Author Archives: deanwebb

This Better Not Get Me Fired

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The only way to guarantee that you will not get hit by a car is to lock yourself in a building, such as a house, and remain only in rooms that are not adjacent to the street or driveway. Abstinence from cars is the only way to prevent getting hit by cars. Don’t even get close to them because the risk exists when you get in their company.

If, however, you choose to engage in risky behavior like crossing streets, then be sure you limit your risk by looking both ways before you cross the street. Don’t step out suddenly into the street, particularly from behind a parked car or truck. Cross the street quickly and don’t engage in crazy forms of street crossing, like interstate highways or six-lane busy streets. Cross at the crosswalks, especially on busy roads. I’d rather you not cross the street at all, but if you do, do it safely. Limit your risks.

And if you want to drive, well, I’ll still love you even if you make that choice. But, please, PLEASE, wear a seat belt. Observe general traffic conditions, drive safely, don’t speed. And for goodness’ sake, DO NOT TEXT AND DRIVE. Again, abstinence from driving is the only way to be 100% sure you’re not going to get killed by a car, but if you are going to drive, you need to drive safely. Limit your risks.

My advice can be analogous for other kinds of risky behavior.

Am I Still in Russia?

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I came home from Russia to see a news report of how Joe Paterno is being consigned to the memory hole. His public legacy is being effaced. His memory will not live on: like Leon Trotsky, he’s becoming a non-person in his homeland.

Then I saw a report about how gangsters in suits are running the nation from their big bank boardrooms. Kleptocracy is alive and well and is in Jamie Dimon’s guest house.

The food is better here, but that’s a superficial difference. I still feel like I’m under surveillance by an authoritarian government that maintains the trappings of democracy. And then, just as I wrote that, a propaganda blast from AARP broadcast itself to me. For what it’s worth, I wasn’t bombarded with propaganda in Russia, except in their Victory museums. So I suppose that’s the difference I needed to know about: if I’m under surveillance in a nation run by gangsters in suits where people can go down the memory hole, I could be anywhere. If, however, I’m being bombarded by unlimited corporate propaganda, then I’m in the USA.

Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps

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I’m a believer, a big fan, and very, very pleased with my shipment of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps. They’re made humanely and sustainably and the company shares its profits with its workers and the poor in a huge way. This is what a corporation should be like: not one obsessed with getting unholy dollars of revenue, but rather filled with a purpose to make an excellent product and to use the profits to benefit the world.

I saw two documentaries recently: one on Dr. Bronner’s and one on Monsanto. Dr. Bronner’s people used their knowledge of chemistry to produce things that are safe and clean, in safe and clean ways. Monsanto has done things to poison the world’s food supply – genes from their corn have gotten into peasant corn stocks in central Mexico, leaving those crops vulnerable to pests, diseases, and weeds unless those peasants buy Monsanto’s chemicals to sustain their crops. The farmers in Mexico have no choice in the matter: Monsanto’s genes made their way through wind-borne pollen. Monsanto is poisoning the world food supply, and that is but one example of it.

Dr. Bronner’s people know we have one world and that we are all one. I love reading the labels because so much of what is on them is true. I don’t go along with all of it, but I’m right there with him when he says we are all together in this and that we have a moral duty in our lives.

I believe in an afterlife, but I’m not sure exactly how it’s organized. I imagine vast halls filled with comfy chairs for the good and the just, where they get to sit and chat with each other and have a wonderful time. Then, there will be school cafeteria tables, complete with hard, backless, immovable stools for all the Nazis, teevee preachers, conservative talk radio hosts with drug habits, crooked politicians, and other “all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly, horrible people” as Arlo Guthrie described the “Group W Bench” in his classic, Alice’s Restaurant.

Which reminds me. I should write something about Alice’s Restaurant. I’ll do that in another article.

So who has to sit at the Nazi table? Monsanto’s executives, because they were just following orders from shareholders, CEOs, and scared men that thought money or power would save their souls.

Who gets to hang out in the comfy chairs with the nice people? Dr. Bronner and the good folks at his soap factory. They were following orders of a different sort, the kinds of orders that we all need to be following.

Time to wash up!

On LIBOR and Plutocracy

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Just after I posted the article about the rigging of the municipal bond market, we saw a story break that 18 major banks have been rigging the all-important LIBOR interest rate for at least since 2003, probably for decades. The same financial industry has also committed massive mortgage fraud, engaged in CDS fraud, financial rating rigging, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

These are the same guys that are buying elections, from state houses on up to the presidency. They own the nation. This is not some wild-eyed suspicion. Look at the numbers: THEY OWN THE NATION. Ask Jack Abramoff: THEY OWN THE NATION. We have a plutocracy, firmly in place, and we have a diverting safety valve in the form of show elections.

What will end this? One day, a president will be sick and tired of how the bankers treated him as they bankroll his opponent heavily. That president will then enact some executive orders to bring in the heads of those financial heads and bring them to heel. Throughout history, in conflicts between money power and armed power, armed power wins.

I’m going to be traveling to Russia this week. I will see a nation that had a brief plutocracy before Putin won the showdown between money and arms. I feel like I’ll be traveling to America’s future. It’ll be interesting what I see there, in a land that might just reflect what awaits us tomorrow.

