* As I’ve long said (because it’s so obvious), studio executives are not in the movie business, they are in the risk management business (which is also known as the job preservation business). Today, of course, all corporations are virtually the same – they consist of fronts for investments in other companies, no matter what goods or services they stamp with their logo – and they all seem to be conglomerated into larger umbrella-entities that exist to launder imaginary money and avoid paying taxes. The current financial debacle was created by computer-assisted financial instruments (combined with old-fashioned Ponzi schemes) designed to create the illusion of mathematically abstract investment opportunities with high return and zero risk. And what fed it? The American Dream, of course! Home mortgages, sold under false terms to people who couldn’t afford them, but didn’t know it until the hidden charges started kicking in. (You mean you didn’t factor in those percentages in the footnotes on pages 129 and 312?) Only markets as corrupt as those we know collectively as Wall Street (using the expertise of physicists and computer programmers who came up with the calculations) could find a way to generate fantasy wealth from bad debt! We still believe in alchemy.
Wow! The footnote is even better than the article (on the absurdity & possible futility to the approach of how we’re going about fighting terrorism in airports)
Roger Ebert’s right hand man impresses me yet again.
