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Published on Thursday, October 15, 2009 by Democracy Now!
As Foreclosures Hit All-Time High, Wall Street on Pace to Hand Out Record $140B in Employee Bonuses
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has topped 10,000 for the first time in a year, as JPMorgan Chase reported massive profits in the third quarter. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that major US banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year—a record high. But on Main Street, foreclosures are also at record levels, and the official unemployment rate is expected to top ten percent. We speak to former bank regulator William Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.
© 2009 Democracy Now!
54 Comments so far
Show AllPerhaps the spark to set this whole sorry mess off will be in resistance to foreclosure. When people get tired of seeing their neighbors evicted, and if people will start squating in their foreclosed homes and neighbors help them keep the pigs at bay, maybe this is how it will start.
t_g from Australia - No, you are neither delusional nor overly pessimistic, you are just realizing that what you hear in the news about "an economic upturn" or "rising share prices" somehow does not fit with your daily (real) life experiences...simply because these announcements are not based on real facts but economic ideology, fraud and wishful thinking... (Black calls these "optimistic" figures the result of an "epidemic of accounting fraud")
When Amy Goodman asks Bill Black to comment on the latest figures (Dow Jones tops 10,000, Wall Street "massive profits", record bonuses for execs, and at the same time Foreclosures at a record high) he answers:
"It’s one of the proofs that the REAL economy and the finance world have been completely unhinged. Finance is supposed to exist for only one purpose: to make the REAL economy work better. But now finance simply WORKS FOR FINANCE, and in particular for the elites within finance. And they HARM the real economy on a regular basis, and periodically, they come close to DESTROYING the real economy."
You write "We are also encouraged to spend, spend, spend... To take on debts, because "we have to support the economy". ..... even if we ourselves go bankrupt?"
Pls watch this video to understand how the debt system works and how people habe been hoodwinked so banks could create "loan money" out of thin air and enslave society in the process:
http://www.viddler.com/explore/prommasa/videos/40/
The point is:
We DO NOT LIVE TO SUPPORT THE ECONOMY but THE ECONOMY IS SUPPOSED TO SERVE US, to make our lives better and safer, to support a society based on solidarity and social justice (without these two things, there can be no social peace and no peace in general..., a society which strives for the fair distribution of wealth it (meaning the working people) produces...
But capitalism, and especially "US-style capitalism" which has morphed into its "neo-liberal" version (in the European sense, not the American usage) since the 1970s does neither allow nor strive for the development of a just society (as is pretty obvious in the US..)
Neoliberal policies deliberately increase income and wealth disparity: wealth is distributed upwards while the tax share of the richest people gets smaller and smaller... in the end a refeudalisation of society is the result: a small, very rich elite live at the expense of the great majority of people:
"The United States has the largest wealth disparity of any industrialized nation in the world, and this disparity is growing larger every year."
"...the top .01% or 14,000 American families hold 22.2% of wealth — the bottom 90%, or over 133 million families, just 4% of the nation's wealth."
Since Australia has been following the neoliberal "religion" (as Black stresses in the interview, politicians and "experts" cling to an economic theory that has been proven to be absurd and destructive for society but still they pretend that there is no alternative...)for many years, what can you expect?
For Europeans, like me, the most amazing and truly scary thing is, how Americans (and others) have been duped into buying the assertion that greatest "economic freedom" is good for all.. while it is clear that the strongest economic players will always rig the system for their benefit and "competition" always ends up in an oligarchy or a (quasi) monopoly... (freedom without social responsibility is dangerous and destructive)
"People have so manipulated the concept of freedom that it
finally boils down to the right of the stronger and richer to take from the weaker and poorer whatever they still have."
- Theodor Adorno
Can we revive democracy? They no longer care what the people think or are sure that they can control our perceptions...
Black on the efforts of Congress for "regulation":
.."So it’s not only a farce; they’re willing to have us see that it’s a farce. They are so little afraid of public opinion and outrage that they’re not even taking steps to cover up the cover-up."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23094.htm
http://www.justpeace.org/structures/squeeze.htm
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03may/may03interviewswolff.html
Transcript of the interview at DN: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/15/black
The financial and corporate aristocracy that rules America is totally incompatible with democratic principles but the show must go on....
t_g
Thank you for your comments. By the time I read and listened through the links you've provided I have become really depressed. How sad that we've come to this. I have never been a fan of trade unions, but lately came to realize that they are pretty much the only organizations that workers can turn to - the law is not always on their side, neither the elected politicians.
