Truth on the fringe

As many of you know, I've had some harsh words for conspiracy theorists. I don't like Alex Jones, I don't like David Icke, I don't like Jeff Rense. In my view, the subculture of popular paranoia misleads people into blaming the wrong parties and seeking the wrong solutions.

Whenever the average person begins to suspect that the game is rigged, our professional plot-spotters skulk out of the shadows to spread their messages of deception. "Our problems are caused by secret societies!" they tell us. "It's devil worshipers! Aliens! Muslims! People who don't go to the same church you go to!"

For as long as I can remember -- and I've been following the American fringe since the 1970s -- conspiracy buffs have pointed accusatory fingers at everything and everyone except for the real malefactors.

There are exceptions to this rule. George Knapp is one.

He's a Las Vegas newsman who occasionally does the "Coast to Coast" program usually hosted by George Noory. Much of the time, Knapp uses this slot to cover Noory-esque "high weirdness" material. But he also manages to do more responsible -- or perhaps more subversive -- programming.

Knapp's great accomplishment is that he has found a way to tell a national audience -- a mixed audience -- the truth about Wall Street. He is not a liberal addressing a liberal crowd. He's just a guy. He doesn't have a discernible partisan agenda. And he's talking to...everyone.

In this broadcast, Knapp gives us a dynamite interview with former federal regulator Bill Black. Black punctures the oft-heard lie that the crisis was caused by laws that forced Freddie and Fannie to make home loans to poor (read: black) people. In truth, no law compelled any financial institution to make bad loans. Those "liar loans" were made because lax regulations allowed the banksters to pull off massive accounting fraud.

Lack of regulation -- nothing else -- caused the crisis.

It's all well and good for someone like Black to speak at an OWS rally or on Amy Goodman's program. (He has done both.) But a program like "Coast to Coast" gives Black access to an audience that has otherwise been brainwashed not to give the truth a fair hearing.

Say what you will about George Knapp. Yes, he has covered UFOs and other oddball topics. Doesn't matter. I think he's a brave man and he deserves our heartiest congratulations.

Here's how Knapp introduces the broadcast:

It drives me crazy to see how little scrutiny Wall Street bankers get from the national media, which of course are headquartered right down the street from them. But the fact is, very little of what goes on there gets covered at all. Infrequently, at best.

If you loved the last economic meltdown -- or should I say the current economic meltdown -- the one in which millions of people lost their homes to foreclosure and millions and millions have lost their jobs, largely because Wall Street bankers were allowed to run wild with little or no oversight -- well, it probably won't be long until we get another one. Probably bigger and more devastating this time.

Whatever limp-wristed reforms and oversight measures that were implemented in the wake of the housing bubble collapse are now being watered down even more, because Wall Street is once again exerting its influence in Washington, particularly in Congress. Flat-out buying them off -- which is, of course, a tried and true method.

How can this be happening again? Didn't we learn anything from this disaster that nearly threw the entire world into a dark abyss?

Apparently, the answer is: No.

Speaking as a liberal who considers Barack Obama a sell-out, I would say that those words summarize the message I've been trying to convey for more than three years.