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On Capital Markets, Confidence Tricks, And Criminals
The ascendency of behavioral economics over its “Classical” cousin is one of the more notable effects of the market turmoil of the last five years. Simple constructs like “Every marginal dollar has utility” have given way to more nuanced explanations that incorporate how human beings really make decisions about the tradeoffs between money and deeply held emotions and beliefs. But even with this realization, academia still seems to have a choke hold on the studies that expand our knowledge of this new discipline. Nic Colas, of ConvergEx, adds to the discipline’s canon with some examples of common street scams around the world. While the modern study of psychology and its interplay with economic choices is barely 100 years old, hustlers the world over have been perfecting their art for millennia. So if you’ve ever “Accidently” jostled someone into dropping their glasses or a bag of food, you can take comfort that you’re actually part of a long tradition of pragmatic field study in the topic of behavioral finance.
Nic Colas, ConvergEx: Taking It to the Streets
I have the good fortune to have been born and raised in Manhattan before it first became a largely gentrified and now extremely wealthy city. Back in the 1960s and 70s, people with money fled to the suburbs rather than subject their families to garbage strikes, dangerous subways, and crime-ridden streets. One advantage to this upbringing, however, was that you learned at an early age that “Street smarts” were a necessary part of a portfolio of urban-dwelling skills. And the first commandment of this rulebook is: “No one has any business talking to you on the streets of Gotham.” If they addressed you in any way other than (perhaps) “Hey, that bus mirror is going to hit you, idiot” they probably wanted to hustle you. And you learned that the guys with the soft-voiced anthem of “Smoke, smoke, smoke” were just peddling oregano they had lifted from the local pizzeria. But we digress…
What I find gratifying about these childhood lessons is that they were excellent training for the now-voguish topic of behavioral finance. The economic and financial meltdowns of the last five years – and the next five, most likely – have put many chinks in the armor of the “Classical” economics, with its claimed formulaic certainties and neatly drawn supply/demand graphs. Now, the study of how humans really make financial decisions, with all their biases, faults and even biological limitations, is the coin of the academic realm. Legions of grad students spend their time designing studies and experiments to show that humans make decisions that stray wildly from the “Optimal” solutions suggested by classical economics.
I would suggest, however, that you can witness a useful cross section of this up-and-coming academic discipline by just keeping an eye out for the myriad of scams run by con men and women on the streets of any major city. Further, the lessons of these scams should ring the proverbial bell for those market participants who want to understand the sources of many common investment pitfalls. The easiest way to expand on this thought is through several examples:
Example #1 – The Valuable Book. A man walks into a bar during the middle of the afternoon, long after the lunch rush but before the after-work crowd appears. He has a hardcover book with him, which he sets down at the bar. He orders a drink from the barkeep, and tells him that he needs to hit the ATM next door. He leaves the book behind to mark his spot.
A few minutes later, two well-dressed men enter the bar. The notice the book and ask the bartender if it his. He says it belongs to a fellow who is next door for a minute. The two men look through the book, and grow increasingly agitated. “This is a first edition of The Great Gatsby, with the original dust jacket!” That’s nice, says the bartender, how much is it worth? The well-dressed men respond, “At least $20,000. If they owner wants to sell it, let us know.” They hand the barkeep a card walk out.
The owner of the book walks back in. The bartender nonchalantly asks about the book. “Oh, it was my mother’s. She just passed away, poor dear.” The bartender professes a great admiration for Fitzgerald and says “Gee, I love old hardbacks – would you sell it?” After professing a reluctance to sell something so near and dear to old Mama, the man gives it up for $500.
The book turns out to be a fifth printing with a photoshopped cover. Real value: $1.75. The same scam has been run with violins and even mutts from the pound, all anchored around the same storyline.
The lesson: humans use a variety of heuristics – mental shortcuts, essentially – to make judgments. One of them is to rely on “Experts.” In this particular example, the wealth of television shows that feature experts revealing that someone’s old knickknack is really a hidden treasure also gives rise to a “Recency Effect” – recalling something you’ve seen in the near past and attributing more value to it.
