The Other McCain

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Mika’s Not the Scariest Brzezinski

Posted on | November 21, 2011 | 18 Comments

When I previously explained that Mika Brzezinski is smarter than you, a commenter called to my attention a video clip from Oct. 17. It’s of Mika’s father, Zbiginew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, in an appearance on Morning Joe:

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“You know, how many Americans are really fully aware of how many other good people, that’s like Warren Buffett and others, who really donate a lot of their earnings to charities, to philanthropy? But how many more are there in the hedge funds, in the banks, in a variety of other places who, on the basis of speculation literally make millions of dollars that it would take a century or two for the average person ever to make? I would like to see those lists. And they shouldn’t be that difficult to produce. And I think public pressure might have also some effect, not only in terms of moving towards more systematic international coordination and regulation. But also to pressure some of those people to give some of it back, back to society.”
— Zbiginew Brzezinski, Oct. 17, 2011

Does he sound like Dr. Evil or what? Let’s talk about “speculation.” What does Brzezinski mean by that word?

“Speculation” involves risk, which is the same thing expressed by the words “enterprise” or “entrepreneur.”

To launch any business endeavor is to take a chance. When I quit my job at The Washington Times in January 2008, it was with the belief that I might be able to make more as a journalistic free agent than I was then being paid in salary. While this speculative effort has not yet met revenue expectations, as the business guys might say, 400,000 page-views per month is nothing to sneeze at, and we’re working tirelessly to increase traffic and enhance the monetization. IYKWIMAITYD.

What the managers of banks and hedge funds do is a more lucrative field of endeavor than “blog proprietor” (or “New Media savant” or whatever you want to call it) because the work they do is more valuable. If I screw up or miss a day at work, what do you lose? Some political news, some snarky commentary and maybe hot chicks in lingerie. But if a hedge fund manager screws up, there goes your 401(k), there goes your retirement dreams, there goes your kids’ inheritance. Kinda more important than a blog, even a blog with 400,000 page-views per month.

Who am I — or who is Zbiginew Brzezinski — to say whether a financial manager makes “too much” money? Isn’t it true that everyone is, to some extent, dependent on the financial sector for their livelihood? Consider that I earn income from Amazon Associates sales (I remind you that this is “Black Friday Deals Week“). Isn’t Amazon a corporation that was launched by enterpreneurs funded with investments provided by financial managers? Wasn’t it “speculation” that led people to invest in Amazon in the belief that their online sales model would work, whereas many other such projects have failed?

If we want investment in the private sector — and we do — then what we want is what Zbiginew Brzezinski calls “speculation,” a word he uses as a derisive epithet, evidently assuming that others share his ignorant (or envious) contempt for people who make their living through “speculation.”

News flash for Zbiginew Brzezinski: People also lose money through “speculation.” For example, if you bought a house in Orlando in 2006, supposing that the market value would increase . . .

Well, that was “speculation,” and you got screwed, whereas the guy who sold that house, cashing out his equity while the market was hot, walked away a winner. And if he then invested his equity in gold — another sort of “speculation” — he’s sitting pretty right now.

Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. It’s speculation either way.

Nearly all of us engage in economic speculation of one kind or another, but because some ultra-successful speculators on Wall Street make millions of dollars, Zbiginew Brzezinski throws in the phrase “on the basis of speculation” as if it’s legitimate to hate bankers or hedge fund managers in a way we don’t hate professional athletes, pop singers or TV stars — like Zbiginew Brzezinski’s daughter Mika. She reportedly gets $4 million a year, but Zbiginew believes his daughter earns that money, whereas the investment banker is engaged in evil “speculation.” So he takes pride in his daughter’s success, but wants us to think that bankers are a bunch of crafty swindlers up to no good, robbing us blind and exploiting us.

This evil which Zbiginew Brzezinski imputes to greedy bankers is evidently the inspiration for his desire to have their names on a list, in order to subject them to “more systematic international coordination and regulation.”

That should scare the hell out of everybody, because who’s going to do all that “coordination and regulation”? Government-appointed bureaucrats, that’s who. And as bad as private-sector “speculation” may be, government regulators have the authority to send you to prison if you disobey them. For the guy who ran Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy to be demanding “systematic international coordination” of the private sector is highly ironic, and also scary.

By the way, did you ever notice that greedy Wall Street millionaires always have a fancy smart phone? Because that’s what it takes to make the big bucks nowadays. And it just so happens that Amazon’s having a limited-time special sale on smart phones — great bargains for you, a small commission for me.

So buy a smart phone and become a Wall Street millionaire. Don’t let Zbiginew Brzezinski stop you. Because capitalism is beautiful.


