I'm done

We've had a pretty good run, here in the US. At least, since the Great Depression, things have been remarkably stable. My feeling, and that of others, is that the time for relative peace and economic growth has come to an end. You can see the signs everywhere, if you look for them. Unfortunately, too many people refuse to look, or refuse to recognize them for what they really are.

The bailout is not the problem. Sub-prime lending is not the problem. The credit crisis is not the problem. Unemployment, foreclosures, and defaults are not the problem. They are merely symptoms of the real problem. The real problem lies in our paradigm, the problem lies in our belief that things will, or must, always grow, always improve, and that tomorrow will always be better than today. This blind faith in inexorable progress is belied by the simple fact that our growth is simply unsustainable. Daily, more proof arrives that the tremendous march of "progress" since the industrial revolution has been purchased at a tremendous cost- one that the planet can scarcely bear for much longer. Or, as award-winning journalist Chris Hedges argued yesterday in a brilliant article, "It's not going to be OK".

Many will wonder why nobody tried to warn them what was coming. The reality is, there are voices out there that are telling you what is coming, but it's not a pretty picture and so you choose to ignore them. For myself, I listen to those who have been right all along. I choose track-record over happy thoughts. Since the current economic crisis really picked up steam in September of last year, the "experts" have been wrong time and time again, while those few voices in the wilderness have been saying that this downturn will be worse than anyone's expecting, will last longer than anyone's expecting, and the consequences will be far worse than anyone's expecting. Those are the voices I choose to listen to now. It certainly is not the politicians that have been saying that nobody could have predicted the current crisis, ignoring the fact that plenty of people did predict it. No longer comparing the current crisis to milder recessions of the 70's, 80's or 90's, expert economists are now calling for an unprecedented depression.

Journalists are starting to realize that they've been far too complicit. Lost in all the news about why newspapers are shuttering their doors around the country is the simple fact that they have been wrong, horribly wrong, for far too long. The rise of the internet has delivered undreamt of resources to those of us who demand truth, and that truth has come at the expense of the so-called opinion makers and spin-doctors. When the media only quotes those who say that we've reached a "bottom", and it becomes clear within days (or hours) that there is no end in sight, it becomes clear that both those sources and the media themselves are no longer worthy of attention. At the same time, they are useful as they ferret out a small portion of the corruption in our modern age. A staggering amount of wrongdoing exists in all levels of government, and if the populace were truly paying attention, the government would have already been overthrown. Taking one small glance at the news of the day reveals that two of Obama's cabinet level appointees (or 17%) have suddenly remembered that they forgot to pay taxes on perks or income they received, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Luckily, they remembered just as Obama won the election! Geithner has been confirmed, and Daschle is expected to be. These two people should have been disqualified on that basis alone, and yet nobody seems to think it's a problem.

Politicians only have themselves to blame, both for the current crisis and the fact that nobody is yet grasping the gravity of the situation. Like the boy who cries wolf, decades of overheated rhetoric has numbed the public to pronouncements of genuine seriousness. A week ago Friday, our new president had this to say: "Look, we are all political animals here. If we don't do this, we may lose seats. I may not be re-elected. But none of that's going to matter if we don't pass this because the economy will be in a crisis and the American people will be hurting." Ignoring for a moment the fact that his solution is unlikely to work, and just listen to the raw appeal for desperate measures. "I may not be re-elected. But none of that's going to matter." When have you ever heard a politician say that getting re-elected does not matter? It's a half-step away from admitting (as a British minister did last week) "The banks are fucked, we're fucked, the country's fucked."

Iceland's government has fallen in this crisis. It will not be the last. Civil unrest is spreading rapidly throughout Eastern Europe and China, and there have been many predictions that it will strike in America before we're done. We've thrown trillions of dollars at the problem, close to 30 banks have failed (with hundreds or thousands more poised to fail at any moment), unemployment has been rising at over half a million per month, and still we are no closer to anything resembling a solution, or even a slowing in the bloodbath.

I'm not asking anyone to take this all on faith. Read both sides of these arguments. Then go back and read the counter-arguments. Read opinions that disagree with yours, read about subjects that you ordinarily would not. Rely as much as you can using direct evidence, or any statistics you can find. The reporting of statistics can be spun, but the raw numbers themselves do not lie. Obama was indisputably correct during his inaugural speech when he said "the time has come to set aside childish things." Stop watching "American Idol", or whatever mindless drivel masquerades as entertainment these days. Are you prepared to provide for yourself and your family should the grocery stores suddenly be empty of food- or closed due to bankruptcy? Or if water stops coming free from the tap, how will you conquer thirst?

Food banks around the country are reporting a 30% increase in demand, double the increase from six months ago. Last week, on Monday- in a single day- approximately 80,000 Americans lost their jobs, and the stock market rejoiced, if only briefly. That's 15% of the total loss for December, and it came in a single day. Where will you go for food when you have job, no money, and the food banks are empty? I hope you won't be part of the rising numbers of Americans taking their own lives.

For what it's worth, the government now admits that we have essentially ignored global warming for too long- it's now irreversible. The twin crises of global economic collapse and climate change are more interrelated than most people realize. In any case, it's too late to do much to solve either- the time has now come to focus on ways to mitigate the fallout. This is what collapse looks like. A slow-motion collapse is now occurring, and time is short for you to figure out how best to weather it.

As I said, rely on those whose predictions have been proven correct, not those who tell you comforting lies. Consider this from a 2006 Maclean's article:

And when the truth can no longer be obscured, the price will spike, the economy nosedive, and the underpinnings of our civilization will start tumbling like dominos. The U.S. -- Consumer No. 1 in the lingo of Leggett's book -- will be the most vulnerable, having allowed its citizens to pile up mountains of debt. "The price of houses will collapse. Stock markets will crash. Within a short period, human wealth -- little more than a pile of paper at the best of times, even with the confidence about the future high among traders -- will shrivel." There will be emergency summits, diplomatic initiatives, urgent exploration efforts, but the turmoil will not subside. Thousands of companies will go bankrupt, and millions will be unemployed. "Once affluent cities with street cafés will have queues at soup kitchens and armies of beggars. The crime rate will soar. The earth has always been a dangerous place, but now it will become a tinderbox."

By 2010, predicts Leggett, democracy will be on the run. As with the Great Depression, economic hardship will bring out the worst in people. Fascists will rise, feeding on the anger of the newly poor and whipping up support. These new rulers will find the tools of repression -- emergency laws, prison camps, a relaxed attitude toward torture -- already in place, courtesy of the war on terror. And if that scenario isn't nightmarish enough, Leggett predicts that "Big Oversight Number One" -- climate change -- will be simultaneously making its presence felt "with a vengeance." On the heels of their rapid financial ruin, people "will now watch aghast as their food and water supplies dwindle in the face of a climate seemingly going awry." Prolonged droughts will spread, decimating harvests. As oceans warm, fish catches "will fall off a cliff," and protein will become a luxury.

The first paragraph reads like recent history or current newspaper headlines (see hyperlinks for examples, or your local newspaper), the second paragraph is yet to come. If you wish, there are plenty of others out there that have made similar arguments. Contrast the words of these prophets with the statements of your politicians, you will find very little overlap, if any. One of these groups has been consistently correct, the other group repeats lame excuses that "nobody could have anticipated the reach, depth, or severity of the current crisis" and then proceeds to promise you a return to "normal" in short order, if you only vote for them or agree with their decision to throw trillions of dollars at the crisis.

