more from this artist
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Hey U.S! Welcome to the third world!
nice LA times article by Rory Brooks:
Dear United States, Welcome to the Third World!
It's not every day that a superpower makes a bid to transform itself into a Third World nation, and we here at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to be among the first to welcome you to the community of states in desperate need of international economic assistance. As you spiral into a catastrophic financial meltdown, we are delighted to respond to your Treasury Department's request that we undertake a joint stability assessment of your financial sector. In these turbulent times, we can provide services ranging from subsidized loans to expert advisors willing to perform an emergency overhaul of your entire government.
As you know, some outside intervention in your economy is overdue. Last week -- even before Wall Street's latest collapse -- 13 former finance ministers convened at the University of Virginia and agreed that you must fix your "broken financial system." Australia's Peter Costello noted that lately you've been "exporting instability" in world markets, and Yashwant Sinha, former finance minister of India, concluded, "The time has come. The U.S. should accept some monitoring by the IMF."
We hope you won't feel embarrassed as we assess the stability of your economy and suggest needed changes. Remember, many other countries have been in your shoes. We've bailed out the economies of Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea. But whether our work is in Sudan, Bangladesh or now the United States, our experts are committed to intervening in national economies with care and sensitivity.
We thus want to acknowledge the progress you have made in your evolution from economic superpower to economic basket case. Normally, such a process might take 100 years or more. With your oscillation between free-market extremism and nationalization of private companies, however, you have successfully achieved, in a few short years, many of the key hallmarks of Third World economies.
Your policies of irresponsible government deregulation in critical sectors allowed you to rapidly develop an energy crisis, a housing crisis, a credit crisis and a financial market crisis, all at once, and accompanied (and partly caused) by impressive levels of corruption and speculation. Meanwhile, those of your political leaders charged with oversight were either napping or in bed with corporate lobbyists.
Take John McCain, your Republican presidential nominee, whose senior staff includes half a dozen prominent former lobbyists. As he recently put it, "I was chairman of the [Senate] Commerce Committee that oversights every part of the economy." No question about it: Your leaders' failure to notice the damage done by irresponsible deregulation was indeed an oversight of epic proportions.
Now you are facing the consequences. Income inequality has increased, as the rich have gotten windfalls while the middle class has seen incomes stagnate. Fewer and fewer of your citizens have access to affordable housing, healthcare or security in retirement. Even life expectancy has dropped. And when your economic woes went from chronic to acute, you responded -- like so many Third World states have -- with an extensive program of nationalizing private companies and assets. Your mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now state owned and controlled, and this week your reinsurance giant AIG was effectively nationalized, with the Federal Reserve Board seizing an 80% equity stake in the flailing company.
Some might deride this as socialism. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
Admittedly, your transition to Third World status is far from over, and it won't be painless. At first, for instance, you may find it hard to get used to the shantytowns that will replace the exurban sprawl of McMansions that helped fuel the real estate speculation bubble. But in time, such shantytowns will simply become part of the landscape. Similarly, as unemployment rates continue to rise, you will initially struggle to find a use for the expanding pool of angry, jobless young men. But you will gradually realize that you can recruit them to fight in a ceaseless round of armed conflicts, a solution that has been utilized by many other Third World states before you. Indeed, with your wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you are off to an excellent start.
Perhaps this letter comes as a surprise to you, and you feel you're not fully ready to join the Third World. Don't let this feeling concern you. Though you may never have realized it, you've been preparing for this moment for years.
SOURCE: http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-oe-brooks18-2008sep18,0,2481300.column
Dear United States, Welcome to the Third World!
It's not every day that a superpower makes a bid to transform itself into a Third World nation, and we here at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to be among the first to welcome you to the community of states in desperate need of international economic assistance. As you spiral into a catastrophic financial meltdown, we are delighted to respond to your Treasury Department's request that we undertake a joint stability assessment of your financial sector. In these turbulent times, we can provide services ranging from subsidized loans to expert advisors willing to perform an emergency overhaul of your entire government.
