Gift Hub

Resuming Normal Banking Scams Soon

Sold To US Tax Payers for $700 Billion: Banks Bad Assets, by Martin Crutsinger:

The ultimate goal of the plan remains the same: buy bad mortgage-related bets from weakened financial companies so they can raise fresh capital and resume normal lending operations to businesses, municipalities and consumers.

Excuse me, "resume normal lending?" What was the kind of lending that created this fiasco? Normal? Abnormal? Aberrant? Criminal? Who is being rescued here? The regulators who looked the other way? The head of a subprime lender whose personal fortune is estimated at $1.5 billion, who donated $1 million to Bush and became Ambassador to the Netherlands? What exactly is normal in these circles? What will be resumed? Who is responsible for the rule of law, when the the people at the top are so self-serving? I ask with all due respect, eying the Heat Ray and wishing that resuming normal operations included restoring our Constitution and my rights formerly under law. But, I guess, the people in charge know what is best for us.

The Financial Crisis, Thinking of my Daughter

‘This was in my prayers: a measure of field not so
big, where I might have a garden, and right next to
the house a spring that always flows. Up above a small
stand of trees. The gods have provided more amply
and even better. It’s fine, and I won’t ask for anything
more, Son of Maia, except that you might make these
gifts really mine.’ - Horace

Dave Pollard and C.A. Fitts on the financial crisis, which is clearly a moral and political crisis. Bankruptcy spreads from domain to domain.  Both Dave and Catherine would counsel us, as I counseled my daughter today, to invest in real wealth, in living things, and in our commonwealth of gifts and giftedness, in a more financially intimate world dealing face to face with those we know and trust. Invest, told my daughter,  in living things, friendship, community, in practical skills, and what you carry between your ears. To be fair, Catherine would also tell us to invest in or start local businesses that provide needed goods and services without stripping the ecological or community wealth: financial permaculture. We should all now see that the economic and political system will be gamed and bubbled by insiders to their advantage until the Chinese will no longer take our debt, even at gunpoint. Then we endure the "structural adjustments" that we have imposed so imperiously on third world nations. Whether this matters to those whose assets are offshore and whose loyalities are to those like themselves, above it all, I don't know. We are just another country to be fleeced. "Tend your own garden," ancient advice from the wise in earlier empires on the verge of collapse.

Socializing Risk while Privatizing Gains

With the bailout of AIG, Freddie, and Fannie, can we say that capitalism like communism has been proven not to work, and that we are now going to give socialism for the rich a go? The rich keep the gains from their irresponsible, unregulated, collusive schemes and the losses are born by the losers who admire the wealthy as the chosen of God?

Thirst: Who Has the Water Rights?

Great slideshow, Thirst. Helps me see why the big money will be made in privatizing the water supply. Buy a ranch in TX. Drill down into the aquifer. Divert water from those downstream. Sell it to people who are now parched.  Public Citizen says:

A more comprehensive groundwater regulatory regime is needed to prevent devastation of Texas groundwater resources. Further, Texas should abandon the Rule of Capture doctrine. Today, Texas is the only state to retain this antiquated rule.

Public goods are communistic. Entrepreneurs should own and control things, like water. That way assets will be allocated fairly by the market, in accordance with ability to pay monopoly prices. The poor can get water as they do food from charity. We don't want big gummint passing regulations to protect us. We would rather die of thirst.

Protests at Republican National Convention

Thousands protest the Republican National Convention despite earlier preemptive police and FBI raids on possible organizers.  The anarchist contigent, presaging future careers as publicists in the Pentagon or on Madison Avenue, bill themselves as The Republican National Convention Welcoming Committee. Twin Cities Indy Media feed provides updates.

Putting a Price on Water

Philanthropy Action News:

Meanwhile it has become increasingly apparent that the huge underwater aquifers that have sustained this system of “pump all you want” have run dangerously low. Without intervention, this scarcity may only exacerbate the problem, as farmers and other landowners preemptively pump even more in an effort to get as much as they can for themselves before it is gone. That’s the thinking of T. Boone Pickens, a former oil-and-gas magnate, who is moving into water. Pickens owned a mid-size ranch above a section of the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies water to much of the Plains states of the US. He realized that in Texas his neighbors could pump out the water from under his land and sell it. Not content to let anyone else profit from “his” water, he began buying up water rights and land from his neighbors. Now, he is proposing that the city of Dallas, three-hundred miles away, buy the water he now owns, and has maneuvered the passage of legislation to allow him to build a pipeline from his ranch to the city to make it happen. So far, Dallas has demurred, but Pickens is patient: he reckons all it will take is a year or so of drought for big cities in Texas to realize they need more secure access to water.

Those with money water their lawns. Those without die of dehydration? Now, if we can just find a way to put a price on air.

The War on Donors

Robert Thalhimer: "Fundraising is war!" What if we just treated donors as we might want to be treated, Robert? Has that been tried and rejected as naive?

Wall Street Socialism

WSJ on Wall Street Socialism:

So now the Bush administration proposes to make the federal guarantee explicit and even to offer taxpayer money to help recapitalize the two banks if needed. Everything has been nationalized -- except the profits and the pay scales of the bank's executives.

That's right. If the guarantees work, private speculators, having driven the stock down, will clean up on the upside. And the bank's CEO's will continue to pocket the multi-million dollar salaries that are de rigueur on Wall Street. Call it Wall Street socialism. Their losses are socialized; their profits are pocketed. You and I will pay for their failures. And if conservatives have their way, their families will pocket their successes, without even having to pay a tax for the transfer of the estates we've helped to create.

So one hand washes the other. No need for conspiracies. The players just do what they know to be right to preserve the system. The "hidden hand of the market" helps all their pals. We the smaller players suffer, but that is the law of the jungle. If we weren't so stupid we would not get taken. 

Biofuels versus Food

Per an unpublished World Bank report biofuels may account for 75% of the run up in food costs.  Via.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush. "It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday.

"What's the Deal?"

Spartacus O'Neal on following the money and power through open source research:

Whenever I am asked to advise or intervene in social conflict, I ask myself, "What's the deal?" Because conflict is almost never what it seems.

Most activists don't do this. Most activists assume that conflict is based on misunderstandings or misguided good intentions, when in fact they usually involve malice and fraud.

As an example, the plethora of post-9/11 homeland security programs were never intended to address security, but were put forward as budget scams by agencies and political appointees to capitalize on public fear and confusion. That's why we always conduct background research on key players and their connections as the first step in developing an estimate of the situation.