Why it's a Goldman Sachs world

As I've been watching this never-ending Euro-crisis go on and on, it's occurred to me more than once that it's odd how many Goldman Sachs alumni occupy positions of power in all those distressed European economies.

From finance ministers to technocrats to top guns at the European Central Bank, the IMF and the World Bank, every time you turn around you bump into a former Goldman director, adviser, or senior economist.

The "sky is falling" hysteria that has accompanied the Greek debacle struck me as typical media sensationalism.

The sky has been falling on Greece for quite some time now, yet when the Greeks voted this week, they apparently voted for a continuation of sky-falling, a continuation of save-the-banks-at-all-costs, and a continuation of the massive screw-over that the common Greek in the street has been enjoying for the last five years.

Yet voter turn-out was around 60%.

You'd think that if the sky was actually falling a few more Greeks would get off the sofa and head for the polling booth.

But no. The champions of austerity managed a victory in this democratic election, even if it appears that the majority of Greeks voted against their own interests.

That's not unique to Greece of course. American voters have been beguiled into voting against their own self-interest for generations.

Books have been written about this phenomenon.

It's still a source of befuddlement though. Are people really that stunned?

Then I ran across a paper called The structure and dynamics of global multi-media business networks. It's worth looking up.

This isn't the sort of quackery that's all over the net that sees some massive Jewish/Freemason/alien (take your pick) conspiracy imposing a "New World Order" on the planet.

This is boring academics at the University of California tracing the links between our news media and our financial institutions.

Long story short, the reason the media never tire of hyping the financial crises is because they've got a vested interest in scaring the crap out of us. Scare the people into saying yes to more austerity, and the same financial institutions who control the media will make a killing on the Greek debt they've been picking up at a steep discount.

Nothing illegal about it.

Immoral, repugnant, offensive?

Definitely!

But it's working for them so far.