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Mammon, child of Pride

“We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.

If you have not chosen the kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.”

William Law


"Day by day the money-masters of America become more aware of their danger, they draw together, they grow more class-conscious, more aggressive. The [first world] war has taught them the possibilities of propaganda; it has accustomed them to the idea of enormous campaigns which sway the minds of millions and make them pliable to any purpose.

American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and assemblies to keep them from doing the people's will and protecting the people's interests; it was the exploiter entrenching himself in power, it was financial autocracy undermining and destroying political democracy.  By the blindness and greed of ruling classes the people have been plunged into infinite misery."

Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check


"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction."

Erich Fromm

Greed does not need— it wants.  It is a sickness that consumes, and craves more.  Until it consumes itself.

Visiting in-laws, extended family, and the newborn from the youngest goddaughter makes his debut.

It was a very good day.

Have a pleasant evening.

Wall St Pleads For More Government Subsidies and Handouts In NYT Op-Ed

"It was the incarnation of blind insensate Greed. It was a monster devouring with a thousand mouths, trampling with a thousand hoofs: it was The Great Butcher — it was the spirit of Capitalism made flesh."

Upton Sinclair

"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction."

Erich Fromm

Surely you cannot be surprised by this headline.

Greed is incapable of having enough, by its very definition.

It does not need.  But it always wants-- more.

Wall Street On Parade

Wall Street Front Group Pleads for Government Help in New York Times OpEd

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

June 17, 2015

After the U.S. government pumped the secret, astronomical sum of more than $13 trillion into Wall Street during the years surrounding the 2008 financial crisis to bail it out of its own greedy and reckless gambles, Wall Street is shamelessly asking for more government handouts in the opinion pages of the New York Times. The woman pitching this pathetic poppycock, Kathryn S. Wylde, was actually on the Board of Directors at the New York Fed during the crisis – the very institution that sluiced the secret $13 trillion into Wall Street’s coffers.

If you live outside of New York City, you’ve never heard of the Partnership for New York City. Even if you live inside New York City, unless you’re part of the black tie cocktail circuit, you’ve still never heard of the group. So when the New York Times gave a chunk of its opinion pages on Monday to Wylde as President and CEO of the Partnership for New York City to plead for government help for Wall Street, it really needed to do the ethical thing and fess up that this is a brazen front group for the financial services industry...

One sharp-eyed New Yorker caught this red flag in Wylde’s pitch in the New York Times when she was spinning how vital Wall Street is to the city’s economy. Wylde wrote:

“All told, the [financial services] industry accounts for 62 percent of private-sector wages in the city, and more than one-third of its $700 billion annual economic output. It contributes about $8 billion a year in city taxes — equivalent to the combined budgets of the city’s police, fire and sanitation departments — and one-quarter ($2.5 billion) of personal income taxes.”

A comment was posted by “David H” noting the following interesting math in the above:

“According to Ms. Wylde, the financial industry accounts for 62 percent of private-sector wages in the city, but only one quarter of personal income taxes. This strikes me as an empirical basis for a very different op-ed.”

Kelly Boling of Hudson, New York commented along the same lines:

“Let’s indeed invest in the infrastructure needed to keep New York globally competitive–and pay for it by requiring financial service executives to pay taxes on their incomes and capital gains at rates equal to the effective tax rates paid by New York’s middle class.”

...This shameless propaganda piece, in drag as an OpEd from some civic organization, was titled: “Yes, Wall Street Needs Help.” We certainly agree. But it’s more along the lines of psychiatric help for having the temerity to ask for a handout for its billionaires when the Coalition for the Homeless reports that the number of homeless New Yorkers sleeping in municipal shelters is 72 percent higher than a decade ago and has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression; when there are an estimated 1.3 million children and teens enrolled in public schools across the U.S. who are homeless – an 85 percent increase since the start of the Wall Street recession; and when Wall Street even gets tax perks to ghoulishly and secretly collect billions of dollars each year on the tragic deaths of workers...

Read the entire piece at Wall Street On Parade here.

Do not be surprised if there is another financial crisis, and the Banks come back again with a long list of demands, threatening chaos and despair if they are not swiftly granted all that they desire, either openly or secretively.  Why wouldn't they?

Remember Jesse's Law. 

Since money is power, the greater the concentration of money in a society, the greater will be the concentration of power.   And therefore the less free and broadly productive it will be, and the more inclined that this power will be to narrowly private abuses. 

Unregulated greed will rise to exceed and eventually overwhelm all rational expectations of theoretical market behavior because men are not angels.  And further, there is a determined minority in any society that is given over to irrational behavior and pathological obsessions that delights in abusing reason and rules, even to their own eventual destruction.

Rational expectations, and therefore market and social forces and their models, will fail when undermined by the unbridled greed for money and power.   

History proves this.

 

Thomas Frank: Pity the Billionaires, Marxism for the Master Class

“Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society....to justify and extol human greed and egotism.”

Gore Vidal


"It is not Man but nature that raises into one class those who are chiefly intellectual, in another those who are marked by muscular strength and temperament, and in a third those who are distinguished in neither one way or the other, but show only mediocrity -- the last-named represents the great majority, and the first two the select. The superior caste -- I call it the fewest -- has, as the most perfect, the privileges of the few...

