Wirearchy - Jon Husband
Googling Wirearchy in 2001
Thanks to the blog JOHO for the link to Google’s fun little 10th-anniversary exercise taking us back in time …
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2001 Web Results 1 - 1 of about 1 for wirearchy. (0.07 seconds)
FirstMatter Lexicon
Wirearchy: An organizing principle for creating structures of governance,
strategy, decision-making and control based on meaning, value, …
http://www.firstmatter.com/newsletter/lexicon.asp?key=Wirearchy - View old version on the Internet Archive
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Transparency on the March ?
We are, in my opinion, collectively watching the "mainstreaming" of a revolt against top-down decisions being imposed on citizens and decision-making processes. People interconnected on the Web are making this happen.
Just one of many examples … CNN pulling up comments from online contributors (via Twitter, facebook, etc.) to set the context fro comments from official and pundits.
People are talking.
At the risk of boring you with my "wirearchy" mantra …
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For more, check out the link "What is Wirearchy?", over in the left sidebar of this blog.
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Wincingly Funny ?
A new widespread acronym has been born.
TARP = Troubled Asset Relief Program
I’ve also seen it translated to TARP = The Anal Rape of the People.
Ouch !
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Why Businesses Often Don’t Want To Blog … Keeping It Positive
This is such a classic tale.
It fits so nicely with a great deal of what I observe about modern North American culture … can’t talk about the negative aspects of what’s really happening (and no, not everything is negative, but it sure as shit ain’t all happy-clappy either). We must stay positive and upbeat because after all, people don’t want to hear and don’t respond to the negative.
Via the NY Times … read the full piece here
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Virginia Heffernan, September 26, 2008
In my imagination, a bank — a real bank — is suffused with a hush, which is interrupted, rarely, by the low gong of a massive vault slamming shut. The sole personnel are the huissiers of Geneva fortresses, those solemn openers and closers of locked doors. Clients dress in bespoke suits and stand reverent before the ramparts that secure their annuities in gold bars and serve as bulwarks against their ruin.
A bank’s own practice of borrowing and lending on its clients’ fortunes is not spoken of too directly, lest it cloud the illusion that when the money is out of sight, it’s in the vaults.
In my fantasies, banks are never financial-services firms, and Bill Clinton did not sign the 1999 law that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, allowing commercial and investment banks to merge.
It seems that the once-glorious Wall Street investment banks — Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns — don’t share my fantasy. Even as they were sick, dying or dead, their Web sites had a chipper, customer-service vibe. They were still babbling about helping me realize my dreams. And money, when I could follow it on these silly sites, tripped around the globe, becoming euros and yen only to spread subprime stardust on razed fields where enchanted condos grew.
It was a missed opportunity. After all, it might have been an excellent time to shore up the confidence of those who wondered what American banks were up to, if not protecting our money. But the banks were sticking with their goofy bravado.
[ Snip ... ]
Over at Lehman.com, I came upon an audio file of a Sept. 10 “investor call” by Richard S. Fuld Jr., the chairman and chief executive of Lehman Brothers. In his remarks, Fuld unfurled “a substantial de-risking of our balance sheet” that he said would “allow the firm to return to future profitability.”
It’s perversely interesting to hear a C.E.O. whose firm was just a few days away from flat-out bankruptcy evince unruffled self-assurance. Whether the plane is going down or just bumping in turbulence, the captain apparently always says the same thing.
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Mind-blowing !
Bring to mind the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s "Everybody Knows" …
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows
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From The Inboxes of Just A. Citizen
Here’s an exchange between me and a friend. I like these ideas .. what do you think ?
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Me to Bruce by email
Re: your Tweet …
"For $700B you could wipe out most mortgage and consumer debt. Solon’s wisdom? How come THAT’s "socialism" & big boy bailouts isn’t?
Quite surprised more people are not asking this question … pay it all off for everybody would be one heck of a stimulus for the economy. The problem of course, is that "the ecopnomy" is not for the average working stiff, they are just the raw material for continuing the ongoing growth of wealth of the relatively few "connected".
The average guy and gal MAY now be learning how the game works.
My friend Bruce to me by return email
It would be nice if they did but, alas, highly unlikely.
