Throughout the current turmoil over the last year in World Banking, there has been a constant reference towards the phenomenon of Banks being Afraid to Lend to Each Other.
What I fail to understand, and forgive me if I happen to have too much common sense, is:
Why weren't Central Banks borrowing money from the Banks who had surplus cash, and were hoarding it, so that they could re-lend it to the banks that lost access to direct wholesale funding?
That way, a Central Bank should have provided as much liquidity as existed before the Credit Crunch, but by acting as an intermediary between banks whom have cash, and banks whom wish to borrow it, they serve as guarantors as well as National risk managers.
As a national risk manager, the Bank of England could then have demanded tighter operation from the commercial banks, such as Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley, which would have provided the most stabilizing method of downsizing the Banking and Mortgaging industry.
Or is this Mervyn King hiding behind his piggy glasses, saying that his only job is to sit at a meeting once a month and get an interest rate decision that stopped mattering over a year ago?
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
¿Looking down at Pork Sossiges?
This is my art. If you would like more, don't bother going to Sotheby's. Just contact me and I will create art in your life, and let your Russian Roubles go a lot further. Furthermore, because this is Love and the Planet, you get something of much longer lasting value that will make your life worth living. My mind!
Dear blog, how glorious it is to come to you in good times. This WAS the best week I have had so far this year. (Getting my bike stolen in mid-July was the lowest point of the year.)
Going back to work, to something I haven't done for years, getting up at 5:45 for four days last week. Meeting lots of new people who were intelligent, even though many couldn't speak English very well. Doing physical, quite arduous work outdoors even in damp dirty damp weather, and surviving it all. Getting to bed exhausted and waking up at 2.30 in the morning just because my muscles were so tired that I couldn't get back to sleep. I have averaged less than 5 hours sleep a night for the last 6 days.
Surviving it all! I feel like king of me, if not king of the planet. Even exhausted and in a state when most normal men feel as if they have been economically abused, I decided on the second day that I felt something again; I felt happy. A vital kind of happiness if not the whole package. That feeling of knowing you've done an honest day's work. Pride in yourself.
Even the sun came out. On Friday afternoon, we had one of those beautiful English afternoons when even I admitted that London was looking beautiful.
Pork Sausages were accompanied by my wonderful own-grown Sweetcorn (what little I have), which has been the most delicious thing I have grown this year. Unfortunately I ate them before I remembered to take a photo! Never mind, my stomach has a better memory than a digital camera! That sweetcorn is going to get at least 5 times the planting space next year.
Something Understood on Radio 4, which is a beacon of wise intellectual secular spirituality, has a superb program this week on Freely Giving, which investigates the tradition of the Gift Economy in civilizations (not the modern consumerist version of Christmas), as compared with the Market Economy that has continued to reel all around the world these last few weeks. That they have researched this topic from such a genius angle indicates that the Economy is on the minds of everyone who has one.
Nearly all the Investment Banks are gone, started by Bear Stearns in March, and then Lehman Brothers just two weeks ago. The last two will probably survive after serious rationalization. The USA still struggles to keep its banking system afloat by trying to get Congress to approve its £700 billion nationalization of Questionable Debt. Lloyds TSB is going to merge with HBOS. Libor Rates were 1.5% above the Bank of England rate, so the BANK of ENGLAND is lying! The Bank of England still says
The interest rate at which the Bank supplies these funds is quickly passed throughout the financial system, influencing interest rates for the whole economy.
Daydreaming monetarists will have to own up to being more ignorant than Psychologists in regard to having any tools of control, let alone tools of science! Stop lying and get out of your paid jobs. Mervyn King, you are a cad.
Today Bradford and Bingley has been nationalized by the government. Journalists are saying that Asia seems unaffected, but even economists are correcting them. Meanwhile, people like me, who take a world view, know this is not just about money. This is the modern version of a World War. One where none of the various sides, either those who own the Capital, nor those who owe it, dare to allow Armageddon, because the Global Human Economic Machine would implode and there would indeed be genuine poverty (the lack of food) experienced even in White America and Britain.
How far would I want this game to go, if I were running it? Judging from my current survey of London, one of the recent centres of globalization, the GHEM is clearly in trouble, but many of its various component cogs and transistors are still carrying on regardless, still expecting to be unaffected...a bit like a car whose engine is still running even though its gear box is broken. By my experience of psychohistory, this means our economic recession has just begun. It should indeed not bottom out for at least another year, or else it would have been ineffective. By my experience of my reckoning, as I believe in damped control systems (whereas economists seem to know nothing about damping) we are in for a long period of much deeper trouble, and the bottom is at least 3 years away.