The order of castes, the order of rank, simply formulates the supreme law of life itself; the separation of the three types is necessary to the maintenance of society, and to the evolution of higher types, and the highest types -- the inequality of rights is essential to the existence of any rights at all. A right is a privilege. Everyone enjoys the privileges that accord with his state of existence.

Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of equal rights."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Der AntiChrist

In light of the recent outcries by billionaire Tom Perkins for fair and loving treatment, I thought it might be interesting to explore the mindset that pictures the doyens of Wall Street, and those who have taken fortunes out of the dot.com and housing bubbles, as the real victims of the financial collapse and The Recovery™.

I think that part of this comes from the phenomenon that for some people, gratitude is their natural response to good fortune, even if it has come from hard work. Whereas others are possessed by a restlessness, an insatiable spirit, and their response to everything is 'I deserve more!.' 

Tom Perkins not only wishes his wealth, and his banal collection of toys, but he wishes to have public adulation as well, or at least the power to compel people to defer to him.

Mr. Frank thinks that this time around the cultural response to a Great Depression is 'backwards,' as compared to that of the 1930's, and one might tend to agree. There certainly has not been the rising of a national sympathy for victims, or a proper outrage at the arrogance and excesses of the financiers.

But this might overlook the fact that the US was a bit of an outlier back then, as only a few countries turned towards progressive reforms, while other developed nations embraced the hardness of totalitarianism, and even went so far as systematically murdering the weak.

But it is a mistake that the US is some sort of paragon, if one recalls John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The allure of selfishness and evil is a natural tendency that we overlook in our economic models, among other things. And we certainly ought not overlook the consecration of the country to the principle that 'greed is good,' or more plainly to Mammon, in the latter part of the last century.

I agree with him that Obama has been a pivotal disappointment, and I was interested to hear the reasons why he thought this was so.  Overall I found his perspective to be interesting, as though he was not an American historian and journalist, but some foreign observer sharing an exterior perspective of wonderment.

I have started the tape beyond the introductory remarks and welcomes at this talk he gave in Seattle.

"Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.

This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.

He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J.H.Newman, The Times of Antichrist

Chris Hedges On the Current State Of Journalism and Post-Literate Society - The Age of Spectacle

"In our age, the idea of intellectual liberty is under attack from two directions. On the one side are its theoretical enemies, the apologists of totalitarianism, and on the other its immediate, practical enemies, monopoly and bureaucracy. Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his integrity finds himself thwarted by the general drift of society rather than by active persecution. The sort of things that are working against him are the concentration of the press in the hands of a few rich men, the grip of monopoly on radio and the films, the unwillingness of the public to spend money on books...

Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading...

The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism. The issue truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background...

The organized lying practiced by totalitarian states is not, as is sometimes claimed, a temporary expedient of the same nature as military deception. It is something integral to totalitarianism, something that would still continue even if concentration camps and secret police forces had ceased to be necessary...

Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable.

It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes.

Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. (cf. truthiness - Jesse)

Meanwhile, totalitarianism has not fully triumphed everywhere. Our own society is still, broadly speaking, liberal. To exercise your right of free speech you have to fight against economic pressure and against strong sections of public opinion, but not, as yet, against a secret police force. You can say or print almost anything so long as you are willing to do it in a hole-and-corner way.

But what is sinister, as I said at the beginning of this essay, is that the conscious enemies of liberty are those to whom liberty ought to mean most. The big public do not care about the matter one way or the other. They are not in favour of persecuting the heretic, and they will not exert themselves to defend him. They are at once too sane and too stupid to acquire the totalitarian outlook. The direct, conscious attack on intellectual decency comes from the intellectuals themselves."

George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature, 1946

I feel compelled to say an explanatory word or two about Chris Hedges at this point, about what it is that I 'like' about him, and to answer a couple of inquiries about why some others prefer to ignore him, besides the usual suspects as they say.

As I have said previously, politically I am almost a perfect centrist, in the classical sense of the term. I say this after having taken yet another 'objective test' to place myself on the political spectrum. I do not hold this out as anything of significance other than to say, this is pretty much where I come out, where I am in my thinking at this stage in my life. It is a hard place to be, because one sees the world in shades of grays, in all its complexity, without the comfort of easy forms in black and white. It requires quite a bit more thought and effort than most can afford.

Hedges is a socialist, self-admittedly. And I am not. I am a believer in markets, but in sound regulation of them by an objective, publicly controlled organization, much like a referee or umpire, who transparently enforces the rules which are clear and fair to all. Why? Because people always and everywhere will cheat, some much more readily than others. The meme of naturally efficient markets is a classic 'big lie.'

I believe that widely dispersed, practical rules of organization and decision making within a greater context of general principles are far superior in their effectiveness in the distribution of resources that any sort of central planning, of the right or of the left. As Acton once said, 'no class is fit to govern.' So I like decision making that is broadly based, and subject to compromise. I think the rewards and punishments of the market are an effective stimulus to productive behaviour, provided that the rules do not become slanted by the power of an inequality propagated by cheating.