How can I begin to explain to you the insanity of politicians? They advocate spending close to a trillion dollars in a stimulus package in which they argue that every $1 of stimulus results in $1.50 in economic growth. If that were true, then why not spend like this every day? Why not spend quadrillions of dollars, and make everyone in the US wealthy? Or why has nobody noticed that every four years we have this masturbatory celebration known as an election- new politicians come to power promising change, vowing to tackle corruption and to solve the really hard problems; and yet, nothing ever changes, corruption is endemic, and the really hard problems are only growing in severity? Frankly though, we're all to blame. We keep looking to them for solutions to problems that they caused in the first place. Well, those days are ending, soon they will no longer be able to pretend that they have solutions- in fact, you can hear that in their statements right now if you are paying attention. The word "unprecedented" is used all too frequently for them to really know what they are doing. Even economists seem eager to get the stimulus on, as it will solve for them the debate over whether fiscal stimulus really works or not. Although politicians worldwide seem to act as though that debate was already settled, in fact, it's not. And what are we to do if we throw trillions into this black hole, and it doesn't do anything after all? Is anyone even asking that question? The Wall Street Journal quotes Rahm Emanuel as saying, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." This frank admission is chilling to anyone familiar with Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. In short, the frightened masses which would normally oppose this type of reckless endangerment of their fiscal health (not to mention that of their children and grandchildren) can be persuaded that "desperate times call for desperate measures." Left unsaid is the fact that the desperate measures will tend to benefit the upper class of society disproportionately.

Most of the masses take some comfort in the fact that doomsdayers have been wrong before, a point I freely grant. However, doomsayers only have to be correct once. Additionally, those who believed their empires would last forever have also been wrong-- 100% of the time, historically. As the great Roman society was poised on the brink of destruction, did anyone alive at the time really believe what was happening, did they recognize the signs for what they were? Or any of the great civilizations that have sprang up to dominate their world- Mayan, Incan, Egyptian, Norse- did any of them recognize the coming collapse? Clearly, not in time to prevent it. Are we any different?

Of course, the end of the world has been promised by Jews, Christians, Muslims and assorted crazies with sandwich boards for as long as there has been a human world to end. But those doomsdays were the product of faith; reason always used to say the world will continue. The point about the new apocalypse is that this situation has reversed. Now faith tells us we will be able to solve our problems; reason says we have no answers now and none are likely in the future. Perhaps we can't cure cancer because the problem is simply beyond our intellects. Perhaps we haven't flown to the stars because our biology and God's physics mean we never can. Perhaps we are close to the limit and the time of plenty is over.

The evidence is mounting that our two sunny centuries of growth and wealth may end in a new Dark Age in which ignorance will replace knowledge, war will replace peace, sickness will replace health and famine will replace obesity. You don't think so? It's always happened in the past. What makes us so different? Nothing, I'm afraid.

If we manage to escape the current crisis relatively unscathed, will we heed it for the warning sign it is? Jared Diamond's amazing book Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed poses an interesting question: What did the person on Easter Island who cut down the last tree think about as he was doing it? You see, deforestation was a major factor in the collapse of Easter Island society. Diamond spotlights several other once-mighty societies that collapsed because of their stupid, short-term, profligate use of natural resources. Put simply, they used their resources until they were gone, and then they died. Their societies crumbled surprisingly quickly, often within only decades from reaching their peak. There is nothing to suggest that American society is any different, or has learned the lessons of the past. Quoting Diamond:

"One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse. Few people, however, least of all our politicians, realize that a primary cause of the collapse of those societies has been the destruction of the natural resources on which they depend. Fewer still appreciate that many of those civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power."

If we assume this is not the great collapse, then it will certainly arrive within decades if we continue on our current path, and probably even if we make radical changes. The deniers have been far too successful, and we are utterly unprepared for the implications. They have postponed action on the most pressing of problems, citing potential damage to the economy (which after all, must continue to grow, at all costs). Well, they've succeeded, and gained the ultimate pyrrhic victory. The economy is now in the process of being destroyed, and it's too late to solve the environmental problems we will be facing. Scientific consensus is now that the human race, if not all life on Earth, will go extinct within the next 100 years. It takes a bit of connecting the dots, but they are all well-regarded scientific studies. Or, if you choose not to believe that one, how about the NASA scientist and climate expert that says Obama has only 4 years to save planet earth? I, for one, am not optimistic that he can muster the will to do so, even if we grant that it's not yet too late.

In any case, I am not going to be spending much more time chronicling this collapse. I'm definitely done posting about political and economic corruption within the US, as there are far too many articles and I have too little time. I urge you to spend whatever time and resources you can muster in preparing yourself for what's to come. I am not going to point you in the direction of "recommended reading" or some similar list. If you are interested, you can find such information on your own, but I suspect that most of you are not interested enough to even try. Pity, but consider this parting thought: before the rise of the age of oil (a mere two centuries ago), the earth was able to support approximately 1 billion people. There are now approximately 6.7 billion. If there is the slightest chance that any of our most respected scientists are correct then the coming wars, pandemics, droughts, famine, and extreme weather are set to reduce that number dramatically, if not totally erase it. Mankind has proven itself to be a parasite, remorselessly feeding on the resources of our host planet. Like a parasite, we may just be killing ourselves along with our host. Or perhaps a cancer is an apt description- growing exponentially, eventually choking out and destroying the healthy parts until the whole organism dies.

Thanks to all who have taken the time to read my postings over the past year or two, and I'm very sincerely wishing you good luck.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

It's not going to be OK

I'm finding it difficult to have much to say about this article. For once, I don't have anything to criticize. I thought I might be able to pick on the reporter himself, but he's impeccably credentialed, as far as I can tell.

It’s Not Going to Be OK

Posted on Feb 2, 2009

AP Photo / Nikolas Giakoumidis

Riots have spread across Europe since the economic crisis began. Here, Greek riot police stand near a burning car.

By Chris Hedges

The daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis. The street protests, strikes and riots that have rattled France, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Iceland will descend on us. It is only a matter of time. And not much time. When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability.

At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or has the possibility of totalitarianism been as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. And poverty and despair will sweep across the landscape like a plague. This is the bleak future. There is nothing President Obama can do to stop it. It has been decades in the making. It cannot be undone with a trillion or two trillion dollars in bailout money. Our empire is dying. Our economy has collapsed.

How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and a glorious tomorrow or will we responsibly face our stark new limitations? Will we heed those who are sober and rational, those who speak of a new simplicity and humility, or will we follow the demagogues and charlatans who rise up out of the slime in moments of crisis to offer fantastic visions? Will we radically transform our system to one that protects the ordinary citizen and fosters the common good, that defies the corporate state, or will we employ the brutality and technology of our internal security and surveillance apparatus to crush all dissent? We won’t have to wait long to find out.

There are a few isolated individuals who saw it coming. The political philosophers Sheldon S. Wolin, John Ralston Saul and Andrew Bacevich, as well as writers such as Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, David Korten and Naomi Klein, along with activists such as Bill McKibben and Ralph Nader, rang the alarm bells. They were largely ignored or ridiculed. Our corporate media and corporate universities proved, when we needed them most, intellectually and morally useless.

Wolin, who taught political philosophy at the University of California in Berkeley and at Princeton, in his book “Democracy Incorporated” uses the phrase inverted totalitarianism to describe our system of power. Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism and the Constitution while cynically manipulating internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens, but they must raise staggering amounts of corporate funds to compete. They are beholden to armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington or state capitals who write the legislation. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion or diverts us with trivia and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. “Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,” Wolin writes. “Economics dominates politics—and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.”

I reached Wolin, 86, by phone at his home about 25 miles north of San Francisco. He was a bombardier in the South Pacific during World War II and went to Harvard after the war to get his doctorate. Wolin has written classics such as “Politics and Vision” and “Tocqueville Between Two Worlds.” His newest book is one of the most important and prescient critiques to date of the American political system. He is also the author of a series of remarkable essays on Augustine of Hippo, Richard Hooker, David Hume, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Max Weber, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx and John Dewey. His voice, however, has faded from public awareness because, as he told me, “it is harder and harder for people like me to get a public hearing.” He said that publications, such as The New York Review of Books, which often published his work a couple of decades ago, lost interest in his critiques of American capitalism, his warnings about the subversion of democratic institutions and the emergence of the corporate state. He does not hold out much hope for Obama.

