Occupy Facebook

 "Devil or Angel I can't make up my mind"

Wing makers and diadem polishers are busy, glow sticks are being fueled as new members of the pantheon of Mammon are about to be welcomed into the fold. What's most difficult for me is my inability to be clear about their belief system. The same people whom we sanctify as good guys, known by their support for OWS, expanded democracy, and the redistribution of wealth, are this very minute checking their insider status, their stock allocations, and lock-up dates for their soon to be public shares of Facebook. Many new members of the soon to be fabulously wealthy are exploiting the very systems that they decried last MayDay. 

Those not lucky enough to be insiders are calling their brokers looking for shares, checking the institutions that they own in their 401s to see if they are going to get any shares, and planning to get the jump on the trading as soon as it starts. Warren Buffett isn't going to play. He can't place a value on the company but he knows that all the noise is creating a "sense of value" that has no intrinsic worth. ( "Bubbles" aren't revealed when they burst. Bubbles are the everyday nature of a stock market that makes prices on a multiple of  expectations of unpredictable future activity). He may also have noted that insiders are selling nearly half of the offering shares. It is usually a negative sign when insiders express so little faith in the future fortunes of their company that they want to rush to the doors to sell their shares. 

Many of the so called "good guy funds", for this post I took Calvert, an early and successful cluster of funds that markets that they invest in sustainable and moral corporations, if history is any guide (they own Google, Apple, and many other new media cos) will be at the trough buying from Morgan Stanley (lead underwriter). JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS),Bank of America Corp., Barclays Plc (BARC) and Allen & Co. also will help with the IPO, Facebook said in the filing. 

The story of Sheryl Sandberg's migration from the Treasury Dept under President Clinton, who she worked for along the way before becoming COO of Facebook, is documented on Bloomberg here. 

So now, if you have clicked away, you know that Facebook is Wall-Street and that only the most naive believe that Facebook is in the social change business, here or abroad. The temporary exploitation of Facebook as a tool to organize a meet-up, should not be confused with the greater and longer lasting function of Facebook as a means to expand through their advertising sales, the ever increasing materialism of new markets. 

"Money for nothing, chicks for free"

As for the expansion of democracy, the implicit understanding that shareholders after all control the companies they invest in, is contradicted by Facebook  using a little known means to retain control: Zuckerberg adopted a dual-class structure in 2009. He has 10 votes for every other shareholder’s single ballot. 

The larger picture is just as morally confusing. What does it mean when we invest almost 100 billion dollars in an activity as vacuous as Facebook. Discussions of the policy of less or more government, investment in infrastructure or education, or the military for that matter, become meaningless against the backdrop of a culture that expresses its true sentiment, aspirations and dreams, by entering the casino and betting up the value of Facebook. Cuz that is what you are doing. Investors have become suckers in the largest ponzi scheme on earth. 

The shortest course in the mechanics of an IPO: An individual or group begins some form of activity that has economic value, or the potential of profit. They can organize that activity in a variety of forms. One could form a partnership, a co-op, a non-profit, or a closely held corporation. Facebook chose stock corporation. Lawyers develop documents which register the company formally, describe the activity, where it will function and the initial owners and board members of that company. Other docs spell out meetings and elections, formats etc. Stock is registered and distributed. Most is kept "on the shelf". In the case of Facebook there are 2.48 billion shares registered at a value of 6 cents a piece. (337.4 million are going to be sold through this IPO). When an insider is awarded shares in lieu of salary, or for a bonus, that 6 cents is their basis price. At some point, enough activity has taken place that someone initiates a conversation about taking the company public. That is selling shares either from the shelf, or from insiders to raise capital. That capital might be used to expand the company, liquidate debt, make acquisitions, or enrich insiders who decide to sell their shares. A set of sell side "bankers" goes through a process of due diligence and writes up the findings. The corporation and their bankers make judgements about how they might price these shares, and how they are going to word the "red herring" the offering document to the public. If you ever read a red herring you will note that they say nothing but the worst about the fortunes of said company. They are not allowed to hype without evidence. It is the wink in the process. The company goes on a road show attracting investors to the IPO and obtaining subscriptions, commitments to purchase x shares. On a date specific the company under the auspices of the SEC offers the shares. The initial shares are distributed and then trading moves to the markets where those less fortunate are allowed to buy and sell shares. There is often a pop created by either a perfectly legal agreement on the part of the bankers to commit to purchase shares in the after market, or a purposeful shortage of shares available determined by bankers guessing the demand, and then not satisfying it. Insiders whose shares are not part of the initial IPO are locked out of sales for 6 months. Their sales into the market after lockout are the first wave of dilution, that is selling more shares of a company into a market after a price per share is being determined on a trading platform. Remember those millions of shares that Facebook retained on the shelf. They too can and will be sold in "secondaries" to raise yet more money and dilute the shares further. 

