29-Jul-12 World View - Geithner's testimony raises questions

[John]

29-Jul-12 World View -- Geithner's testimony raises questions about his competence


Syrian army massing for major assault on Aleppo

** 29-Jul-12 World View -- Geithner's testimony raises questions about his competence
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 29#e120729



Contents:
Geithner's testimony raises questions about his competence
Vox Day on Generation-X cynicism and fury
The Oklahoma City bombing
Syrian army massing for major assault on Aleppo


Keys:
Generational Dynamics, Timothy Geithner, Libor, Vox Day,
Boomers, Generation-X, Nuremberg Principle, Clarence Thomas,
Jeffrey Toobin, Bill Clinton, Susan Estrich,
Syria, Aleppo, Bashar al-Assad

[Trevor]

Wow, a note! He was sure diligent about trying to make sure the criminals were punished. He's a definite hero...

What they say might be true, but it's also phrased in a way that absolves them of any blame for the financial crisis. This is the kind of crap everyone is pulling right now, Boomers and X-ers both.

As for their comments on what divorce courts are like, I've listened to a lot of people complain that the system is biased towards the father, that the whole system is set up to benefit the "evil patriachy" and that more laws must be passed to correct this. Question: how can they possibly say that with a straight face?

[John]

The same way that politicians lie about everything else.

[Higgenbotham]

Actually, Day himself gave the reason in his e-mail message to me:

"The financial crisis is absolutely a Boomer affair. The reason GenX isn't concerned with playing the little regulatory game of the 1980s is because we believe the entire game is rigged, the prosecutions are fake, the punishments are wrist slaps, and the entire system has to be burned down in flames."

I'll give my version of this, which is similar to what Day says.

The main difference I've seen between Boomers and X'ers with regard to this subject is the Boomers feel the system is legitimate whereas the X'ers feel the system is illegitimate. Therefore, I concur that Day is describing things accurately.

The Boomers believe that if those who are in positions of responsibility within the system have not done their jobs, that can be fixed. They believe that positions of responsibility must be respected and therefore those persons in positions of responsiblity must be respected regardless of the individual occupying them (multiple Boomers have told me this).

The X'ers on the other hand believe the fraud at root originates from within the system, from the top. They don't believe that positions of responsibility or those persons in them deserve any respect because the system is illegitimate. Of course, not all Xers think this way but of the people who do I have invariably found them to be X'ers, as Day also states.

The Boomers therefore define crime as it is defined by the system. Specifically, anyone who clearly breaks laws as defined by the system is a criminal. Examples of criminals as defined by Boomers would be Madoff or the traders who were involved in the LIBOR scandal. The Boomers may look at these types of people as being the root of the problem.

The X'ers see the criminals as those who run the system. John is saying the problem is that Geithner didn't follow up on fraud because he's an X'er. Day is saying fraud wasn't prosecuted because the system is illegitimate and broken. I concur with Day. Bernanke didn't follow up on fraud either.

I believe the other distinction the X'ers are making is the size of the fraud. Somebody working in an office at Countrywide may have done a few million, Madoff may have done a few billion, whereas the X'ers see the Federal Reserve as having counterfeited a few trillion and as being more illegitimate and criminal than Madoff due to the size of its fraud. A Boomer may be more likely to view every dime the Federal Reserve didn't pay in interest as being a decision made democratically for the greater good whereas an X'er may more likely view every dime the Federal Reserve didn't pay in interest as a dime that was stolen from somebody. The money printing or counterfeiting would be viewed similarly, with a Boomer more likely viewing it as policy and an X'er more likely it as very large scale theft.

[Marc]

Thanks, Higgs, for the cogent analysis to John's revelatory posting. As a fellow X'er, I think that you're on target in regards to how Boomers and X'ers have a difference of opinion relating to, say, massive money-printing by the Federal Reserve — e.g., "using those trillions for the greater good" (typical Boomer opinion) as opposed to "monumental theft" (typical X'er opinion).

