Cheney's offensive defense of his crimes

Ex-Vice President Dick Cheney is trying to keep himself out of prison by going on the offense against President Obma's release of the torture memos. It looks to me like Cheney has violated the law by authorizing specific acts of torture. If the call for justice gathers steam, he would be in the legal crosshairs.

The idea that we should not prosecute these heinous crimes because they are somehow in the past ... is absurd on the face of it. All crimes we prosecute have occurred in the past. We don't yet convict individuals of future crimes. Is there anything more absurd in a nation of law?

The one good thing that should come of Cheney's taking to the soapbox, is that the issue will arouse the people to cry out for justice, to punish — according to our laws — the leaders who thought they could get away with torture.

The Tag Teams: Geithner & Summers vs. Krugman & Stiglitz

Tim Geithner's and Larry Summers' and careers and personal wealth benefited from the recent derivatives bubble. They are up to their armpits — again, career-wise — in support of the bank bailout plan. They are connected, you might say ... in several dimensions.

On the other hand, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economists, say the bank bailout plan is not so hot.

Krugman writes in his column America the Tarnished in The New York Times:

In an article in the current issue of The Atlantic, Mr. Johnson, who served as the chief economist at the I.M.F. and is now a professor at M.I.T., declares that America’s current difficulties are “shockingly reminiscent” of crises in places like Russia and Argentina — including the key role played by crony capitalists.

In America as in the third world, he writes, “elite business interests — financiers, in the case of the U.S. — played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive.”

Stiglitz is quoted in Stiglitz Says Ties to Wall Street Doom Bank Rescue in Bloomberg.com::

All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients,” Stiglitz said in an interview yesterday. The people who designed the plans are “either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent.

If it's tag teams, Geithner & Summers vs. Krugman & Stiglitz, we know who should win ... but in wrestling, you go by the script ...

Let me put it this way ...

Let me give you an example to explain my view of money or "financial instruments".

I have end stage renal disease and I am being evaluated for a kidney transplant. In the evaluation process — looking forward — they told me that if I had a volunteer kidney donor who was not a good tissue match for me, I could participate in a multiparty transplant group where my volunteer would give her/his kidney to someone else and the other person's volunteer would give her/his kidney to me. This could involve as many participants as could be efficiently — in medical terms — handled.

Let's call the agreement between the parties a "transplant agreement" or "transplant instrument". It is quite obvious that the agreement is only worth more than the paper it is printed on IF there are enough kidneys to go around. And if — for example — twice as many agreements come in play as available kidneys because transplant hospitals "sold" more transplant agreements in the short term simply because they could earn a huge profit from selling the transplant agreements ... and then a need for kidneys from individuals holding transplant agreements exceeded the number of actual kidneys available ... Dah! The market would collapse, wouldn't it?

The same is true of money or "financial instruments". They make the exchange of diverse items in multifaceted transactions over time and distance possible ... but only if I am able to get something I want for a price I am willing to pay when I want it ... for the money I have ... unless I can borrow some ...

The Obama (Geithner?) bank bailout plan ... is a swindle

In today's Op Ed piece published March 31st in The New York Times, Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism, Joseph E. Stiglitz lays out the the problem with the Obama (Geithner?) bank bailout plan. It's a swindle of taxpayer money to benefit the banks that helped get us into this mess.

And when we start thinking about the government coordinating the auction of banks' toxic assets ... for the purpose of recapitalizing the banks ... so they can start lending ... so we can start borrowing and spending? What's wrong with this picture?

Geithner seems to believe these toxic assets have real value, and by getting them priced "realistically" it will put the financial system back on its feet.

He probably hasn't visited many ghost towns where the buildings are still standing because they are worth less than the cost of their demolition.

Financial gurus lose sight of the fact that money and other financial instruments have no value in themselves. Their value derives from adding efficiency in making transactions in the market between seemingly diverse elements, including the guarantee of future events ... allowing us to pay for something such as a home or auto over its use life, instead of up front. (However ... when you start paying double-digit interest on groceries bought on a credit card, or lose the means — a job — for making the payments ... dah!)

At the end of the day — as in, "at the end of the bubble" — if there aren't other real goods or services to put up to back up whatever financial instruments are in play ... well, golly gee whiz ... why DO bubbles keep happening? And aren't we watching the Obama financial team repeating the basic "borrow to invest more than we will ever be able to repay (or get back)" of the bubble syndrome?