“The basic systems are going to stay in place; they are too powerful to be challenged,” Wolin told me when I asked him about the new Obama administration. “This is shown by the financial bailout. It does not bother with the structure at all. I don’t think Obama can take on the kind of military establishment we have developed. This is not to say that I do not admire him. He is probably the most intelligent president we have had in decades. I think he is well meaning, but he inherits a system of constraints that make it very difficult to take on these major power configurations. I do not think he has the appetite for it in any ideological sense. The corporate structure is not going to be challenged. There has not been a word from him that would suggest an attempt to rethink the American imperium.”

Wolin argues that a failure to dismantle our vast and overextended imperial projects, coupled with the economic collapse, is likely to result in inverted totalitarianism. He said that without “radical and drastic remedies” the response to mounting discontent and social unrest will probably lead to greater state control and repression. There will be, he warned, a huge “expansion of government power.”

“Our political culture has remained unhelpful in fostering a democratic consciousness,” he said. “The political system and its operatives will not be constrained by popular discontent or uprisings.”

Wolin writes that in inverted totalitarianism consumer goods and a comfortable standard of living, along with a vast entertainment industry that provides spectacles and diversions, keep the citizenry politically passive. I asked if the economic collapse and the steady decline in our standard of living might not, in fact, trigger classical totalitarianism. Could widespread frustration and poverty lead the working and middle classes to place their faith in demagogues, especially those from the Christian right?

“I think that’s perfectly possible,” he answered. “That was the experience of the 1930s. There wasn’t just FDR. There was Huey Long and Father Coughlin. There were even more extreme movements including the Klan. The extent to which those forces can be fed by the downturn and bleakness is a very real danger. It could become classical totalitarianism.”

He said the widespread political passivity is dangerous. It is often exploited by demagogues who pose as saviors and offer dreams of glory and salvation. He warned that “the apoliticalness, even anti-politicalness, will be very powerful elements in taking us towards a radically dictatorial direction. It testifies to how thin the commitment to democracy is in the present circumstances. Democracy is not ascendant. It is not dominant. It is beleaguered. The extent to which young people have been drawn away from public concerns and given this extraordinary range of diversions makes it very likely they could then rally to a demagogue.”

Wolin lamented that the corporate state has successfully blocked any real debate about alternative forms of power. Corporations determine who gets heard and who does not, he said. And those who critique corporate power are given no place in the national dialogue.

“In the 1930s there were all kinds of alternative understandings, from socialism to more extensive governmental involvement,” he said. “There was a range of different approaches. But what I am struck by now is the narrow range within which palliatives are being modeled. We are supposed to work with the financial system. So the people who helped create this system are put in charge of the solution. There has to be some major effort to think outside the box.”

“The puzzle to me is the lack of social unrest,” Wolin said when I asked why we have not yet seen rioting or protests. He said he worried that popular protests will be dismissed and ignored by the corporate media. This, he said, is what happened when tens of thousands protested the war in Iraq. This will permit the state to ruthlessly suppress local protests, as happened during the Democratic and Republic conventions. Anti-war protests in the 1960s gained momentum from their ability to spread across the country, he noted. This, he said, may not happen this time. “The ways they can isolate protests and prevent it from [becoming] a contagion are formidable,” he said.

“My greatest fear is that the Obama administration will achieve relatively little in terms of structural change,” he added. “They may at best keep the system going. But there is a growing pessimism. Every day we hear how much longer the recession will continue. They are already talking about beyond next year. The economic difficulties are more profound than we had guessed and because of globalization more difficult to deal with. I wish the political establishment, the parties and leadership, would become more aware of the depths of the problem. They can’t keep throwing money at this. They have to begin structural changes that involve a very different approach from a market economy. I don’t think this will happen.”

“I keep asking why and how and when this country became so conservative,” he went on. “This country once prided itself on its experimentation and flexibility. It has become rigid. It is probably the most conservative of all the advanced countries.”

The American left, he said, has crumbled. It sold out to a bankrupt Democratic Party, abandoned the working class and has no ability to organize. Unions are a spent force. The universities are mills for corporate employees. The press churns out info-entertainment or fatuous pundits. The left, he said, no longer has the capacity to be a counterweight to the corporate state. He said that if an extreme right gains momentum there will probably be very little organized resistance.

“The left is amorphous,” he said. “I despair over the left. Left parties may be small in number in Europe but they are a coherent organization that keeps going. Here, except for Nader’s efforts, we don’t have that. We have a few voices here, a magazine there, and that’s about it. It goes nowhere.”

Freakonomics:The Fiendish Genius of Credit-Card Minimum Payments

From the Freakonomics blog:

New research finds that credit-card holders pay down their debts more slowly when their statements suggest a minimum monthly installment.

I don't think anyone is shocked by that. The credit card industry has long had bare minimum payments, enough to keep their consumers solvent. The interesting part of the study they cite is that even for customers that tend to pay more than the minimum payment, the existence of a stated minimum payment acts as a kind of "anchor" on what they actually pay. That is, if you were inclined to pay $100 on your balance this month, and then you see the statement and it only carries a minimum payment of $48, you're likely to pay far less than the $100 you intended and then rationalize that you are still paying more than the minimum.

Say you’re a credit card company. You make money every time one of your card holders carries a balance at the end of the month, because you charge interest on that debt. A lot of interest. The longer your card holder carries debt, the more money you make.

But if that debt tips out of control, and the card holder defaults, you lose everything.

So you want to find a middle road, a strategy that will keep your card holder’s debt manageable, but that will stretch out repayment as far into the future as possible, maximizing your profits.

I thought I remembered some changes to the minimum payment structure as a part of the bankruptcy overhaul from a few years ago, and I was right.

In the past, credit card companies required customers to pay an average of just 2 percent of their total credit card balance, which meant constant debt for many consumers. The 2 percent minimum payment only covered interest and other fees, so it often could take a lifetime to pay off the principal balance.

By the end of 2005, new banking guidelines went into effect in an effort to save consumers from themselves. Banking regulators issued the guidelines that pressured credit card companies to boost minimum payments so debts would be paid off in a reasonable time. For many banks, that has translated into new rules requiring monthly minimums to cover interest, any fees or extra charges and at least 1 percent of the principal amount.

Some overhaul... now instead of just paying interest and fees, you have to pay interest and fees, plus 1% of your principal.

Too big = made to fail. And take democracy with it...

We're using the bailouts to rebuild giant financial institutions. But what we really need are small ones. - By Eliot Spitzer - Slate Magazine

Say what you will about Eliot Spitzer's personal life, I think he makes some pretty good points here. Although he doesn't take it so far as to connect the current economic behemoths and their natural instability as the inevitable result of capitalism itself, he's only a couple of steps away from that.

[The risk is] that current bailouts—a remarkable $7.8 trillion in equity, loans, and guarantees so far—may merely perpetuate a fundamentally flawed status quo. So far, at least, we are simply rebuilding the same edifice that just collapsed. None of the investments has even begun to address the underlying structural problems that are causing economic power to shift away from the United States, sector by sector:

• Our trade deficit has ballooned from about $100 billion to more than $700 billion annually in the past decade, and our federal deficit now approaches $1 trillion. These twin deficits leave us at the mercy of foreign-capital inflows that may diminish as Asian nations, in particular, invest increasingly at home.
• Our household savings rate has been close to zero—and even negative in some years—not permitting the long-term capital accumulation required for the investments we need; China's savings rate, by comparison, is an astonishing 30 percent of household income.
• U.S. middle class income has stagnated over the past decade, while the middle class in China—granted, starting from a lower base—has seen its income growing at about 10 percent annually.
• Our intellectual advantage could soon turn into a new "third deficit," as hundreds of thousands of engineers are being created annually in China.
• We are realizing that the service sector—all the lawyers, investment bankers, advertising agencies, and accountants—follows its clients and wealth creation. This, not over-regulation, is the reason investment-banking activity has begun to migrate overseas.