As you know, some outside intervention in your economy is overdue. Last week -- even before Wall Street's latest collapse -- 13 former finance ministers convened at the University of Virginia and agreed that you must fix your "broken financial system." Australia's Peter Costello noted that lately you've been "exporting instability" in world markets, and Yashwant Sinha, former finance minister of India, concluded, "The time has come. The U.S. should accept some monitoring by the IMF."
We hope you won't feel embarrassed as we assess the stability of your economy and suggest needed changes. Remember, many other countries have been in your shoes. We've bailed out the economies of Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea. But whether our work is in Sudan, Bangladesh or now the United States, our experts are committed to intervening in national economies with care and sensitivity.
We thus want to acknowledge the progress you have made in your evolution from economic superpower to economic basket case. Normally, such a process might take 100 years or more. With your oscillation between free-market extremism and nationalization of private companies, however, you have successfully achieved, in a few short years, many of the key hallmarks of Third World economies.
Your policies of irresponsible government deregulation in critical sectors allowed you to rapidly develop an energy crisis, a housing crisis, a credit crisis and a financial market crisis, all at once, and accompanied (and partly caused) by impressive levels of corruption and speculation. Meanwhile, those of your political leaders charged with oversight were either napping or in bed with corporate lobbyists.
Take John McCain, your Republican presidential nominee, whose senior staff includes half a dozen prominent former lobbyists. As he recently put it, "I was chairman of the [Senate] Commerce Committee that oversights every part of the economy." No question about it: Your leaders' failure to notice the damage done by irresponsible deregulation was indeed an oversight of epic proportions.
Now you are facing the consequences. Income inequality has increased, as the rich have gotten windfalls while the middle class has seen incomes stagnate. Fewer and fewer of your citizens have access to affordable housing, healthcare or security in retirement. Even life expectancy has dropped. And when your economic woes went from chronic to acute, you responded -- like so many Third World states have -- with an extensive program of nationalizing private companies and assets. Your mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now state owned and controlled, and this week your reinsurance giant AIG was effectively nationalized, with the Federal Reserve Board seizing an 80% equity stake in the flailing company.
Some might deride this as socialism. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
Admittedly, your transition to Third World status is far from over, and it won't be painless. At first, for instance, you may find it hard to get used to the shantytowns that will replace the exurban sprawl of McMansions that helped fuel the real estate speculation bubble. But in time, such shantytowns will simply become part of the landscape. Similarly, as unemployment rates continue to rise, you will initially struggle to find a use for the expanding pool of angry, jobless young men. But you will gradually realize that you can recruit them to fight in a ceaseless round of armed conflicts, a solution that has been utilized by many other Third World states before you. Indeed, with your wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you are off to an excellent start.
Perhaps this letter comes as a surprise to you, and you feel you're not fully ready to join the Third World. Don't let this feeling concern you. Though you may never have realized it, you've been preparing for this moment for years.
SOURCE: http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-oe-brooks18-2008sep18,0,2481300.column
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The $700B Bailout
Here is a post from a redditor that sums up his/her opinion on the proposed $700 Billion line of credit bailout that Paulson has proposed. I thought it was interesting:
This is Reality, not Fantasy Land. Housing prices have to be affordable, have to reflect the actual ratio of 3-4 times the income of buyers.
The plan doesn't do jack. The fundamental problem is that housing prices are three times greater than the income ratio of people who would buy those houses.
There's only two possible outcomes to solve this problem:
1) Everybody's income triples.
2) Housing prices collapse by 66%.
That's it. Everybody who is making $40K a year this month starts making $120K a year next month. Or those median $250K houses drop in price to $85K.
With approximately 100M homes in the US, a 50% drop in prices at a $225K median represents a wealth loss of $11 TRILLION. Not ONE TRILLION. Not $700 BILLION. ELEVEN FUCKING TRILLION DOLLARS.