I have read Marx, Engels and a couple of other European left-wing philosophers back at uni (MANY years ago...), but I have decided to read them again. They had interesting ideas - not all workable of course, but maybe the time has arrived to refresh them and try to adopt them to today's circumstances.
The only thing I seem to remember clearly: the biggest profit for the imperialists is in the "war-business". Halliburton, KBR and the mercenary firm that has changed its name comes to mind.
I find it frightening, that young people have no hope and us, the elderly generations have nothing to rely on, even if we have both worked all our lives and paid our taxes diligently. We have superannuation in Australia, that has halved just when I have retired. My husband retired almost a decade ago, when the big upwards swing with the first bubble (dot.com) just burst and the second one, the housing bubble hasn't really started. His superannuation was not significant, even after a very long career in academia.
I have retired recently, just as the big sharemarket crash happened. My superannuation was less than half it was worth just a mere half a year before, but our financial advisor told us to cash/invest it, as times will get worse...
And now here we are. After a lifetime of work, we still are uncomfortable about the future, dare not think about health issue that will certainly start sooner than later...
Our healthcare system is starting to resemble the US system by the day, which is very scary.
All excellent points!
And this will continue to happen as long as the US has no economic policy.
t_g
I keep thinking that if the USA falls, we'll all do. We are fundamentally linked with you, US Americans: not only our banking system, but our (lack) of manufacturing basis - we have also moved the factories to SE Asia - we are even linked to your wars (you go - we go too).
On commercial TV the economists keep telling us that all is looking up: interest rates are going up: it is a good thing (???), the share market is on the way up (our superannuation is growing in leaps and bounds), etc. But all I see is misery: people are working 2-3 jobs, all part-time, kids are unable to pay back HECS debt (university loans), young people are struggling with the mortgage payments and yes: foreclosures. In Australia!!!
And supposedly here in Australia we've weathered the crisis - in fact we escaped it. Then why do I see all this???
Am I delusional? Overly pessimistic? Seeing things from the wrong angle?
We are also encouraged to spend, spend, spend... To take on debts, because "we have to support the economy". I can only ask: even if we ourselves go bankrupt?
We are late middle aged, self-supported retirees, but on our investment the returns are turning pear-shaped: the overheads on our rental properties are too high, it's not that profitable, sometimes even a losing bet; the stock-market is too volatile and we have in the recent times twice (!) lost a packet and at our age we can't really aspire to get a decent job. Or any job, for that matter.
And we are living in the only country in OECD that has "escaped the recession".
Go figure...
Sioux Rose
TOAD GODDESS: It's interesting to learn that similar "neoliberal" fallout is occuring in your neck of the woods. I have 2 rental units (mobile homes on land) and the past year the costs involved with taxes, insurance, and property repairs have made me wonder about the wisdom of taking this course. My recently deceased parents left me and three sisters some stocks and I cashed most out to buy these properties. I thought they'd make for passive income in retirement, especially since profitable work as a freelance writer has seen DRAMATIC cuts in the past decade. I am in my fifties and have begun to face typical "maintenance" issues IN the body, too, primarily dental at this point. And I have no health insurance. (I live a conscious lifestyle, exercise, yoga, mostly vegetarian, etc.) Where banks had paid 4.5% interest a year ago, it's now 2.2% AND the credit cards have in NO way reduced their usurous rates in spite of eveything tumbling.
I just wanted to share that on both sides of the world's oceans, workers and the middle class (or lower middle class) are experiencing the same constraints, as if we are being purposely squeezed every which way, while bankers take the cream off the top to take spending equivalent bubble baths in. They're all Marie Antoinette now!
I do believe a reckoning will come, unfortunately, given the imperial ambitions of this fallen land, many will die in the process. Nor will nature be kind given the trespasses She has experienced with such blatant disregard. I see a new world constitution drawn up, possibly around 2020, that would HONOR the indigenous of all lands, draw nature and the natural world's assets onto business balance sheets, equalize human rights across the board, set minimum poverty standards and maximum wealth standards, outlaw human slavery, sex trafficking, and ANY sales of major armaments, etc. MUCH suffering may ensue before such a vision comes to fruition. I believe in reincarnation, so those who must lay their lives down to build this chain of human progress operate somewhat like those giant waves of ants. A great many form a living bridge over which their peers may travel towards safety. The life force is inexorable, and that which is Light pulls away from all that is dark on a mission (it would seem) to destroy everything from the mundane to the sacred. It's almost Luciferic, this defiance of Creation, seeking to nullify it all, in the patriarchal-war god devotees' version of a big bang. Although not seen on visible levels, a veritable battle between these forces is now EVERYWHERE at play. So keep your light lit! I have enough miles (frequent flyer) to go anywhere, and I am thinking of a visit to Australia (I've never been there) in 2010. Maybe you can offer some suggestions?
