Repuglican Circus

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor reportedly made a joke recently about the two front runners in the Repug primary… One of the candidates is a polygamist and he’s not the Mormon. Gingrich, the serial philanderer, who was forced out of congress for ethics violations is the darling of the conservatives… they really believe he’s into their small government, family values shit. He swears he’s not a lobbyist, but nonetheless received $25,000 per month from Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, government mortgage insurers, for his services - not to lobby, mind you, but as a historian.

They also like Santorum, a true conservative who equated being gay to fucking dogs and children, who lost the last contest he fought for US Senate from Pennsylvania by a deluge of eighteen percentage points… real popular guy, that. However, lately he’s on the up and up, winning three contests in a row and shaming Romney, the putative frontrunner.

Then there’s Ron Paul, who, true to his libertarian principles, wants to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and any other part of government that might, incidentally, do anything good for average Americans, who is also noted for putting out a little racist mag.

And what about the turkeys who fell by the wayside (but not before offering a few laughs to the peanut gallery)? Like the pizza guy who regularly pays hush money to keep sexual abuse incidents quiet, who didn’t know that China has had nukes since the early sixties. Or how about the dim bulb from Texas who couldn’t remember which three government departments he wanted to eliminate?

The grand prize will likely go to “Corporations are people” Romney. People own them and work for them, don’t they? Yes, but when’s the last time Texas executed one? That’s how you know what a person is. Dumbocrats will also gleefully take his comment that he doesn’t care about very poor people out of context, though even in context it shows how far out of touch he his. He went on to say that they are taken care of by the country’s safety net… except it’s the worst safety net in the developed world and leaves millions of people in desperate straits. But give him credit, he’s the first major politician who’s uttered the words poor people since Lyndon Johnson… except, that is, to berate them for being poor because they’re lazy. Newt would solve that problem by having them work their way through middle school as janitors. Not only would they learn the value of hard work, schools wouldn’t have to soak downtrodden and long suffering middle class taxpayers (who, in the world of America today, have incomes up to $250,000) for the cost of a low end but livable wage for school janitors.

Let me recount a story about laziness and opportunity amongst poor kids. Some twenty or thirty years ago a wealthy New Yorker found himself teaching a ghetto class of teenagers. I don’t remember what brought him there, whether it was purely voluntary or he was required to be there for some reason. He wound up liking the kids so much he offered, on impulse, to pay all costs of higher education for any kid who did well in school. Almost all the kids in that class went on to college compared to almost none in other classes in the same school. Community colleges used to be free. City College of New York where I got my B.A. used to be free. Otherwise I couldn’t have gone since I was a single parent working for peanuts driving a cab. Society should first provide opportunity then talk about lazy poor people who don’t take advantage of it.

Anyway, forget about Newt, he hasn’t got a chance in a million of being the nominee. Though they may love him in their hearts, even dumb as doorknob Repugs know he can’t win against Obama. Though after Santorum’s recent wins, the Repugs might actually rather go down in flames rather than have a chance at the presidency.

So back to Romney. His other glib great-to-take-out-of-context remark was the one about liking to fire people. In context he added; who provide services to me I don’t like. He was referring to medical insurance and, having hundreds of millions in the bank, he does have a few choices. And no matter how big the co-pays he’s not likely to be forced to declare bankruptcy because of them. Seventy percent of Americans are forced into bankruptcy because of medical bills, sixty percent of those had insurance but couldn’t cover the co-pays, a situation which hasn’t changed a bit with Obamneycare.

In spite of the obvious heartlessness and cluelessness of his statements, his sleaziest attribute by far is the way he made his fortune as a vulture capitalist. Putting it in simplest terms, you look for a healthy going concern to buy. You use a small amount of your own money and borrow the rest using the assets of the company as collateral. Once you’ve got it in your clutches you load it down with debt to pay your creditors or you strip it of its assets to pay those debts, either way the company is toast. You don’t care what happens to the company because you’ve made your money by charging exorbitant fees in the process of destroying it. In that way he bought a Florida company employing 700 people with $30 million of his own money and then earned more than $500 million while bankrupting it and destroying 700 jobs.

