click it, watch it

a true history of the USA plus action for future. action.

http://ultimatecivics.org/spresent.html

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/06/business/economy/unemployment-lines.html

break it down

work less, shred more (collectively)

“The best way to get a mental grasp about the current financial crisis is to look at a few past recessions and depressions. The most famous being the great depression of the 1930s but equally interesting is a much smaller recession that happened in England following the invention of the spinning jenny.
James Hargraves invented the spinning jenny in 1764. It could spin yarn eight times faster with the same amount of labour. The initial economic impact was that the price of yarn dropped and many yarn spinners lost their jobs. Violent riots ensued, many of the new machines were smashed and Mr Hargraves was forced to flee for his life. Eventually the demand for yarn grew and because textiles were now significantly cheaper people started to consume more. Wild radical consumerist ideas such as changing your underwear weekly started. A regular change of clothes became possible for the common man. The industrial textile industry of the late 18th century was the fastest growing segment of the economy and was one of the driving forces that lead the UK into the industrial revolution.

What technology does is increase the efficiency with which we can produce more goods and services. If we do not consume more, we have a surplus of labour and people lose their jobs.  The same pattern repeated itself in the early 20th century. There were more new technological inventions in the late 19th and early 20th century than ever before. Combustion engine, production lines, transatlantic flights, radio and many others increased productivity.

[.....]

Today the average worker is approximately 400% more efficient than a worker in the 1950s. In just eleven hours a worker can produce the same amount of goods and services as someone working 40 hours in the 1950s. It also means that 400% more stuff as to be consumed or people will loose their jobs.

[.......]

Technological efficiency gives us a choice; we can either continue to work just as hard and exponentially consume and grow the economy, or we can translate those gains in efficiency into other more meaningful activities such as child rearing, education, arts and holding elected leaders accountable. It is not surprising to learn that countries that do have lower workweeks such as Norway, Holland and Germany are more egalitarian and have lower crime rates. This might be coincidental, but I suspect that when people have time to invest in other types of work besides trying to endlessly fill up landfills with junk, we create the opportunity for a healthier and wiser society.In 1933 we changed from a 10 hour day to a 8 hour day. Maybe its now time to change to a 6 hour day.”

full article

the eternal now

CommonDreams.org
Published on Monday, September 28, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Time for Citizens to Convene

by Ralph Nader

Just when many conditions seemed ripe for a progressive political movement, the likelihood is fading fast. Concentrated corporate power over our political economy and its control over peoples lives knows few boundaries.

As Republican investor advocate leader Robert Monks puts it: “The United States is a corporatist state. This means that individuals are largely excluded both in the political and corporate spheres.”

Since Wall Street’s self-inflicted multi-trillion dollar collapse last year, the corporate supremacists have shown no remorse. They have become more aggressive: they are blocking regulatory reforms; pouring campaign donations into the governing Democrats’ coffers; and, shamelessly demanding more bailouts, subsidies and tax reductions. They also continue to block avenues for judicial justice by aggrieved people, whether they be the wrongfully injured, defrauded consumers and investors, or jettisoned workers and bilked pensioners.

The problem: large corporations have too many structural powers over the citizenry. These “artificial persons” have acquired the constitutional rights originally given in 1787 only to “natural persons.” In fact, corporations have enormously greater privileges and immunities than the people themselves because of their global control over politicians, capital, labor and technology.

Normal sanctions do not adequately deter multinational companies that can obscure their culpability, escape jurisdictions or create their own parents (holding companies) and endless progeny (subsidiaries) to evade or avoid accountability.

Even the most ardent progressives in Congress, and the most organized progressive groups, cannot begin to deal with such gigantic mismatches.

Decades ago, there was more debate about the need for different “rules of conduct,” to use conservative Frederick A. Hayek’s phrase, between corporations and human beings. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned about corporations becoming “Frankensteins.” Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft wanted to replace the permissive state chartering laws with tough federal chartering laws for large corporations.

For two generations the ever-expanding superior status of corporations has gone undiscussed in political realms. During that time, corporations and their attorneys rode roughshod over the “we the people” preamble of the Constitution. Our charter of government never mentions the word “corporation.”

Unabated, the corporate crime wave continues. The corporate welfare kings get fatter, the power disparity expands between corporations and shrinking unions, and the pull-down pressures, created by the corporate shipment of jobs and industries to repressive regimes abroad, further corrodes American work opportunities. More of government, including military functions, is being corporatized despite recurring reports of rising waste, fraud and abuse.

The federal government’s budget for auditors, investigators, inspectors and prosecutors is laughable, given the scale of looting: the defrauding of medicare; abuses of Pentagon contracts; the taking of minerals on the public lands; and the giveaways of government research and development to favored companies.

