Review (Guest): ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Capitalism (Good & Bad), Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
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Yves Smith

Product Description

Why are we in such a financial mess today?  There are lots of proximate causes: over-leverage, global imbalances, bad financial technology that lead to widespread underestimation of risk.
But these are all symptoms. Until we isolate and tackle fundamental causes, we will fail to extirpate the disease.  ECONned is the first book to examine the unquestioned role of economists as policy-makers, and how they helped create an unmitigated economic disaster.

Here, Yves Smith looks at how economists in key policy positions put doctrine before hard evidence, ignoring the deteriorating conditions and rising dangers that eventually led them, and us, off the cliff and into financial meltdown.  Intelligently written for the layman, Smith takes us on a terrifying investigation of the financial realm over the last twenty-five years of misrepresentations, naive interpretations of economic conditions, rationalizations of bad outcomes, and rejection of clear signs of growing instability.

Review (DVD): The Most Dangerous Man in America–Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, 6 Star Top 10%, Censorship & Denial of Access, Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Corruption, Crime (Government), Cultural Intelligence, Culture, Research, Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Government, History, Impeachment & Treason, Justice (Failure, Reform), Media, Methods & Process, Military, Military & Pentagon Power, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
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5.0 out of 5 stars Stunningly Relevant Today and Always

December 7, 2010

I completely missed the release of this film in July, and stumbled on it while picking movies for a sick son.

It opens with Henry Kissinger, since demonstrated to be a war criminal, calling Daniel Elsberg the most dangerous man in America, and lamenting the release of secret documents (that ultimately proved government perfidy). Fast forward to WikiLeaks as a sequel to the 935 documented lies led by Dick Cheney.

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