Living in a crisis is not too bad. It is food and water that matters. Those of us who lived in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties GHEM recessions know we survived, and there was some wonderful music to remind us of it all, yet we never once starved.
The GHEM, for all its faults, must be de-commissioned gradually, and gracefully, a bit like an outdated nuclear power plant. We do not want a Chernobyl end to the life of the GHEM, for human psychohistory must grant it a noble end.
Forget my pompous fantasy. In fact, I don't believe the GHEM is dead, or dying. I think it is moulting, and it is inexorably growing, as it has done for centuries.
Friday, September 12, 2008
E On F Off, Down with Brown, Up with Green
The trouble with getting excited about the recent jury trial court victory is precisely what I blogged about 6 weeks ago.
If you're the Gordon Brown Labour government, a bunch of anarchists winning this precedent-setting case can one way or another be turned instantly to your advantage. Politics is chess, and some people can look 10 moves ahead and have a strategy. Winning a pawn is not proof you are winning the game.
Already, the media, the intellectuals, and I are all bowed towards the inevitability of nuclear power stations, simply because Britain out of national security needs to maintain its Nuclear technological base, even if it does not pursue a massive program of nuclear power generation.
Meanwhile, this week the Brown government announced a "fuel-poverty" policy that has the correct intent, but is nothing different than what existed before. Lag your loft, pump your cavity walls with insulation, but keep your Central Heating on at 21 degrees, while you sit there in front of the telly like a battery human, being fed the food produced by machines, and barely ever producing energy out of it.
Nobody in politics is re-designing cities or social groupings, let alone the national economy. 12 years of a pseudo-socialist government, and all we have is a bunch of politicians who want to carry on driving to Tesco on a wretched motorway, and sitting at home alone in 21 degrees centigrade through summer and winter, until the time comes to rot in a nursing home at £800 per week.
Christian Socialists? Are they really that stupid?
If you're the Gordon Brown Labour government, a bunch of anarchists winning this precedent-setting case can one way or another be turned instantly to your advantage. Politics is chess, and some people can look 10 moves ahead and have a strategy. Winning a pawn is not proof you are winning the game.
Already, the media, the intellectuals, and I are all bowed towards the inevitability of nuclear power stations, simply because Britain out of national security needs to maintain its Nuclear technological base, even if it does not pursue a massive program of nuclear power generation.
Meanwhile, this week the Brown government announced a "fuel-poverty" policy that has the correct intent, but is nothing different than what existed before. Lag your loft, pump your cavity walls with insulation, but keep your Central Heating on at 21 degrees, while you sit there in front of the telly like a battery human, being fed the food produced by machines, and barely ever producing energy out of it.
Nobody in politics is re-designing cities or social groupings, let alone the national economy. 12 years of a pseudo-socialist government, and all we have is a bunch of politicians who want to carry on driving to Tesco on a wretched motorway, and sitting at home alone in 21 degrees centigrade through summer and winter, until the time comes to rot in a nursing home at £800 per week.
Christian Socialists? Are they really that stupid?
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Production of a Piece of Paper
For some decades, maybe at least since the invention of the typewriter, so for 80 years, the production of a piece of paper has been the sole enterprise and ability of a huge portion of the population.
So it is today, although whether it is more so or whether it has begun to decline is debatable. The "piece of paper" is often in electronic form and never gets near the pulp of a tree.
Astounding as it seems, the rebellion in me extends even to here. Why should we have an economy that nurtures a sector of the population (piece-of-paper creators) so secluded and ignorant and uninvolved in the source of the essentials of their day to day survival, and yet so unduly proud and commanding of their share of that natural wealth?
So I face a piece of paper, and do I want to play this silly game? Or do I have to play it? Why should I have to play football if I don't like the rules, when I can make up my own?
So it is today, although whether it is more so or whether it has begun to decline is debatable. The "piece of paper" is often in electronic form and never gets near the pulp of a tree.
Astounding as it seems, the rebellion in me extends even to here. Why should we have an economy that nurtures a sector of the population (piece-of-paper creators) so secluded and ignorant and uninvolved in the source of the essentials of their day to day survival, and yet so unduly proud and commanding of their share of that natural wealth?
