----- Original Message ----- From: Bob Taft To: mary rose Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2008 12:59 PM Subject: Re: "The Revolution Devours Its Children - BE RESPONSIBLE - OR ELSE
There seem to be endless solutions offered to reverse the devastating slide of society into oblivion - again - yet all miss the basic problem, IRRESPONSIBILITY GRANTED AND/OR IMPOSED BY GOVERNMENT. Everyone loves the liberty/equality talk but everyone also has the idea that their survival depends on getting a notch up on their neighbors. They really don't want Equality, they want the Liberty to hopefully advance beyond their neighbors. Actually nothing wrong with that. Dissatisfaction with one's lot in life is the prime mover of civilization. The difficulty comes when Government - which represents the collective Irresponsibility of the people - is used to grant special Irresponsibilities to particular segments of society. The Irresponsibility that has most of us in a bind today is that which creates CORPORATIONS, which of themselves are not evil, but when given certain dispensations by Government they begin doing evil things. The worst Irresponsibility granted to Corporations is the concept of Limited Liability which allows the owners of corporations to rake in the profits, but makes them immune to any action that might attempt to make them pay for their losses. They can do acts through their corporate structure for which an individual might land in jail, but corporate law makes them immune. This is what is behind the Wall Street criminality going on in recent weeks, and the Responsibility for it all is being billed to YOU AND ME. I see nothing less feudal for land management under the Geonomy plan than under the current feudal system. There is no actual land ownership today. We are but tenants on the King's lands. Land titles "In Allodium" do grant ownership but are almost extinct today. We are tenants and if we cease paying rent we are evicted. The Geonomy system would attempt to balance this off by giving part of the rent back, as would other similar systems do, yet the real problem is allowing the King to steal us blind in the first place. A legitimate government (preferably based upon the old system of Exodus 18:21) would have neither need nor ability to pick our pockets. The US government, fatally flawed as it is, based upon the 1787 Con-Job, existed quite well financially on duties, imposts and excises for nearly 115 years until encumbered with a foreign-owned banking corporation which has brought the US to bankruptcy. There is nothing good about granted Irresponsibilities, whether granted to mega-corporations, or to masses of individuals. There is in the long run no escaping Self-Responsibility. One has to get over the only-live-once silliness. There is a very basic agreed-upon LAW that is behind the civilizing structure of every society: THE GOLDEN RULE. I like "'an it harm none, do what thou wilt." The one most familiar to us all is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That's really a bit too toned down. Better might be "You WILL get back just what you put out." Or if you prefer, "As ye sow so shall ye reap." The Golden Rule has dozens of forms as it is so very obviously in effect at all times and so obviously understandable by all societies. So it would behoove us all to remember that a Responsibility escaped today WILL come back to haunt us some day in the future, whether in this life or a succeeding one. That's the Golden Rule. It even applies to Wall Street criminals. You can be sure that there is a special Hell awaiting the likes of Fed chairmen and Treasury secretaries, and CEOs of any capitalist club that attempts to live high off the labors of others by fraud. Best regards,. Bob Taft The Taft Ranch Upton, Wyoming (307) 465-2206 http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=74897 "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." Aesop From: mary rose Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2008 5:27 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Discussion Forum for Global Justice Subject: Fw: "The Revolution Devours Its Children This is a good overview of the situation today and what we are faced with, however, what I found to be more important is the link at the bottom of the page to http://www.progress.org/geonomy/ The Geonomy Society dwelves into land ownership and the question as to who the Earth belongs and its apportionment. As a real estate broker for many years and having gone through a major recession, and having lost everything myself in that recession, i began to question the commodification of land. Before we became an industrial society land was held for generations as productive farm land which supported many. But, with industrialization and corporatization, people became increasingly mobile and large land holdings began to be sold off for "housing tracts" in which people lived while going off to work every day dependent upon an outside "job" for income. And, at the same time technological advances were changing industry and excluding many from the laborforce, the same was happening as agriculture became technofied as well. Now run by machinery instead of human labor we see huge tracts of land under corporate ownership producing immense quantities of food without the use of but minimal human labor. In addition, real estate speculators have continually begun to hold