A Colossal Failure of Common Sense
A little over 10 days ago — give or take a few (don’t hold me to it) — one of our local radio DJs, during his afternoon news update, told how a Staten Island 15-year-old teenager, in classic Looney Tune style, fell down an open manhole while walking AND texting.
He basically said that the consequences of her lack of attention were only a few mild cuts and bruises… and, yeah, the stench of landing in a bunch of sewer crap.
And, like him, I was thinking, “Okay, watch where the hell you’re going next time… next! Give me some news that’s actually important now.”
Then, after finding out about how city workers said they left the hole unattended (even if for only seconds) while they were obtaining cones and markers with which to barricade it, I just shook my head and wondered WHO (the city workers or the girl) didn’t get a big enough breakfast that day.
Hey, accidents and lapses in thinking are part of life. They come, they go, we think or say “fuggetaboudit” and move on.
Well, apparently not. The girl’s family decided to sue, and stated, “the city must compensate Alexa for the trauma of landing in a sewer.”
Yup, the absurdity of it is almost too silly to be true… yet, stories like this happen every day — and, to quickly be straight about why I’m bringing this up, they happen way, way too frequently.
One of our subscribers, who lives in a semi-rural area of Kansas, had a new neighbor call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the DEER CROSSING sign on their road. The reason?
Simply, said their neighbor: “Too many deer are being hit by cars out here! I don’t think this is a good place for them to be crossing anymore.”
Can you just hear Bill Engvall saying: “Heeeeeere’s your sign!”?
Okay, yes, I know this post is quite a departure from our last blog post about giving and sharing love — appreciating and adoring the mysteries and awe of all that is good.
Yet, like we’ve been saying for many years, it’s healthy every now and then to be curious and aware of the ridiculous and just plain “bad” too!
Why?
Simply because, Dear Watson, without the absurd, we wouldn’t KNOW the “sensible” and “wise”!
And, if you think about it hard enough, you begin to see that our contributions as a society and our desire to DO THE RIGHT THING only grow from the manure of human incompetence and ignorance.
But, hey, I ALREADY talked about that via another post.
So, moving on to another story that’ll just make you “wonder”…
In the early to mid ’90s, a promising young financier, by the name of Dana Giacchetto, is hobnobbing with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. He molly-coddles to a crowd he knows best — musicians, artists and actors — because, well, he’s “fascinated” by them.
Click the ‘continue reading’ link below to find out what happens next…
—— Cont’d ——
According to the T.V. show American Greed and other collaborated reports, by late 1999, the “rock and roll broker” falls out of fashion with his clients. Nearly 10 million dollars is missing from client accounts!
Yet, somewhere between Hollywood’s trust and courtship of Giacchetto and his exposé as a scam artist, theater and film producer Victoria Leacock Hofman, due to Giacchetto’s “in crowd” pedigreed persona, thinks it’s a rational thing to give the dude all her profits from the hit musical ‘RENT.’
As I watched her complain, whine, and feel sorry for herself on the documentary, I just couldn’t help but think:
“Damn, what’s the worst of two evils here: the ruthless brilliance and all-consuming self-loathing of the people at firms like Lehman Brothers and AIG, who knowingly make money by separating the gullible and laudatory masses from theirs… or… is it the wide-eyed, impressionable who will easily cry, ‘I’m a victim,’ even after knowing it was their own lack of judgment or rational thinking that got them netted in financial muck?”
I truly have no sympathy for the Victorias of the world who “cry foul” AFTER making a hair-brained “I’m-going-to-let-one-person-handle-all-my-money” financial move. Just as equally, I despise the ego maniacs of the world, like Mr. Dana Giacchetto, who knowingly set intentions to destroy wealth, by having so little concern for the welfare of the people they’ve conned into trusting them.
Recently, Lawrence McDonald wrote a book called A Colossal Failure of Common Sense — The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers.
McDonald, a former vice president at Lehman Brothers, offers an intimate look inside the mad house that Lehman became, and shows beyond a doubt that Lehman’s top executives were totally out to lunch, allowing Lehman’s risk profile to reach gargantuan proportions.
While his book title inspired me to give this blog post the same name, there’s more to life — much more — than knowing the nitty-gritty DETAILS about the craziness behind ONE financial giant.
Instead, I’m more interested in sharing my broader thoughts and giving some street-level commentary about how good ol’ fashioned, home-spun horse-sense — especially the financial kind — is becoming an endangered species.
