Financier Peter Schiff’s findings of fact in Florida V. George Zimmerman are much like mine in “The Colosseum of Courtroom Cretins,” where it was noted that “Idiocracy elite lacks the ability to separate the political constructs to which it is wedded (racism) from the facts of a case brought in a court of law.”
Or, as Mr. Schiff puts it in “Print the Legend”: “preconceived emotional commitments to a narrative [consistently trumped] demonstrable facts.”
“The vast majority of observers continue to subscribe to the dominant narrative that our economy is improving, the Fed’s Quantitative Easing programs are responsible, and that the debt we are currently accumulating is not a long-term problem.”
“The current administration, the media, Wall Street, and the Fed itself, are particularly committed to this narrative. After all, we have been pursuing these policies for more than five years, and many of these parties have a particular emotional and pecuniary investment in a positive outcome. It would be difficult for them now to admit that their preferred cures have not only been ineffective, but harmful. As a result, they will continue to advocate for the current policies until they get the answers they expect.”
“Not only do their underlying assumptions defy economic law and objective rationality, but they are also at odds with the evidence that continues to arrive. The data makes it clear that while asset prices (stocks, bonds, and real estate), are currently being inflated by an activist monetary policy, the real economy continues to stagnate. What supports do exist are based solely on government intervention. Yet they nevertheless discuss a potential Fed exit strategy as if the economy were in a position to make such a transition without bringing on an even more severe recession than the last. In this light, the failure of QEI to produce a real recovery led directly to QEII, and so on to QE Infinity. We are unwilling to challenge our initial assumptions about what is really wrong with our economy and how to fix it.”
“To get a sense of justice and emotional clarity over the death of Trayvon Martin, many cling to the image of a saintly youth and ignore the more difficult reality of a troubled teen picking a fight with an inept neighborhood watchman. Accepting this reality does not lead to a conclusion that Trayvon deserved to die, but it denies the self-justifying conclusions that keep race relations dysfunctional. It also allows us to ignore more troubling and far more common tragedies like the one that befell 18 year old Jett Higham, another African American youth who lost his life in a nighttime run to a local convenience store. The media decided that this tragedy was a non-story, as his killers were also African Americans teens.” [Emphasis added.]