Pitchforks, Tar and Feathers

It is rare, these days, for Chaos to have to "soften" a post by explaining it in detail, but the vehemence and raw anger in this post (taken from our friend, Karl Denninger's site) cries out for some context. A day or so ago, an unfortunate executive at the notorious AIG wrote the CEO a resignation letter that found its way into print via the nation's paper of record. Purporting to provide readers with the "real story" behind the granting of corporate bonuses, it served as a kind of counterbalance to the recent mob mentality displayed by the the public and its corresponding representatives in the Legislative and Executive branches. Hence, the references in this screed to that person named above. At any rate, please note that should the US public ever become aroused to this degree, pitchforks, tar and feathers will not be a metaphor, but real. Here you go:

DEAR Wall Street,

What a bunch of whiny f**king babies. John Galt would be puking blood for 200-pages over this load of sh**, you bunch of sobbing welfare queens. You f**ked up. You ruined everything. You broke it, and we f**king bought it, because big baby was too big baby to fail.

We get it all ways from you motherf**kers. You're robbing us of our present and future now, but first you stepped on our throats on your way to the top. You raked in the money with a bunch of made up fantasyland bullsh** that wouldn't fool a counting horse on America's Funniest Home Videos, but somehow suckered in every major bank in the world.

Credit default swaps.

Those things are so f**king dumb that when you explain them to somebody and they laugh about how dumb they are you've got to act like ooooh they're so magical and complicated. Far too complex for the plebes to get. No! Wrong! Go into OTB and put fifty dollars on Rambo's Beautiful Blood. You just bought a credit default swap. Whoaaa you're blowing my simple pea brain with your fancy Wall Street talkin'. You sadsack ****ers.

So everybody bought into your big scheme, even when they didn't know they were playing, and now the whole thing has come crashing down because too many people won the f**king unbelievably obvious bet that a million illegal immigrants were going to default on million dollar home loans. Suddenly all your stupid fake money is gone, but if it's gone the whole system of bullsh** lies collapses and you look like d**kheads. So whoopty-doo, now we gotta make the fake money turn real or else the house of sh**ty c**t cards comes crashing down, only there isn't enough real money to cover all the fake money, so we're making more real money.

Then there's A.I.G., the bad seed, the carbuncle on our anus, the weeping wound in our tit, the sorry source of all our misery and woe. This is the monster garage full of miscreants that dreamed up the fire-breathing nitro-gulping predicament we're in right f**king now. Their financial products division created the derivatives market from lies and their executives raked in billions in bonuses and easy money. While they were peddling bad bets, median wages in the US stagnated and poor working schmucks leaned increasingly on credit to get by. Prices on everything were going up, but credit was easy to come by what with all that bullsh** money to throw around. And then the good days ended, for the poor sh**head in the middle class anyway. While you a**holes on Wall Street were lining up for your first round at the government trough, the poor f**kers that had been using credit cards to maintain their standard of living from the 1990s were beginning to lose everything. Their houses, cars, health care, and even their jobs were disappearing. F**kers at Merrill-Lynch, A.I.G., Citi Group, Bank of America, and on, and on, and f**king on were taking huge bonuses or executive compensation packages. They were "retiring" to third world countries where their fortunes would set them up like kings.

And listen up motherf**kers, because we f**king paid for it. Us. The f**king taxpaying public. The dudes you have been grinding beneath your heels since you first read Ayn Rand and sociopathed your way through econ 101. We're your paymasters now, f**kers. And yeah, your tools in the government and in the press are between you and us for now, but we've got one trick up our sleeve. One and only recourse while you're raping us for our last f**king dollars.

We can get ****ed. We can let the hate take over and form a f**king mob. When you take home bonuses from our money, when you get our bailouts and have your lobster luncheons or your strippers and coke parties at the Mirage, we'll be there with our torches and our f**king pitchforks. And just because you got your little crybaby letter in the New York Times, just because "the media narrative" is turning back in your favor, doesn't mean we have forgotten. We're ****ed and we know what you did.

Jake DeSantis, you f**king narcissist, don't give me that bullsh** self-pitying resignation letter. Don't tell me you weren't the dick that has been f**king this country, just the hand on its throat. Don't make me laugh with your charity donation lesson in life. Let me give you a life lesson. We'll go through the Red Cross and the March of Dimes to get to you. We'll leave Jerry's Kids mewling and thrashing in the gutters and overturn the Salvation Army Kettle to get our f**king money back.

You're all scum. Villains. And before this is through blood will be shed. Human blood that doesn't come out of a gigantic f**king vagina like yours, DeSantis. It's not a threat, it's a promise you're making to us.

"Come get us," you're sneering.

"I hope you like to eat turds from a human butt," we're sneering right back.

Your offices will be lit from within by the fires of a thousand burning evil motherf**kers and their evil personal assistants. There will be chaos. Triple chaos. Saigon all over again. They'll be pushing G5s off the deck of an aircraft carrier to make room for the next private jet escaping New York. We'll string the filth of the NYSE from lamp posts and Rick Santelli's empty sockets will look out on the streets, choked with useless paper and cars torched for insurance money.

The orgy of our outrage will be legendary. We'll cut off hands and feet and gouge out tender parts. We'll feed chopped up guts to dogs and rotting carcasses can fertilize urban gardens. Remember that tree they put Conan on? No, that's not for you, that's for your wives! You should be so lucky!

The last of you, the scarred remnants of your horrible tribe, can read this to a congressional hearing, your voices quivering with indignation while pale fists hammer on the glass and cry to see your blood spill out in a red gush across the steps of the Capitol.

You motherf**kers had better be afraid. You haven't learned your lesson yet, but we have.

DEATH TO WALL STREET!

Sincerely and with warmest regards,

XXXX XXXXXX (name deleted)

Medical Tourism, Revisited

Chaos has remarked upon this phenomenon several times in the past, both because of personal experience with the dysfunctional, expensive, highly wasteful US healthcare system and because well, there just doesn't seem to be a viable solution, now or in the future, other than going abroad for medical treatment if one is un- or under-insured. At any rate, the nation's paper of record has now "discovered" the practice, which would not be particularly notable save for the helpful hints at the bottom of the piece. Give it a read, and contemplate the implications of a civilized society whose values are such that it regards medical care as a profitable commodity, and which leaves upwards of 50 million of its citizens uninsured.

A Solution, Of Sorts...

Well, Chaos realizes that this certainly will not solve all the economic woes, but it sure would make sense and stop wasting resources on something that all agree is ridiculous, but for some strange reason cannot be touched. Here it is in all its glory:

The only way to stop drug gangs is to end their monopoly on production.

