Allen Sloan does a lot of not-so-fancy footwork here. He doesn't bother to answer the question about how the average listener, like me, can get down to the "nuts and bolts" of what's really going on. He makes it all sound so ... unknowable. "Keep your head down." "Try to survive."

Brilliant!

Then there was the question about Wall Street "finagling the facts," which Sloan corrected the questioner by using the word "spinning." Which, sounds like a bit of Sloan finagling. It's what David Simon calls "jukin' the stats" to make the reports look good to those who need to have it look good. And since we can all agree that this is what goes on, we accept it. Little white frauds. What harm do they do? Wink, wink.

Sloan's perspective would be helped if he took higher ground to gain perspective on the muck of Wall Street instead of wading in it.