Watched The China Hustle recently and it made me feel like a pawn in a game that I can't begin to understand. Yet, it was the monies of average people like me that is being looted by an array of actors who seem to have no losing scenario. One scene was particularly poignant for me. Dan David, the whistleblower who is trying to get Congress to take action is shown at a barbeque in his father's house with a bunch of elderly neighbors. He is trying to get them to understand that they are being robbed and defrauded. No one in the gathering exhibits any signs of comprehension as David explains the problem statement and what he does as a short seller. One man asks him at the end of it all to explain how it is that he makes money while they lose on the same thing. The conversation moves on.
People have been conditioned to chase after the next thing in sight - a vacation, a nicer car, a bigger house and so on. If they can find the money to do what is top of mind, it lulls them into a sense of comfort. There is their arbitrary and misplaced faith in the system that grows stronger with such outcome. When things work - the roll of dice is favorable, it is assumed that the system though inscrutable does work. Its only when the entire house of cards collapses that people wonder what happened. So the trick is to have a non-stop news-cycle feeding negative stories so the average person lowers their overall expectations in life - the world is a hard place and they are lucky to have their small wins, they expect they will need to keep working as long as they physically can, they accept that retirement is not for everyone, the accept having half their savings wiped out and building it back up. In the background, the winners are taking it all.
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