So I face a piece of paper, and do I want to play this silly game? Or do I have to play it? Why should I have to play football if I don't like the rules, when I can make up my own?
Prove Yourself
Pioneer. Frontiersman. Adventurer.
Brave Warrior. Independent Wild Man.
Soldier who can take the shit in Iraq.
Construction Worker who can effortlessly jump girders 60 storeys high in the sky.
Marathon runner.
World Record breaker of records.
King of the Hill, Man of the Hour, Boxer with Guts of Steel.
Cyclist who can cross the continent with one pair of tires and a tireless pair of legs.
Ultimate Blog Cynic.
What is the difference between any of these?
When you have done it, and you prove to yourself that you have done it, what difference does it make on your deathbed?
Is it nobler to die with the celebrations of your peers, than without, and why is the death any more or less noble?
Is it nobler to live pursuing the celebrations of your peers? If not, why is the life any lesser?
We live in a culture where "proving yourself" is so pervasive and endemic that many people waste their lives proving themselves, and even more shockingly they pity others for wasting their lives because they rebel against this peer-pressure.
Chavs? Perhaps their quintessential feature is that they refuse to waste their lives "proving themselves". Are they any better or worse? Even those who claim they will not judge a chav on their lack of abilities and ambitions, nonetheless pity them as though they are sinners against the perpetual need that Thou Must Prove Thyself.
When did this commandment enter what was once a Christian culture?
Life does not have to prove itself. It either survives and reproduces, or it does not.
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
Yet Man must Prove Himself?
So CERN. So Space Exploration. So Electronic Miniaturization. So Genetic Engineering. So Civil Engineering. So Architecture. So Opera.
Man is not superior to other men, or other forms of life by virtue of being able to "prove himself".
Brave Warrior. Independent Wild Man.
Soldier who can take the shit in Iraq.
Construction Worker who can effortlessly jump girders 60 storeys high in the sky.
Marathon runner.
World Record breaker of records.
King of the Hill, Man of the Hour, Boxer with Guts of Steel.
Cyclist who can cross the continent with one pair of tires and a tireless pair of legs.
Ultimate Blog Cynic.
What is the difference between any of these?
When you have done it, and you prove to yourself that you have done it, what difference does it make on your deathbed?
Is it nobler to die with the celebrations of your peers, than without, and why is the death any more or less noble?
Is it nobler to live pursuing the celebrations of your peers? If not, why is the life any lesser?
We live in a culture where "proving yourself" is so pervasive and endemic that many people waste their lives proving themselves, and even more shockingly they pity others for wasting their lives because they rebel against this peer-pressure.
Chavs? Perhaps their quintessential feature is that they refuse to waste their lives "proving themselves". Are they any better or worse? Even those who claim they will not judge a chav on their lack of abilities and ambitions, nonetheless pity them as though they are sinners against the perpetual need that Thou Must Prove Thyself.
When did this commandment enter what was once a Christian culture?
Life does not have to prove itself. It either survives and reproduces, or it does not.
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
Yet Man must Prove Himself?
So CERN. So Space Exploration. So Electronic Miniaturization. So Genetic Engineering. So Civil Engineering. So Architecture. So Opera.
Man is not superior to other men, or other forms of life by virtue of being able to "prove himself".
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
London Today has no English People
It was nearly 10pm.
Sitting on the bench outside the train station were two men in their late twenties, fit, healthy, having a beer and probably East European.
Standing over them, apparently trying to converse with them, was another man, notably different because he was wearing a full-length leather coat, in the style popularized by Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. He was about their age, and sufficiently tall and attractive to not have ever suffered deprivation in his adulthood.
He stood up, and appeared frustrated as he walked away. As he passed me, with his mobile phone to his ear , I heard him saying into the phone, "Fucking hell, where do these fucking foreigners come from". His accent was from London. He could have been the last English London-born Londoner left in London.
The foreigners were back to loudly chatting between themselves. Their language was undoubtedly East European.
***
People who visit London today for the first time, expecting to meet English people, might be shocked to discover none at all across vast swathes of the city. Even where they can be found, they are seldom in majority.
So riding the trains and buses of London, you will not encounter any of the stereotypes that you have in your mind, that you might have learned from a film, television, or books.
That's the way it is, today.