The great irony is that our new place in the global economy is a direct consequence of our grand victory over the past 60 years. We have, indeed, converted virtually the entire world into one integrated capitalist economy, and we must now bear the brunt of serious and vigorous competition. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States was essentially the only nation with financial capital, intellectual capital, skilled labor, a growing middle class generating consumer demand, and a rule of law permitting safe investment. Now we are one of many nations with these critical advantages.

While he's mostly right, there are a few other things I would like to point out. Assuming the American capitalism can weather the current financial tsunami (which is not at all guaranteed), this trend is unlikely to reverse itself. The Washington Post reported this week that access to college education in the United States gets an "F" in every single state except for California, "which received a C because of the relatively low cost of its community colleges." If you think community colleges are churning out the next world leaders, at least under the current aristocratic system, you're sorely mistaken. College tuitions and fees have risen by an astonishing 439% since the early 1980's, which is almost twice as much as medical care (251%) and three times faster than the median family income for the same time period (147%). So what are the implications of this? Only the wealthiest will be able to send their children to any institution of higher learning, thus furthering the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

Secondly, the consolidation of companies in the financial sector is mirrored by consolidation in virtually every other industry. The Center for Corporate Policy points out that

The accelerated concentration of corporate power is reflected in the relatively small number of major media conglomerates, defense contractors, etc. Another symptom is the precipitous rise in the value of corporate mergers and acquisitions over the past 25 years – amounting to a total $1.4 trillion during the 1980s, exploding to $11 trillion during the 1990s, and continuing at an even greater frenetic pace of $7.6 trillion during 2000-2003 (including $3.4 trillion in 2000 alone) — adding up to a combined total of $20 trillion.(2)

This trend has not abated in the years since- if anything, it has accelerated. And, it's affecting all sectors of the economy. The big 3 automakes got bigger by acquiring other brands, which they are now frantically trying to spin off again (see Saab, Volvo, Saturn, Hummer, etc...). Six conglomerates control virtually all of the television, radio, publishing and newspapers in America. Saturday's Opinion page in the Wall Street Journal had this nugget to look forward to:

- Financial concentration will gain even greater momentum and influence. This is the most profound long-term consequence of the current credit crisis. Leading independent investment banks already have been taken over by large financial conglomerates that are controlled by commercial banking entities, as have giant deposit institutions. Within the next year, many smaller and medium-sized financial institutions also will lose their independent identities.

Today, more than half of all nonfinancial debt (debt held by households, nonfinancial companies and government) is held by the top 15 institutions. These were the very firms that played a central role in creating an unprecedented amount of debt by securitization and complex new credit instruments. They also pushed for legal structures that made many aspects of the financial markets opaque.

In the years ahead, the influence of these financial conglomerates will be overwhelming -- and they will limit any moves toward greater economic democracy. These conglomerates are and will continue to be infused with conflicts of interest because of their multiple roles in securities underwriting, in lending and investing, in the making of secondary markets, and in the management of other people's money. And because there will be fewer market participants of importance, the price volatility of financial assets likely will remain high.

Through their global reach, these firms will transmit financial contagion even more quickly than it spread in the current credit crisis. When the current crisis abates, the pricing power of these huge financial conglomerates will grow significantly, at the expense of borrowers and investors.

So if you're happy with the way the last year has gone in the financial industry, you'll love what's ahead. Far more troubling to me, is the consolidation within the food industry. Mega-corporations have been trying for years to patent or control basic necessities of life, including water, something that ought to horrify anyone in today's business climate. If it doesn't, imagine Lehman Brothers or Citigroup in sole control of your water supply. In Stuffed and Starved Raj Patel discusses consolidation thusly:

It's a consolidation that spans the entire food system. The ten largest companies control half the world's seed supply... Ten firms control 84 per cent of the nearlyUS$30 billion pesticide markets, with analysts pointing to a trend in concentration that will see, by 2015, only three major players in that sector. The top ten in food and beverage processing amount for 24 per cent of hte US$1.25 trillion market in packaged foods. And the market with the sharpest trends in concentration, retail, sees the top ten players accounting for 24 per cent of the US$3.5 trillion market. (p.102)

Still, the government thinks it's good policy to hand out billions in subsidies and incentives to the megafarms as part of the travesty known as the Farm Bill. The end result? Virtually all fast food is made from corn- your burger included. High fructose corn syrup makes up the soda, cows are raised on a diet of corn, fries are cooked in corn. "Of 160 food products we purchased at Wendy's throughout the United States, not 1 item could be traced back to a noncorn [sic] source. Our work also identified corn feed as the overwhelming source of food for tissue growth, hence for beef and chicken meat, at fast food restaurants," says a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Thirdly, Spitzer points out that our "grand victory" was conversion of "virtually the entire world into one integrated capitalist economy", but he neglects the extent to which that conversion was an unwilling one. We have created a world full of enemies, ready to mete out justice to their imperialist overlords that have been exploiting their natural resources, their environments, their labor, and their very cultures in the name of "economic growth". Of course, these giant mega-corporations have exploited those of us in the U.S. as well, but our travails are of little comfort to those in the massively impoverished global south.

I will close with a quotation from Robert Reich in his book Supercapitalism that encapsulates a good portion of my argument.

Supercapitalism has triumphed as power has shifted to consumers and investors. They now have more choice than ever before, and can switch ever more easily to better deals. And competition among companies to lure and keep them continues to intensify. This means better and cheaper products, and higher returns. Yet as supercapitalism has triumphed, its negative social consequences have also loomed larger. These include widening inequality as most gains from economic growth go to the very top, reduced job security, instability of or loss of community, environmental degradation, violations of human rights abroad, and a plethora of products and services pandering to our basest desires. These consequences are larger in the United States than in other advanced economies because America has moved deeper into supercapitalism. Other econoimes, following closely behind, have begun to experience many of the same things.

Democracy is the appropriate vehicle for responding to such social consequences. That's where citizen values are supposed to be expressed, where choices are supposed to be made between what we want for ourselves as consumers and investors, and what we want to achieve together. But the same competition that has fueled supercapitalism has spilled over into the political process. Large companies have hired platoons of lobbyists, lawyers, experts, and public relations specialists, and devoted more and more money to electoral campaigns. The result has been to drown out voices and values of citizens. As all of this has transpired, the old institutions through which citizen values had been expressed in the Not Quite Golden Age-- industry-wide labor unions, local citizen-based groups, "corporate statesmen" responding to all stakeholders, and regulator agencies-- have been largely blown away by the gusts of supercapitalism.

Top 10 Searches for 2008 | The Best Article Every day

As far as I'm concerned, there is no hope for our society. Only one entry on the top 10 searches for 2008 has anything to do with news, current events, or politics- Barack Obama. And that's as much due to his snazzy marketing campaign and branding than anyone being genuinely interested in his policy positions. Here's the list:

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Barack Obama
4. Miley Cyrus
5. Runescape
6. Jessica Alba
7. Naruto
8. Lindsey Lohan
9. Angelina Jolie
10. American Idol

Seriously, please take a moment and think about the state of affairs in a country where more people are interested in what's going on with a drugged up, psychotic, redneck single mother that used to have a singing career than anything else. We're not concerned about the thousands of dead Americans in Iraq (4,207 at latest count- for what?), we're not concerned with our war in Afghanistan, we're not concerned with economics, or politics, or art, or justice. We're concerned about celebrities, fake wrestling and what's else is on TV. We're depraved, and a civilization like this is in its last stages. We're fiddling and dancing around while Rome burns. We live in the kind of country where a seasonal Walmart employee would get callously crushed to death beneath the feet of consumer zombies.