It is getting so hard to maintain even the semblance of liberalism in the face of such temptation. Before you sell your soul, or wish that you had I think it is important to consider one small excerpt from Wendell Barry's Jefferson lecture: excerpt from Wendell Berry's 2012 Jefferson Lecture 

"That we live now in an economy that is not sustainable is not the fault only of a few mongers of power and heavy equipment. We all are implicated. We all, in the course of our daily economic life, consent to it, whether or not we approve of it. This is because of the increasing abstraction and unconsciousness of our connection to our economic sources in the land, the land-communities, and the land-use economies. In my region and within my memory, for example, human life has become less creaturely and more engineered, less familiar and more remote from local places, pleasures, and associations. Our knowledge, in short, has become increasingly statistical.

Statistical knowledge once was rare. It was a property of the minds of great rulers, conquerors, and generals, people who succeeded or failed by the manipulation of large quantities that remained, to them, unimagined because unimaginable: merely accountable quantities of land, treasure, people, soldiers, and workers. This is the sort of knowledge we now call “data” or “facts” or “information.” Or we call it “objective knowledge,” supposedly untainted by personal attachment, but nonetheless available for industrial and commercial exploitation. By means of such knowledge a category assumes dominion over its parts or members. With the coming of industrialism, the great industrialists, like kings and conquerors, become exploiters of statistical knowledge. And finally virtually all of us, in order to participate and survive in their system, have had to agree to their substitution of statistical knowledge for personal knowledge. Virtually all of us now share with the most powerful industrialists their remoteness from actual experience of the actual world. Like them, we participate in an absentee economy, which makes us effectively absent even from our own dwelling places."

Enough is enough

Collee was an apple man. He grew them, picked and packed and shipped them himself from his several hundred acre orchard in the Shenandoah Valley. He brought Carrie and me an apple ladder and pointed toward a small grove where he kept his heirlooms; smokehouse, maiden's blush, and a variety of pippins. We strapped on pickers' vests, deep barrel chested leathers for collecting as you climb up into the trees. After we nearly toppled from the weight of it all we staggered back up to the farmhouse chomping on an apple that contained the nectar of the gods. I offered one to Collee and he refused: "I've had my last apple," he told us. "Every week for 60 years I've delivered apples to market. I would place a peck in the cab and eat as I drove. One day it occurred to me that I had eaten near a million apples. I surmised that that was all the apples God intended a man to eat. I quit then and there. Haven't had an apple since."

I brewed beer. English style ales. It is a relatively simple process, one you can learn, and was a great source of "real" beer in an era of PBR, Bud, and Corona piss. I never had a fail or any of the horror stories associated with brew your own. When we moved south I gave the works away. There were nothing but piss beers in Florida at the time, Sierra Nevada had to travel a great distance to get there, and so like Collee, I told myself I had had my last beer. Then we arrived in Maine. There is a vital micro brew industry here and it was easy to reconnect with a product. There are five breweries within 5 miles of where I live and we have visited them all. They make good beer.

I read an article in which a bar (Ebenezer's, Lovell, Maine) was mentioned as the best place in the country to sample Belgian beer. A perfect excuse for a day trip. We went and challenged the boss to tell me why my cost point was about to jump by a factor of three, and what all the fuss was about? He asked what our taste preferences were and when we told him we didn't appreciate fruit in our beer he offered that Coke nearly killed Belgian beer. The demand for sweet changed the brewers style in an attempt to keep up with the market BUT, there were many traditionalists that were making historic beers. The Trappists were the gold standard. This became one of those days. I'm sure this is old news to some of you, it brought us to our knees. We drank incredible beers and American crafters have learned the art.

I've done some research and I came upon this article which brought my attention to the economics of the enterprise. I am not moved to take on the cloth, but I appreciate the life lessons containing in the following quote:
"St. Sixtus brews just 60,000 cases of beer a year. The famous Westvleteren 12 sells for about $33 a case, the blond 6 is the cheapest at $23 for 24 bottles. That makes enough money to cover the costs of maintaining the abbey, where 28 monks work. There's also a little extra to help the needy. The brewery currently is running at maximum capacity. And the monks are not interested in raising prices or production, because that would require hiring more outside workers (they have three) and working with distributors."
An intentional community coming together, creating a great product, making enough money for themselves and those less fortunate, that is an ethic we can all learn from.