The new bailout for banks ...

So ... let me get this straight ...

We package these toxic assets ... and put them up for bid ... in an auction where the bidders only have to put up 15% of their winning bid? And the government will match the private money of the bidders dollar for dollar, up to 15%? And the government will loan up to 85% of the purchase price — the winning bid — in a non-recourse loan? (Isn't that one that doesn't have to be paid back?) And this is supposed to provide a market to properly value these assets? Are you kidding me?

A nonrecourse debt or non-recourse debt or nonrecourse loan is a secured loan (debt) that is secured by a pledge of collateral, typically real property, but for which the borrower is not personally liable. If the borrower defaults, the lender/issuer can seize the collateral, but the lender's recovery is limited to the collateral. If the property is insufficient to cover the outstanding loan balance (for example, if real estate prices have dropped), the lender is simply paid out the difference. Thus, non-recourse debt is typically limited to 80% or 90% loan-to-value ratios, so that the property itself provides "overcollateralization" of the loan. The purpose of non-recourse debt is to require lenders to underwrite their loans on a sustainable and prudent basis since the lender is in the first-loss position with these loans, not the borrower.

wikipedia.com

B-b-bu-but the government is simply going to underwrite whatever the winning bid/purchase price is. How is that sustainable or prudent?

In this auction the only thing determining the bid will be what 15% dollar amount are the banks willing to lose to gain the 85% remainder? Gee, I wonder.

See, the banks are going to get paid off at 100% of the purchase price. Now, if a bank loaned the 15% for the private equity in this deal to some type of limited liability company that used the toxic asset to balance whatever liability it carries on their books ... then if the LLC goes belly up when the toxic asset defaults ... well, all the bank would lose is its 15% ... and if Bank A loans the 15% to X LLC that purchases the toxic assets from Bank B, and Bank B loans the 15% to Y LLC that purchases the toxic assets from Bank A ... so it all looks impartial ...

Are you kidding me?

And Geithner or Bernake or Summers are going to coordinate this for the banks?

Are you kidding me?!

Oh ... and check this out: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/#29875591

Variations on a Ponzi theme

Harvard economist Kenneth S. Rogoff, who with Carmen M. Reinhart of the University of Maryland has analyzed 800 years of banking crises. “You can study all the financial crises, and there is a common pattern, that the faster you mark down the assets in the financial system and recapitalize the banks,” the sooner the economy recovers, he says. “As long as you leave the banking system sick, you’re not going to have sustained growth.”

Macroegonomics by Virginia Postrel, an Atlantic contributing editor

There you have it. The financial gurus create the illusion of wealth with variations of Ponzi schemes and other manipulations of the velocity of money and leverage aka borrowing against assets until the bubble they are blowing up can no longer be sustained by the market value of the underlying goods and services we actually need and want ... and the whole thing explodes, forcing the pricing of these goods and services at real market value ... what people are really willing to pay for them outside the illusion of increased value created by the financial schemers aka bankers.

It isn't so much about curing the banks, as it is about getting their excessive illusory wealth wrung out of the money supply, and returning money to its useful place of facilitating the exchange of goods and services that do have value ... their real market value.

Anyone who still thinks the cure is to get the banks to start lending again for the purchase of this generation of goods and services rather than the production of the next generation of goods and services that will in turn create demand ... is out of their ever-loving mind.

Obama picked the wrong players for his economic team

Hey, of course the coach has to take responsibility for the team ... but if you're losing with the players on the floor, shouldn't you be thinking about making some substitutions? Or, is this the best you can do? And what does that say about you?

As Frank Rich writes in his NY Times OpEd column, Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ Arrived?:

"We must have governance to match the message."

We have a ways to go before we reach bottom ...

Together with other Fed programs, the aim is to lower borrowing costs for consumers, businesses and the government. More borrowing and spending, in turn, would bolster the impact of the fiscal stimulus package passed in February.

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that this will work. With unemployment rising, debt loads high and household wealth falling, consumers may be reluctant to resume spending anytime soon, no matter how low rates and prices go. And even if consumers and businesses want to borrow, banks — stung by their own losses — may not be willing to lend.