The fundamental problem is too big to be solved by government because the inflation of the money supply which occurred is massively beyond the wildest comprehension of 99.99% of the people. Why do you think the Federal Reserve stopped printing the M3 total money supply number which reflects all outstanding credit and all outstanding currency?
So you spend $11 TRILLION to keep people in their houses by keeping prices inflated, and what does that do? NOTHING. It leaves us in the exact same position as before where house prices are not affordable by first time buyers, and nobody further up the housing chain can sell and upgrade, except another ELEVEN FUCKING TRILLION DOLLARS has been blown up in not affordable housing.
And the bubble isn't just in housing. It's in Health Care. It's in College Education Prices that are more per year at private universities than the parents' incomes of 50% of the people going to those schools! It's in Wall Street Credit Default Swap Derivatives. This is the MOTHER LOAD end game of massive fiat currency inflation counterfeiting of the money supply.
What's the difference between a one dollar bill, a five dollar bill, a twenty dollar bill, a fifty dollar bill, a hundred dollar bill? They are all printed on the exact same rectangular piece of non scarce worthless paper!
see more comments on the matter here
This is Reality, not Fantasy Land. Housing prices have to be affordable, have to reflect the actual ratio of 3-4 times the income of buyers.
The plan doesn't do jack. The fundamental problem is that housing prices are three times greater than the income ratio of people who would buy those houses.
There's only two possible outcomes to solve this problem:
1) Everybody's income triples.
2) Housing prices collapse by 66%.
That's it. Everybody who is making $40K a year this month starts making $120K a year next month. Or those median $250K houses drop in price to $85K.
With approximately 100M homes in the US, a 50% drop in prices at a $225K median represents a wealth loss of $11 TRILLION. Not ONE TRILLION. Not $700 BILLION. ELEVEN FUCKING TRILLION DOLLARS.
The fundamental problem is too big to be solved by government because the inflation of the money supply which occurred is massively beyond the wildest comprehension of 99.99% of the people. Why do you think the Federal Reserve stopped printing the M3 total money supply number which reflects all outstanding credit and all outstanding currency?
So you spend $11 TRILLION to keep people in their houses by keeping prices inflated, and what does that do? NOTHING. It leaves us in the exact same position as before where house prices are not affordable by first time buyers, and nobody further up the housing chain can sell and upgrade, except another ELEVEN FUCKING TRILLION DOLLARS has been blown up in not affordable housing.
And the bubble isn't just in housing. It's in Health Care. It's in College Education Prices that are more per year at private universities than the parents' incomes of 50% of the people going to those schools! It's in Wall Street Credit Default Swap Derivatives. This is the MOTHER LOAD end game of massive fiat currency inflation counterfeiting of the money supply.
What's the difference between a one dollar bill, a five dollar bill, a twenty dollar bill, a fifty dollar bill, a hundred dollar bill? They are all printed on the exact same rectangular piece of non scarce worthless paper!
see more comments on the matter here
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Keeping it Real ... GDP
Let us analyze this graph.
- Real GDP Per capita in western countries is over 12 times that of those in Africa.
- REAL GDP in Africa is equivalent to that of western countries IN 1850. In other words, where Britain was in 1850, Africa is today.
- although there was miniscule growth in GDP in Africa from 1900 to 1960...it flattened after this. The 1960s were, coincidentally, when independence was granted to many of the African colonies.
-Asia after 1960, rapidly overtakes Africa, and now has almost double Africa's Real GDP per Capita.
These are OECD Figures.
Where did Asia go right that Africa went wrong? How can we rectify this?
Analysis on this issue can fill many volumes. This will be examined in the upcoming months.
The Woman in the Red Dress
Morpheus speaks:
The matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy.
But when you're inside, look around, what do you see?
Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters,
the very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do these same people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy.
You have to understand that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged.
And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.
The matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy.
But when you're inside, look around, what do you see?
Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters,
the very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do these same people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy.
You have to understand that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged.
And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.
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