Archive for category CreditCrunch
GM is Bad For You
Posted by nacnud in CreditCrunch, RullingClass, economy on June 2nd, 2009
Original Link: The Guardian
Oh wait, I was thinking of Genetically Modified foods, maybe General Motors is better? It was once the corner stone of American capitalism and today it is no more.
The carmaker has received $19bn of emergency aid from the treasury to keep it afloat and a further $30bn of government funding is likely to be forthcoming to see it through bankruptcy.
Mr Obama is pledging the huge sums of money to help resurrect it in some form and to maintain the brand GM but the company that powered a lot of American has fallen foul of the most dramatic downturns that Capitalisms has seen to date.
“You will have to make a sacrifice for the next generation so that our children can grow up in an America that still makes things.” – Barack Obama
That doesn’t sound to me like a system that humans really want to buy into. What?! More sacrifices just so we’ve got profit so we’ve got an excuse to make things that humans need?
Wow. It’s not like you and I don’t need cars any more, it’s just that there’s no profit in generating them they way they have been generated. And it’s not like it’s just GM, there is the demise of Chrysler too. Well, okay, they both still exist, but they are in administration and the Gov owns a majority stake in both companies.
In American we, as a species, now have a nationalised car industry.
In return for its support, the Obama administration is likely to get a 60% ownership stake in the company. Canada’s government, which is contributing billions of dollars in further help, will get 12.5% with unions and bondholders holding the rest.
Obama said the massive reorganisation of GM would leave the US government holding 60% of the company’s equity. But it was necessary to preserve an iconic symbol of American business and maintain a viable US auto industry.
Iconic symbol; there you go. If the symbol is a metaphor for the system, then the one that it stood for has just crumbled and has needed to be put on life support.
Mr Obama goes on to say:
“I recognise that this may give some Americans pause,” he said. “We’re making these investments not because I want to spend the American people’s tax dollars but because I want to protect them.”
So that is an admission that the previous way of doing things, the free market, failed. Yet you all sit back and watch as the ruling classes try to put the very institutions back together that crumbled in the first place. They are bailing them out. Does this not show an astonishing lack of creative thinking? Does it not highlight a bankrupt thought process?
The logic is very simple; method A has failed, let us try method A.
You will notice the huge difference this time round though; we, as humans, own the fabric of institutions. Still, their focus, the ruling class, is to re-establish a business in the same mould as the old one. They assume that Method A is the only approach to life on this planet. And I dare say a lot of you will sympathise with them.
To me the very notion just stinks of irrational and illogical thought patterns that an educated flee could work its way around. Don’t let fear or conditioning stand in the way of you demanding a society that is fit for, and focused on, human need.
The State Of Things
Lest we forget, remember the free and open market that was the banking sector and it’s now newly nationalised status too.
Capitalism, as it was in October 2008 is not what is now in June 2009. The whole world has changed as the largest and most central organisations and been necessarily bailed out by central money. Tax payers money. Government money. Your money. Our money.
Thousands of humans will be made redundant; because there’s no more profit in x, y or z.
You will know people that have been laid off. Companies only hire you when they can make profit from you. Yet you need goods all year round.
You need car parts when you’ve bought a car.
You need food all year round.
You need water all year round.
All of these commodities are brought to you by the same mechanism that brought you banking and cars; the open and free market.
A free market that is focused on production of profit, not on human need; we are an after thought in a system that we all support.
A Mantra
Say this over and over, it may help you to preserve your faith in the current state of things:
The chaotic winds blow over me
I’m struggling striving to be free
Have no fear this market is free
So unplanned and good for me
Any time anyone wants one more human to join in as a voice against this current scourge on the planet, just get in touch.
In hope.
Deeper than simple greed
Posted by nacnud in CreditCrunch on March 16th, 2009
Original Article – Guardian
Could this piece be full of any more wordy nonsense? It’s very hard to get to the bottom of what this chap is saying but suffice to say his premise and kick of point is all wrong. And as far as I can tell he’s still arguing for a system based on profit and not human need to regulate the flow of commodities on the planet; pity he can’t speak clearly. This could be indicative a policy, idea or view that is not well thought out I suppose.
Thus
…and we are left with the question of what skewed the judgment of a whole society, as well as of financial professionals
This is a deeper matter than just “greed”. – Rowan Williams
This makes me laugh; a subjective word such as “greed” being used to analyse a financial system that does not even work on greed at all. It works on maximising profits, to do anything other than that is to be “anti-capitalist”. So it is not greed that drives the system, but a need to follow the rules.
