I think it is a very serious point on who or what is authoritive.
This is a video that I am putting in the Sources section:
Which can be found at:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/RoleofFe
And this is the 'Funny Video' I put in one of my serious Posts:
What's the difference?
Well actually virtually nothing! Barring a few jokes virtually nothing. In fact the second video is ALMOST a TRANSCRIPT of first.
There are two obvious differences:
1. One is delivered by someone who until 2008 was a very highly respected economist (see below for David Malpass's CV).
2. The other is delivered by two animated 'sock puppets'
There are two other differences:
1. The C-Span interview with David Malpass was received 140 views
2. The 'sock puppets' on Youtube got 3.2 million hits
So why is it that someone who until recently would have been guaranteed a pretty wide audience if he had spoken, now seems to have to rely on his friends knocking up a 'Youtube' video with animated sock puppets, to get his message out?
Well, for that you probably have to have either studied 'Sociology', either in the highly intellectualised form my Mum did (esp. Gramsci on 'Hegemony') or the more diluted form my 19 daughter has just done through 'Media Studies'.
The fact is that 'the powers to be' are deliberately stifling this message, and replacing it with a new one.
You mentioned that you enjoyed reading Antole Kaletsky in the Times. We clearly have different views on Kaletsky. I personally think that he is a complete, Breshnev-era communist-trained and educated crackpot with no experience beyond being a 'hack journalist' and no fundamental understanding or sympathy at all with 'capitalist' economics (see below for Anatole's Kaletsky's CV).
So why did Kaletsky get a column in 'The Times'?
A: Gordon Brown liked to surround himself with economic crackpots like this, trained in apparatik-style toadying . Murdoch obliged.
Why can't you read Kaletsky so easily anymore?
A: What has happened to Gordon Brown?
OK, so Kaletsky has good things to say, Malpass has soon good (& vice-versa) things to say. But be careful how you are being manipulated here, and how heavy is the manipulation.
AND REMEMBER OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES AND SOCK PUPPETS....
Pete
____________________________________________________________________
Who's who:
David Malpass
A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Malpass sits on the boards of the Economic Club of New York and the National Committee on United States-China Relations.
Co-author of a weekly column in Forbes
CV
Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary 1984-88,
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State 1989-93,
former Chief Economist of Bear Sterns,
former Senior Managing Director of Bear Sterns,
How authoritative is/was he? Well:
1. Malpass' team at Bearn Sterns ranked second in the Institutional Investor ranking of Wall Street economists in 2005, 2006, and 2007
2. In 2008 he was important enough to be a member of the US & Global Forum hosted by Jean-Claude Trichet President of the ECB,
3. This man was called to give testimony before a great many US Congressional Committees.
Antole Kaletsky
Mr Kaletsky was born in 1952 in Moscow, USSR and also spent his childhood in Poland and Australia.
He has lived in England and the US since 1966.
Mr Kaletsky was educated at King's College at the University of Cambridge where he graduated with a first class honours degree in Mathematics and at Harvard University, where he was a Kennedy Memorial Scholar and gained a master's degree in Economics.
CV
1976-9 Journalist with The Economist, writing about business and finance.
1979-90 Journalist Financial Times, including New York Bureau Chief, Washington Correspondent, International Economics Correspondent and Moscow Correspondent.
1990-1996 Economics Editor of The Times, responsible for all economic news and analysis,
1996 to date Founded Consultancy Practice. The Times’s principal commentator on economic and financial affairs, Editor-at-Large writing for The Times Comment pages on Thursdays and for the Times Business section on alternate Mondays.
As noted on Wikipedia:
Many of his economic predictions have been proven wrong by subsequent events, and this tendency was noted by the satirical magazine 'Private Eye'.
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Note: My harsh judgement on Kaletsky comes from reading this article, which advocates policies that strongly echo those led to the in collapse of the Russian economy in the late 1990s...
...and shows zero understanding of the paramount importance of protecting savers within capitalism economics....
Punish savers and make them spend money
Near-zero interest rates and even a tax on bank deposits are necessary to force those with cash to use it productively
Which can be found here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article5469589.ece
January 8, 2009
The basic mechanism of price discovery has been terminally corrupted because of the large speculative community using leveraged products like derivatives.
Traditionally price of any commodity was derived by the actual demand and supply of users and producers. Today it is derived by the long and short speculative positions on the exchange.
The sad part is that the rest of the population have to pay the price whatever is quoted on the exchange. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/...
2 people
Since I have money to burn, I think I will run out and buy a bit of copper tube and try this experiment. I am also wondering what would happen if you spin the tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
By the way, I am not very rich but have managed to buy two silver coins this past year.
Actually silver is up 70% in 12 months.
4 people
But new developments in Cambs, are going through with 40% affordable housing -that means we pay for the umarried women and unemployable through council taxes and central government taxes -their plot of land gets inflated in price I remember the property boom in Thatchers time . My neighbour was getting his house valued regularlyand hence reinisuring. He Had no idea it was the land increasing in value and not the house but the company loved his premiums.I was 29 years old then so I didnt say anything! Simple common sense
we kwow what happenned to Bunker -Hs too
Its taking part that counts I was once told .Play the game and gear up -and down
We live in rip off Britain Food prices ,cars houses etc. I buy beautiful sides of meat -pig ,lamb beef -from a farming friend 60% less than you would see in Tesco and much better eating Carry on spending you sad people out there!Some people are getting rich at your expense whilst you have got used to remortgaging to enable you to live WE ARE ANOTHER PIGS COUNTRY but noone has noticed yet Itis just difficult to make word with pigs and in it init!. NEw cars in the car park all on HP and 30 % credit card debt .We AR E the third world in 20 years
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1 person
1. Why buy the house then?
2. Are you considering the value of the land it is built on?
2 people
so how the hell can one trader squeeze the market?
the bunker hunts tried a similar thing.......
pretty soon noboby will have any money to buy any metal so the market will collapse..........of course banks can play monopoly because we have given them billions to play with....i wonder when the cheque will arrive with my slice of the profits?
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Desperate governments print money and flood markets with liquidity, but exercise no control over where it flows.
This is free market ideology gone mad, yet its deluded disciples still rail against any kind of intervention.
Financial markets should be a servant of the people, not their master. How much more evidence of a seriously malfunctioning financial system is needed before sanity prevails?
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9 people
If all those who purchased Gold said I want it now, they would get a nasty surprise!
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After all, they are printing like there no tomorrow and gold and silver are too expensive
3 people
if ww3 happened tomorrow, all those with actual materials would be king, all those with numbers in the bank, would be bankrupt.
so it does make a strange kind of sense.
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6 people
Does this mean we are going to reopen the copper mines of Anglesey? Would be nice to see a return to mining in Wales under a Tory government
4 people
I thought the last 3 words were noteworthy. I must have been asleep...are we (The West) back in a boom? Am nervous that we perhaps mistake some rising asset prices and demand elsewhere with real economic recovery?
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"She meant it as a compliment"