Corporate profits keep going up, except for bailout periods, while most Americans’ standards of living decline. Our country, so full of unapplied solutions, is grid locked—stuck in traffic. Record levels of poverty, unemployment, home foreclosures, consumer debt and bankruptcies, and people lacking health insurance persist, yet corporate political power has not waned. A bad sign. Indeed, it has increased, notwithstanding large majorities of Americans decrying too much corporate control over their lives. The leave-it-to-the market ideology of Big Business, and its claims of patriotism, have lost credibility in this globalized era. Yet, the myth lives on even as socialism routinely saves big capitalism from its own greed.

What can active progressives do? In Congress, amongst the Republicans and corporate Democrats, the small progressive caucus of 83 members generates little political impact. Ironically, many of those progressive legislators are busy dialing for the same commercial campaign dollars.

Outside Congress, progressive groups have been on the defensive for so many years that they have few offensive political strategies. The two parties are in the narrowest channels of self-perpetuation. They gerrymander their opponents into one-party districts and together produce a matrix of obstacles to keep competition from third parties at bay.

Both parties give preferential access to the hordes of drug, coal, banking and other industry lobbyists, who are allowed de facto to choose many of the nominees that lead the government’s departments, such as the Defense and Treasury Departments.

Enough abuses have been documented. Enough power has been concentrated to shred our democratic processes and institutions. It is time to decisively shift power from the few to the many. Democratic power is the essence of progressive political philosophy, and the precondition for the emergence of a just society nourished by higher public expectations.

How to begin? Progressives—elected, civic, labor and funders—need to come together in a national convention to aggregate the existing forces for change. Such a gathering could create a clear-eyed vision of the common good to shatter debilitating public cynicism and passivity.

In attendance must be a broad range of energetic community organizers, thinkers, the seriously generous progressive mega-rich and the heroic dynamos who have risen from their suffering to act on behalf of “liberty and justice for all.”

There is ample historic precedent for the galvanizing effect of founding social justice conventions. This proposed convocation needs to take civic and political action to unprecedented levels, powerfully fueled by committed resources and strategies to build enduring democratic institutions.

Unused knowledge, and many working models of community economics, environmental advances and educational quality exist to further the larger progressive dynamic.

Lincoln once observed the crucial importance of “public sentiment” for moving a society forward. That “public sentiment” is here, deep, widespread and ready for clearly explained “redirections.”

If a mantra is needed in the convention hall, let the eternal words of the Roman, Marcus Cicero, be emblazoned for all to see: “Freedom is participation in power.” For this aspiration places responsibility where it must always reside: on the shoulders, in the minds, and in the hearts of an empowered American people.

……………..

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book – and first novel -  is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.

a new world ordered?

“For Hayek, a market was a personal voyage of discovery. Malthus once told Ricardo to be wary of becoming too attached to abstract ways of thinking. Keynes believed in “animal spirits.” Schumpeter sensed a brutal dynamic of “creative destruction” at the heart of capitalism. Heilbroner sternly warned economists to abandon their “suicidal formalism” if they wanted to progress … but such crunchy, philosophical insights into the soul of economics have largely been lost on the last few generations of its practitioners. For 50 years they’ve been rationalizing human behavior, sanitizing their models and trying their best to turn economics into a mathematically driven exact science like physics.

Now the old guard is under attack by students and scientists from other disciplines for its profound disconnect from reality. The logic freaks of neoclassical economics are in retreat … the old certitudes are crumbling. Economists are being forced to admit that their understanding of nonlinear, real-world systems is frail at best and that their abstract models have limited value. Everything, from banking, financial regulation and credit, right down to the bedrock fundamentals – growth, freedom, happiness, progress – are now being rethought. The profession is entering an almost Nietzschean period of creative destruction. Here are some of the tectonic mindshifts now underway:

• A theoretical shift from free market back to Keynesian economics. The idea that governments should step aside and let markets regulate themselves has been publicly, viscerally discredited.

• An aesthetic shift in the tone, style and spirit of economics. The abstract number cruncher, alone in his tower, lost in the abstraction of models – that dusty Apollonian archetype – is dead.

• An operational shift: After years of self-imposed isolation, economists are finding inspiration in psychology, environmental science, design, philosophy and art.

• An existential shift: Before last year’s meltdown it was considered heresy to question the wisdom of growth. Now economists are coming out of the closet and doing exactly that: openly proclaiming infinite growth cannot be sustained on a finite planet. This is the most far-reaching, penetrating paradigm shift imaginable – a monumental mindshift on par with what Einstein’s relativity did to physics. It points to what is perhaps the most exciting and intractable problem of our time: how to create a sustainble economy that does not feed off nature. It heralds the beginning of a debate that will occupy the best minds on the planet for centuries to come: How to manage our planetary household – how to live and be happy – without crashing Gaia?   “

—– from adbusters.org

good thing there have been plenty of wonderful ideas for a long time. try any.

