institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, which were primarily created to help the 3rd World. Sure, John Perkins' tell-all Confessions of an Economic Hit Man provides some convincing detail of global economic structure and dominance, but isn't it more than a bit fantastical to assume that all countries should be of equal footing economically? Isn't it human nature that those on the top strategize to stay there? And in the long run isn't this best for the world, even if they don't know it? After all, could you imagine the mayhem of a truly democratically structured United Nations that did not funnel important decisions of life and death to the Security Counsel, where aside from the token rotating members, the permanent member-states (colonial powers) ensure progress?
But the point here is not about the 3rd world; it's already been established that it doesn't really matter. In fact, even the people of the 3rd World (don't the smart people say "developing world" why am I being so insensitive) know that it doesn't matter, otherwise they wouldn't be clamoring to relocate to Toronto, Miami, Manchester, or Lion. Right? Proof positive that we've got it figured out. It has nothing to do with the "hit" they've been taking for the past 500 years, right?
Anyway, we need to continue to pursue this cause-and-effect thread, because if race hegemony isn't the motivating factor, then we might guess that some of the same "capital freeing" policies that have been applied in the 3rd World will eventually hit home, er I mean the home of the racially inoculated. In other words, if it is possible to apply the law of science that "for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction," then it is scientific to conclude that those opposites have a little reacting to do here in the "civilized world." It doesn't seem unreasonable that one such reaction is immigration, but whether that will fully account for bombs in the name of freedom is up for the historians and historical revisionist to decide.
Since The Yang Zhu is just another way of saying heretically inclined, it is interesting to note what appears to be a thawing in the reception toward heretical economic views, particularly in the UK. It seems that this receptivity has much less to do with any innate English sensibilities (though I must confess that to put English and sensible together strikes me as tautological) than with the crunch that the smart economists and financiers have begun exacting upon the erstwhile English middle class in the fashion that seemed darned humanitarian when exacted against the 3rd World. But as they say, what's good for the goose isn't necessarily good for the gander. Thus, a new critical view or more precisely a new receptivity toward critical views of global economics is emerging. The tendency has been for leftist malcontents to play the race card, but greed and it's off-shoot entitlement are probably more responsible. Whether this new-found receptivity reaches the 3rd World probably depends on our ability to recognize 3rd World humanity, but didn't we already establish that this would be akin to enabling atavism, otherwise they wouldn't be trying to move here and get what we got in the first place? Right?
Gods of Greed
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: the prophet of boom and doom
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