Matthew Yglesias » Lucky Me

Oct 27th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

Lucky Me

The current global financial crisis involves a lot of complicated technical matters that I’m not very familiar with. Thank God someone had the brilliant idea to bring Bernard Henri Levi’s considerable expertise to bear on the matter. That’s editorial judgment I can believe in!

Comments
35

35 Responses to “Lucky Me”

Asher Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
That crap was pretty retarded.
Shine Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Not to be outdone, Slate has commissioned Nate Silver from Five-Three-Eight to analyze structure and motif in Finnegan’s Wake.
Dan Kervick Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Sounds like BHL just took a hit deep in his portfolio.
lampwick Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Stay tuned next week for Palin on Kant, and Hitchens on lawnmowers!
Don the libertarian Democrat Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
“Is man a predator of man? Does the fear of this predator slumber within us? An anxiety, formerly concealed by a poorly applied varnish of civilization, about a state of nature that is re-emerging?”

I thought that we were in for a new round of regulation and rules?

Which is it?
roac Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
What’s the French for “gasbag”?
blah Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I don’t know what you guys are talking about. I immediately turned to my worn copy of de la Boetie’s “Discourse on Voluntary Servitude” when the financial crisis started to hit home.
JS Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Money talks.
Dan Kervick Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Seriously, what is this hysterical man saying? He seems to be suggesting that the slowdown of interbank lending has not been caused by mere businesspeople making difficult economic decisions in trying circumstances, aimed at minimizing risk and protecting their firms’ assets, but is instead some sort of spasm of predatory vindictiveness, where bankers red in tooth and claw have sadistically chosen to starve all their rivals of capital, for no other good reason than sheer hatred of their rivals and ghoulish delight in carnage:

“… consider the tango of white-hot hate that has been discreetly called the “drying up of interbank credit.”

I read him as worrying thus: The capital class – whose opulent salons I visit – has failed to stick together. As a result, I’m running out of free dinner tables to visit. And my benefactors are soon going to be facing mobs of rope and guillotine-wielding revolutionaries. I’m going to save myself by dusting up on my Marxism so I can spout it convincingly when the mobs come to get me too. Until then, Au revoir, mes amis americains! Sauve-moi, Sarko!
Matt Weiner Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
What’s the French for “gasbag”?

“homme”
Tom Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Sounds like BHL just took a hit deep in his portfolio.

Sounds more like he took a deep hit of some pretty strong weed.
goethean Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
worst link ever.
John Emerson Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Too much even for TNR readers: “What a load of babble this is.” Comment 1, line 1.
bob mcmanus Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
“Seriously, what is this hysterical man saying?” …DK

Scroll down to the end. BHL is pumping Sarkozy over Obama for World Leader.

“There are always leaders who–as historian Raymond Aron said of a defeated former French president–ignore the fact that “History is tragic,” who believe that everything always works out.” …BHL

Yes, Europe is pissed at Bush. But I don’t think they were crazy about Obama whipping that Paulson bill.

There is positioning for leadership and influence as a weakened America goes thru transition. I don’t think “forgive & forget” Bush wasn’t our fault brand spanking new guy mulligan start over…is quite how the rest of the world sees it.

So maybe reread the BHL piece to see if “Fuck America” is between the lines.
bob mcmanus Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
The background of the piece, one that isn’t getting much attention in the US, is the November 15 meeting.

Europe & the Euro are in even worse economic shape than we are and believe the US is primarily to blame for the world collapse. They are right. They want revenge.

They will sing “Gotta have high hopes” along with Obama but in the backrooms are negotiationg a new currency regime with Asia and we are not really invited. Obama will be eating shit and kissing ass.
blah Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
If Sarkozy can lead a united front EU in rejiggering the world financial system, I will eat my tie.
SMK Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I’m looking foward to Cloris Leachman’s “tango of white-hot hate” this week on Dancing With the Stars, though.

Oh don’t tell me you don’t watch it, people.
James Wimberley Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Just so you can avoid the vapid prick in future, his name is Bernard-Henri Levy.
Don Williams Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I think Columbia Professor Nouriel Roubini –who gave a very good forecast of these events starting two years ago — is a much better guide. He’s predicting the US will have to shut the stock markets down for a week as investors start to panic.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=a6tupYFy_UBs

Plus Roubini has the natural cheerfulness of a Jew who grew up in Iran. As well as being an economist who knows what a dumbshit Alzheimers victim Al Greenspan is.

Congress all these years thought 80 year old Greenspan was talking in babblespeak because he was an Oracle. Ha ha ha
James Wimberley Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Sod’s Law, it’s Lévy.
Don Williams Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
After being sodomized by the Germans twice in the 20th Century — and by the British before that — the French have a keen nose for when things start to turn to shit.

Check out the movie “Le Temps Du Loup” –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Temps_du_Loup
bob mcmanus Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Hey, Sarkozy bought IIRC 50k French homes to proect the French people..

Obama signed on to give Wall Street hundreds of billions, not for lending, but that they are using for acquisitions. Which IB owns Obama next week?

I know who I trust to lead the world economy.
beowulf Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
” Money–essential to the spirit of peace–congealed, like blood in veins.”

OK, that was enough to realize this one was going to go down hard, so I punched out. It reminded of an old Reason piece that gleaned economic insights from Shakespeare.

In several of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the idea of sexual reproduction is imaged in frankly economic terms, as an investment that earns compound interest. The sum that we invest was itself loaned to us by nature; we do wrong if we spend it on ourselves, or even invest it in ourselves at high rates of interest, for if we do, it will perish with us…
http://www.reason.com/news/show/30189.html
JS Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Interesting link from beowulf — where we also find Shakespeare the eugenics advocate and printer:

Let those whom Nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish.
Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish.
She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.
Anne F. Says:
October 28th, 2008 at 7:14 am
After eight years of leadership characterized by utter contempt for the opinions of experts, can we also do away now with the intellectual charlatanism of Bernard Henry Levi? Why is he even asked for his opinion on the financial crisis?

Ugh. Those initials haunt me.

Apparently his brain cells correspond to the plummeting stock market.
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Lucky Me

35 Responses to “Lucky Me”

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