Again, as an X'er, I would respectfully give less weight to "feminazis" (terrible term, I know!) in creating "messed-up X'ers," even though hardcore feminists may well have given a significant thrust to the loosening of family ties in many instances, with its resulting pathologies. One could look also at "Great Society"–type efforts in eradicating poverty (which sometimes unwittingly encouraged dependency or created poorly-thought-out urban-renewal programs) in conjunction with middle-class-conscious efforts such as homeownership programs and even the expansion of the US Interstate Highway System. These middle-class-conscious efforts encouraged those who could afford better to move to the suburbs, thus leaving the inner city, in many instances, to the poorest and most desperate. As the Awakening era kicked in during the mid-1960s, inner-city residents, spurred on by what they saw on television, sometimes became volatile and rioted; with the suburban infrastructure being built up, coupled with homeownership programs, it made it even easier for those who could afford to move to do so — and who were further encouraged to do so by inner-city violence in many instances. All this surely helped to create dysfunctional inner-city environments that no doubt had a deleterious impact on too many X'er children.

However, for the more privileged American X'er kids, who were the majority of X'ers, there was still the "Reality Bites" experience of growing up, hearkening to what Higgs said — and fortified by an increasingly less chivalrous culture and much underprotective parenting as they grew up. As the Third Turning kicked in, and as Boomers took key positions in corporations, I would agree with John that such Boomers frequently showed a lack of managerial skills and simply looked the other way when "dicey stuff" happened from underlings. The underlings, under increasing pressure to produce "shareholder value" due to Third Turning expectations, and with the underlings' frequently-experienced "Reality Bites" experiences of a harsh growing-up experience (punctuated by, indeed, some X'ers who had particularly dysfunctional growing-up environments), I can thus easily see how quite a few X'ers would adopt a "screw-you-and-get-away-with-what-you-can" ethos. Most X'ers didn't have mothers with a string of men in their beds, or feminazi mothers, but there didn't need to be to create what happened: there was enough "poison X'er stew" on the table, fortified by Third Turning greed, to get enough X'ers into "screw-you mode" for them to be the active agents of the current economic crisis. Of course, when behavior becomes normed within organizations, or even required to keep your job, you can see how even more employees will do dicey deeds if they feel they must.

So...just my further respectful opinions here on how X'ers helped to cause the financial crisis...but I do kindly feel that some "moral-neutral" efforts such as "Great Society" and civic-improvements efforts — and even some conservative efforts, such as welfare workers fastidiously looking for "a man in the house," whose absence was sometimes a criterion to receive welfare up to the mid-to-late '60s — did have an impact on the X'ers as well, in creating what we have today. Thanks, all, for also sharing. —Best regards, Marc

[Johnny Caustic]

John,

An excellent and very thoughtful post. Thank you. The bit about the cheering at the Game Developers' Conference is particularly salient to me; I'm Gen X, but I'm just about as aghast as the reporter.

I notice the "In-Depth Analysis" column on the left side of your home page hasn't been updated since August, and I'd like to suggest that you move the Vox Day/Gen X/OK City discussion to that column. (There have been a few other daily updates over the last year I thought were general enough and excellent enough that they also belonged in that column, though I no longer remember which ones.) Stuff like that is well worth placing where we can easily find it over the next few years.

I'm one of the Gen-Xers who answered Vox's poll and said Boomers have primary responsibility. Regarding your mention of the Nuremburg defense, you are right of course that Gen-Xers who committed or aided fraud should be punished. But that's not the same as asking who has ultimate responsibility. I'm a believer in old-fashioned hierarchy, wherein both power and responsibility are invested in carefully chosen individuals; that way, when officials commit wrongdoing, they cannot pass the buck, because they had the power to act otherwise. The Boomers with their anti-authoritarianism did a lot to break down that hierarchy, replacing it with systems of committees and bureaucracies that diffuse responsibility so everybody can maintain plausible claims of innocence. I think this modern tendency to put faith in committees, "consensus", and diffused responsibility is a genuine Evil with a capital E, and the Boomers did a great deal to disguise this Evil as a Good.