This is why I’m so ab-so-lute-ly committed to getting our new membership — The Wealth Vault — off the ground. It’s a labor of love (and, yes, sometimes shock) to be digging up the “Insider Only” money-growing techniques and wealth-building programs that the masses rely on the establishment to flesh out for them. That plan doesn’t work well because, of course, the establishment are the “insiders”, and rarely do they let information out that’ll free the everyday Joe and Jane from relying on them.
Stop giving away your money-power to others and start your own education through the pre-screened vendors and cash-flow opportunities we’ll have waiting for you inside LWL’s Wealth Vault.
Yep, 90% of the world is conditioned to hire people to do their thinking for them. Rarely do they expend their own mental effort to check facts, look at different angles or find solutions by stepping back and looking at the problem for what it is.
Common sense is a developed talent. It requires a lot of challenges and the freedom to make mistakes. It requires knowing real-world truth and seeing things as they are… regardless of how sad, negative, or disheartening something is. It requires imagination based on physical reality, not head-in-the-clouds daydreaming.
Whether you like hearing this or not, it’s still the rampant fact: rational, value-based behavior, personal responsibility, knowing right from wrong, and just plain being consciously aware are rare traits.
In my eye, the person who never makes a unconventional move, because they played it safe all their life and feel comfortable doing what CNBC tells them, deserves as much of a tongue-lashing as the person who hides his money under his mattress AFTER one high-risk investment went south.
I know many people who after ONE failure (not just setbacks and drawdowns with their money) are ready to go back to sucking their thumbs so they can look at their supporters and say: “See, see, I told you so!”
I recently found out from The Huffington Post about a new documentary. It’s called Broke: The New American Dream. Michael Martin, from The Post, writes:
“…It’s a hard look at the decisions we as a country make about money. Broke: The New American Dream is a study in Behavioral Finance — how and why people do the things they do with their money — or avoid it all together.
“The result is a shocking exposé on the belief systems behind how Americans handle their money and what drives our decisions from the the regulator, the money manager, the guru, and the end-user… the American public.
“This is not a partisan film. This is a film about personal responsibility, and he [Michael Covel, The Director], blames everyone for the financial meltdown — including me and you. Greed, ego, and arrogance overcame everyone from the most sophisticated financier to the most rural participant… especially in real estate. Greed took over the buyer, the mortgage broker, the seller, the agents, and Wall Street. To Covel, all are responsible: if you’re broke, it’s because you have a lot to do with it.”
To watch the trailer, play this video:
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“Those who expect to be both ignorant and free are expecting something which never has, and never will, exist.” – Thomas Jefferson
What you’re seeing in the markets now — the “bump up” between March and today — is none other than bubble-gum hope and phony profit reporting; a temporary ride up the roller coaster that is operated by financial commentators who get paid handsomely to give you the Alice in Wonderland version of the state of the economy.
This financial crisis is not over — the financial system remains broken and insolvent — and to date nothing in our financial system has been genuinely fixed, only covered up.
The fundamentals aren’t pretty: unemployment is getting worse. Housing is still going down. Profits are going down. Instead of using their federal bailout money to boost lending, many banks have used it to repay debts or buy other banks.
In just a few months, Barrack Obama has more than doubled the U.S. money supply… committed the government to nearly $24 trillion in new spending… and warned the American people to expect trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future.
While the media has been falling over itself to praise Obama’s “bold initiatives,” the question no one has been asking is, “Where is all of this money coming from?”
Well, just like Michael Coven above, I’ve sorta gotten sick ‘n’ tired of all the monetary nonsense, not only being hacked away at by politicians who bow at the knees of lobbyists (instead of their state’s constituents), but by everyday folks who are just sitting by idly.
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Dylan Ratigan — one of the rare breed — a true, brave, independent-thinking financial journalist and commentator who doesn’t suck-up to the “spoon fed” producers who are paid to ONLY report surface-level good numbers and applaud and dance market “up days.” In my opinion, CNBC is proving to be the “financial news” equivalent of the self-help cheerleaders & new-age love ‘n lighters whose brain only works on one channel.
“I feel as if the American has suffered the greatest theft and cover-up ever”
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Filed under: Common Sense, Critical-Thinking, Personal Responsibility
Everything you have described is what we’ve been conned into, since Reagan threw the Election back in 1980, with Iran Contra (look it up!).
My question is, when will we stop to think, again?
This LWL community is NOT about spoon-feeding; it’s about investigation, thought, and finding out what fits each of us individually. So far, with most of the other sites and philosophies that I have investigated, nothing works for me personally.
OH, the IDEAS and Frameworks are sound, don’t get me wrong. But it’s like trying on a new suit, or dress; it has to FEEL right, you have to love it, and it has to love you back.