Example #2 – The Broken Glasses. You are walking down the street, talking on the phone or listening to music. You think you are paying attention, but somehow you miss the person who is just removing their glasses. They fall to the ground and appear to shatter. You realize the wearer has a subtle but now-obvious mental challenge. They begin to cry and say their Mom is going to kill them for being so careless with their glasses. People around you begin to stare at you. One or two even stop to try to comfort the obviously distressed owner of the now-broken glasses. You feel like a jerk and hand over $100-200 to make up for your clumsiness and to show the bystanders that you aren’t actually jerk.
As you might guess, the glasses were never broken and the bystanders were accomplices meant to make sure you felt as guilty as possible. The whole scam takes 2-5 minutes from start to end and can be repeated – in different parts of town – 10/15 times in a day. I have seen it done at least a dozen times – usually to obviously affluent tourists in midtown Manhattan – with glasses or a bag of food from a takeout deli. It works every time. The only way out of this situation, which is the one I have personally used, is to claim that you have no money on you but that your cousin, who is a policeman at a nearby precinct, will lend you the cash. The con artists don’t especially want to walk into a police station and let the matter drop pretty quickly.
The lesson: social pressure is a powerful force in negotiations. You aren’t paying for the broken glasses. You are paying society to not think you are a careless jerk. This is a Harvard Business School case study-worthy example of “Know what business you are REALLY in.” The scam artist knows you are buying social standing.
Example #3 - Put Your Money with My Money. You are approached on the street by a man wearing clerical garb with a seemingly sad looking fellow in tow. The “Priest” explains that the other man has just been the victim of a robbery, and only has $5,000 in cash to his name. Leary of accepting help from anyone – he is a native of a country where the police are corrupt – he approached the “Cleric” looking for help getting to a local bank. They show you a paper back stuffed with $20s and $50s. Would you help by walking it across the street to a quite visible bank branch while the priest tries to hail a police car and convince the other man to explain what happened? Oh, and would you mind stuffing a few dollars into the bag as well, just to show that you are affluent enough to be trusted? When you drop your $100 into the sac, the switch occurs. You end up at the bank with a bag of paper, while the con men walk away with the real one.
The lesson: The term “Confidence Game” stems from the fact that the criminal appears to give you their confidence. Not that you give over yours. This act essentially makes you, the mark, pliable and open to suggestion. This is, I think, one of the most underexplored areas of behavioral finance. There are plenty of studies about the importance of trust, and there is even a “Trust Game” variant of the “Ultimatum Game” that is the bedrock of the discipline. See more here: http://wiki.dickinson.edu/index.php/Behavioral_Economics_and_Game_Theory). But the power to manipulate human action by “Giving” someone your confidence in the hopes of eliciting a response that is patently bad for them may fall beyond the walls of proper science.
I assume that the comparisons to recent events in the capital markets are fairly obvious, whether they be failed IPOs or the strategies used by weaker sovereign nations to negotiate with stronger ones. The point here is not to call out anyone as inherent ‘Criminal.’ There are plenty of laws – and diligent regulators - surrounding the capital markets, after all. Rather, the examples here are simply a lens that allows us to examine the nuances of human behavior with greater understanding. As the old saying goes,'The proper study of mankind is man.' Even when it is a con man. And in the case of behavioral economics, perhaps especially so.
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Simply, if I don't know you, don't talk to me
With that said, I have been taken more than once , by people I do know. It has now made me say no to everyone except family. I used to not be able to say no, but now it's so easy I look forward to it.
Con men have an old saying: You can't cheat an honest man.
In high school, I had a buddy (ugly as sin - and I am half coonass and that is some rough sinnin') who was gifted with "the con". I got my fair share over the years the followed, as a room mate, a friend. Over time, I watched him work other people. I am border line autistic, so I was grossly clueless to a lot of it. But the odd things I remember I still don't much sense from. He could do things to capture peoples attention, keep their attention, gain their trust. He was an ugly mo-fo. So, this in spite of all of it.