If you haven't read Black's book, "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One", or seen his interview done with Bill Moyers, may I HIGHLY recommend both. I just finished the book about a month and a half ago, and the half-hour interview on "Bill Moyers' Journal" was absolutely excellent. He leaves no stone unturned and lets NO one off the hook.
As they do more and more of this ROGUE crap, what they're really doing is bringing the U.S. empire closer and closer to the edge of the very high precipice the empire's about to fall a very long way down from into a total or near-total decline.
They will lose in the U.S., as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps [globally], and when the time comes for or of their total failure, then there may possibly be nowhere for them to run and hide, at all.
But it seems that when all prior empires went into decline, they caused a lot of havoc, pain, ... on their way downward.
Obama is their "charismatic" instrument; just as bad, if not worse than Bush Jr, who was "straight" about what his administration was going to do than Obama has been, always or regularly saying pleasing things, yet always doing the opposite.
Diminishing the occupation in Iraq? No he isn't, as Dahr Jamail reported this past summer, including in September. Obama might be shifting a portion of U.S. troops out of Iraq to Afghanistan, but U.S. troops continues as before in Iraq, and Obama's been increasing the use of private "security" mercenaries a lot; Dahr Jamail having stated between 25% and 29% or so in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nothing Obama says can be trusted, except in the sense that we can trust that he's planning to do the opposite of what he says to us. After all, he works for the rich and powerful ruling "elites".
It was hilarious when his supporters claimed he was a Constitutional Law expert, for this hasn't never been apparent with him; he's evidently been working on trying to get everyone to forget that he's supposed to be a graduate in law.
To the victors go the spoils. In America we call it Capitalism.
Our only hope is for things to get so bad that it remains impossible for the average person to deny,forget, rationalize, escape, or otherwise ignore the daily pain that these ass#%^&s inflict upon the masses. hopefully this will result in mass rebellion. Refuse to pay off bank and credit card loans, demand that all bailout money be returned immediately, with interest deposited directly into taxpayers personal accounts , refuse to do anything that would support the banking industry's profits and most of all refuse to be afraid of any imaginary consequences that might arise because of such action.
We learn today that the banksters are back on the ascendancy. Were they ever REALLY in trouble?
The Hollow State provides a platinum safety net for them; "honor among thieves" is a much more PRAGMATIC and understandable a motto than "e pluribus unum", after all.
Unless that really translates as "WE plunder YOU".
And the beauty part is that we also learned today that the military is meeting its recruitment goals due to the dire lack of employment opportunities for young adults; the Pentagon, which is all about the Up Side of death and destruction, is as ecstatic as an undertaker during a plague.
Oh, drones are all very well in their own way-- but as Carl von Clausewitz might have observed had he thought of it, an army marches on Fresh Meat.
It's a win-win situation for the bankster/Pentagon elite AND the fresh-faced youth queuing up to enlist. Opportunity knocks at the highest and lowest sectors of the economy, and Business Is Booming!
Everything's coming up roses!
· Yr Obd't Servant
Yep,
Obama is certainly looking for ways to "provide jobs" for the young as I observed in some headline today. Of course it doesn't mention the military recruitment reaching all it's goal during the year at a pace it hasn't met since 1973; that's somewhere else. These clever assholes let us connect the dots. How nice of them.
At any rate, I just dropped by to say I enjoy your comments. In many ways, your words often express my thoughts in a much more polite and satirical fashion than I can muster.
Well done, my friend.
