The Disappearing Intellectual
We live at a time that might be appropriately called the age of the disappearing intellectual. In a media scape and public sphere that view criticism, dialog and thoughtfulness as a liability, anti-intellectuals abound, providing commentaries that are nativist, racist, reactionary and morally repugnant. But the premium put on ignorance and the disdain for critical intellectuals is not monopolized by the dominant media, it appears to have become one of the few criteria left for largely wealthy individuals to qualify for public office. Underlying this drift toward the disappearing critical intellectual and the erasure of substantive critique is a regime of economic Darwinism in which a culture of ignorance serves to both depoliticize the larger public while simultaneously producing individual and collective subjects necessary and willing to participate in their own oppression. The cheerful robot is not simply an opprobrium for ignorance, it is a metaphor for the systemic construction in American society of a new mode of depoliticized and thoughtless form of agency. Democracy places civic demands upon its citizens. It may be the case that everyday life is increasingly organized around market principles; but confusing a market-determined society with democracy hollows out the legacy of higher education, whose deepest roots are moral, not commercial. This is a particularly important insight in a society where the free circulation of ideas are not only being replaced by ideas managed by the dominant media, but where critical ideas are increasingly viewed or dismissed as banal, if not reactionary.
http://www.truth-out.org/the-disappearing-intellectual-age-economic-darwinism61287?print
Pack of Hyenas
Ray Dalio is a billionaire hedge fund manager who makes more money in a day than most Americans in their lifetime. Hedge funds are the top of the Wall Street food chain, and Dalio runs the largest one of all, Bridgewater Associates.
Dalio, a self-described "hyperrealist," is author of a book of maxims leaked recently via the financial blog Dealbreaker. Dalio titled his collection "Principles," and he makes every Bridgewater employee memorize it. This is what Dalio has to say:
When a pack of hyenas takes down a young gnu, is that good or evil? At face value, that might not be "good" because it seems cruel, and the poor gnu suffers and dies. Some people might even say that the hyenas are evil. Yet this type of apparently "cruel" behavior exists throughout the animal kingdom. Like death itself, it is integral to the enormously complex and efficient system that has worked for as long as there has been life. It is good for both the hyenas who are operating in their self-interest and the interest of the greater system, including those of the gnu, because killing and eating the gnus fosters evolution.
Six biggest banks control US economy
Fifteen years ago, the combined assets of the six biggest banks in the United States totaled 17 percent of the GDP. By 2006, that number was 55 percent. Right now, it stands at 63 percent. This degree of market power brings with it not just antitrust concerns and a huge amount of economic risk -- but great political influence as well. The financial Godfathers' message is quite clear: If you cross us, we will bury you at the polls. Nothing in former Fed chairman Paul Volcker's new rules would change this relationship between Wall Street and Washington.
American health is not a business goal
Rachel Maddow points out that health insurance companies do not care about the well-being of Americans and should not be expected to because they are businesses so their goal is making money. Because American health care is a profit-making system, not a health care system, the incentives are wrong to provide Americans with adequate care.
Powerful people are assholes
Scientists argue that power is corrupting because it leads to moral hypocrisy. Although we almost always know what the right thing to do is, power makes it easier to justify the wrongdoing, as we rationalize away our moral mistake. The real question, of course, is what causes this blatant hypocrisy. One possibility is that power makes us less sensitive to the needs and feelings of others -- it silences our empathy -- and so we only think about our own motivations and needs. Once we become socially isolated, we stop simulating the feelings of other people. Our sense of sympathy is squashed by selfishness. The UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner found that people with power are like patients with severe brain damage. Our most powerful people are also the most isolated. They live in gated communities with private drivers. They skip the security lines at airports, before sitting at the front of the plane. We shouldn't be surprised that they're also assholes.
Swiss pride
Switzerland's leading bank UBS could collapse if talks with the United States over a high-profile tax fraud investigation fall through, said Swiss justice minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf. Speaking in an interview with Le Matin Dimanche, Ms Widmer-Schlumpf said the Swiss economy and job market would suffer on a major scale if UBS fails as a result of its licence being revoked in the United States.
Switzerland and the US have negotiated an agreement under which UBS would hand over information on some 4,500 account holders to US tax police. Many in Switzerland have, however, accused the government of failing to protect the country's banking sector. "We have nothing to blame ourselves for. I don't think anyone could prove that we acted badly," Ms Widmer-Schlumpf said. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.44ec3a3581bd2b87b081a9614648ee11.c61Where is the Wrath?
In January 2009, shortly before President Obama took office, veteran Democratic pollster John Marttila conducted a series of focus groups on a range of issues in the Philadelphia and Baltimore areas. When the conversations turned to the economy, Marttila was shocked. In the middle of the financial collapse, these people -- men and women of different ages, incomes, races, and political affiliations -- were predictably ticked off. But, he recalls, the "dominant emotional dynamic was self-criticism. They really felt that they had failed. They had spent too much on things they did not need." The pollster had expected rage at Wall Street and George W. Bush, but the people barely mentioned Bush. Though they were upset at big banks, they were not revved up for revenge. "Their intellectual criticism was directed at the financial world," Marttila says, "but their emotional criticism was directed at themselves."
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/financial-crisis-wall-street-anger
