Danny Schechter
“Irrationality is cognition, thinking, talking or acting without inclusion of rationality. It is more specifically described as an action or opinion given through inadequate reasoning, emotional distress, or cognitive deficiency. The term is used, usually pejoratively, to describe thinking and actions that are, or appear to be, less useful or more illogical than other more rational alternatives.”………
A closer look, usually in times of crisis, offers a window into another kind of financial world, a world of panic and fear, where irrationality is the order of the day, an irrationality that goes by the name of “Market Psychology.”…….
Forget the bulls or the bears...this is a world of sharks deeply in need of shrinks.
When things go well, the wizards of Wall Street are anointed by the media as geniuses. When they don’t, you get Time Magazine’s condescending putdown of “Wall Street’s mad scientists blowing up the lab again.”……….
This kind of humor seems out-of-place when we are talking about what many fear has lead to the collapse or at least a severe wounding of the global economy with millions of jobless and homeless victims who believed in the system until it failed them. And yet, as we saw in the great manufactured budget stalemate in Washington, members of Congress were and still are prepared to trigger a collapse in the name of a naïve but rigid ideology. Some of us argue with them thinking our facts can refute theirs but at bottom, fanaticism is not neutralized by rational argument. You need countervailing power and a willingness to fight for another vision……..
A closer look, usually in times of crisis, offers a window into another kind of financial world, a world of panic and fear, where irrationality is the order of the day, an irrationality that goes by the name of “Market Psychology.”…….
Forget the bulls or the bears...this is a world of sharks deeply in need of shrinks.
When things go well, the wizards of Wall Street are anointed by the media as geniuses. When they don’t, you get Time Magazine’s condescending putdown of “Wall Street’s mad scientists blowing up the lab again.”……….
This kind of humor seems out-of-place when we are talking about what many fear has lead to the collapse or at least a severe wounding of the global economy with millions of jobless and homeless victims who believed in the system until it failed them. And yet, as we saw in the great manufactured budget stalemate in Washington, members of Congress were and still are prepared to trigger a collapse in the name of a naïve but rigid ideology. Some of us argue with them thinking our facts can refute theirs but at bottom, fanaticism is not neutralized by rational argument. You need countervailing power and a willingness to fight for another vision……..
“And yet, as we saw in the great manufactured budget stalemate in Washington, members of Congress were and still are prepared to trigger a collapse in the name of a naïve but rigid ideology.” I’m sure the author was referring to Republicans as the ideologues. You know, the ones whose ideology drove them to try to cut deficit spending. Reason tells me that running up the debt at a rate of $1.6 trillion a year will lead to debt default and the total destruction of the government’s debt rating. Reason tells me that when you are in the midst of a debt crisis you don’t run up more debt. Federal expenditures have risen by nearly a $trillion per year from ’08 to ’11. In Bush’s last year the federal government spent $2.98 trillion. In Obama’s first year it spent $3.5 trillion, and this year the CBO estimates expenditures of $3.8 trillion. I think we could have cut $200 billion out of this year’s budget. That would have only reduced the rate of spending increase, not cut spending from ’10. Spending is rising uncontrollably. Is supporting that a form of rationality? I think not.
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