Part of the "Romanians don't know how" series

I am trying to understand what the students in Braşov made from what the officials of the NBR told them yesterday, in the educational session of the "Academica BNR 2014" program, which was held in the Aula of the Transilvania University.

Counselor Adrian concluded: "I will come out and say in all honesty, with my hands on my heart, that Romanians don't know how to make money."

This sample of wisdom serves as the foundation for a syllogism:

-The first premise: Romanians don't know how to make money.

-The second premise: Adrian Vasilescu is Romanian.

-Conclusion: Adrian Vasilescu doesn't know how to make money.

This conclusion disregards what Mr. Adrian Vasilescu does with his hands: whether they are on his heart, or not, Mr. Adrian Vasilescu doesn't know how to make money.

The situation isn't very comfortable from an intellectual point of view: if Adrian Vasilescu doesn't know how to make money, then how does he know that Romanians don't know how to make money?!

Because if he doesn't know how to make money, it follows that he can't know whether others, who have made money, made it because they knew how to or they didn't know how and just copied others who knew how.

That last alternative is extremely plausible.

Many citizens who make money have no idea that it is used to pay employees from the public sector, such as Adrian Vasilescu.

He gets paid that money, to tell Romanians they don't know how to make money.

Of course, the situation would make more sense, if Adrian Vasilescu knew how to make money, so that when he says "When I say that Romanians don't know how to make money I am referring to the 20 million Romanians", we could assume that, in spite of any census, Romania's population has 20,000,000 people, plus one: "Adrian Vasilescu".

And then, it would make sense for that Adrian Vasilescu who stands out from the crowd that to say that "Romanians don't know how to make money", because he knows how, and the other 20,000,000 don't, and it doesn't matter that much that he is Romanian himself.

But I for one haven't heard of Adrian Vasilescu making money.

He writes articles in the newspaper and he may be getting paid for that, but, putting aside the fact that any money he gets that way isn't that clean, as long as he has a position with the NBR and he writes, in those articles, about things that the NBR is involved in, that money is still money, just like the money that all the other journalists make, out of the 20,000,000 Romanians that don't know how to make money.

Therefore, I don't know what is the message that the students took away by listening to Mr. Adrian Vasilescu.

I hope some of them actually read Lucian Boia as well.

Those that did will have understood that they were listening to a speech from the "Romanians don't know how how" series.

That series is intended to make us despise ourselves, so we can be more easily controlled.

When we will have lost any shred respect for ourselves and for others, Adrian Vasilescu will congratulate us, by giving us the passing grade for financial and banking knowledge.

And then we will take our money, which we don't know how to make, and put it in the banks.

For them to take it away, apotheotically.