But I also see that rules alone cannot embody wisdom. There is a need for the conscious hand of humanity to guide the legendary 'invisible hand of the market.'

So I like Hedges, because what he says brings me back to center, even though he is further left. That is how bad things have become in this age of austerity, the willfully immature, and the false bravado of the destructively greedy and ideologically irrational. The western nations have moved and are still moving to the Right, as they did in the 1930's. As corruption enervates the old order, as empires once again crumble, we are re-entering the Age of Spectacle, the time of fire.

And if you stay in place, at the center, you have the false feeling of 'moving left,' relatively speaking. It has become noticeable especially when one compares the Right to their forbears of even ten years ago.

Hedges irritates some of the sacred orthodoxies of the Right without a doubt and to say the least since they are the epitome of intolerance. But he also disturbs the Left, who can be as inflexible and censorious as the Right which they hold in utter disdain for those very qualities. And he tweaks their nose on it, which is doubly irritating for those who are currently not in power.

Hedges has an absolutely wonderful description of this phenomenon of the unseeable center in describing the debates he had with both the new religious right, and the irreligious neo-atheists. The relativity of their extreme views distorts all of their perceptions, so that to both groups, Hedges the religious moderate becomes anathema, for similar reasons of intolerance and vanity.

I think that western society has gone off the tracks, in a loosely cyclical manner, by adopting an unsustainable set of priorities. Rather than forming policies to support the general good of the people, they have instead adopted the objective of the 'greatest good' where that implies the maximization of profit, but for a select few. That was a fateful decision, and I mark it somewhat loosely from 1987 for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the bailout of Wall Street by Alan Greenspan. It had its cultural resonance in the theaters.

"The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth.

I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it. You've got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I've still got a lot to teach you."

Gordon Gekko, Wall Street, 1987

This situation, and history, has a lot to teach us indeed, and I think those lessons have only just begun in earnest.

This historically recurrent principle of the greatest greed rather than the greatest good is killing us. There should be no doubt that it will revert to the mean, a balanced society, once again, but that reversion may be painful, and bloody, if history is any guide. But this too shall pass.

I like to include historical quotes in these pieces, like the extended Orwell quote above, not only to illustrate the situation using powerfully resonant words from greater writers than myself, but also, in a Socratic way, to infuse the quiet understanding that every generation fights perhaps not the same, but similar, battles against ignorance, greed, intolerance, mean-spiritedness, carelessness, lawlessness, fear, hysteria, betrayal, hatred, and apathy.

And so there is hope, always.

We are not facing anything new, anything insurmountable,  but rather the same old enemy, the principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, and the ancient spiritual wickedness in high places.  And that is the basic plot line of all human history.

And so we will write our own particular chapter in human history and the book of life, and thereby be remembered by our children and our grandchildren, and perhaps by those who interest themselves in all things human, for all time.





I have to note, most strongly, that the same principle of objectifying the other as a prelude to oppression and the language of violence is a tool of both the extreme right and the extreme left.  Their inflexibility and intolerance of differences in the individual virtually indistinguishable, and in every case is used to justify violence and murder.



I include this clip below in particular because he is describing 'the economic hitmen coming home to roost' which has been a forecast and an image I have used for quite a few years.  And it is happening now, predominantly in parts of Europe, but very much in the US and the UK.  The move on from victim to victim, their ravening hunger insatiable.



As they become more extreme, belief systems tend to resemble their putative opposites more closely, and the center becomes almost imperceptible, if noticed at all and not merely held in complete disdain.

Scientific Study Shows That The Powerful and Privileged Are More LIkely to Lie, Cheat, and Steal

I seem to recall my grandmother telling me this about 50 years ago.

I have encountered quite a few of the nouveau riche, barely upper middle class, that are unscrupulous and almost unbearable. And I have met a number of very wealthy people, both old money people and the accidental rich, who are kindly, enjoyable, and exceptionally hospitable.

From my own experience it is not whether a person has money per se. Rather it is the perceived power that a person feels that they have and their attitude towards it, and how differently they consider themselves to be therefore from others.

I have heard that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich person to get into heaven. Perhaps it is a simplicity of heart that opens such doors for us, and the baggage of pride that closes them. None of the spirit can justly feel such pride compared to another. Our comparison, our aspiration, is not to the fellow next to us, but to a model so perfect and so loving that it leaves us equally alike in our unworthiness, attempting that which is unattainable to us on our own, except for the undeserved gift of grace.

But the world says 'Greed is good, baby.' Build the foundations of society on that historically untenable aphorism and enjoy the ride. It's been done many times before.

"Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals.

In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals.

Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed."

Higher Social Class Predicts Unethical Behaviour, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, February 27, 2012 Paul K. Piffa, Daniel M. Stancatoa, Stéphane Côtéb, Rodolfo Mendoza-Dentona, and Dacher Keltnera

"According to Piff, unethical behavior in the study was driven both by greed, which makes people less empathic, and the nature of wealth in a highly stratified society. It insulates people from the consequences of their actions, reduces their need for social connections and fuels feelings of entitlement, all of which become self-reinforcing cultural norms.

