Let me say at the outset, I think the Feds are behaving horrendously (unless were dead wrong and theyre right on the money, of course.) With that said, Ive been racking my brain trying to understand the power-elite (broomers). To do so, Ive attempted to walk around in their shoes and to try to see an impending disaster from their perspective. For the sake of this discussion, let us say that Koskinen (1) believes the problems will be substantial, and (2) believes he is acting in everybodys best interest by understating them. The former assumption stems from the fact that he has the best information money can buy. The second assumption is based on the notion that, at some point, he will have to answer for his actions and he must somehow sleep at night. (Of course, he may be a psychopathic spinmeister, but lets assume hes not for the time being.)

The question I keep asking is as follows:

Why would a morally sound individual who can see the problems coming hide it from the public?

Here are some thoughts, hoping maybe others will surface from you thoughtful folks:

1. Justification for Draconian (severe) measures is hard in the absence of a bad event. For example, it would be hard to bring out the troops if panic is due only to perception; it would be easy, on the other hand, if the infrastructure has already weakened or begun to collapse. If you cant readily act on panic before January 1, wouldnt it be logical (forget about intelligent/morally sound, etc) to try to defer panic until after the rollover?

2. To justify why food stockpiling may be viewed as a problem, I realized that you cant ration what you dont control. In the event of a disaster, it may have been argued behind closed doors that rationing will get us through this whereas individual preparation (emphasis on pre) will consolidate the reserves in private hands. Consequently (and as noted by Bennett), if you have enough supplies but you dont get them into the inner cities fast, all hell will break loose.

3. The bank run needs little comment; a panic-induced run on the banks scares everybody. Importantly, closing (or controlling) the banks would be easier/more justifiable during on ongoing emergency.

4. Somewhat off-topic (but still offering insights into the Fed mind-set), the party in DC seems really silly from our perspective. However, since it is being catered by the Army (Guard?) and theyre bringing in generators to prevent a blackout from ruining the damned thing, this seems like a thinly veiled way to import infrastructure without raising suspicions.

Anyone who is still with me have any other thoughts? I must repeat, I think it would be productive to try to see it through their eyes (valid or not).

-- Dave (aaa@aaa.com), September 06, 1999

Answers

Judging from the number of times I was T.D.' to D.C., I have seen for myself that much of the DC (or Sodom on the Potomac) vision is that which is presented to the pols by the corporate entities and their subsidiaries. During the Gulf War and it's war induced-gas-price gouging, ($1.40 in some areas), I found on a little trip round the 5 sided puzzle palace that the gas prices in and around DC were remarkablly lower than around other areas. The indicator being that here we are paying out the obscene gouge prices, yet our reps and other were untouched by this. When complained about the reps simply went to the 'round-the-corner gas station and saw the prices that the gas companies wanted them to see...nuff said

-- Billy-Boy (Rakkasn@Yahoo.com), September 06, 1999.

As I stated in a previous thread re- banks:

"I think that the most likely outcome will be a run on the banks toward the end of the year (like the 3rd week of December), and when currency supplies get too low, they'll just close the banks until the end of the year. Any banks (if any) still in business after the rollover will be rewarded when hoarded currency is re-deposited with them (hopefully at much higher short-term rates). "

Suppose someone in the government blew the whistle now. The runs would start immediately, causing food shortages and closing the banks for, bringing the economy to a screeching halt months ahead of the rollover.

However, if they give everyone the mushroom treatment (keep them in the dark and feed 'em a bunch of bullshit), then the sheeple will remain apathetic until right near the end.

Now, suppose that a certain percentage of banks do fail at the rollover. We know that if more than 1 or 2 percent fail, the FDIC won't be able to cover the deposits, so those customers will lose all of their money and will be very upset. But from the government's point of view, so what? Overall, the end result will be less disasterous than having everything shut down months ahead of time (which, by the way would also mean that even less remediation would have been accomplished prior to the rollover.)

Same thing for food. More people would starve if the food supply got cut off now than if they just keep us all in the dark.

However, I am definitely not defending their approach.

I think that President Clinton should have taken aggressive action several years ago to try to head this off. If he had, the whole issue of "panic being the biggest problem" wouldn't have even been an issue because most companies and individuals would have been much better prepared, and the potential damage would have been much less. I, for one, hope that those who have been in positions of authority in the government who knew about this (and especially the President) are tried as criminals if this thing ends up as bad as I think it will be, which is a 5 or greater.

Then again, the people of this country elected him TWICE, even when they knew what type of a person he is. From that perspective, a lot of people are getting what they asked for. Most people WANT to be lied to! Think about it. A lot of people have either seen, or have access to the same information that we have, yet they refuse to believe it. They don't even want to hear about it (I've actually had people say that to me). They would rather pretend that all is well. Then, when TSHTF, they can blame the president instead of taking the blame for a situation made worse by their own INTENTIONAL IGNORANCE and IRRESPONSIBILITY.

