This is an extremely disappointing post. Why on earth are we discussing conspiracy theories on Piggington? Maybe we should be discussing the economic implications of 100+ IQ people actually believing that the burden of proof lies in disproving the conspiracy theory beyond a shadow of a doubt rather than proving it beyond some measure of doubt. I encourage anyone intersted to Google a phrase like “Psychological State of Conspiracy Theorists” to get an cursory assemssment of the path they are heading down.
Wall Street is one of the most important institutions in our country today. The U.S. government does not want to do anything to damage it. There is no motive for the U.S. government to do anything to damage the island of Manhattan. It’s a jewel in the U.S. crown, and anyone who doesn’t realize this quickly needs their head examined.
For every structural, materials or aerospace engineer that will say they’re suprised by how the buildings behaved, you can find one that says they are not. Remember the U.S. fighter plane that severed the tram cable like it was butter in Switzerland? Materials do very strange things under stressful conditions. The average engineer doesn’t know squat about material properties beyond standard boundary conditions. So folks, any argument from any engineer as to what they thought should have happened doesn’t prove or disprove anything. The smartest bridge builders in the world built the Tacoma Narrows bridge, only to see it collase within 6 months.
A number of folks here are quoting things that people say when they are not under oath as though it is the truth. If one can be sure of anything in our modern society, it is the fact that a tangled web of self-interests will necessarily emerge on the other side of any catastrophe. Everyone will say whatever they can to avoid bearing the burden of any liability. What do you think an engineer from the Steel company who produced the WTC beams is going to say in an interview? So please, before any of you try and use a statement as support for your viewpoint, please try and assess what that person’s motive is.
In science, knowledge is forwarded by forming a hypothesis and testing it. The difference between successful and unsuccessful scientists is the degree of thought that goes into forming the intial hypothesis. This would not be true if we had an infinite amount of time to test every possible outcome, but obviously, we don’t have that luxury. So, scientific progress is accomplished by a very careful concentration on the factors that are *likely* to matter the most.
In this forum, there are some that like to sling around the concept that one must have an open mind to every possible concept or explanation surrounding a problem. Futhermore, they go on to chastise those that do not as “close-minded.” This is just simply not true. The open mind wants to make progress towards a solution, and understands that that progress can only be achieved in a finite amount of time by eliminating the absurd and evaluating the facts surrounding the possible. The conspiracy theory developing mind is in fact the close-minded one, since it crafts a web of facts to support an intial hypothesis rather than focusing on the standard scientific exercise of elimintating the remote. Psychology is not my field, but I might hypothesize that since a closed-mind is far more comfortable clinging to a “truth” for long periods of time (even an infinite amount of time), it sabotages its search for that truth from the very beginning by constucting a low probability theory and then looking to support it (and even asking others to try and discredit it??!!?? Goofy city!).
Along these lines, I have on final bone to pick with some of the posters here…especially those who present their interpretation of some tidbit of fundamental economic data. Please make an attempt to harvest at least four distinct interpretations of this data. Right now, we know what Roubini thinks. But, what does Jim Rodgers think? What does Soros think? What does Warren Buffet think? What does Joe analyst at Merrill think? Roubini is not the only smart guy in this world, and furthermore, he’s well down on the totem pole of people who make money by interpreting fundamental economic data. Either get a clue, or get content with your +5% returns from fixed income sources, and -5% from variable ones.
