The Green They Steal, the Greed They Wear ...a St. Patrick's Day Lamentation

Just read this editorial by Michael Moore and started crying...Why do we all feel so helpless?

The Green They Steal, the Greed They Wear ...a St. Patrick's Day Lamentation

Willie Smits Restores a Rainforest

This is such an inspiring story...permaculture at its finest. I can only imagine the possibilities when we accomplish restoration like this in other countries.

The Connection between the Economy and Terrorism

This is such an interesting theory about world economics...and I tend to believe it especially with the consistent increase in the Euro over the last few years. The Euro is even now being excepted on the streets of NY.

Move Your Money

A wonderful new website that has been created called Move Your Money that promotes the idea of supporting local economies and community banks. No more giant banks that are "too big to fail". This website provides a list of banks in your community that are worth investing your money in.

Sustainably

Interview with Wes Jackson, co-founder of The Land Institute
-- Read the Full Interview

We live off of what comes out of the soil, not what's in the bank. If we squander the ecological capital of the soil, the capital on paper won't much matter... For the past 50 or 60 years, we have followed industrialized agricultural policies that have increased the rate of destruction of productive farmland. For those 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe the absurd notion that as long as we have money we will have food. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. Remember, if our agriculture is not sustainable then our food supply is not sustainable... Either we pay attention or we pay a huge price, not so far down the road. When we face the fact that civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland, it's clear that we don't really have a choice.

Shrinking Products

STEALTH PRICE INCREASES ON CONSUMER PRODUCTS
from Jim Hightower's Common-Sense Commentaries

Good grief! Whole industries are downsizing, paychecks are shrinking, home values are dwindling, and our 401Ks are deflating to 1Ks. It can’t get any worse, can it?

Well, don’t look now, but they shrunk the toilet paper. Scott Paper is pleased to announce that its "new" toilet product has fully 1,000 sheets of tissue on each roll. Actually, so did the old rolls. What's really new and what the company didn’t announce is that each sheet has been shorted. The old version gave us 4 inches of tissue, but the new and “improved” Scotts has quietly been cut to 3.7 inches in length. That’s a decline of 300 square inches per roll! Yet the price remains the same.

All sorts of corporations are instituting stealth price increases these days by shrinking product content while holding up prices. Skippy peanut butter, for example, ought to change its name to Skimpy. The company is now providing two ounces less in each jar, but it did not lower what it charges us. Worse, Skippy is intentionally trying to hide its consumer heist by playing eye tricks on us. The new jar is the same size as the old one was, so it looks like you’re getting the same amount – unless you turn the jar upside down. Instead of a flat bottom, the jar has an inward dimple that reduces the volume inside.

Likewise, cereal makers are cutting content while maintaining prices, and also using package deception to keep consumers from knowing what’s up – and what’s down. The new cereal boxes have the same height and width, thus looking the same as the old ones on the shelf. But cereal makers cleverly reduced the depth of the packages, leaving you paying more per ounce without knowing it.

One outraged consumer has launched a website chronicling these sneak attacks on our pocketbooks. Check it out: www.mouseprint.org.

Citi the Latest to Join the Bailout (But we still aren't forcing these banks to loan!)

We must start demanding more from this bailout...It should not be just a blank check to these CEOs for their bonuses.

CITIGROUP BAILS OUT ON EMPLOYEES
from Jim Hightower's Common-Sense Commentaries

“We are a bank,” Vikram Pandit recently told employees of Citigroup, the Wall Street banking conglomerate that Pandit heads.

Perhaps he thought it would be comforting for employees to hear the CEO say that at least he knows what business they’re in. But then he asked, “What does a bank do?” That definitely was not a comforting question.

Indeed, Pandit’s utterances were a bizarre prelude to the real, totally-discomforting purpose of the meeting, which was to announce that 53,000 Citigroup employees were being booted out the door – the largest mass firing in American corporate history. This is on top of 23,000 Citigroupers who had already gotten pink slips this year.

Citigroup, once the most valuable financial company in the nation, became a sprawling giant through the loosy-goosy deregulation policies of the past decade, and its top executives bet heavily on the speculative racket built on risky subprime mortgages. It was an awful bet. Citigroup has lost billions of dollars in the past year, and its stock price has plummeted.

So, now, Pandit says the employees have to take the hit. He brags that such wholesale downsizing is a sign of his executive boldness, referring to it as corporate “shock therapy.” As you might expect, however, Mr. Bold himself is not going to share in the shock. He is taking no cut in his $216 million pay, nor has he even been modest enough to say that he’ll forgo any bonus this year for presiding over Citigroup’s collapse.

Perhaps Pandit feels he deserves a bonus because of his chief achievement this year: getting $25 billion in bailout money from you and me.

