It’s always good to talk about edumacation, right? Is our children learning, and such? Well Barack Obama certainly did all that last night — but he actually went so far as to blame dumb American children for the global economic collapse, which was actually designed and directed by the red right hands of Wall Street, the “best and brightest” who had the best American education money and elite connections can buy! Our old pal Robert Scheer has this nasty little analysis that is probably the best one we’ve read so far:
His references to education provided a convenient scapegoat for the failure of the economy, rather than to blame the actions of the Wall Street hustlers to whom Obama is now sucking up. Yes, it is an obvious good to have better-educated students to compete with other economies, but that is hardly the issue of the moment when all of the world’s economies are suffering grievous harm resulting from the irresponsible behavior of the best and the brightest here at home. It wasn’t the students struggling at community colleges who came up with the financial gimmicks that produced the Great Recession, but rather the super-whiz-kid graduates of the top business and law schools.
What nonsense to insist that low public school test scores hobbled our economy when it was the highest-achieving graduates of our elite colleges who designed and sold the financial gimmicks that created this crisis. Indeed, some of the folks who once designed the phony mathematical formulas underwriting subprime mortgage-based derivatives won Nobel prizes for their effort. A pioneer in the securitization of mortgage debt, as well as exporting jobs abroad, was one Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of GE, whom Obama recently appointed to head his new job creation panel.
Much, much more at the link: [Truthdig via Tikkun/Spiritual Progressives]
{ 53 comments }
I think it was a jab at the Palin son, who stands in the front yard, finger pointed toward the sky, mumbling "airplane, airplane" over and over again. I bet he picked that up in his army service. Go troops!
"the Palin son, who stands in the front yard, finger pointed toward the sky, mumbling "airplane, airplane" over and over again"
Todd?
No, he stands at the shoreline, watching people fish and mumbles, "hookers"
Speaking of Nobel prizes, Obama really earned his peace prize by barely mentioning Iraq and Afghanistan and not mentioning his other wars in Pakistan, Yemin, Columbia, Mexico, etc., etc..
I can't pee on that enough.
Let us not forget the important role played in the housing collapse by the desire of the undeserving lower orders to live in houses rather than drainage culverts.
I think we also need to find a way to blame the lack of jawbs on the shifty, cozy in their hammocks, unemployed.
They took mah jerb!
Why can a hipster friend of mine live off 700 a month, but it takes my cousin at least 700 a month to fill his SUVs tank for his 80 mile every day commute?
Let us not forget the role played by the financial sector's inflated paychecks, which lures many of the "best and the brightest" to work there as parasites on society rather than doing something that's actually useful (like say, teaching).
'Zactly so. A large number of modeling gurus left the sciences and engineering for crazy nutz paychecks on Wall Street. And keep in mind that modeling as applied in the physical sciences and engineering is nowhere near 100% in systems where fuzzy things like emotion, ego, and greed are not factors.
Mechanical engineering has arguably harder math requirements than an economics degree, even for a PhD, but the economics degree is worth 5x more over a lifetime.
Yeah, but a Republican would be worse!
That's your answer for everything. Mine too.
I thought his point wasn't "our dumb kids screwed us" so much as "we ought to educate our children better." But don't let that get in the way of a good screed, Scheer.
Zing! Ouch! Bullseye!
Yeah, Ken's posts RE Obama are becoming dangerously unsnarky. Sometimes it's like reading FireDogLake.
Critically low levels of truck nutz and blingees.
How many colleges did Palin go to before she got her degree?
All of them, Katie.
Also.
I went to 4 different colleges but 3 of them were before I was 21 and I graduated when I was 23.
Oh sure, let the poor off the hook again. Everybody knows they really run everything. And now it's time for that "collapse of the Roman Empire" meme where conservatives quote some historian or other who concluded that Rome fell into corruption because the poor had too many privileges and too much bread-and-circus coddling and blew the hell out 800 years of economic expansion.
Of course they never mention that there were so many poor people due to skyrocketing real estate prices caused by seizure of land by the wealthy, and such a lack of social mobility that soldiering was the only profession with any possibility of economic success and that even then it was taking longer and longer for people to pension out and get less and less of a reward. But that was probably caused by overregulation.
And fluorescent light bulbs. Don't forget the impact of fluorescent light bulbs on the Roman Empire. I'm pretty sure they were the main cause of the fall.
There was also quite a bit of damage that came about when Rome was taken over by a death cult that had spread from one of its backwater provinces to the full reach of the Empire, which shunned all knowledge that did not come from members of that cult and went around destroying all the works of science and literature it could, among other acts destroying the Great Library of Alexandria, and which set back all knowledge in Europe for about 1500 years.