I have often thought Canada should do exactly that. Now that our finances are in better shape (and we don’t need to sell government bonds just to close deficits) we should:
(a) forgive all consumer debt (I would not do corporate as so much of our corporate sector is owned by outsiders anyway). Solon’s cancelling of all debts in Athens MADE Athens the pre-eminent Greek city-state for two centuries: it also wiped out the entrenched interests in ONE blow.
(b) back the dollar 100% with gold at $1,000/oz or more. (I’d knock a zero off at the same time, i.e. one "new" dollar is 1/100 oz. - thrift is taught by low income numbers and low price points, plus all the junk at China, Inc. (WalMart, etc.) would now be priced in pennies, i.e. indicative of its future worth.) My back of the envelope guess is that with the BoC reserves we’d need $2,000/oz. but an influx of metal as being a gold-standard country might allow a lower number.
(c) borrow nothing as a government. Live within your means. In other words, make choices.
(d) companies can accept US bucks, euro, etc. if they want. For government, you pay in specie (metal).
(e) then start restructuring our tax system to make it clear what’s going for what. You want a carbon tax - fine. Gasoline excise tax, deficit fighting tax, GST, PST, etc. come OFF - the product has a single kind of tax. (Note I don’t say lower taxes [I might like that, but it's not the point] but make the relationship between policy and tax clear to even Joe and Jane Doofus.)
Won’t happen, any of it, of course, just as the $40B we spent on Broadband for rural and northern development infrastructure could have been tendered to a supplier to deliver broadband via satellite to the whole country, free of charge.
Cheers.
Bruce
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This Just In … Internet Gas Pedal
Via the Times Online UK
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New era dawns at home of the internet
A network of supercomputers called the Grid will allow information to be downloaded quicker than ever. Tasks that took hours will now take seconds
Murad AhmedThe dawn of a new internet age has begun. A network of supercomputers, known as the Grid, is to revolutionise the speed at which information is downloaded to personal computers.
The power of the Grid is such that downloading films should take only seconds, not hours, and processing music albums just a single second. Video-phone calls should also cost no more than a local call. More importantly, it should help to narrow the search for cures for diseases.
The Grid, a network of 100,000 computers, is to be connected to the world’s largest machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is designed for projects, such as large research and engineering jobs, which need to crunch huge quantities of data, but scientists believe it will eventually be used on home computers.
The Grid allows scientists at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, to get access to the unemployed processing power of thousands of computers in 33 countries to deal with the data created by the LHC.
Scientists at CERN, where the world wide web was invented, created the €500 million Grid because they realised that a single computer would not be able to cope with the amount of data the LHC is expected to produce each year – 15 petabytes, or 15 million gigabytes, which would fill 20 million CDs.
They said that it was an extra facility laid on top of the internet, which originally linked computers around the world in the Seventies.
Dr Bob Jones, a CERN scientist, said: “The [world wide] web allows you to access information on other computers. What the Grid allows you to do is not only access the information, but make use of their computing resources and power.”
He likened it to the National Grid. Users would be able to tap into massive amounts of processing power, but the source of the power would change, depending on availability.
Processing tasks will be distributed between 11 gateway computer centres in ten countries, including Britain, which will share them out between more than 140 sites.
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On The March ?
Hardly …
And I agree with John Gray that the return home of the Chinese astronauts from their first-ever spacewalk is a serendipitously-interesting bit of timing.
Via The Guardian (UK). It’s a very lucid piece .. read the whole thing.
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A shattering moment in America’s fall from power
The global financial crisis will see the US falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down. The era of American dominance is over
John Gray
The Observer, Sunday September 28 2008Our gaze might be on the markets melting down, but the upheaval we are experiencing is more than a financial crisis, however large. Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over.
You can see it in the way America’s dominion has slipped away in its own backyard, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez taunting and ridiculing the superpower with impunity. Yet the setback of America’s standing at the global level is even more striking. With the nationalisation of crucial parts of the financial system, the American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated. In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed.