Abendland and Sioux Rose. I also have a gravel/dirt road to walk, and woods to wander. I just recently returned from 7 days in the Gulf of Mexico. During such times I pull back, withdraw, disconnect from the political fray with our government and the "other side of the aisle". I consider the "other side" as anyone who is anti-human, pro-corporate monied interests. I have come to believe that the Progressive cause has been drawn in to a war with our own "Afghanistan" against corruption, religious fundamentalism, and "tribal"(corporate) factions who are more or less aligned against any semblance of individual equality based Democracy. I think that the only way to succeed is to permanently withdraw our energies from the quagmire and create an underground, black market type of economy, and therefore begin to starve the "other side" of their life's blood, which is OUR money. They are a cancerous blight on our society. I did not say country, because "they" are multinational in their organization affecting most all societies in our 21st century civilization. Wars, pollution, disease, and hunger are driven by those money hungry interests. There are really only two classes in the world today: Us and Them! We might not necessarily see this, but they sure as hell do, and they are bleeding us dry. I might not have said all of this correctly, but I agree wholeheartedly with you both.
Yes, we are in agreement.
We need to encourage and promote a dissident way of making a living, one that bypasses the holy economy (the economy run by the Wall Street vampires and their various friend and which is inseparable from the military-industrial complex) and taxation (no taxation without representation, and we know that we are not being represented). Furthermore, we must form community groups that bypass the largely corrupt political system.
I just finished reading this issue yesterday, I think it's a great guide for creating and sustaining just and healthy local economies. http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-new-economy
I think that the only way to succeed is to permanently withdraw our energies from the quagmire and create an underground, black market type of economy, and therefore begin to starve the "other side" of their life's blood, which is OUR money.
johntwodogs,
I agree. For several years now I have done the best I could to "starve the beast". The more people do it, the better.
The "beast" will, of course, fight back. They aren't stupid. Their main weakness is their love of things. As long as we reject the love of things, we'll win. Otherwise, we'll lose.
Good Luck to all of us who still believe in humane behavior.
There's probably little for real, serious effect that Americans ceasing to spend and save such that it doesn't profit the "elites" that this will really bother them. They know what's happening to the economy in the U.S.; they're the cause of it and know that they are. They also know that the population of the U.S. represents maybe 5% of the total human population on Earth, while Asia has around two-thirds of the total population; and this underlies their program of corporate "globalisation". They don't care where they sell, or where the profits come from; they only care about making themselves ever more rich than they already are, more rich, more globally dominant, etcetera. And the government of the USA is the instrument for these hegemons to achieve their goals.
They probably don't really understand their goals well, for if they did, then they'd realise that while their empire seems to continue building, it's nearing total or near-total downfall.
It's still a good idea to spend and save in ways that the profits don't go to these diabolically greedy "elites", these pigs of the Earth, these traitors, etcetera. We can and should try to encourage local and regional producers of food, clothing, all items we need and which are produced on a local and regional level, and then nationally. And we should do the same for services. I've been doing this as much as possible since the mid-1990s; as of that time seeking what's available for products made as locally as possible, after which regional and national, and the same for services. The only exception was the automobile, for the U.S. automakers badly screwed consumers out of fairness; but when products and services were of good quality, then I went with the local, regional ... consumer outlook. It wasn't to hurt workers in the U.S. automobile industry, but I wasn't going to make these corporations richer with my hard-earned dollars when I could get considerably better quality for my money by buying foreign. It wasn't the fault of the workers, who only did as instructed and therefore required by their employers. It was the fault of top management and engineers.
Anyway, the actions won't really or seriously hurt these rogue "elites". They know Americans are losing purchasing power and FAST. But at least we diminish our contributions to their ... pockets and agendas or projects; as much as possible.
Couple that with NO COLA FOR RETIREES announced today. The government then throws a crumb at us with a proposed added $250 one payment and a "compationate conservative" comes up with this gem:
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H, called the $250 payments “inappropriate.”
“The reason we set up this process was to have the Social Security reimbursement reflect the cost of living,” Gregg said.
Hey Ruth, let me explain it to you. Wall street profits on government bailouts is really what is inappropriate. How come you haven't said word one about that, huh? Also, you corrupt crook, a one time $250 payment keeps a whole slew of pension funds and worker wages from being raised by law with the spurious claim that cost of living didn't go up. That's the game with the "no cola this year" thing. You know it and you are just trying to appear seriously concerned. We are not fooled.
AGG: I read the NO COLA FOR RETIREES. Disgusting!
Recently, I also noticed that Congress raised their own staff budgets by 8%. They certainly support their own priorities, don't they?
Shame on congress, and shame on Obama!