large tracts of land off of the market in order to take advantage of property appreciation. A practice which deprives many of land use from which to practice subsistence farming thus forcing them into migration since there are not enough jobs to provide income for those who have been displaced by mechanization. In addition, as homeowners have become more mobil holding a place of residence for only 2 - 4 years before moving on due to "corporate transfers," speculation in this segment has increased as well. And, in today's market much of the reason for ownership is simply "to make money". It is no longer valued for its productivity as our life support system -- or as a place in which to live and raise one's family, something that should be held sacred and revered -- but is increasingly monetized simply for bottom line profit. And this is something that has to change if we are to not only survive but thrive as the human family. mary rose We must be the change we wish to see in our lives. M Gandhi ----- Original Message ----- From: Jeffery J. Smith Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2008 8:17 PM Subject: Re: "The Revolution Devours Its Children What $700B won't buy: a quick fix for the economy Saturday September 27, 2:45 pm ET By Michael Liedtke, AP Business Writer What the US government can't buy for $700 billion: a quick fix for the broken-down economy SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Not even $700 billion will be enough to spare the United States from more economic anguish if the government's proposed banking bailout pans out like similar desperation moves during the past two decades. ADVERTISEMENT It usually takes years to recover from a financial crisis severe enough for politicians to ride to the rescue with truckloads of taxpayer money. Take, for example, the U.S. government's August 1989 bailout of the savings-and-loan industry. The stock market fell by 12 percent within the first 14 months of the rescue plan while the economy slipped into an eight-month recession that began in July 1990. Housing prices that had just begun to erode continued to fall for another three years. There's little reason to believe it will be dramatically different this time around, particularly since this bailout involves harder-to-value assets and comes with the U.S. economy already on the edge of a recession, if one hasn't begun already. "This is going to take years to work out and it will be incredibly complicated," predicted banking consultant Bert Ely, who has extensively studied the U.S. government's 1989 bailout. Although lawmakers are still sparring over the precise details, the proposed bailout would authorize the government to borrow up to $700 billion to buy the toxic assets poisoning banks. Most of these holdings are tied to mortgages made to borrowers who either can't afford to make their monthly payments or have simply chosen to default because they owe far more than their homes are worth. No one seems quite certain how much these assets are worth, but the government is betting that -- with time -- it can get a handle on it and eventually profit. Even as the government tries to clean up the mess left by reckless home lenders, borrowers and investors, more problems are likely to stack up. The trouble could include longer unemployment lines as struggling companies faced with declining sales and limited access to credit trim their payrolls. That could lead to even more bank failures as cash-strapped borrowers don't repay loans. And most experts think there's still a good chance the downturn in the housing and stock markets will deepen to further spook already frightened consumers. The government is hoping its intervention will unclog the lending pipeline, but that isn't a certainty either, said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, Channel Islands. "If I am a medium-sized bank on Main Street, simply because the government is bringing a bailout package to Wall Street doesn't mean I am suddenly going to change my mind and start lending money again," Sohn said. That suggests the economic statistics won't even capture some of the collateral damage -- all the lost lending opportunities that occur as banks try to bolster their rickety balance sheets. Many banks have curtailed their lending because they are already swimming in losses and don't want to risk drowning by taking chances on more borrowers. "The real tragedy is we will never know how many businesses would have been started or how many businesses might have expanded if all this hadn't happened," said Jonathan Macey, deputy dean of Yale Law School, who wrote a book about a government bailout in Sweden during the early 1990s. In a best case scenario, Macey said the United States will bounce back within two years, like Sweden did after the government spent billions of dollars to salvage the country's troubled banks and prop up a slumping housing market. Before the medicine took effect, Sweden suffered through a 20-month recession that saw nearly 60,000 companies go bankrupt, housing prices fall by 19 percent and the country's bellwether stock market index plunge 45 percent from its peak. Once the hangover ended, the good times resumed; Sweden's economic growth has averaged 3.2 percent since 1994. Sweden spent 65 billion kronor (about $10 billion at the time), but made most of the money back because it bought a stake in some of the troubled banks. The government