We went our separate ways. Over the years, I realized how I had been taken advantage of, regarding covering rents/bills/expenses, this sort of thing.
Much after the fact, he passed through town. I was married many years at this point, well into my early 30s. He was visibly irritated when we parted ways and I had no interest in the subtle confidence he was selling. He couldn't con me, even as a best friend, and it showed in his face when we parted.
As a young man, a cheap price for the lesson I think. As an older man, I find I make very smart decisions regarding purchases, savings, and many other related activities.
Thanks Charles. I guess.
Regards,
Cooter
P.S. One time I busted my buddy short changing me a buck buying cigs, gas, and a soda at his convenience store. He counted tills for a hobby (multiple fast food joins and convenience stores) and made good money doing it. If he had straight teeth and a decent complexion, he would be on Wall Street. Fucking pro looking like Frankenstein.
Interesting, I have similar exepriences. But its so often the old "borrow a bit money and don't give it back". I seldom see more exotic ones.
No, it wasn't like that. Chuck was "A" grade. I mean, seriously "A" grade. I always respected him.
In fact, now that I think about it, he had a pretty good record talking his ass out of traffic tickets. I mean, so often he didnt keep insurance or anything else. This guy was brassy and good.
I felt bad a times, watching him burn the few times. It was youth, a shared loss of a friend. Then, I wanted him to hit his mark. Now, I realize it for what it was, but then it was the impressive friend who got away with it.
As I said before, it shaped me a lot about how things really work. If I didn't have Chuck to school me at an early age (with no money), I would have paid a bigger price later (with money). He saved me. I see so many parallels when I talk to sales folks.
He was ugly as sin and if he wasn't, he would be successful salesman in big markets. I worked with those guys too. They always think too much of themselves. Just like Chuck. But Chuck sold shit looking like, well, ground chuck. I think most of those pretty boys relied too much on a shiny smile and good features.
Sales is not anytihng other than some sort of crazy intuition, some sort of behavior schizism in public.
I fail at life being an engineer with the right answer. Doesn't get me very far. I keep coming back to Chuck. I need a bit more Chuck in my career, because solving problems, producing value, and generally knowing what the fuck I am talking about gets me next to no where. I need to have that mojo that lets me convince the boss that my idea is the right one.
God knows 15+ years of doing it isn't enough. Pisses me off. But, at damn near 40, who is the fool?
Regards,
Cooter
only slightly more exotic but often quite effective: borrow a bit of money, pay it back. borrow a good bit more and don't. a girlfriend's mom did it to me once. they're both dead now. karma?
what, you killed them?
He probably thought of himself clever screwing them both at the time while being the one being screwed.
Jokes aside, example 1 sounds like what my granddad did in every town he was stationed at.
Disclosure : he had to serve in the Wehrmacht at the time
while his dad was in concentration camp. No joke.
Example 2 : I cannot remotely relate to this, kick his groins for good measure if you are street smart in any sense, trick probably works with goi only
"Harvard case study" says it all, stupid
Example 3 : outright off the mark. Third worlders tend to
have scams to match their own insufficiency, though there are notable exceptions of great scam people. This scenario is beyond stupid both ways, not even cops and criminals in the most stupid of circumstances could keep up.
American (Aryan?) naivety by a native of New Jew City is always good entertainment. Street smartness or even chutzpah
were not bestowed upon the author of this article ,though.