Ever since the end of the Cold War, successive American administrations have lectured other countries on the necessity of sound finance. Indonesia, Thailand, Argentina and several African states endured severe cuts in spending and deep recessions as the price of aid from the International Monetary Fund, which enforced the American orthodoxy. China in particular was hectored relentlessly on the weakness of its banking system. But China’s success has been based on its consistent contempt for Western advice and it is not Chinese banks that are currently going bust. How symbolic yesterday that Chinese astronauts take a spacewalk while the US Treasury Secretary is on his knees.
Despite incessantly urging other countries to adopt its way of doing business, America has always had one economic policy for itself and another for the rest of the world.
[ Snip ... ]
The irony of the post-Cold War period is that the fall of communism was followed by the rise of another utopian ideology. In American and Britain, and to a lesser extent other Western countries, a type of market fundamentalism became the guiding philosophy. The collapse of American power that is underway is the predictable upshot. Like the Soviet collapse, it will have large geopolitical repercussions. An enfeebled economy cannot support America’s over-extended military commitments for much longer. Retrenchment is inevitable and it is unlikely to be gradual or well planned.
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On One Hand …
Warren Buffett says "Must bailout, or Catastrophe" …
Though to be fair, having placed his $5 Billion bet on the table with Goldman Sachs Buffett is hardly what you could call "disinterested" .. and of course he stands to make out like a bandit should the bailout proceed.
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Buffett To Congress: Bail out economy or face "Meltdown"
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Billionaire Warren Buffett told congressional negotiators that if they can’t agree on a proposed financial bailout, the nation will face "its biggest financial meltdown in American history," two sources familiar with the talks said.
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On the other hand … Naomi Klein points out in this important article that the use of The Shock Doctrine is (once again) in full swing:
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Now is the Time to Resist Wall Street’s Shock Doctrine
By Naomi Klein - September 22nd, 2008I wrote The Shock Doctrine in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place…).
The best summary of how the right plans to use the economic crisis to push through their policy wish list comes from Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. On Sunday, Gingrich laid out 18 policy prescriptions for Congress to take in order to "return to a Reagan-Thatcher policy of economic growth through fundamental reforms." In the midst of this economic crisis, he is actually demanding the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which would lead to further deregulation of the financial industry. Gingrich is also calling for reforming the education system to allow "competition" (a.k.a. vouchers), strengthening border enforcement, cutting corporate taxes and his signature move: allowing offshore drilling.
It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the right’s ability to use this crisis — created by deregulation and privatization — to demand more of the same.
Don’t forget that Newt Gingrich’s 527 organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future, is still riding the wave of success from its offshore drilling campaign, "Drill Here, Drill Now!" Just four months ago, offshore drilling was not even on the political radar and now the U.S. House of Representatives has passed supportive legislation. Gingrich is holding an event this Saturday, September 27 that will be broadcast on satellite television to shore up public support for these controversial policies.
What Gingrich’s wish list tells us is that the dumping of private debt into the public coffers is only stage one of the current shock. The second comes when the debt crisis currently being created by this bailout becomes the excuse to privatize social security, lower corporate taxes and cut spending on the poor.
A President McCain would embrace these policies willingly. A President Obama would come under huge pressure from the think tanks and the corporate media to abandon his campaign promises and embrace austerity and "free-market stimulus."
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Me ? I’m with Naomi. I don’t trust these bastards about or with anything at all.
Of course, you know what’s going to happen. The bailout is going to proceed without any investigation of alternatives that would truly benefit the average working stiff. They’ve already learned us all how to keep on being scared. Most North Amercans don’t even want to contemplate major changes in the way(s) they live.
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From The Peanut Gallery
Noticed in blog comments somewhere …
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Despite last week, these events will unfold slowly, over months.
The bailouts last week are nothing but bailouts for Wall Street. The problem of over-indebtedness
remains throughout the land.If Washington really wanted to help the country, that $700 Billion would be directed to helping families stay in their homes and keep paying their restructured mortgages.
Then, and only then, will value return to the mortgage paper on Wall Street. The question is, how much of that paper was based on fraud, condo flippers, vacation homes, second homes and "investors"??