Lesson learned — they'll do better next time.
When, Space Rome?
Hmm, I wonder what their space stations would look like.
I can't tell if you're talking about the U.S. or the Roman Empire in your last paragraph …you can use either one and it's still true.
I think that's the point.
So, the smart MIT Quants that ass-fucked our entire economy into submission didn't have any education prior to the Ivy League? Seems plausible.
meh..i didnt see him as blaming the dumb kids as much as "eventually these dumb kids will all grow up and if you think we're screwed now…" needz more better skools.
I knew Euclidian Geometry and Calculus were evil.
Algebra's my bitch though.
Now Statistics, she's a whore.
right on.
Look everyone let's get this straight…Wall Street didn't cause the collapse…dumb people without jobs buying houses they couldn't afford or pay for caused it. Wall Street and the banks just fueled the stupidity with their zero down loans, no income loans and the like…then they sold those as AAA backed securities – because you know – spread the risk. Then when the dumb uneducated poors couldn't pay for the house they never had a chance in hell of paying for everyone went WHOOPS! So Barry is right, get edumacated and maybe you will be smart enough to tell the mortgage broker that there is no way in hell you can afford this McMansion…so therefore, it is our fault. I think the logic is about fucked up enough to make sense – don't you?
It wasn’t the students struggling at community colleges who came up with the financial gimmicks that produced the Great Recession
No, it wasn't. But it was those same valiant ignorants who, in a fit of Reagiography, voted into office the trickling pustules that laid waste to any oversight mechanism which might have reined in the Ivy-covered sharpies.
Eggzackly! I think if anyone did an exit poll and cross-referenced it with IQ we would see that the dumbs are voting Repugnicant by a wide margin.
They just want their chance too! In America, anybody* can be a hedge fund manager and pay 15% income tax on his obscenely bloated income.
_____________________
*Anybody = a math degree from MIT and an MBA from Harvard
While I'm all for the lynching of anyone with an MBA (and I say that having a JD), let's not forget that even if everyone at Goldman Sachs voted one way, it is not them demanding that the government get their hands off medicare, or not holding Republicans accountable for eight years of faulty oversight and sucking up to lobbyist which is what got us here.
And, in Obama's defense, in the long term, we are much better off if we would get our children to be engineers and scientist, not MBAs and Lawyers. It is in the hope of achieving this goal that I propose legislation that would outlaw MBAs and JDs from breeding, and expose them to death panels. I think even Sarah Palin say something bad about that!
My sister has an MBA, but she hasn't bred any offspring. Instead, she uses her powers for good–she makes wine. yummy wine…
I humbly disagree. I don't think there's anyone on the planet who is more qualified to convince their children not to be lawyers than lawyers themselves. Most of them already have years of practice telling everyone even remotely contemplating law school the gazillion and one reasons not to go.
What a stats geek. I'm keeping my Mahalanobis distance from you.
Got to find someone to hold responsible so we can award the Medal of Freedom.
G.E.!!! WE BRING GOOD THINGS TO LIFE!!
I think if michele leaned forward, she would tip over.
I propose a "Punches for Poindexter" program
wherein every underachieving middle-schooler gets to sucker-punch one Ivy League-educated quant so that America can feel good about Herself again.
You don't need to be a genius to go to business school, just a sociopath.
The ones in grad school maybe, the undergrads are 90% grade D idiots, the 10% clever ones are the scary fucks, the rest are just going to manage a nameless random office somewhere.
The real scary ones are the grad school economists who subscribe to libertarian social or political philosophy like Nozick or arguably Malthus.
COUNTDOWN with Ken Layne
"But first, the headlines breaking in the administration's 50 running scandals…BAMMED!!"
If you believe that Ivy League graduates on Wall Street caused the financial market collapse, then you should also believe a great way to remedy Wall Street's disproportionate influence on the economy is to through granting wider access to education opportunities.
Obama knows that if more Poor-Americans can infiltrate the Ivy Leagues, some will eventually make it to Wall Street where they stand the best chance of finding a few advocates on Capitol Hill.
Those damn kids.
I just said that today when some kids were skateboarding on the sidewalk, does that make me old?
If we educate our children too much, they're not going to be happy being the nannies, gardeners, and personal assistants to the super-rich, now are they.
The only math they'll need to know is half. You fold the towel in HALF, then in HALF again. You worked 40 hours this week, but you're only getting paid for HALF. I'd like to give you a raise, but there are HALF-a-dozen people who'd be willing to do this job for HALF of what I'm paying you already, so suck it.
You know, that kind of practical math.
I work on robotics all day at school, don't worry, we will soon replace poor people.
So by now, Walnutz would have fixed all of this mess. Right Ken?
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