There is no Chicago-school free market solution to an oligopoly.
We like to make fun of government in this country, but really, what are you and a few of your buddies going to do to fight JPMorgan Chase on your own?
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of a private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power. —Franklin Delano RooseveltJames Wooley:
It is important to remember the primary product of Wall Street: the peddling of debt.
Often one hears of the necessity of Wall Street bankers for providing seed money for industry; but year after year we have observed them dismantling factories and shipping them overseas. We have observed them dismantling production facilities and shipping them overseas. We have observed them dismantling research and development laboratories and shipping them overseas
And year after year we have observed them ship all those jobs and careers overseas along with those facilities.
Dismantle, dismantle, dismantle is what we have observed. They securitize, and promote the privatization and securitization of everything. Then they transfer their private debt, from whence their millions and billions flow into their coffers, to the public, and then it becomes the public debt (or rather the public’s debt!).
Profiteering.
And what is the point? To enrich a few and to impoverish the many. As usual.
Those at the top of the pile tend to stay there.
I would argue that free market ideology has been distorted by elites as a means of justifying kleptocracy.
For any ranked society, whether a chiefdom or a state, one thus has to ask: why do the commoners tolerate the transfers of the fruits of their hard labor to kleptocrats?
Deric Bownds's Mind Blog:We find that significantly more tickets are issued in the year following a decline in revenue.
Our results suggest that tickets are used as a revenue‐generation tool rather than solely a means to increase public safety.
"We showed that low levels of dopamine receptors were associated with low social status and that high levels of dopamine receptors were associated with higher social status."
Ponder this nugget from Sarah Palin's Teabagger speech.Six studies demonstrate that interrupting a consumption experience can make pleasant experiences more enjoyable and unpleasant experiences more irritating, even though consumers avoid breaks in pleasant experiences and choose breaks in unpleasant experiences.Take a break, or not.
She says all poems are about love.What brought the banks down was not speculative bets in volatile markets but what appeared to be ultra-safe investments in the most conservative assets available, namely medium-term bonds rated Aaa/AAA by Moody's and Standard & Poor's, the major rating agencies.
The US Federal Reserve agreed to allow the banks to put on more leverage (that is, allocate less of their own capital against prospective losses) than they had in the past. But the Fed agreed to do this only for assets that were supposed to be virtually default-proof. The ratings agencies "sold their soul to the devil", as a Standard & Poor's analyst admitted in an e-mail later brought to light by a congressional investigation, in order to rubber-stamp riskier assets with the AAA label.
But that's because the banks couldn't find enough prime assets in which to invest and had to find subprime assets to replace them.
...
There is nothing wrong in principle with Paul Volcker's call for banking caution. But the problems of the banking system can't be separated from the larger economic picture.
Without a way to match the aging savers of the industrial world with the young workers and entrepreneurs of the global south, banking problems will persist no matter what regulatory regime prevails.
Todd Palin and senior officials reach into countless areas of state government and politics: potential board appointees, constituent complaints, use of the state jet, oil and gas production, marine regulation, gas pipeline bids, postsecondary education, wildfires, native Alaskan issues, the state effort to save the Matanuska Maid dairy, budget planning, potential budget vetoes, oil shale leasing, "strategy for responding to media allegations," staffing at the mansion, pier diem payments to the governor for travel, "strategy for responding to questions about pregnancy," potential cuts to the governor's staff, "confidentiality issues," Bureau of Land Management land transfers and trespass issues and requests to the U.S. transportation secretary.
Understanding the motivations of the architects of the modern world reveals a startling picture of greed, callousness and ignorance.Lord Macaulay in the British Parliament on 2nd Feb 1835:
"I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief.
Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation."
We had all watched and marveled as Sullenberger and Stiles ditched that Airbus so deftly in the Hudson River. Continental/Colgan 3407 was the negative image of that event.
From Sully – to sullied.
The two crashes offer cases in point for the consequences of a fundamental change in the way we fly in this country that you probably have not noticed. Since deregulation in the late seventies, the large, legacy carriers have outsourced much of their flying...
We are just poor weak human beings,
Resisting the call
Because we cease and desist
our belief in all we can offer
Somehow we have created
single places upon which everything hinges
and when we are put in those spaces
we confront our smallness, see it in
perspective because none of us are
big enough to be the change others expect
and we have long stopped fooling ourselves.
To confront our own smallness is terrifying
especially when people project bigness on us -
the scale of challenge, the scope of our capability.
The I we are through other people’s eyes
is never the me we see through our own.
Know this - you have been chosen only to live.
It is never over until you leave.
the only line you ever cross
is the one you choose to draw.
"The white blood cell stalks its prey tirelessly. It can consume more than three times its physical size in a single day."Just super!
Our military budget is 13 percent higher than at the peak of the Korean War, 33 percent higher than at the peak of the Vietnam War, 12 percent higher than at the peak of the Cold War and 64 percent higher than the Cold War average.Dwight D. Eisenhower:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.Biggest US Defence Budget Since WW2
Fred Kaplan | Slate | 1 February 2010
At $708bn, 2011 defense budget 23% higher in real terms than Cold-War peak.
Like us, developing countries are simultaneously becoming obese and under-nourished, because the 'diseases of affluence' are not diseases of affluence at all but diseases of an over-simplified diet.
Reagan and Republicans convinced us that favoring the wealthy, relying on trickle-down and untethered markets... you know the story.“In China, when you’re one-in-a-million, there are 1,300 other people just like you.” - Bill GatesMichael Pettis replies:
If China indeed has the same distribution of geniuses, or talent, as other countries, the fact that it has so many people won’t make it richer.Yes, some are saying China is undergoing a speculative bubble that makes it the equivalent of “Dubai times 1,000 – or worse”.
On the way into Manhattan today my cab driver, Bubu, asked me what my impression of Africa was. I admitted that it was limited - I had only spent a week there, most of it in a middle class suburb or on a safari ranch and all of it in the company of middle class people.
But I said that the overwhelming impression was that Africa differed from North America in a key way: in Africa, the truth is valued above everything else.
Here in North America we are quick to sacrifice truth at the alter of a happy ending but African stories would never do that.
A personal blog about ideas, written by a hardworking fellow who is big on love, tolerance, freedom and the human potential.
Ask not.
Take everything.
Even my poverty.
Brian Hayes produces the One Stop Thought Shop as a blog to capture smart and interesting ideas and technologies and social commentary. This blog doesn't tell you about what there is on the breakfast menu nor about mood or dinner dates. Instead the One Stop Thought Shop provides education and insight about breakthrough science, technology and our modern world. This is a good site for learning new things.
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