Really, no way to accurately convey the dead-on observations of Rushkoff other than lifting his BB post wholesale:
It’s not that the irony of an economics reporter – “the chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years” – falling prey to the very phenomena he was reporting on was lost on the Times; that’s what the article was about. Rather, it’s the way the magazine has chosen to embrace the values of the population it failed: instead of reporting accurately on what happened while it was happening, the magazine (and the papers’) reporters simply excuse everyone’s short-sighted greed by admitting they did it themselves. Hell, if it can happen to the economics guy at the Times, then it really is excusable, and the government should restructure or repackage and let us stay in these giant houses we couldn’t afford. At the expense of those who made smarter, non-NY decisions.
But the missed opportunity here was that by dedicating an entire issue to Dilemmas of Debt, the NYTimes put itself in a position to explain debt. To help people understand what really happened, and to think about it more deeply. They could have done a piece on central bank-issued currency, on the bias of currency, on the workings of a debt-driven economy, or on the hundreds of alternative value-driven currencies now on the horizon. They could have looked at how debt itself functions, or how it influences societies who use it as the basis for their economy. They could have at least help readers consider the possibility that debt itself is not a pre-existing condition of the universe. It is an invention.
Remember this.
Plin
Ah, but that would have required *research*, and people who are capable of probing into deeper causes, asking more “why?” questions than can be answered in a 10-minute phone interview. And perhaps most of all, it would have required a broad sense of the workings of culture and economy.
That’s hard work, yo. Plus, it means wrenching one’s head out of one’s own navel, and entertaining the thought that, just maybe, reporters and newsrooms are not the center of universe.