SUB-PRIME MINDS

The thought passed my mind that as the Federal Government is now nationalizing the Banks I may be due a second government pension. Then again it would only be paid out in inflated dollars so it may be more profitable to take up begging. Or is the government nationalizing insurance instead? Nothing like handing insurance over to the very temple of profligacy itself. If you want to get a sense of how deep the culpability for the financial crisis goes, consider that no one wants to expose just who invented and sold the idea of bundling bad mortgages into financial instruments. These weren't bad loans, the were just "Sub-Prime." The idea is idiotic on its face. Which means that it took people of very high intelligence and communications abilities to sell this lump of coal as a diamond.

Stepping away from the market for a moment let's look at Law. The cult of intellectual brilliance is at it's most preposterous here. Why? because Law, like Philosophy is abstracted enough from cause and effect as to allow a charlatan a long career before the fruits of his brilliance fall rotten to the ground. Intellectual prowess now manifests itself in its practitioners outdoing each other in making the worst seem the better in either some political cause or for no better reason than to exhibit one's mastery over the commons. Thus we have constitutional argument devoid of any actual constitutional language. We also have legal theories used to interpret a document which the crafters of the document never entertained.

Our law was founded and rested on the English Empirical method, in which judges with a grounding in prudence and the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition stove to interpret the law so as to render coherent, reasonably predictable decisions that tended to maintain social order while rendering justice. Precedent superseded novelty wherever possible, not out of lack of imagination, but because continuity within a single culture was deemed important. But American Law has now devolved through the twin infections of politicisation and European style intellectualizing into mere politics played via theoretical subterfuge. The affairs of the courthouse have taken on the aspect of the witchdoctors hut. Anything may happen within, depending on the "brilliance" of the legal practitioners . Law for the average man is now the equivalent of voodoo, fearsome and unknowable

I digressed from the market for a reason. The market, once the domain of old money and basic precepts, is now the domain of this bright new voodoo as well. Where we were once practical, we are now gullible imbibers of everything theoretical, accepting pure hokum as insight if it is presented with sufficient intellectual flair. Deep down we know that the worthless is still worthless but the temptation to relax and accept the brilliant delusion as fact as long as it provides profit is just too great for we new Americans.