If humans were truly greedy, as opposed to just following the rule of maximising profit, either tacitly or directly, then they would say:
No more war on my planet, as I don’t want it coming to my door.
No more unemployment on my planet, as I don’t’ want it coming to my door.
No more famine on my planet, as I don’t want it coming to my door.
Etc
Etc
If we truly wanted the best and had a greedy for the best life style, then this system would have died long ago. So we’re sure it’s not been driven by greed, but by the simple rule of the system; maximise profit.
The system, in those terms, has failed, and we can see that now. When it fails, as a by product, humans suffer. This is only because we are the constituent parts of the system, because we support the system.
No more profit = human misery
Yet we’re all still here. All still humans. So why not think of a system that directly works for us and not just one where we get our commodities as a by product of a striving for a goal that is not central to our well being?
Get greedy.
Want your planet cleaned up.
Want your security.
Want your life to be happy.
Realise that capitalism can never bring you this, as it’s focused on profit generation, not you.
Rowan goes on to talk nonsense thus:
economic reality – scarcity as an inexorable truth about a materially limited world,
Under this system scarcity is built in as things don’t get done if there is no profit in it. We know that to be a fact:
We don’t have enough money to build that hospital.
We have to close that hospital down as we don’t have enough money.
You’re not getting your cancer treatment as there it’s too expensive.
Etc
Etc
However the material world is full of promise with regards vegetation and resources that we, as humans, as a species can utilise.
After all, we have the sun shining over our heads; why not centralise power collection in African and distribute the power around the word? No profit in it right now, so let’s kill ourselves with oil or wait till it runs out – there’s more profit in it. To heck with profit, we’re humans, we deserve the best:D
Why not build high rise food production units, turning one hectare of land into many hundreds of hectares of land? No profit in it.
Why not irrigate the whole of Africa, bringing a food basket to the world and raising millions of people to the level of humanity that we expect here in “the west”? No profit in it. Think of all that extra food and energy and all those extra humans that could aid in making our world better.
Oh, yeah, no profit in it.
Our means of production, that is, what we can do with tools and ideas, is currently outstripping how we actually utilise those tools. In short, capitalism is holding us back.
I’ll see you in the food queues in the UK shortly.
I’ll see you on the dole lines.
I’ll see you in the mire that capitalism left behind.
Or choose another way.
Peace.
World Bank tells G20 finance ministers fix banks before boosting growth
Posted by nacnud in CreditCrunch, economy on March 16th, 2009
Original Article – Guardian
The focus is all wrong – see if you can spot it:
The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, warned bickering leaders of the G20 countries that they risked “doing too little, too late” to repair the global economy
If you don’t take on the banking issue,
Can you see what it is yet? [Thanks Rolf]
Alistair Darling, who said today that leading nations had to act together to solve the “frustratingly slow” progress in repairing the world’s banking system.
“We’ve got 80% of the world’s economy sitting around one table, first this weekend and in a couple of weeks’ time in London,” Darling said. “We have the opportunity to demonstrate that we not only understand what needs to be done but we actually get on and do it.” [ to fix the economy ]
Heck. This is a really hard test.
The chancellor is hopeful that this weekend’s talks will agree to provide extra funds to allow the IMF to offer support to struggling emerging economies
Hmm.
commit to substantial and sustained efforts to bolster their economies as the recession deepens.
Let me think. What is the focus here?
displeasure at US comments that Europe has not done enough to ¬stimulate the economy.
Ah, it’s the economy! Stupid me! Not one word of human needs, just financial ones. The economy is in good health when profit is being generated, and when it’s not, it’s in bad shape. So people like you and I suffer directly.
This method of production, capitalism, is not focused on human needs but on profit, we all know that. Yet we somehow think that a non-human-focused system is the best one we can hope for? Are we humans or profit generating machines?
Well, sit back and wait. See if these “leaders” can fix this system. See if they wind the clock back to a time when everything needed loads of labour to get done and the rate of profit was high.
OR
Choose another way. Get connected. Google reality info dot org. Understand this system. Join together as one to make a difference on this planet.
OR
Wait for the food queues.
Wait for the international moves to war ( That’s how the ruling class fixed it the last time )
Wait for the super high unemployment.
Wait for the degradation.
Wait for the drop in living standards
Get with the program my fellow humans.
