The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the publication of Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom.” As he looked around him, Friedman marveled at the world’s perverse refusal to learn certain lessons, even when history itself drove them home. Everyone had by then learned that government was too large, he said, but countries kept on growing government anyway.

Glad Thomas Frank followed that paragraph with

Friedman may have misread the direction in which the world was moving in 1994, but the question he raised is still a good one. Bad ideas and clueless pundits often do get on top, and they stay there — sometimes hailing incentives and accountability, even — despite all manner of rebukes handed down by history itself.

Adversarial voices are few. Criticism is sacrificed for access

Bad ideas and clueless pundits often do get on top, and they stay there . . . —

golly gee, where have we seen that before ?!?!?

this has beena huge A-Ha! for cbl these past two weeks – frankly, because I hadn’t paid much attention to the so-called financial reporting media before

commented in an earlier thread that the parallels btw Wall St Media and Villagers are stunning. this one is married to that hedge fund manager but never has to disclose it, this bobblehead is married to Wall St PR Wiz, no disclosure – ad nauseum
aaarrrggghhhh !

all this ass-kissin’ Christy, – poor Jeff Zucker’s gonna feel left out :D

You got to love this guy Lawrence, here is a quote:

AIG should have been placed in bankruptcy last fall under some sort of government sponsorship. While in bankruptcy, all the salary contracts (and every other AIG contract) would have been nullified and voided. At the same time, there would have been an orderly liquidation and sale of AIG’s assets and separate divisions.

Now that makes sense to me. Why should we hate this guy.

Larry Kudlow can most definitely kiss my a**!

He is truly one of the bigger idiots on TV (and that covers a wide ground)

Ludlow and Cramer and their ilk have been passing bad advice for years and suffer no repercussions while assisting in killing our economy, 401k’s and savings. So when will our Corporate Congress pass laws requiring conflict of interest disclosures from financial pundants offering their great buys in the media. News Casters should be required to segregate news from propaganda or pontification by stating it as same. Oh well.

Actually I believe CNBC is part of the NBC Entertainment division and NOT part of the News Division.

Which point it all makes sense for them.

The news casters are idiots. The news they report is always sided to be sensational.
If you want real news then you must read and watch many point’s of view.

Hard to get real news.

There’s always BBC and Democracy Now, though they’re so truthful I gave up listening because my Zoloft couldn’t keep up.

Christy, T.Frank is right as rain. But Geithner and Born, too, made their obligatory speeches to echo Greenspan’s own “irrational exuberance” meme…Greenspan’s comment was made way back on December 5, 1996. So, “Amen!” to Thomas Frank.
But there are much larger geopolitical stories that are being absolutely hidden behind 1/10th-of-one-percent-of-the-bailout bonus controversies and Cramer v. Stewart farragoes.
1.) For instance, Santelli’s (and CNBC’s?) Chicago Tea Party coordination with hidden corporatist elements is now an open secret. (see Ames at http://www.exiledonline.com)
2.) Madoff’s so-called Ponzi scheme was not a Ponzi scheme at all. (see leveymeg’s blog) It concealed international money-laundering and fraud at the highest levels of international Treasury departments – Madoff could not have done it at all without the endorsement and collaboration/approval of the US SEC and the Fed!
3.) AIG’s indebtedness in the form of “naked” credit default swaps are estimated to lie between $23 trillion and $60 trillion! Much of the voluminous paperwork substantiating these transactions is shredded & degaussed from hard drives! The only verification available may be via individual relationships.
4.) That is why the bonuses may be returned, and why EU and London brokers are under surveillance by Interpol, their few US counterparts under guard by the Secret Service who are entrusted with the security of the financial markets!
These are the real stories – and these are the open secrets – that belie the stupidity we read about in the papers and see on CSPAN and CNN. So, “Booyah! to Thomas Frank, but I would say, “Get real!” and I’m not really plugged into the evidence…yet. But I’m hunting around. Trillions moving around unregulated? Suuuure….

Frank goes on to hammer away at the oft-tossed trope that no one could have seen this coming. Anyone who has read Calculated Risk, Roubini, Stiglitz, Krugman, Atrios, Baker, here at FDL or any number of other places across the web for the last few years knew things were brewing up a bad storm of shitpile.

we’ve been talking about this for at least three years here at the lake

I myself told everyone the economy was going to collapse and they should turn any of their stocks into some kind of hard asset, I told my dad and my friends, sad to say very few of them followed my advise, those that did have thanked me no end

now I am teh genious as far as they are concerned

Thanks for the Deep capture link earlier today.

Amazing reading, movie and archive. The archive would fit Christy’s post.

Jon Stewart must have gone through this sight. I get why Cramer was his front and center example.

Atrios pretty much called this whole thing a couple years ago. Thanks to his constant warnings and watching the foreclosure legal notices explode in our local paper, my wife and I restructured our investments when she retired from teaching to get out of Fannie Mae and anything else to do with housing, and almost all stocks. We’ve lost some money, but nothing like most of our friends who stayed in stocks. That “nobody could have predicted” meme is pure bullshit because lots of people DID predict it.