Once again, Barry Ritholtz proves why he’s the best “big picture” financial blogger on the web. Period. From my vantage point, no one has a better handle on ignoring agnotology all while using it to his advantage.

[Ritholtz segment begins at 12:50.]

Couple highlights:

When you say the market’s integrity is questioned, it’s beyond any doubt. The market’s have been corrupted. The stock exchanges were once a nonprofit organization ran for the benefit of the investors … and now it’s a for profit operation … So all of these colocated servers that hedge funds are putting at the exchanges themselves in order to get a milli-second advantage over everybody else to sniff orders before they go to the market, allows them to frontrun investors, these guys are literally pulling out billions and billions of dollars out and that profit doesn’t come out of thin air, that profit comes from the investing public … These people are people are stealing money from the investing public and it’s a great tragedy.

We’re not a democracy in the USA, at least as we used to be. We’re now a corporatocracy… When you look at the vast amount of lobbying dollars that are spent and the massive campaign contributions, the whole concept of government “for the people, by the people” … is a quaint, ancient notion. We’re now a representative government that is sold to the highest bidder.

If we had people of his character in higher places, I’d wager the current economic crunch wouldn’t be kicking our collective ass(ets).