As we enter the gift giving season consider these other representative samples of great product being produced at other monasteries:
Trappist jams which distributes a variety of products from around the world.
Fruitcake, cheese, bourbon and fudge from Gethsemani Farms
Fruitcake, truffles, and honey
Simply divine cookies
Some of the world's finest liquors are crafted by monks.
and this story featured vinegar produced in the Hudson Valley

I am sure you can add others, please do, and any other examples of successful small scale commercial enterprises that suggest an alternative to business as usual.

Had Enough Yet?

The systems of empire, totalitarianism, institutional slavery, indentured servitude, and the divine right of kings are concepts that have slipped into the trash bin of history.

We are at the threshold of yet another momentous change. It is hard to get your mind around it. There are many vested interests that are in the business of distraction in order to allow them to extract the last vestiges of what they have wrought. This weekend's Iowa nonsense and the media attention to it have the effect of exciting people of all the political spectrum into frenzies of irrelevant mind numbing excitation. The call to prayer, or the return to some imagined time in history when all was well cannot halt the inevitability of the end of an era.

What has quickened the process this time has been the global expansion of an economic system, desired by all, and demonstratively doomed to failure. The evidence is constant; the corpus, be it person, or company, (which have now morphed into the same "being") grows, (capital is drawn to capital), greed engorges the beast and it dies. The neo-liberal expansion of the multi-national corporation, the insatiable desire of the world's population to drive a car, and the most pernicious of all the elements in the drama, the expansion of debt as a "growth" lever all converge and the system collapses of its own weight.

The Economist publishes this world debt clock: 46 trillion and counting. This number is in current dollars and counts debt that we can see, obligations that are actually transparent. It does not take into consideration the debt obligations of say the entitlement obligations of future Americans, estimated to be 65 trillion dollars, to site just one example. We cannot cover this debt. It will be cancelled.

This is but an excerpt. The entire interview is on the WSJ website.

Disbelievers will have all the visual cues they need to reject the premise of this clip. Roubini has an accent and probably hair on his back. He is not a true American. Another darkie bringing the communist manifesto to light. Ironically China, the last great satan state, is closer to collapse after adopting the tenants of unbridled capitalism then it has ever been. It will not be able to sate the demands of the billions to drive that car.

For those with a sharp pencil and a keener understanding than I have are directed to the BIS. This is the world settlement clearing house that monitors debt and to the extent they can, the non transparent OTC derivatives that none of us understand. If you cruise around this site you will see that the value of derivatives (the instruments that precipitated the collapse of 2008) has actually increased to over 600 Trillion dollars in the last two years. You will also read that this is but the notational amount and their true asset value is only 20 some trillion. I don't understand it either. Here is what I know. They will all be settled or else. In the same way bond obligations, no matter how long they are kept off the books, will also be settled or else, default. In a rational world derivitives allowed a commodity producer to stabilize a price, say for a steer. A rancher owned a steer, an option was written of the future price of the steer, he delivered the steer, the option was cleared. What the geniuses who destroyed the world as you knew it did, was create a system of "Open Interest" which meant that persons could place side bets on the steer's price without any underlying interest in the steer. This is the easiest tell on the subject so if you have a problem here skip away. The impact will still effect you. You just won't know what hit you. And some of these bets, the poison ones placed on housing stock, already blew up and we are still paying off the gamblers. The argument is that if they default the world collapses. They will default, the world financial system will collapse.

Had enough yet?

We have to add in the problem of the underlying basis of the entire system, extractive economics. At exactly the same time that we are in a fiscal crisis, which is just a counting game, we have the all too real set of facts that the growth limits models of commodities that we extract from the earth to support all of this economic activity, predict that they are getting scarcer.

The following were excerpted from the NYT this weekend:

Can Jeremy Grantham Profit From Ecological Mayhem?

When prices go up and stay up, it’s not a bubble. Prices may always revert to the mean, but the mean can change; that’s a paradigm shift. As Grantham tells it, oil went first. For a century it steadily returned to about $16 a barrel in today’s currency, then in 1974 the mean shifted to about $35, and Grantham believes it has recently doubled again. Metals and nearly everything else — coal, corn, palm oil, soybeans, sugar, cotton — appear to be following suit. “From now on, price pressure and shortages of resources will be a permanent feature of our lives,” he argues. “The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value. We all need to adjust our behavior to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly.”

here is his conclusion “But it’s never absolutely too late,” Grantham said. “It’s never too late to do what we can,” which includes making a lot of money you can use to try to protect whatever and whoever matters to you — biodiversity, family, nation, everybody.

He’s an impassioned environmentalist not only for the usual reasons but also because he believes humanity’s vexed relationship with the planet is the great economic story of our time. “This commodities thing may turn out to be the most interesting call of my career,” he told me. “I have no doubt we’re going to have a bad hundred years. We have the resources to gracefully handle the transition, but we won’t. We apparently can’t.”

