Marathon Shorters

time to get off my ass and on Megan's case. I'm going to try for genuine shorters, if possible.

Institutional investment:

It's so much more fun for Megan to force people to play by her rules than accept the negative consequences her poorly considered and written output generates.
Or pointing out rank hypocrisy, like now claiming there isn't a "liberal gleichschaltung" in the university system. Or not, clarity and consistency aren't her goals or particular strengths.
Then she spends several hundred words on how because she was a bad student and knew nothing about the field she was trying to enter we have to retain the people who fucked up the global financial system to fix their mistakes, obviously.

Markets in everything:

Y'know, if you ignore the fact that actual people's lives are being fucked up and destroyed by the various economic crises, it can be fun to abstractly consider the shitty situations produced as reflections on the all powerful market which is the one true god praised be Greenspan before he fell into heresy.

AIG gets a French kiss-off:

The fucking French are trying to hold people at an AIG subsidiary responsible for their mistakes. Thankfully, these folk wrote convoluted contracts which are voidable if new management is put into place, and their cronies on the other ends of these bad deals have their backs. In no way does this resemble extortion, and all fault here rests with the French government for daring to interfere with these economic masters of the universe, and, somehow, the US Congress for (mostly pretending to) act on the outrage against the undeserved AIG bonuses.

What does a million dollars mean to you?:

A trillion is, in some sense, a meaningless number.

It's meaningless when it's part of the debt rolled up by Republican Administrations, but when it's a number involving Democratic economic plans, it's a monstrosity that will rape and kill our children.

GM gets a reality check:

Apparently Megan thinks the auto companies don't realize they're in dire straits, because they're trying to paint a rosy picture for the market. No company anywhere has ever engaged in such behaviors, because executives outside the auto industry are moral giants whose ethics will be studied as models for good behavior for centuries to come, as we now study the examples of such wise men as Socrates and the Stoics.

Foreigners + Money = Crisis?:

Let's skip the glaring editorial failures in this post and get to the meat. If I noted every copy mistake by Megan I'd never get to her claims and views.
The article she linked to reads as intelligent and reasonable, if you ignore one thing; it was written by a former IMF agent, a fact which should make the ears of anyone who's read The Shock Doctrine perk up. Of course, it turns out the countries the IMF was trying to help bungled that help and made things worse on their own. The former IMF agent then goes on to rail against the financial elites in the US and call for nationalization of banks, which sounds like something people should be saying. But you have to note that Megan is endorsing the conclusions in the article, which offers two paths out of our current crisis. The first is taking on the oligarchy and nationalization of banks. The latter might happen eventually, the former obviously never will. So, the second option is to let things collapse, then take advantage of the chaos to institute new models.
And once again, Shock Doctrine readers go hmmmmmmmmmm.

Next, a post which deserves individualized treatment. I will be caught up by the end of the day, dammit.