Lets see, I really like this one:

blatant prevarication

And I love this one:

I think that until we start seeing some prosecutions of those well-paid executives of our financial institutions for allowing the crossing over from "optimist accounting" into "utterly-misleading and unsound accounting" we will distrust not only the markets and banks, but any entity which doesn't point it out, such as mainstream media.

So I am awarding Bwak the Dayly Line of the Day for TPMC, given to all of you from all of me!!!

Frankly accountants as a class have caused more pain and suffering in this country than all the drug dealers combined and then some!!!!

I like your equation of fallacy in reasoning to fallacy in governing and accounting. I am working on a blog addressing this in addition to the fact that academics also make too much use of jargon so that their writing becomes inaccessible and people are left feeling the experts are able to assess things you can never understand. I believe there ought to be something like a "law" mandating speech to be understandable, whether in a professional article or for a loan or a will or laws or health care of anything. I think something has crept into language, through our culture, which allows people to be duped. And we have to combat it, call it out when we see it. (I'm not really expecting a law, but my contention is that anything someone wants to express should be capable of being posted at places like this, using regular everyday words that make sense to the average interested reader.)

It's not an easy subject to tackle, as I'm finding out. But it's crucial. And the number of blogs and comments dancing around this issue, as you point out, convinces me of the need to address this more.

So thanks for the encouragement - even though, in some ways, I hate to tackle the issue!

I'll tell you Chicken, for a feathered gurl who hates blogging, you're awfully good at it! Hope to see more from you in the future!

Maybe rhetoric is a matter of inertia in the realm of the collective (unconscious and not so unconscious).
The loss of trust in a certain way of talking usually results in the inhibition (or prohibition) to talk a certain way.
The critical element to any change from "business as usual" must involve the revival of significance to what has been excluded from discourse.
If the above thinking is correct, it is odd that demands for transparent measures of value would ever become something that was not trusted.
Whatever the reason, it seems that a lot people are waiting on the sidelines to see if this group of talkers (ie the Obama administration) are struck down by the heavens before trying that kind of talk themselves.
This crisis has revealed a nation struck dumb in the midst of chatter.

Bwak, thanks for saying something true that does not require footnotes -- just recognition.

"optimist accounting"...that's the one I like, chiggun. It's sorta what I do when I write a check at the grocery store on Thursday night before the paycheck hits the bank Friday morning. :o)

Good post. Important message. I'm guilty of a rant myself, but at the same time I am thirsting for more information. Ideally, I would like that information expressed plainly.

And also, too...I am with you about the American People having been abused and losing trust. We're just in the first stages of healing....yet there is that segment of the population that feel the need to defend their abusers. Funny-odd, that.

Seems that "we make our own reality" bit didn't actually work, kind of vapor-ware.

On this subject, from that Icelandic writer: "Honest resentment opens a space for the hope that one day language might regain some of its critical capacity, that it could even begin to describe social realities again."

If there is one thing that upsets me about all the Republican screaming that the borrowers were not responsible, it is the exclusion or avoidance of those who were responsible for making the loans in teh first place. You know, the professionals who spend their entire day dealing with loans, not the people who are seeking to make a home purchase, an act they will probably do once in their entire life.

The purge needs to begin at the top and work it's way down, like a trickle maybe. We could call this Trickle-Down Accountability. We hit hard at the top and then it works its way down. The great part about this is that, if we imitate the economic agenda of this same name, the little guys will not get any accountability at all!

Zee Cheeken heets zee nailz on zee heads... A perfect post which truly describes the missing anchor as we drift about in the storm battening hatches and reefing sails. Nicely done!

Reset and Resist