journal features

I don't understand the financial system

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Oakville, 2011.01.26

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't understand the financial system. Not even one little bit.

Also, I don't understand the US political system, but I do get that the actual elected officials are essentially useless. For example, it took them two years to produce these stunning findings: a statement of the blindingly obvious.

By counterexample, there are people who have been saying from the beginning that it was all simply fraud (favourite quote: "It is not necessary to hope to perservere."). At the same time, little attention is being paid to some of the real impacts that the rest of us have felt from this debacle: I've seen figures that show a 20% decline in the average Japanese household monthly disposable income. 20%! I found the figure in a report prepared for a retailers' newsletter but never saw anything about it in the press, anywhere.

How on Earth have we gotten this far without anybody in a position of power being charged with these towering crimes?

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot