Taboo Plaza

I'm going to confess something to you that may lead you to believe me insane.

I think I know the purpose.

All of it and it really seems rather mundane.  In fact, if we had the right perspective I believe we as a race could fashion a scientific system out of it.  It lives.  I think we might agree that it feels like something larger than ourselves exists: at times at least.  You can tow the aethist hardline and refuse me that point, but enough people believe such a concept that if we are crazy, then we are a deeply flawed race of beings.

What do you do with that?  Where can you go with that kind of premise?

There's also a deep-seated notion among many people to believe that somehow we are interconnected with one another.  (Though, I wouldn't suggest there's not as many as of that variety as believers in something larger than themselves.)  As a race, a substantial portion of us have an underlying belief that we should matter to one another.  In fact, I might suggest that most of our rage is at the fact that someone won't conform to what we want of them.  This starts with a desire to have the other close. 

Be close to me, but be the way that I want you to be. 

If you won't be the way that I want you to be then I must kill you.

That's history.  That's not sane.  If something is larger than us, we must pray that it is sane. 

It's the Christian notion that we're not perfect, but God is perfect.  We're the ones that should grovel, because we make a mockery of things.  Only it is Supreme.  It's got to be sane though.  Why wish it any other way?

So if we have sanity above us, then we must try to match the sanity above.  Sanity is predictable.  Sanity is satisfied.  Sanity is peaceful.  Insanity flies off the handle.  Insanity refuses to accept reason.  Insanity thrives on chaos.  We must resist our insanities, because we are not worthy of that which is larger than me.

Can you live a mundane existence?  I'm not saying necessarily as dull as cattle, but mundane.  Even spectacularly mundane would be fine, but can we tone it down anyway?  There are some people in the world that might suggest assuming the tranquility of a cow is Divine.  I like cows for the most part, but they seem pretty stupid.  We need to be more than that, yet still have the ability to live around one another without drama.  Cows at least have that tendency down pretty well.

There seems to be some sanity in a cow's existence. 

It's peculiar to me that something larger than myself would share an interest in me.  I've got cells roaming my body and I don't really care too much about them.  I might find a couple scientists who would be interested in the cells of my body, but beyond that crowd my cells don't interest people. 

As I am to my cells, that which is larger is to me.

I don't wish any harm on my cells.  I suffer their fate.  On the other hand, if one of my cells is getting more nutrition than other parts of my cells- I can't intervene to make the situation right.  The situation just is.  The Taoists have pegged the incoherence of discussing that which is larger than us.  The situation is and you can either follow the path or you can resist and still follow the path.

Not predestination.  Favored winds.  Something like growing up.  Everyone's going to do it.  Most everyone has a notion of what it means.  You can't stop it no matter how hard you try.  Look at people around you for examples of people resisting growing up yet still they have grown. 

So point blank, "God" cares about you in the same sense you care about the cells of your body.  No hostility, but if you are lost and starving in a forest- the peach tree that is, or is not, around the next corner was, or wasn't, already there. 

Nobody's favored.  We're all of the same material.

The Hindu notion of Karma and reincarnation suggest a reason (some sense of sanity to explain it all.)  It seems right.  Many Americans believe as much in Karma as anything else in the world.  I don't combine all of these beliefs together to lure anyone anywhere.  I also don't weave different beliefs because I am somehow spiritually lazy.

Nobody has all of the answers.

These concepts help me to formulate a picture of that which is larger than me.  My picture will be inadequate for sure, but it's a start.

A big brain.  Highly advanced through evolution compared to our mind, but similar to the comparison of a gnat brain to a human brain.  This mind separates itself (i.e. souls) and here we are.  We come from the mind and we will return to the mind. 

What does a mind want to know?  Everything it can.  It wants experience.  An open mind will take you to odd places.  A mind strives, even if trained upon a narrow topic, to know as much as it can.  A mind fills.  Beyond that we can't say, because we are insane.  We just wouldn't understand.

If we are all part of the same mind, then when we return we dump our data.  We leave our narrow sense of the world and reunite.  We become a part of what is more than ourselves.  At that moment, everyone you knew welcomes you back by examining your entire life in its detail.  For maybe a moment longer, you won't be able to hide a single thing that you've done.  In front of everyone who died before you.

For that single moment, you haven't assimilated back into the consciousness.  You are still essentially you.  You feel them and if you lived an evil life you will face everyone you wronged.  You will meet their gaze for just a moment and then you will be one.  I think if we had the proper perspective this process might be observable. 

Either that or we could be accidents on a remote rock in an unintelligibly immense void of space. 

Who really knows?

Current Affairs

The government spent a lot of money in the last two weeks.  It's damn hard work to push an unlimited/undefined credit advance to Freddie and Fannie, then push a budget for 2009 with a deficit of $482 billion on the table.

Heh, heh.  Just make it happen.

