Saturday, December 20, 2008

Idols of the Land of Wealth

Something I mentioned in the post Moshiach ben Yosef II was:

I think that the most potent message of the story is that Rebbe Nachman teaches that the most desperate place a person can be is in the Land of Wealth. This place is a land that worships wealth and literally calls the wealthiest people there gods.

Interestingly, Paul Krugman writes the following in his op-ed article in the NY Times:

Think of the way almost everyone important missed the warning signs of an impending crisis. How was that possible? How, for example, could Alan Greenspan have declared, just a few years ago, that “the financial system as a whole has become more resilient” — thanks to derivatives, no less? The answer, I believe, is that there’s an innate tendency on the part of even the elite to idolize men who are making a lot of money, and assume that they know what they’re doing. (Italics mine - ag)

Striking.

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