            Meanwhile he might well be the next president. If the vote is close the Repugs will steal the election and the Dumbos will figure, as they did in the cases of both Gore and Kerry, that if the Repugs are smart enough to steal it they must deserve it so it’s a waste of time trying to fight for an honest vote count.

Anyway, it won’t make much difference to the American people since he’d be governing from almost the same position as Obama minus a few details. The banksters love Romney, but they’re doing really well under Obama, who’s doing his best to burnish his creds with them. Obama’s new chief of staff, Jack Lew, came right out of Citigroup. William Daley, the previous one, came directly from one of the other megabastard banks into the most important position in the white house. Do you think it’s possible that Obama, if he looked really hard, could find one person in the whole US of A to run his staff who wasn’t a sleazoid, scumbag bankster? Evidently not.

            Obama’s justice department is pushing hard for the states to accept a settlement with the banks over mortgage fraud. It’s a total sell-out, free pass, get-out-of-jail-free card. The banks get to pay $25 billion where the damage is up around $700 billion. They get to do that without admitting any wrongdoing or anybody going to prison for malfeasance. The $25 billion is nothing especially since the banks can borrow it from the Fed at close to 0% interest.

As it stands now Obama will have the advantage of saying the economy is improving since it’s been growing at about 2% and unemployment is going down. But when you look more closely at the numbers you see a completely different picture since some 90% of the growth in the economy has gone to the top 10% in the form of rising stock values and the new jobs created pay a lot less than the ones that have been lost. New manufacturing jobs pay only half what they paid just a few years ago. Once again income is being transferred from the poor to the rich.

So where are we then? Well, Americans will have a choice this November between a cool guy who’s a center right conservative and a doltish megamillionare who’s a center right conservative. And the banksters will be shitting their pants with glee either way.

There’s a ‘2’ in My Milkfruit Tree

Every day now for about a week an old-fashioned style 2 appears right around sunset on a lower branch of a milkfruit tree in my yard. (The fruit on my tree has deep purple flesh with a very sweet center; some milkfruit trees have green flesh. Its taste moves towards the chalky as you get close to the skin, and, as you would expect, it exudes a milky white juice.) All other times I’ve tried to see that 2, it’s just a clump of leaves. But then, against a subdued gray twilight background, it’s just above eye level when I’m sitting in my soft chair on my front porch and blares out to me like neon. It can’t last long, at any time a leaf or small branch will fall and my 2 will be history.

What’s doubly remarkable about that leafy message is that 2 is my number. Starting with my birthday which is on the 22nd, it’s been central to my numerical life. I spent a good part of my childhood at house number 20202. My house in Portland where I lived for 18 years was at 722. My Oregon driver’s license, which I’ve had for 40 years, has four 2’s out of a total of seven numbers. The number two signifies duality, the two sides of almost any question or person. Also the two parts that make a whole - positive, negative; male, female; left, right; right, wrong… and I’m as bifurcated as anyone.

About 10 or 11pm last August 21 I stepped out of my car at home after a night out and there was a large spectacular epiphyllum flower in bloom. (Epiphyllum is a spineless hanging cactus with thin flat leaves.) The bud stem had appeared several days before, but never having seen one bloom before (or for that matter since) I had no idea what to expect. Wow, was it showy  - It was six inches across with long blue petals radiating in a circle off a white center. And I’m thinking, Great display for the party tomorrow, but alas it didn’t even last till the morning. What a flash of brilliance to erupt and fade in such a short time. Are they - the milkfruit 2 and the epiphyllum bloom - omens that I’m about to abruptly fade away? Or do they mean my life is charmed?

For certain, I lead a charmed life, but equally, at the age of 70, who can say how fast I’m going to fade? Meanwhile, I’m having no trouble loving my life and having the greatest time of it, so I was set a bit off balance when my brother-in-law, being the brunt of my last post’s humor, took umbrage. Somehow in the process of defending himself he took my mention of my meager pension as an indicator that I was whining and feeling sorry for myself, whereas I meant only to contrast how great I feel with how little money I have.