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That - all the speculative money "created" by flipping and fraud - is what drove mortgage marketers’, financiers’ and bankers’ bonuses (bonii ? boners ?) and that is what should NOT be "bailed out". And that is what royally pisses off the average jane and joe, or at least those who understand what is going on
Joe Bageant wondered, in a response to one of his readers, whether the $700 billion should just be distributed evenly amongst all citizens of the USA, who could then use the money they receive to pay mortgages, spend, reduce debt, etc. - but clearly that would be a massive stimulus to the economy.
Here’s the story, and the exchanges between him and two ‘experts:
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No one is looking out for your interests
[ Snip ... ]
I had the repugnant experience of talking to two economists a couple of days ago, one an international financier, and the other a wealthy developer with a master’s degree in economics (who appears in my book.).
I posed this question to both:
What if we took the bail-out money and paid off every college loan, every credit card, every pending foreclosure and every mortgage in arrears, and every unpaid hospital bill? Wouldn’t that free up a lot of income to stimulate our economy, 70% of which is based on Americans consuming good, services and commodities? Wouldn’t it be better to have the money circulating, stimulating the U.S. economy than stashed in overseas as accounts? If Bush’s little $250 rebate propped up the national economy for a couple of months, wouldn’t distributing the $700 billion push the economy into the stratosphere? What if we used it to pay down the national debt? Wouldn’t the American dollar reverse its plunge? At the very least for the first time in 80 years Americans would actually owe the debt to themselves, not the unseen financial lords.
The international financier said: "It just cannot be done. The financial machinery of our free market economy would fall apart. Then we’d be in worse shape than ever."
"How’s that? It seems like it’s already fallen apart. Been turned into a swindler’s paradise, with the swindlers now asking that all future productivity of Americans be signed over to them, since there’s nothing left to steal at the moment."
"It simply cannot be done. Nor should such socialism ever be allowed. It’s a ridiculous idea."
The economist developer, when asked the same question, "Why not bail out the American people, instead of the fat cats?" was more honest:
"Doing that would have unintentional consequences.’
"Like what? You’re an economist, so tell me."
"Well, I don’t know. That’s why they are called unintentional."
"So why should the American public be perpetually and increasingly in debt?"
"Because debt is the source of American wealth."
"Wealth for whom?"
"Obviously for those who understand the system and have the know how to use it to its best purpose for all concerned."
"Won’t that devalue the dollar over time?"
"Sure, but if you’ve got enough dollars it doesn’t matter. Look at how African dictators live, despite that their nations’ currency is worthless."
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She Said “You Can’t Blink, Charlie”
When I read the blog post excerpted below, my first thought was "No way".
Via Firedoglake …
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Since she didn’t do so well in interviews, the McCain campaign is attempting a new tactic with Sarah Palin in the hope that she’s cool to some demographic someplace. Word is Palin will try to prove she can actually be funny–or at least a good sport–on tonight’s Saturday Night Live, possibly playing opposite doppleganger Tina Fey.
[ Snip ... ]
So to insure the VP candidate’s protection from polysyllables and pointed humor, on Wednesday security for Gov. Palin conducted a walk-through of the Rockefeller Center studio in anticipation of the possible appearance.
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If indeed the security team did a walk-through, that would seem to jive with the official "possibility". A later update to the blog post I am citing notes that the McCain - Palin campaign states that the Guv’ will not be appearing on SNL (Saturday Night Live).
One of the phrases Sarah is famous for uttering is "You can’t blink, Charlie" in her interview with Charlie Gibson, when she was referring either to getting a clear view of Russia from her porch, preparing to shoot a wolf from a low-flying helicopter, or staring down one of her children when they are playing "Interrogate a Terrorist" just before bedtime.
One of the comments to the Firedoglake blog post … you’ve got to love it.
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SNL called Palin and she blinked?
snl called palin and she blinked?
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R.I.P. and THANK YOU - Paul Newman
The Last Guy In The Chain in the Trickle-Up Economics Game .. Seems It Depends Upon Who You Know ?
Via Joe Bageant …
The financial pros … the mob’s fixers and hit men ?
The last three or four paragraphs of the excerpt below set out clearly, in my opinion, why the "bailout" can be considered theft on the part of those who control the government, in cahoots with those who run the financial system.
