I want to create a climate of INTELLECTUAL debate here where our ideas as well as others’ can be subjected to insightful criticism. This will not happen if anyone with a contrasting opinion is flamed off the stage.

Josh

I was suggesting that when times are tough people may try to make themselves feel better by imagining a better day in the future. This is not a radical idea and happens all the time, for instance, when we are stuck in a traffic jam and imagine a day at the beach. It certainly doesn’t suggest we abandon our imaginations.

As for the economics lesson, J., it may be an incorrect characterization of what you wanted to say, but what you did say, namely “What’s happened is that lots of people made bad investment decisions, and the investments didn’t pay off,” led me to the conclusion that this is what you meant.

While you, and it would seem others who come to this blog, exercise what I would consider a healthy skepticism towards “nano-scale bulk technologies” and even the finance industry, I trust that you feel comfortable applying that same rigorous system of doubt to the promises of molecular nanotechnology.

As for the name calling, it’s a pity that anonymous commenters feel that it’s acceptable to indulge themselves in this kind of ad hominem attacks, but I suppose that is just the way of things. I will try to imagine a day when this doesn’t happen.

Nano-hype — the overpromising of near-term nanoscale bulk technologies — was clearly a very minor part of the problem, but it was real. I’ve been amazed how many people asked me for investment advice once they heard I’d written a book on nanotech. (My stock answer: “Buy land.”)

The promissory note a home buyer signs over to the bank in exchange for the loan/mortgage, the bank/loan company sells the same day. In other words, the bank is lending the borrower the borrowers own credit. The borrower lends the bank a promissory note worth 100k and the bank turns around and loans the borrower 100k.

The problem is it’s all credit and the bank wants it’s loan repaid in federal reserve notes. Which it also gets FRNs when it sells the borrowers promissory note. The bank never pays back the borrower for his promissory note he loaned to the bank. It’s probably the biggest institutionalized fraud in the history of the world.

None of the mortgage loans, none of the debts the homeowners supposedly owes can be validated. Why? Because the banks no longer have it on file because the sold it. If when the bank opens it’s books it shows that the bank has already been paid via the promissory note thus there’s no outstanding debt.

Plus, the banksters have the audacity to foreclose on a home and take title to a home that the homeowner already paid for with the promissory note and perhaps ten or fifteen years of monthly payments.

The problem.fraud gets even bigger… International bankers who own the central banks loan money to both sides of waring governments — it’s their most lucrative endeavor. The private corporation known as the Federal Reserve creates billions of dollars out of thin air as credit for THE UNITED STATES corporation to barrow. And the tax-payers are on the hook to repay the loan principle plus interest. Billions For the Bankers, Debts For the People.

The bright side is that government Tax Retirement Funds (Google “CAFR1″ — comprehensive annual financial report) have over twice the assets as all government liabilities combined. That’s well over one-hundred Trillion dollars that you won’t hear even so much as a peep about from the mainstream media. Of course the main stream media didn’t tell you about the massive bankster loan fraud either. That’s because the banksters own and or control the mainstream media… and they control politicians and bureaucrats.

Yes, this is a conspiracy. And it’s not a theory. It’s fact.

When things are bad, they are never as bad as they seem.

When the greatest percentage of people forget this and think the current state (whether boom or bust) can never change, then you know a turning point is near.

Go and tell people something like ‘the economy will recover late this year, making this 24-month recession the longest since the GD’. A LOT of people will say you are delusionally optimistic. Thus, you know the turning point is near.

Dexter Johnson’s bad attitude is borne of ignorance. It is all the more preposterous for him to accuse others of denial. The current economic situation is NOT dire. Even in the Great Depression most people kept their jobs, and many people even prospered, and those that struggled did not, generally, suffer the horrible diseases and starvation of past centuries or, indeed, in the modern third world. Dexter Johnson is an ignoramus whose ignorance leads him to view optimists with contempt. If he was capable of standing back and taking a broad view of human history, he would occupy the same viewpoint as those he haughtily accuses of denial.

[NB: this comment is inflammatory: consider it an example of the kind of comments that will be frowned upon here in future. --Josh]