I Need to Make a Correction in My Teachings…

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… as it turns out, I wasn’t paranoid enough. To all my former Economics students, I apologize.

It seems as though the major banks have been colluding to rig the main interest rate in the world, the LIBOR, for their fun and profit since 2005. That means the guys that kept hollering the loudest to let the market decide efficient outcomes were in a back room, letting their own greed decide the best outcome for themselves, no matter who they killed to get it.

These guys that demand there be no regulations because banks can self-regulate are also the first to claim innocence when their banks are caught doing heinous things. Why? They claim there’s no way they can watch over all the far-flung operations of their banks.

When guys like that pulled stunts like that in the Roman Republic, the senators there passed ex post facto laws that made stuff like that retroactively illegal and then had the culprits sewn up in bags full of snakes and then tossed into the Tiber. The British Parliament considered a similar course in the wake of the South Sea Bubble of 1721, but chose instead to personally fine each man involved in that financial crisis. In the USA, we can’t do ex post facto laws and corporations have limited liability – the perfect combination for the perfect crime, one in which the government itself is a partner.

So, in sum, interest rates are not set by the market. They are set by gangsters that are out to get every last bit of your money. I’ll be teaching that from now on.

A Conversation with Stalin

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Russia.

I will write about Russia.

But what about research? I need to read so many books, visit so many places, view so many primary source documents! How can I hope to write about Russia if I do anything less?

And then, before me appears a shade. The shade takes form, translucent and ethereal. It is Joseph Stalin. I am mortified. What evil have I done to be visited by the likes of this tyrant?

He speaks: “So. You wish to write about Russia? It is simple. You know enough. Just do it.”

“No,” I say, “I cannot. While I know much of the official version of this and the official version of that, I know that in history, especially Russian history, the official versions often have little connection to reality. They serve their masters, not the historians.”

“You Westerners.”

How dare this thug judge me? “What do you mean, ‘You Westerners’? You say that like it’s an insult.” Continue reading →

Yet One More Way Wall Street Has Ripped You Off

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Rolling Stone has an important article that should be required reading for anyone that still believes markets are efficient or that it makes a difference if we vote for Democrats or Republicans. Markets are rigged, frequently, and the parties exercise a cozy duopoly in which they do the bidding of the big corporations doing the rigging of the markets.

This isn’t isolated stuff, either. This is the way things roll in the USA. We’re not a land of the free, nor is there justice for all. The big players pay tiny fines, keep their ill-gotten gains, and then go on to keep doing what they’ve been doing. They commit massive felonies, admit no guilt, and then the government sets them up to commit the same felonies over and over.

Three-time losers get life in jail, but only if they’re individual felons. Corporate three-time losers face no such penalties. Instead, they can bend Congress to let them murder to get gain. And before anyone balks and says nobody in the financial world is directly killing anyone, I’m going to come right back and say that acting as the killer or the killer’s accomplice is the same thing. They’re responsible for health care not provided to the poor, food not available for the hungry, shelters unbuilt for the cold. Inasmuch as they have done it unto the least among us, they have done it unto Jesus, as far as my religion goes.

And now you know why Jesus had so much hostility towards the rich. They tend to be Satan’s most dependable servants.

Arkady Nikolaevich Changes His Career

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Boris Ivanovich couldn’t believe his ears. “What do you mean, you can’t write any more propaganda?”

Arkady Nikolaevich shrugged his shoulders. “It’s all derivative. I just keep on, over and over, praising the nation. I mean, I love the nation, and I especially love our dear leader, but I feel like I’m in a rut.”

Boris nodded. “Maybe you want to switch divisions? There might be an opening in the film department.”

Arkady shook his head. “No, it’s just the same thing, but as dialogues. I want to be able to explore my talents more. There’s only so much I can do with exhortations to increase steel production 12.5%.”

Boris went to his computer. “Let’s see what else is on the job board. I don’t want to see a good guy like you burn out. Let’s take a look, here…” The search query ran and a screen full of results popped up. “Here you go, there’s an opening as a patriotic novel writer. If that doesn’t give you permission to explore, I don’t know what will.”

“What’s the pay like?” Continue reading →

The Himynamistan Menace

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“Thank you for calling the Homeland Security Hotline. Please listen carefully, as our options have recently changed. To continue in English, please press 1. Para continuar in Es-”

1

“To report suspicious behavior, press 1. To claim responsibility for a past terrorist attack, press 2. To claim responsibility for a future terrorist attack, press 3. For directions to the near-”

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“If this attack will take place in the USA in the contiguous 48 states, press 1. If this attack will take place in Alas-”

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“If this attack has ecological motives, press 1. If this attack is for you or your organization’s struggle against the Great Satan, press 2. If this attack is in regards to Puer-”

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“Please hold while we connect you to a live operator.”

Saifal Ohrmazd exhaled with relief. As he waited on hold, he thought of possibly attacking automated answering switchboards as his next target. That would certainly galvanize the downtrodden masses behind his movement.

The hold music was Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American.” Saifal Ohrmazd chuckled. “Well played, DHS. Well played.” Continue reading →