Despite taking public money, Citigroup still has not increased its lending to help our economy. Excuse me, but if they’re not making loans and are slashing jobs, why are we bailing them out?

Gen-We

Numbering 95 million, Generation We or "Millennials" were born between 1978 and 2000 and are emerging as a social, political and philosophical force. In 2016 the youngest of us will reach voting age and we'll be the largest voting block in the history of the country.



Join the movement...The 'We Declaration'

Gen-We plans to release a site in 2009 that will allow us to connect, organize, develop campaigns, and launch actions that influence the political process, enable collective voices to be heard and heeded, and encourage a movement of globally responsible citizens.

What is Section 382, you ask?

It seems the Treasury Dept is going behind our backs yet again...

A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks: With Attention on Bailout Debate, Treasury Made Change to Tax Policy
By Amit R. Paley for the Washington Post

In just a couple months, I must have read well more than 100 newspaper articles on the financial collapse and the federal response to it. But none is more remarkable than Amit Paley's story in the Washington Post...The story concerns an obscure change in the U.S. Tax Code that was forced through by the U.S. Treasury Department without any public review or Congressional involvement, a change that will grant an estimated $25 billion in tax savings to Wells Fargo and deprive the federal government of somewhere between $105 and $140 billion in revenue...The change was announced with no fanfare within 24 hours after the House voted down the first bailout bill. Treasury acted without clear legal authority. "I've been in tax law for 20 years, and I've never seen anything like this," says one lawyer quoted in the article. (Summary for TIME.com by Michael Scherer)

The Paper from the Future - NY Times 7/4/09 Edition

What's crazy about this whole thing is that from just reading the articles as if they have happened makes me feel we really have a chance right now to accomplish everything we've been seeking.


New York Times Special Edition Video News Release - Nov. 12, 2008 from H Schweppes on Vimeo.

Liberal Pranksters Hand Out Times Spoof
By Sewell Chan for The New York Times

In an elaborate hoax, pranksters distributed thousands of free copies of a spoof edition of The New York Times on Wednesday morning at busy subway stations around the city, including Grand Central Terminal, Washington and Union Squares, the 14th and 23rd Street stations along Eighth Avenue, and Pacific Street in Brooklyn, among others.

The spurious 14-page papers — with a headline “IRAQ WAR ENDS” — surprised commuters, many of whom took the free copies thinking they were legitimate.

The paper is dated July 4, 2009, and imagines a liberal utopia of national health care, a rebuilt economy, progressive taxation, a national oil fund to study climate change, and other goals of progressive politics.

The hoax was accompanied by a Web site that mimics the look of The Times’s real Web site. A page of the spoof site contained links to dozens of progressive organizations, which were also listed in the print edition.

(A headline in the fake business section declares: “Public Relations Industry Forecasts a Series of Massive Layoffs.” Uh, sure.)

The Associated Press reported that copies of the spoof paper were also handed out in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, and that the pranksters — who included a film promoter, three unnamed Times employees and Steven Lambert, an art professor — financed the paper with small online contributions and created the paper to urge President-elect Barack Obama to keep his campaign promises.

According to The A.P., software and Internet support were provided by the Yes Men, who were the subject of a 2004 documentary film.

On Wednesday, the Yes Men issued a statement about the prank, stating, in part:

In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out on the street.

Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a co-author of “The Trust,” a history of the family that controls The Times, said in a telephone interview that the paper should be flattered by the spoof.

“I would say if you’ve got one, hold on to it,” Mr. Jones, a former Times reporter, said of the fake issue. “It will probably be a collector’s item. I’m just glad someone thinks The New York Times print edition is worthy of an elaborate hoax. A Web spoof would have been infinitely easier. But creating a print newspaper and handing it out at subway stations? That takes a lot of effort.”

Why are We Bailing Out Executive Pay?

WHY ARE WE BAILING OUT EXTRAVAGANT EXECUTIVE PAY?
from Jim Hightower's Common-Sense Commentaries

Well, isn’t this special? Despite Washington’s assurance to us angry commoners that its Wall Street bailout scheme would, by gollies, include a crackdown on excessive pay to top executives – there seems to be a few loopholes.

The Guardian newspaper in London analyzed corporate pay plans that were recently drawn up by Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and Lehman Brothers. The highest-ranking executives of these banks are to split a total of $70 billion in salaries and bonuses this year.

Bonuses? The stock prices of the firms have plummeted in the past year, Lehman Brothers has collapsed completely, the bungling executives have caused a global financial crisis, and the five remaining banks are down now down in Washington loading up their share of a $700 billion taxpayer bailout. They get bonuses for that?

The math is infuriatingly easy here: This $70 billion executive payout means that honchos in these firms will siphon off 10 percent of the bailout funds that were supposed to shore up our economy – not reward executive failure.

