---

From: tgmy7@...
To: chaljohnson@...; ksusiek@...



SCIFINOMICS OR THE CREDULITY OF THE PUBLIC
 
by
Tom Mysiewicz
 
      I preface this article with my opinion.  That the purpose of the Bush/Paulson $700-billion bailout was not to save Ma and Pa Kettle from the ravages of a stock-market crash, which is going to happen anyway.  Nor was it primarily to enrich the financial cronies of those in power, although it does that amply.  It was naked blackmail, in fact, to force Congress to accept emergency financial rule, raise the Federal debt ceiling to unheard-of levels, allow foreign governments and banks to dictate policy and have limited enforcement powers in the U.S., and allow the U.S. Government to, in effect, and buy its own debt instruments from foreign banks by lending them money.
        (My opinion is given credence by the fact that the Fed's "Plunge Protection Team" has stopped supporting the Dow as it has done for the past several years--even after the passage of the "vital" bailout legislation!)
        Like some of the science fiction movies I describe below, this "bailout" plan plays on the credulity of the public and legislators, hence my term "scifinomics".   In short it involves the creation of a plan based on untested means, without a full knowledge of the scope or magnitude of a problem, or the size and duration of corrective measures necessary.  And it has to take no more than 90 minutes!!!
       The first thing one notices about the Bush/Paulson "Bailout" is that the proposed sum is probably less than 10% of what would be needed to have any chance of stemming a worldwide panic as it does not even address seven or more troubled areas of the financial sector (loss of home valuation in excess of $500-billion in the U.S., consumer credit bubble, commercial real estate bubble, gold derivative bubble, municipal bond bubble, mutual fund/pension bubble, and gold-derivative reverse bubble).  Further, the haste with which this plan was concocted and lack of any citations of past success using the proposed tactics, makes the approval of the plan--in the absence of the actual collapse--little more than a one in a thousand shot in the dark!
       Three particular movies come to mind that I think may have had something to do with preparing the public to accept such reasoning,
        Armageddon (1998) features a space flight of astronauts, including the actor Bruce Willis, flying a space shuttle mission to a Texas-sized asteroid about to collide with Earth.  The goal is to drill into the asteroid, insert a nuclear charge, and blow up the asteroid so that only small pieces (if any) hit Earth.  Now, this mythical mission was put together without any tests showing the resistance of the asteroid to an explosion (which means the size of the required nuke could not be known).  Further, there was no seismologic data showing any faults that might be exploited.  No one had landed a human mission on an asteroid.  And no one had any indication of just how hard this particular asteroid would be to drill into.
        Against all odds, the mission not only destroys the asteroid but some of the astronauts even get back!  I counted over 60 scientific impossibilities that would have made the mission success even less likely than that of the Bush/Paulson bailout.
      Next, I recollect the movie Core (2003).  In this movie we have a group of "terranauts" journeying to the center of the Earth to place (you guessed it) a nuclear bomb there whose purpose was to "restart" the Earth's core whose electromagnetic activity had been destroyed by a human experiment.  Once again, the mission was put together with no evidence indicating the possibility of drilling with a manned craft to depths of hundreds of miles (our current technology makes even a 5-mile drill hole most difficult!) or that the craft could even survive the stresses or temperatures it would encounter...much less get out when the mission was completed.  Further, little was known about the Earth's core (since we have never been there or even sent probes anywhere near it) and even less was known about the efficacy of a nuclear explosion or even the size of such an explosion (if there was even a slight chance of it working) that would be required to "restart" the Earth's core!
        A more recent sci-fi film, Sunshine (2007) features a second mission from Earth to restart the sun with, you guessed it, a nuke.  It seems the sun has been partially shut down by a black hole that drifted into it and a first solar restart mission disappeared.  Once again, we have a mission launched lacking the most basic of information critical to its sucess.  No probes had ever been sent into the sun, let alone its core (where the nuke would have to be delivered.)  No manned ships had ever been sent anywhere near the sun.  No detailed knowledge was available on the sun's core--which makes it very difficult to determine if a nuke of any size would have any effect on it whatever or what the size of that nuke would have to be.  The possibility of returning from such a mission alive is remote, but the movie presents that as realistic until the second Sunshine mission deviates from its "slingshot" course around the sun (madness from an astrophysics point of view--and madness doomed the first crew as well) in response to a radio signal from the lost first mission. 
       Sunshine, alas, probably has more to say about our current attempt at scifinomics--the Bush/Paulson bailout package.  It seems the captain of the first mission went quite mad and, as the new Sunshine docks, he boards the ship and sabotages the greenhouses and oxygen supply and sets the ship on a course to plunge into the heart of the sun.  Through a series of heroics, the mad first captain is killed and one male and one female astronaut manage to arm the nuke and plunge into the sun with it.  They do not survive the mission, of course, but those on Earth see the sun reborn.
        Alas, this is probably the best that can be hoped for in the current scifinomics "bailout" regimen.  That those who survive the plunge into economic chaos and war may one day see the dawn of a new world hopefully better than the one of the past few centuries.
 
###
Copyright 2008 by Thomas G. Mysiewicz.  All rights reserved but premission given to freely reproduce this item, in its entirety, without payment.  Redistribution and republication are encouraged.  Visit Mr. Mysiewicz's website http://members.tripod.com/writer_on_call to find out more about this versatile analyst and commentator.

---

See how Windows Mobile brings your life together—at home, work, or on the go. See Now

---

Get more out of the Web. Learn 10 hidden secrets of Windows Live. Learn Now

---

See how Windows connects the people, information, and fun that are part of your life. See Now