Category: Economics, MSNBC

Comments

18 Responses to “Mika’s Not the Scariest Brzezinski”

  1. Anonymous
    November 21st, 2011 @ 8:28 pm

    To be fair, if some of those hedge fund managers skip work or screw up, they’ll be missing out on hot chicks in lingerie, too.

    Life’s a cruel mistress.

  2. Anonymous
    November 21st, 2011 @ 8:36 pm

    Brzezinski wants “a list” of New York/Wall Street money-makers so that he and an incited public can impose directed, international justice?

    You know, Mika, that should make your skin crawl. Literally.

  3. Anonymous
    November 21st, 2011 @ 8:53 pm

    They’re already on a list. The Obama donor and DNC Platinum list.

  4. newrouter
    November 21st, 2011 @ 9:22 pm

    this is zbig news to me! east european accents for the win in dr. evil.

  5. Anonymous
    November 21st, 2011 @ 9:23 pm

    This from the genius who foresaw the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

  6. Dianna Deeley
    November 21st, 2011 @ 9:34 pm

    Brzezinski fled Hungary, essentially skipping along the bow-wave of the Soviet tanks at the end of WWII.

    He wrote a perfectly brilliant analysis of the East Bloc and world communist systems which I still find useful as a reference. Then, so far as I can tell, he went to work for Carter and some sort of worm was inserted into his brain.

    Anyone who survived what he did, and fled the system he did, is off his head for even suggesting “a little list.”

  7. Joe
    November 21st, 2011 @ 9:55 pm

    OH! 

  8. Joe
    November 21st, 2011 @ 10:00 pm

    Anti Soviet Propaganda?  How much you want to bet this douchebag voted for Obama.

  9. Joe
    November 21st, 2011 @ 10:03 pm

    I’ve got a little list!

  10. Joe
    November 21st, 2011 @ 10:11 pm

    Imagine who they put on this list?  Ha ha.  Except they are not kidding. 

  11. Joe
    November 21st, 2011 @ 11:26 pm

    Zbiginew is part of the Carter Administration.  What else can you say?

  12. Adjoran
    November 22nd, 2011 @ 12:59 am

    Brzezinski was the architect of Carter’s foreign policy, the brilliant genius who gave away the Panama Canal, let the Sandinistas subvert Nicaragua, granted amnesty to draft-dodgers, did not support the democratic movements behind the Iron Curtain, let the Iranian mullahs get away with taking our embassy and holding our hostages for 444 days (released on the day Reagan took the oath – what a difference a spine makes!), embraced Brezhnev in the woods, watched the Soviets invade Afghanistan, and for the first time ever, allowed the Soviet Union to surpass the USA in overall military power, as chronicled by the respected independent British military journal, Jane’s Review.

    With a record like that, it’s a wonder he even shows his face in public.

  13. Anonymous
    November 22nd, 2011 @ 6:55 am

    Speculation is how we spread and hedge against risk (ZOMG, the H word!). Generally, it helps keep the market more stable.  Obviously, bubbles still happen.  My favorite demonstration of this was Mark Perry’s Chart of the Day: Peeling Back Onion Prices vs. Oil Prices.  Fortunately, our betters have forbidden us from speculating on onions.  Unexpectedly, their price is pretty volatile.

  14. Bob Belvedere
    November 22nd, 2011 @ 10:28 am

    What ever you think about Zbiginew Brzezinski, he’s always possessed a big pair of zballz.

  15. Anonymous
    November 22nd, 2011 @ 11:30 am

    Guys, read his book, The Grand Chessboard, if you want to understand what is going on and his actions in the Carter administration. He’s playing us for a bunch of fools. 
    The “free market” my a$$. There hasn’t been a halfway free market in this country for a long time. Remember the hallowed words of Frederic C Howe, whose words the biggest, baddest Ruling Class Elite take totally to heart:

     Get a monopoly; let Society work for you; and remember that the best of all business is politics, for a legislative grant, franchise, subsidy or tax exemption is worth more than a Kimberly or Comstock lode, since it does not require any labor, either mental or physical, for its exploitation.

    Here’s a bonus Brzezinski quote:
    “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thai to help the Khmer Rouge. The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him. But China could.”–Time Magazine, 1989

  16. ThePaganTemple
    November 22nd, 2011 @ 1:15 pm

    It never occurred to me Zbigniew was Mika’s father. No wonder she acts like a bitch with a bag of razor blades up her ass. But just what exactly qualifies her for her job at MSNBC? How long will it be before Amy Carter gets an hour on prime time?

  17. AngelaTC
    November 22nd, 2011 @ 1:43 pm

    I thought it was Ford that gave the draft dodgers amnesty, and Carter just finished it?

  18. Bob Belvedere
    November 23rd, 2011 @ 8:52 am

    Ask Chelsea Clinton.