WE ARE BACK AND WE ARE NOT ROBOTS

For a while there this blog was down, why? I really don't know. I once heard a very egotistical Google dude talking about how to manipulate human behavior without being too obvious. So is that what we are dealing with here? Somehow some of the more controversial things I publish seem to get taken off the net for a while. They say they think I am a robot, a spam robot. This is generally original content friends and yes, I use the resources offered by the Google Account.

I am thankful to be back, even if I am suspicious of the less than transparent Google review.

A little human contact might go a long way to keep people using Google Accounts happy.

On the other hand the problem may be a little four letter word like c...
r....a....p? Or was it the word s-p-i- ...t?

I don't know why this blog was flagged or even if it was flagged by someone. Maybe they just thought it was a bot doing the writing. Yeah,
they use bots and I guess it may be a problem, but I have no reason to replace myself with a bot. I'm just a blogger with a wet brain, no computer chips here.

WERE CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS A FORM OF MATH ABUSE?

I was just reading another article about the financial crisis that has America, and perhaps the world in its grip. A really big number got my attention. The number, forty six trillion dollars! Yeah, that's $46,000,000,000,000!

It turns out that there is supposedly a market in a peculiar kind of insurance called credit default swaps . The market is supposedly forty six trillion dollars in size!

So how much is Manhattan Island worth? What about the United States? What is our GNP and GDP? Is it that big? Is it more or less than forty six trillion dollars? I don't know, but I'm skeptical that there were forty six trillion dollars in assets really represented by the credit default swap market.

I still don't know what a credit default swap is, especially since it is said to be a so-called "derivative". I keep on reading and hearing that no one knows what these derivatives really are so I suppose I have a lot of company but lets seek understanding, sister.

I just think the size of that market, forty-six trillion dollars, should have been a red flag to someone. It's similar to looking at the shacks that are valued at a hundred grand or more. It defies logic, rationality and common sense. Yet human greed and optimism seems to have fed what
one Federal Reserve taskmaster referred to as irrational exuberance. Like Marx, Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker has a way with words.
"Irrational exuberance", indeed!

Curiously these psychological explanations, while being satisfying on, perhaps an emotional level, may be leaving something out, economics for example. Of course there is regulation and deregulation. Perhaps more regulation, less deregulation would have prevented this denouement.
But comrade workers and working class allies, we know it is something else. We know it is the capitalist system itself that was struggling to survive, forcing those running the system to play the fool and fraudster just to keep the huge contraption of profits going, and going and ooops!

WRONG CHANGE TO FINANCIAL FRAUD

As the glory of Western Civilization, "Free Enterprise" falls into crisis and those who own and operate it fight with one another about how to save their glorious contraption, it seems like a time to relax. After all, wondering about food shortages and a cold winter without utilities, is stressful. I hate homelessness! Yeah, it's time to relax.

Somehow I find it relaxing to think about some of the instruments of individual and mass deception. Specifically I am referring to mathematical concepts that are used to manipulate the public and politicians alike into doing irrational and destructive things.

I am going to use the term MATH ABUSE to refer to the misuse of math, and/or math concepts to deceive others. Such math abuse often results in poor decisions by those abused by the misinformation. Promises of an inexpensive war come to mind. Lying about one's age is another.

Incorrect change is one form of math abuse we have all encountered. Just the other day I had to point out to a sly cashier that I had given her twenty dollars, not ten.

Of course, the scam called "passing twenties" depicted in the movie Paper Moon is the same kind of math abuse but in reverse. This time the customer walks off with too much change.

Curiously, my own experience is that a conversation with a cashier is likely to lead to an unintentional error. If it is in the customer's favor the situation could become unethical. I don't see this as math abuse as such.

{This, perhaps ultimately, reflects the close relationship between gibberish and intelligent thought, perhaps a boundary where intelligence itself virtually exists? }