Those who have come forth and tried to inform the public have been ridiculed and attacked. What politician would subject themselves to the type of crap that people like Gary North or Ed Yourdon have had to put up with? (I don't even know why *they* put up with it - I wouldn't). Yet it is an elected officials DUTY to protect the public, so their inaction is inexcusable, as far as I'm concerned.

For the rest of us (and probably most on this forum) who don't believe a thing that comes out of the President's or any other politician's mouth, we can still prepare as much as we feel is necessary without noticably disrupting the system, so we aren't hurting anyone, and there's still some time left to prepare.

-- Clyde (clydeblalock@hotmail.com), September 06, 1999.

Dave,

Part 4 of my White Paper zeroes in on your concerns regarding what the White House understands and why they are doing what they are doing. (It would probably be especially helpful to read Part 1 as well.)

In my view, it is not the case that the President and Mr. Koskinen have the best information. They apparently don't understand the nature and scope of the problem. They can't know what information to ask for if they are operating on the basis of a partial definition of the problem.

They lack technical expertise on their staffs and if no one on their staffs has sufficient technical expertise, that makes it pretty difficult for them to advance their understanding of the nature of the threats and challenges facing us.

Mr. Koskinen told the author of an article that is to appear in an upcoming issue of Washington Monthly that he dismisses what IEEE says about the seriousness of Y2K. That reveals alot I think concerning his current comprehension of Y2K and embedded systems problems.

Regards,

Paula Gordon

(For Parts 1 - 4 of my White Paper on Y2K, see http://www.gwu.edu/~y2k/keypeople/gordon. Part 5 coming soon. For a Y2K Audio/Video webpage of Y2K related programs, see http://www.y2kapproaches.com/real/pgordon.htm. The videotaped proceedings of the July 1999 GW Y2K Conference will soon be posted there. For comments on the conference and copies of prepared statements and related material, see http://www.gwu.edu/~y2k/keypeople/gordon/1999conference.)

-- Paula Gordon (pgordon@erols.com), September 06, 1999.

Dave,

It's always a big problem, when you try to make really important life decisions for someoene else.

I can't read Koskinen's mind. For all I know he may be a perfectly wonderful human being. If that's so, then he is unfortunately an incredibly out of touch human being. Or maybe it's as Paula suggests, that he and Clinton do not have the best data available. Then there are those who suggest that there are more sinister motives.

Whatever is going on, when you decide for someone else what is best for them and keep them in the dark, you always end up with a big pile of wrath to deal with.

A lesson in life that the present administration must have missed.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), September 06, 1999.

The PTB (in the larger sense) are trying to keep the lid on for as long as possible. The longer they delay the panic, the more code will get fixed. The more that gets fixed, the fewer will die. What more motivation do you need than that?

Would preps help the pop at large? No, an early warning would just start the panic sooner. Would panic secure the early death of many? Yes. What more motivation do you need than that? I think Kosky said as much over a year ago.

Sincerely,

-- Uhmm.. (jfcp81a@prodigy.com), September 06, 1999.

I think I gotta agree with Uhmm on this one.

Bokonon, we don't know what Koskinen knows. It seems reasonable to assume he has more and better data than we do, but we can't be certain even of this. The notion that Koskinen is keeping us in the dark presumes that not only does he have more information than we do, but that his information is substantially different from what the public already thinks they know.

And since no alarm is being raised, if Koskinen has this different information, it must be bad, right? Therefore, the 'real' truth is bad news, Koskinen knows it, and he's keeping this a secret from us, likely (guessing here) on the grounds that public panic will almost surely make things worse rather than better for the greatest number. We are well around the bend of circular reasoning here.

Conversely, what if Koskinen has ample reason to believe that very little will actually go wrong (just for the sake of discussion, of course). In that case, what should he do? Most likely, he should act to head off any genuine misinformation or incipient panic should there be any of alarming extent, and otherwise if everything is going smoothly anyway he should keep a fairly low profile and hope nobody starts rocking the boat. Which is what we see happening. In other words, Koskinen's actions are *most* consistent with a small threat, whereas if the threat is large one must immediately begin to concoct conspiracies of silence motivated by unguessable (but evil) intent.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 06, 1999.

Flint:

This is really what I've been wrestling with. I understand the massive cyclic reasoning that we're forced to confront (especially the contingency planning part). If we ignore the assurances for the time being and look at the data, I believe we can make a compelling case for almost any scenario. (The mathematics underlying the problem seems a bit inescapable to me.) Since I personally believe Kosky has access to some pretty good data and he must be pretty smart, either (a) he's legitimately unconcerned, or (b) he's not being straight. What I'm struggling with here is whether sound deductive reasoning might lead a reasonable individual to hide impending bad news. I'm not so sure I have to don my tinfoil hat to believe this model.

-- Dave (aaa@aaa.com), September 07, 1999.