occam's razor dictates that people who said they wanted "a new pearl harbor" must have had a motive for making their "new pearl harbor" happen, especially in view of the fact that, shortly afterward, they were installed into positions from which they could make their "new pearl harbor" happen, and shortly after that, their "new pearl harbor" did happen.

If you want to believe in a conspiracy, then no one will be able to convince you otherwise.

This is no longer an adequate response. The US gov't and media FORCED everyone to become conspiracy theorists on 9-11. They presented a conspiracy theory to explain the events of that day, and then turned around and asked people NOT to believe in conspiracy theories! There is no one, I dare say, who believes 9-11 was a series of unfortunate accidents. It's obvious by now what happened.

Now, saying that conspiracy theories in general can't automatically discounted is not the same as buying into any particular one. Crises are endemic to capitalism, and there's no need to invoke conspiracy to explain them. And I don't think this meltdown was planned either. It doesn't seem to have benefitted politically those who might have orchestrated it.

On the other hand, the bailout plan was drafted before the meltdown, so it would seem that there was at least contingency planning. The Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and several other pieces of legislation ALL point to significant amounts of contingency planning, scenario spinning. The 47 billion intelligence budget (not including the military) isn't spent entirely on video games.

Also, the collapse in energy prices has temporarily shifted some of the balance of power back to the US. I suspect that this too might have been at least foreseen.

Anyway, how much conspiracy has been an element in this whole thing is a fascinating subject, not easily fathomed.

Jeff Rubin: Oil Prices Caused the Current Recession.

I say: Huge number of the exploration dry wells is a root of high Oil Prices.
Today, as it was decade years before, oil companies have drilled mostly dry exploration wells. Drilling success rate doesn’t overcome 25% on average. It means that three dry wells go to waste from four drilled. It means also that discovery occurs much slowly then if success rate significantly rise. Using Seismo-electromagnetic (SEM) phenomenon in oil deposits it is possible to triple world oil discoveries every year for same money and time-frame with 75% success rate.
Initiating of SEM phenomenon to detect of hydrocarbon deposits has the steps of simultaneously action an electromagnetic field and a seismic wave in investigated geological region so that an electromagnetic signal originates by vibrating of hydrocarbon deposit surface excited by the electromagnetic field and travels from the surface. For details see www.phenomenon-in-oil-accummulation.weebly.com

I don't argue with creationists either. I consider it to be a complete waste of time. Most of those whom I've observed arguing with creationists aren't biologists, but are people who get their info from talkorigins.com. This website is pretty good but its PTB have their pet biases & misconceptions. When I hear these biases & misconceptions being parroted by those who do argue with creationists, it becomes apparent where they get their info. In the past, when I've objected to or corrected these biases & misconceptions, I've often ended up arguing with the anti-creationists, which gives the impression that I'm a creationist myself or at least sympathetic with their ideas. I've given up on trying to instruct people online and in fact have given up the landline, DSL & internet at home. Simplify, simplify.

The religious nuts are sure in their knowledge-they know the age of the universe, heaven follows life on Earth (for the chosen), etc. etc.-they aren't interested in any info that might shake their rock solid belief system-just like you.

The science professor who called creationists "Idiots" was speaking out of frustration, not informed thinking. I'm not saying I blame him, I don't. But I think it is very important for scientists to understand exactly what is going on in these arguments. I've seen a LOT of these confrontations. I work in evolutionary biology; paleontology to be precise.

There are two fundamentally different methods of reasoning which have been handed down to us (from the classical Greeks) that allow us to examine the world in which we live; the dialectical and the rhetorical. The dialectical line of inquiry (scientific method; question, experiment, review data, conclusion) is the language of science. The rhetorical line of inquiry (argumentation based only upon the abstract and the logical) is the language of the legal profession, the church, philosophy.

Both of these lines of questioning are very powerful analytical tools, but they operate by two entirely different rule books. For a scientist (a dialectician) to debate a creationist (a rhetorician) is akin to a boxer agreeing to fight a samurai.

Real world examples of the devastating effect of rhetoric used against the dialectic abound. My favorite was the example of how quickly and effectively Johnny Conchran destroyed the credibility of the forensic DNA evidence submitted by the prosecution in the O.J. Simpson trial. With only a few skillfully constructed logical ideas the rhetorician demolished the prosecution's argument; game, set, match, O.J. NOT guilty!

The best read on this subject is the book by the famous American philosopher, Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". It is a book every scientist needs to read and understand backwards and forwards. NEVER argue with a skilled rhetorician using dialectical argumentation; you will be sliced up faster than you can say, "evolutionary and developmental biology".

I feel the very same way about conspiracy theory wingnuts.

You totally abandon logic here. You have no choice but to become a conspiracy theorist after 9-11. The gov't forces you to adopt one or another conspiracy theory. And then it tells you not to believe in conspiracy theories! It is one of the greatest insults to the public intelligence of all time.

Ilargi wrote about the possible creation of financial chaos for averting peak oil in the October 9 Debt Rattle, in a much more articulate fashion than Deffeyes's recent venture.

There’s something I first wrote about years ago, and have left alone most of the time since. It exposes me to conspiracy theory claims, and that just takes away from more serious issues. Today, I’ll revive it. I don’t really care much what anybody says, never have, I simply figured it’s more productive to talk about things that can actually help people. And I have, as many will confirm.

But today the New York Times comes with a comprehensive overview of Alan Greenspan’s tenure at the Fed. So here goes.

When Marion King Hubbert introduced his Peak Oil theory for the US and the world (he didn’t name it that) in 1956, the general assumption is that it was dismissed across the board, that none of the folks in charge paid much attention.