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Grantham doesn’t dwell on the potential for disaster on an unimaginable scale, but it looms behind his measured language. The world’s population is seven billion and counting. “Whether the stable population will be 1.5 billion or 5 billion,” he said to me, “the question is: How do we get there?”

This is probably the darkest article I have read in my lifetime. Not the least because of the value free way it is reported. Within the article and this consultant's "letter" to his clients is the understanding that in a zero sum game, the world may collapse but you can profit from it, and, with the gains, put your money to work to secure yourself. But more insidious is his understanding that a stable earth will only support half of its anticipated population. How we eradicate the surplus is the issue. Implying, we can allow them to starve, or more likely, given our history, is we unleash the holy war on them and simply kill them off. This is the behavior of those "vested interests" I alluded to at the top of this post.

There are options to consider that you might want to contemplate. Nothing like world revolution. How about an adjustment of a few basic destructive behaviors that might take the pressure off the world. End the fiscal derivitives market immediately.

End the concept of "growth" and change it to sustainable regardless of how that term has been abused

End the practice of planned obsolescence, and redundancy

Constrict advertising and marketing

End the practice of inflation

Educate, educate, educate, to the realities of the world

End the auto-cracy

It appears Elizabeth Warren is going to run for the senate from Mass. Pity.

Leftovers

We just finished our leftovers and with the last serving we swore; never again to turkey. I don't care how good you are at cooking turkey the fact is, if you weren't hyped to death to eat or serve this bird to fill out the Norman Rockwell "way it's supposed to be" image of Thanksgiving, you would never eat it. When was the last time you ate turkey other than a holiday? The sides are fabulous. Serve them around a great pic of a turkey that you can stand up as a centerpiece and let that satisfy the photo op.

Below are two leftovers, a food thought and a re-post of a current outrage. I include the latter as food for thought. Mine was not the only table around which political discussions got heated. In tens of thousands of households around the country, newly matriculated freshmen were home from their first semester of, say, social studies 101. Heretofore in these families the opinions of the "heads" of the table were for the most part the orientation of the family. In this particularly heady times, hot on the heels of an election, one can imagine that some opinion was served with the slice of turkey. You can also assume that it was met with a disagreement. Headstrong in their new found contrary perspective, the recent initiate into the "liberalizing" experience of higher ed shot back his/her countervailing point of view. See this summary of research that supports the proposition that attending college has the effect of increasing; tolerance of diversity, the desire to do public service, and identifying oneself as "liberal". The impact of this interruption of the tradition of "father knows best" is only getting larger as more and more students join the ranks. Despite the pundits' acceptance of the lie that we are a center right nation, the trend seems to be in place for a meaningful shift to the left. It will require lots of truth telling. Some of which got left on the table.


Carrie posted a pic of a rye bread I baked for Thanksgiving. Her readers wanted the recipe.


The preamble to making this bread the proper way is to be acquainted with Jim Lahey's method of making yeast breads. It is a no knead bread, with an overnight fermentation(24 hr) and the bread, when baked is placed in a cast iron dutch oven (your crueset will work fine) which has been preheated in a very hot (500degree) oven.

The size of the dutch oven determines the size of the loaf. I use a very large Staub.You will more likely have a Lodge or Crueset or lookalike. If yours is 6 quart stick with the following proportions. If you have a larger dutch oven, 9+ quarts, you can double the recipe. The water ratio is key. It is not fixed. Start with the following amounts and if you have loose flour add another 1/2 cup. What you want is a moist dough. Incorporate the caraway with the other dry ingredients and use another tablespoon to sprinkle over the loaf after it lands in the dutch oven. I don't double the yeast and don't quite double the salt. After your initial rising you are going to turn out a really moist dough. Use a dough scrapper to fold it over on itself, cover and allow a second rising ( an hour). I do this on a pizza peal, or use a cookie sheet, so that I can transfer it to my now very hot dutch oven without burning myself. It will flop. It will look wrong. It is ok. The loaf will form out to fit the oven. Sprinkle the surface with the rest of the caraway seeds. bake for 1/2 hour then remove the lid and reduce the heat to 400 for another 20-40 minutes. Don't burn the bread but don't remove too soon. This is a judgment call. The loaf is easy to remove from the oven using tongs. Hold the loaf in a tea towel, thunk the bottom listening for that hollow sound that says all is well. It usually requires more time or there will be moist spots in the center. You can slide the bread directly back into the oven for another 10 mins to finish. I often turn off heat and let it the bread cool therein. Pumpernickel raisin is next. Lehey goes nuts in his book knocking off amy's semolina raisin bread. I have a better recipe I will share with you later.