Hi Kay,
Yep. What a pack off liars and hypocrites. Speaking of liars, catch this:
Van Praag, the Goldman spokesman, said the company understands public sentiment over bankers' pay, but added: "The easiest way to destroy the firm would be if we didn't pay our people. . . . Destroying a profitable enterprise would not be in anybody's interest."
Oh, I don't know, Mr. Van Praag Pig. I think that Goldman is not a profitable enterprise. Consequently your whole argument is riddled with mendacity and false premises. You call buying government politicians for a pittance and having the government bail out your losses with our money a profitable enterprise? And what's this about "your people"? You don't have people in Goldman Sucks; you've got vampires. You creatures of evil need to be thrown in the ocean with some real sharks. Then you'll find out what a level playing field is all about. And Finally, Van PIG, you don't understand anything about the public. We are going to get you. We are going to destroy your enterprise. The name Goldman Sachs will live in infamy.
Rant over.
Don't mind me, Kay. I'm not feeling very Christian today.
I wish I could give the man an old fashioned straight razor shave.
I hope that the small print of their bailout provided for an increase in their interest rate to 208%
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
What these Wall Street banksters and their political enablers, like Barney Frank and Obama, depend on is the impotence and passivity of the public. They know they can defraud and manipulate, steal, lie, buy off Congress, wreck the economy for their personal benefit all they please, because we won't do a goddamn thing. They keep us confused and distracted in hundreds of ways, all the way up to making us divided over whether Obama will "do anything" (I'm saying he won't--ever), or whether Congress will show some backbone. They won't either. Then there's oodles of TV to watch and sports to obsess about.
Geithner, Summers and their minions know we'll sit passively as clueless spectators through the whole show, no matter how it turns out. William Black says as much right here. They know they can get away with anyfuckingthing. Obama bails them out to the tune of trillions and there's barely a peep. We don't storm their citadels and drag them out into the streets, or anything else that might be effective, so they just keep giving themselves bonuses with our money, which of course was never ours anyway. They MAKE money; all we do is lament that we haven't won the lottery.
They do nothing of any value and run away with the whole world in their slimy, fetid pockets. Even when the world they've looted collapses around them, we sit idly by without a clue, as the planet becomes uninhabitable, war-torn, and our souls shrivel up to husks. But there will always be Larry Summers, Timmy Geithner and Barry Obama reassuring us that The Economy Has Recovered and we should all celebrate their victory over us once again.
Ephraim, nothing captures the disgusting scale of this 'daylight' looting of our country by the global ruling-elite corporate/financial EMPIRE (as I call it), or "Corporate Communism" (as Dylan Ratigan calls it on MSNBC) as ANDREW COCKBURN's clear, simple and sickening article in today's CounterPunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org/
In which he explains:
"Wall Street balance sheets make this very clear. Last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, major banks and other financial institutions in receipt of $295 billion in TARP money pumped $114 million into Washington in lobbying and campaign contributions. As a stand-alone figure, $114 million sounds like a lot. Set against the torrent of cash flowing in the opposite direction, it is minimal. At 258,449 percent it has been called “the single best investment in history.” Our elected representatives are giving it away."
This multi-Trillion dollar heist by the corporatist Empire will totally destroy what we once thought of as 'our' country --- 'our' democratic Republic ----- and makes Nero's fiddling while Rome burned pale as only a misdemeanor.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
William Black rules.
I finally found DN! on my radio this morning, this segment was great.
Congratulations!
(Whatever was the radio doing before?)
The KPFK archives have these for download if you miss them:
archive.kpfk.org/parchive/
It was sitting unused in my phone for a couple years until I discovered it :-)
You've been a progressive living in DC all this time, and never heard of WPFW/Pacifica radio?
My dial is never anywhere else but 89.3 when I'm in the DC area - or on a WV Mtn. in recieving range - except for the good bluegrass music they used to (still do?) have on WAMU (88.5) in the afternoon. They used to have good talk shows too.
But those were the old days (early 1980's) when NPR was actually politically left - with regular commentaries by socialist Michael Harrington and Mumia Abu Jamal. And you wouldnt even recognize the politics of Diane Rehms or Terry Gross if you listened to a recording of them back then. I'm sure NPR has had all of them burned.
I had occasionally watched it on Link TV or from the website, and I got hooked on classical music up here, and do still listen to NPR a lot too, mostly because of my job. I just found out this past weekend which radio station DN! is on up here, I had really never bothered to look for it before...but I only really started listening to the radio to pass time on the bus a few months ago.