What turned London into this? Globalization. Who allowed Globalization to go this far? The State. Who have been the State? The Labour Party have been the State for nearly 12 years. The Conservatives were the State for 18 years before that. Who advised them in this regard? The globalist economists. What was the primary focus of the Economists? Wealth of the most material kind.
Is London alone in this? No, but it is one of the most globalized cities in the world. Perhaps Los Angeles and New York City are at the same level.
Sitting on the bench outside the train station were two men in their late twenties, fit, healthy, having a beer and probably East European.
Standing over them, apparently trying to converse with them, was another man, notably different because he was wearing a full-length leather coat, in the style popularized by Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. He was about their age, and sufficiently tall and attractive to not have ever suffered deprivation in his adulthood.
He stood up, and appeared frustrated as he walked away. As he passed me, with his mobile phone to his ear , I heard him saying into the phone, "Fucking hell, where do these fucking foreigners come from". His accent was from London. He could have been the last English London-born Londoner left in London.
The foreigners were back to loudly chatting between themselves. Their language was undoubtedly East European.
***
People who visit London today for the first time, expecting to meet English people, might be shocked to discover none at all across vast swathes of the city. Even where they can be found, they are seldom in majority.
So riding the trains and buses of London, you will not encounter any of the stereotypes that you have in your mind, that you might have learned from a film, television, or books.
That's the way it is, today.
What turned London into this? Globalization. Who allowed Globalization to go this far? The State. Who have been the State? The Labour Party have been the State for nearly 12 years. The Conservatives were the State for 18 years before that. Who advised them in this regard? The globalist economists. What was the primary focus of the Economists? Wealth of the most material kind.
Is London alone in this? No, but it is one of the most globalized cities in the world. Perhaps Los Angeles and New York City are at the same level.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Open Source Food versus Genetically Modified Rapeseed of Monsanto
So Percy Schmeiser was the man who had to stand up alone against a Globalist Corporation.
In Britain, Rape is commonly grown as an oilseed crop. In Canada, because of prudish reactions to the other meanings of the word rape, the plant was given the name Canola long ago.
Monsanto developed a GM version of rape/canola that was resistant to their Roundup herbicide:
1. Buy the herbicide made by Monsanto
2. Buy the seed resistant to that herbicide grown by Monsanto
3. Spray the herbicide on the field several times a year to superficially keep down the other weeds and non-GM seed.
4. Pay a license for it year after year, because you never own the seed or its descendents, not unless Monsanto dies.
It sounds like Monopoly, because it is. There is one player, called Monsanto, and it owns the whole board. As if that isn't bad enough:
5. Get sued by Monsanto if their seed lands on your fields, and you don't want to grow their crap as a crop.
Quite apart from this obvious abuse of corporate power, there is a fundamental insult here to all people who believe in Open Source. The definition of a seed, or any genetic material, as intellectual property goes entirely against everything that Open Source advocates believe in.
GM = Genetically Modified = Globalist Monopoly
How many Open Source computer heads who defend GM Science ever think about this, every time they eat something? That the food they eat, which today often contains GM soya, goes against their political beliefs?
Well a Google on Open Source GM reveals that the concept of Open Source Genomics is a few years old, and the article points out that Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) biotechnology should be favoured over Transgenic GM creations.
So why, when Prince Charles spoke up last month against GM, did I not hear any of his opponents mention MAS biotechnology?
Silence is Golden for those who are protecting the Golden Eggs laid by the Transgenic GM Geese.
Open Source versus GM. I like it. I wonder where all that GM Canola Rapeseed oil goes to. How can we avoid it? Stuff it down the throats of stupid Labour Governments, maybe?
In Britain, Rape is commonly grown as an oilseed crop. In Canada, because of prudish reactions to the other meanings of the word rape, the plant was given the name Canola long ago.
Monsanto developed a GM version of rape/canola that was resistant to their Roundup herbicide:
1. Buy the herbicide made by Monsanto
2. Buy the seed resistant to that herbicide grown by Monsanto
3. Spray the herbicide on the field several times a year to superficially keep down the other weeds and non-GM seed.
4. Pay a license for it year after year, because you never own the seed or its descendents, not unless Monsanto dies.
It sounds like Monopoly, because it is. There is one player, called Monsanto, and it owns the whole board. As if that isn't bad enough:
5. Get sued by Monsanto if their seed lands on your fields, and you don't want to grow their crap as a crop.
Quite apart from this obvious abuse of corporate power, there is a fundamental insult here to all people who believe in Open Source. The definition of a seed, or any genetic material, as intellectual property goes entirely against everything that Open Source advocates believe in.