By Aaron Houston

Violence in Mexico is getting worse by the day. There are reports of beheadings, killings in the several thousands, and an environment of fear that makes it impossible for Mexican officials to do their work. The country's very stability may be threatened.

It's time to put an end to U.S. policies that subsidize these murderous drug gangs. The first step, as a growing chorus of voices is arguing, is to end the quixotic policy of prohibition, a proven failure. But the United States can do even better; by empowering a domestic marijuana industry, the United States would squeeze Mexican cartels' profits, cutting off the financial lifeline that sustains organized narcocrime.

According to U.S. and Mexican officials, some 60 percent of the profits that fuel Mexican narcotrafficking come from just one drug: marijuana. Although such estimates are inherently imprecise, there is no doubt that marijuana is the cash cow that makes these gangs the powerful, dangerous force they are -- both in Mexico and in the 230 U.S. cities where cartels are thought to operate. The chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Mexico and Central America Section recently told the New York Times that marijuana is the "king crop" for Mexican cartels, because it "consistently sustains its marketability and profitability."

Last November, the U.S. Joint Forces Command warned in its "Joint Operating Environment" report that Mexico "bear[s] consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse" due to drug cartel violence. Some critics saw the report as unduly dire, but at a minimum, as outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden warned, drug cartels "threaten ... the well-being of the Mexican people and the Mexican state." A further increase in instability would constitute a national security and humanitarian crisis on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. For now, there is no end in sight to the worsening violence and no adequate plan to address it.

This appalling situation is not just happenstance. It is the direct result of prohibitionist U.S. policies.

Like it or not, marijuana is a massive industry. One hundred million Americans admit to government survey-takers that they've used it, with nearly 15 million acknowledging use in the past month. That's a huge market -- exceeding the number of Americans who will buy a new car or truck this year, or who bought one last year. Estimates based on U.S. government figures have pegged marijuana as the No. 1 cash crop in the United States, with a value exceeding corn and wheat combined.

Current U.S. policies are based on the fantasy that Americans can somehow make this massive industry go away. But prohibition hasn't stopped marijuana use. Although marijuana use hits peaks and troughs over time, overall consumption of the drug in the United States has risen roughly 4,000 percent rise since the first national ban took effect in 1937. In other words, for 72 years, the U.S. government has in effect granted criminals, including those brutal Mexican gangs, a monopoly on production, distribution, and profits.

The solution is already apparent: Make marijuana a legal, regulated product like alcohol and tobacco are. After all, there's a reason these gangs aren't smuggling wine grapes. When you have a legal, regulated market for a product, the underground market disappears. Indeed, the United States already has an illustrative example from its own history. During the 13 dark years of alcohol prohibition, drinking didn't stop, but gangsters such as Al Capone got rich. When Prohibition ended, the bootleggers -- and the orgy of violence that accompanied them -- went away. By taking marijuana out of the criminal underground and regulating it, Americans can cut the lifeline that gives Mexican drug gangs their power.

There are benefits for the United States, too. For the first time, regulators would have a level of control over marijuana production and distribution, both of which are impossible under today's system. Over time, the domestic marijuana industry would start to look like California's wine business: a responsible industry that adds to the state's prestige, tourism, and tax coffers, rather than a source of violence and instability.

Critics have already started to object, claiming that such a move would set off a surge of marijuana use. But in the Netherlands -- where adults have been permitted to possess and purchase small amounts of marijuana from regulated businesses since the mid-1970s -- the rate of marijuana use is less than half that of the United States, according to a recent World Health Organization study. More importantly, the percentage of teens trying marijuana by age 15 in the Netherlands is roughly one third the U.S. rate. Indeed, a 2001 National Research Council report commissioned by the White House found "little apparent relationship" between criminal penalties for drug use and the prevalence or frequency of use.

Most everyone can agree on one thing: The situation today is intolerable. Three former presidents of Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil have recently joined the call for the decriminalization of marijuana in its largest market, the United States. Mainstream commentators, editorial boards, and members of U.S. Congress have begun to join in. The momentum has shifted, and a solution is at the world's fingertips.

What's needed is the political courage to grasp it.

Aaron Houston is director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project.

Chaos has really nothing to add, except that it seems this is just one of many issues a declining Empire faces: intractable problems (see: the health care issue).

Well, While We're At It (The Debacle Put In Another Context)

Chaos has few words to describe how admirable this essay is, how it provides the full context to current events, and how it provides a "solution" to the economic angst being experienced right now. To alleviate the necessity of providing a link, Chaos will quote the essay in full:

Suppose you give me a million dollars with the instructions, "Invest this profitably, and I'll pay you well." I'm a sharp dresser -- why not? So I go out onto the street and hand out stacks of bills to random passers-by. Ten thousand dollars each. In return, each scribbles out an IOU for $20,000, payable in five years. I come back to you and say, "Look at these IOUs! I have generated a 20% annual return on your investment." You are very pleased, and pay me an enormous commission.

Now I've got a big stack of IOUs, so I use these "assets" as collateral to borrow even more money, which I lend out to even more people, or sell them to others like myself who do the same. I also buy insurance to cover me in case the borrowers default -- and I pay for it with those self-same IOUs! Round and round it goes, each new loan becoming somebody's asset on which to borrow yet more money. We all rake in huge commissions and bonuses, as the total face value of all the assets we've created from that initial million dollars is now fifty times that.

Then one day, the first batch of IOUs comes due. But guess what? The person who scribbled his name on the IOU can't pay me back right now. In fact, lots of the borrowers can't. I try to hush up this embarrassing fact as long as possible, but pretty soon you get suspicious. You want your million-plus dollars back -- in cash. I try to sell the IOUs and their derivatives that I hold, but everyone else is suspicious too, and no one buys them. The insurance company tries to cover my losses, but it can only do so by selling the IOUs I gave it!

So finally, the government steps in and buys the IOUs, bails out the insurance company and everyone else holding the IOUs and the derivatives stacked on them. Their total value is way more than a million dollars now. I and my fellow entrepreneurs retire with our lucre. Everyone else pays for it.

This is the first level of what has happened in the financial industry over the past decade. It is a huge transfer of wealth to the financial elite, to be funded by US taxpayers, foreign corporations and governments, and ultimately the foreign workers who subsidize US debt indirectly via the lower purchasing power of their wages. However, to see the current crisis as merely the result of a big con is to miss its true significance.

I think we all sense that we are nearing the end of an era. On the most superficial level, it is the era of unregulated casino-style financial manipulation that is ending. But the current efforts of the political elites to fix the crisis at this level will only reveal its deeper dimensions. In fact, the crisis goes "all the way to the bottom." It arises from the very nature of money and property in the world today, and it will persist and continue to intensify until money itself is transformed. A process centuries in the making is in its final stages of unfoldment.

Money as we know it today has crisis and collapse built into its basic design. That is because money seeks interest, bears interest, and indeed is born of interest. To see how this works, lets go back to some finance basics. Money is created when somebody takes out a loan from a bank (or more recently, a disguised loan from some other kind of institution). A debt is a promise to pay money in the future in order to buy something today; in other words, borrowing money is a form of delayed trading. I receive something now (bought with the money I borrowed) and agree to give something in the future (a good or service which I will sell for the money to pay back the debt). A bank or any other lender will ordinarily only agree to lend you money if there is a reasonable expectation you will pay it back; in other words, if there is a reasonable expectation you will produce goods or services of equivalent value. This "reasonable expectation" can be guaranteed in the form of collateral, or it can be encoded in one's credit rating.

Any time you use money, you are essentially guaranteeing "I have performed a service or provided a good of equivalent value to the one I am buying." If the money is borrowed money, you are saying that you will provide an equivalent good/service in the future.

Now enter interest. What motivates a bank to lend anyone money in the first place? It is interest. Interest drives the creation of money today. Any time money is created through debt, a need to create even more money in the future is also created. The amount of money must grow over time, which means that the volume of goods and services must grow over time as well.

If the volume of money grows faster than the volume of goods and services, the result is inflation. If it grows more slowly -- for example through a slowdown in lending -- the result is bankruptcies, recession, or deflation. The government can increase or decrease the supply of money in several ways. First, it can create money by borrowing it from the central bank, or in America, from the Federal Reserve. This money ends up as bank deposits, which in turn give banks more margin reserves on which to extend loans. You see, a bank's capacity to create money is limited by margin reserve requirements. Typically, a bank must hold cash (or central bank deposits) equal to about 10% of its total customer deposits. The other 90%, it can loan out, thus creating new money. This money ends up back in a bank as deposits, allowing another 81% of it (90% of 90%) to be lent out again. In this way, each dollar of initial deposits ends up as $9 of new money. Government spending of money borrowed from the central bank acts a seed for new money creation. (Of course, this depends on banks' willingness to lend! In a credit freeze, banks hoard excess reserves and the repeated injections of government money have little effect.)

Another way to increase the money supply is to lower margin reserve requirements. In practice this is rarely done, at least directly. However, in the last decade, various kinds of non-bank lending have skirted the margin reserve requirement, through the alphabet soup of financial instruments you've been hearing about in the news. The result is that each dollar of original equity has been leveraged not to nine times it original value, as in traditional banking, but to 70 times or even more. This has allowed returns on investment far beyond the 5% or so available from traditional banking, along with "compensation" packages beyond the dreams of avarice.

Each new dollar that is created comes with a new dollar of debt -- more than a dollar of debt, because of interest. The debt is eventually redeemed either with goods and services, or with more borrowed money, which in turn can be redeemed with yet more borrowed money... but eventually it will be used to buy goods and services. The interest has to come from somewhere. Borrowing more money to make the interest payments on an existing loan merely postpones the day of reckoning by deferring the need to create new goods and services.

The whole system of interest-bearing money works fine as long as the volume of goods and services exchanged for money keeps growing. The crisis we are seeing today is in part because new money has been created much faster than goods and services have, and much faster than has been historically sustainable. There are only two ways out of such a situation: inflation and defaults. Each involve the destruction of money. The current convulsions of the financial and political elites basically come down to a futile attempt to prevent both. Their first concern is to prevent the evaporation of money through massive bankruptcies, because it is, after all, their money.

There is a much deeper crisis at work as well, a crisis in the creation of goods and services that underlies money to begin with, and it is this crisis that gave birth to the real estate bubble everyone blames for the current situation. To understand it, let's get clear on what constitutes a "good" or a "service". In economics, these terms refer to something that is exchanged for money. If I babysit your children for free, economists don't count it as a service. It cannot be used to pay a financial debt: I cannot go to the supermarket and say, "I watched my neighbors kids this morning, so please give me food." But if I open a day care center and charge you money, I have created a "service". GDP rises and, according to economists, society has become wealthier.

The same is true if I cut down a forest and sell the timber. While it is still standing and inaccessible, it is not a good. It only becomes "good" when I build a logging road, hire labor, cut it down, and transport it to a buyer. I convert a forest to timber, a commodity, and GDP goes up. Similarly, if I create a new song and share it for free, GDP does not go up and society is not considered wealthier, but if I copyright it and sell it, it becomes a good. Or I can find a traditional society that uses herbs and shamanic techniques for healing, destroy their culture and make them dependent on pharmaceutical medicine which they must purchase, evict them from their land so they cannot be subsistence farmers and must buy food, clear the land and hire them on a banana plantation -- and I have made the world richer. I have brought various functions, relationships, and natural resources into the realm of money. In The Ascent of Humanity I describe this process in depth: the conversion of social capital, natural capital, cultural capital, and spiritual capital into money.

Essentially, for the economy to continue growing and for the (interest-based) money system to remain viable, more and more of nature and human relationship must be monetized. For example, thirty years ago most meals were prepared at home; today some two-thirds are prepared outside, in restaurants or supermarket delis. A once unpaid function, cooking, has become a "service". And we are the richer for it. Right?

Another major engine of economic growth over the last three decades, child care, has also made us richer. We are now relieved of the burden of caring for our own children. We pay experts instead, who can do it much more efficiently.

In ancient times entertainment was also a free, participatory function. Everyone played an instrument, sang, participated in drama. Even 75 years ago in America, every small town had its own marching band and baseball team. Now we pay for those services. The economy has grown. Hooray.

The crisis we are facing today arises from the fact there there is almost no more social, cultural, natural, and spiritual capital left to convert into money. Centuries, millennia of near-continuous money creation has left us so destitute that we have nothing left to sell. Our forests are damaged beyond repair, our soil depleted and washed into the sea, our fisheries fished out, the rejuvenating capacity of the earth to recycle our waste saturated. Our cultural treasury of songs and stories, images and icons, has been looted and copyrighted. Any clever phrase you can think of is already a trademarked slogan. Our very human relationships and abilities have been taken away from us and sold back, so that we are now dependent on strangers, and therefore on money, for things few humans ever paid for until recently: food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, child care, cooking. Life itself has become a consumer item. Today we sell away the last vestiges of our divine bequeathment: our health, the biosphere and genome, even our own minds. This is the process that is culminating in our age. It is almost complete, especially in America and the "developed" world. In the developing world there still remain people who live substantially in gift cultures, where natural and social wealth is not yet the subject of property. Globalization is the process of stripping away these assets, to feed the money machine's insatiable, existential need to grow. Yet this stripmining of other lands is running up against its limits too, both because there is almost nothing left to take, and because of growing pockets of effective resistance.