But it's not just our common vulnerability to mob psychology that ties the rest of us to last week's tragedy. It is also our common love of stuff. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a starker illustration of our true priorities. Oh, we pay lip service to other things. We say children are a priority, but when did people ever press against the door for Parents' Night at school? We say education is a priority, but when did people ever bang against the windows of the library? We say faith is a priority, but when did people ever surge into a temple of worship as eagerly as they do a temple of commerce?

No, sale prices on iPods, that's our true priority. Jdimytai Damour died because too many of us have bought, heart and soul, into the great lie of American consumerism: acquiring stuff will make you whole. ''You, Happier,'' is how a sign at my local Best Buy puts it. As if owning a Jonas Brothers CD, an Iron Man DVD, a Sony HDTV, will elevate you to a level of joy otherwise impossible to attain. Hey, you may be a total loser, may not have a friend, may not have an education, may not have a job, may not have a clue, but it will all be OK as soon as you get that new Canon digital camera, especially if you get it for 50 percent off.

It would be nice to think -- I will not hold my breath -- that Damour's death would lead at least some of us to finally see that for the obscene lie it is, to realize that seeking wholeness in consumer goods is an act of emptiness, not joy.

You, Happier? No.

Just you, with more stuff.

Democracy Now! | Noam Chomsky: "What Next? The Elections, the Economy, and the World"

It's ideas and speeches like this that exemplify the type of political dissent this country needs most, especially now. I love Noam Chomsky, can I say that? He points out so many things that bear focusing upon- not least of which is the concept that change comes from us, not from Washington. That was his message before Obama co-opted it, and it's still his message today.

This is a speech that I first heard on Democracy Now, but now I've taken the transcript and added some hyperlinks if you are curious (as I was) about some of the suprising things that Chomsky talks about. For example, did you know the Obama campaign won the largest award in the advertising industry? I didn't. And why did the advertising industry award a political campaign it's highest honor? Because Obama had a tremendous sales presentation- and enough people purchased brand Obama, that now he's heading to the White House. Chomsky also points out that this was not a landslide election. Oh sure, the electoral college results make it appear as if it were, but the two major candidates were only separated by some 7 million votes. And did you believe the stories about record turnout? Not true. But it sure was a great sales job, so he deserves the advertising industry's highest honor. He beat out Apple- can you imagine? Obama ran a better sales campaign this year than the people who brought you the ubiquitous iPod. But the product is already turning out to be different than advertised- he's not going to raise taxes on the riches Americans after all, and his cabinet is filling up with warmongers.

As usual, pay special attention to the bolded sections:

Democracy Now! | Noam Chomsky: "What Next? The Elections, the Economy, and the World"

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, let’s begin with the elections. The word that the rolls off of everyone’s tongue is historic. Historic election. And I agree with it. It was a historic election. To have a black family in the white house is a momentous achievement. In fact, it’s historic in a broader sense. The two Democratic candidates were an African-American and a woman. Both remarkable achievements. We go back say 40 years, it would have been unthinkable. So something’s happened to the country in 40 years. And what’s happened to the country- which is we’re not supposed to mention- is that there was extensive and very constructive activism in the 1960s, which had an aftermath. So the feminist movement, mostly developed in the 70s-–the solidarity movements of the 80’s and on till today. And the activism did civilize the country. The country’s a lot more civilized than it was 40 years ago and the historic achievements illustrate it. That’s also a lesson for what’s next.

What’s next will depend on whether the same thing happens. Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below. And the answer to what’s next depends on people like you. Nobody else can answer it. It’s not predictable. In some ways, the election—the election was surprising in some respects.

Going back to my bad prediction, If the financial crisis hadn’t taken place at the moment that it did, if it had been delayed a couple of months, I suspect that prediction would have been correct. But not speculating, one thing surprising about the election was that it wasn’t a landslide. By the usual criteria, you would expect the opposition party to win in a landslide under conditions like the ones that exist today. The incumbent president for eight years was so unpopular that his own party couldn’t mention his name and had to pretend to be opposing his policies. He presided over the worst record for ordinary people in post-war history, in terms of job growth, real wealth and so on. Just about everything the administration was touched just turned into a disaster. [The] country has reached the lowest level of standing in the world that it’s ever had. The economy was tanking. Several recessions are going on. Not just the ones on the front pages, the financial recession. There’s also a recession in the real economy. The productive economy, under circumstances and people know it. So 80% of the population say that the country’s going in the wrong direction. About 80% say the government doesn’t work to the benefit of the people, it works for the few and the special interests. A startling 94% complain that the government doesn’t pay any attention to the public will, and on like that. Under conditions like that, you would expect a landslide to a opposition almost whoever they are. And there wasn’t one.

So one might ask why wasn’t there a landslide? That goes off in an interesting direction. And other respects the outcome was pretty familiar. So once again, the election was essentially bought. 9 out of 10 of the victors outspent their opponents. Obama of course outspent McCain. If you look at the—and we don’t have final records yet from the final results, but they’re probably going to be pretty much like the preliminaries a couple of months ago. Which showed that both Obama and McCain were getting the bulk of their financing from the financial institutions and for Obama, law firms which means essentially lobbyists. That was about over a third a few months ago. But the final results will probably be the same. And there is a—the distribution of funding has over time been a pretty good predictor of what policies will be like for those of you who are interested, there’s very good scholarly work on this by Tom Ferguson in Umass Boston, what he calls the investment theory of politics. Which argues essentially that elections are moments when groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state and has quite the substantial predictive success. Gives some suggestion as to what’s likely to happen. So that part’s familiar. The—what the future is as I say, depends on people like you.

The response for the election was interesting and instructive. It kept pretty much to the soaring rhetoric, to borrow the cliché, that was the major theme of the election. The election was described as an extraordinary display of democracy, a miracle that could only happen in America and on and on. Much more extreme than Europe even than here. There’s some accuracy in that if we keep to the West. So if we keep to the West, yes, it’s probably true. That couldn’t have happened anywhere else. Europe was much more racist than the United States and you wouldn’t expect anything like that to happen.

On the other hand, if you look at the world, it’s not that remarkable. So let’s take the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti and Bolivia. In Haiti, there was an election in 1990 which really was an extraordinary display of democracy much more so than this.

In Haiti, there were grassroots movements, popular movements that developed in the slums and the hills, which nobody was paying any attention to. And they managed, even without any resources, to sweep into power their own candidate. A populist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. That’s a victory for democracy when popular movements can organize and set programs and pick their candidate and put them into office, which is not what happened here, of course.

I mean, Obama did organize a large number of people and many enthusiastic people in what’s called in the press, Obama’s Army. But the army is supposed to take instructions, not to implement, introduce, develop programs and call on its own candidate to implement them. That’s critical. If the army keeps to that condition, nothing much will change. If it on the other hand goes away activists did in the sixties, a lot can change. That’s one of the choices that has to be made. That’s Haiti. Of course that didn’t last very long. A couple of months later, there was military coup, a period of terror, we won’t go through the whole record. Up the present, the traditional torturers of Haiti, France, and the United States have made sure that there won’t be a victory for democracy there. It’s a miserable story. Contrary to many illusions.

Take the second poorest country, Bolivia. They had an election in 2005 that’s almost unimaginable in the West. Certainly here, anywhere. The person elected into office was indigenous. That’s the most oppressed population in the hemisphere, those who survived. He’s is a poor peasant. How did he get in? Well, he got in because there were again, a mass popular movement, which elected their own representative. And they are the source of the programs, which are serious ones. There’s real issues, And people know them. Control over resources, cultural rights, social justice and so on.

Furthermore, the election was just an event that was particular stage in a long continuing struggle, a lot before and a lot after. There was day when people pushed the levers but that’s just an event in ongoing popular struggles, very serious ones. A couple of years ago, there was a major struggle over privatization of water. An effort which it would in effect deprive a good part of the population of water to drink. And it was a bitter struggle. A lot of people were killed, but they won it. Through international solidarity, in fact, which helped. And it continues. Now that’s a real election. Again, the plans, the programs are being developed, acted on constantly by mass popular movements, which then select their own representatives from their own ranks to carry out their programs. And that’s quite different from what happened here.

