Understanding Just How Deep The Rabbit Hole Goes
Perspectives on Leadership / What Really Happened and Why
“Let me tell you WHY you’re here. You’re here because you know something.
What you know you cannot explain. But you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life.
That there’s something wrong with the world.
You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a
splinter in your mind, driving you mad.
Do you want to know, what It Is!
The Matrix is everywhere, all around us. Even now in this very room.
You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television.
You can, feel it when you go to work.
When you go to church; when you pay your taxes.
It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. What truth?
That you are a slave like everyone else, you were born into bondage.
Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch.
A prison for your mind…………………(sigh)
Unfortunately no one can be, told what the Matrix is.
You have to see it for yourself.
This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back.
You take the Blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and you believe what you want to believe.
You take the Red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Remember, all I’m offering is the truth; Nothing more.
Follow me.”
Sophia Stewart, science fiction writer of The Matrix
So we decided one day to study the Rabbit Hole, its origin, its geometry, its continuity, impact and its power. It lead us to a startling maze of trenches and black holes that impact global business development, leadership, public policy, images in media, marketing, finance and sales. Ours is a lifelong commitment to finding out just how deep the rabbit-hole goes. But there is a war raging inside the rabbit hole; a battle over values and ideals surrounding integrity, leadership, flawed or flawless execution of business strategy and the evolution of entrepreneurship, banking, organizational development, change management, technology and communication or the choice of business as usual; a battle in which you must choose sides.
The Entrepreneur, one who takes calculated risk for potential reward. For years that was the best way to describe those of us who seek the uncertainty of opportunity. The cascading financial turmoil of the last 10 years and the repeal of Glass Stiegel Act by Graham, Leech, Wiley should leave no doubt that just taking calculate risk is not the romantic voyage of the past. As of 2013, this outdated model is totally undercapitalized, inherently problematic, antiquated and offers zero certainty or assurances necessary for modern business success. In 2008, I like many others realized the futile attempts of government bailouts, and one sided financial interventions, were not capable of shedding the markets of gross incompetence, layers of greed, corruption, inefficiencies, unethical behavior and misguided strategies being sold to accredited investors, businesses, municipalities, pensions funds and consumers. By 2009 this gun slinging “Entrepreneur by Any Means Necessary” craze resulted in the net collapse of over $900 Trillion in global net asset value; business by Smoke and Mirror. The result of this aftermath was a new era of corporate welfare bailouts of favored industries thru a program called TARP – Troubled Asset Relief Program. This shift in the behavior of the US Government proved to be unlike anything ever occurring in the history of global economics.
History will record the principal architect of this fiasco as George Bush and his administration. The truth is, everything was approved by a Congress and Senate made up of Republicans, Democrats and Independents.
TARP was wonderland, intended to fool you into believing “the sky was about to fall” while those in charge quietly created a “new protected class” of no fault Entrepreneurial Institutions called too big to fail. This policy sheltered two specific industries at the expense of all others in the entire country. • The US Automotive Industry • The World Banking Cartel This model quickly morphed into public view like a Broadway stage play.
Scene One: The architects and inventors of the collapse were to be fined with a slap on the wrist for global financial debauchery.
Scene Two: They would be relieved of or have their liability for the design, build, sales and global distribution of the vomit infested financial investments they created and sold to their best customers until five years latter starting in 2012. Scene Three: They would then be fined for selling their junk to the U.S. Federal Government and simultaneously placing massive bets behind the scene that, “what they just sold to their best customers would hopefully fail”; and guess what, all of those bets did fail. Nevertheless, the brokers and architects were handsomely rewarded in the hundreds of billions for the trades anyway, due to the rules and structure of the rabbit hole.
Once news of the bets knows as (naked shorts) hit the street, a blanket devaluation of the entire derivatives industry ignited like a match to a pool of gasoline that started sucking the equity out of markets world-wide.
Their global customers suddenly realized the investment they thought they were holding were just illusions manufactured from the psychotic minds from wonderland. This epiphany trigged and even greater world-wide sell off and devaluation of over $900 trillion in pooled syndicated investments. Most of these pools contained mortgage backed securities called MBS. The pools were a perfect target for the brokers and bankers since they contained two giant scape goats called “Freddie Mac and FANNIE Mae”, the gate keepers and aggregator of the American Dream of Home Ownership. Now, the stage was set: “When our customers finally figure out just how deep they are in the rabbit-hole, and try to dump the junk we sold them, we will just blame the entire mess on homeowners who will be forced to default on their mortgage payments into our Ponzi scheme. Why? Because they won’t be able to refinance the ARM mortgages we sold them.
At that point we will just say, “these greedy mofo’s, these unethical homeowners all bought homes and took out mortgages they couldn’t afford” and they are the ones you should blame for the collapsed the global world-wide financial system.”
The anticipated investment cash flow from mortgage payment and refinancing in wonderland was the intended engine and jet fuel to feed the rabbit-hole. It was to be the Ponzi scheme of a lifetime; the golden goose to forever investor returns.
The banks and mortgage lenders bought in and sold the scheme to drive homeowners to the pools by the millions. Everyone was told they would be able to refinance out of the loans before future rates and payments adjusted up. (Surprise………….!@#$%)
This lie drove a global ecosystem linked to mortgages into the bloody pit of hell.
But in a dimly lit room at the Federal Reserve, a group of Wall Street Frankenstein’s and banking regulators were about to unleash the crackin and expose the rabbit hole to make themselves look like the hero. The question was “who to pin this thing on, who gets saved and who gets thrown under the bus”.