Just like when I found out the GOD doesn’t want people to serve Him! he wants PARTNERS, to help Him make our world just a tiny bit better. Hard cash is only a tool, and if it’s not used for the Common Good, then why accumulate it?
Isn’t it time to think about the Common Good, and who will help you in an emergency?
It could be that bum, under the viaduct. It could be the people you foreclosed on, without mercy, or compassion. It could be that platoon of people whose jobs you out-sourced to Thailand, to save a dollar or two; or it could be the parishioner whom you embarrassed last Sunday, who holds your life in his hands….
It’s time to start thinking again, people….
Funny, …and true. Ha Ha Ha..Poor Kid:-(
Very good article, caused me to do some new ways of thinking, for which I am always grateful.
The problem has seemed to me that far too many Americans are ‘SUE-HAPPY’ and refuse to accept the consequencies of their own actions or mistakes.
The accepted norm seems to be; whatever happens, its the other guys fault, we’re blameless! And until the world’s population wakes up and accepts full responsibility for their own actions, we’ll just continue sliding downhill.
Let’s expand on Jeremy’s point for a minute. I equate “Sue-happy” with selfishness, ownership, and screw the other guy, am I right?
I agree with Jeremy, and stress my original point. The rest of the world is laughing at us because we are dividing ourselves, and being conquered.
By whom?
By those cultures who know how to forget the individual, work for the Common Good. They are uniting and conquering — US!
Think about it; it’s how we beat Hitler in WWII. Now, WE are the Hitler, and the world is showing us by owning us.
Time to use our resources for the Common Good, or as Ben Franklin so aptly put it, when the Declaration was signed: “Gentlemen, we have committed to hang together, for if we do not, we will most assuredly hang separately!”
Gee whiz. “Sue happy”, that’s been going on forever. Too bad some people are so poor that they resort to these time consuming, life disolving, reputation making negative behaviors to live a little better (so they think)for a little longer. Some people care not to take responsibility for their mistakes, but I like to think that many begin to take some necessary action when things begin to fall out from underneath them. It’s just irritating to me that some need that kind of motivation to do something about “those” problems or situations. We need to be present, together. We have to see what needs to be done before it gets too big, too fast, too much, too sad, and too late. We need to put our energy to the good, and not the destructive or hurtful. the world needs to mend, and then take one step at a time out of our messes. Compassion may help save us, and passion would cause us to suceed.
Great article and very true of the mindset of a lot of
people in this country who believe the lawyers on TV
are their ticket to instant wealth, just get in a accident
and sue the other party no matter who was at fault.
I guess common sense is not so common any more.
Turn off that TV and learn to think on your own.
While I totally agree with the concept that we as a nation have given away not only some of our basic rights as human beings and our wealth, we have done so by allowing the powers that be to ‘control’ certain aspects of our lives. We have ‘agreed’ with their concepts of how we should invest our money, live our lives, school our children, etc., by not challenging ‘their’ methods and by not taking full responsibility for all that comes our way. We do this by not searching out things that seem to make sense, by not becomming involved because it takes too much time and effort. I am responsible for this in my life as well. Too much time required to work my business and raise my children much less reasearch every money making ‘opportunuty’ to determine if it really is an opportunity (and I have looked into a bunch).
Isn’t it interesting that the standard way we cope with life (work, raise kids, do chores….work) is a repeating pattern that consumes all our available time? Difficult to break out of……
But my question is really this…….You state (I am paraphrasing here) that we have allowed ourselves to be lead by every scheme out there and trust those who have designed them to be a good thing? What will actually make us money, that glorious tool for awesome living? What makes the Wealth Vault any different from wht is already out there?
Just Curoius……
Marla
Barry,
Waking up requires you to really check everything out. Even if it looks good, sounds great , and has a testimony, it still can be a scam. It is so easy to be hypnotized with fancy marketing these days. We as a society have mastered marketing, with a capital M. Every person should read about hypnotism, how it works, how they do it. Every person should take a high powered internet marketing class, then you will really wake up unless your greed button gets too excited and you suddenly get sucked in. It is to the point that even good people fall to the plot of scamming, thinking that is the only way to market. To the point that even scammers get scammed. Any marketing which sounds really good almost to good to be true, 99% of the time is. Marketing that pulls you in, catches your attention preys on the needs of the times, Marketing that you want to buy now , think you need now, …you start to trust, ….send your money ….only to find out you have been scammed, with the newest marketing hype. It is not doing meditations, affirmations, positive self-talk, visualization,writing your future story, those things that require you to open your heart and mindfulness of others , that get you into trouble, it is the hypnotic marketing that feeds on scarcity, fear, and emergency buy now for the discount, which is at the root of all this greed. We must wake up and realize that prosperity is an inside job, for true prosperity is not all about money it is about happiness, integrity, honest soulful living. True success is when you do not have to use marketing hype to reel people in, they come to you because you walk your talk. It is a lasting relationship vs. once they discover your not what you said you are they run away. It is time to stop and examine how did we get here in the first place and what can we do completely different to create a better world for all. Any grandparent will tell you it is not money that they wish for their grandchildren it is happiness, health, love and a beautiful healthy planet for them to live on. Money does not buy happiness, happiness buys money.