“When pursuit of self-interest is allowed to run unchecked, it can lead to socially pernicious outcomes,” said Piff, who noted that the findings are not politically partisan. “The same rules apply to liberals and conservatives. We always control for political persuasion,” he said."

Greed Is Not Good, Wealth Can Make People Unethical

History Lesson

History Lesson by Arthur C. Clarke has been one of my favorite short stories since boyhood. It contains an allegorical lesson about the importance of context and assumptions in scientific and historical study. It has served me well throughout the years.

The story is of course an intellectual descendant of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, from Book VII of The Republic, which I also enjoyed as a boy, if you prefer to use a reference with a more high brow pedigree.

And now I would like to share an excerpt from it with you.

As the story begins, the cooling of the sun has turned the Earth into a cold world covered by ice, effectively destroying all life and preserving only a few remnants of human civilization.

But this cooling has had a beneficial effect on Venus, turning a once harsh world into a lush plant. After thousands of years, a reptilian race had arisen, and eventually become capable of interplanetary flight.

This race was intrigued by their sister planet, the Earth. A number of expeditions had retrieved fragments that showed intelligent life, but their understanding was still very limited.

As the story begins here, a recent expedition has retrieved several key artifacts, including one that is utterly unique, holding great promise.

...The warm ocean that still bore most of the young planet's life rolled its breakers languidly against
the sandy shore. So new was this continent that the very sands were coarse and gritty. There had not
yet been time enough for the sea to wear them smooth.

The scientists lay half in the water, their beautiful reptilian bodies gleaming in the sunlight. The
greatest minds of Venus had gathered on this shore from all the islands of the planet. What they were
going to hear they did not know, except that it concerned the Third World and the mysterious race that
had peopled it before the coming of the ice.

The Historian was standing on the land, for the instruments he wished to use had no love of water.
By his side was a large machine which attracted many curious glances from his colleagues. It was
clearly concerned with optics, for a lens system projected from it toward a screen of white material a
dozen yards away.

The Historian began to speak. Briefly he recapitulated what little had been discovered concerning the
Third Planet and its people.

He mentioned the centuries of fruitless research that had failed to interpret a single word of the
writings of Earth. The planet had been inhabited by a race of great technical ability. That, at least,
was proved by the few pieces of machinery that had been found in the cairn upon the mountain.

"We do not know why so advanced a civilization came to an end," he observed. "Almost certainly, it had
sufficient knowledge to survive an ice Age. There must have been some other factor of which we know
nothing. Possibly disease or racial degeneration may have been responsible. It has even been suggested
that the tribal conflicts endemic to our own species in prehistoric times may have continued on the
Third Planet after the coming of technology.

Some philosophers maintain that knowledge of machinery does not necessarily imply a high degree of
civilization, and it is theoretically possible to have wars in a society possessing mechanical power,
flight, and even radio. Such a conception is alien to our thoughts, but we must admit its possibility.
It would certainly account for the downfall of the lost race.

It has always been assumed that we should never know anything of the physical form of the creatures
who lived on Planet Three. For centuries our artists have been depicting scenes from the history of
the dead world, peopling it with all manner of fantastic beings. Most of these creations have
resembled us more or less closely, though it has often been pointed out that because we are reptiles
it does not follow that all intelligent life must necessarily be reptilian.

We now know the answer to one of the most baffling problems of history. At last, after hundreds of
years of research, we have discovered the exact form and nature of the ruling life on the Third
Planet."

There was a murmur of astonishment from the assembled scientists. Some were so taken aback that they
disappeared for a while into the comfort of the ocean, as all Venusians were apt to do in moments of
stress. The Historian waited until his colleagues reemerged into the element they so disliked. He
himself was quite comfortable, thanks to the tiny sprays that were continually playing over his body.
With their help he could live on land for many hours before having to return to the ocean.
The excitement slowly subsided and the lecturer continued:

"One of the most puzzling of the objects found on Planet Three was a flat metal container holding a
great length of transparent plastic material, perforated at the edges and wound tightly into a spool.
This transparent tape at first seemed quite featureless, but an examination with the new subelectronic
microscope has shown that this is not the case. Along the surface of the material, invisible to our
eyes but perfectly clear under the correct radiation, are literally thousands of tiny pictures. It is
believed that they were imprinted on the material by some chemical means, and have faded with the
passage of time.

These pictures apparently form a record of life as it was on the Third Planet at the height of its
civilization. They are not independent. Consecutive pictures are almost identical, differing only in
the detail of movement. The purpose of such a record is obvious. It is only necessary to project the
scenes in rapid succession to give an illusion of continuous movement. We have made a machine to do
this, and I have here an exact reproduction of the picture sequence.

The scenes you are now going to witness take us back many thousands of years, to the great days of
our sister planet. They show a complex civilization, many of whose activities we can only dimly
understand. Life seems to have been very violent and energetic, and much that you will see is quite
baffling.