Ingredients:
2 1/4 c Bread Fl
3/4 c rye fl
1 1/4 t salt
1/2 t yeast
1 1/3 c warm water
2 T caraway seeds
Rye for dusting

(The bread pictured was double the above recipe)
This is the link to see the original posting which changed so many peoples minds about kneading. I kneaded for YEARS and was known for the second best bread around in my territory. All those wasted hours!! This is BETTER.

If you need any further encouragement Google Jim Lahey no knead bread and read some of the entries. End of Carrie's e-mail

In the spirit of calling out the liars the following is an excerpt from the blog Lynnrockets' Blast-Off
I would have posted the whole entry but the use of a cartoon of Newt in Nazi gear is a practice I don't support. The posting however goes into detail re. the German health care system and is worth reading.

"Gingrich vomited a diatribe on what a truly great nation Germany is and why the United States should emulate its policies. How’s that for “American exceptionalism” and patriotism? What would Gingrich and the Republicans have to say if a Democrat expressed that opinion? When one of the show’s hosts agreed with him and then questioned if whether Germany’s universal health care system should also be applauded, Gingrich started with the lies and misinformation.
To begin, he claimed that Germany has a private health care system which is run by over 350 private insurance companies with minimal government funding, supervision or regulatory authority. He then lied by saying that German citizens privately purchase their own health care insurance policies from these private insurers and that they can change their plans and providers whenever they choose. In essence, Gingrich stated that Germany’s health care system is even more privatized than the American system was prior to this year’s health care reform legislation. In the words of Stephen Colbert, Gingrich’s characterization of Germany’s health care system was devoid of “truthiness”.
The truth is, that Germany has Europe’s oldest universal health care system which dates back to 1883 with changes made thereafter. Currently 85% of the population is covered by a basic health insurance plan provided by statute, which provides a standard level of coverage. The remainder opt for private health insurance, which frequently offers additional benefits. According to the World Health Organization, Germany’s health care system is 77% government-funded and 23% privately funded. Additionally, the government partially reimburses the costs for low-wage workers, whose premiums are capped at a predetermined value. Higher wage earners pay a premium based on their salary. Those higher earners may also opt for private insurance, which is generally more expensive, but whose price may vary based on the individual’s health status.
Germany has a universal multi-payer system with two main types of health insurance, public and private."

World of Work

You know a problem is getting "serious" when the NYT does a feature on its front page, American Dream Is Elusive for New Generation. The story is a profile of the agonies of 2008 Colgate grad Scott Nicholson, the unemployed millennium gen, solid son of the solidly middle class. The latest example of an economy gone bad. Comments attached to the piece
and the letters to the editor that followed, give him and his family a pretty swift ass kickin. He appears self indulgent and his family enable him.

No one in this story, or the related comments, challenges any of the basic premises underlying Scott's predicament. He must be thankful for any job offer. He must get out of the house. He might move to Europe where the job possibilities might be better. Scott must get better at becoming a wage slave to a system that doesn't need or want him.

During the same week Alternet picked up a story from Psychotherapy Networker / By Mary Sykes Wylie, appropriately titled: Has the American Dream Become our Nightmare?

That title could be thought to be the first of a set of fundamental questions that needs to be asked and answered. Other questions that we all have to ask include: How might Scott spend his days in ways that don't make the rest of our lives materially worse? What is it that we need, if anything, that Scott might help us acquire? How might Scott evaluate what he really needs? What are Scott's lifetime ambitions; where does he want to be, with whom, and how many of his ambitions involve money? Obviously none of the answers to these questions or even how to pose them were part of Scott's education.

Colgate senses the angst in their graduates. Their response in justifying $54.000 in annual costs to attend include assisting the host community by buying up buildings and placing University offices within them, publishing studies that demonstrate the Colgate grads do better salary-wise then many peers, and bringing back Alumna with a job to share their experiences as a demonstration of "you too can do it." In this case the alum is a vp at MTV.

What Colgate might do: They could rethink their curriculum in terms of 21st century reality. They could sponsor teach-ins on the most critical issues of the day. They could assist their students in conceiving of and moving into a world that was sustainable, ethical, and elegant. They could strengthen their career counseling department. To be effective they have to anticipate the world their graduates are going to enter. The university could provide transitional housing for grads while they determined their next moves. They could incubate entrepreneurial alternatives to traditional job searches. The university might provide goods and services: health care, senior activities, child care, food service, art activities, to their neighbors, enriching the entire community. Any number of grads might be part of the delivery mechanism. Most importantly the university is going to have to become the well spring of alternatives to a system that is so fundamentally broken.