They don’t want to give up what they made swindling people over the last 6- 8 years, and in order to scare people enough to comply with the ransom note, they are threatening to let the financial system disintegrate (after having made it into a real house of cards).
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Bail Out is Just More Trickle-Up Economics
[Snip ... ]
Flips were the buzzword of the day. Just about anyone, from the sidewalk wino on up, could qualify for a mortgage. And the price of real estate always went up. So it was a no-brainer to simply bid in for whatever real estate you could get and sell it to the next greater fool. Like all ponzi schemes, the last guy in the chain suffered all the losses.
Now if this happened to your brother-in-law, everyone would express their deep sympathy and then snicker that you knew he was a moron all along. Sooner or later he comes around asking for a handout. He tries to tell you how it’s really in your best interest, how it would avoid painful situations for his family, the children and so on.
The difference this time, is the last guy in the chain happened to be the so called financial pros — giant investment banks, hedge funds and derivatives holders. Of course your brother-in-law doesn’t have connections to the Fed, the U. S. Treasury and the White House. These guys do. So the net effect is they simply don’t want to pay up — plain and simple. They concoct all sorts of nonsense about why it’s really in your best interest, how it will avoid painful situations and so on.
So the so called bail-out is just another in a long line of brazen attempts to move your money to the pockets of the very, very rich. This is trickle up economics. It was formerly just called a swindle.
It’s the same as your brother-in-law, except this time they signed your name to the debt. The idea is to dump the losses on people who had the good sense or sufficient control of their greed to avoid overextending themselves to begin with.
Let me explain it in simple terms. About six years ago I bought a 900 foot one bedroom condominium on the North Carolina coast, paying a little under $100,000. I sold it because the expense was more than I could handle with the condo dues, insurance and so on.
This past year a realtor I know had five of his clients purchase a 900 foot condominium on the North Carolina coast paying $1.5 million. Not one put a single nickel into it. The first and second mortgage covered everything including the mortgage brokers, mortgage bankers, real estate agents, real estate attorneys, and the developer. All made out handsomely.
Now my condo was probably better situated than theirs, at a closer beach with more amenities. I actually make a little more money than they do. The difference, and this is absolutely key, is that I expected to have to pay for mine. None of the other guys expected to pay anything. They expected to flip for an amount roughly twice my annual salary. When it came time to actually make some payments, no one was home.
The reason for this, obviously, is that their condos were never worth anywhere near that price to begin with. The price quickly melted to about $800,000, then $600,000 and there are no takers. I would probably be willing to pay about $250,000 if I was in the market.
Now here’s where the bailout swindle comes to play. The bailout is intended to prop up the mortgages that were made on the funny money. They want us to pay up on the $1.5 million in mortgages that we all had the good sense to avoid.
They are not asking for any return of money from the mortgage brokers, mortgage bankers, real estate attorneys, real estate brokers or developers. And none from the purchasers. Every single wrong-doer in the scam walks.
And we should pay for them so that an insanely inflated price won’t have its day of reckoning.
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Why Bailing Out The Financial System Is Causing Outrage
Cobbling together several blog comments I have found, as I sometimes do, may help connect some dots.
The issue is not really bad or stupid lending, although that can be considered a factor. Understanding the deeper causes also helps explain why pumpinmg the additional $700 billion into the system is likely to be just a stop-gap measure that may restore confidence and let the system run a bit longer, but …
The real culprit is leverage, enabled by deregulatiion, bought and paid or by lobbyists.
That’s who ultimately is being protected … lobbyists’ clients, who were allowed to make money out of thin air by making risk into a "product" and sellling it over and over again.
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"This is not caused by sub prime loans:
You add up the really bad loans and the not so iffy loans and even if they were 2 trillion, which they are not.The collateral of the mortgages loans are still worth at least 70% or more of the loans.
The problem is they sold loans in slices and some were sold 30 times."
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I get what you’re saying, but …
artificially inflated housing prices, along with many years of stagnant wages and high unemployment put lots of people in a desperate situation. I have no sympathy for speculators or people who knowingly took out "liar loans", but let’s remember what made this all possible in the first place: extreme deregulation.