Morning News

China Hemp: “The King of All Natural Textiles”
http://www.ccfgroup.com/newscenter/newsview.php?Class_ID=600000&Info_ID=20090611011

i know how to save the economy

An Ontario company says it has secured $2 million from investors to open the first North American bio-processing plant for industrial hemp.

Stonehedge Bio-Resources Inc., based in Stirling, Ont., north of Belleville, announced it plans to open a bio-refining facility this year.

Hemp is the common name for the cannabis plant, which has fibrous roots, stalks and stems useful for producing a variety of products and seeds that are edible. The flowers, buds and leaves of some strains are used to produce drugs such as marijuana and hashish because they contain a psychoactive compound called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), but industrial hemp is bred to produce very little THC.

The Stonehedge plant would produce Hemcrete, a limestone building material similar to concrete that is considered to be more environmentally friendly.

The company also expects to produce more than $17 million per year in renewable hemp fibre, wood-like chips, pellets, matting and seed products.

Stonehedge Bio-Resources says it plans to start with five employees this year and employ up to 27 people by 2011.

The company says the global renewable and bioproducts industry is expected to exceed $125 billion in revenues by 2010.

2009

Rahm Emanuel: “Universal Civil Service”

Henry Kissinger: “New World Order”

The U.S. Economy: The Philosopher’s Stone

Terrorists could use “insect-based” biological weapon:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/4123782/Terrorists-could-use-insect-based-biological-weapon.html
“Flying Syring” mosquitos , other ideas get Gates Funding:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i4hpnz5eOMpxfld81tEZYsC23teg
Stonehenge was giant concert venue:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4108867/Stonehenge-was-giant-concert-venue.html
Harry Potter: To know the future, return to the past (crystals and crops)

Earth Pilgrims postponed till 2009 for Nassim Haramein:

Larry King: Did UFO’s dismantle weapons defense?

Federal Reserve Refuses to Say where $2 trillion have gone:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=apx7XNLnZZlc&refer=home
The Bush Amin Continuity Plan:

“We found injections containing traces of cocaine and LSD left behind by the terrorists and later found drugs in their blood,” said one official.
rundonotwalk.blogspot.com
secretsun.blogspot.com

“there is something happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you mr jones”

“Because the majority of us are aware of the rampant fraud and incompetency of the government and bankers, we must remember to maintain positive intentions in all we do, and especially in our thoughts and feelings towards the economic/political situations.”

elections astrology

Berlusconi Says Leaders May Close World’s Markets (Update1) – Bloomberg

Berlusconi Says Leaders May Close World’s Markets (Update1)

By Steve Scherer

Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) — Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said political leaders are discussing the idea of closing the world’s financial markets while they “rewrite the rules of international finance.”

“The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite the rules is being discussed,” Berlusconi said today after a Cabinet meeting in Naples, Italy. A solution to the financial crisis “can’t just be for one country, or even just for Europe, but global.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much 8.1 percent in early trading and pared most of those losses after Berlusconi’s remarks. The Dow was down 0.5 percent to 8540.52 at 10:10 in New York.

Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers are meeting in Washington today, and will stay in town for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings this weekend. European Union leaders may gather in Paris on Oct. 12, three days before a scheduled summit in Brussels, Berlusconi said today, while Group of Eight leaders may hold a meeting on the crisis “in coming days,” he said.

Berlusconi didn’t give any details about what kind of rules leaders were looking to change, except to say that leaders are “talking about a new Bretton Woods.”

The Bretton Woods Agreements were adopted to rebuild the international economic system after World War II in a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The aim of the agreements was to establish a monetary management system, initially by pegging currencies to gold. The IMF was set up later to help manage the international financial system.

To contact the reporter on this story: Steve Scherer in Rome at scherer@bloomberg.net

is it the END, or just the BEGINNING?

something is happening, thats for sure. lets get active on some front.

here is a comment i lifted from current.com

another perspective:

“USA alone will have a total bail out of 2.8 Trillion… The 700 Billion only covers the banking system to a balance of zero. Short Sales, Loan Modifications/Audits, and Foreclosures will continue for the next 36 to 48 months. 

The FOUNDATION of the USA economy is REAL ESTATE… Lending to 1st time buyers is key, re-introducing buyer assistance/seller contribution will kick-start the economy moving forward and steady. 

A single real estate purchase has a positive ripple affect, employing at least 14 different entities, and so forth… 

The bottom line- if you have the funds, and you are a solvent buyer, purchase real estate; TODAY! 

The USA has one of the lowest prices in Real Estate in the WORLD… 

Stable/Solvent Banks, and Investors/Investing Firms are buying Real Estate Loan Packages from .18 cents to .25 cents on the dollar. 

Once these notes are purchased, The New Mortgagee/Bank call the Mortgagor/Borrower telling them their home loan/mortgage will be modify at a lower and permanent rate, but not the Principal… They are making a large profit. Why? They bought the notes for peanuts. 