It is clear that the Third Planet was inhabited by a number of different species, none of them
reptilian. That is a blow to our pride, but the conclusion is inescapable. The dominant type of life
appears to have been a two-armed biped. It walked upright and covered its body with some flexible
material, possibly for protection against the cold, since even before the Ice Age the planet was at a
much lower temperature than our own world. But I will not try your patience any further. You will now
see the record of which I have been speaking."

A brilliant light flashed from the projector. There was a gentle whirring, and on the screen appeared
hundreds of strange beings moving rather jerkily to and fro. The picture expanded to embrace one of
the creatures, and the scientists could see that the Historian's description had been correct.
The creature possessed two eyes, set rather close together, but the other facial adornments were a
little obscure. There was a large orifice in the lower portion of the head that was continually
opening and closing. Possibly it had something to do with the creature's breathing.

The scientists watched spellbound as the strange being became involved in a series of fantastic
adventures. There was an incredibly violent conflict with another, slightly different creature. It seemed
certain that they must both be killed, but when it was all over neither seemed any the worse.
Then came a furious drive over miles of country in a four wheeled mechanical device which was capable
of extraordinary feats of locomotion. The ride ended in a city packed with other vehicles moving in
all directions at breathtaking speeds. No one was surprised to see two of the machines meet head-on
with devastating results.

After that, events became even more complicated. It was now quite obvious that it would take many
years of research to analyze and understand all that was happening. It was also clear that the record
was a work of art, somewhat stylized, rather than an exact reproduction of life as it actually had
been on the Third Planet.

Most of the scientists felt themselves completely dazed when the sequence of pictures came to an end.
There was a final flurry of motion, in which the creature that had been the center of interest became
involved in some tremendous but incomprehensible catastrophe. The picture contracted to a circle,
centered on the creature's head.

The last scene of all was an expanded view of its face, obviously expressing some powerful emotion.
But whether it was rage, grief, defiance, resignation or some other feeling could not be guessed. The
picture vanished. For a moment some lettering appeared on the screen, then it was all over.

For several minutes there was complete silence, save for the lapping of the waves upon the sand. The
scientists were too stunned to speak. The fleeting glimpse of Earth's civilization had had a
shattering effect on their minds. Then little groups began to start talking together, first in
whispers and then more and more loudly as the implications of what they had seen became clearer.
Presently the Historian called for attention and addressed the meeting again.

"We are now planning," he said, "a vast program of research to extract all available knowledge from
this record. Thousands of copies are being made for distribution to all workers. You win appreciate
the problems involved. The psychologists in particular have an immense task confronting them.

"But I do not doubt that we shall succeed. In another generation, who can say what we may not have
learned of this wonderful race? Before we leave, let us look again at our remote cousins,
whose wisdom may have surpassed our own but of whom so little has survived."

Once more the final picture flashed on the screen, motionless this time, for the projector had been
stopped. With something like awe, the scientists gazed at the stiff figure from the past, while in
turn the little biped stared back at them with its characteristic expression of arrogant bad temper.

For the rest of time it would symbolize the human race. The psychologists of Venus would analyze its
actions and watch its every movement until they could reconstruct its mind. Thousands of books would
be written about it. Intricate philosophies would be contrived to account for its behavior.

But all. this labor, all this research, would be utterly in vain. Perhaps the proud and lonely figure
on the screen was smiling sardonically at the scientists who were starting on their age-long fruitless
quest.

Its secret would be safe as long as the universe endured, for no one now would ever read the lost
language of Earth. Millions of times in the ages to come those last few words would flash across the
screen, and none could ever guess their meaning:  

A Walt Disney Production.

Arthur C. Clarke, History Lesson

Whole pyramids of learned understanding, highly structured laws, and academic rules can be built on a set of false assumptions, or some principle or premise based not on context but in some intellectual misapprehension.

So it is with the efficient market theory or trickle down economics, for example. Or the idea that by feeding the 'job creators' until they are stuffed one might eventually improve the condition of the many by trickling down.

Granted, all too often these misconceptions of reality are by intent, just another facet in a general campaign of propaganda and deception. But their acceptance by the public still proves the danger of untested and unproven assumptions and building even highly ordered and intricate structures on false premises.

Whether it is in your study of the stock market, money, and economics, or of some translation and interpretation of an antique work, or in reading an essay about an idea or person in history, you may wish to keep this little story in mind.

All too often someone will make an outlandish assertion, and upon questioning it appears that their primary knowledge of the subject at hand is based upon the reading, or more likely viewing, of an essay or video by some individual or group promoting that particular interpretation of reality.  They have nothing else to judge it by, given their lack of investigation and knowledge, but it is duly enshrined in the pantheon of human thought as 'their opinion,' their private judgement.

And their position is often unassailable by reason, because it is not based in thought but in a system of belief. But it is not safeguarded by the intellectual constraints and dignified distance one must place on a religion as inherently a leap of faith beyond the limits of science.  Science and the supernatural are by definition not the same, but complementary.

When someone says, 'I do not believe that I have a soul or that there is a God,' I may pay attention on the most particular and technical of information, but how can one take someone seriously on philosophical and higher matters who is so dull and unfeeling as to consider themselves and their fellows to be apes?

