> Double-entry bookkeeping has been around for some 700 years now.
> That's not a "strict financial sense," that's elementary financial
> literacy.
Elementary for accountants and financial experts, not for the rest of us! Part of the reason Wall Street has been able to run its scams is control over language - in particular, the deployment of a popular vernacular, a.k.a. the American mythology of small town, frontier/farmer self-reliance, copiously cited in the prospectus of practically ever mutual fund ever created.
So Wall Street turned loopy, parasitical debt schemes into glittering triple A rated CDOs, or rebranded immiseration for the many as a freedom-filled lottery of prosperity. In response, our critique needs to be as succinct and punchy as possible, and tap into other, more progressive vernaculars.
-- DRR