So while it is no defense for Gen-Xers to diffuse responsibility for their frauds to their superiors, it is tenfold worse for the Boomers to diffuse responsibility for their employees' frauds to their employees. While it was wrong of the Boomers to allow the Gen-Xers to commit those frauds, the greater wrong was for the Boomers to break down the system of authority that would have more clearly kept the power and the blame where it belongs, in the hands of a relatively small number of trusted individuals who accept full responsibility for any wrongdoing.

Johnny

[bluebird]

I'm definitely a Boomer born 1949. We can be here all day discussing who is to blame. I would be happy if someone would put these banksters in jail. But it appears this entire corrupted system will end in collapse first.

[gerald]

Wow - that sure illiterates the generational differences.

Is it possible that the ebb and flow of generations may be due to the interaction of people that are generally isolated/protected from the larger reality?
I mean this in the context of humanity vs. nature.

Thomas Jefferson --
"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe we shall become as corrupt as Europe"
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/autho ... PQIhyVP.99

( Aren't most wars started by leaders in cities? --- hmmm )

Generally, rural agricultural communities were/are considered backward ( conservative ) and cities ( progressive )

These non-city societies appear to have a more stable and moral/law abiding culture.

For example, I noticed in rural New Zealand fruit stands with a sign stating the cost and a box to place ones money, no owner, just trust. Years ago, trappers would keep their cabins unlocked so another trapper in trouble could come in out of the weather and save himself, even if the owner was not there. The code required that the "guest" replaced all the wood that was burned for warmth, they abided by the code.

Is it possible that these non-city societies were more stable because they frequently experienced regeneracy events caused by nature, the common foe?

Additional comment to the "Johnny Caustic" comment.

Regarding my "nature the common foe" point of view. Generically speaking -- If you screw up regarding nature, you can be dead. Then, how you pass the buck?
This instills individual responsibility and accountability.

[John]

From a web site reader:

My own personal opinion as to why the west will never survive is as follows:

An anthropologist by the name of J.D. Unwin initiated a study with the premise that marriage was not necessary and possibly even detrimental to the development of great societies. At the end of this study he completely reversed his hypothesis.

"Perhaps the definitive work on the rise and fall of civilizations," writes Fitzpatrick, "was published in 1934 by Oxford anthropologist J.D. Unwin":

In "Sex and Culture," Unwin studied 86 human civilizations ranging from tiny South Sea island principalities to mighty Rome. He found that a society's destiny is linked inseparably to the limits it imposes on sexual expression and that those sexual constraints correlate directly to its theological sophistication and religious commitment.

Unwin noted that the most primitive societies had only rudimentary spiritual beliefs and virtually no restrictions on sexual expression, whereas societies with more sophisticated theologies placed greater restrictions on sexual expression, and achieved greater social development.

In particular, cultures that adopt what Unwin dubbed "absolute monogamy" proved to be the most vigorous, economically productive, artistically creative, scientifically innovative and geographically expansive societies on earth.

The following are grave words for the USA that come from noted Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin who found no culture surviving once it ceased to support marriage and monogamy. None.

Now we can do a basic analysis of marriage in the USA. Current illegitimacy rates are as follows:

Black 73%

Hispanic 53%

White 29%

for an overall rate of 42%. The future of the USA has been written. Currently the rate of illegitimacy for women of all races under 30 is 53%.

“Once a society departs from a social norm of absolute marital monogamy, social chaos ensues within three generations.” — Anthropologist Joseph Daniel Unwin

Some statistics from single parent families

- Graduate from high school less frequently

- Suffer more addictions

- Suffer more abuse

- Twice as likely to become an alcoholic

- Three times more likely to have a baby out of wedlock

- Five times more likely to commit suicide


- Five times more likely to fall into poverty

- Twelve times more likely to be incarcerated.
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[gerald]

Regardless of what one thinks of organized religion - it has good and bad aspects. Organized religion can, and has, instilled moral codes on society, which can then lead to a society's rejuvenation.