One could spend a lifetime studying the stock markets trying to make sense of them and their movements, and build an impressive body of study and rules, but fail miserably despite all that work, because one has built upon the false premise that the game was honest and subject to natural laws, and not often rigged and controlled by insiders to the very extent that they can get away with it.

Or perhaps there is a belief in some economic system like 'market capitalism' controlled by an oligarchy through the manipulation of money and information for their own ends in the name of freedom,  for example.

It may be summed up in the familiar saying, 'A little learning is a dangerous thing' and perhaps, 'Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.'

"Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst...You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life.

Whereas if they go to the administration of public affairs, poor and hungering after their own private advantage, thinking that hence they are to snatch the chief good, order there can never be; for they will be fighting about office, and the civil and domestic broils which thus arise will be the ruin of the rulers themselves and of the whole State."

Plato, The Republic

As with men and rulers, so with markets and money.

Greed is an excess of desire and lack of empathy and judgement, outside of the virtues, and is therefore most decidedly not 'good.'  A system built predominantly upon unrestrained greed, anger, envy, and pride will not, by definition, be virtuous but degenerative, unstable, and ultimately self-destructive if not put down by its victims first.

"The sad duty of government is to establish justice in a sinful world."

Reinhold Niebuhr

And I suspect that history will see our generation as deluded fools for having believed otherwise, forsaking a Constitution and a legacy that is based upon first principles, actively promoting the virtues of goodness, equality, moderation, the careful distribution of power, and both freedom and justice for all.

Greed Is Not Good

With regards to the global financial crisis, imposing austerity is not the answer. That is like starving the slaves to improve their condition by making the plantation more profitable.   Looting the 'great house' and the barns to feed the slaves, at least temporarily, is not the answer either. The problem is obviously in the system itself.

But either expedient solution suits the external moneyed interests promoting the system who seek only to plunder and drain the assets and labor of others who are all their common prey, whether they feel their kinship or not. An unjust and unsustainable system tarnishes all participants and leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and decay.

It is the root causes of the debt and the imbalances in the system that must be addressed to make any reform sustainable. And this obviously includes addressing abuses such as the promotion of a global trade regime that is inherently unjust and imbalanced to the favor of the oligarchs of whatever political wrappings around the world who hold the greater profit to themselves and leave their people relatively impoverished and exploited.  And it also includes the waging of unfunded wars to protect and promote privileged commercial interests, and a political funding system that is little more than soft graft and an open invitation to corruption by special interests.

It begins with a debilitating system of taxation by the moneyed interests on every commercial transaction in the form of fees and commissions, and the abuse of a money system that is little more than a fraud perpetrated by private interests for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many. If you wish a simple measure of this, then look to the median wage.

Greed is not good.  Greed is a disease, an aberration of simple honest ambition and necessary provision taken to excess.  This simple distinction may be lost on a people no longer able to distinguish between virtue and sin, honor and expediency, appetite and gluttony, the means and the ends.  Every great religion, every school of philosophy has cautioned throughout history on the perils of unbridled and unregulated greed.  

And yet this generation would make a god of it, although they may not understand, or care, what it is that they are doing, and whom it is they serve. And yet they will be held to account for their willfulness, foolishness, and casual disregard for others.

Greed, often in company with hubris and fear, is a handmaiden of the corrupting influence of power and triumph of the will. Greed is contagious, and attacks the very contentment of society at its heart, turning it towards oligarchy and oppression.

"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction." Erich Fromm

Any system that promotes greed, gluttony, and insatiability as its highest goods and fundamental ideals is a cult of perversion and addiction on a scale with ancient Rome, an imbalanced insult to the natural law, with a fatal attraction to overreach, failure and self-destruction. What the US has today is not market capitalism that rewards the merits and work of individuals, but rather is the product of dishonest and disordered minds, a system of fraud and plunder by privileged oligarchs masquerading as fair and honest markets of legitimate valuation and price discovery.

"Because the free market system is so weak politically, the forms of capitalism that are experienced in many countries are very far from the ideal. They are a corrupted version, in which powerful interests prevent competition from playing its natural, healthy role." Raghuram G. Rajan

The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustained recovery.

Financial Interests Dictate Sovereign Policy
By Michael Hudson
December 18, 2010

"...The economic problem is not caused by sovereign debt but by bad bank loans, deceptive financial practice and neoliberal bank deregulation. Iceland’s Viking raiders, Ireland’s Anglo-Irish bank and other foreign banks are trying to avoid taking losses on financial claims that are largely fictitious, inasmuch as they exceed the ability of indebted economies to pay. The ‘crisis’ can be solved by making the banks write down their debt claims to realistic ‘junk’ valuations. There is no need to wreck economies by subjecting them to financial asset-stripping.

In such cases there’s a basic principle at work: Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be. The question is, just how won’t they be paid? As matters stand, countries are being told to subject themselves to massive foreclosure – not only a forfeiture of homes, but of national policy.

In this respect the sovereign crisis is a crisis of sovereignty itself: Who shall be in charge of the economy, its tax philosophy and public spending: elected officials acting in the public interest, or an intrusive financial oligarchy? The EU was wrong to tell governments to pay for following its advice – and pressure – to trust financial crooks and deregulate bank oversight. The European Central Bank should reimburse victimized governments for the bailouts that have been paid. This reimbursement can be done by levying a progressive tax policy and creating a central bank to help finance governments.