GM = Genetically Modified = Globalist Monopoly
How many Open Source computer heads who defend GM Science ever think about this, every time they eat something? That the food they eat, which today often contains GM soya, goes against their political beliefs?
Well a Google on Open Source GM reveals that the concept of Open Source Genomics is a few years old, and the article points out that Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) biotechnology should be favoured over Transgenic GM creations.
So why, when Prince Charles spoke up last month against GM, did I not hear any of his opponents mention MAS biotechnology?
Silence is Golden for those who are protecting the Golden Eggs laid by the Transgenic GM Geese.
Open Source versus GM. I like it. I wonder where all that GM Canola Rapeseed oil goes to. How can we avoid it? Stuff it down the throats of stupid Labour Governments, maybe?
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Lex - Financial Times and The Economist
I used to be impressed with the Lex column in the Financial Times, which is so well respected that their website actually charges for it. Looking at today's in the paper has incited me to launch my nuclear missiles at economists again.
Lex was literally taking quotes from Adam Smith to interpret today's global economic situation. This is akin to meteorologists who quote passages from the Bible to interpret why Hurricane Katrina would have hit New Orleans! It would also be similar to physicists who delve into Isaac Newton's tomes to interpret results when the CERN Large Hadron Collider starts up on 10 September
It shows how completely addled by Adam Smith the entire field of Economics has become. I wonder if economics was ever heading for anything more? Here we are in 2008, at a point when the Global Economy is the largest human economy that has ever existed in history, and the people who should understand it and plot its future are mired in a Flat Earth Universe.
To confirm my assessment of the stupidity of economists, I was leafing through this week's copy of The Economist, and I swear it was one of the weakest issues I have ever seen. It completely lacked any new intelligence, and in the back they still quote tables of basic, vacuous and fundamentally dubious national economic monthly statistics, which are as useful as Woolworths quoting weekly Singles Charts for pop music.
The whole scene of Economics brings to mind once again Asimov's Foundation Series. It is as though the real economists, the clever psychohistorians, have long since been secreted in a hiding place, to plot and plan the course of the Global Human Economic Machine. Meanwhile, they have left a bunch of idiots and clowns in charge of the Economist, The Financial Times, The Bank of England, The London School of Economics etcetera, so that we are distracted from discovering the real economists.
If Asimov were going to hide some clever economists today, where would he hide them? In a hedge fund company? Maybe. In the Bank of England? Maybe. In Goldman Sachs? Oh that's so obvious...... So obvious that they could really be there! Guarded by a fortress of security, untouched by the Credit Crunch, and protected by cities (London, New York, Hong Kong) of cynical spoilt-brat know-it-all wasted liberals whom crush conspiracy theories more quickly than cockroaches. But the probabilistic calculation and prediction of mass human economic behaviour is well within the reach of modern technology, and anyone incapable of appreciating that might as well keep their sunglasses on and leave their Ipod earphones switched on.
Lex was literally taking quotes from Adam Smith to interpret today's global economic situation. This is akin to meteorologists who quote passages from the Bible to interpret why Hurricane Katrina would have hit New Orleans! It would also be similar to physicists who delve into Isaac Newton's tomes to interpret results when the CERN Large Hadron Collider starts up on 10 September
It shows how completely addled by Adam Smith the entire field of Economics has become. I wonder if economics was ever heading for anything more? Here we are in 2008, at a point when the Global Economy is the largest human economy that has ever existed in history, and the people who should understand it and plot its future are mired in a Flat Earth Universe.
To confirm my assessment of the stupidity of economists, I was leafing through this week's copy of The Economist, and I swear it was one of the weakest issues I have ever seen. It completely lacked any new intelligence, and in the back they still quote tables of basic, vacuous and fundamentally dubious national economic monthly statistics, which are as useful as Woolworths quoting weekly Singles Charts for pop music.
The whole scene of Economics brings to mind once again Asimov's Foundation Series. It is as though the real economists, the clever psychohistorians, have long since been secreted in a hiding place, to plot and plan the course of the Global Human Economic Machine. Meanwhile, they have left a bunch of idiots and clowns in charge of the Economist, The Financial Times, The Bank of England, The London School of Economics etcetera, so that we are distracted from discovering the real economists.