On the other hand, nobody likes being poor. But being as I’ve spent nearly my whole life in that category - minus two short interludes after I sold my house in Portland and received an inheritance - I’m (relatively) very comfortable without money.

During a two year period living on the commune I had a total of $16 in my possession. Food, shelter and fuel were covered and I did my share (usually) of work around the place to compensate for having no dough. It seemed just natural then to extend that moneyless status out to the road where I did about 30,000 miles of hitching without money (out of a total of about 70,000). Amazingly enough, looking back, I survived quite well sans cash and sometimes even today wonder exactly how I managed those weeks at a time on the road, fed and taken care of by the cosmos, as it were. As recompense for going ‘naked’ I had experiences and insights no amount of money could replace. (Read all about it in my new book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Enlightenment…forgive the shameless plug.)

At the same time, I always took money with me when I had it. More recently I did a couple of quite long hitches around the middle of the double oughts, but had enough money with me to stay in motels and pay for meals. Meanwhile, if the occasion arose, I’d have no problem sticking out my thumb and going anywhere I needed to (in the states anyway) on the spur of the moment, without cash. But once again, I wouldn’t do it voluntarily, so there’s your duality.

Aside from the odd ascetic or monk, nobody who’s poor ever turns away from mammon. There are people who eschew additional money when they already have enough, but even those are few.

Even living here in Cambodia where everything that’s important - food, shelter, clothing, transportation - is dirt cheap, my $800 per month income (Social Security plus writing) is not living high, though it does provide a good and healthy life and still affords lots of good times.

 Bro-in-law pointed out that Social Security is based on what you put in and I had my choice so why was I whining. Maybe there was a little whine there. I worked hard enough when I was working, just didn’t make any money because during the bulk of my working life in the states - 14 years - I was doing recycling, the bastard stepchild of American industry. The US gives a tax break for cutting down a tree but nothing for recycling paper. We also recycled certain materials for the good of it even when they were big losers on the balance sheet. As a result, I never earned more than $11,000 in one year in my life, though for more than half those 14 years, I kept longer than 40 hour work weeks and had a lot of responsibilities. That accounts for my meager pension, which is now, with this month’s raise, $660. 

(Don’t tell anyone but Social Security is part of an income-redistribution, communist plot to steal money from the haves and give it to the have-nots. The person who put ten times as much as I did into the system only gets out three or four times as much as I do.)

Had I been willing to wait till the age of 65 years and 8 months, I’d be getting about $800 now. The average pension is about $1200 per month. That would not finance the good life in Portland, say, but it would be just barely livable with enough to pay for the cheapest one bedroom apartment, keep an old clunker on the road, eat healthy but almost never go out or indulge in any of the dearer foods, drink low-down beers and rarely do it outside the house, always be late with bills because you are juggling your limited resources… well, you get the picture. That’s the way I’ve lived almost all my life, it’s second nature and to some extent I’m still doing it now.

But $660 in Portland? Painful. What if I didn’t know how to live outside the US? Well, I’d be whining for sure. Here I’m very comfortable though it’s still not a cushy life, and, as you might expect, I would like a bit more money to spend… another few hundred dollars would do; in fact, $1200 would be just fine. At the same time I still love my life the way it is and I’ll get along with what I have for sure.  

In two countries that I’m aware of - The Netherlands, Australia - everybody gets the same amount, in both cases about $1400 per month. That makes sense to me. The whole idea is to keep geezers off the streets and out of the poorhouse. And for we old-timers to be able to maintain a little dignity while our life forces are fading. A state pension is a form of insurance in case you made poor choices, were too lazy, indifferent or indigent to save for retirement or maybe had a run of bad luck. Whatever, it’s hardly the life of Riley.

            I chose to work hard for little, and now I’m paying for it, though karma being what it is, you do what’s given to you. It’s your choice but it’s even more a part of the grand plan, so you carry on day to day, month to month, year to year and before you know it you’re 70 years old. If you’re lucky like me you’ve found a place to be comfortable where you can take life easy. Working hard is great when you’re in the prime of life, and it’s good to be able to do it in spurts in your twilight years, but at 70 stress and hard work will only wear down the parts that much faster and shorten your life so once again I’m fortunate to have found my home.