Cold War has just ended, I'm walking through the capital of a city in Eastern Europe, convinced that the official exchange rates are propping up the local currency. Some guys in a city square are calling out, "Change money" so I walk over and engage one. He offers a black market rate of 40:1 and the official rate is 20:1 so I am going to clean up. As I am handing him my deutschemarks, he has moved in very close to me to shield our transaction from prying eyes presumably when he stiffens, eyes widen and he looks over my shoulder and says, "Oh no. There is a police officer coming. Here, take this." I push the deutschemarks to him, he pushes the local paper to me, we stuff the bills into our pockets and head quickly in opposite directions. Something makes me pull the bills out to look and I see lots of zeroes. Lots and lots of zeroes. He gave me Polish zloti instead of the local currency. The zloti exchange rate was about 700:1 at the time, so I had been scammed. The currency trader had disappeared and there was no policeman nearby.
I was undone by my greed and naivete. It cost me the equivalent of $60 and was one of the cheapest lessons in the perils of greed and trust that I've had. Thanks, currency trader.
Wizened Tourist
When Enron was on the way up, it strongly encouraged the employees to buy company stock in their 401k's. This was very lucrative (on paper) for them for many years. Greed kept them going such that when Enron collapsed, many lost their jobs and their life savings. My reaction was, "How fucking stupid do you have to be to put every last egg you have in one basket?" Of course, as widespread as the culture of fraud was inside Enron, it should not be that surprising that many of the employees let their greed get the better of them. More than half of Enron's 401k assets were "invested" in the company's own stock. In case you are unaware, each employee decides for themself which assets will be purchased with their 401k savings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/22/business/employees-retirement-plan-is-...
In Houston, Enron's hometown, it had not been that long since the state banks, the oil company employees, and nearly everyone else had gotten leveraged up on the assumption that oil prices only go up. When Reagan got the Saudis to pump enough oil to crater Soviet exports (and Texas), Houston's bubble popped and thousands of people realized all their eggs were in one basket. Next was techies putting all their money in tech stocks in the late nineties... Then came the Enron bust. Then came the real estate bust in California (and nationwide).
I am finding it harder and harder to generate much sympathy for these greedy saps.
I am a behavioral economist all the way. Still waiting to meet a "rational economic actor".
Put your wealth in FRN's, gold, guns, crops, oil, real estate, Swiss francs - but not in one basket "that can't lose".
stoopid american bitch. the best i ever heard, and i'm sure it still goes on.
stoopid anglo boy from some where, doesn't matter. cairo. man says - i put cobra around your neck, take your picture. now man says, you give me all your money or cobra bites you.
stoopid. you think bernake any different? or big bad bama?
Well you are right that most cons prey on greed. But not all, as outlined in the admittedlyy awesome article above.
A good book on the subject of persuasion is Cialdini's "Influence". One of the few books in business school I actually learned something useful from.
'most cons prey on greed' You're absolutely right, no they don't. The banking system is one big con, it sells safety with low returns.
Part of my job is due diligence. I am required to sometimes very quickly assess the suitability of investment opportunities including funds amongst others. The fact is that despite my best efforts due diligence is now nigh on impossible since most investors rarely look any further than a 'regulated' fund or an audit. Fat lot of good that did Madoff investors.
In reality, anyone can quickly obtain the marketing bullshit from any licensed fund manager; it's the reason why it's there, but the instant you try and obtain anything further, like the entitlements of any independent body to check the validity of trades before the accounts go to audit for example and the reply is inevitably 'How much are you thinking of investing again?'
The answer is nothing unless we get the information we want, which is rarely forthcoming when an army of 'licensed' investment advisers and brokers stand by ready to send any amount of client funds to these investments based on no due diligence other than that they are licensed. It is the reason why we are in many ways stuck in gold and quite happy with that. In this market it would take wild horses and dynamite to get us out, and some very hefty disclosure about structure and detail.
The world has swapped due diligence and common sense for slick marketing in the form of State condoned bullshit.
As always, buyer beware, and do your fucking homework before committing to anything that doesn't have proper paperwork and full disclosure. Nuff said.
yeah i should have said street cons. as in the type you can get punished for if caught.
and i feel ya re lying for a living. i am indirectly paid by the ponzi banking machine and i know it's dirty money but i take it.