Well you are lucky not only to be able to hear DN live at it's proper morning hour but to live in one of only five cities in the US with a Pacifica radio station.
Here in Pittsburgh, we only got DN daily after a concerted campaign. After failing to get on WYEP - a high-power indy station, we had to settle for WRCT 88.3 - Carnegie Mellon U's 1000 watt station.
That's what one would call a well oiled class society, where the wealthy get wealthier while the majority gets screwed royally and, judging by the lack of insurgency, approves of being so treated.
One reason the majority accepts its lot so easily is because many individuals in the majority hope, against all odds, to "make it big" one day. What those people do not suspect is that it is structurally impossible (owing to the mechanisms that preside over the accumulation of wealth) for more than a tiny minority (proportionally to the total population of the nation) to make it big, to become wealthy or well to do. Wealth is necessarily the privilege of a few. In fact, this has always been the case since the appearance of societies the livelihood of which is founded upon agriculture and sedentary life. What seems to be the exception are sedentary societies whose wealth is more equally distributed and where efforts are being made to avoid great disparities of wealth, with the suffering the latter inevitably bring with them.
Abend, you correctly note, "One reason the majority accepts its lot so easily is because many individuals in the majority hope, against all odds, to "make it big" one day."
This, of course, was what F. Scott Fitzgerald noted in "The Great Gatsby", being more prescient of the Great Crash and Great Depression than Roger Babson or any market analyst. "Gatsby believed in the green light, that orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter --- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further .... "
But the result has not just been that we sacrificed what "flowered before Dutch sailors eye's --- a fresh, green breast of the new world .... face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate with his capacity to wonder." We have sacrificed the very genius of the democratic experiment that our forefathers died dreaming. We have sacrificed democracy itself on the alter of Empire and accepted the monetization of the very definition of 'equality' within our whole political-economic existence. In other words, the monetization of 'democracy' itself, in order to hide an 'Empire' system morphing into and posing as democracy.
http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=14623
Democracy is much more than money, although even our Supreme Court does not have the brains or sense to realize that money is not democracy --- which we have lost in a trade with this new Empire, and for which native Americans might ironically suggest gets us back for the Manhattan screwing.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Sioux Rose
ABEND: The "make it big" lie may have held cover during the Reagan years when plentitude was ostensibly on the menu, but I don't think it currently motivates many people at all! Right now I'd say it's FEAR that's governing, and the passivity is due to the sense that "I better not rock the boat, or I'll be next. So long as I can pay the mortgage/rent and put food (if not as select as previous times allowed for), on the table, and come home and turn on the TV after an exhausting day of work/double shifts, then I'll count my lucky stars."
The nation now has a LESS-THAN attitude, a sense that if anyone stirs up "trouble," they will lose what PRECIOUS little they can still call their own.
I look around and know of five people recently in their 50's-60's who died. I know several totally out of work. All around me I see nothing but costs going up, and I live with a spirit of conservation (i.e. frugality).
To read an article like this, the obscenity of it, that money that came from the sweat and labor of the people given to these bastards so they can dole it out to their own clique, while health care is a bad dream or nightmare to millions, another million plus have to sleep in a vehicle or under a bridge, wars continue to bleed the nation's treasury dry... could any writer obsessed with vengeance for the human race concoct a worse set of ruling principles or unprincipled scenarios?
I think I have a "disgust overload" at the moment. In an hour I can bike into the forest and maybe gain some peace from the trees.
Sioux Rose said..."Right now I'd say it's FEAR that's governing, and the passivity is due to the sense that "I better not rock the boat, or I'll be next."
Right you are. Although I'd take it a step further.
I cannot read/watch stories like this without wondering why the streets aren't filled with rioting mobs dragging politicians and financiers into the streets to be drawn and quartered. As I see it fear is the reason. Fear of local and state police forces and other forms of citizen containment. So many towns, cities, jurisdictions have essentially made it impossible for people to protest legally so when people do amass to voice displeasure they are immediately faced with a wall of gun toting "peace keepers" raised on the indoctrinating effects of everything from Joe Friday to Matt Dillon to Jack Bauer. People who are simply "following orders and upholding the law". People that will do whatever...to whomever...if so ordered. People that see nothing wrong in protecting Wall Street crooks from those from whom they have stolen.