Humans before profit; every time
Peace
Printing money is the right way to get us out of this mess
Posted by nacnud in CreditCrunch, RullingClass, economy on March 8th, 2009
Full article Observer
Although everybody is rushing to say how unusual the approach is, in fact it is only a variant of the way Britain used to run the financial system until it fell into the hands of the market fundamentalists. We used to siphon quantities of cash out of bank balance sheets in booms, making them sterilised reserves at the Bank of England; and in downturns release the cash back. It is still how most banking systems in Asia are run, and when the European Central Bank was established- to derision in London – it retained the facility. – Will Hutton
Excellent, so the gov, according to Mr Hutton, are only trying to wind the clock back to a place that is much better than now. Wait a minute, the past morphed into now, at some stage. Okay, so winding the clock back will not work as even if it does, we’ll be here. Progress is never made by going backwards, and it’s not time to be looking in that direction just now.
Also, we know that printing money is an excellent idea as Mr Hutton says:
“It is still how most banking systems in Asia are run”
I mean, we all know that the Asian markets are immune to this current downturn in world profits. Anyone fancy living in China just now?
What kind of brain comes up with this illogical nonsense? And he gets a place in a national paper to spout it? Wow. The ruling elite know how to pick their puppets.
Oh, I forgot, he’s not just a puppet, he’s a sage, profit and visionary too, with maps of the future laid out for us hard of thinking folks to follow:
In other words, come what may, there will be work and you will be able to service your mortgage. Do all this and the economy will stabilise next year.
Get connected.
Google reality info dot org.
Peace
Stop the bus – I want off.
Posted by nacnud in CreditCrunch, RullingClass, economy on March 7th, 2009
This week has seen the following three momentous, and I use that word sincerely, events in the world of finance capital and capitalism in general.
1) AIG were bailed out – again to the tune of $30bn.
2) The UK government cut the interest rates to 0.5%, their lowest since records began.
3) The UK government has decided to “print money”, the last time that was seen was in Japan 10 years ago and before that in Germany between the “great wars”.
Let us start at the top:
The crisis-stricken insurance company AIG has crashed $61.7bn (£43bn) into the red with the biggest corporate loss in US history after being crippled by policies protecting troubled banks against default on loans and derivatives.
In a renewed effort to prevent AIG from collapsing, the US government yesterday provided it with access to $30bn of emergency aid. This takes the amount of taxpayers’ funds advanced to AIG to more than $150bn.
Guardian Online
Did you read those figures? AIG is a central structure in capitalism and in essence it supports all of the other entities that float around it, as it provides payment insurance. If AIG were allowed to fail, by the ruling class / governments, we’d all be in food queues tomorrow and the govs who like to control us would have chaos on their hands. It’s not scare mongering to say that there would be carnage. So they save it. With tax payers money to the tune of $150,000,000,000.
Nice little game if you can be in on it. Tax payer’s money is given to the ruling class to bail out the wee “game” they’ve been playing and we’ve been supporting, for all these years. A game that has been shown to be lack by both its own terms, profit generation, and any kind of moralistic measure right thinking humans would care to measure it by.
We will suffer the most. We the people who do not own the means of production or have any way to feed ourselves other than sell our labour to “the market”; a market that has so obviously failed, even in it’s own terms – profit generation.
Maybe we can be thankful that the gov and ruling class are trying to save this system, that brings us cyclical down turns and wars, as at least we’ll be okay.
The media / economists have been saying, openly, that we are in new territory here and there is no telling if anything they do can “fix capitalism”. People who do theoretical analysis, as opposed to just “appearance” analysis of capitalism, will tell you that there are inner contradictions in the system that will have to manifest themselves as a collapse of the system.
Whether we are seeing this process in front of our eyes or not just now we can surely come up with a better system of commodity production. I mean, is this the only way we can envisage food, cars, beer, wine, shoes, clothes and all other commodities flowing into and around our lives?
The central issues within capitalism remain the same, now, as the did last year and the year before that;
A. Antagonistic competition exists between monolithic ( and now tax payer supported 
) entities that are there for only one reason.
B. Profit is the only reason that any commodity gets produced. The profit motive is put beyond any kind of human factor, always.
Take a simple consequence of B – mad cow disease.
Commercial feeds for most farm animals contained meat and bone meal. Cows, which are natural herbivores, were being fed parts of other dead cows. Their feed also included the ground and cooked left-overs of the slaughtering process gleaned from other animals. The carcasses of sick and injured animals such as pigs and chickens were being used as a protein supplement.