The Fed Does Battle, Again
The New York Times Editorial
Published: March 20, 2009

Is the Fed crazy? Borrowing and spending what we borrowed got us into this mess. Somehow the financial sector brilliant idiots still think that their pieces of paper actually create wealth ... and not the illusion of wealth ... the bubble.

Until folks are working at jobs that actually create wealth — the goods and services that have value in a transparent and well-regulated market (everyone uses the same weights and measures, for instance) — and are paid a fair return for their labor — the mental and physical effort used in creating that wealth with its historical investment — there is not going to be a turn around.

And as we are still losing jobs faster than we are creating them ... we still have a ways to go before we hit bottom.

Is Obama's credibility now DOA?

If Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, Director of the White House's National Economic Council for President Barack Obama, aren't gone in 60 days then the credibility of Barack Obama's presidency is permanently DOA ... before the end of the initial 100 days of his presidency.

IMHO ...

A few things about us ...

Let's get a few things straight.

We are a tribal animal. How do I (we) know that? We cannot survive as an individual nor as a family. With a solitary human being the future is obvious. The future ends in that person's death. With a family we now know that the gene pool is not robust enough to perpetuate the species.

We are a hunting animal. I would suggest that the biological basis of our human society is caught up in the alpha person leading the hunt ... and then fairly dividing the spoils of the hunt according to tribe's "rules".

Those tribal rules that increased the success of tribal activity led to a more successful tribe.

America's political genius was giving everyone in the hunt a fair reward out of the spoils of the hunt ... the counterpoint to slavery and indentured servitude.

No matter how complex things seem to get, they really stay pretty simple ... if you pay attention.

The lesson of these United States of America is simple

The lesson of these United States of America is simple. Reward the individual fairly out of the material wealth his/her labor creates and the dynamism created in the agrregate of individual motivation within our society will create (created) the greatest society known to the human race.

Some thoughts on the subject ...

Material wealth for human beings is produced by the mental and physical effort of human beings.

The mental and physical effort of human beings is what we define as labor.

The primary economic concern of a just society is the fair distribution of material wealth for the labor that created it.

If in a given society the material wealth contained in the assets of production — the land, buildings, and equipment — becomes more and more centralized in their ownership among fewer and fewer individuals, creating a classification of stored wealth separated from the labor that produced those assets, then that society is no longer just in relationship to a fair distribution of material wealth based on the labor that produced that wealth.

And ... if the centralized accumulation of the assets of production attenuates the fair distribution of material wealth, then the dynamism of our society will also be diminished.

Dah!

On labor, liberty, and the common good

Defining "Labor" as the aggregate of human effort — physical and mental — that produces something of value ... then ... what is wrong with "Labor" that we withhold our labor as human effort from ourselves when the larger economy in which we live and work cannot employ us? "Labor" needs to form something like a "collaborative labor corporation" to employ Labor when the larger economy doesn't ... for whatever reason. Why do we only work to create wealth for others, and consider this — a form of slavery — the primary legitimate or substantive economic structure to use in harnessing the wealth creating potential of human effort? Isn't time we learned from communities like the Amish and the Mormons on how to generate wealth for the common good?

I propose that we explore the development of economic organizing structures that I call "collaborative labor corporations" (CLC) — both profit-making and nonprofit — to create the economic environment where everyone able and willing to work can find work that creates value for which they are fairly rewarded.

All wealth has been produced by human effort — our labor, physical and mental.

That is the underlying fact of any economy.

Human labor is the synergy of our creative imaginations — ideas — and the physical ability to produce the concrete embodiment — products — of our ideas in the time and space continuum of our reality.

The machines and energy that we use to replicate the products of our ideas are also products of human labor. Energy is our product in the sense of our inventing ways to harness it to our directed use.

The organizations, tribes, natons, societies cultures that maximize the output of human labor, the integration of our creative imaginations — think cerebral cortex — and our physical ability — think hands with thumbs — will win the economic race, not as a zero-sum game, but as a collaborative engagement.

The American ideal is (was?) to reward individual effort fairly, relative to the wealth that person's effort creates, regardless of the social status of the individual. Our collective effort then creates our progress. Whenever our progress is guided by liberty in individual choice in a well-regulated market that maximizes the efficiency in transactions derived from trust and transparency, the American economy outpaces anything else known to us and we benefit — not equally, but collectively — if each of us is rewarded for his or her labor fairly. The maximization of human labor collectively is due to the maximization of motivation individually. That is the basic tenet supporting freedom and fairness.