The result is that the supply of money -- and the corresponding volume of debt -- has for several decades outstripped the production of goods and services that it promises. It is deeply related to the classic problem of oversupply in capitalist economics. The Marxian crisis of capital can be deferred into the future as long as new, high-profit industries and markets can be developed to compensate for the vicious circle of falling profits, falling wages, depressed consumption, and overproduction in mature industries. The continuation of capitalism as we know it depends on an infinite supply of these new industries, which essentially must convert infinite new realms of social, natural, cultural, and spiritual capital into money. The problem is, these resources are finite, and the closer they come to exhaustion, the more painful their extraction becomes. Therefore, contemporaneous with the financial crisis we have an ecological crisis and a health crisis. They are intimately interlinked. We cannot convert much more of the earth into money, or much more of our health into money, before the basis of life itself is threatened.

Faced with the exhaustion of the non-monetized commonwealth that it consumes, financial capital has tried to delay the inevitable by cannibalizing itself. The dot-com bubble of the late 90s showed that the productive economy could not longer keep up with the growth of money. Lots of excess money was running around frantically, searching for a place where the promise of deferred goods and services could be redeemed. So, to postpone the inevitable crash, the Fed slashed interest rates and loosened monetary policy to allow old debts to be repaid with new debts (rather than real goods and services). The new financial goods and services that arose were phony, artifacts of deceptive accounting on a vast, systemic scale.

Various pundits have observed that the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme was not so different from the financial industry's pyramid of mortgaged-based derivatives and other instruments, which themselves formed a bubble that, like Madoff's, could only sustain itself through an unceasing, indeed exponentially-growing, influx of new money. As such, it is a symbol of our times -- and even more than people suppose. It is not only the Wall Street casino economy that is an unsustainable pyramid scheme. The larger economic system, based as it is on the eternal conversion of a finite commonwealth into money, is unsustainable as well. It is like a bonfire that must burn higher and higher, to the exhaustion of all available fuel. Just as fire breaks existing chemical bonds and frees heat, so does our economy break the bonds of community, nature, and culture, liberating free energy -- called money -- in the process. Only a fool would think that a fire can burn ever-higher when the supply of fuel is finite. To extend the metaphor, the recent deindustrialization and financialization of the economy amounts to using the heat to create more fuel. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the amount created is always less than the amount expended to create it. Obviously, the practice of borrowing new money to pay the principal and interest of old debts cannot last very long, but that is what the economy as a whole has done for ten years now.

Yet even abandoning this folly, we still must face the depletion of fuel (remember, I mean not literal energy sources, but any bond of nature or culture that can be turned into a commodity). Most of the proposals for addressing the present economic crisis amount to finding more fuel. Whether it is drilling more oil wells, paving over more green space, or spurring consumer spending, the goal is to reignite economic growth; that is to expand the realm of goods and services. It means finding new things for which we can pay. Today, unimaginably to our forebears, we pay even for our water and our songs. What else is left to convert into money?

A collapse is coming, unavoidably; indeed, we are in the midst of it. The first government response, the bailout, was an attempt to uphold a tower of money that is far beyond the total value of real goods and services it promises to redeem. Predictably, the bailout was a miserable failure. The next response, Obama's massive stimulus package, will fail for a different and much deeper reason. It will fail because we are "maxed out": maxed out on nature's capacity to receive our wastes without destroying the ecological basis of civilization; maxed out on society's ability to withstand any more loss of community and connection; maxed out on our forests' ability to withstand more clearcuts; maxed out on the human body's capacity to stay viable in a depleted, toxic world. That we are also maxed out on our credit only reflects that we have nothing left to convert into money. Do we really need more roads and bridges? Can we sustain more of them, and more of the industrial economy that goes along? Government stimulus programs will at best prolong the current economic system for two or three years, with perhaps a brief period of growth as we complete the pillage of nature, spirit, body, and culture. When these vestiges of the commonwealth are gone, then nothing will be able to stop a massive inflationary surge and currency collapse on a global scale.

The present crisis is actually the final stage of what began in the 1930s. Successive solutions to the fundamental problem of keeping pace with money that expands with the rate of interest have been applied, and exhausted. The first effective solution was war, a state which has been permanent since 1940. Unfortunatly, or rather fortunately, nuclear weapons and a shift in human consciousness have limited the solution of endless military escalation. Other solutions -- globalization, technology-enabled development of new goods and services to replace human functions never before commoditized, and technology-enabled plunder of natural resources once off limits, and finally financial auto-cannibalism -- have similarly run their course. Unless there are realms of wealth I have not considered, and new depths of poverty, misery, and alienation to which we might plunge, the inevitable cannot be delayed much longer.

In the face of the impending crisis, people often ask what they can do to protect themselves. "Buy gold? Stockpile canned goods? Build a fortified compound in a remote area? What should I do?" I would like to suggest a different kind of question: "What is the most beautiful thing I can do?" You see, the gathering crisis presents a tremendous opportunity. Deflation, the destruction of money, is only a categorical evil if the creation of money is a categorical good. However, you can see from the examples I have given that the creation of money has in many ways impoverished us all. Conversely, the destruction of money has the potential to enrich us. It offers the opportunity to reclaim parts of the lost commonwealth from the realm of money and property.

We actually see this happening every time there is an economic recession. People can no longer pay for various goods and services, and so have to rely on friends and neighbors instead. Where there is no money to facilitate transactions, gift economies reemerge and new kinds of money are created. Ordinarily, though, people and institutions fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening. The habitual first response to economic crisis is to make and keep more money -- to accelerate the conversion of anything you can into money. On a systemic level, the debt surge is generating enormous pressure to extend the commodification of the commonwealth. We can see this happening with the calls to drill for oil in Alaska, commence deep-sea drilling, and so on. The time is here, though, for the reverse process to begin in earnest -- to remove things from the realm of goods and services, and return them to the realm of gifts, reciprocity, self-sufficiency, and community sharing. Note well: this is going to happen anyway in the wake of a currency collapse, as people lose their jobs or become too poor to buy things. People will help each other and real communities will reemerge.