Nope, nuttin ta do wiv da ponzi banking machine, old stick...
bs. total. due dilligence is finished, because the sociopaths have control, and if you looked at things honestly, you would state that things are a fraud, and you would be fired and arrested. care for some shares in f..book? chow down brother and enjoy it.
Due diligence is only possible with accurate information. With all of the fraud accounting tricks available, reading a pnl statement of any traded corp is about as useful and funny as Sunday comics in one's local paper.
absolutely.
That's what the comment says isn't it?
or are you reading something else...
and no I didn't buy into Facebook, but thanks for the advice. Next time I'll know where not to come for it.
97% of Obamas speeches read from the TelePrompTer over the past 4 years have been a con!
what were the 3%?
boldface lies...
>>The point here is not to call out anyone as inherent ‘Criminal.’<< This war, and the TRUTH is, that it is "CRIMINAL". What we do, or don't do is ether right or wrong. My name is my fathers name, and his name was his father's. Those who love their fathers would dye before dishonoring their names. If one knows the father, then so they know the son. So yes; There are things worth dying for. The question is what are the things you would dye for? Now you know who you really are, and how other see you.
True. They frequently use the punter's own greed to steal from him. Witness the Nigerian scammers.
"You can't cheat an honest man"
I thought more favorably of that saying before I learned it came from a movie about a con man, who used it to con another man into joining him.
almost certainly predates the w.c. fields' classic of '39. even better?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Give_a_Sucker_an_Even_Break or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bank_Dick
I say no to family first!
I've suffered more financial damage from family than anyone else. I eventually learned though.
Your opinion about something is very valid and true brother. You can always trust your 1st gut feeling when you make a decision, it's the spirit guiding you.
The biggest con is streaming live into your living room whenever the state of the union needs addressing. He may not talk to you directly, but he is still conning you just the same. Then there are con artists telling you what you are supposed to accept as currency when you know that that is not making sense as that currency really has no value. Regardless, every time you're accepting their currency you're part of their con.
I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point.
The biggest con is accomplished when the victims have absolutely no way of escaping the con even when they know they've been conned. Sheer fucking living nightmare which puts everything into question. What is real once you realize that everything around you is based on a con in one way or another?
Eh,i dont trust in our "expert"Ben Shalom and his friends scams.
I'll think of this post the next time Romney or Obama takes the stage or just about any politician or lawyer. It aint only economists, it is a good portion of those who graduated from college and cheated to pass their exams and fluffed up their resumes.
"You approach a man to buy 1,000 shares of the IPO of a company called Facebook...but in order to be in you have to be "all in." It's either 10,000 shares or nothing." Need i say more? Bernie Madoff never made a sales pitch. You made one TO HIM. The problem arises of course when "once the trust is shattered" (since this is no mere confidence game. That's 100 BILLION dollars with Facebook) what returns "mere confidence." In other words what was famously called in the 90's a "burn rate" (a successful business "burns through" money at a great rate) was for real...and is the sign of "an ultimate return"...but at a certain interval. Facebook to me represents to end to this "the craziest aspect" of the equity space namely "you have to be all in from the get go or you're gonna miss it." Can there even be a return to an "investable thesis" with so much money gone now? If i were doing a sales pitch going forward i'd sure make the idea of "an actual investment" my emphasis. The ability to New York City to borrow a dime probably depends on not only such a pitch but such a pitch actually "being real." We shall see...
Yea...I also wonder what happened to all those people paraded on CNBC who told tales of them going all in on Facebook with their life savings along with thousands they talked their mom out of. Not so good I guess.
They went in with other people's lifetime savings ...
i heard bartoromo provide her "opinion" that FB was going to $65 first day - which im sure wasnt a con but an "educated" opinion
Alexander Pope: 'I am his Highness' dog at Kew;Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?'
Let's just substitute 'special interest group' for 'his Highness' and we got our government in action.