What I call the British Imperialist Model (BIM ... and it's adherents, BIM-bos) is built on the concept that human labor produces wealth for an elite class of individuals who are then free to create the progress of the world. However, when this elite class is allowed to impose its sense of entitlement — its greed — on a society, extracting the wealth of labor to its own purposes — what worked in a feudal society or a slave-based society for some period of time— in a modern economy cycles through boom and bust. Its limitations in maximizing human labor collectively and, hence, the creation of wealth are obvious. However, because it maximizes the wealth of the elite for a time, if they usurp economic power through strategies like the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank, they can and will use their economic power to impose their model.

The only antidote to BIM is democracy, wherein the people can gain a countervailing political power to an elite's economic power. However, democracy devolved into mob rule is the precursor of socioeconomic chaos by being able to disrupt orderly markets.

Again the U.S. has created the most rational form of government yet known to us with the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the individual in a form of federal government with its power divided between the three branches — executive, legislative and judicial — with additional checks and balances in the conduct of elections to elective office.

Addendum: The key to getting us out of the current economic mess the BIM-bos have gotten us into, is not to get the banks working, but to get the American people working. With Americans at work we will once again benefit from the tremendous wealth creation of our human labor. The mantra should be: Every person willing and able to work will be given a job to do, a job that creates value in a market economy.

And this time, let's make sure that those who create the wealth through their human labor, get their fair share of the wealth they help create.

And finally, it is the responsibility of the larger society to actively pursue fairness in the distribution of the wealth our human labor creates. AND it is the responsibility of the individual to participate in the larger society in determining that distribution BUT TO ALSO creatively explore ways to contribute his or her individual human labor to the benefit of the common good.

The reward follows labor. Where we might withhold our human labor from a given organization, we have no right to withhold it from our communiy. We can clean the common areas in our neighborhood. We can volunteer at our local church, synagogue, temple, mosque, food bank or homeless shelter. Whatever we can do to improve the socioeconomic environment benefits the common good of our community. It is only when those of us who are able to perform human labor don't, that we go downhill.

Our mantra requires us to participate in providing work for each and every individual whereby that individual can perform his or her human labor to the benefit of the common good of our community. We then must participate is providing a fair reward for the human labor thus performed. However, the fact that there is a lag at times between performance and receiving the reward, should not deter us from doing the work. We are, after all, embedded in our community, and our human labor benefits our community. It gives us the dignity of doing our part for the common good.

The bailout is a bust!

With a "$2.9 trillion gap between what the economy could produce and what it will actually produce. And $800 billion, while it sounds like a lot of money, isn’t nearly enough to bridge that chasm." -Paul Krugman, Failure to Rise, Published: February 12, 2009, NY Times OpEd.

Then David Brooks chimes in with: "Between 1990 and 2007, the total mortgage debt held by Americans rose from $2.5 trillion to $10.5 trillion." -The Worst-Case Scenario, Published: February 12, 2009, NY Times OpEd. That's $8 Trillion we have to absorb.

What the hell is going on?!

Do the Republicans also believe the bailout is a bust and are positioning themselves to be the political party of "I told you so!"?

And we wonder why the Taliban are willing to destroy the tranquility of their nation for an ideological belief?

THE TALIBAN WING OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.... From time to time in recent years, liberals have identified the "Taliban wing" of the Republican Party -- those conservatives who reject church-state separation, taking marching orders from James Dobson, and wonder why the government doesn't do more to promote and endorse their vision of Christianity.

The phrase is generally considered offensive by most Republicans, and it's easy to understand why. Indeed, no U.S. political contingent wants to be compared to the Taliban.

It came as something of a surprise, then, to see a leading House Republican make the comparison unprompted.

Frustrated by a lack of bipartisan outreach from House Democratic leaders, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said House Republicans -- who voted unanimously last week against the economic plan pushed by President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- will pitch a "positive, loyal opposition" to the proposal. The group, he added, should also "understand insurgency" in implementing efforts to offer alternatives.

"Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban," Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. "And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban -- I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."