The proper aim of a national economy is to promote capital formation and rising living standards for the population as a whole. not a narrowing financial class at the top of the pyramid. So I see two major policies to lead the way out of this mess:

First, shift taxes back onto land and resource rent, and onto financial and capital gains. This will prevent another real estate bubble from being inflated by debt leveraging. By holding down housing prices, it will save labor from having to pay an equivalent amount in income tax. Low real estate taxes (under 1% until just recently) have not saved homeowners money in Latvia. Low property taxes merely have left more rental income to be pledged to banks, to capitalize into large mortgage loans.

Second, de-privatize basic utilities and natural monopolies to save Europe from rentiers turning it into a tollbooth economy. Europe needs a central bank that can do what central banks are supposed to do: create money to finance government deficits. But the European Central Bank and article 123 of the European Constitution as amended by the Lisbon Treaty prevents the central bank from lending to governments. This forces governments to levy taxes to pay interest to banks – for creating electronic credit that a real central bank could just as well create on its own computer keyboards.

Government banking is not necessarily inflationary. It finances what is necessary for economies to grow: investment in infrastructure and capital formation to raise productivity and minimize the cost of doing business.

What turns out to be inflationary is commercial bank lending. It inflates asset prices – unproductively. Banks lend mainly against real estate and other assets already in place, and stocks and bonds already issued. This is unproductive credit, not real wealth creation. The only way to keep this unproductive debt overhead solvent is to inflate asset prices more – by untaxing assets to leave more revenue to pay bankers on exponentially growing debts.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The recent 30 years of financial polarization is reversible. The alternative is to succumb to neoliberal austerity."

I think that most people know what needs to be done in their conscience, but their hearts have become so hardened over the past twenty years that the message will be ignored until after they undergo a period of suffering on the scale of the worst of the twentieth century. May God have mercy on us all.

Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.
In vain you rise early and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep only to those he loves.

Psalm 127

The Financial Times Man of the Year - Lloyd Blankfein

How fitting, to mark the high tide of the will to power of the Anglo-American banking cartel. No better symbol of hubris, of the overreach driven by obdurate insensitivity and sociopathic greed, of the cult of ego and the darker impulses of the human heart, that creates nothing.

Honoring the man as the epitome of 2009, a man whose bank helped to precipitate one of the greatest financial crises, if not crimes, of the century, and used it as a means of profit for their own ends. No matter what damage was caused in the process, what corruption was required to undermine the nation's well-being, thereby sowing the seeds of their own eventual destruction.

And no better day for it, than on the eve of the commemoration of the renewal of life, of genuine value, of the perennial yearning of the human spirit from within the images and the shadows, a turning away from the stench of corruption and decay, and into the light.

"For what shall it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, but loses himself?

Not even the whole world, but bragging rights, a false bravado, and a bonus.

The man of the year indeed. King of the ash heap, almost universally held in contempt. And in the end, alone. Not even rising to the level of high tragedy, but merely furtive, grasping, manipulative, pathetic. A monument to banality, and the hollowness of Western materialism.


NY Times
Financial Times Names Blankfein Person of the Year
December 24, 2009, 2:37

The Financial Times has chosen Lloyd C. Blankfein as its person of the year. The Goldman Sachs chief has become the public face of Wall Street during its most testing period since the 1930s, the newspaper said, and Mr. Blankfein’s position and his personality were the basis of his selection.

Goldman Sachs, said the newspaper, “navigated the 2008 global financial crisis better than others,” and is about to make record profits while paying up to $23 billion in bonuses to its 31,700 staff.

The newspaper called Mr. Blankfein “a tough, bright, funny financier who reoriented Goldman. Under his leadership, trading and risk-taking have pushed to the fore, reducing the influence of its investment banking advisers.”

Facing public anger in 2009 — as taxpayers raged at having to bail out the big Wall Street banks — Goldman’s profitability, and suspicions that its ties to governments around the world give it unfair advantages, made it a symbol of greed and excess.

But Mr. Blankfein has rebutted the criticism effectively, the newspaper wrote, “shifting from insisting that it would probably have survived the crisis without help from the U.S. Treasury, to apologizing for its conduct,” and finally, the newspaper noted, in an interview with the Sunday Times of London, asserting that Goldman was “doing God’s work”.

Are We Ready to Try Market Capitalism?

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `to be master -- that's all.'

The refrain from Wall Street these days is "I worked hard for that bonus."

Lots of people work hard. Most of the people we know, probably many of the readers of this blog, could give lessons in working hard to these Wall Street whizkids.

A waiter or waitress works hard, very hard. But they don't get huge tips when they dump hot soup in the customer's lap.

You don't get paid for how hard you work, you get paid for how much value you add for your customers and your shareholders. If you work on commission and bonus your pay is intended to vary with performance, not by how much you can grab off the table before the police arrive.

The pay structure on Wall Street looks less like a profit based enterprise and more like organized crime.

