Some of the recent discussions regarding propaganda have had me thinking about the relationship between propaganda and morality in professional money management. The following from CJ Hopkins at counterpunch.org struck a chord when I read it:
The primary aim of official propaganda is to generate an “official
narrative” that can be mindlessly repeated by the ruling classes and
those who support and identify with them. This official narrative does
not have to make sense, or to stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny.
Its factualness is not the point. The point is to draw a Maginot line, a
defensive ideological boundary, between “the truth” as defined by the
ruling classes and any other “truth” that contradicts their narrative.
Imagine this Maginot line as a circular wall surrounded by
inhospitable territory. Inside the wall is “normal” society, gainful
employment, career advancement, and all the other considerable benefits
of cooperating with the ruling classes. Outside the wall is poverty,
anxiety, social and professional stigmatization, and various other forms
of suffering. Which side of the wall do you want to be on? Every day,
in countless ways, each of us are asked and have to answer this
question. Conform, and there’s a place for you inside. Refuse, and …
well, good luck out there.
Fund managers have clearly been beaten into submission for a generation now by the money stick wielded by central banks. Bet against the asset bubbles they create for even a moment and you will quickly find yourself on the outside. Central bankers have eliminated all dissenters from the investing world. All those who remain as professional investors are now forced to mindlessly repeat the official narrative. Even as the narrative moved from central bank control of elevated asset prices to the fiscal policies of Donald Trump, no investor has dared to utter a discouraging word. Be bullish and repeat the official narrative or find another profession is the new reality of the money management business.
All of this brings me to a warning issued by that middle-aged moralist (as he called himself), C.S. Lewis. Lewis once delivered a commencement address titled The Inner Ring, where he warned against both the desire of becoming an insider (someone supposedly in the know) and the fear of being an outsider.
I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s
lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the
most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the
terror of being left outside....
And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or
ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your
lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world.....And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little
further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all
in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal,
and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the
prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.
Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in
making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.
Lewis recognized that desire to be on the inside, as well as the terror of being on the outside, can lead people to abandon their principles and become scoundrels. I am almost certain that much of professional money management is now full of scoundrels all too willing to blather that central bank theft via the printing press and government control of the economy are creating real wealth. It is now too cold and forbidding on the outside of the ring for them to any longer contemplate a life there.
I was reminded of the depth of the investing propaganda again this week as CNBC trotted out Warren Buffett to cry to never bet against America while proclaiming that the U.S. possesses some "secret sauce" that insures that asset prices will always rise over time. I often wonder if Buffett's more principled father would view his son as a scoundrel?
I will finish with a rather ominous warning from another middle-aged moralist from the past century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that seems appropriate to the discussion of propaganda:
It seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are
deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give
up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging
circumstances.
The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to
the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one
virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but
with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of
him.
He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.
Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be
capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is
evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is
this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