The best example of what is required is exemplified by the award winning documentary film, TEE Shirt Travels, embedded here.

Filmed in Zambia, this film explores the unintended consequences of western do-gooders shipping second hand clothing to a nation in "need". In the process we wiped out their indigenous textile industry and created a nation of re-sellers. It is heartbreaking. And just when you think you can't stand it any more you have the testimony of the stated dream of an unbelievably hard working Zambian young man. His ambition is to have a car. We have shortened the distance between the continents. We have shortened the timeline of civilization.

The Class of 2010

This blog space has intended to infill the gaps in the formal curriculum that you have just completed.
Prior posts have dealt with ancillary housing options, yet more shelter strategies, dorms as models of "real world" possibilities , economic survival options, and the ultimate in "sharing" programs.
I posted a short list of supplemental courses that I called "the art of crap detection" within this post.

All of the above pointed out that the most important lessons you were learning were informal; living in groups, being carless, the economies of scale, and that having access is more important than owning.
If you insist on leaving the "ideal world" you just inhabited, where you literally had it all, then consider the following my commencement address.

The decision you are going to make re. where to live is more important than your career choice. Typically, media stories will list cities that are attractive to recent grads and list the criteria supporting their choices. This story by Richard Florida goes so far as to cite that which is "important" to 20 somethings; bars, restaurants, and entertainment. (You are worth no more than your ability to consume). What everyone of the chosen cities have in common is that they are already what they are going to be. As a migrant to any one of them you are chasing a dream already realized by those who preceded you. You hope to become part of that which already exists. "I am moving to NYC cuz that's where the hipsters live". What you can't know, because your teachers like Richard Florida haven't a clue, is that you are about to participate in the "next biggest sucker syndrome". The person who is about to leave for someplace where she has a chance of actually carving out a living for herself, needs someone to whom she can sub-lease her too expensive 350 sq ft apartment. Don't be that person.

Its is going to take some backbone to resist the kind of marketing crap proffered by the merchants of cool so lets use some common sense.

The criteria that I would suggest you apply when considering where to live include: What is the total tax burden of the place you might live? What is the cost of auto; insurance, registration, and taxation? What are the rules regarding house sharing? What is the speed of the local ISP provider? What are the average utility costs? What is the fiscal status of the town, state in which you might reside? What is the cost to have a dental filling? What is the ratio of others to whom you might be attracted? Are there viable and independent media outlets? What are police practices regarding victimless crimes? Applying the above criteria would automatically rule out California.

The places that do qualify are invariably going to be the subject of bad news. You are going to hear about the abandoned, the broke and broken places that are the casualties of the economic collapse. This is exactly where I suggest you begin your quest. Only when a place is degraded enough does it become possible to have an opportunity for real growth. Consider that Georgetown, D.C., Harlem, NYC, The Mission, S.F., SoBe, and now the Design District in Miami, are examples of what were once neglected slums. Their reconstruction afforded their pioneers the opportunity for employment, new think, and identity. Now those very people couldn't afford to live in any one of these neighborhoods should they chose to move there today.

In a world where one can literally buy anything from anywhere and have it delivered, where the newest ideas are instantly available on the web, where affinity networks thrive, the pressure to be within the hip cores is unimportant.

The myth that there are "creative communities" belies the fact that the most significant wellsprings of art are often at a remove, giving the artist the space they need to create their own identities. Think Morgan Freeman, Clarksburg Ms., Dennis Hopper, Wilmington N.C., the crowd at Black Mountain, N.C. or Georgia O'Keeffe in Abiquiu, N.M.

More important than any of the shibboleths that are so indicative of mob think, absorb the most important principle you weren't taught during your college days, buy low! This is just as true in real estate as it is an adage in the stock market.

When a place has become cheap enough that you, or more importantly a group, can pool resources and actually gain a foothold, then you have a real opportunity. Exploit the social network you have developed, form a gang, and move somewhere. The wants and needs of that place and the opportunities will sort themselves out. This is exactly what happened in Hardwick Vt.

What a fabulous example of the success of people who went their own way. Other food oriented activities are located through Balle.

Get busy. There has rarely been more opportunity.

Bill Moyers Redux

Bill Moyer's final broadcast has aired. The complete transcript of that show and the blog for future reference is here. I excerpted his farewell editorial from that broadcast:


BILL MOYERS: "You've no doubt figured out my bias by now. I've hardly kept it a secret. In this regard, I take my cue from the late Edward R. Murrow, the Moses of broadcast news.

Ed Murrow told his generation of journalists bias is okay as long as you don't try to hide it. So here, one more time, is mine: plutocracy and democracy don't mix. Plutocracy, the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy.

