I see your point, however there is a suggestion of personal complacency when Phillips says that, "the average American, with other things to worry about, had little inkling of the financial sector's gargantuan size and clout or its resemblance to a laboratory of digital wagering. Straightforward, candid discussion was about as easy to find in popular publications as a five-leaf clover in a vacant lot full of weeds." However it is clearly said that there was strong impediment to the ability of the people to inform themselves. Had they know would they have acted to stop it? "Analogies to the late 1920s would have been too disconcerting." Would it have been possible, even if given adequate information, for the gropus of average citizens unassociated with the large profits to effect meaningful change? "Many buyers, for their part, were quite ready to be misled or to fib themselves. "Housing inflation," pundits pointed out, was also "the American national religion."
So according to Phillips, even if the news had been given it would not effect the cyberspatial dimensions of the American centered global financial system. Scary in a way, like being of a runaway train with no way to stop it your self and an engineer who won't acknowledge the problem of too little track. A simple metaphor but an applicible one non-the-less.
"A mixture of naivete and patriotism made it hard for many Americans to believe that so many foreginers would work against the United States."
This book is reading very well, Phillips has great style.
![Book :book:](https://www.booktalk.org/images/smilies/ext_book.gif)