If you're like me, you find the daily talk of "the recession" depressing enough to make your ears bleed.
But here's two comforting facts: It's going to get much, much worse, and it's going to last much, much longer than anyone expects or wants.
OK, comforting wasn't the right word there.
So buckle up, or whatever. Get some headphones. It's all anyone is going to talk about for the next 3 years, at a minimum.
And when you read a clear, well-reported analysis like the one offered by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, you begin to develop the frightening picture in your mind. This should be required reading for every man, woman and child in the country.
Because you realize that these financial guys, these "free market" gurus, they're nothing more than common criminals on the grandest of stages. Is there a more helpless feeling in the world? They've infiltrated the government and it's systems of power and regulation and turned them into a big, fat joke. And they allowed themselves to become so big that the entire economy rests in their hands: big, fat companies that are "too big to fail."
So we must bail them out to save the system, which led to the corruption and greed in the first place, because the hunger for bigger profits is all it is based on.
It remains to be seen, but the 2008 election is beginning to look like a puppet show, an expensive, highly choreographed sporting event that had no real meaning or importance. Because these financial guys are still swarming. McCain would have brought with him Phil Gramm, a co-conspirator in this entire mess. Obama bought with him Richard Holbrooke, the pig Larry Summer, Geithner, and countless others.
Some fucking choice.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Jon Stewart, hero
You think this is a game?
If you haven't followed the supposed 'war or words' between Jon Stewart and financial cracker-jack Jim Cramer, you've been missing out.
Rather than fully update you, just watch the following clip(s).
Time and again, when Jon actually gets angry, and has a good cause, he uses his half-hour cable-TV platform to completely annihilate people who completely deserve it.
It's not a fucking game.
If you haven't followed the supposed 'war or words' between Jon Stewart and financial cracker-jack Jim Cramer, you've been missing out.
Rather than fully update you, just watch the following clip(s).
Time and again, when Jon actually gets angry, and has a good cause, he uses his half-hour cable-TV platform to completely annihilate people who completely deserve it.
It's not a fucking game.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Madoff
As I watch this cartoon-like man, a dead ringer for The Count, only evil, I do not get the sense, despite the media hype, that there are any true victims in this dastardly scenario.
Only varying levels of criminality.
For too long the ever-growing disparities in wealth have created huge separations between supposedly equal people, and then between those people and the less fortunate, and between the less fortunate and the even less fortunate: the starving, those families living on less than $1 a day.
So when I hear the horror over someone losing $1.6 million to this evil Count, a thief with no equal in terms of size and scope, I do not think "victim."
I think, well, that money didn't ever really belong to you anyway, and neither does the land you own, or the house you bought from the bank that is now asking for more money from you in a different way, aside from the interest and the overdraft fees and the various other ways they steal from the poor and give to the rich. You can't even claim to really, truly own the clothes on your back, because someone may come and take them, too.
Your stock portfolio isn't real. Your five houses and luxury vehicles exist but their value isn't real.
$5,000 suits exist because someone out there finds it necessary to buy them and has...or had...the money to do it.
Money isn't real.
I hope we learn, from this and the entire collapse of a corrupt system, that money can disappear. It can vanish. That which was created by man for man's supposed gain and has since controlled every aspect of every minute of every day is as tangible and real as the minutes that pass by. You can try to squeeze it in your hands and hold it forever, but it will not work.
It's time to find something different with which to occupy our time.
Only varying levels of criminality.
For too long the ever-growing disparities in wealth have created huge separations between supposedly equal people, and then between those people and the less fortunate, and between the less fortunate and the even less fortunate: the starving, those families living on less than $1 a day.
So when I hear the horror over someone losing $1.6 million to this evil Count, a thief with no equal in terms of size and scope, I do not think "victim."
I think, well, that money didn't ever really belong to you anyway, and neither does the land you own, or the house you bought from the bank that is now asking for more money from you in a different way, aside from the interest and the overdraft fees and the various other ways they steal from the poor and give to the rich. You can't even claim to really, truly own the clothes on your back, because someone may come and take them, too.
Your stock portfolio isn't real. Your five houses and luxury vehicles exist but their value isn't real.
$5,000 suits exist because someone out there finds it necessary to buy them and has...or had...the money to do it.
Money isn't real.
I hope we learn, from this and the entire collapse of a corrupt system, that money can disappear. It can vanish. That which was created by man for man's supposed gain and has since controlled every aspect of every minute of every day is as tangible and real as the minutes that pass by. You can try to squeeze it in your hands and hold it forever, but it will not work.
It's time to find something different with which to occupy our time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
