Comments on: Wall Street : The End http://www.appapillai.com/blog/2008/11/13/wall-street-the-end/ Random musings on global financial markets, technology, physics and geopolitics Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:53:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Ravi Rikhye http://www.appapillai.com/blog/2008/11/13/wall-street-the-end/comment-page-1/#comment-273 Ravi Rikhye Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:13:45 +0000 http://www.appapillai.com/blog/?p=414#comment-273 This piece sounds eerily like the US in Second Indochina. Almost 50 years ago the US went to war, and no one had a clue what they were doing. There were prophets, just as in Wall Street, but no one wanted to listen to them. Part of the reason I suspect was that while the prophets had solutions to specific parts of the problem, no one had a paradigm shifting view that was acceptable to America, government and people alike. The paradigm shifting view boiled down to: Ho Chi Minh was a revolutionary, the US was born of revolution and then became a staus quo power, so time to return to being a revolutionary power, and back Ho Chi Minh instead of the status quo power, France/South Vietnam. In due time the US did come around to making its peace with the heirs of Ho and to working with them to the point while Vietnam is not a formal US ally, it is becoming a very good friend with the same objective: countervail PRC. Now you're going to say: how does this relate to Wall Street? I can't say precisely because I dont know the Street well enough. I am speaking intuitively. There was a facade then as now that things were going well, but beneath everything was rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark, and the refusal to face reality led to defeat then as now. Very bright people then as now (The Best and the Brightest) who were dead wrong from Day 1. Incredible energy misdirected, then as now, of the sort only Americans can muster and sustain. An absolute determination to make the world conform to America's definition of reality, then as now. An astonishing capacity to lie to oneself, then as now. And so on. This piece sounds eerily like the US in Second Indochina. Almost 50 years ago the US went to war, and no one had a clue what they were doing. There were prophets, just as in Wall Street, but no one wanted to listen to them. Part of the reason I suspect was that while the prophets had solutions to specific parts of the problem, no one had a paradigm shifting view that was acceptable to America, government and people alike.

The paradigm shifting view boiled down to: Ho Chi Minh was a revolutionary, the US was born of revolution and then became a staus quo power, so time to return to being a revolutionary power, and back Ho Chi Minh instead of the status quo power, France/South Vietnam.

In due time the US did come around to making its peace with the heirs of Ho and to working with them to the point while Vietnam is not a formal US ally, it is becoming a very good friend with the same objective: countervail PRC.

Now you’re going to say: how does this relate to Wall Street? I can’t say precisely because I dont know the Street well enough. I am speaking intuitively. There was a facade then as now that things were going well, but beneath everything was rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark, and the refusal to face reality led to defeat then as now. Very bright people then as now (The Best and the Brightest) who were dead wrong from Day 1. Incredible energy misdirected, then as now, of the sort only Americans can muster and sustain. An absolute determination to make the world conform to America’s definition of reality, then as now. An astonishing capacity to lie to oneself, then as now. And so on.

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