In the meantime, anything we do to protect some natural or social resource from conversion into money will both hasten the collapse and mitigate its severity. Any forest you save from development, any road you stop, any cooperative playgroup you establish; anyone you teach to heal themselves, or to build their own house, cook their own food, make their own clothes; any wealth you create or add to the public domain; anything you render off-limits to the world-devouring Machine, will help shorten the Machine's lifespan. Think of it this way: if you already do not depend on money for some portion of life's necessities and pleasures, then the collapse of money will pose much less of a harsh transition for you. The same applies to the social level. Any network or community or social institution that is not a vehicle for the conversion of life into money will sustain and enrich life after money.

Elsewhere I have described alternative money systems, based on mutual credit and demurrage, that do not drive the conversion of all that is good, true, and beautiful into money. These enact a fundamentally different human identity, a fundamentally different sense of self, from what dominates today. No more will it be true that more for me is less for you. On a personal level, the deepest possible revolution we can enact is a revolution in our sense of self, in our identity. The discrete and separate self of Descartes and Adam Smith has run its course and is becoming obsolete. We are realizing our own inseparateness, from each other and from the totality of all life. Interest belies this union, for it seeks growth of the separate self at the expense of something external, something other. Probably everyone reading this essay agrees with the principles of interconnectedness, whether from a Buddhistic or an ecological perspective. The time has come to live it. It is time to enter the spirit of the gift, which embodies the felt understanding of non-separation. It is becoming abundantly obvious that less for you (in all its dimensions) is also less for me. The ideology of perpetual gain has brought us to a state of poverty so destitute that we are gasping for air. That ideology, and the civilization built upon it, is what is collapsing today.

Individually and collectively, anything we do to resist or postpone the collapse will only make it worse. Let us stop resisting the revolution in human beingness. If we want to survive the multiple crises unfolding today, let us not seek to survive them. That is the mindset of separation; that is resistance, a clinging to a dying past. Instead, let us shift our perspective toward reunion, and think in terms of what we can give. What can we each contribute to a more beautiful world? That is our only responsibility and our only security.

More concretely, let us engage in conscious, purposeful money destruction in place of the unconscious destruction of money that happens in a collapsing economy. If you still have money to invest, invest it in enterprises that explicitly seek to build community, protect nature, and preserve the cultural commonwealth. Expect a zero or negative financial return on your investment -- that is a good sign that you are not unintentionally converting even more of the world to money. Whether or not you have money to invest, you can also reclaim what was sold away by taking steps out the money economy. Anything you learn to do for yourself or for other people, without paying for it; any utilization of recycled or discarded materials; anything you make instead of buy, give instead of sell; any new skill or new song or new art you teach yourself or another, will reduce the dominion of money and grow a gift economy to sustain us through the coming transition. The world of the Gift, echoing primitive gift societies, the web of ecology, and the spiritual teachings of the ages, is nigh upon us. It tugs on our heartstrings and and awakens our generosity. Shall we heed its call, before the remainder of earth's beauty is consumed?

An Archdruid Take On The Economic Debacle...

Our most esteemed friend, John Michael Greer, comments on why you shouldn't be looking forward to an early, on time, or late retirement, ever. (If this idea disturbs you, you need to be doing some more reading...Chaos prescribes a daily dose of The Automatic Earth, listed in the blogroll). Briefly, our system of economic "growth" is based on consumption of the planet's resources, which has now peaked and is declining. (Once again, these assertions are not new, radical or strange, if you've been paying attention). The gyrations, shenanigans, and increasingly desperate attempts to maintain the status quo will not result in anything but more pain. The global economy is crashing, the United States of America is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and eventual ruin, and yet, somehow, in Chaos' little corner of the world, everyone continues on their daily acitvities. Disconcerting, to say the least, but regional differences are apparently quite stark, at least at this early stage. Later on, when fewer and fewer people have jobs, money, health care, or much else, differences will diminish. Many institutions are now dead, but have not yet quite given up the ghost, and appear to have slight signs of life. Get ready; it's coming, soon, to a neighborhood near you.

Where We Are Today: What's In and What's Out

In: real numbers/statistics (ShadowStats)
Out: fake/massaged government statistics

In: frugality
Out: flaunting wealth, conspicuous consumption

In: cooking at home
Out: eating out

In: small cars/hybrids/used cars
Out: new vehicles/Hummers/SUVs, giant trucks

In: gardening
Out: the 3000 mile Caesar salad

In: organic fruits and vegetables
Out: hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup

In: recyclable utensils
Out: plastic

In: self-sufficiency
Out: depending on government or the "free" market to solve anything

In: farmer's markets
Out: shopping malls, strip centers

In: peacekeeping (wait, what is that? lack of war, at least)
Out: wars

In: cash
Out: houses, boats, jetskis, money parked anywhere else (especially 401k's)

In: safety
Out: gambling/risk (yes, we mean the stock market, the bond market, the real estate market, and any other market)

In: Jon Stewart
Out: Jim Cramer, CNBC

In: aluminum water bottles, tap water
Out: plastic water bottles, bottled water

In: saving
Out: spending

In: mud huts, tent cities
Out: tract house suburban "developments"

In: we suck slightly less than others
Out: American exceptionalism

Think It's Tough All Over? Think Again...

The quote of the day/week/month/year, or whatever, comes to us from the sane and sober nation of Sweden, whose industry minister, who goes by the most wonderful name of Maud Olofsson, in response to the giant bankrupt automaker GM's threat to shut down its Swedish subsidiary, Saab, unless the Swedes fork over massive government aid, as the so-called leaders (who, needless to say, are not worthy of the name) of the Empire of Sorrows have given, without question or mutter of protest (ok, they muttered, but they did it anyway). Here it is:

"When I see that Saab has been running at a loss for so many years it would be irresponsible for me to stand here and say, sure, we are going to use the taxpayers' money in this way. I don't think I was elected to do that." (emphasis Chaos')

A most refreshing take on the let's-throw-money-we-don't-have-at-companies-who-are-insolvent-and-have-no-way-of-returning-to-profitability situation, and Chaos will direct your attention to the fact that, once again, national and regional differences matter. They matter a great deal, and probably more so in times of global economic collapse. The entire idea that elected government officials are charged with acting in the public interest has gradually faded away in the Empire, so that this quote hits one with the force of a firehose.

More Disturbing Thoughts...