And what makes it worse is that most of the gun toting civilians that might just have the cajones to make a stand...have been indoctrinated into the same way of thinking as those they would be facing.
Swansong, I really think it's just a matter of time. It's getting to where almost every story on alternative news sites, and now even some MSM is about the great ripoff by Wall Street and the accomplice government. People are slowly awakening to the fact that they have been robbed of everything they have worked for and are getting angrier by the day. I don't know how long it will be, but eventually something is going to snap. Just look at the gun and ammunition sales. They are through the roof. Once all of these angry people piece together who has been ripping them off, a spark is all it will take to set the whole mess off. The banksters and CEO's are like heroin addicts. They can't can't get enough and cannot stop. They are blind with greed. Their insatable appetite for money will be their demise.
Sioux Rose
AUSSI: Have you ever heard the euphemism of "Going postal"? If not, it's a dark parody on the tendency for a person to take out their rage on an innocent crowd, say at a post office. Don't you think all the amo sales are going to result in much more of that? Many of the elite travel about in armoured cars, they have body guards, and sometimes entire villages are cleared to create the Potemkin Village safety equivalent when their numbers meet, if the press covers it at all. I fear that bystanders, wives and children, people eating at Burger King will "take it" for the true perpetrators of the crimes against them, the rest of humanity, and too much of the natural world caught up in this suicide mission!
Skeletal remains were found with a great many gold artefacts, the archaeologists of 3011 A.D related in her journal. It seemed so strange a combination. So much of a precious metal, but no way to save themselves from the calamities the idolatry of gold apparently brought on, she concluded.
aussidawg, how very true. It is with absolute incredulity that I continue to read the seemingly, never-ending stream of stories like this one...and countless others about the power of corporations to subvert healthcare reform...destroy the environment...subvert and poison our food and water supplies...and the complicity of politicians in all of it.
Can you imagine if the same situations were occuring in places like France or Greece...and, I would hope, Canada (although I fear most here would be just as indifferent or lacking the motivation to get involved)?
People would race to the streets. Entire neighborhoods...even cities would be ablaze. Politicians and corporations would be reminded immediately to whom they are beholdin'.
I think your analysis of what's to come and how it will transpire is quite accurate. All it will take is the proverbial last straw to break the camel's back. At this point I don't think contemplation of a potential civil conflict...war, if you like...is at all an overly dramatic concept.
I have spent much of my life lamenting the fact that I missed most, if not all, the world's truly important "firsts" and "fights". And barring being alive for an extraterrestrial "first contact" I didn't think I would live to see a truly important moment in human history. But, as time goes on, I'm beginning to think that we may be on the precipice of a moment exactly like that. A moment when humanity profoundly changes the way it looks at, and interacts with, the world and it's peoples.
And I would very much like to be here to see it...or better...help bring it to fruition.
Sioux, I hear you very clearly, I believe. The reason you give is one among several, and I have no dispute with it; I am naturally aware of the dire circumstances you describe.
Note that I purposely said 'one reason' so as to leave room for other reasons.
But I do maintain the reason I gave, for I am convinced that it is a factor that keeps people in a state of servitude to Empire: it keeps them mesmerized, just as celebrities gawking does and all the garbage entertainment that is being force fed to people by the corporate media and the Hollywood opiates trade.
I feel as you do, and I, too, take a walk down my country road to look at the trees and the clouds in the evening, and I am so glad I am no longer in NY City, where the Wall Street vampires draw the blood of the nation.
I believe both you and Sioux Rose have valid viewpoints. I'm reminded of my friend working in the area of safety in the oil fields of Louisiana. He literally works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. He makes about $60,000 for his efforts. And, he constantly talks, at age 60, about "getting to the next level". The power of positive thinking I suppose. Poor deluded bastard.
Don't blame the city for Wall Street.
New York - and the larger cities in general, are also home of practically all leftist and socialist movements in the USA. They are also where all its art and culture resides.
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I did not blame the city. However, I lived and worked in NY City for 37 years, and I know that the city is hostage to Wall Street, no matter how many left leaning people and artists may reside in it.
There are other objectionable things about the city, the most important one, though, being that its way of life is unsustainable.
Sioux Rose
ABEND: That works for me. I like that you left open OPTIONS, as that's what true progressive minds should be flexible enough to entertain. I'm glad you find peace in your surroundings, too. I occasionally miss the infusion of a city and its offerings and will make a visit; but ultimately, I am wired to pick up on sounds and signals those who reside in cities have long placed into atrophy, or otherwise disabled. In my case, "no can do."
