What is the question ? My son asked me:
"Mom...., if we live, all the animals on the planet may die,
but if we die.... they'll live.
Why should we live? "

I'm afraid we are giving all the wrong answers
Over and over, we seem to be silently screaming, "SELF-DISTRUCT"Everywhere I see written and spoken ......... so called "SOLUTIONS" For the Environment, for the Financial Systems, Solutions whose proponents are really only pushing for their personal benefit while paying for these minimal benefits with damage to the system and the society as a whole, walking us all closer to Societal Suicide.The Market participants yell "FREE MARKETS!" as if it were a magic word, just say it and it'll happen. Lets not forget they also yelled that housing pricing would keep going up forever; They even grew to belive it themselves. But as we've seen, simply saying and believing doesn't make things true, only Acting like a free market creates a true free-market, whose prerequisite is freedom from government protectionism and manipulation, including freedom to fail, freedom for workers to gain for themselves the best possible contracts, and freedom for the public to invest its monies in products that are not Mis-represented, but rather meet their true needs.

What is the Role of Government? To PROTECT the citizenry from those who would Steal their monies, properties, and liberties. In Economic terms, it can be summed up in one phrase: Consumer protection.

(1) Transparecny: Enforce Transparent Financial Statements and Financial Instrument which would prevent investors from being scammed by deliberately confusing and mis-leading numbers and terms.

(2) Establish and Enforce Investor voting rights to set executive pay in the corporations they own. Corporate Executives are NOT the owners of the corporations.

(3) Funds must actively manage the monies handed over by pensioners and individuals, and not be allowed to hand them over to another fund, like Mardoff's, to do the work they are being paid for. In this way, funds that fail to produce results will be sidelined and fail and successfull fund managers will be rewarded and prosper.

(4) Re-couple Loan Origination with Loan-ownership, at least upto 50%But what have we been doing instead for the past 8 years ? Forget about an even playing field, small government, or a balanced budget. Heck, reduce taxes and increase spending.... it sounds good... it'll all work out... Ignore that this is just another name for borrow and spend consumerism... pretend it's working toward bi-partisan change, rather than the reality of working toward bi-partisan more of the same... say it enough and everybody will believe it... and once you've said it enough, even you'll believe it.

The market's invisible hand will do its job, the invisible hand will now or eventally wipe them out and the rest of us with them: Oil Industry, Financiers, and the rest for intense shortsightedness and greed and us for blindness, indiference, and lack of will. What is the Market's Invisible hand? Unproductive companies, products, and methods fail and productive things succeed, productive companies and ideas gain resources, the un-productive loose resources, and successful methods, products, and ideas get copied and therefore spread through the society. Theft is unproductive and so fails, even if it appears to succeed in the short run. Lies fail, such as false or misleading financial statements and convoluted instruments. If we continue to fill our financial system with unproductive products, the financial system will fail.. But we should all
Abraham Lincoln "You can't fool all of the people all the time...

THE GOLD PIECES AND THE FIRE ON THE ROAD:
Its weird... like watching some crazy person heading straight for a fire that's clearly in their path, while the crazy person is only seeing the gold littering the road. Hey, it's ok to pick up the gold pieces, but just not by throwing kindling on the fire. First we have to put out the fire, build some fire stations, and then continue along the road. But we have to safeguard the community so we can spend the gold somewhere we love.

This crisis is strangely like watching history play itself out in shortened time..... like waking from a dream of calm and prosperity to see that the society we have built has deep and spreading cracks of error and corruption, and watching it disintegrate right in front of us all, in slow deadly steps. I guess this is how some Romans felt in 400 a.d.... seeing it all unravell in steps of corruption, knowing exactly why, and watching those around them act as if it were impossible and invisible. Wondering, what words could stop the tide and turn back the current.... and finding more evidence daily that it may not be possible, because the current is carrying so much trash and momentum.

........read the book PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL on : the high cost of small thefts..........
In the News:

Chinese Government spyware slicing through corporate,government, and user firewalls .... we have it and everybody wants it..... the creativity of a Free People..

Unauthorized Russian and Chinese software found on our electric grids............................. maybe they make it sing...

CAPITALISM:In a democracy, Capitlism sublimates the will to power, transforming it into creative energy, Empowering a society to build an unimagined future while maximizing individual freedom.