The economic debacle, the meltdown of laissez-faire capitalism, has reached the attention of those who try to control the uncontrollable, those who believe that force and violence are in fact, the answer to a great many questions, and those who have no understanding of what the terms "strength" and "power" really mean. We speak here, of those in charge of the military-industrial complex in the Empire of Sorrows, and lo and behold, here is a nice piece summarizing what these people are thinking, and we find: local and regional domestic "unrest," which of course must be met with, well, appropriate "measures" to beat it back. Suppression of rights, internment camps, and other rigidities inevitably follow. In other times, perhaps, this kind of outrageousness would remain on the down low, but when the already failed Administration of False Hopes has resorted to urinating away the future earnings of future generations by throwing said funds to the entities and elites who caused this economic meltdown, with scant regard for the vital needs of those who, if not already suffering, are scheduled to begin impoverishment soon, these topics become quite, shall we say, relevant to today's conversation. Read and enjoy...

The Thoughts We Cannot Think: Sharon Astyk

Sharon Astyk is a farmer and blogger, eloquent beyond measure, and should be read by all. Her latest piece captures perfectly the dissonance between the business as usual crowd (which, by the by, includes most of us) and the newly emerging way of doing things, which of course will change everyone's life, for better or worse. If you thought reading and thinking about peak oil and then going out into suburban America produced some dissonance, check out the economic scene, where pronouncements from high officials and financial pornography sites like CNBC are contrasted with the realism of, for example, The Automatic Earth.

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehn, Goodbye...

In light of recent economic events, we here at the Edge must regretfully bid goodbye to two of our longtime links, based on irrelevancy.

Andrew Tobias is a longtime author and has had several very helpful financial ideas which has made Chaos slightly more wealthy in the past. The combination of the US presidential election (Tobias is a hardcore Democrat), and the black swan of 2008, the economic debacle, have reduced this poor man to partisan sniping, cheerleading for the current administration, and starry-eyed techno-fantasies a la Ray Kurzweil. Really, there is now very little benefit to reading such a person, unless you like studying it for sociological purposes. Today's column is a perfect example; after months of boundless optimism, he finally capitulates. Adios, Andy...

Scott Burns has had quite a few interesting columns in his many years of writing, in addition to the very useful book or two concerning the profligate growth of Social Security and Medicare. Alas, this person was also apparently blindsided by the current economic crisis, and has little to offer anymore beyond platitudes. "It's only money," true, but not terribly useful, and that pretty well describes his latest few columns, along with an infuriating tendency to equivocate on whether deflation is coming (hint to Scott: it's already here).

Chaos cannot in good conscience recommend these two any longer; they simply have been eclipsed by current events.

Yet Another Explanation of the Economic Predicament

As we all know by now, a predicament differs from a problem in that there are no solutions to a predicament, merely responses. To Chaos' mind, the current economic debacle is really in fact just another predicament, in the same way that peak oil and other manifestations of limited planetary resources are all predicaments rather than problems. Viewed in this light, the mighty efforts to solve them are futile to some degree or other, since those proposing them lack the understanding of what is being faced. We do, however, enjoy expanding our understanding of how we got here and what we can expect (or more properly, what not to expect, and here we mean why returning to the past is impossible). To that end, please consider this piece from previously unknown to Chaos blogger Dan Lindorff (quoted in full to relieve readers from clicking a link):

"President Barack Obama and his economic team are being careful to couch all their talk about economic stimulus programs and bank bailout programs in warnings that the economic downturn is serious and that it will take considerable time to bounce back.

I’m reminded of an experience I had with Chinese medicine when I was living in Shanghai back in 1992. I had come down with a nasty case of the flu while teaching journalism at Fudan University on a Fulbright Scholar program. A Chinese colleague suggested I go to the university clinic. When I told him there wasn’t much point since doctors couldn’t do much for the flu besides recommend fluids and bed rest, he said, “That’s Western doctors. You could go to the Chinese medicine doctors at the clinic. They can help you.” I figured, what the hell, and we went. The doctor inquired into the lurid details of my illness—how my bowel movements looked, the color of the mucus in my nose, etc. He didn’t really examine me physically. Then he prescribed an incredible number of pills and teas and sent me home with a huge bag of stuff, and instructions on the regimen for taking them through the course of each day. I followed the directions dutifully, and my colleague came by each day to check on my progress. By the fifth day, when I was still running a fever and feeling terrible, I told him I didn’t think the Chinese medicine was working. He replied confidently, “Chinese medicine takes a long time to work.”

I laughed at this. “Sure,” I said. “But the flu only lasts a week or so, and now, when I get better, you’ll say it was the Chinese medicine, right?”

He smiled and agreed. “Yes. You are right.”

Obviously the Obama administration recognizes that it needs to keep the finger of blame for the current economic collapse squarely pointed at the Bush administration, which is certainly fair in large part (though the Clinton deregulation of the banking industry played a major part in the financial crisis and its enthusiastic promotion of globalization began the massive shift of jobs overseas that has left the nation’s productive capacity hollowed out). But it also seems to recognize that it cannot tell the bitter truth, which is that our national economy will never “bounce back” to where it was in 2007.

America, and individual Americans, have been living profligately for years in an unreal economy, propped up by easy credit which inflated the value of real estate to incredible levels, and which led people to spend way beyond their means. Ordinary middle-class working people have been encouraged to buy obscenely oversized homes at 5% down, or even no down payment. They have been lured into buying cars the size of trucks, one for each driving-aged member of the family (in our town, so many high school kids drive to school that the school ran out of parking spaces and the yellow school buses, largely empty on their runs, are referred to by the students as the “shame train,” an embarrassment to be seen riding). They’ve installed individual back-yard swimming pools, unwilling to share the water with their neighbors in community pools. Boring faux ethnic restaurant franchises of all kinds have befouled the landscape, filling up with families too stressed out to cook, and willing to endure over-salted, over-priced and tasteless cuisine and tacky plastic décor night after night.

Now this is all crashing down. Property values are in free-fall. Car sales have fallen off a cliff. Joblessness is soaring (At present, it’s approaching an official rate of 8%, but if the methodology used in 1980, before the Reagan administration changed it to hide the depth of that era’s deep recession, were applied, it would be 17% today, or one in six workers).

Eventually, the economic slide will hit bottom and begin its slow climb back, as all recessions do, but there will be no return to the days of $500,000 McMansion developments, three-car garages and a new car every two or three years for both parents plus a car for each highschooler. Not only will banks no longer be able to offer such credit to clients. People, having been burned, will not be willing to borrow so much. Company health care benefits, pension programs or 401(k) matching programs that were slashed during this downturn will not be restored when the economy picks up again.

