{"id":652,"date":"2009-02-21T22:14:48","date_gmt":"2009-02-21T22:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astraea.net\/blog\/?p=652"},"modified":"2009-03-10T22:22:45","modified_gmt":"2009-03-10T22:22:45","slug":"the-spiral-of-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/the-spiral-of-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spiral of Ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best part of this opinion piece by The Economist is the title<\/a>.\u00a0 It is, unfortunately, too true that we are ignorant of the situation we are in and ignorant of how to get out.\u00a0 That was made so clear in the few clips of the World Economic Forum that I saw – leaders bleating platitudes but failing to own up to the inherent problems of moral hazard, greed and fear that have catalysed a gaping hole in the global financial system.<\/p>\n

The article is linked here<\/a>.\u00a0 And here’s a pithy extract:<\/p>\n

The culprits many have now settled on are the bankers. Some of those\u2014unable to accept the reality of their institutions\u2019 failure\u2014deserve the opprobrium. But the furore over their bonuses has obscured other realities. One is the fact that, now that taxpayers own some of them, they have an interest in the banks being run by clever people; another is the fundamental role banks play in the economy. And because MPs are instinctively populist, as well as bemused themselves, they too have fixated on bonuses.<\/p>\n

It is not only banking about which general knowledge seems poor: the same is true of the concept of money. The nasty little secret of the slump is that by overborrowing and making myopic investments, lots of ordinary Britons helped to bring their difficulties on themselves. Low levels of financial literacy (knowing the difference between an ISA and an iPod, and so on) are part of this problem. But so is the cowardly reluctance of politicians to say unpalatable things.<\/p>\n

The philosopher Bertrand Russell once remarked that he knew of only six people in the world who had followed his daunting book \u201cPrincipia Mathematica\u201d to the end. There sometimes seem to be almost as few people in Britain who truly understand the credit crunch and its recessionary consequences. The public is scared and uncertain; the politicians are panicky and confused. They are leading each other around and down a worrying spiral of ignorance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best part of this opinion piece by The Economist is the title.\u00a0 It is, unfortunately, too true that we are ignorant of the situation we are in and ignorant of how to get out.\u00a0 That was made so clear in the few clips of the World Economic Forum that I saw – leaders bleating …
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