            It’s been ten years since I came to Cambodia looking for work. I had tried to figure out a way to survive in the states, but my prospects were dismal. Like many events in my life, I was forced by circumstances to move on only to discover the perfect place for me.

            And a charmed place at that.

           

Guilt Tripping

I’m beginning to agree with my brother-in-law: My life is too easy, I’m enjoying it way too much. I should be like him: At the age of 80 he’s still working full time doing his part for the American and world economies. There’s not much made in America anymore so the new cars he buys on a regular basis and other trappings of the good suburban life he works so hard for mostly provide jobs for Japanese and Chinese, but what the hell, they need to work too.

Meanwhile, the only endeavor-like activity I can muster lately is a couple hours of writing a day and it rarely involves significant remuneration so my contribution to the world’s economic well-being is mostly limited to my meager pension, so, realistically it’s not much more than negligible. Otherwise all I do all day is putter around with my 250 plus potted plant collection, either gazing in awe at the beauties or fretting about those that look sickly; or riding my bicycle around a pacific tropical countryside or staying informed by reading and listening to lots of news or taking long afternoon naps or hanging out with friends drinking beers in the local bars. Is that any way to live?

I especially feel guilty now that the weather here in Cambodia is as good as weather gets; you know, low to mid-seventies at night - cool enough in the morning for me to want to put on a long-sleeved shirt - and a balmy mid-eighties in the daytime with humidity low enough to preclude perspiration except with serious exertion - I can walk for an hour without working up a sweat. Around April when the temperature here goes up near 100 and barely goes below 85 at night and the sweat pours off of you even when you’re not lifting a finger; well then I wouldn’t feel so bad about old sis and bro-in-law all bundled up against the deep-freeze Minnesota winter, but now I’m just racked with guilt about having it so easy.

Maybe I should assuage my guilt by going back to states and supplementing my $636 per month pittance of a pension by getting a job as a minimum wage Mall*Wart greeter? I’m good at smiling all right, though my weak back might make standing on my feet all day a bit of a challenge. Alternatively, I could always make do in one of the new tent cities that have sprung up around America. I love the outdoors so spending the winter in a tent shouldn’t be all that difficult. Think about hanging around the campfire roasting marshmallows and singing camp songs like Good Night Irene, that’s got to be lots of fun.

I dunno, maybe I should just resign myself to slackerhood and leave the consumerism and concomitant production of CO2 to more upstanding and responsible members of society. I am, after all, an old hippie so it would be kind of fitting to live out my remaining years being counterculturally unproductive, so to speak.

On the other hand, spending my paltry pension here in low-income Cambodia where it actually makes a difference, not to mention provides me a decent standard of living, can’t be all bad, can it? I thought not.

Meanwhile, in the midst of debilitating guilt and remorse while plagued by congenital lethargy and just plain laziness, I have managed to create a blog of news, views and stories from Cambodia: if you’re interested go to http://stanscambo.blogspot.com.

Greek Drama

The Greek Drama keeps getting stranger by the day. Greece’s prime minister, George Papandreau, after acceding to the financial troika’s (IMF, European Central Bank, European Commission) demands to impose further harsh austerity measures in exchange for the latest in a long list of bailouts decided to put the measure to a referendum. Then he changed his mind; now he wants a unity government, I expect so the people’s wrath can be spread around to all the political parties. No matter what the citizenry actually wanted, all the parties were going to back the deal anyway, so why take the blame himself for his party only?

As part of the deal private Greek bond holders are going to take a 50% haircut; that is, lose half of their investment. The part owned by the big banks will then be covered by bailing them out. That is why there is such heavy pressure and urgency in getting Greece to take on the new debt; better the Greek people pay than France, Germany, etc., having to ‘recapitalize’ their banks with their own money.

In the end result, if everything works according to the troika’s optimistic projections, Greece’s debt to GDP ratio will fall to 120% in 2020. In other words, after eight years of wrenching and painful sacrifice, they will still be hopelessly mired in debt. Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that the leadership is conflating default with leaving the Euro. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, because even if Greece formally, technically ‘leaves’ the Eurozone and prints its own money, most transactions there will still be in Euros unless the government specifically prohibits their use, which would be absurd. Go to any European country outside the Eurozone and you can spend Euros as easily as the local currency, at least in the touristy or big city areas.