Plutocracy is not an American word but it's become an American phenomenon. Back in the fall of 2005, the Wall Street giant Citigroup even coined a variation on it, plutonomy, an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer with government on their side. By the next spring, Citigroup decided the time had come to publicly "bang the drum on plutonomy."

And bang they did, with an "equity strategy" for their investors, entitled, "Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer." Here are some excerpts:

"Asset booms, a rising profit share and favorable treatment by market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper...[and] take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years..."

"...the top 10%, particularly the top 1% of the US-- the plutonomists in our parlance-- have benefited disproportionately from the recent productivity surge in the US...[and] from globalization and the productivity boom, at the relative expense of labor."

"...[and they] are likely to get even wealthier in the coming years. [Because] the dynamics of plutonomy are still intact."

And so they were, before the great collapse of 2008. And so they are, today, after the fall. While millions of people have lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings, the plutonomists are doing just fine. In some cases, even better, thanks to our bailout of the big banks which meant record profits and record bonuses for Wall Street.

Now why is this? Because over the past 30 years the plutocrats, or plutonomists — choose your poison — have used their vastly increased wealth to capture the flag and assure the government does their bidding. Remember that Citigroup reference to "market-friendly governments" on their side? It hasn't mattered which party has been in power — government has done Wall Street's bidding.

Don't blame the lobbyists, by the way; they are simply the mules of politics, delivering the drug of choice to a political class addicted to cash — what polite circles call "campaign contributions" and Tony Soprano would call "protection."

This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet. According to a study from the Pew Research Center last month, nine out of ten Americans give our national economy a negative rating. Eight out of ten report difficulty finding jobs in their communities, and seven out of ten say they experienced job-related or financial problems over the past year.

So it is that like those populists of that earlier era, millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable. Then, the remedy was a popular insurgency that ignited the spark of democracy.

Now we have come to another parting of the ways, and once again the fate and character of our country are up for grabs.

So along with Jim Hightower and Iowa's concerned citizens, and many of you, I am biased: democracy only works when we claim it as our own. "

I would add that as we watch Greece implode and their citizens' reaction to being asked to suffer the burden, and as this process spreads to the rest of Europe, you take the time to place Moyer's words in context and realize it is but a matter of time until such policies are implemented here.

Two Views

Robert Irwin, the west coast artist most famous for his designs for the Central Garden at the Getty, said in an interview (Robert Irwin, "The State of the Real, Part 1," conversation with Jan Butterfield, Arts 46, no. 10 (June 1972), p. 48.) that he felt as if he was straddling a mountain; one leg placed him in "now time", the other in "real time." An example of what that meant to Irwin was the controversy that exploded when he "finished" the build out of the garden in 1997 and it was opened to the public. The public howled at what appeared to be the absence of plants, the lack of green, the barrenness of the landscape in "now time". Irwin had allowed for the garden to grow, to fill in, in the fullness of "real time", and now of course it is appreciated as one of the great gardens of the world.

We are burdened by two great calamities occurring in tandem. The links between the environmental and economic crisis are obvious when we have a "now time" event like the gulf oil spill threatening the shore line, and what are surely going to be the economic consequences of slowing down off-shore drilling.

What hinders resolution of either of the "real time" crisis, the profound problems of the environment or the world's economy, is the fact that the problems are even harder to imagine then Irwin's garden. It is hard for the average citizen to imagine the consequences of his/her acts. Even harder is imagining how invisible co2 emissions are warming the planet. The images that reinforce an "Inconvenient Truth" are either too removed; impacts are 50-100 years off, too remote; Greenland, or too special; polar bears, to have any profound impact on the way we live.

There is the attendant problem of denial when the implications are that one must change his or her behavior, exacerbated by "deniers" who supply an alternative reality. I learned not to jump to any quick conclusions about who those deniers might be. When I moved to Maine on a grant to work within the University of Southern Maine, I was asked from time to time to speak to groups of students. In every case I was forewarned NOT to be the bearer of bad news. Their faculty felt that the students couldn't take a nightmare scenario of environmental change.

We are learning that the effects of the economic crisis are more immediate. As troubling as the nightly "now time" news is, limited though it may be, a daily dose of evidence of job losses, foreclosures, and the failure of sovereign states, doesn't seem to have the impact on personal behavior that one might imagine. I believe that the same conspiracy of silence prevails among the chattering classes who fear that if the citizenry were aware of the depth of the "real time" problem, they would amplify the problem by say, saving, or scaling back their consumption. Their protest and rejection of the current regimes that brought them the end, if indeed it is the end, would be louder and uncontrollable. An example of a news organization at least trying to inform its public is evidenced by the BBC airing a story that all three of the parties running in the current election are underestimating how they would achieve fiscal responsibility by a factor of at least three. That is too say that each party's proposals to cut expenses and tax to raise revenues misses the mark by two thirds. Their burden of debt is not being addressed. The British will not have to face their real problems, yet.