If Asimov were going to hide some clever economists today, where would he hide them? In a hedge fund company? Maybe. In the Bank of England? Maybe. In Goldman Sachs? Oh that's so obvious...... So obvious that they could really be there! Guarded by a fortress of security, untouched by the Credit Crunch, and protected by cities (London, New York, Hong Kong) of cynical spoilt-brat know-it-all wasted liberals whom crush conspiracy theories more quickly than cockroaches. But the probabilistic calculation and prediction of mass human economic behaviour is well within the reach of modern technology, and anyone incapable of appreciating that might as well keep their sunglasses on and leave their Ipod earphones switched on.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
The Hopes and Fears of All The Years
... Are Met in You Today.
Notion: "stilling the soothing internal voice that tells us everything will be okay" to "embrace hopelessness"
Compare with: "stilling the panicky internal voice that tells us everything is going wrong" to "embrace fearlessness".
Are these silly notions, and if they are not, could they stand improvement?
The internal voices of each individual vary not only with time, but in the frequency of occurrence. Some might have panicky voices all the time, and never the soothing voice, for example. I do not believe that many people have any awareness of their internal voices, and I propose that this is more so in our modern communication age than ever in history. Our population today is constantly surrounded by the voices from Pop songs, Radio, Television and Movies, never mind the endless buzz of the mobile phones, internet and urban crowds.
Where does an individual today get encouraged to listen to their internal voices? It used to be easier, and it used to be encouraged through religious guidance, but we all know how much of a setback religion took in Christian countries in the Sixties.
Embracing hopelessness and fearlessness? I don't think I quite agree with the choice of the word "embrace". It is not possible to embrace abstractions, let alone emotionless abstractions, except in an abstract sense. The word "embrace" invokes enquiry, but is not the most useful description of the action.
Adoption? Welcoming? Inviting?
These words point out that there is a staged process in the adoption of hopelessness and fearlessness:
1. Seeing;
2. Greeting;
3. Welcoming, embracing;
4. Inviting;
5. Entertaining;
6. Adopting
In other words, imagine Hopelessness and Fearlessness were travellers whom wandered into your neigbourhood. You would have to go through these stages of communicating with them before they became active members of your rational toolbox.
Alternatively, let us consider hopelessness and fearlessness to be nothing more than points on a line that runs from Hope to Fear. (Hope and Fear are essential tools in all living things upon which their survival and success depend). To move easily back and forth along the spectrum requires that you should be able to adopt any point on that line quickly and responsively, with rational control.
This means that you must be able to "bid goodbye" to hopelessness and fearlessness just as easily as you must embrace it.
The problem then is how to manage a world of Procrastinators (those who live in Hope and Fear without making effective actions) and Activists (those who seek change because they live in hopelessness and fearlessness).
I think that's the lot. I think I will award myself Today's Doctorate for that.
Notion: "stilling the soothing internal voice that tells us everything will be okay" to "embrace hopelessness"
Compare with: "stilling the panicky internal voice that tells us everything is going wrong" to "embrace fearlessness".
Are these silly notions, and if they are not, could they stand improvement?
The internal voices of each individual vary not only with time, but in the frequency of occurrence. Some might have panicky voices all the time, and never the soothing voice, for example. I do not believe that many people have any awareness of their internal voices, and I propose that this is more so in our modern communication age than ever in history. Our population today is constantly surrounded by the voices from Pop songs, Radio, Television and Movies, never mind the endless buzz of the mobile phones, internet and urban crowds.
Where does an individual today get encouraged to listen to their internal voices? It used to be easier, and it used to be encouraged through religious guidance, but we all know how much of a setback religion took in Christian countries in the Sixties.
Embracing hopelessness and fearlessness? I don't think I quite agree with the choice of the word "embrace". It is not possible to embrace abstractions, let alone emotionless abstractions, except in an abstract sense. The word "embrace" invokes enquiry, but is not the most useful description of the action.
Adoption? Welcoming? Inviting?
These words point out that there is a staged process in the adoption of hopelessness and fearlessness:
1. Seeing;
2. Greeting;
3. Welcoming, embracing;
4. Inviting;
5. Entertaining;
6. Adopting
In other words, imagine Hopelessness and Fearlessness were travellers whom wandered into your neigbourhood. You would have to go through these stages of communicating with them before they became active members of your rational toolbox.