All the money now in circulation in Greece is Euros; tourism, the country’s number one industry will continue to bring in Euros and all contracts signed since Greece joined the Euro in 2001 are in Euros. The beneficiaries of those contracts will demand payment in Euros.
What’s to stop Greece from continuing to use the Euro after they’ve ‘left’ the Eurozone? For instance, I live in Cambodia in which the US Dollar makes up 80 to 90% of all transactions even though the country also has its own currency. There are no US coins here so everything priced less than a dollar is in riel, the local currency. Also all transactions with the government are made in riels. Cambodia, as well as the several other countries who use the dollar as their own never asked America for its permission to use the dollar.

As long as the Greek people are going to deal with hardship anyway they’re better off defaulting. That way it can be cathartic and the citizenry can come together in a national forum and decide where they want their country to go rather than be forced to accept the nasty, punitive, neo-con economic prescriptions/ultimatums of the elite whose primary goal is to protect their banks and by way of inference, their investments. As I’ve stated repeatedly, there’s too much money at the top. If the 1% aren’t willing to give some of it up in increased taxes they should at minimum lose out for their poor investment choices. If the top are cut down to size, everyone else will benefit.

While Greece, the small potatoes, is in turmoil, Italy, the big cahuna, is teetering on the brink. It’s that old contagion thing: If Greece is having problems, then maybe Italy will be next, so let’s jack up the interest Italy has to pay now. The bywords of the recent international summits is: Calm the Markets; that’s the primary goal of the bailouts and rescue funds. If the financial community, which brought down the world economy with its shenanigans, is the least bit ‘jittery’ then they’ll force up interest rates to the point where countries can no longer sustain them, so that Italy last paid 6.6% on its bonds. It cannot go on very long at that rate before it can no longer meet its obligations.

Italy’s debt is very large, 120% of GDP, but its annual deficit actually isn’t, so it’s not really in the same predicament as Greece which is running very large deficits on top of its extremely high national debt ratio. Nonetheless, because the Markets rule, they decide whether a country passes or fails. Without the ‘Greek effect’ few people would be noticing Italy’s problems, or at least not think they were all that important or imperative. High debt doesn’t matter as long as the lender thinks the loan will be repaid. Witness the US which is currently paying very low interest in spite of its massive debt.

To bail out Greece to the tune of a couple of hundred billion is one thing, but to come up with the trillion or so Italy would need… well, that would be a might more of a challenge, possibly even insurmountable.

Meanwhile in make-believe-land, aka, America, there is great wrangling and hand wringing over cutting the deficit by $400 billion a year - from $1.5 trillion to $1.1 trillion. Even after shafting people who depend on benefit programs - SS, Medicare, Medicaid, as Dumbocrats have proposed - there’s still a $1 trillion plus deficit. A healthy economy would reduce the deficit by $400 billion, but that’s nowhere on the horizon, especially since both parties are intent on taking money from commoners, who spend their money in the economy, rather than taxing the wealthy who hoard it or speculate, either way with no benefit to the society as a whole.

I know Obama has taken out his populist, election-is-approaching, talking points about taxing the wealthy, but it’s nearly all lip service since he’s proposing minute amounts from the very wealthiest; nothing that would remotely get the country’s books in order. Further, Congress’ most liberal members, cowed by the neo-con paradigm, are proposing a .25% financial transaction tax to yield $100 million per year when they should be demanding at least 1%. There’s no legitimate long-term investor who’d be put off by paying 1%.

When Greece’s debt to GDP ratio (under the present optimistic scenario) is down to 120% in 2020, the US’s ratio, without drastic attitude adjustments, will be up around 160%; where Greece stands today. Some argue the deficit is not a great problem, better to borrow to create jobs than be stuck with a faltering economy. I might agree if there weren’t such massive wealth reposited in the elite. If a single one time 8% wealth tax on those with more than a million dollars can cover an entire year’s deficit there’s no reason whatever for any cuts in benefit programs, and lots of economic, as well as moral, reasons to tap into those deep pockets.