If you are willing to dig a little deeper on matters of debt, toxic assets, and exposure you will find The International Monetary Fund is forecasting that global bank losses from the financial crisis will total $2.28 trillion, in 2010, a drop of $533 billion from an estimate made last October.


As this plays out on the world stage the NYT blog Economix asks if Europe can save itself? (answer no). By now you can see the similarities to those eco-issues that seem of another place, another time. They do not effect us.

And if we can't absorb the scale and meaning of the current crisis what of the potential of the next real crisis. This is even harder to imagine as the masters of the universe let us know in their congressional testimony. Included in that mind numbing exercise was a statement by one master that only the hedge fund guys know how it works, the "buy what the rating agencies endorse players" won't know. FYI that includes pension funds, trusts, endowments, states, the institutions we depend on to secure our lives.

An even larger example of what we can't get our heads around is the following: The WorldBank calculates that the world's GNP is roughly 60+ trillion dollars.

Now consider that the Bank for International Settlement, that keeps track of these things, calculates that the OTC Derivatives Market "Notional amounts of all types of OTC contracts rebounded somewhat to stand at $605 trillion at the end of June 2009, "

The value of these derivatives are ten times the world economy on any given day and they are not regulated. The potential for the next blow up is enormous. But I can't see it, I can't touch it, I still have a job, my house is still here, the cars run, the planes fly. Why worry? The nightly news reports the markets are up, consumer confidence is raising, home prices are stabilizing.

Sen. Alan Simpson got to the issue last night as he spoke about the new commission he co-chairs to deal with our national debt crisis:
"If we don't solve this problem, its not like we won't be here. We'll still be here. Its just that everything we know and love won't."

New Gang in Town

I began my career in rural Appalachia struggling to help the working poor earn a living wage. Employers exploited workers, keeping them in line by using fear and intimidation. Community organizing was an obvious response. By coming together in an organization that approximated a gang, workers had a better chance to appeal for fairness.

The widely circulated AP story "Jobless professionals vie for holiday sales work" By CHRISTOPHER LEONARD and MAE ANDERSON, AP Business Writers put a face on the current unemployment crisis.
AP – In this photo taken Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009, Mara Proctor arranges merchandise at Sticks boutique in Kansas …

Mara, and the 6 million former professionals like her, are terribly alone. Having done everything the society asked of her, she finds herself discarded. Despite having ample cause for fury, her survival strategy is to get to work, any work will do.

I have a suggestion for Mara, form a gang. Not one of those groups who grope around trying to create a better resume or network, hoping against hope to find a way back into the system that just failed them. No, a real gang that pools their resources and begins with the premise that they do not want to get back to business as usual.

The first principle of the gang they should form is that society has failed them. They signed the social contract, but they got no security. They will take it as a truth that if you locate a problem that one person has, ten thousand others have the same problem. In some basic way, society has failed the majority of its citizens. The gang's job will be to identify and rectify those failures. This is Mara's opportunity. Mara should assess a set of needs that are common in her locale, and begin to solve those needs.

Let's get the ball rolling with a short list based on areas of opportunity that are fairly common, one of which Mara might want to exploit.
Programs are beginning to assist seniors in their transport needs.
Mara starts a car service, contracting with seniors, parents, and commuters.

Persons are struggling to eat right. Home chefs are but one new start-up.
Mara could do that or assist persons in their homes to rid their lives of junk food and teach the basics of healthy food prep to the entire family.

Schools are failing to provide the skill sets that Mara and her peers need to survive. Mara could tailor teaching sessions to the job skills required by specific corporations. Different then job training that is rarely specific, this concept begins with the employer and moves the training off site. States are starting to experiment with funded models that she might want to explore.

Mara might find a commercial building suffering a lack of tenants. This problem is only going to get worse. At the same time her state, and others, are going to suffer drastic budget cuts and education will not be immune. Mara proposes to the building owners and the existing tenants that what she wants to develop is a charter school, the organizing basis of which is that it is geared to provide real world office experience to its students.

This list is just suggestive. To develop any project Mara is going to need help. Enter the gang. For any of these suggestions to become a reality will require enormous amounts of energy. But it has to start with Mara and her gang, getting off their knees.

Who knows what she and her pals will come up with. The important thing is for her to form an alliance with a small group who share her motivation.
Maybe after a successful launch, her most ambitious project will be to replicate this process. "New Starts" might be their logo.