Times-On-Line
Now, you or I, looking logically at things, would never ever decide to feed meat to a herbivore, would we? It’s insanity. However, in the world of profit generation, it is sanity if the profit that can be turned is more than if the process was not carried out. So it gets done. Not one human ounce of thought in there. Your kids could tell me that it sounds like a bad idea. This is not rocket science.
Are you seeing how this system, at any level you care to analyse it, is not actually set up for you? You are not even an after thought. Profit is central, and it brings you the chaos you see around you, and the pain you are about to experience as profit is no longer able to be generated.
Let us now lump points 2 and 3, way above, together; we have the lowest interest rates since records began and the gov has decided to print money.
These two facts are so earth shatteringly important to your life but you may not realise it right now. You see, this system works on lead times. Right now, looking around, aside from the house prices crashing and some people being made unemployed, the world looks kind of normal and stable.
The Bank of England yesterday announced unprecedented steps to prevent the deepest slump since the 1930s when it unveiled plans to inject up to £75bn into the economy over the next three months.
…
after its monetary policy committee cut the bank rate for the sixth time since the global financial system came close to collapse last October. The rate is now 0.5% – a level not seen before in the Bank’s 315-year history.
Guardian Online
What you have to bear in mind here is that these steps, currently, are aiming to restore order to the system that brought us here in the first place. We’re in free fall just now, without a parachute. We’re just trying to get ourselves back up 1000 feet, but the ground is till looming.
The last time money was printed was in Japan and they did it to try and end a 10 year recession in profits. Note, it was not done to get food in peoples mouths or to get homes built, but it was done to end the recession in profits.
It is not akin to the situation in Germany in 1923 or currently in Zimbabwe as the money that is being printed is being given to, guess, wait for it, the ruling class banks and financial institutions. Maybe the gov feels that the tax payer has paid enough to these institutions so they’ll use some ink instead?
Either way economists are hailing this as a break through and a bold move and one that is needed; however, that is all just guess work, as the system has never, ever, been in this situation before. The closest thing we have to it is 1930’s and then we needed a global war to get out of it. War, again, a construct of the ruling class elite.
Let’s play devils advocate here for a bit; even if all of these “measures” actually work and save “the system”, from itself; is this a system that you really want?
Do you want to have to face the fear of job loss on a cyclical basis? Do you want pollution on your planet that is killing your kids? Do you want to see humans blown up on battle fields for the sake of profit? ( Think Gaza re-generation – build, bomb, build; taxes flow from folks to large businesses as per).
[ I am not suggesting Gaza should not be re-built here, I’m suggesting we demand that the elites stop getting us to blow things up in the first place ]
In summary this system stands on the edge of a location that it’s never found itself in before. Given that the system has no though for human need, and only profit, I would argue, strongly, that right now we, as humans, have never had a better time to utilise all of our previous creations towards building a future that is human focused.
For a detailed break down of the current system see www.realityinfo.org.
Get Connected
These bankers are lucky they’re not going to jail
Posted by nacnud in CreditCrunch, economy on March 3rd, 2009
Article published in Observer – 1.03.09
Original article by Andrew Rawnsley
“Assuming it is out of the question to hang, draw and quarter Sir Fred Goodwin, pluck out his intestines while they are still warm and wriggling, stuff them into his greedy mouth and then display his severed head on a spike at the Tower of London, could we settle for shooting him instead?”
How easy it is to point the blame elsewhere. To think that its all bankers or politicians who have done wrong here. Its so easy to turn a blind eye to the real culprits;
Us
Without question we partake in this system.
Without question we prop it up
Without question we buy their instruments of finance
Without question we buy their products.
Without question we support a system that is based on profit not human need.
By its own measure of success, the generation of profit, the current system, capitalism, has failed.
It does not judge itself on how many humans had a smile on their face or how few wars it started or how many it started; it is defined by how much profit it can generate.
So you can look for scapegoats and burn a few folks at the stake, but when all is said and done, this world will be as in humane as ever until we all choose to do it a different way.
We have the technology, now lets build a solution.
Toxic asset deal yet to be agreed, Lloyds says
Posted by nacnud in CreditCrunch, RullingClass, economy on February 27th, 2009
Headline: Toxic asset deal yet to be agreed, Lloyds says
Full Article: ( Guardian )
Whenever economic conditions do begin to normalise, however, we believe we will be in a very strong position to reap the benefits. – Sir Victor Blank – Lloyds TSB Chairman
It’s comforting to know that when “normality” returns they’ll be able to generate huge profits. Let me get this straight; did they not have “normality” before this crash?
