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3-9-2009 |
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." | Albert Einstein |
| 3-9-2009 | Some people make the same mistake a thousand times and call it "experience." Then some of us glibly imbibe the "expert" advice and call it "gospel." | Ole Kristensen |
| 3-9-2009 | "...buying and selling houses and financial instruments doesn't bring lasting prosperity. What brings prosperity is work." | Justin Fox in Time Magazine, March 14, 2009, p. 44 |
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3-9-2009 |
During
the preceding 30 years, the United States has undergone what can
best be described as a revolutionary shift from a nation of
innovation and products toward a nation whose economy depends in
large measure on many large financial pyramids. Its basis is the
willingness of more and more people to join by investing their
money, not so much in companies that make products anymore, but mostly in genuine
(or sometimes fake) financial schemes that can only continue so long as
more and more contribute. Were you and I to undertake a pyramid scheme through which more and more people would send us $1, we'd be put in jail. It is illegal. Yet this is what is happening on a grand scale among our financial institutions. The Ponzi schemes recently identified serve to illustrate this problem. As an example, it came to light this week that Bernard Madoff sustained such a scheme by creating false and fraudulent documents and moving millions of dollars between banks to create an illusion of trading. Our financial markets are just that: markets in which investors deposit their wealth with the sole objective of gaining yet more wealth. There is no real work being performed. There is no contribution to the health of the nation or the wellbeing of its people. There is only one motivating force: greed! This system is at its root immoral! The profit of some requires a loss to others. There is no product, no contribution, no substance, no work. |
Ole Kristensen |
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Ole Kristensen
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