theWheel

theOwl

“Too Big To Fail.” “High Frequency Traders.” A “Ponzi Scheme – an Inside Job.” Sorry to say, our financial system appears still to be rotten to the core. Watch your wallets…and then watch this:

And this:

Oh, gloom and doom.  It would be so nice to believe that since we elected Barack Obama, all is in good hands and there’s no need to worry anymore.  Wrong. 

theOwl

Interesting article by Matt Taibbi at True/Slant, and another from Paul Krugman at HuffPost…

theOwl

I really don’t want to think about Government and Democracy and Big Finance and Insurance Companies and Agribusiness and Global Warming and so forth.

And I wish you didn’t need to think about all these things either. It would be nice if everything were OK. It would be nice if electing well-meaning people were adequate to ensure good governance.

But it’s not.

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theOwl

Updated 4.27.09

Confused about all this talk about American torture? Watch this one. Rachael Maddow and her guest Ron Suskind clear a few things up for us.

Here’s part one with Rachael Maddow:

And part two joined by Ron Suskind:

I think we need to know what happened to us.  George W. Bush, the President of the United States is apparently, in light of treaties that the United States has signed, a war criminal.  Have a look at Andrew Sullivan’s post What Reagan Signed.

Just ask yourself: reading this language and knowing that president Bush ordered the waterboarding of a man for 83 times to get evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda, is it really a matter of debate whether the last president of the United States is a war criminal? How is one able to come to any other opinion?

Remember:

“any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession”

is torture. Remember:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

Why are we still debating this?

At the time of the 9/11 attacks upon New York and Washington, it was possible to imagine a ticking bomb scenario, where our/my prisoner had information that could save the lives of thousands, or even millions of innocents.  Would I torture in such a situation?

A few years ago, during his wife Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign, Bill Clinton was asked about all this:

At some point the issue in play here is not even Torture, but rather the Rule of Law. If we want to be able to torture, we should change our laws to permit torture. But if we have laws against torture, then the laws must be enforced.

By the way, I think torture is bad, and that the United States of America should not torture.  I recognize that is easy for me to adopt this position when the responsibility for our collective safety falls on other people’s shoulders.

From my safe, comfy living room, I weigh in on a subject I have avoided because I’m not sure how I’d behave if my city or my family were threatened and I had a prisoner…

theOwl

From The Onion. I haven’t figured out how to outsource the bus driving gig yet…

theOwl

This is wrong.

theOwl

Have you read Red Mars?

(Illustration by Don Dixon)

“So it’s democracy verses capitalism at this point, friends, and we out on this frontier outpost of the human world are perhaps better positioned than anyone else to see this and to fight this global battle…

So says John Boone, the first man to visit Mars, to a convention of settlers on the summit lip of Olympus Mons sometime in the late 21st century.  Democracy verses Capitalism – oh yes…

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theOwl

Here’s what Paul Krugman has to say about the Geithner plan. Unfortunately, it rings true to me. I fear Barack Obama and America are in great hazard here.  From Krugman:

The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.

theOwl

Driving along yesterday the thought occurred to me that derivatives traders, string theorists, and serial composers may well have some ineffable commonality.

It’s possible to get a good deal of mileage out of complicated graphics and a hearty dose of hand waiving…

theOwl

I really hope this stuff I’m dealing with here tonight – Derivatives – Bucket Shops - and their role in our still melting financial fiasco -  is not totally boring to you, my readers.  It just seems to me that regular non-economist people like you and I have got to start understanding what has happened to our system of money and exchange.  I’ve not yet formed a totally coherent gestalt, but the most powerful and explanatory metaphor I have run across so far is that of “Casino Capitalism”.

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