Meanwhile, there’s the loudly ballyhooded effort by Congress to restrict future pay for the big shots at banks getting bailout money. Congress’s bark was ferocious, but its bite turns out to be harmless. The banks are limited to a tax deduction of only $500,000 for each executive’s pay. But there’s no limit on how much total money is doled out to the execs – meaning they can still be paid $5 million or even $50 million a year. The banks wouldn’t get a tax break on the big sum, but – hey – they’re already getting billions of our tax dollars from the bailout, and that money can be used to maintain the extravagant paydays of those at the top.

These are not merely loopholes in the bailout scheme – they amount to blantant frauds.

Our New Metaphor for the Economic Crisis

Definitely a little dire but poignantly written description of our current economic condition...

The Long Road Ahead -- Are You Ready for the Worst the Economy Has to Offer?
By James Howard Kunstler of Kunstler.com

...let's say that we are witnessing the two stages of a tsunami. The current disappearance of wealth in the form of debts repudiated, bets welshed on, contracts cancelled, and Lehman Brothers-style sob stories played out is like the withdrawal of the sea. The poor curious little monkey-humans stand on the beach transfixed by the strangeness of the event as the water recedes and the sea floor is exposed and all kinds of exotic creatures are seen thrashing in the mud, while the skeletons of historic wrecks are exposed to view, and a great stench of organic decay wafts toward the strand. Then comes the second stage, the tidal wave itself -- which in this case will be horrific monetary inflation -- roaring back over the mud flats toward the land mass, crashing over the beach, and ripping apart all the hotels and houses and infrastructure there while it drowns the poor curious monkey-humans who were too enthralled by the weird spectacle to make for higher ground. The killer tidal wave washes away all the things they have labored to build for decades, all their poignant little effects and chattels, and the survivors are left keening amidst the wreckage as the sea once again returns to normal in its eternal cradle...

Resignation Letter

"Amidst the chaos of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, one head-honcho of the financial industry has decided to turn over a new leaf. Andrew Lahde, the now-former head of California-based hedge fund Lahde Capital Management, recently quit his job despite posting gains of 870 percent over the last year.

His resignation letter reflects his disillusionment with both the financial industry and the federal government, and contains scathing criticisms of American materialism, economic deregulation, and the philosophical fortitude (or lack thereof) of our country's leaders."-Over the Hedge


Letter: Andrew Lahde, Lahde Capital Management
Posted in the FT.com
By Andrew Lahde
October 17, 2008

Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Recently, on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, “What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it.” I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

There are far too many people for me to sincerely thank for my success. However, I do not want to sound like a Hollywood actor accepting an award. The money was reward enough. Furthermore, the endless list of those deserving thanks know who they are.

I will no longer manage money for other people or institutions. I have enough of my own wealth to manage. Some people, who think they have arrived at a reasonable estimate of my net worth, might be surprised that I would call it quits with such a small war chest. That is fine; I am content with my rewards. Moreover, I will let others try to amass nine, ten or eleven figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck. Appointments back to back, booked solid for the next three months, they lookforward to their two week vacation in January during which they will likely be glued to their Blackberries or other such devices. What is the point? They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen, and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten. I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life.

So this is it. With all due respect, I am dropping out. Please do not expect any type of reply to emails or voicemails within normal time frames or at all. Andy Springer and his company will be handling the dissolution of the fund. And don’t worry about my employees, they were always employed by Mr. Springer’s company and only one (who has been well-rewarded) will lose his job.

I have no interest in any deals in which anyone would like me to participate. I truly do not have a strong opinion about any market right now, other than to say that things will continue to get worse for some time, probably years. I am content sitting on the sidelines and waiting. After all, sitting and waiting is how we made money from the subprime debacle. I now have time to repair my health, which was destroyed by the stress I layered onto myself over the past two years, as well as my entire life – where I had to compete for spaces in universities and graduate schools, jobs and assets under management – with those who had all the advantages (rich parents) that I did not. May meritocracy be part of a new form of government, which needs to be established.

On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to make a modest proposal. First, I point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have reigned in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. Since Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith passed, I would argue that there has been a dearth of worthy philosophers in this country, at least ones focused on improving government. Capitalism worked for two hundred years, but times change, and systems become corrupt. George Soros, a man of staggering wealth, has stated that he would like to be remembered as a philosopher. My suggestion is that this great man start and sponsor a forum for great minds to come together to create a new system of government that truly represents the common man’s interest, while at the same time creating rewards great enough to attract the best and brightest minds to serve in government roles without having to rely on corruption to further their interests or lifestyles. This forum could be similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoft’s near monopoly. I believe there is an answer, but for now the system is clearly broken.