Achieving all of this while drawing a public paycheck requires great chutzpah.  The papers write about it and nobody cares, but call someone a communist and panties begin bunching.  The United States Congress authorized an unlimited line of credit to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae's private investors who may lose some money because they bought so many home loans.

The housing market plummets in price.  People can actually afford homes now, but the banks are hurting.  Banks are dumping homes at a discount, because people won't buy them otherwise.  The market is hurting and you're supposed to feel bad about that.

Merrill Lynch may not be able to feed its babies.  Merrill Lynch became over-exposed in the market with mortgages on which people defaulted.  Why did people default?  There's no simple explanation, but the economy has sucked for quite some time.  I might would start there.

The Compassionate Conservative in the White House has opted to run 2009 unfunded by a projected half-trillion dollars.  It makes me wonder, who comes to break the United States' legs if we don't pay our debts?




Our Nation is Now Dumber for This…Thank You for Your Participation!

I'm trying to get a handle on what's going on economically around me.  I'm trying to gain clarity.  I don't know about you but my finances really suck as of late.  I didn't get a raise this year.  My dollars aren't stretching as far as they were last year.  Prices are going up and the cost of my labor has stayed the same.

How does that happen?

I'm investing in myself through education.  I'm not terribly worried about myself.  I get a Master's degree in a year and a half, I should be okay.  Right?  That's the way I've always understood the story.  I'm not alone in this though.  It's not just me rolling along with the economy in the United States of America.  I was born into this system with a lot of other people and now my children are being born into this system.

I can share with them my life experience and my understanding, but what about their children and the ones that follow them?

This recession we're tip-toeing around is negatively impacting many people, yet a few people don't feel the effect.  How does this happen?

It has to start with the dollar.  What is it?  What does it really mean?  It's a piece of paper.  It's backed by nothing more than faith.  Where is the outrage from my followers of Christ on this one?  Faith in the dollar determines how our financial well-being plays out from day to day.  In my studies this week I've discovered the term "fiat currency."  Connotatively-alone it is an interesting term.

According to some sources, this type of economic structure (America's economy) runs with mysterious groups manipulating the outcome.  Explanations about how the economy works- or doesn't work- tend to lean towards technical terms that most people don't understand.  Words like "hedge funds," "margins" and "short selling."  For that matter words like "U.S. Fed" and the "Department of the Treasury" don't mean much to most Americans either.  They're shadowy organizations because there is no face for citizens to identify and recognize.  In this way, these organizations do not answer to the American people.  Since no face readily jumps to mind when the economy turns sour, nobody has to stand forward, accountable, for manipulations and bad decision-making.

I recently found the following break down of a "fiat currency" in a blog discussion:

"Just to clarify, greed plays a role but the flaw of fiat currency is structural. As follows:
Every dollar in circulation in the US was generated through debt.
That means that all the dollars together represent the principle.
And that means that the money to pay the interest doesn't exist, so it must be borrowed.
Without indefinite expansion of credit, this economy collapses."

I don't know how well it encapsulates the issue, but it seems reasonable and simple.  The only reason something like this needs to be complicated is so people far too invested in studying the system can find secret ways to benefit from the system.  Creating a "futures market" and saying that it is a legitimate practice doesn't change the fact that it only exists on paper and as digital data.  The most baffling thing about our economy is that it tends to exist only on paper. 

That's seems to be a basic flaw with the housing market.

The escalation in home prices only existed on paper, because people could get loans.  The value of the house never actually changed, it was only the ease of obtaining credit that changed.  Everything looks cheaper when you don't actually have to produce the cash.  That seems to be the single biggest problem with the American economy.  Banks cannot produce all of the cash they've claimed to have produced.  All they are supposed to have.

While reading around the internet on this issue I found another post that was an interesting encapsulated history of our economic structure in the United States.



A brief history of time-Uncle Entity  (Sat Aug 11 2007)

Let's say for just a minute that we still had a *real* commodity backed currency. To lend this you actually have to have the money in your hand and physically hand it over to another person. They take the money and return it to you after the agreed amount of time plus a 'fee' for the use of this money. The person who loaned it in the first place is that much poorer for this time while the loanee is that much richer. A simple system where it would be extremely difficult for one person to accumulate a serious amount of wealth.

Let's add a bank. People put their gold in the bank and get a certificate of deposit in return. For this service they charge a 'warehousing' fee. The people can use the deposit slips as a proxy for the actual gold so now we have paper money. Still have to have money in your hand to loan to another person and collect interest.

After a while people get used to this system and the people running the bank start looking at all that gold just sitting there doing nothing. They do some calculations and see that people don't really withdrawal the gold that often so 'what would it hurt if we printed up a few extra deposit certificates and collect interest on those, nobody needs to know'. They start doing this in secret and all goes well so they run up the printing press and start making some serious money off interest.

Every thing's going well in mythical bank land until people start doing the math and start to suspect there might not be enough gold in the bank to back all this paper money so they lose confidence in the bank and withdrawal their gold en masse. The bankers don't have enough gold so have to declare bankruptcy and quite a few people lose out.