It does suck to have acted responsibly and to be left facing an enormous bill, but keep in mind that there are always people who’d like to borrow beyond their means.
This never was a problem until Wall Street lobbyists got everything they asked for."
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A True Nugget
(Hence saving these companies at all cost from bankruptcy, because actual bankruptcy would make real values public.)
They can mark (value)-to-market–safest.("This pile of silver ingots is worth…..")
They can mark-to-model–necessary. (Date: 1958: "So Hewlitt & Packard you say this thingamabob–oh, ‘integrated circuit’—is a different kind of transistor? Its gonna replace vacuum tubes huh? Hmmm")
Or they can mark-to-made up (the last several years. How well can you sell it?)
But the rules of the game are when you get better information (move toward mark-to-market) about the price/value of an asset your accounting has to reflect that.
And THIS is a big part of WHY the push for an immediate federal bailout. Other firms can look at an AIG being rescued (and AIG’s own accountants can say) "They/We’ve been bailed out….a rare, one-time event that cannot serve as a precedent (in accounting terms) for valuation."
If a firm is failing and sells itself to another firm (Merrill Lynch sells out to Barclays) how the buyer evaluates what they are getting is a PRIVATE matter between the firms.
But if a failing firm files chapter 13 then all the insides of the busted firm are made public—a matter of public record. And other firms holding similar assets (MBS, CDO, swaps, etc) now have open, available data (not quite market data but a fair approximation) to value their OWN assets. They can (perhaps MUST) put a value on that #107B "security" that is backed by the real, physical asset of a drivetrain of a 1987 Yugo.That’s what they’re afraid of. That’s what binds them together–their mutual, interlocking fear of being found out. That’s what would pull them all under. (Darkly, it could indeed pull us all under—the Depression scenario.) Enron "worked the refs" (Arthur Anderson Accounting) the same way and Anderson went along with them and then went down with them.
Sobering to say the least, but also explains the urgency on Wall Street’s part to get this done yesterday.
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The Bailout Economy - The USA Begins Re-branding Exercise
A country’s flag is its logo, supporting its brand.
Clearly the USA needs to re-structure and then re-brand.
Via Chris "Rageboy" Locke:
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A Modest Proposal for a New Flag Design
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"Runnin’ On Empty"
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hehehe …
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Canada’ National Digital Media Day
Today (September 25) there are a range of events across Canada to celebrate our ongoing push into the exciting new field of digital media …
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By BUZZ BISHOP
Today at noon people are being encouraged to randomly kiss for two minutes in a busy downtown intersection. This will also be happening in cities across the country in a simultaneous flash mob being organized by Jennifer Ouano of Elastic Entertainment to celebrate National Digital Media Day (NDMD08).
"High tech = high touch," she writes on the mob’s Facebook page. The event is designed to inspire "hope, celebration, spontaneity and fun."
But what does kissing have to do with digital media? Jennifer’s inspiration was a friend who made a video about a similar traffic-stopping stunt shortly after Sept. 11. Dozens of people stood in a busy intersection and kissed for two minutes.
Flash mobs, or spontaneous gatherings doing something totally random, show the power of the internet, and the connections people can make. Whether they are inspiring blogs, or educational meetups, digital culture is alive and well in Canada and NDMD08 is meant to highlight it.
Lynda Brown of NewMediaBC has been a leader in raising the profile of the digital business community, and is the creator of NDMD08.
"After tiring of the proverbial ‘banging of head on computer screen’ I thought a new approach was needed," she writes. "Over a Sunday morning coffee, I came to the conclusion that the only thing that might work would be good old-fashioned grassroots effort."
And it’s not all just kissing.
The national events will mostly focus on gatherings of new media creators, at unconferences - shared learning environments also called camps. In Vancouver, bloggers will be meeting across the city to create their content in groups in highly visible places.
The events couldn’t come at a better time for the digital media industry, right in the middle of a federal election campaign as the Conservatives were expected to kill the Canada New Media Fund.
"It is of the utmost importance that the Canadian government supports domestic creators of digital media content so that our exciting industry may continue to flourish in a province rich with innovation, new ideas, and intellectual property," NMBC President Kenton Low wrote in an open letter to the B.C. digital community.