Lastly, while I still have an audience, I would like to bring attention to an alternative food and energy source. You won’t see it included in BP’s, “Feel good. We are working on sustainable solutions,” television commercials, nor is it mentioned in ADM’s similar commercials. But hemp has been used for at least 5,000 years for cloth and food, as well as just about everything that is produced from petroleum products. Hemp is not marijuana and vice versa. Hemp is the male plant and it grows like a weed, hence the slang term. The original American flag was made of hemp fiber and our Constitution was printed on paper made of hemp. It was used as recently as World War II by the U.S. Government, and then promptly made illegal after the war was won. At a time when rhetoric is flying about becoming more self-sufficient in terms of energy, why is it illegal to grow this plant in this country? Ah, the female. The evil female plant – marijuana. It gets you high, it makes you laugh, it does not produce a hangover. Unlike alcohol, it does not result in bar fights or wife beating. So, why is this innocuous plant illegal? Is it a gateway drug? No, that would be alcohol, which is so heavily advertised in this country. My only conclusion as to why it is illegal, is that Corporate America, which owns Congress, would rather sell you Paxil, Zoloft, Xanax and other addictive drugs, than allow you to grow a plant in your home without some of the profits going into their coffers. This policy is ludicrous. It has surely contributed to our dependency on foreign energy sources. Our policies have other countries literally laughing at our stupidity, most notably Canada, as well as several European nations (both Eastern and Western). You would not know this by paying attention to U.S. media sources though, as they tend not to elaborate on who is laughing at the United States this week. Please people, let’s stop the rhetoric and start thinking about how we can truly become self-sufficient.

With that I say goodbye and good luck.

All the best,

Andrew Lahde

Transparency

So I came across this great new website BailoutSleuth.com that is seeking to add transparency to the bailout program. They are and will be tracking the government's $700 billion rescue plan. This site will monitor the government's purchase, and eventual sale, of bad mortgages and other distressed assets. Analyzing deals and providing information about the companies and people involved in them. They will be looking at whether banks that got billions in government bailout money are using some of it to pay executive year-end bonuses and whether the banks that received taxpayer money will be using it to make loans and ease the credit crunch, like they are suppose to.

Bailoutsleuth will be keeping up with how our tax dollars are spent and the people and companies that are impacted by this program and will be keeping an eye out for favoritism, political influence or anything else that could undermine the potential returns to taxpayers.

And although the investment program is only a few weeks old, BailoutSleuth has already uncovered government and corporate shenanigans, "none of the companies that have signed on for federal bailout money have announced plans to slash salaries and bonuses, or to substantially overhaul their executive compensation schemes"...

A Knee-Jerk Attack On Poor People

A KNEE-JERK ATTACK ON POOR PEOPLE
from Jim Hightower's Common-Sense Commentaries

Guess who caused the financial crash.

Greedhead bankers and Wall Street speculators? Nope. How about those boneheaded laissez-faire ideologues in Washington? Uh-uh. Instead – get ready for this – the culprits are poor people!

This is the latest load of bunkum being fired at us by right-wing politicos and pundits. Trying to stop Congress from regulating Wall Street’s razzle-dazzle, ponzi-style investment schemes that have wrecked the housing market, banks, jobs, and so much more – the gooberheads of the far right are pointing fingers of blame at low-income homeowners.

The particular target of this nutty, right-wing campaign is CRA, the Community Reinvestment Act. Passed 30-something years ago, this law simply requires bankers to do a better job than they had been doing of making home loans to lower-income folks. But Wall Street’s frenzied apologists are claiming that banks were bullied by the CRA into making risky loans to borrowers who couldn’t afford them.

Horsedoodle. Until the Bushites took power and deregulated Wall Street speculators so they could essentially play casino games with poor people’s mortgages, the law worked beautifully! Loans were made, repaid, and bankers made profits. So don’t blame CRA. The damage came from money-grubbing interests having no relationship to that law. In fact, 75 percent of the high-risk home loans that were made under Bush’s anything-goes regime came from unregulated mortgage outfits, not from banks covered by CRA. They were working closely with such mortgage profiteers as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, which also are not covered by CRA.

Experience shows that lending to poor people can be less risky than lending to the wealthy, including to Wall Street bankers. The idea that poor people caused Wall Street to crash is not an idea at all – it’s an ideological, knee-jerk smear.

The Price of Oil

One of the key indicators for the economy is the price of oil...If our economy and the economies of other leading crude consumers continue to deteriorate, industries will use less oil.

So when I saw this posted on Urban Survival this morning, all I felt was dread...

Just like I expected, the OPEC'ers have cut production by 1.5 million barrels a day in order to hold up global consumers so they can pay for all that opulence built on sand with borrowed money.

If you're wondering why oil is trading below $65 a barrel anyway, it's because this is how depressions begin, my friend. Demand collapses, price collapses; repeat as often as necessary until you're in a soup line.

If I remember correctly it's only been three months since oil was being traded at it's historic high of around $147 in July.