What starts as a valuable component, a method of efficiently allocating capital for a small fee, becomes an oversized drain on the process it is intended to serve.

There is nothing wrong with capitalism and competitive markets and a healthy meritocracy. It is probably the most efficient and effective means of creating wealth and managing businesses.

We should try that system now that the cult of pay for privilege, interconnected frauds, rule by empty suits, and crony capitalism has failed.

Economic Times
For CEOs, thirst for bonuses may be in their DNA31 Jan 2009, 1151 hrs IST

NEW YORK: Why do CEOs need extravagant perks even when they are firing staff and pleading for taxpayer bailouts? It may just be in their makeup, experts say.

It takes arrogance and narcissism to become leader of a Fortune 500 company. Those same traits, however, have become their undoing during the deepest recession in decades. (If their narcissism is particularly acute they might become a Senator instead - Jesse)

U.S. President Barack Obama has noticed, telling reporters on Thursday he was outraged by a New York State report that $18.4 billion in Wall Street bonuses were paid in 2008 as taxpayers rescued the crumbling financial system.

"That is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful," Obama said. (And as recent denizen of Congress he has a refined palate for shameful irresponsibility, which has been the primary product from Washington DC in recent years. - Jesse)

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who is investigating Wall Street bonuses, welcomed Obama's comments.

"While Wall Street melted down, top executives believed that, unlike the rest of the country, they still deserved huge bonuses," Cuomo said. (And Congress took increasing pay raises, and a private pension system, and superior healthcare, while the median wage stagnated and the middle class dwindled - Jesse)

For Bob Monks, a former executive who has written nine books on corporate governance, the reason is that the rich and powerful simply love their toys.

"It's a boy thing. Sort of, 'Mine's bigger than yours.' It's really childish," said Monks, a shareholder rights activist and the subject of a book called "A Traitor to His Class." (It is not childish, for that is a slander on children. It is pathological. It is an addiction, a compulsion, a sickness that transcends the occasional petulance of childhood - Jesse)
Monks related a story about flying on someone's corporate jet. The host was devastated when, upon landing, he saw that while he planned for a limo to be waiting at the airport another captain of industry had a helicopter take him to town.

"I thought my guy was going to die. ... It's entirely about people's self-image." (It is about a sense of personal worthlessness. Some people have a huge hole in the center of their being, and and a compulsion to fill it up with things and people, to try to make themselves feel whole, but it can never satisfies, and they are ravening - Jesse)
Longtime advocates of shareholder rights were handed a gift in November when Detroit auto executives flew to Washington on corporate jets to ask for billions of dollars in taxpayer money, sparking a public outrage.

More recently, it became known that former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain spent $1.2 million remodeling his office last year, including $1,405 for a trash can. Merrill Lynch is owned by Bank of America, which consumed $45 billion of taxpayer money through bailouts.

Then on Tuesday, Citigroup canceled plans to buy a $50 million executive jet after a White House rebuke.

"People don't become head of Merrill Lynch without having a certain sense of self-importance. Once they arrive at that position, they have all kinds of toadies tell them what geniuses they are, then of course they begin to feel their lifelong feelings of self-importance have been confirmed," said Charles Goodstein, a psychoanalyst and professor at New York University School of Medicine.

Defenders of executive perks say generous compensation is needed to retain talent. (Generous, not extravagant. There is a direct proportion between the emptiness of the suit and the extravagance of the trappings. There are only a few Steve Jobs; most of the others are verbally adept, highly cunning, political animals. For the most part it is the myth of the "Great Man." A surprisingly large number of them are frauds. The problem is the system does not manage them, eliminate them. It pays for the office, not for the performance. - Jesse)
Sometimes it's jets but can also include home security systems, country club memberships, sports tickets and financial advice. The value of these benefits is considered income, so CEOs also sometimes get another perk: company help in paying their taxes. (Set the tax rates so bloody high that they might consider competing on something more useful, like the performance of their companies - Jesse)
"I was CEO of a bank once and it's not rocket science. You need the same skill set as somebody running a hardware store in a medium-sized town," Monks said. (For many corporate managers the most difficult of the job is protecting the business from overpaid corporate goons with nothing better to do than to subvert the good of the business to their own personal ends in some of the most imaginative ways possible. And in high tech startups, the most intractable problem is trying to keep the VCs from destroying the company with their clumsy attempts at stealing the business. - Jesse)

Steve Thel, a former lawyer with the Securities and Exchange Commission and now a professor at Fordham Law School, blames compliant board members who often come from the same privileged world and can get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for attending a few meetings each year. (The Boards are bastions of the fraternity of empty suits and the brotherhood of professional courtesy -Jesse)

"It's endemic to the system. The last administration didn't think there was any structural flaw. Now across the political spectrum people feel that Wall Street executive compensation is out of control," Thel said. (The former president is the epitome of a thin veneer of privileged arrogance covering a deep well of incompetence. - Jesse)
He predicted Congress would pass legislation granting minority shareholders more say on pay and possibly introduce higher taxes on some parts of executive compensation.

"A year ago it was absolutely unthinkable that this would be heard in Congress," Thel said.