Millions of people around the world will be visualizing the planet filled with love, peace and happiness tomorrow, please join us. I am proud to say I am a Light Worker. The invisible is more powerful than most people give credit. There is a reason: because the majority of people making money need you to play small. If you play big you will not need them. However we do need them. We need their harmony to help bring in the Golden Age. So lets send them love, compassion, and trust in their higher good. We are all are responsible:everything is simply a reflection. As you do your meditations, affirmations, positive self-talk, visualization,writing your future story, those things that require you to open your heart and mindfulness of others, it will all come back to you.
[Heather’s REPLY]:
Oh, Louise, Louise, Louise…
First of all, your comment comes across as just an axe to grind with Barry. You seem to be responding to an email he sent out rather than this blog post (your comments aren’t really relevant to either, but they make a little more sense when applied to the email)… and he specifically wrote:
“And, no, don’t write back and tell us that it’s the pretend life you create in your imagination that replaces or initiates the life you have here. Sorry, it just doesn’t work that way. Meditations, affirmation, self-talk, visualization, writing your future story, etc… they’re all just TOOLS to help you align intangible energy with tangible “to dos” — i.e., those things that require you to get your hands dirty and your head in the game.”
So what do you do? Write back saying exactly what he told you not to say!
Secondly, if you think you’re going to change the world by sitting and “thinking” and “visualizing” it getting better, rather than actually ‘doing’ anything, you don’t understand the flow of energy or the concept of yin and yang. See, everything in the Universe is in perfect balance; you can’t “kick it” out of balance, and tip the scales towards the positive, no matter how hard you “think”. For every up there’s a down (look at the hills around you), for every light there’s a dark (look outside at noon, and then again at midnight) and for every positive there’s a negative.
What happens when a couple of “terrorist” planes fly into the World Trade Center, killing a bunch of people in New York? Murder rates go down for awhile, so the same number of people end up dead during the same period of time as they normally would have.
Balance.
What happens when people have “peace sit-ins” and do exactly what you propose to do tomorrow? Less crime/violence/”bad things” happen for a few hours… and then more of the same things happen to balance them out.
Thirdly, if you’re going to run scared and label the world of marketing as being full of “hype” and “scams” (you might as well just say “evil”) then you’re going to keep running into problems. You think you’re a victim, and that others around you are victims, so you’ll be a victim.
It reminds me of when I used to work as an on-site salesperson for newspaper subscriptions. About every five people that I would offer a free newspaper to would say, “Nothing in this life’s free!” Another two, and somebody would say, “All news is just negative, anyway!”
If you go through life grumbling about what’s given to you, thinking nothing is free, or everything’s negative, or scams are lurking around every corner waiting to suck you in, or marketing is evil… what do you think you’re going to manifest?
Let me guess… you’ve been scammed before, right? Numerous times? In fact, you keep manifesting the pattern again and again? The way you look at the “scamming” mindset, I’d be highly surprised if you haven’t.
Speaking of patterns, you said, “True success is when you do not have to use marketing hype to reel people in, they come to you because you walk your talk. It is a lasting relationship vs. once they discover your not what you said you are they run away.”
Hmmmmm… how ironic! Because Barry thinks you have a pattern of running away, not because someone doesn’t “walk his talk” (he certainly does) but because you’ve been forced to look at your own habits, and — guess what — patterns. After all, you “ran away” after Barry had his first call with you as your coach. Apparently you didn’t like the solutions he offered and the fact that he asked you directly about what you were accomplishing. But… ummmm… since you were having problems with your marketing being unfocused, and you got advice to solve it (five pages worth of advice), could it possibly be that all you really wanted was to be told how great you already were?
Well, that’s not effective coaching, and that’s certainly not what you should expect from either of us, if you’ve been around our community for very long (which is seems you have).
And really, how condescending can you be? Your little rant about marketing and greed is basically just telling Barry in a nutshell (I’m the queen of nutshelling long rambles), “I’m awake, you’re not, and you either don’t understand marketing, or you’ve been sucked in by the greed yourself; you’re either a scammer, or you’re being scammed; and you don’t walk your talk.” What an incredibly negative, unfounded bunch of things to say, and it just proves that you know nothing about Barry.