Over the last 20 years, America has degenerated into a nation of consumers, with 72 percent of Gross Domestic Product (sic) now being accounted for by consumer spending—most of it going for things that are produced overseas and shipped here.

That is not an economic model that is sustainable, and it is a model that has just suffered what is certainly a mortal blow.

What we are now seeing is the beginning of an inevitable downward adjustment in American living standards to conform with our actual place in the world. As a nation of consumers, and not producers, with little to offer to the rest of the world except raw materials, food crops, military hardware and bad films (none of which industries employ many people), we are headed to a recovery that will not feel like a recovery at all. Eventually, productive capacity will be restored, as lowered US wages make it again profitable for some things to be made here at home again, but like people in the 1930s looking back at the Roaring 20s of yore, we are going to look back at the last two decades as some kind of dream.

It would be better if the new administration would be honest about this, because with honesty, we could have a recovery program that would actually address the real critical issues facing the country—the decline of our educational system, the irrationality of official promotion of home ownership that has led to the proliferation not just of suburbs but of exurbs, the over-reliance on the automobile for transportation, the unprecedented waste of resources, the pillaging of the environment, not to mention the decimation of the retirement system and the creation of a vast medical-industrial complex that is sucking the life-blood out of families and businesses alike.

With honesty, we could also confront the other big obstacle to national recovery—the nation’s obsession with militarism and foreign wars. The honest truth is that the US is technically bankrupt and in a state of chronic decline, and yet the nation persists in spending a trillion dollars a year on war and preparations for war, as though America were in mortal danger from foreign enemies.

The truth is that we are not threatened by Communism, by drug lords, or by Muslim Jihadists in any serious way. Rather, we have become our own worst enemy.

The administration could start by telling us all this straight up, but the problem is, most of us probably don’t want to hear it, which explains why we’re not hearing it. It also explains why we’re about to blow another trillion or so dollars on propping up failing banks, funding pointless highway and bridge construction, and blowing up illiterate peasants in remote places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Indeed. Nicely said.

The Cure That Kills: Shopping Shopping Shopping

If you are puzzled about how the US economy suddenly found itself going over a cliff, but are disinclined to read detailed and technical accounts like this one, check out this finely written piece in today's paper of record. Focusing on the outlandish bastion of overconsumption, the Mall of America, where upwards of 5000 couples have gotten married in the last 10 years, this account is a fine exploration of how the downturn, otherwise known as a depression, will force the culture of shopping to end. Truly, the US public's attachment to huge centers of consumerism is over; these people just don't realize it yet. There are few better uses of your time than to peruse this, and ponder the implications...

Change You Can Believe In...Not

Periodic Special Torture Edition:

Item: President Obama preserves the right of the CIA to outsource torture, i.e., the euphemistic "extraordinary rendition," in which agents kidnap "suspected" terrorists, and transport them to countries who are willing and able to torture them at the US' behest. The mangling of the language to accomodate the conduct is notable:

"The role of the CIA's controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say." (emphasis Chaos')

Oh, and even better news: the US may "expand" the program. Nice. No, Chaos has no reason to change the belief that the US has become a rogue nation. For more, check out this one, an up close and personal look at the US military's torture school, which of course remains open (the writer of the piece calls for its closing: fat chance).

Real Explanations, Not Propaganda

If you have an iota of interest in why the Empire of Sorrows and the rest of the world are in the financial predicament that has sprung up, you simply must read these two pieces (here and here) by Michael Lewis and David Einhorn, financial insiders, appearing in Sunday's paper of record. How rare it is to read truth these days; here is some. It may also make you quite ill...

More Predictions...

If yesterday's weren't enough for you, try these...first, James Howard Kunstler, who has, well, a terrible track record (he just has to speed things up that go slowly, and extrapolates linearly), and Karl Denninger, who has a great record, at least for last year. If you absolutely must read something hopeful, try this one; it makes about as much sense as anything coming out of Washington, Wall Street, or CNBC these days.

2009: Life As You Know It, Is Over

Well, two days late, and many dollars short, here are Chaos' predictions for 2009. Let us hasten to add that these should not be surprising, to those who take the time to follow what's been happening in 2008, and 2007, and 2006, etc., because, of course, what's happening now has been building up for quite some time. Chaos is referring in this instance to the asset and credit bubble, which peaked sometime in the last year or so and is now in the process of a spectacular crash. And crash it will, most surely and certainly. Pay no attention to those in the MSM who attempt to "call the bottom," and forecast a "recovery" or some other version of business as usual in the latter half of the upcoming year. Ain't gonna happen, folks. The bubble has burst and 2009 will be marked by many many businesses of all kinds becoming insolvent, despite the best efforts by government and other elites to bail them out. Chaos' prediction here: the weakest go first. Those who were having trouble already in the bubble years are now revealed as naked as the tide is now out (this actually describes quite a large portion of the US public, as many of them live paycheck to paycheck, just one health issue away from bankruptcy), and these and others who have taken on debts that come due, are going to disappear, taking enormous numbers of jobs with them. Second will mark the gradual disappearance of many businesses involved in activities that are, shall we say, not vital to humans basic needs. By this we mean such establishments as restaurants, nail salons, gyms, jewelry stores, coffee shops, pet hospitals, recreational vehicle dealers and a seemingly endless variety of goods and services which have proliferated in the hothouse atmosphere of supercharged credit. The auto industry is a special case. Because of its deemed importance to the US economy, it will not be allowed to fail (this is not a prediction; it has already occurred a couple of days ago, but still...), but will limp along, swallowing ever more taxpayer dollars as it gradually winds down in the face of declining demand (there seems to be no possible way for the automakers collectively to sell anywhere near the vehicles they require to stay solvent). At any rate, the misery of lost jobs the loss of all these businesses will produce will be astounding to behold...yes, we are referencing the Great Depression here, and 2009 has the potential to be much worse. Unfortunately, the government's response to this has been ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. By needlessly tossing money to failed businesses, insolvent banking and investment houses, and businesses which would have failed of their own incompetence and malinvestment, the Empire of Sorrows has sealed its own eventual fate, although this will not occur in 2009. Already bankrupt, the US will propose and implement more of the same (spending money it does not have). The reason for this is simple: the US public lacks the character to be told the truth, and like children, must be pandered to and flattered. Some have already pointed out the loss of legitimacy of a government which cannot provide basic necessities (i.e., food, clean water, air, health care, and the like) to a majority of its citizens, and this trend, already obvious, will become more evident in the year 2009. We'll see more individuals opting out of the system in various ways, whether by local action, or relocation to more favorable venues (Chaos' preferred choice). State and local governments will also be under major budgetary pressures, depending somewhat on the wisdom of their investments, but also from the lack of tax revenues--people without jobs and homes have trouble paying taxes, you see. Where this downward spiral will end is not knowable, but bet on it not reaching bottom in 2009. The aversion to short term pain will cause a much longer and more miserable crash than is necessary. More broadly, the use of credit to finance well, just about anything, is pretty much over. The US public is going to have to relearn all it thought it knew about buying stuff, whether houses, vehicles, or cheap Chinese junk. Thrift is in, and will become more so. Growing one's own food is making a comeback, and fixing things rather than replacing them will be "hot." Already luxury goods are becoming passe, and conspicuous consumption will fall away to a large extent. Once again, these changes in attitudes will not come voluntarily, or easily, being purchased with the misery of lost jobs, foreclosed houses, and business failures. Along with these, should come the death of the optimistic idea that the killer apes of this planet will voluntarily restrain their worst impulses and smoothly and painlessly adjust to a world of declining resources. If you must feel sad about events, this is the one to respond to. Chaos wishes you well in this most fascinating year of 2009. Namaste!