Alternatively, let us consider hopelessness and fearlessness to be nothing more than points on a line that runs from Hope to Fear. (Hope and Fear are essential tools in all living things upon which their survival and success depend). To move easily back and forth along the spectrum requires that you should be able to adopt any point on that line quickly and responsively, with rational control.
This means that you must be able to "bid goodbye" to hopelessness and fearlessness just as easily as you must embrace it.
The problem then is how to manage a world of Procrastinators (those who live in Hope and Fear without making effective actions) and Activists (those who seek change because they live in hopelessness and fearlessness).
I think that's the lot. I think I will award myself Today's Doctorate for that.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Chicken Licken ate Global is Good
"The Pound is Falling"
"The Pound is Falling!", Chicken Licken cries!
Surely not? London is the financial capital of a globalist world economy. If the pound is falling, then the Sky is Falling for global economics?
Oh no, don't be ridiculous. Every old person over the age of 40 still bleats to the beat of "Global is Good". Every day some professor, intellectual, politician or businessman still throws their hands up in the air, and says, "we live in a global economy, and we have to wait until it sorts itself out".
I have not heard one person, not one voice shouting against the mantras of Globalism. When I heard 8 years ago a small businessman shouting the Mantra "We must go global", I remember being dumbstruck by the significance of its pervasiveness.
Then for the last 8 years, all we have been hearing is "Global is Good. See how wealthy we are."
Now the Pound is Falling, the Pound is Falling, and Chicken Licken now says "Global is All There Is. We must sit under the Clouds and be rained on by worthless Falling Pounds."
It is fitting that Britain has endured officially the gloomiest (least sunshine) August since 1942. This is like being in World War 2. It IS World War 3. Instead of bombs and armies and submarines and destroyers, we have words, threats, gestures hissy fits, and Financial Market attacks. Just look at David Milliband and Russia. That whole Ossetia and Georgia affair has seen the Russian stockmarket collapse. I'm with Vladimir Putin on this. I admire a man with brains, and who has some shrewdness. Russia couldn't care less, and why should it? Its people will still be better off today with a collapsed stock market than 20 years ago with the rudderless Gorbachev in a collapsed Communist dream.
And isn't China finally getting revenge on Britain, more than a century after the Scots launched the Opium Wars and brought down millenia of Imperial society? When is it more fitting than when we have a Prime Minister, one Gordon Brown, who is Scottish, and the son of a sing-song preaching Minister of the Church? It is almost as though the ghosts of the mandarins of China have finally engineered the ultimate slap in the face: bringing down the British economy. Strange isn't it, that the British, whom prided themselves on being immune to occupation and revolutions ("We have never been invaded since 1066, and have a continuous monarchic and parliamentary history"), went so carelessly around the world to occupy other countries and seditiously incite revolutions.
I wonder how many Chinese people today understand where the Communists came from, and how their thinking was directed (dare I say toyed with) by European intellectuals. A whole century of occupations, revolutions and upheavals, instead of some continuity of adjustment, and now nothing but an environmental mess to clear up.
And Thaksin Shinawatra is selling Manchester City football club, even while the Thai government is trying to recover his assets. Will Britain be very popular if they give protection to rich globalists like him?
Meanwhile, in India, the floods in Bihar this past week have displaced 3 million people, and have been hugely overshadowed by the ddrama of the New Orleans hurricane panic attack. Oh yes, wasn't India part of the British Empire once? Obviously did it a lot of good, and the fact that it has a democracy is doing it just as much good. Everybody in India must surely understand by now that nobody is going to look after them in the world, but they have to look after themselves.
So "The Pound is Falling, The Pound is Falling". Why should China, India, Russia or any of the Asian countries rush to rescue "the Pound"? Britain drove Globalism and still wallows in Globalism as if it were Catholic Iconography. Gordon Brown has never bothered to understand history or Global Economics, but merely dreams of being like the U.S.A. So once again, Britain will have to be rescued by America. And nobody will ever understand any better what a mistake Globalist Economics have been.
There is only me here, writing, free of charge, unpaid, thankless. Soon I shall stop protesting against Human Globalism and start designing salvage plans for the Global Human Economic Machine... while machines are still worth a lot of money as scrap metal. So while everybody else is sitting on their bums, I shall be sitting on their faces for time immemorial?