Actually what happened here is understood by elite elements. The public relations industry which runs elections here-quadrennial extravaganzas essentially- makes sure to keep issues in the margins and focus on personalities and character and so on–and-so forth. They do that for good reasons. They know- they look at public opinion studies and they know perfectly well that on a host of major issues both parties are well to the right of the population. That’s one good reason to keep issues off the table. And they recognize the success.

So, every year, the advertising industry gives a prize to, you know, to the best marketing campaign of the year. This year, Obama won the prize. Beat out Apple company. The best marketing campaign of 2008. Which is correct, it is essentially what happened. Now that’s quite different from what happens in a functioning democracy like say Bolivia or Haiti, except for the fact that it was crushed. And in the South, it’s not all that uncommon. Notice that each of these cases, there’s a much more extraordinary display of democracy in action than what we’ve seen–important as it was-here. And so the rhetoric, especially in Europe is correct if we maintain our own narrow racist perspective and say yeah, what happened was in the South didn’t happen or doesn’t matter. The only matters is what we do and by our standards, it was extraordinary miracle, but not by the standards of functioning democracy. In fact, there’s a distinction in democratic theory, which does separate say the United States from Bolivia or Haiti.

Question is what is a democracy supposed to be? That’s exactly a debate that goes back to the constitutional convention. But in recent years in the 20th century, it’s been pretty well articulated by important figures. So at the liberal end the progressive end, the leading public intellectual of the 20th century was Walter Lippman. A Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy progressive. And a lot of his work was on a democratic theory and he was pretty frank about it. If you took a position not all that different from James Madison’s. He said that in a democracy, the population has a function. Its function is to be spectators, not participants. He didn’t call it the population. He called it the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. The ignorant and meddlesome outsiders have a function and namely to watch what’s going on. And to push a lever every once in a while and then go home. But, the participants are us, us privileged, smart guys. Well that’s one conception of democracy. And you know essentially we’ve seen an episode of it. The population very often doesn’t accept this. As I mentioned, just very recent polls, people overwhelmingly oppose it. But they’re atomized, separated. Many of them feel hopeless, unorganized, and don’t feel they can do anything about it. So they dislike it. But that’s where it ends.

In a functioning democracy like say Bolivia or the United States in earlier stages, they did something about it. That’s why we have the New Deal measures, the Great Society measures. In fact just about any step, you know, women’s rights, end of slavery, go back as far as you like, it doesn’t happen as a gift. And it’s not going to happen in the future. The commentators are pretty well aware of this. They don’t put it the way I’m going to, but if you read the press, it does come out. So take our local newspaper at the liberal end of the spectrum, “Boston Globe,” you probably saw right after the election, a front page story, the lead front page story was on how Obama developed this wonderful grassroots army but he doesn’t have any debts. Which supposed to be a good thing. So he’s free to do what he likes. Because he has no debts, the normal democratic constituency, labor, women, minorities and so on, they didn’t bring him into office. So he owes them nothing

What he had was an army that he organized of people who got out the vote for Obama. For what the press calls, Brand Obama. They essentially agree with the advertisers, it’s brand Obama. That his army was mobilized to bring him to office. They regard that as a good thing, accepting the Lippman conception of democracy, the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders are supposed to do what they’re told and then go home. The Wall Street Journal, at the opposite end of the spectrum, also had an article about the same thing at roughly the same time. Talked about the tremendous grassroots army that has been developed, which is now waiting for instructions. What should they do next to press forward Obama’s agenda? Whatever that is. But whatever it is, the army’s supposed to be out there taking instructions, and press work. Los Angeles Times had similar articles, and there are others. What they don’t seem to realize is what they’re describing, the ideal of what they’re describing, is dictatorship, not democracy. Democracy, at least not in the Lippman sense, it proved- I pick him out because he’s so famous, but it’s a standard position. But in the sense of say, much of the south, where mass popular movements developed programs; organize to take part in elections but that’s one part of an ongoing process. And brings somebody from their own ranks to implement the programs that they develop, and if the person doesn’t they’re out. Ok, that’s another kind of democracy. So it’s up to us to choose which kind of democracy we want. And again, that will determine what comes next.

Well, what can we anticipate if the popular army, the grassroots army, decides to accept the function of spectators of action rather than participants? There’s two kinds of evidence. There’s rhetoric and there’s action. The rhetoric, you know, is very uplifting: change, hope, and so on. Change was kind of reflective any party manager this year who read the polls, including the ones I cited, would instantly conclude that our theme in the election has to be change. Because people hate what’s going on for good reasons. So the theme is change. In fact, both parties put both of them, the theme was change. So the theme is change. In fact both parties, both of them the theme was change. You know, break from the past, none of old politics, new things are going to happen. The Obama campaign did better so they won the marketing award, not the McCain campaign.

And notice incidentally on the side that the institutions that run the elections, public relations industry, advertisers, they have a role—their major role is commercial advertising. I mean, selling a candidate is kind of a side rule. In commercial advertising as everybody knows, everybody who has ever looked at a television program, the advertising is not intended to provide information about the product, all right? I don’t have to go on about that. It’s obvious. The point of the advertising is to delude people with the imagery and, you know, tales of a football player, sexy actress, who you know, drives to the moon in a car or something like that. But, that’s certainly not to inform people. In fact, it’s to keep people uninformed.

The goal of advertising is to create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices. Those of you who suffered through an economics course know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. But industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to undermine markets and to ensure, you know, to get uninformed consumers making irrational choices.

And when they turn to selling a candidate they do the same thing. They want uninformed consumers, you know, uninformed voters to make irrational choices based on the success of illusion, slander, and effective body language or whatever else is supposed to be significant. So you undermine democracy pretty much the same way you undermine markets. Well, that’s the nature of an election when it’s run by the business world, and you’d expect it to be like that. There should be no surprise there. And it should also turn out the elected candidate didn’t have any debts. So you can follow Brand Obama can be whatever they decide it to be, not what the population decides that it should be, as in the south, let’s say. I’m going to say on the side, this may be an actual instance of a familiar and unusually vacuous slogan about the clash of civilization. Maybe there really is one, but not the kind that’s usually touted.

So let’s go back to the evidence that we have, rhetoric and actions. Rhetoric we know, but what are the actions? So far the major actions are selections, in fact the only action, of personnel to implement Brand Obama. The first choice was the Vice President, Joe Biden, one of the strongest supporters of the war in Iraq in the Senate, a long time Washington insider rarely deviates from the party vote. In cases where he does deviate they’re not very uplifting. He did break from the party and voting for a Senate resolution that prevented people from getting rid of their debts by, individuals, that is, from getting rid of their debts by going into bankruptcy. It’s a blow against poor people who’ve caught in this immense debt that’s a large part of the basis for the economy these days. But usually, he’s a, kind of, straight party-liner with the democrats on the sort of ultra naturalist side. The choice of Biden was a, must have been a conscious attempt to show contempt for the base of people who were voting for Obama, or organizing for him as an anti-war candidate.

Well, the first post-election appointment was for Chief of Staff, which is a crucial appointment; determines a large part of the president’s agenda. That was Rahm Emanuel, one of the strongest supporters of the war in Iraq in the House. In fact, he was the only member of the Illinois delegation who voted for Bush’s effective declaration of war. And, again, a longtime Washington insider. Also, one of the leading recipients in congress of funding from the financial institutions hedge funds and so on. He himself was an investment banker. That’s his background. So, that’s the Chief of Staff.