The biggest scam aided by wanna-be sophiticates is that any behavorial understanding from an economic or financial standpoint is worth mentally masturbating over because (as with the all the data explosion some more useless then the next) it's easy to draw cross studies and sound smart when all that's happening at best is the systematic elimination of common sense and principles to be guided by as nuanced academia fart out the non-sense that is current vogue faux intelligent musings.
That is a very good point. The point of economics is logical choices reasoned out. It is about allocating scarce resources to obtain the most value from them. Once we start studying how people scam each other and make that our focus, is it any wonder that we get nothing productive as a result?
If we had honest money, i.e. gold or silver, the great majority of these con games, deceptive schemes, and debt scams would be revealed for what they are, and be greatly reduced.
Those lessons ring the bells, sure. Just wondering whether our hardworking bread-and-butter con artists are as fully backed by the government as their tribal brethren over at Wall Street are.
Global Debt Crisis - The greatest private fraud of human history.
Who are the great fraudsters who are becoming the murderers of the human kind?
http://eamb-ydrohoos.blogspot.gr/2012/01/global-debt-crisis.html
.
World War III - The first private war in history
http://eamb-ydrohoos.blogspot.gr/2012/02/world-war-iii.html
That chart is wrong....Canada doesnt have that much debt....
Gov fudges are in, starting with aust
* Australia Q1 GDP +1.3% q/q, +4.3% y/y, +0.5% and +3.2% eyed, Tsy Swan notes rock solid fundamentals. Consumption +1.4%, gross CAPEX +2.9%, chain price index -1.2%.
as metal prices collapse in the last 3mths.
Russia's rubbel currency is already going to shitz. Austral and Canuck Dollars are protected by Her Majesty of course and won't slide as bad. My bet is that she is not interested in a Brazilian. Imagine that and puke in your cereal. Good morning. You're in HK?
The sad man with the cleric was robbed and claims to only have $5,000? Gee, thats real sad....I'd tell him to cheer up he's got more available cash than I do!
Here's a related story that is absurd and why nobody wants to be a doctor anymore. It a shame to see stuff like occur.
Man Dies While Having Sex in a Three-Some, Cardiologist Gets Sued for Failing to Tell The Man To Avoid Exerting Himself Before Stress Test is Done–Doctor Loses and Estate Gets $3 Million DollarsIf he died, who filed the lawsuit. No wonder mal practice insurance is so costly.
I said yes to Ron Paul tonight. He was still on the California ballot.
Ron Paul for President.
And the tooth fairy for his vice president.
I'd vote for the tooth fairy any day of the week over the evil cocksuckers currently running the asylum. At least she gives something of value in exchange for some enamel and dentin instead of ass-raping my children's future.
very interesting post. thanks as always.
http://youtu.be/O-rPDFKnKKA
I learned by street smarts in Manhattan too - and I learned how to spot a con well enough that I didn't have to be afraid to talk to anyone.
The logical endpoint of "nobody has any business talking to you in the street" is Kitty Genovese.
Winston Moseley didn't stop to chit chat.
You know, we should just give in to their madness. Start thinking like they do and come up with our own gigs that make us ultra filthy rich. Like for example the fact that pets are highly underinsured and most importantly, pets just aren't leveraged enough. There's a good strategy to come up with a few trillion in fresh debt we can create and pay us all handsomly for our lifetime. Let's face it, humans are overleveraged but the shit show has to go on and the can has to be kicked further down the road. Canine and feline members of our society have important jobs and they are worth a lot. They deserve leverage in form of credit cards, LOCs and so on. Student loans to send Pussy to Purring school. Why the heck not?
Wait, why stop there! I'm sure we can bundle the debt and throw in a few strokes of rehypothecation. The opportunities are limitless. Wall Street hasn't seen a ramp like that in ages.
So what if some say this is bullshit. It's all bullshit. It doesn't matter. Debt is money. More debt is more money. THEY don't care so why should anyone else. Is there a bank that caters to pets? Let's build it and get access to the Fed discount window. Some pets get more preferred rates than others. Sorry, Pussy. It is a dog eat, uhm cat eat cat world after all.