still owns nearly 20 percent in one bank -- a stake that is now up for sale. U.S. lawmakers also have been debating whether it makes sense to acquire stock in some of the banks that the government intends to help out. In a more sobering situation, the payoff from the U.S. bailout might take much longer. That's what happened in Japan after its government finally intervened in a real estate and banking crisis that began in the early 1990s. By the time the government acted in 1997, the economic hole was so deep that it took another seven or eight years to climb out. The net public outlay to clean up mess was 18 trillion yen ($168 billion), according to the Financial Services Agency. The abysmal times in Japan during the 1990s are now known as the "lost decade." Even though the economy is better now, the Japan's stock market still hasn't returned to its peak before the bubble burst. And Japan still has about $9 billion worth of property held as collateral that needs to be sold. It seems unlikely that the United States will have to wait as long for a recovery because the government is wading into the financial muck much more quickly than Japan did. In contrast, the United States is promising to bail out its banks 18 months after mortgage lender New Century Financial Corp. filed for bankruptcy -- a move that set off alarms about the rot ruining home loan portfolios. "Some resolution measures are more effective than others in restoring the banking system to health and containing the fallout on the real economy," the International Monetary Fund concluded in a study of 124 financial crises since 1970. "Above all, speed appears to be of the essence." Even if the U.S. government is moving in time to make a difference, success is likely to hinge on the ability to figure out the right price to pay for an exotic mix of mortgage-backed investments and other serpentine securities that aren't easily appraised. And then the government must hope the housing market eventually rebounds to lift the value of the acquired assets. If those pieces fall into place, the United States could profit or at least minimize its losses. On the flip side, the losses could be huge if the government misjudges the value of the problem assets or the housing market remains in a funk. "The best we can hope for is that this (bailout) buys us time," said Edward Yardeni, who runs his own economic research firm. The United States moved a little quicker to address the mortgage crisis than it did in the savings-and-loan debacle of the 1980s. Although warning signs of an industry breakdown started to flash in the mid-1980s, the government waited until August 1989 to create the Resolution Trust Corp. to dispose of the repossessed homes, offices, cars, planes and even artwork held by failed S&Ls. During the next six years, the RTC sold nearly $400 billion in assets on the books of more than 700 failed thrifts. Taxpayers ended up sustaining a loss of $125 billion to $150 billion on the fire sale -- about 2 percent of the country's gross domestic product by the time the bailout was completed in 1995. Entering the S&L bailout, the government had projected a taxpayer loss of $40 billion to $50 billion. If the ratio of losses to assets inherited in the latest $700 billion bailout is similar to what occurred in the S&L crisis, the taxpayers will be saddled with a bill of more than $250 billion, which also translates into about 2 percent of the nation's current GDP. Data from the IMF's study suggest the losses could run even higher. The monetary fund calculated governments typically recover about 18 cents on every dollar spent in bailouts -- a rate that would translate into a loss of more than $500 billion. The United States seems unlikely to sustain a loss that large since it presumably will be buying the banking assets at a sharp discount -- leaving plenty of room for an upside. Although the S&L bailout was the biggest in U.S. history before this one, the challenges facing the government are radically different. In 1989-95, the government and an army of contractors disposed of assets that were dumped into their laps as S&Ls collapsed. And it wasn't too difficult to figure what those assets were worth because their value could be easily measured against similar property. That's not the case this time. Part of the reason so many banks are imperiled is that no one is sure what their investments are worth. Most economists agree absorbing the bailout's costs are preferable to running the risk of the entire U.S. financial system unraveling -- a calamity that would probably trigger a global depression. But knowing things could be even worse probably won't make it easier to stomach the turmoil still to come. "Unwinding asset and credit bubbles is a long and arduous task even with aggressive government involvement," Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg wrote in a report titled "Capitalism takes a sabbatical." AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo and Associated Press Writer Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm contributed to this story. SMITH, Jeffery J. President, Forum on Geonomics [EMAIL PROTECTED]; www.geonomics.org Share Earth's worth to prosper and conserve. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ShadowGovernment" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/ShadowGovernment -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