Lynda’s goals for NDMD08 are to bring visibility to digital media creators, connect those in the industry and create a discussion between the industry and community leaders to develop and grow this forward thinking sector of the economy.
So pucker up and give them a big kiss of thanks.
Full details and links at cyberbuzz.com
THE KISS
Interested in The Kiss? Meet on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery on Robson Street at 11:30 a.m. when the secret kissing location will be unveiled. Photos, and a way to interact with them will be posted online after the event.
thekiss.ca
TECHIE’S LIFE FOR ME
There are an estimated 3,200 firms engaged in interactive media across Canada that generate total gross revenues in excess of $7 billion. Including full time staff, part time staff and subcontractors, there are estimated to be more than 50,000 people working in interactive media across Canada. (Canadian Interactive Industry Profile, Authored by PWC and CIAIC, 2006).
THE UN-CONFERENCE
The NDMD08 festivities will roll through the weekend as BarCamp will go off on Granville Island. It’s an unconference where the schedule is made up at the start of the session and people are encouraged to be active, participate and share. "Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join." Except, you know, it’s sold out.
BarCamp.org
Stephane Dion and Elizabeth May have joined Twitter, making it now possible to follow all the major parties as they microblog their campaigns across the country. The Twitter IDs for those who would be PM are: @pmharper, @elizabethmay, @jacklayton, @liberaltour and @gillesduceppe.
twitter.com
10 FOR NEW MEDIA
As a part of the inaugural NDMD08, New Media BC is having its 10th anniversary annual general meeting tomorrow afternoon at Radical Entertainment. The usual AGM business will be tackled, immediately followed by a networking event for Vancouver’s digerati.
NewMediaBC.com
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Market Update
Via the Deviant Behavior blog (h/t to Tom) …
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Isn’t this bailout just one big subprime mortgage? Weren’t subprime mortgages typified by shoddy paperwork and blind trust? And here you are, giving the American people a three page outline for $700 billion.
Three fucking pages? We had to put more effort into book reports during grade school, and suddenly that’s enough to vest you with the greatest financial powers in the history of the world.
You want our money and you’re treating it like the last no-down, adjustable rate, give-us-your-finances on a cocktail napkin shell game cooked up by a coked out trader trying to unload a brick of bad credit default swaps on a confused rookie in the bathroom of a plush Wall Street bar.
Aren’t you just asking us to insure your fragile house of cards one more time? Aren’t you just asking us to take out another bad loan and hope all the right things materialize at the right time as long as it’s your pals who have the money?
Aren’t they the ones who fucked us in the first place?
Let’s call this American 419 scam what it is: One last stab at sucking the US Treasury dry before Hurricane Bush blows over and the stripped, shoddy frame of deceit and greed and toxic mold that used to be the US economy is left to the nation’s workers to rebuild, while you assholes tool around the world on your yachts, eating caviar, and dumping all the money we gave you to help us into hidden bank accounts and Chinese startup firms.
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It’s Just Theft, Plain and Simple
The money in the banking and credit-derivative markets (that everyone is now scared of losing since it was all represented on paper by easy mortgages and leveraged debt) was created by the banks lending up to high leverage levels, followed by the financial industry as a whole (de-regulated) packaging and selling the risk contained in the derivative financial "instruments". The money "created" by these machinations was circulated in the stock market, which kept rising over the past 7 years, much of it sustaining the run-up in value of financial institution stock (and thus the "performance-based" bonuses paid to the CEOs and other executives) as their businesses seemed to grow year-over-year.
This is, more or less, what Kevin Phillips calls the financialization of the American economy.
As the developing holes in the sub-prime and then Alt-A mortgage markets and credit-derivative markets began to deflate the bubble in real estate prices, the share prices of financial institutions holding unidentifiable levels of rapidly-devaluing assets began to drop and then some insolvencies loomed (Bear Sterns, IndyMac, the FMs and Lehman).
If the share prices of the financial institutions, and thus much of the stock market, are not propped up now, the people who made the money for which they could not sustain the payments (everything that is in play has been created over the past seven years) will lose it.