We’ve been preaching the whole idea of being “more than a marketer” for years. But we don’t define “marketing” as “scamming” the way you do… “marketing” is about the Law of Reciprocity. It’s about an equal exchange of energy, value for value (such as time for money, or information for money). It’s about giving value to the Universe, and getting value back. Quid pro quo.
Fourth, of course prosperity isn’t JUST about money. But it certainly involves money! Anyone who calls themselves prosperous while dead broke is just fooling themselves, in denial, or just a complete idiot. We know first hand… we had a broke business partner who wrote a book called The Great Wealth Pandemic, and talked about his vast wealth all the way through. It’s just sad, really, to see people in such denial, who then sit around meditating and convincing themselves that they’re changing the world. Money may not buy happiness, but it does buy freedom, and freedom leads to happiness.
Louise, you can keep your misguided “money isn’t important” assertion, which is clashing and fighting with your scared “I’m going to be scammed” mindset… and continue to be taken advantage of, and continue to run away when you’re getting good value because you can no longer see it when it’s right in front of you. That’s your choice.
But if you’re looking for people to slam and complain to, and explain how “every person” is just a victim to marketing… well, you’re in the wrong place.
Victimitis is a rampant disease in this society, and it spreads through comments like yours. But this is a victimitis-free zone, so you might as well take the medicine.
Heather
I LOVED the Stuart Davis article that you provided in your latest email. Thanks for the link.
It’s the first coherent “bashing” of the Secret that I’ve ever read, though it did it quite nicely and with great thought.
I am a big fan of the Secret (it got me through some major depression when I needed a tool to lift up my spirits and help me to feel good), but it took me a while to figure out it wasn’t the full answer, that the Secret fell short in a significant way. And I agree, it’s preposterous to think that millions of people are so powerful to create such suffering as the world has seen. Or for instance, the state of today’s economy, homelessness, and escalating employment rates. There are more reasonable hard and soft reasons for why these events are happening.
I couldn’t quite place my finger on what went wrong with the advice it was giving, or why. Stuart nailed it. Awesome insights. And I loved the description of the four domains the importance of each. The self is not the Self. It is just part of the equation.
My son’s friend’s parents are being sued because another friend got hurt jumping on their trampoline. The Mother knew he jumped on the trampoline when he visited, but is still suing the parent’s, who are barely getting by financially as it is.
When I first began my internet business, I learned the hard way that I must check out all companies thoroughly. I had believed that “you get what you pay for.” But I paid a substantial sum for “take you by the hand coaching”, that wasn’t.
I agree that we are all responsible for the financial situation in this country. Our blind admiration for people in positions of wealth and power, our desire to acquire that wealth and power for ourselves, resulted in the assumption that those people that we admired and wanted to emulate, were also above reproach. We equated wealth and power with character and determination. So we willingly believed what they told us, refused to view those who extorted money as common criminals, and allowed congress to deregulate business, believing the claims that it would be socialistic to do otherwise.
The Government makes and enforces laws for the individual, why should businesses, that is made up of people be any different. Especially when it is easier for a faceless corporation to rape their unseen customers, the distant oceans and the life supporting forest.
Whistle blowers received harsher judgment and consequences than the people who were actually making unethical and illegal choices. Again, we supported a “Don’t buck or betray the system”, attitude.
However, I would hope that we never need to resort to doing everything ourselves. Yes, we need to be responsible, but feeling the need to be our own accountant, lawyer, investor, etc. in addition to our primary profession and family responsibilities, would be a step backward in civilization. In our advanced technological society, we can not all be specialists in every endeavor in which we choose to become involved.
Of course, we need to research the basics, check the better business bureau, ask questions, and not be intimidated by double talk or status. But I hope that fair play, compassion, cooperation and honesty have not become so diminished as true assets of character, or have become too difficult to maintain and support, that we would rather go it alone, no longer share information and services between specialties, and look upon everyone with a distrustful eye.
The founding father’s were very far sighted in setting up a division of power into three distinct groups, Executive, Congressional and Judicial.
“Absolute Power corrupts absolutely”. I am not certain of the author of that quote , but it has bee proven time and again. Perhaps corporations and banks need to have a similar division of power or at least some guidelines and culpability.
Most importantly, we need live with integrity, honesty, compassion, cooperation, responsibility and acceptance in all aspects of our own lives, business included. Only then will we have the awareness, insight and courage to question and address the conduct of the people that our society automatically respects and believes.
Your blog is precisely what I ve been looking for. Your info is to the point and focused. If everyone on the internet could be every bit reader centered as you, the blogosphere would be so much more simple!