My assumption is that they did. I think they jumped on it like a bunch of pouncing tigers, because if Hubbert was right, power itself would be at stake. And power needs to look ahead, power needs to be pro-active, it can’t afford to just react to events. Power also doesn’t rhyme with visibility, so we’re not talking about the presidents et al you see, they are mere hand puppets.

If Hubbert was right 50 years ago, the wizards behind the curtain reasoned, American society would be a whole new and different game. If oil supplies were sure to go down year after year at a certain point, the whole society would change, and not just a little bit.

Rubin says that defaulting mortgages are only a symptom of the high oil prices. We should be blaming the underlying cause--higher oil prices--rather than the symptom.

Conversely there would not be nearly as many defaults if people weren't coerced into precarious positions which was caused by the housing bubble mania. High oil prices surely did assist but there would still be massive defaults without just because of the dynamics of a massive asset bubble. Turns out people are not to keen on keeping property that is worth half as much when they bought it and did not put money down. Who would've known?

The whole fantasy that something as complex as a nation of 300 million people can be successfully regulated by a small group of ordinary mortals is amazing. Now imagine orwellian task of centrally managing the whole globe. Economy just happens to be a substantial yet very small part of that complexity. There are no supermen in D.C, they happen only in comic books.

Here is a short article on the real effects of most regulations...

Since the bailout bill passed, I have been frequently disturbed to hear “experts” wrongly blaming the free market for our recent economic problems and calling for more regulation. In fact, further regulation can only make things worse.

It is important to understand that regulators are not omniscient. It is not feasible for them to anticipate every possible thing that could go wrong with whatever industry or activity they are regulating. They are making their best guesses when formulating rules. It is often difficult for those being regulated to understand the many complex rules they are expected to follow. Very wealthy corporations hire attorneys who may discover a myriad of loopholes to exploit and render the spirit of the regulations null and void. For this reason, heavy regulation favors big business against those small businesses who cannot afford high-priced attorneys.

The other problem is the trust that people blindly put in regulations, and the moral hazard this creates. Too many people trust government regulators so completely that they abdicate their own common sense to these government bureaucrats. They trust that if something violates no law, it must be safe. How many scams have “It’s perfectly legal” as a hypnotic selling point, luring in the gullible? Many people did not understand the financial house of cards that are derivatives, but since they were legal and promised a great return, people invested. It is much the same in any area rife with government involvement. Many feel that just because their children are getting good grades at a government school, they are getting a good education. After all, they are passing the government-mandated litmus test. But, this does not guarantee educational excellence. Neither is it always the case that a child who does NOT achieve good marks in school is going to be unsuccessful in life. Is your drinking water safe, just because the government says it is? Is the internet going to magically become safer for your children if the government approves regulations on it? I would caution any parent against believing this would be the case. Nothing should take the place of your own common sense and due diligence.

These principles explain why the free market works so much better than a centrally planned economy. With central planning, everything shifts from one’s own judgment about safety, wisdom and relative benefits of a behavior, to the discretion of government bureaucrats. The question then becomes “what can I get away with,” and there will always be advantages for those who can afford lawyers to find the loopholes. The result then is that bad behavior, that would quickly fail under the free market, is propped up, protected and perpetuated, and sometimes good behavior is actually discouraged.

link here
Regulation can actually benefit big business and corporate greed, while simultaneously killing small businesses that are the backbone of our now faltering economy. This is why I get so upset every time someone claims regulation can resolve the crisis that we are in. Rather, it will only exacerbate it.

...gold-plated turds...

aha!

so the whole financial system of america was based on tactics that were sure to kill the goose that shat the golden turds...

that smacks to me of foreknowledge of something that was gonna kill the goose that shat the golden turds, anyhow.

There are two distinct types of professional money guys. The sell-side, who have engineers build complex financial products so the salesforce can sell them for big commissions, and the buy-side, who have portfolio managers invest people's money in the lots of things including the afore mentioned goldishturds. The buy-side guys are competing with each other for client investment dollars based on their performance with those dollars. The real culprits are on the buy-side.

I have been on the buy-side of the money biz for twenty plus years and I have seen this play out over and over. If the sell-side makes something complicated and tells the buy-side that it is so difficult to understand that few players on the buy-side can handle the complexity, buy-siders will buy it with every penny they have.

A good part of the recent epidemic of insanity has to do with the engineering metrics that buy-siders use to evaluate risk. Asset risk has been quantified in investment science as volatility: how much price moves around. According to volatility measures, assets like junk bonds have a lower risk than treasury bonds. That sounds kind of silly, but mathmatically it is usually true. "Usually" being somewhat of an important word here. A junk bond like XYZ Steel Co might normally trade at a yield of 8% or 4% higher than a corresponding 4% yield treasury bond. When the economy is booming and XYZ is doing well, their bonds might trade at 3% higher than a treasury instrument, but since the economy is booming, the treasury trades at 5% due to inflation fears. Since my CFA training tells me that 5+3=8, I know that the treasury has been volatile, but the junk bond hasn't moved an inch. If the economy slides into a mild recession, the inflation risk declines and the treasury yield dips to 3%, while the XYZ junk bond needs a yield 5% over the treasury to cover the extra risk. Once again, the treasury has been whipsawed, but the lovely little junk bond is still priced to yield 8%. And there you have it: under Modern Portfolio Theory government issued bonds are too risky to own.

Obviously needs some touching up, don't you think?

We don't need any conspiracy theories.

"need" is a funny word, isnt it?

if we're willing to accept being manipulated by predators, who conspire with each other to maintain their power over us, well, then, we dont "need" to know that those predators are conspiring.