Too Many People Had to Know!

A few days ago a watched the Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Enron ran a naive and sketchy business, resulting in desperate money-making schemes like flicking power plants on and off. When looking at the big picture, the entire enterprise looks like a legitimate and documented conspiracy. Enron worked congress to get the energy business deregulated, which led to the ability to lie about the company value, which led massive earnings, which brought other banks into their schemes, which resulted in the financial rape of their shareholder, customers, and the general economy.

As Ashley pointed out to me, a common argument against conspiracy theories is that “too many people would have to know in order to pull it off.” So if we can believe this publicly documented event which involved countless people, then why not believe a faked moon landing, intentional 9/11 strikes, or the NWO?

Forgive the cliché Nazi comparison, but the Nazis too were a large group who ran an unethical operation. We must remember, like the Nazis, Enron was extremely unsuccessful in their big picture goals. These organizations were so large, and their effects were had such an impact, that they did not survive. “All the people who knew” were either out of a job, imprisoned, killed, etc.

Enron had countless participants, the Nazis too was a large organization, as in these examples the number of participants alone does not mean that they are incapable of doing harm. It is the scale of an organization, along with diminished individual responsibility that paves the way for potential ruin. What the Enron situation does not have in common with other conspiracy theories, is that it’s members all suffered by everything from job loss, prison time, and suicide, which the media has all documented. All those peope did know, and look what happend to them.

For many conspiracy theorists, traditional conspiracy theories by nature can not be disproved because lack of available evidence can be seen as evidence of a cover-up, so no matter what the findings, theorists claim proof of a conspiracy. I guess one could argue that the Enron situation didn’t measure up to the severity of the moon landings or 9/11, so the same level of cover-up wasn’t required. Or maybe, Enron was prosecuted so that the institution could show the people that they don’t cover-up. This way the people will stop looking for the real conspiracies, tricky, tricky!

Not being able to disprove a conspiracy theory, is not supprting evidence for it’s plausability.

My Stimulus Question

I have an economic stimulus question. Instead of bailing out companies, what if the government only gave a stimulus to individuals?   The money would pass through individuals and eventually get to the businesses that the collective people wanted to save.

Pretending that politics aren’t a factor, is there a practical problem with stimulating the economy this way?  It seems that pushing more money through the people helps those people and allows a more capitalistic way to bail out worthy businesses.

Tax Cut

Last was the Henley tax-night.  I didn’t realize that the Tax Cut software is only good for the year in which you purchased it.  At around 10PM I made a Wal-Mart run where I saw the old lady with all the squash like buds all over her body, too bad for her.

When using Tax Cut, the top right of the screen displays what your return (or how much you owe) will be.  This number changes as you enter more information.  I started off owing about $70, then it was $600, then $1400, I was unenthused.  So I kept telling Tax Cut more financial secrets about me, and after a while it must have heard a secret that it really liked, my owing $1400 gradually changed into about $4900 returned.  This is significantly more then we got back last year so I hope that I didn’t inadvertently tell some tall tales.

justthrive.com

I’ve recently signed up for justthrive.com. This site pulls all your financial information from all your prospective financial websites and gives you a concise view of your financial health. It looks at your bank accounts, your credit cards, your loans and mortgages, your investments and gives you a score based on how good you are with money. The site is fantastic,

It tally’s how much you spend on going out vs buying groceries,
It makes suggestions oh how much more or less you should try to spend,

It tells you how much your lifestyle costs per day,
It tells you how long you could survive without a job,

It estimates you how much you will make per year once you retire.

Don’t be afraid of putting up your precious financial into. The site does not contain any account numbers, and you have not access to the money that’s visible on the site, it only gives you a birds-eye-view of what you are spending your money on. Worse case scenario, if someone just had to break in, they might find out that your debt has just decreased $400 since last month.

On an irrelevant note, check out my new Hanna Montana tissue box for my car!