He added that if Democrats don't give the minority party more "options or opportunities," Republicans "will then become an insurgency."

- Political Animal
by Steve Benen and Featuring Hilzoy,
February 5, 2009
WashingtonMonthly

Geithner is the fox in the henhouse!

From today's — Tuesday, February 10 — NY Times front page:

Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout
By STEPHEN LABATON and EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: February 9, 2009
WASHINGTON— The Obama administration’s new plan to bail out the nation’s banks was fashioned after a spirited internal debate that pitted the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, against some of the president’s top political hands.
In the end, Mr. Geithner largely prevailed in opposing tougher conditions on financial institutions that were sought by presidential aides, including David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, according to administration and Congressional officials.

Mr. Geithner, who will announce the broad outlines of the plan on Tuesday, successfully fought against more severe limits on executive pay for companies receiving government aid.

He resisted those who wanted to dictate how banks would spend their rescue money. And he prevailed over top administration aides who wanted to replace bank executives and wipe out shareholders at institutions receiving aid.

Because of the internal debate, some of the most contentious issues remain unresolved.

That says it all about the Obama team. They are in the control of the global financier mindset that got us into this economic mess.

Brilliant idiots like Secretary Geithner —running the Federal Reserve Bank of New York while we descended into economic chaos — value their financial acumen over the worth of a tool and die maker ... to the detriment of our modern economy.

It isn't the Republicans we the people have to worry about. They were defeated soundly in the last election. It's the global financial gurus embedded in the Obama administration ... and obviously calling the shots. Do I see feathers in Geithner's smile?

Obama is screwing up the recovery bigtime

It's all over but the shouting. (See What the hell is going on?! below.)

Why? It's simple. Frank Rich lays it out in black and white in his column today, Slumdogs Unite!:

The new president who vowed to change Washington’s culture will have to fight much harder to keep from being co-opted by it instead. There are simply too many major players in the Obama team who are either alumni of the financial bubble’s insiders’ club or of the somnambulant governmental establishment that presided over the catastrophe.

-Frank Rich
Slumdogs Unite!
Ny Times OpEd
Sunday, February 8, 2009

This is going to get ugly ... all because the major players are beholden to the global financial model that got us into this mess in the first place.

Note: I call this the British Imperialism Model or BIM ... and folks like Geithner, Summners, and Rubin (and their ilk) BIM-bos. (See The Republican's plantation mentality ... below.)

Monday, Feb 9, update: Paul Krugman writes in today's column on the NY Times OpEd page, The Destructive Center :

So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good.

For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. “Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,” he declared on Saturday, and “the scale and scope of this plan is right.”

No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t.

Religion as the ground for growing the individual

Some background first ... I attend the West Village Salon Conversation Group. Last Tuesday — the discussion was about the selfishness of being unselfish — to paraphrase from my point of view.

During the discussion two of the members brought up two examples of how small individual contributions to the collective good can keep a "community" functioning for the benefit of the individual. One example was theoretical. The other was a concrete example. Though the concrete example came second in the discussion, I will start with it first.

The coffee serving area at the woman's office was in constant disarray until she set up the "rule" that each person do at least one housekeeping chore whenever they entered the coffee serving area: clean the coffeemaker, make coffee, put any trash in the wastebasket, empty the wastebasket, wipe down the serving area, etc.

They haven't had a problem since.

In the second example, the salon member told how a friend of his — a graduate student in complex systems at a West Coast university — had built a model relating to the mess of dirty dishes that accumulated in the kitchen sink in the students' living area.

In his model he worked out how often each person would have to clean up a given number of extra dishes than their own, to keep the area clean.

As these examples were laid out, I had an epiphany. This was the core value of religion: giving us the rules to keep a community not only from descending into chaos, but establishing the "ground" out of which the individual grows a productive life.

Even as we get our sustenance from our community — the ground of our existence — we have to fertilize/nurture — give back to — the ground. Our basic set of rules not for only giving back but for our expectations of receiving is our religion.

Is a basic rule of the Christian to give without consideration of receiving something in return directly in the reciprocity of the transaction? That I should not give to the powerful and wealthy, expecting favor, but give to "the least of these", as in "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done [it] unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done [it] unto me." -Matthew 25:45 KJV

I think it a basic rule. It is why I call myself a Christian existentialist.