You in?
This post was a rambling mess. Still not sure what connections the author is trying to make between behavioral economics in macroeconomics and petty grifters running small-time cons?
It's all one big fucking con.
There. For you in plain English.
i agre and i have been in NYC since 1947 and have never been approached on any scam nor do i know of anyone outside of the banks - i think over rated concern
The European union is collapsing, US banks will fold soon after when this huge ponzi scheme falls apart the only thing that will keep you and your loved ones from starving is if you net more calories or watts than you consume. Grow food or generate power or die. I fear that things will get bad.
Something's up after the Queen's Jubilee and London market opens soon.
A public service announcement in red words crossed Connecticut TV screens ten minutes ago, saying more information would follow if there was an emergency.
Yes, the emergency system is common, but this is the first time in years that this sort of message has appeared, silencing the sound of TV,so the viewer would read the red message.
Just thought I'd mention it.
The unregulated otc derivative makers are getting desperate, imo.
Corner a beast, and it will come out fighting. Look out below...
It's just the fear-monger machine keeping you subservient.
As you were.
And don't panic!
top-shelf...great stuff.
i'm likewise interested in the subject.
more please,
janus
A heavy but interesting tome is
'Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases' edited by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.Did someone say 'efficient markets'?
sigh, con, con, con, we still trust the con's
Economics, like the other social sciences, must abandon their sad attempts to generate of "grand theories" and work at accumulating useable data and applicable categories. Human science is not readily or properly divisible into "psychology," "sociology," "cultural anthropology," and "economics" because human behavior does not occur as the result of "culture" or "economics" or "personality." Human behavior arises from innumerable and as-yet ill-defined phenomena.
Human psychology works such that as fear grows and the sense of not having a place of safety and security rises panic sets in and the desire for a quick fix leads to people accepting things that were they thinking slowly clearly and calmly they wouldn't try.
The fact that the fear is deliberately caused, by The Architects of Fear, is much more important than the poor decision making that is its byproduct.
flag as wisdom (1)
The biggest con artists alive are in CONgress and State Legislatures; if it weren't for them, Wall Street would be Ball Street and Main Street wouldn't be Pain Street.
'Oh, and would you mind stuffing a few dollars into the bag as well, just to show that you are affluent enough to be trusted?'
It's where Fagin ends and Corzine begins.
In the 19th Century Finance and Banks were regarded as Quasi-Criminal Enterprises. Regulation was designed to give Consumers and Businesses some basis of Trust to facilitate wider use of FIRE sector services. The corruption of Regulators has brought matters full circle with both State and FIRE Sector now seen as Organised Criminal Conspiracies
Willie Sutton( ish ), "'Cause that's were the power is."
Also, regulatory capture, or the cops are in with the crooks/politians.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e82a90fa-ae48-11e1-94a7-00144feabdc0.html#axzz...
The Austrians suggest that "value" is determined by an individual's anticipation of the satisfaction of wants, or the anticipation of the removal of felt uneasiness.
It is part of the con man's game (and the salesman's) to build up that anticipation.
If you ever want to read the words right from the devil's tablet, click on an "explain this" link within a CNBC article. Enough to make your eyes cross.
I love this old stuff. But, you’re right, the techniques have long been honed and perfected several orders of magnitude in what now is known as financial sales.
You see a lot of it in the media too. It amazes me how there is a call-ready expert for anything and everything that happens in the world these days. If someone finds a dead armadillo with a viral infection on a Long Island subway car, it takes all of one hour before every MSM channel across the country is interviewing some expert about why it happened, why and exactly how we should all be concerned, and what can be done to prevent this from ever threatening our lives again. Guess what, that so called expert is most likely a journalist too.
GOOD MORNING LADIES AND GENTLEMEN...The most blatant subway begging/lying scam ever. This intro was followed by a sob story about sick a sick child or parent and money was desperately needed.
Don't trust anyone who wants your money or your vote. Remain on high alert when someone sends over a drink.