Peggy Noonan’s column today focuses on the financial meltdown, the hearings held this week and the total and complete language opacity that is being used to avoid assigning guilt or driving any kind of change in the system. She also correctly notes that the people asking questions in the hearing seem to have forgotten that asking a question is sort of important, and maybe should be tried instead of making a speech designed to look (sort of) like a question. ANYWAY, the quest to find out exactly what happened in this meltdown reminds me of my favorite acronym of all time: TANSTAAFL.
I saw it first in “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” and it has stuck w/ me and protected me ever since…when someone offers something too good to be true, where everyone seems to win, where money comes into a system and gets bigger and richer in a circle and there is no more money coming in, then TANSTAAFL it is, and run the other way as fast as possible.