I believe life itself has established an order in the cosmos that dictates that nurturing the ground out of which I grow benefits me in ways that are not — necessarily — directly related to my immediate act. Is this not also the concept of karma?

This concept completes the mind wrap that we expect the reward from our "God", so it is a selfish act.

In this we define ourselves by whom or what we believe to be our "God".

After thought: Those who believe the sole pursuit of self-interest brings the greatest collective good have chosen greed as their "God". Existence repeatedly proves them wrong. It is a short-term illusion.

The Republican's plantation mentality ...

A plantation mentality has taken hold in the Republican Party. It is all about keeping labor costs low. Slave wages (like having a mule) are best, and indentured servitude is next. Note: Is it any wonder the GOP has such a strong base among Southern whites?

This is the carry-over of the British Imperialist Model (BIM) with Lords of Castles and their fiefdoms as the optimum socioeconomic arrangement ... thereby allowing an elite to focus on enriching the culture ... supported in their efforts by the masses producing the wealth the parasitic elite (bim-bos?) feed on.

The American model is the antithesis of both this — the BIM — and the communist model where the "state" dictates the distribution of wealth. We hold to the right of the individual on an equal opportunity basis to receive a fair return for his/her contribution to producing the wealth of our socioeconomic arrangement that includes a basic safety-net for all. We understand this to be the energy/motivation behind our — the greatest ever known to the human race — richly productive economy.

For some reason the currant crop of Republican leaders simply doesn't get it. I think it is because they are caught up in the Biblical model of God rewarding the righteous, so if they have been rewarded then it is their divine right to keep it ... no matter how they got it.

What the hell is going on?!

We all know what we have to do to turn this economy around for the United States. WWII showed us.

Get on a "war" footing and rebuild our infrastructure and start building the next generation of energy producing technology. And just like "weaponry", keep improving it.

But we are not doing it, are we. Why? In my humble opinion, it is because our closet elitists — the British-American Imperialists and their lackeys — are still trying desperately to emasculate labor, reducing wages to the cost of keeping a mule alive: water, food, harness, stall, and medical care for breeding stock.

These greedy one-world bastards — of the lord in the castle surrounded by their doting indentured servants ilk, whose concept of the optimum society is an elite supported in their lifestyle by the labor of an underclass — were orchestrating their version of globalization when their economic house of cards aka Ponzi scheme came crashing down.

Whereas the American ideal — IMHO — is that of equal opportunity and fairness in distributing the wealth we all help create.

The British-American Imperialists — my label — are now desperately trying to stave off the return of fair wages for labor which would mark the end of their one world dreams. They are willing to sacrifice the future of our nation on the alter of their insane lust for power and wealth.

Addendum 8:40 AM Monday, February 16, 2009:

If you want to see what it really takes to boot the economy out of a debt trap, look at the large public works program, otherwise known as World War II, that ended the Great Depression. The war didn’t just lead to full employment. It also led to rapidly rising incomes and substantial inflation, all with virtually no borrowing by the private sector. By 1945 the government’s debt had soared, but the ratio of private-sector debt to G.D.P. was only half what it had been in 1940. And this low level of private debt helped set the stage for the great postwar boom.

Since nothing like that is on the table, or seems likely to get on the table any time soon, it will take years for families and firms to work off the debt they ran up so blithely. The odds are that the legacy of our time of illusion — our decade at Bernie’s — will be a long, painful slump.

— NY Times Op-Ed Column
Decade at Bernie’s
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 15, 2009

Is Hamas Israel's foster child?

I cannot remain silent about Israel's disproportionate response to Hamas in Gaza. NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes a column in today's paper that we all should read and ponder ... and then we should respond in some manner.

The Gaza Boomerang
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: January 7, 2009
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/opinion/08kristof.html

At a time when Israel is bombing Gaza to try to smash Hamas, it’s worth remembering that Israel itself helped nurture Hamas.

When Hamas was founded in 1987, Israel was mostly concerned with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement and figured that a religious Palestinian organization would help undermine Fatah. Israel calculated that all those Muslim fundamentalists would spend their time praying in the mosques, so it cracked down on Fatah and allowed Hamas to rise as a counterforce.

Art as transcendental resonance ...