Fast forward to 1929. People rush the bank after the stock market crashes and the government says 'enough is enough'. Uncle Sam confiscates all the private gold and gives people paper money in return and says 'deal with it, bitches'. The dollar is still backed by gold on the international market as is all other currencies under a system of treaties. Banks can print all the money they want because the people can't trade it for gold and everything is good in the world. Government places restrictions on the printing presses as a condition for guaranteeing their deposits and as a means to control the economy.

Fast forward to 1971. The international treaty of gold backing has been taken over by the US bullion stores and due to inflation of the dollar gold bullion is leaving the US at an alarming rate. Nixon looks at this and surprises everyone by removing the US from the gold standard while simultaneously saying 'deal with it, bitches'. Pretty much every other country follows suit which brings in the age of the global fiat currency.

The last hurdle to running the printing presses at full steam has been removed so the central banks and government start in with 'economic reform' programs.

This brings us to today and the end of our little history lesson. How it all turns out is still in the future since there is no historical parallel to the economy of today. Back before the central banks and fractional reserve banking there was no inflation like we know it today. Prices would stay steady across generations. There was also no problem with someone cornering the 'money market' without coercion, theft or fraud. When money became tight the price to borrow it went up and when there was an excess the price went down — just like any other commodity. When the price went up people had incentive to save(loan) and when the price was low is the time to spend. Supply and demand. There were always people out digging up gold or silver so there wasn't a problem with not enough currency for an expanding population.

The problem as you describe it is directly related to fractional reserve banking. If I put a chair in a warehouse they just hold my chair but if I put money in a bank they loan it out like they own it. Depending on the reserve amount they keep in the bank they actually produce *new* money in the process. This is how money gets concentrated into the hands of a few which incidentally is also the root cause of much of the historical antisemitism since Christians were banned from money lending by 'law'.



I don't know how accurate the whole post is, but it seems to at least to carry some kernels of truth and relevance.  There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of hope on the surface of our current economic climate.  I would strongly recommend not buying anything on credit for the short term, at least.  Personally, I'm considering withdrawing all of my money from my 401K early.

I know I'll take a heavy tax hit (I figure 33% percent,) but I'll be able to remove all of my credit card debt and pay off 1 of 3 remaining semesters before I have a Master's degree.  That seems like a pretty good use of the money, especially considering that I've lost 10.5% of the money in my 401K for the year so far. 

All of the money I've contributed in 2008 is gone, plus some.

What good does this faith in future money for retirement really do me, when I'm struggling to pay my bills and feed my family now?

My Butthole Bleeds for You…Really….It Does

John McCain is an interesting guy.  He should've beat George W. the first time around, but somehow he lost.  I've heard Bush credited with staying on message to achieve victory.  It's pretty clear now that he didn't have a whole lot of skill.  He was also credited with making stupid sound relatable.  He botched words and speeches.  Talking heads talked about how the common people could relate to him.  Because he sounded stupid.

That's all water under the bridge now.  W has had his eight years.  We've got Barack and John to choose from.  Here's a clip of John McCain five years ago.

I probably would've voted for this guy in 2000 over Gore.  He seemed more genuine but who knows.  He may be genuine now.  However, he's said that 100 years in Iraq seemed plausible.  He then came back and said troop withdrawal from Iraq should be guided by conditions on the ground.  He's recently come back to say that 16 months seems like a good timeframe to withdraw troops from Iraq.

McCain has become irrelevant and only propped up by media coverage.  There is very little interest in McCain outside of the fact that he's not Barack Obama.  Most news stories about John McCain in turn headline Obama in someway; whether by inference, allusion or directly naming Barack.  McCain only holds our attention as an anti-thesis to Barack Obama.

If this guy wins the election, I suggest, America truly is a predominantly racist country.

His campaign doesn't make much sense from a continuity standpoint.  One member of his campaign calls America a nation of whiners for complaining the economy sucking.  He has completely shifted his position on the Iraq Invasion and he has no sort of ethics left in regard to conservative economic politics.

In 2003, John McCain said that his primary responsibility to the American people- as a public servant- was fiscal responsibility.  Now he really doesn't seem to know what his primary responsibility is to the American public. 

It's time for an Obama vs. McCain debate, so that positions can be clarified.

Tip of the week

Don't buy something that will break or be useless in 2 to 3 years.  If you've got to buy, buy some land.  This auction ends September 5th, 2008.



Belly Laugh

This time around I'm spotlighting Gilbert Gottfried.  He's definitely a unique comedian.  People either love him or hate him.  He revels amid social commentary mixed with repetitive annoyance.  It's difficult to recognize when he leaves one area for another.

A side of Gilbert some people might not have seen is his outright vulgarity.  He's not really the cute guy when he switches to this mode.  He gets kind of creepy.  He says the most outrageous things, it seems, simply to say them. 

Warning: the following clip is grossly explicit.