Here is an opportunity for individuals to do the same on a smaller scale. 

I recommend the following steps: 

1. JOIN FORCES with trusted investors, friends, and or family members forming an LLC or even a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). By doing this you will pool more funds and your risk will be lower. 

2. Hire the best Realtor in the region, where you plan to invest. Remember every market/region will be different. In other words, the actual Real Estate Market will vary from City to City across the USA. 

3. Buy Real Estate between .50 cents to .75 cents on the dollars. In Regards, to Short Sales, most banks will not sell no less then 81% to 83% of the actual Real Estate Market… Then again, you never know; right? 

4. Don’t believe the negativity of the mass media. 

5. Remember to study your market, before Real Estate purchase commence. 

When life throws you lemons, make lemonade! 

This is the time where novice investor(s), solvent investors, the rich, the wealthy, the millionaires, the billionaire’s jump to the next level… 

The USA Real Estate Market is the best in the world. 

Global investors are buying left and right in the USA! 

So, what is your Excuse?”

NEW zeitgeist movie

i am fully impressed by the next installment in the zeitgeist educational movie world. these pictures, ideas and quotes are really imporant and expansive. there is a great expilanation of the for-profit economy that has led to our current financial ”disaster” first, followed by ideas for a more inclusive and expansive future.

i do, however suggest critical thinking (like blog peeps need encouragement) because these arguments are one sided for sure. not that the ends of sustainability and abundance are not good or real, but more that there are many means to reach such ends. in any case, its nice to see some ideas for solutions instead of fear mongering cynicism. please check it out if ya got some time.

bail-out = fail-out

i think that we have reached a real make or break point in the USA. what happens with our economy in this hour will determine the direction and fate the next few years. i wrote my congressman today to urge him to not vote in favor of the bush-paulson plan and to think about his constituents in front of the investors. we are dawning on scary times (politically, anyways) and need a push now to show that we know what ‘they’ are trying to do. let our voices be heard as this economic predicament becomes a catalyst for the awakening of the american public.

the senate has just passed a new version of the bill that adds some insurance incentives, but it still takes the tax payer to the cleaners. this friday the house will vote, email your rep by entering zip code on this page. the congressional server went down a few days ago after a huge, unprecedented surge of emails around this issue… so things are happening. if you enter your zip and then select an issue, you will be heard. anything is better than nothing in this case.

if we bail-out wall street, economy fails, if we don’t, economy still fails, but at least we will keep the scum who greedly brought the system down accountable in their pocketbooks. i say let the whole thing burn, but burn the shady fuckers along with it all…. lets build the system better next time. kucinich for president, or at least obama…

economists say no to “bail-out”

this letter was sent by the top college proffesors in economics from our country to members of our government and includes nobel laureates. the bail-out not only is un-sound, but also leaves open many holes for a quick transition to fascism.

‘conspiracy nuts’ can always have their say, but when their candor is the same as ‘normies’ we are in trouble….

“To the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate:

 
As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:
 
1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses.  Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.
 
2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If  taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.
 
3) Its long-term effects.  If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America’s dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity.  Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted. 
 
For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.  ”

 

for a full list of the hundreds of signatures check here.

as i read on current: “when a salesman is really pushy about ‘rushing’ something through, that is when you need to walk away.”

noam the gnome

via BBC on the current state of US capitalism:

Noam Chomsky is a philosopher, political theorist and professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Markets have inherent and well-known inefficiencies. One factor is failure to calculate the costs to those who do not participate in transactions. These “externalities” can be huge. That is particularly true for financial institutions.

Their task is to take risks, calculating potential costs for themselves. But they do not take into account the consequences of their losses for the economy as a whole.

 

State capitalist institutions [are] designed in large measure to socialise cost and risk and privatize profit, without a public voice

Hence the financial market “underprices risk” and is “systematically inefficient,” as John Eatwell and Lance Taylor wrote a decade ago, warning of the extreme dangers of financial liberalization and reviewing the substantial costs already incurred – and also proposing solutions, which have been ignored.The threat became more severe when the Clinton administration repealed the Glass-Steagall act of 1933, thus freeing financial institutions “to innovate in the new economy,” in Clinton’s words – and also “to self-destruct, taking down with them the general economy and international confidence in the US banking system,” financial analyst Nomi Prins adds.

The unprecedented intervention of the Fed may be justified or not in narrow terms, but it reveals, once again, the profoundly undemocratic character of state capitalist institutions, designed in large measure to socialise cost and risk and privatize profit, without a public voice.

That is, of course, not limited to financial markets. The advanced economy as a whole relies heavily on the dynamic state sector, with much the same consequences with regard to risk, cost, profit, and decisions, crucial features of the economy and political system.

 

see also:

par-econ