One would think I was descended from a people who have spent thousands of years adapted to globalism. A people whom had to develop a culture that was adapted to having no homeland. Diasporas, gypsies and nomads come to mind. Maybe I am. Maybe the horrors of World War 2 are no longer able to blind people to the horrors of a future of Globalism.
No, I'm just not a brainless sheep. I might have a sheep's soul, but my brain is half wolf.
"The Pound is Falling!", Chicken Licken cries!
Surely not? London is the financial capital of a globalist world economy. If the pound is falling, then the Sky is Falling for global economics?
Oh no, don't be ridiculous. Every old person over the age of 40 still bleats to the beat of "Global is Good". Every day some professor, intellectual, politician or businessman still throws their hands up in the air, and says, "we live in a global economy, and we have to wait until it sorts itself out".
I have not heard one person, not one voice shouting against the mantras of Globalism. When I heard 8 years ago a small businessman shouting the Mantra "We must go global", I remember being dumbstruck by the significance of its pervasiveness.
Then for the last 8 years, all we have been hearing is "Global is Good. See how wealthy we are."
Now the Pound is Falling, the Pound is Falling, and Chicken Licken now says "Global is All There Is. We must sit under the Clouds and be rained on by worthless Falling Pounds."
It is fitting that Britain has endured officially the gloomiest (least sunshine) August since 1942. This is like being in World War 2. It IS World War 3. Instead of bombs and armies and submarines and destroyers, we have words, threats, gestures hissy fits, and Financial Market attacks. Just look at David Milliband and Russia. That whole Ossetia and Georgia affair has seen the Russian stockmarket collapse. I'm with Vladimir Putin on this. I admire a man with brains, and who has some shrewdness. Russia couldn't care less, and why should it? Its people will still be better off today with a collapsed stock market than 20 years ago with the rudderless Gorbachev in a collapsed Communist dream.
And isn't China finally getting revenge on Britain, more than a century after the Scots launched the Opium Wars and brought down millenia of Imperial society? When is it more fitting than when we have a Prime Minister, one Gordon Brown, who is Scottish, and the son of a sing-song preaching Minister of the Church? It is almost as though the ghosts of the mandarins of China have finally engineered the ultimate slap in the face: bringing down the British economy. Strange isn't it, that the British, whom prided themselves on being immune to occupation and revolutions ("We have never been invaded since 1066, and have a continuous monarchic and parliamentary history"), went so carelessly around the world to occupy other countries and seditiously incite revolutions.
I wonder how many Chinese people today understand where the Communists came from, and how their thinking was directed (dare I say toyed with) by European intellectuals. A whole century of occupations, revolutions and upheavals, instead of some continuity of adjustment, and now nothing but an environmental mess to clear up.
And Thaksin Shinawatra is selling Manchester City football club, even while the Thai government is trying to recover his assets. Will Britain be very popular if they give protection to rich globalists like him?
Meanwhile, in India, the floods in Bihar this past week have displaced 3 million people, and have been hugely overshadowed by the ddrama of the New Orleans hurricane panic attack. Oh yes, wasn't India part of the British Empire once? Obviously did it a lot of good, and the fact that it has a democracy is doing it just as much good. Everybody in India must surely understand by now that nobody is going to look after them in the world, but they have to look after themselves.
So "The Pound is Falling, The Pound is Falling". Why should China, India, Russia or any of the Asian countries rush to rescue "the Pound"? Britain drove Globalism and still wallows in Globalism as if it were Catholic Iconography. Gordon Brown has never bothered to understand history or Global Economics, but merely dreams of being like the U.S.A. So once again, Britain will have to be rescued by America. And nobody will ever understand any better what a mistake Globalist Economics have been.
There is only me here, writing, free of charge, unpaid, thankless. Soon I shall stop protesting against Human Globalism and start designing salvage plans for the Global Human Economic Machine... while machines are still worth a lot of money as scrap metal. So while everybody else is sitting on their bums, I shall be sitting on their faces for time immemorial?
One would think I was descended from a people who have spent thousands of years adapted to globalism. A people whom had to develop a culture that was adapted to having no homeland. Diasporas, gypsies and nomads come to mind. Maybe I am. Maybe the horrors of World War 2 are no longer able to blind people to the horrors of a future of Globalism.
No, I'm just not a brainless sheep. I might have a sheep's soul, but my brain is half wolf.
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