End of Year Recap: The Cows Came Home

2008 was tumultuous. It was the year that the global debt bubble imploded, beginning with the crashing real estate market, and spreading through the massive $600 trillion derivatives market, leading to the destruction of (at least) $60 trillion in stocks, bonds, real estate, and other assets. World trade tottered, then collapsed. Early on, as US financial institutions wobbled and eventually sank, those in government and the MSM assured everyone that things were contained, that the economy was sound, and other rubbish. (You may note that some of these speakers are ostensibly in charge of the US Treasury and Federal Reserve, added to that the ridiculous cheerleaders on CNBC). These are the same people who are now exclaiming that "no one could have foreseen" the looming credit crunch and real estate implosion. The US Empire and the world got a first taste of reality, but are now poised to enter a global depression, perhaps lasting for many years. Perhaps the trigger this year for the implosion was the skyrocketing price of oil, which shot up to $146.00 US per barrel, engendering the usual stupidities, the more so since a ridiculous presidential campaign was in full swing. In the end, fecklessness carried the day, as both parties pandered furiously by embracing the "drill here, drill now" mantra, never mind the pure mendacity of it all. Thirty years of energy illiteracy and ignorance were not to be shoved aside for an electorate with the maturity of six year olds. At any rate, the price of oil soon subsided, then collapsed along with all other commodities, as global demand cratered, revealing the sheer unsustainability of the endless growth and consumption of ever-scarcer resources paradigm (well, it revealed it to some discerning readers, at any rate). After the first deluge, things were looking grim. Even the savior of the US economy, the monstrous orgy of consumerism known as the holiday season, could not salvage the wreckage, leading to early bankruptcies of several major retailers. The domestic automakers, vulnerable to begin with, were perfectly ill-positioned to take a broadside of weakening demand. Already reeling from the rejection of their ridiculous monster trucks and oversized SUVs caused by the price of $4.00 gasoline, softening demand and frozen credit proved to be the last straw. All three went hat in hand, to beg for "free" federal money. At this writing, Your Federal Reserve has figured out a way to use taxpayer money to lend to people with terrible credit to purchase these vehicles, the better to juice up the economy. As a symbol of the cluelessness regarding the economy exhibited by those in power, this is beyond peer. 2008 also saw the demise of the dinosaur SUVs, which, though still produced in limited quantities, will never again roam the planet in such numbers as years past. Again, as symbols, these silly vehicles had no equal, so we here at the Edge will miss them. As actual transportation vehicles, they were completely absurd, catering to the reptilian portion of the brain, which seems to be the dominant decision-maker in the case of the US public.

Top Stories of the Year:

1. Price of oil delivers yet another wake up call to US public; no one wakes up. SUV and monster truck sales turn upwards in December. Gas tax? What?

2. Real estate bubble pops completely, taking down the markets. The use of refinancing to go shopping is gone forever.

3. Paris Hilton produces a more coherent energy policy than the two presidential candidates.

4. Corn ethanol is revealed to be the total scam and boondoggle that it is, yet somehow can't be touched. Ethanol producers line up (along with everbody else) for a government bailout.

5. Endless mindless shopping comes to an end, not because anybody became enlightened enough to voluntarily stop it, but because everyone ran out of (borrowed) money.

6. The US is revealed to be bankrupt, deeply in debt, and has no prospects for growth for a long time. Nonetheless, all those in the MSM (Hi Paul Krugman!) and government officials advocate spending vast sums of future earnings to sustain the endless spending spree.

7. Credit started to disappear. Those used to financing their lifestyles with plastic were out of luck, now and forever.

8. A person who appears to have a brain was elected leader of the US, and was handed a poisoned chalice by the incumbent.

Well, there you have it, readers. 2008 proved to be a most interesting time to be alive and paying attention; Chaos hopes you were. Predictions and prospects for 2009 will be covered in tomorrow's post.

Fallout From the Economic Debacle: Jury Duty

This article is a fine example of the coming global depression and how it will impact local and state governments. In brief, some states are cutting judicial funding and taking months off from having jury trials (so far mostly applicable to "less important" civil cases). Look for all agencies of government to be affected in the coming months. Tomorrow: recap of 2008 and predictions for 2009.

The Predatory US Culture

This article in today's paper of record is an excellent snapshot of the overentitled, delusional, financially illiterate and bankrupt US public, preyed upon for years by institutions that have grown ever more corrupt and carnivorous, with the silent acquiescence of its victims. From the unemployed gent who drifts off into a "fantasy" where in his "real" life, he's a millionaire (wonder where he got that one?), to the woman who ran up tens of thousands in student loans for a bogus "medical assistant" career (which now offers the commanding salary of $7.50/ hour) to the inevitable health problems postponed or ignored because of no insurance coverage, to the available jobs consisting of telephone collections of medical bills, this is an outstanding example of the descent of the country to Third World Nation status, mostly because of its own profligacy.

The Annual Xmas Atheist Rant: Totalitarian Xmas

As is now traditional (or, as "traditional" as anything is these days...hey, let's just make up some!), one of our favorite atheists and bombthrowers, Christopher Hitchens, has come up with his usual outrageous diatribe against the religiousness of the holiday. Note Chaos' complete agreement, with the caveat that Hitchens loses a bit of entertainment value to the angry tone, but fine reading nonetheless.

As for another tradition, please listen to SOMAfm's (now two) Xmas-themed stations, and consider a donation for these underpaid and wildly creative internet people.