Sioux:
Great analysis, but how in the world can your cost of living be going UP when just 5 minutes ago I heard Obama (on the radio) tell us that because the cost of living actually went DOWN this year that this is the first year social security recipients will get no cost of living adjustment (COLA)???? Obama went on to predict that they won't get a COLA next year either (because the cost of living will continue to go down ?).
I guess food prices are not considered part of the cost of living. In fact I KNOW that food prices are not included in the consumer price index. See, when prices are going UP, they are actually going DOWN. Just ask George Orwell.
NPR had a nice report on COLA this morning, and had someone on who said the CPI was basically a stupid thing to tie SS increases to, since it represented little of the goods and services seniors use most, such as health care.
The CPI is tied to Social Security. It was changed (I can't remember, but I think Reagan is the one responsible for changing the components that compose the CPI) specifically to lower the annual COLAs for Social Security payments.
I literlly live off of Social Security Disability payments. The monthly check is around $1400, which needless to say is difficult to live on. The federal government says there hasn't been any cost of living increase this year, but food and energy is not included in that cost of living statistic. Rent prices have increased, utilites have increased, fuel prices have increased, insurance costs have increased, and food prices have increased.
I would love to see Obama, and every congress motherfu*ker live for 3 months on Social Security income. In fact, maybe even forcing their mother, father, or grandparents to live for one month without any assistance from their rich kid would make them reconsider. Then again...
"but I think Reagan is the one responsible for changing the components that compose the CPI) specifically to lower the annual COLAs for Social Security payments."
Big surprise, that bastard has ruined just about everything.
I myself live off $1200 a month from my internship, but it's a bit easier being 26 and not really having any health problems that require regular treatment, and having lived in dorm rooms for two years at college I'm much more flexible with my living situation. Morgan Spurlock, the guy who filmed Supersize Me, started a show based off that premise and one episode he tried to live off minimum wage for 30 days. He couldn't do it.
RAY,
Indeed. It is exactly this announcement of the cost of living going down that made my home state of Colorado be the first one in the Union to actually LOWER the minimum wage. It just happened yesterday. Boy, I'm so proud.
Sioux Rose
RAY: In Florida the registrations on vehicles just doubled. The gas company charges $40 rental for the tank and the ungodly sum of over $365 to fill it. Their rates never went down when gas prices dropped, and now they want $100 tank rental. In Florida we get $25,000 homestead exemption, and last year they voted for another $25,000 and I was able to apply it to two properties (mobile homes on land, very nice actually). This year they are not stacking it, so I have to pay $783 extra on the one property. Food prices are also up. I had a major dental issue I haven't entirely dealt with yet ($1500 out of pocket so far, another $2500 at least to go.)
Meanwhile, I took a salary cut at the magazines I write for, my CD is getting 2% interest (it had been 4.4 last year), and it seems everything is breaking around me. All I know is I keep a very modest lifestyle and I am not making ends meet. Fortunately my father left me some stocks, and I can cash them if I need to. The fact that I have not seen much profit from my books tells me to try to hold onto the stocks (?) It's such a crazy time, what with derivatives "the VD infecting $," and the very premise of HONOR lost from most business equations. Professionals lie and experts who really do NOT know. I'm good at certain types of prediction, but never studied how the stock market works with respect to astrological cycles. Perhaps everything is already coming apart yet since we're in the midst of it, we can't see the truth as one would if they had enough distance (i.e. to exist outside the entire American paradigm to gain a full perspective).
JOHNTWO DOGS: Sun Bear came through a trance medium I've had the opportunity on several rare occasions to speak with, and he told me that when I feel downhearted, to get INTO the water, the water will carry the emotions off. Also, the peace of nature has been legendary (Thoreau, poets, mystics) for its therapeutic properties. That's one reason I decided to move to a remote area. Sometimes I do miss the culture of a city like NYC, the cool ethnic restaurants; but Gainesville, Florida and some of the upstate Florida quaint little towns happen to have some decent restaurants. Ocala has a good Indian one, definitely worth dining at.
California's done the same. Of course, California *ought* to tax the fast money that flies around here instead of something people pretty nearly need here.
Excellent point, Rose! States are raising fees and taxes, as well as cutting 'assistance' programs. We live in such and Orwellian world now.