The next group of appointments were the main problem, the primary issue that the governments’ going to have to face is what to do about the financial crisis. Obama’s choices to more or less run this were Robert Rubin and Larry Summers from the Clinton--Secretaries of Treasury under Clinton. They are among the people who are substantially responsible for the crisis. One leading economist, one of the few economists who has been right all along in predicting what’s happening, Dean Baker, pointed out that selecting them is like selecting Osama Bin Laden to run the war on terror.

[laughter]

Yeah, I’ll finish. This saves me the problem of what’s coming next, so I’ll finish with the elections. Let me make one final comment on this. There was meeting on November 7, I think of a group of couple, of a dozen advisers to deal with the financial crisis. Their careers were, records were reviewed in the business press, and Bloomberg News had an article reviewing their records and concluded that these people, most of these people shouldn’t be giving advice about the economy. They should be given subpoenas.

[applause]

Because most of them were involved in one or other form of financial fraud, that includes Rahm Emanuel, for example. What reason is there to think that the people who brought this crisis about are some how going to fix it? Well, that’s a good indication of what’s likely to come next, at least if we look at actions. We couldn’t, but it won’t. You can bring this up. Ask what we expect to see in particular cases. And there’s evidence about that from statements from Obama’s website. I’ll mention just one thing about Obama’s website, which gives an indication of what’s happening. One of the major problems coming is Afghanistan and Pakistan. That’s pretty serious. Take a look at Obama’s website under issues, foreign policy issues. The names don’t even appear. I mean, we’re supposed to be ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. We’re not supposed to know what Brand Obama is. So you can’t find out that way. The statements that you hear are pretty hawkish. And it doesn’t change much as you go through the list. I’ll wrap up here. So it’s up to you to continue.

Times are tough all over

It seems like a daily occurrence now. I open the paper to see another story of people who have fallen on hard times. Maybe it's people struggling to make their mortgage payment. Maybe it's a single mother trying to decide whether to pay the electric bill or put food on the table. Perhaps a young family that cannot afford all the medical care that they need. Or maybe, like today, it's a story of the most drastic cutbacks of all- the very richest are being forced to cut back on gifts and allowances that they give to their mistresses.

Fully 82% of men in the study said they planned to lower the allowances to their mistresses, while more than three quarters planned to provide fewer gifts, less expensive gifts and fewer perks, like jet rides, resort vacations and top restaurant meals.

Yes, it truly is a dark day in America when 80% of multi-millionaires are forced to cutback in this way. 80%!! We need a bailout for extra-marital lovers!! They're vital to the luxury goods portion of economy. Just think about how many people are employed by the resort vacation industry, top restaurants, jewelry sales, not to mention all the aviation jobs provided by all those private jet-rides. Congress better act- and soon! I suggest a modest bailout- perhaps $25 billion? Just enough to get them through the current crisis, without encouraging any moral hazards or windfall profits. Let it never be said in these great United States of America that we failed, during our darkest hours, to take care of those that matter the most!

The Chomsky: United States Has Essentially a One-Party System

Chomsky nails it again. All emphasis mine.

The United States Has Essentially a One-Party System

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Gabor Steingart

Der Spiegel Online, October 10, 2008

SPIEGEL: Professor Chomsky, cathedrals of capitalism have collapsed, the conservative government is spending its final weeks in office with nationalization plans. How does that make you feel?

Chomsky: The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable, its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.

SPIEGEL: What exactly did you anticipate?

Chomsky: In the financial industry, as in other industries, there are risks that are left out of the calculation. If you sell me a car, we have perhaps made a good bargain for ourselves. But there are effects of this transaction on others, which we do not take into account. There is more pollution, the price of gas goes up, there is more congestion. Those are the external costs of our transaction. In the case of financial institutions, they are huge.

SPIEGEL: But isn't it the task of a bank to take risks?

Chomsky: Yes, but if it is well managed, like Goldman Sachs, it will cover its own risks and absorb its own losses. But no financial institution can manage systemic risks. Risk is therefore underpriced, and there will be more risk taken than would be prudent for the economy. With government deregulation and the triumph of financial liberalization, the dangers of systemic risks, the possibility of a financial tsunami, sharply increased.

SPIEGEL: But is it correct to only put the blame on Wall Street? Doesn't Main Street, the American middle class, also live on borrowed money which may or may not be paid back?

Chomsky: The debt burden of private households is enormous. But I would not hold the individual responsible. This consumerism is based on the fact that we are a society dominated by business interests. There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment.

SPIEGEL: How does it benefit politicians when the populace drives a lot, eats a lot and goes shopping a lot?

Chomsky: Consumption distracts people. You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption. The business press has been quite explicit about this goal.

SPIEGEL: A while ago you called America "the greatest country on earth." How does that fit together with what you've been saying?

Chomsky: In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.

SPIEGEL: After travelling through the United States 170 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville reported, "the people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe." Was he a dreamer?

Chomsky: James Madison's position at the Constitutional Convention was that state power should be used "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." That is why the Senate has only a hundred members who are mostly rich and were given a great deal of power. The House of Representatives, with several hundred members, is more democratic and was given much less power. Even liberals like Walter Lippmann, one of the leading intellectuals of the 20th century, was of the opinion that in a properly functioning democracy, the intelligent minority, who should rule, have to be protected from "the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd." Among the conservatives, Vice President Dick Cheney just recently illustrated his understanding of democracy. He was asked why he supports a continuation of the war in Iraq when the population is strongly opposed. His answer was: "So?"

SPIEGEL: "Change" is the slogan of this year's presidential election. Do you see any chance for an immediate, tangible change in the United States? Or, to use use Obama's battle cry: Are you "fired up"?

Chomsky: Not in the least. The European reaction to Obama is a European delusion.

SPIEGEL: But he does say things that Europe has long been waiting for. He talks about the trans-Atlantic partnership, the priority of diplomacy and the reconciling of American society.

Chomsky: That is all rhetoric. Who cares about that? This whole election campaign deals with soaring rhetoric, hope, change, all sorts of things, but not with issues.

SPIEGEL: Do you prefer the team on the other side: the 72 year old Vietnam veteran McCain and Sarah Palin, former Alaskan beauty queen?

Chomsky: This Sarah Palin phenomenon is very curious. I think somebody watching us from Mars, they would think the country has gone insane.

SPIEGEL: Arch conservatives and religious voters seem to be thrilled.

Chomsky: One must not forget that this country was founded by religious fanatics. Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.

SPIEGEL: Is there nothing about McCain that appeals to you?

Chomsky: In one aspect he is more honest than his opponent. He explicitly states that this election is not about issues but about personalities. The Democrats are not quite as honest even though they see it the same way.

SPIEGEL: So for you, Republicans and Democrats represent just slight variations of the same political platform?

Chomsky: Of course there are differences, but they are not fundamental. Nobody should have any illusions. The United States has essentially a one-party system and the ruling party is the business party.

SPIEGEL: You exaggerate. In almost all vital questions -- from the taxation of the rich to nuclear energy -- there are different positions. At least on the issues of war and peace, the parties differ considerably. The Republicans want to fight in Iraq until victory, even if that takes a 100 years, according to McCain. The Democrats demand a withdrawal plan.

Chomsky: Let us look at the "differences" more closely, and we recognize how limited and cynical they are. The hawks say, if we continue we can win. The doves say, it is costing us too much. But try to find an American politician who says frankly that this aggression is a crime: the issue is not whether we win or not, whether it is expensive or not. Remember the Russian invasion of Afghanistan? Did we have a debate whether the Russians can win the war or whether it is too expensive? This may have been the debate at the Kremlin, or in Pravda. But this is the kind of debate you would expect in a totalitarian society. If General Petraeus could achieve in Iraq what Putin achieved in Chechnya, he would be crowned king. The key question here is whether we apply the same standards to ourselves that we apply to others.

SPIEGEL: Who prevents intellectuals from asking and critically answering these questions? You praised the freedom of speech in the United States.