I believe all art forms have the potential to create transcendental resonance out of the dissonance of my isolation ... an isolation "produced" by my having sought identity in things I own rather than in relationships within my community of extended family and friends ...

I use my writing ... plus reading poetry aloud ... to merge my consciousness into the transcendental.

What do I mean by that: "merge my consciousness into the transcendental"?

I turn off my mind's ongoing discussion with itself and let it explore its depths as deep as the art will take me. My awareness comes out of the biological existence of my life-form ... and its biological evolution ... a connectedness stretching back to the dawn of life. I have a sensitivity to the variations of my environment ... going back eons. Words are a late arrival in my mind ... in evolution time.

Walking among Henry Moore's large sculptures in the New York Botanical Gardens this fall ... I experienced connectedness with the transcendental nature of the cosmos ... I 'knew' that the expression of human existence was fashioning ongoingness with unity expressed as love out of the chaos of integral systems interacting randomly.

Others express similar experiences with music ... and — in my opinion and from my childhood experiences from going to church regularly — music is recognized as deepening the spiritual experience ... which to me is feeling or sensing connectedness to the transcendental nature of the cosmos ... in the moment ... now ... turning off my mind's ongoing discussion with itself ... thus — philosophically — completing the concept.

Posted By: hglindquist I 'knew' that the expression of human existence was fashioning ongoingness with unity expressed as love out of the chaos of integral systems interacting randomly.

Let me explain my pov ... for those who may be new to some of these concepts.

Death and decay fertilizes new life in a myriad of life-forms from microscopic bacteria to giant sequoia, which in turn feed numerous small animals ... and this food chain thriving on a planet bathed in a daily cycle of sunlight ... creating wind and rain as well as energizing life ... everything in its own definable "system" ... that in a chaotic mix of periodic, random, and randomly periodic interaction with other systems ... produced/produces the environment in which we evolved/evolve and now live ... amidst a gigantic universe of known systems contained in the cosmos of everything.

We humans "make sense" of our environment in order to live ... we learn how to feed and take care of ourselves ... and to nurture our children, our offspring ... the next generation ... to whom we feel a strong bond of love ... love being the desire that we want positive outcomes for the object of our love ... (thus hate is wanting negative outcomes for those we hate) ... as we try to anticipate the future, first as seasons and cycles ... to now where we know that our sun will someday expand and consume our planet ...

I believe the strongest bond of love is between parents and their children. Love is what guarantees the survival of the next generation. Therefore, love is a "glue" of the transcendental character of the cosmos ... a positive expression of ongoingness within the cosmos. Without it, the strong parent would prey upon the weaker child whenever the going got rough ... as we see in some other life-forms ... it is the emergence of love that allows us to exist with hope of a future for our life-form continuing to expand our understanding of our environment ... out into the universe ... giving us a chance at surviving beyond the existence of earth as an environment.

Now ... a couple of things ... it doesn't matter to an existentialist — myself — whether or not the cosmos had/has a purpose in the emergence of love. Love has emerged out of existence ... much as awareness has emerged out of existence. What matters is whether or not we BELIEVE the cosmos has purpose independent of existence ... which for many is the belief in God. I do not believe the cosmos has purpose outside of its existence.

And at another level, it seems that the "tribe" is the smallest social unit that can guarantee the survival of the human species ... because of the need for a gene pool sufficiently varied to provide healthy offspring ... which interjects the dimensions of social boundaries ... and the evolved sense of loyalty to one's own tribe versus the tribe on the other side of the river or mountain or whatever separates us.

I believe over the eons of evolution we evolved the capacity to intuitively recognize our "tribe" and feel an emotional bond with members. My hypothesis is that it is the loss of active engagement of these emotions when we become "non-tribal" that creates the sense of ennui requiring constant stimulation in so many modern young people. This ennui is compounded when our emotional bonding for identity becomes connected to things we own rather than relationships with other ... because we do not get the emotional "feedback" necessary to have the "climax" of engagement ... except from our dogs ... which, in fact, goes a long way toward proving my point.

Art provides a transcendental resonance that engages otherwise "unconnected" emotions in a satisfying and fulfilling real experience.

Notes:

- Details of my trip to the New York Botanical Garden are at Henry Moore sculptures at The New York Botanical Garden.

- The first part of this post was first written as a comment in the End of Life Issues blog on Maplewood Online.