At Last, The Truth, or, Accounting Is Amazing

Speculation has been running rampant, even @ The World's Funniest Blog:

Meanwhile, Megan McArdle is being Megan in Vietnam this week (on whose tab no one knows), all like, ‘gosh, I never anticipated that things in Asia would be so…Asian.’

On whose tab indeed? Because, as anyone who's been reading Asymmetrical Information knows, money, money, money, nothing more, nothing less, makes the world go 'round. "Follow the money," as they say. Even those of us dedicated to irresponsibility, bad choices & suckling at the public teat, rather than grubbing for money and making good choices for our careers, are interested in who's getting what from whom. Sometimes, hard as it is to believe, it can have an influence on what is typed, & what influences the —oh, blah, blah, blah, you get the picture.

What we're working toward are the entities footing Megan's bill, who have at last been revealed.

I am probably the only person in the world who could sit on a bus, admiring the lovely tropical scenery, and thinking about accounting, but there you are. The scenery here is amazing. But so is accounting.

I was thinking about it because the US-Vietnam trade council, which shepherded us around Vietnam in partnership with the German Marshall Fund, was telling us about the ways in which they're trying to help new entrepreneurs get a leg up.

Do excuse us for a moment. (Regular A. I. readers who may have stumbled across this site 'cause your money-grubbing skills have taken precedence over your English abilities, please be patient for just a few moments. I know you're probably not familiar w/ the concept, but we're going to do some research.)

And here are the first results:

The U.S.-Vietnam Trade Council is a project of the International Center.

This stuff is hard. "It's hard, it's hard work," as somebody said. You find one thing, & it leads to another.

The International Center. That sounds innocuous. Couldn't be anything wrong w/ that. Let's see who's on the Board of Directors. Oh, look! It's representatives of Pfizer, Inc., Nike, Inc., Chevron, & something called World Federalists. (Not, I suspect, dedicated to one-world gov't. & rampant statist socialism.)

We all know who the corporate entities are, what they represent, & how much power & wealth they command. So the non-profits & NGOs also represented on the board are merely there for show. You may look them all up, but we know what's going on here.

The German Marshall Fund of the United States isn't quite as transparent. Guilt-laden Krauts, perhaps. Feeling bad about that little dust up we had 60 yrs. ago, when they killed all those people, & then we rebuilt their economy & society for them so they wouldn't succumb to the evils of Marxist yada yada.

How do they repay us? By "trying to help new entrepreneurs get a leg up." How does this repay us? Well, these new entrepreneurs exploit their countrymen, and then hand over the results of the exploitation to, oh, let me guess, Pfizer, Nike & Chevron, to name but a few. That's called "creating wealth." In a military/political context the new entrepreneurs would be called "quislings."

One thing about the Krauts, they don't bother w/ any new ideas. Dig this boilerplate:

HANOI, Vietnam — Over the next week, this blog space will see some posts from Vietnam and Cambodia, where a few GMF staffers are accompanying a group of American and European journalists to the region to look at trade, development, aid, economics, and other issues. We’ll attempt to get at the challenges and opportunities facing these two countries, how the policies of the U.S. and EU affect them, and what hopes, dreams, and fears the people have for their futures.

Another milestone in banality. The banality of evil, if I may coin a phrase.

I'm a soul-less materialist, but this crap is deadening my non-existent soul. Doesn't make me materialistic, though. Just cynical as fuck. Two fucks, as a matter of fact.

If brad's finished w/ cat pix, he may have more say on this, but I can't wade through any more of this muck right now.

I'll leave you w/ my own dose of feline whatnot, taken w/ an especially sucky digital camera: Princess Lillie, seeking the sun.