The US is experiencing a deer-in-the-headlights moment. Crash and burn is coming but Congress is incapable of responding - except by digging in its heels, and challenging the gods of reality, as it were.

It’s About Time

After getting mercilessly butt reamed over the past few years after getting royally shafted since Reagan’s time, the people are finally standing up and fighting. What began with a couple hundred hardy souls camping out near Wall Street mushroomed last weekend into 950 demonstrations in 80 countries.

However, just to try to make sure the demonstrators in the US understand that their quest for equity and fairness and a healthy economy for all is futile, the Congress, at the behest of President Obama, passed free trade legislation with Korea, Columbia and Panama. They wanted the people to know that it didn’t matter which party they voted for, they were going to get shafted nonetheless. While free trade areas do create certain types of jobs for Americans, many more are lost, that’s why a large majority of Americans are opposed to FTAs.

In addition, the worst, most egregious aspects of the pacts were left unchanged from NAFTA; that is, the rights given to corporations to sue for damages when environmental legislation, for instance, cuts into their profits. The most famous example was the Metalclad Company’s attempt to build a toxic waste dump in Mexico near the US border. When the local authorities refused a permit, the company sued and forced Mexican authorities to pay $25 million in compensation. What’s more, the trade courts that adjudicate those issues are made up totally of corporate hacks and their deliberations are in secret. While they do lately occasionally judge in favor of the environment, the first 48 cases were all in favor of the corporations and against the people.

Obama campaigned on the promise to renegotiate NAFTA to eliminate its worst aspects, instead, at the behest of corporations who own him and who have no interest in anything but their own profits, he’s carried them forward to taint the new pacts.

Or take the example of Greece. While it was the conservatives who were in power when the world economy started to meltdown, who used the deceitful and charlatanesque talents of Goldman Sachs to hide the true deficit, it’s the ‘Socialists’ who are now in power who are trying to ram austerity down the throats of the people. All mainstream political parties in the Western world, regardless of whether they call themselves conservative or liberal or socialist, have bought into the feed-the-rich, save-the-banks-at-all-costs, economic paradigm.

They say not feeding the banksters will result in catastrophe, but it’s already catastrophe for large numbers of people. In fact, the only people to really suffer in a banking meltdown would be the 1%, those who’ve been sucking on the government’s corporate welfare tit. The trillions of dollars spent to save the banks only went to protect the obscene salaries and bonuses of the banksters, the gifts to the banks did nothing for the economy or the citizenry in need. Much better to let the banks fail, pay off the small depositors, and use the vast sums now being spent to save bloodsucking monster banks to instead create new smaller community oriented banks. One trillion dollars would capitalize 1000 banks at $1 billion each, 10,000 banks at $100 million each, 100,000 banks at $10 mil each.

It would be good for the banks to fail and the 1% to take a big hit to their deep pockets because they are too rich and powerful, they need to be brought down. Those resources held by the few are not good for anyone or anything but themselves. Until they take a real hit, the world’s economy and politics can never be righted.

It’s not going to happen because the banks and the 1% own the government. With the exception of about 70 Democrats who call themselves progressives, there’s no movement in Congress to correct the wrongs of today’s economy and turn it into the right direction. 75% of the American people, including 55% of Republicans want taxes raised on the wealthy to bring down the deficit, but there isn’t a Republican in Congress who would vote for that, and not all that many Democrats either, and only a few Dems who would really fight for it.

We’ve been through this all before, I feel like I’m just repeating myself. I see no light at the end of the tunnel, no dawn on the horizon, no rainbow in a heavy, steely gray, overcast sky.

However, futile or otherwise, I’d love to be out there demonstrating. It’s cool, it’s fun, it’s solidarity, it’s comradeship, it’s a little bit of hope. And it’s about time.

Steve Jobs and the American Way of Capitalism

Eulogies for Steve Jobs have been coming hard and heavy since his expected but untimely death recently. He is recognized by everyone as a great innovator. To his fans, rather his devotees, he’s a genius, almost a demigod.

