Catching On ... 22 Years Too Late. Instead, Can We Carefully Define "Success" .. So That We Can Aim Directly At It?

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Twitter exchange.

Better Markets ‏@Bettermarkets42m
RT @ritholtz: SEC Regulatory Exemptions Led to Collapse http://dlvr.it/3zt4lX

Roger G Erickson ‏@rgeOps Reply to @Bettermarkets @ritholtz
Ya think? About time someone other than William K. Black said so (for 20 years straight).

Wow! The pace here is breathtaking ... well, at least the pace of Middle Class wealth taking has been. (Wait .. isn't that a NEGATIVE pace, from our perspective?) Yes, Larry, that IS a negative pace applied to the General Welfare of the People of the USA.

At this rate our grandkids will learn how WE sold them into financial servitude. "Werks fur mi!"

Anyone ever heard of these concepts called "TEMPO" and "ADAPTIVE RATE" ??? How about the collective quality of distributed decision-making?

Where were these guys in 1992, when the Clinton administration STARTED accepting appointees requested by whomever was pay Greenspan and Robert Rubin. (hint: Greenspan used to WORK for Charles Keating, of the "Keating 5" fame)

In all seroiusness, given that we're 20 years behind the RobertRubin OODA Loop, what strategic issues should we NOW be looking ahead to ... to even have a snowball's chance in hell of catching up and ridding ourselves of our own, misguided cultural practices and the random parasites those practices breed? Cuultural life is warfare, folks, and we haven't been anywhere close to winning in your lifetime. 

Can we carefully define what success means, to a consensus of US citizens? So that we can aim directly at that Desired Outcome? Instead of wandering in the ideological wastelands for another 40 years?

Barry Ritholtz - he may mean well, but is the same guy who says that Warren Mosler's math "doesn't add up for me." If Barry and many others really mean well, we all absolutely must both radically bump up our tempo - and assess where it's really taking us - in order to meaningfully serve the USA. Either that or Barry & others honestly admit that they're in the game simply for their own momentary interests. When your country's future matters, ya either gotta step up to the plate WITH WHATEVER MATH WORKS FOR THE USA - NOT YOU ... or get out of the way.

The original examples to follow were Marriner Eccles & FDR, NOT Keynes and endless other academic blowhards. If everyone doesn't want to get involved, we can't succeed by letting various Central Planners tackle parts of American culture in isolation. Too much delegation defines a mob, not a culture. Too little defines gridlock.  Yet somewhere in between those dynamic tolerance limits lies the pathway for survival of an evolving system constantly tuning ITSELF - NOT being tuned by it's own, internal isolates.  None of us are as smart - or meaningful - as all of use. Every process is too important than the presumed process owners.  We need pragmatic test/assess/respond action cycles when they matter, not endless words years or decades after the war was lost. The words and theory follow, they can NEVER, by definition, lead. That's up to us. All of us. How do we do that?

It was a mistake to ever apply academic principles to leadership and exploration tasks. That's one root of all current problems. We have ZERO net predictive power. If we had any, we wouldn't have to explore and evolve. What we do have is seemingly unlimited adaptive power. It's up to us to collectively apply that power, with tempo and purpose, so that the academics have something to document - in OUR spare time. Meanwhile, we've got options to explore, and limited time to explore, analyze and respond to them ... and assess OUR net outcomes.