Preventing these losses is the key reason for the bailout .. in effect, to legitimate the wealth transfer (based entirely on credit), to make it become real as opposed to just happening on paper.
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This is a stick-up, folks ! Just shut up and put the money in the bag, QUICK, before the alarm goes off … NOW !
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Blog Comments Often Distill to the Essence
From Glenn Greenwald’s blog, in response to his stark challenge from whiich the conclusion below is excerpted:
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The way it works is that Bush officials decree how things will be, and then everyone — from Congressional Democrats to the Serious Pundits — jump uncritically and obediently on board, even if they were on board with the complete opposite approach just days earlier, and then all real dissent vanishes. That’s how the country in general works. As Atrios says: "We’ve seen this game played before."
… what I do know is that an injustice so grave and extreme that it defies words is taking place; that the greatest beneficiaries are those who are most culpable; and that the same hopelessly broken and deeply rotted institutions and elite class that gave rise to all of this (and so much more) are the very ones that are — yet again — being blindly entrusted to solve this.
… this authorizes Hank Paulson to transfer $700 billion of taxpayer money to private industry in his sole discretion, and nobody has the right or ability to review or challenge any decision he makes.
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Watching all this unfold is astonishing, a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Here are a couple of comments that boil it down …
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Empire of Debt
God bless you, Glenn. You’ve hit the nail on the head and pounded it through the rotted board.
I’ve been reading Bill Bonner’s Empire of Debt over the last few weeks. Then sat astounded as everything he and his co-author predicted a couple years back started happening right before my eyes.
I fear we have only delayed the full impact of the corruption and greed that have been driving our economic and political class for the last few decades.
May the next generation forgive us for letting it happen.
– Alpwalker
[Read Alpwalker's other letters]
Permalink Saturday, September 20, 2008 09:51 AMI’m no economist…
But, yeah. As usual, I agree 100% with GG. I’m no economist but no matter how I look at this, this is what I see.
Over the past 8-plus years, a bunch of fairly wealthy people on Wall Street gamed the system to become fabulously wealthy by using make-believe money.
Now that that system has lurched towards its inevitable collapse, Bush and his Democrat cronies (yes, I said Democrat) have decided that the only responsible thing to do in order to make sure that their wealthy sponsors don’t lose any real money is to buyout the failing firms, and stick the poor and the middle class (IE, the rest of us, who actually PAY taxes) with a bill totaling a good part of a TRILLION dollars.
Seem fair? Seem sane? Wonder why nobody is even raising their voice about it?
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Ban the Bailout
More and more people are figuring out that the current suggested bailout may not look so good. But of course everyone’s scared and uncertain of what might happen, so what a great time to pass an unreviewable law that essentially transfers a whole whack of money from taxpayers to the private sector.
Granting telecomms immunity wasn’t enough; letting Cheney state that the office of the Vice-president is not part of the executive branch wasn’t enough; trying to privatize Social Security wasn’t enough; getting rid of habeas corpus wasn’t enough .. these bastards are taking as much of your money as they can while you still refuse to do anything about their criminality.
It’s being done directly under the noses of the American public, in broad daylight, with people in megaphones announcing it.
Via Atrios:
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Great Moments In Legislative Proposals
This is my favorite bit. Well, aside from the whole SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS part.
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Deep Thought
Any member of Congress who looks at the plan to give Hank unchecked power to transfer $700 billion from the Treasury to his friends’ companies and has any reaction other than "You’ve got to be fucking kidding me" does not deserve to hold office.
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Just A Few USian Contradictions …
… for your light reading pleasure on the weekend. Thanks to a comment on a blog somewhere out there.
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1. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.
2. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s Daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him, and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can’t find Bin Laden" diversion.
3. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with China and Viet Nam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.
4. The United States should get out of the United Nations, while our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.
5. A woman can’t be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational drug corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.
6. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches, while slashing veterans’ benefits and combat pay.
7. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won’t have sex.
8. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies, then demand their cooperation and money.
9. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but providing health care to all Americans is socialism. HMO’s and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.
10. Global warming and tobacco’s link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.
11. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense, but a president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.
12. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.
13. The public has a right to know about Hillary’s cattle trades, but not George Bush’s
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