The last time I used an Apple product, it was an Apple II, back in the 80s. At a certain point the place I went to to use a computer had Macs, but for some reason I resisted moving to the much better system, maybe I’m just stubborn and slow to change. Over the years I’ve frequently had Mac lovers recommend the Apple system over the PC.

No matter how much better the system might be, adopting it was always problematical for me. In the beginning were the issues of compatibility, access to software and ease of repair, which were especially important as I was in traveling mode starting in 1992. In America, those issues would’ve been minor, in Asia a real bother.

The other, even more decisive reason for shunning Macs is that they’re so damned expensive, double or triple the cost of an equivalent PC. Jobs’ economic philosophy involved doing products so likable that people would be willing to pay a premium for them. It worked out well for him as he left this world with $6 billion in the bank, but it also strictly limited the number of people who could enjoy his ‘great innovations’.

Not only did he make his loyal and dedicated customers pay a heavy price for his products he also subjected them to indignities and rip-offs, such as not allowing purchasers of itunes songs to copy them to use on their other computers, or not making iphone batteries replaceable except by a very expensive process at an Apple store. That’s the gratitude he showed them after they showered him with adoration and fabulous wealth.

So he left with $6 billion in assets. If he had departed with ‘only’ half as much - but still far more than any one person could ever possibly need or legitimately use in one lifetime - because he priced his products more competitively and didn’t seek to soak his customers at every opportunity, a lot more people could’ve enjoyed his products and I’d feel more kindly towards him. He actually might have made even more than six billion if he’d kept a smaller margin, but sold a lot more.

In fact I would’ve loved to have an alternative to Microsoft, since I detest Bill Gates with an unrelenting passion, but Jobs made it impossible for me.

He exemplified the capitalist way, which is to think of innovation and quality only in terms of profit and whatever good might be accomplished by your work as peripheral. He might’ve been a good guy but he was also a greedy bastard.

He had it all but still died young. He had it all in this life but it’s hard to say if his great good fortune will extend to the next as it takes more than fat bank accounts in this life to get through the Pearly Gates to the next.

It’s the Bank’s Problem

There’s a saying about banks and borrowing: If I borrow $10,000 from the bank and subsequently default, it’s my problem. If I borrow $10 billion from the ban, and default, it’s the bank’s problem.


Greece is on the edge of default. All the money thrown at the country in recent times has been expended in the fervent hope that some miracle will happen to make the country’s debt sustainable. European and international financial institutions are in denial of the inevitable default so are merely delaying the day of reckoning.


They are deathly afraid that Greece’s default will drag several large European banks down with them, because that’ll mean ‘recapitalization’, in other words, another bailout. If they can stave off default by loaning the country lots of money (which it’s very unlikely to ever be able to pay back under any circumstances) then they won’t have to give away lots of money to their too-big-to-fail banks. Either way a lot of good money will be thrown after bad and the citizens of the more frugal northern countries called upon to bail Greece out will be just as irate as the Greeks who are being called on to make sacrifices.


There are three basic reasons why default is inevitable. First is that the country’s debt level is just too high. All of the austerity measures taken and demanded so far by the international financial institutions and Eurozone countries who are loaning the money are only reducing the annual deficit, not balancing the budget, so under the most optimistic scenario, Greece’s debt will continue to rise to even more stratospheric and unsustainable levels. Secondly, many, if not most of the measures undertaken to reduce the deficit are slowing the economy, thus raising unemployment, which then increases social costs and reduces revenue and so turns out to be counterproductive; the more austerity that’s enforced or attempted, the closer the country comes to default.


Finally, the people won’t stand for additional austerity regardless of any consequences that might befall the country. Maybe they truly do not understand the seriousness of the situation or maybe they do, but either way they are fighting back to the point where the government will be powerless to act. Maybe the Greek people think default will be better than trying to meet the country’s crushing debt obligations or maybe not, but either way it won’t be pretty. At least under default the slate will be wiped clean, or at least reduced to a manageable level.


Greece’s economic problems, along with those of Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, UK, US and many more countries, goes back to the fundamental ethos of neo-liberal economics that’s held sway in the financial world since Reagan and Thatcher.