Chomsky: The intellectual world is deeply conformist. Hans Morgenthau, who was a founder of realist international relations theory, once condemned what he called "the conformist subservience to power" on the part of the intellectuals. George Orwell wrote that nationalists, who are practically the whole intellectual class of a country, not only do not disapprove of the crimes of their own state, but have the remarkable capacity not even to see them. That is correct. We talk a lot about the crimes of others. When it comes to our own crimes, we are nationalists in the Orwellian sense.

SPIEGEL: Was there not, and is there not -- in the United States and worldwide -- loud protest against the Iraq war?

Chomsky: The protest against the war in Iraq is far higher than against the war in Vietnam. When there were 4,000 American deaths in Vietnam and 150,000 troops deployed, nobody cared. When Kennedy invaded Vietnam in 1962, there was just a yawn.

SPIEGEL: To conclude, perhaps you can offer a conciliatory word about the state of the nation?

Chomsky: The American society has become more civilized, largely as a result of the activism of the 1960s. Our society, and also Europe's, became freer, more open, more democratic, and for many quite scary. This generation was condemned for that. But it had an effect.

SPIEGEL: Professor Chomsky, we thank you for this interview.

Thomas Jefferson on Banks

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)

Life as a Cog

Life as a Cog

by Mike Jaynes / August 30th, 2008

The disturbing feeling of Cog-ness is slowly creeping into our nation’s educated citizens. By educated, I do not mean those of us with various alphabet soups behind our gentrified names, but those who have begun to realize this American Dream isn’t what we signed up for. And by Cog-ness, I mean the Machine. Much has been written on our quaint and overly mechanized materialistic system and its class slavery, but there is even more ground to cover. The wheel of the world keeps spinning around its eight-to-six slave driving and passionless axis while the outer rim of the super wealthy continues to be supported by the spokes of hard working American types who never take a day off unless they have to and believe in words like Freedom and Justice while possessing neither. And the wheel of America, in its ever accelerating downward roll, continues to squash any country and every culture that happens to wander into its path. For confirmation, examine the tread marks on flattened Iraq, Sudan, and the like. Or google “factory farming” and look at our wonderful factory farmed meat industry. Real warm and fluffy. Hopeful, you know.

We’ve been told that if we work hard, stay honest, do our best, and floss every day we will have good lives. We’ve been told not to complain, believe in God, and keep our heads down; keep a low profile. We’ve heard this our whole lives. The problem, and what inspires considerable stress related gastrointestinal cramps in The Man, is that the inherited sociocultural beliefs of past generations won’t do anymore. They are no longer relevant. Across the country, people are beginning to pay attention and complain with the best of them. But stay in line, we are told. Corporations weed out possible rebels and free spirits with standardized personality and drug testing and the university realm of academia scoffs at any would be teachers lacking multiple graduate degrees on their resumes. As if jumping through various systematic hoops of academic accomplishment proves one dynamic enough, creative enough, and worthy to educate the up and coming troublemakers of tomorrow. The low wage workers, as researchers such as Barbara Ehrenreich tell us, are told to value hard work and not complain and continue to pull the hard unforgiving yoke on the ground floor of the machinery.

And then there is God. Or rather, the popular Americanized version. The drifting vagrant Christ who said Love each other and Do the Right Thing before adorning some knotty pine seems not to be present. America holds God up as a threat to these low wage worker slaves showing them: See? Jesus had it way worse than you, and he didn’t complain. And often the low wage view is skewed as well. Here in East Tennessee, on UT football nights, God is undoubtedly inundated with countless southern inflected twangy voices begging for the Vols to make those two last yards for the first down. This is distressing, and it seems best if we just left the whole subject out of the quest for personal freedom. Often my students are confused, and we examine beliefs on God much like Serge A. Storms’ in Triggerfish Twist: “I’m not saying God doesn’t exist. I believe in God. But he’s not a micromanager, so stop asking Him to drop the crisis in Rwanda and help you find your wallet.”

However, in my experience as a university lecturer in English and the Humanities and an animal advocate, plenty of students are catching on. They are getting the vague and uneasy feeling that overly reductionist religious systems and outdated social codes are selling a comfy cell block box with all the trimmings in which to live, in which to stay in line. Our jailers are masters of deception, and they use chains with such subtle disguising craftsmanship Hephaestus himself would be proud of them. In our comfy ornate boxes, the jailers give us pretty shackles to wear. Not only do we wear them, but we must go out and purchase them and pay for them with our hard earned money (nah, just charge it). Akin to docking a prisoner for his meals, we pull on the woolly snug chains of comfort in complete ignorance. Ipods, absurdly large and flat television screens on which we watch absurdly large and fake heroes. More clothes than anyone could wear, Hummers, overly aggressive predatory student loans, and more. Oh yes, don’t forget the wholesale slaughter of countless animals who think, live, and acutely feel pain. Sure, I realize many feel these purchases are their right. They earned the money or have the credit, so who am I to say these excesses are wrong? Who says we can’t eat animals? I do. The minute you find yourself plopping down huge percentages of your monthly income for unneeded things, you are wrong. I’ve been there as well, so save your righteous indignation. If you have not examined the reasons behind your desire for things, you need to rethink, or perhaps simply think. And that is why my writing and classes often inspire controversy…I feel no reason to subscribe to a hypocritical system of political correctness in which I do not believe. So I feel I am someone who is right and not hesitant to admit it. It is not ego; it is simply truth.

Ah yes, it is a part of my dilettante palm-tree-methodology and life path to live and let live, so don’t expect me to come fire bomb any Hummer dealerships. Been there, done that, so to speak. If you want to eat the cooked flesh of a tortured animal, that is your choice; it is our choice to live as we chose. That, in fact, is one of the only true values America has to offer us. Therefore, hateful small minded responses do not anger me. Rather, I am quite entertained by them because there always is the possibility that my paradigm could be flawed in some way unbeknown to me. You know, I could be wrong. But, materialism, class division, animal slavery, overly reductionist religious institutions, and ignorance are the problems in this society as I see them and unlike so many millions who have came and gone before me quite unnoticed, I don’t have a big interest in faking sincerity and keeping my head down.

Predatory credit card companies, criminal mortgage lenders, slaughterhouses and factory farms, absurd student loan companies, and well spoken politicians who truly do not care about the plight of commoners are all too vocal and powerful and committed to exploiting the lower classes for outrageous financial gain. So why should people who realize the version of Freedom we have been sold has come at the cost of soulless conformity remain politically correct and silent? Why should the cogs keep evenly greased and silently turning? The squeaks of social unrest, class consciousness, and animal/civil rights are quickly greased by cheap government bureaucrats with six part plans efficiently going nowhere. The truth is the poor are simply minor speed bumps on the road to upper class elitism, a minor annoyance with no real teeth, nothing to damage the SUVs of the Very Well Adjusted and Upwardly Mobile. So go ahead, crush them as you ladder climb because it’s completely your right to do so. Go ahead and destroy them and their hopes, you won’t hardly even think about it; it won’t trouble you at all.

Being a system in which one can rise above one’s situation, achieve a higher level of socioeconomic successs, and then haughtily look down on members of one’s previous socioeconomic class, America may not be as Great as they once told us. The present wealth oriented America system depends on the ignorance and placidity of us cogs to stay silent and take what they can give us. Then, after an adult lifetime of crushing labor, we can get a company watch and know that we never started any trouble and kept to ourselves. Perhaps the tombstones of the current American low wage workforce could have a single inscription above a collective mass grave: Good American. Worked Hard. Never Caused Trouble. Socially Accepted. Historically Irrelevant. Not that their one track activism is always the correct approach, but as those mysterious maskers at A.L.F. and E.L.F. would no doubt tell us, there is talking and there is doing. Until the majority of Americans realize our superimposed socioeconomic slavery and decide to raise complete and holy hell, this article — and all others like it — is the worthless talk of self-important academics. Thanks for reading. I’ll be around.