Monday

A night where I was subjected to CNN Headline News. How shallow and tasteless. I couldn't wait to turn that bile spewing box back to the reggae channel (#6084) on Sirius. And later the Grateful Dead (#6032). I've read (and do not know how true this is) that in North Korea it is mandatory for every home to have a radio on at all times for the occupants to listen to propaganda broadcast by the government. How different is this than the few corporate run media outlets are where the majority of Americans get their news. Alarming.

But oddly enough, democracies (although actually we are a republic; I wonder why a republic - take the United States, for example - would kill millions in the name of democracy?) are relatively short lived and through our military overstretch, financial tailspin, crumbling infrastructure, threadworn social safety net, and the list can go on...but what will the future hold for our aging oligarchy? And now the market-state (ie, corporatism) shadows the traditional nation-state, which replaced the church-state, replacing the city-state (way back in something like the Medieval times, although history is not my cup of tea).

And the picture was taken a few weeks back while sailing: more Chinese crap coming into the country so we can send out dollars (assets) to China to turn around and buy our debt (a liability) from us. And if I get this right, dollars that are enacted by Congress that appear out of thin air to be lent electronically (few dollars are actually printed) by the Federal Reserve (a private bank whose books have never been audited and whose shareholders are cloaked in secrecy) to lend to national banks at the arbitrarily determined fed funds rates, and you and I incur record levels of debt and are required to pay interest for your home, car, boat, or other crap on a fiat currency that really doesn't even exist. Creating some of such substance out of nothing fascinating.

I remember back in the seventies how the increased productivity would give us much more leisure time and create an entire leisure class. But unfortunately American doubled the square footage of their homes, the number of cars they owned, and myriad other things (including their waste lines, probably) and now we work more than any other industrialized nation, as well as being more in debt, less healthy, etc. Forty hours a year more the average American works, I've read, than their workaholic Japanese counterparts. All for a lifestyle that Madison Avenue told us would make us happier, sexier, more successful,...

Yeah, it's Monday. Where did that blather come from?

Some interesting and varied news sites I read, mostly finance and economics:
Naked Capitalism
Doctor Housing Bubble
The Daily Reckoning
Party for Socialism and Liberation
Z Facts
Brookings Institute

Trouble ahead, trouble behind,
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.
- Robert Hunter