Neo-liberalism has three basic tenets. First is the obsession with growth in all situations regardless of the existential circumstances of each country. Second is the insistence on low taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Third is the demand that the actions of the economic establishment be unregulated.


Japan provides the best example of the absurdity and idiocy of the all-growth-all-the-time paradigm. Economists the world over have lamented Japan’s ‘lost decades’ of stagnant economic growth. But Japan is already a wealthy country and it not only has a declining population but also an aging one. If population as a whole is declining and the proportion of the elderly, who typically have less need or desire to consume, is growing then the economy should be declining, not growing. Moreover, if the economy is ‘stagnant’(I prefer the word, stable) in a declining population then its per capita income is actually growing: shouldn’t that be enough? And yet, in a frantic and ultimately futile attempt to adhere to neo-liberal economics the country has amassed the world’s highest debt to GDP ratio - 220% - building lots of bridges to nowhere. If they hadn’t accepted the obsessive growth paradigm they could’ve shared the available work and taken lots of vacations instead of continuing to work the longest hours of any industrial society. They could’ve rested on their laurels, been content with their already wealthy status and started to enjoy life.


The insistence on low taxes for corporations and the wealthy has two major impacts. One is the excessive and destructive speculation that arises from the wealthy having too much money on their hands. The other is the debt that governments accumulate because tax receipts are insufficient when the fat cats are lightly taxed.


Finally, the demand that the activities of society’s economic controllers be unregulated combined with them having more money than they know what to do with brings wild economic swings with inevitable and debilitating busts coming after giddy and unsustainable booms. It doesn’t have to be that disastrous for an economy or a people. Germany experienced a downturn equal to America’s but its unemployment rate grew only minimally. They accomplished that by setting up a program that encouraged companies to put people on short hours with the government making up the difference.


If we were going for sustainability, the good life, spiritual growth instead of blind, mindless consumerism, there’d be neither booms, nor busts. There’d be neither high unemployment, nor widespread poverty. It wouldn’t take much in the way of income redistribution to insure that no American needed to be hungry or homeless. Meanwhile, the poor and middle classes are called upon to sacrifice so that the wealthy can have more tax breaks. And the Repuglicans call it class warfare when the masses object.


Every tax law is a political statement; one way or another somebody is going to have to pay. Since nobody likes taxes and governments are therefore reluctant to levy them, they’ve relied on huge levels of borrowing to make up the difference in the fervent hope that economies will grow enough to make the additional debt payments tolerable. That works until the burdens get too large for governments to sustain and/or inevitable downturns happen because of deregulation and speculation. Either way you’re in a pickle.


Now Obama, our very own Manchurian candidate, is starting to talk tough about raising taxes on the wealthy. Ah, yes, the campaign is beginning and since raising taxes on the wealthy is supported by more than 70% of the American people, it sure won’t hurt his chances for reelection to throw a little red meat to the angry electorate. However, he also made sure to keep his overseers happy by agreeing to cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, saying he wouldn’t accept cuts in those programs without (minimal) tax rises for the wealthy. In other words, slash away wingnut congress, your dream of starting the evisceration hated social programs has been answered.


The world is slouching towards economic disaster because nothing has changed since the 2008 blowout to rein in out-of-control banksters. Witness a ‘rogue’ trader at Swiss bank UBS losing the bank more than $2 billion. You’d think they’d be watching a little more closely or investing a little more conservatively. The certainty of another crash is also indicated by a recent news announcement from the UK that retail banks, where people have their checking accounts, etc., were going to be separated from investment banking, which is no more or less than speculation, a.k.a., gambling. Separation is an absolutely essential change if future bailouts are to be avoided. The problem is that the UK’s new rule is not programmed to take effect until 2019, giving the banksters all the time they need to create another, even multiple, banking meltdowns. Why 2019? Why not 2050? Sure wouldn’t want to unnecessarily rush the banks, would we?


Anyway, there’s always more money in the coffers for bankster welfare… until there isn’t. There will be until the people rise up and say, No more!, regardless of the consequences.