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General News    H2'ed 8/11/11

The Role of The Irrational In The Market Failures

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Danny Schechter
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Systems Collapse When The Irrational Is Considered Rational

By Danny Schechter, Author of The Crime Of Our Time

Oh thank you, Wikipedia, for this definition:

"Irrationality is cognition , thinking, talking or acting without inclusion of rationality . It is more specifically described as an action or opinion given through inadequate reasoning, emotional distress, or cognitive deficiency. The term is used, usually pejoratively, to describe thinking and actions that are, or appear to be, less useful or more illogical than other more rational alternatives."

And what about this one? Market Psychology ?   This term is defined in the Investopedia this way:

"The overall sentiment or feeling that the market is experiencing at any particular time. Greed, fear, expectations and circumstances are all factors that contribute to the group's overall investing mentality of sentiment."

Q: What do we have when we put the two together?

A: The current madness and market mayhem,'

S&P's downgrade is being blamed for the market panic even though all the business media expected a downgrade and initially minimized its potential impact. The ratings agency blamed the government's failure to deal with the debt including the stalemate in Congress,

The Republicans, predictably blamed Obama and the Democrats went after the Tea Party as the culprits behind the market plunge. But then, investors who at first denied that a downgrade would be significant overreacted to it by pumping more money into government treasuries adding to government debt.

The Comedy Channel's Jon Stewart's sensible reaction: "are you f*cking kidding me?"

Does this make any sense?

We are taught to think of businessmen and their minions as absolute worshippers of objective truth as they allegedly practice "due diligence" to confirm underlying facts and insure that their decisions are based on research and thoughtful decisions.

That's what we are taught---but is that what they do?

In fact, the "smartest guys in the room" as the Enronians were called proved to be the dumbest, buying into a warped worldview, and then, believing their own hype leading to decisions that brought the house down.

And that's what happens again and again, over and over, as panic seizes The Street followed by a herd of decision makers making bad decisions.'

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News Dissector Danny Schechter is blogger in chief at Mediachannel.Org He is the author of PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books) available at Amazon.com. See Newsdisssector.org/store.htm.
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