So if they couldn’t make it work then, why should we believe that they can make it work if and when “normality” returns?
As the Chairman of a large bank you would at least expect that Sir Blank would be able to speak something other than complete nonsense? It seems that he can’t though.
And we, as UK tax payers, are going to bail out his bank, buy the bad debt and leave the profit in private ownership; i.e. his hands.
The hands of a man who can’t even think straight? Wow.
Time to get some Reality Info down our throats I think. Waken up and smell the coffee.
Get connected, and choose another way.
Peace
Martin Kettle – Brown’s Own Doing.
Posted by nacnud in CreditCrunch, economy on February 25th, 2009
Open letter to Martin Kettle ( Guardian ),
Martin, in the article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/13/gordon-brown-financial-crisis ) you say:
But it would then say something Brown never allows: that responsibility for the banking crash is systemic and must be shared, including by Britain and including, in their place, by politicians.
Are you really still looking for scapegoats? It is all somehow “their fault” and not yours? Not mine? Not your mother’s? Not your brother’s? Not your sister’s? Not your wife’s? Not, in short, ours?
You really have to get a grip man; a systemic fault is our fault. We have done this to us. Humanity has been “choosing” to produce in the way that it is producing. And now, even if the system is defined and graded by its own morals and ambitions, it has failed. No more profit is what is flowing from the cogs of industry. The free market has collapsed. We have a state run banking system almost; and how much longer will it even pretend to be otherwise?
Your money, my money, your family’s money, pumped into support a system that has failed humanity; and all you can think about is that someone else is responsible.
Maybe it’s time you woke up and realised, you’re to blame, we’re to blame. The up side of that is that we’re the cure too:)
Spread the word, choose another way:)
Peace
www.realityinfo.org
www.realityinfo.org/news
Get connected
British Airways Cut Capacity
Posted by nacnud in CreditCrunch, economy on February 23rd, 2009
Story: BA to cut capacity after poor peak season hammers profits
Original Story ( Guardian )
“BA will reduce its capacity by 1% next summer, measured in the total distance its fleet will cover, by reducing the number of flights on some of its busiest routes such as Heathrow to Edinburgh and Paris. It also announced today that it is dropping four routes altogether next year:”
So their profits are going down so the services they provide will suffer. Seems to make logical sense to me. After all, the only reason they are in business is to make a profit. What does this cut in services mean for the humans that used the services though? A cut in jobs as the airline “down sizes”? A drop in flexibility for humans as they want to travel the face of the earth? Pain and misery for the shareholders, fellow humans, that have lost their pensions etc? In short, a curtailment of human activity, just because a company could not turn a profit.
It is obvious, with this one example, that the idea of arranging human activity around the profit motive is only actually aiding the legal entities we call “companies” and it has no look out for human needs or desires. Of course, it is not just BA that this generic analysis applies to; it’s every company entity. Each of them in “competition”, not for your affection, but for higher and higher profits. And we all support their actions, tacitly, by going to work for them and using their services and thinking that it’s a great way for humans to act and interact.
Each day you go to work you actively work against you own self interest in the longer term. Sure, you get money to feed your family and go out and have some fun but you are participating in a system that does not care about you; it does not have you as its central focus. That means you do not have you as your central focus.
There is another way. We no longer have to waste our human endeavours in the name of profit. What will it take to waken you up to this fact?
Will you waken when you are on the dole line as there was no profit in giving you a job?
Will you waken when you can’t get a mortgage as there is no profit in it?
Will you waken when you can’t buy a new car as there is no profit in it for the loan company?
Your life is currently only possible as long as there is profit it in for some company somewhere. That is a fact. From the tea in your cup to the computer on your desk. From the car in your drive to the welcome mat outside your front door. Everything is done for profit in a system that is not human focused. A system riddled with “cyclical” downturns in “profit generation” which lead to mass unemployment, fear and uncertainty.
Nothing of what I’m saying here is brain science or rocket surgery; you can surely see that.
“BA said it is reducing capital expenditure for the year by £100m and confirmed that 450 managers will leave the airline at the year end after applying for voluntary redundancy.”
I’m sure they were all just jumping to give up their jobs in this climate of fear.
Get Connected