Drive and ambition has been an engine of productivity and improved living conditions, as long as it was coupled with the freedom to fail., free from government privelledge for the few .. controlled individual corporate failures rather than mass destruction of the system!
Privatizing profits while socializing losses is the ultimate weapon of economic mass destruction... but only where it is accompanied by the general public's faith in the system. Once the public's faith in the system is wiped out to be replaced by cynicism and the recognition that the deck is stacked to favor those who would use bribes, then it looses its ability for mass destruction and becomes only a force of mass mediocrity, where the trickle down theory actually works to spread lack of integrity and mediocrity to an entire system of life and government, as more and more mental and creative resources are redirected toward bribery, theft, and playing the system, and away from creativity and advance... at best, the fall from greatness toward mediocrity and meanness. As always, some will continue to create and produce, but the rate of productivity's spread will be greatly slowed by the weight of inefficient companies and methods.

What an ingnomious end to the great experiment in self-determination and self-government started by men of vision and faith... ended by men of greed and small dreams...

And what was the agent of infection?"He's doing it too" or SuccessEmulation-'
Our competitors are using Securitized loans to rake in the bucks, we can't be left out of the bonanza'-'Everybody donates money to Congress and state and local representatives and gets laws that favor them and is awarded subsidies and no-bid contracts'
except all of these were short-sighted gains

It's like gravitiy:

An even playing feild, where bribery doesn't work and government doesn't subsidize businesses with industry tax rebates, bid-free contracts, and the rest, means failed ideas cause business failures and the best ideas, companies, and processes rise to the top and are copied and spread. Government's largest role should be in the area of consumer protection, protecting again fraud and unfair practices, protecting us from misleading financial statements, convoluted financial instruments, and the rest.I think that we recognize integrity, honesty, dilligence, preserverance, justice, and all the other virutes as virtues because they ARE the requirments for a natural system to work..

If one bee LIES, or could lie, to the rest about where the pollen is so that its family gets more of the polen, it may survive but the community dies...

If the lion, in greed, could eat every animal, he either blows up (eye roll) or kills off all his food source, and so dies and then he, the destructive element, disappears.

It's been shown that if the wolves in an area are all killed off, the deer overpopulate the area and eat allthe grasses and then start dying of famine. Sound familiar?

Over and over, nature uses destruction to elliminate everything that is too greedy, dangerous, slow, inflexible, or stupid, or all of the above........ Nature has this interesting knack of using the destructive elements themselve to self-terminate the system and open a blank space for new creation, a spot on the evolutionary chain, or an area for a new society to develop..etc...
Nature eliminates the distructive forces, and we are proving to be a destructive force. We will in effect destroy ourselves if we can't talk ourselves out of it..... if there aren't enough of us without excessive greed, and without over inflated self-opinions which place temporary individual monitary success before the success of the whole (individuals, societies, species) ...., if those of us with vision and empathy have not enough ambition and diligence to push for the right path with force, and I don't mean violence, then the human species is the failed experiment... But more likely, some other form of government will come to replace us, quickly or slowly... hopefully I won't be around to see it, as I love this experiment in self-government and self-determination... but if as a species we are still too imature to use it successfully, then democracy will die off for now, again, and for some genereations more the specie will suffer, to greater or lesser extent, through tyrany or chaos or mediocrity, till we again try for self-determination or till we have failed enough times that another species will have risen to take up the struggle toward individual self-awareness, then species self-awareness, and then inter-species self awarenes..

The more often and longer that Unproductive methods and businesses are protected, the Worse and Longer will be the eventual fall....

The only question is how long will it take, whether days or years or decades or generations, and how hard and painful will be the fall. The eventual re-surgence will come! Only the timing is in question. Well, unless we make the planet uninhabitable for humans in the meantime.... then it will still come, just not for us.And we'll be blindsided by it worse than we recently were by the so called Financial Collapse, like Rome in 400ad as it was overrun by barbarian invadors, an INCONCIEVABLE event to the Romans of the time - they, too, couldn't see how their internal corruption had weakened their system of government, weakened their very WILL to fight off invasion.

Remember that commandment about "Don't Lie"? Maybe we should try it for a little while, as an experiment, to shut up with the bull, speak only the truth, and print only the facts, so we could for a moment take a clear look around and see where we are really standing and be sure that only the forest is burning. Maybe we should have an 'only the truth' week, just to test it out. And, if the species is one biological whole, what better way to find out? At least a possibility of finding out. Did I mention I was a science fiction buff?

On a lighter note for the Anti-Feminists:
Like the Natural animals we are, we are bound to the Laws of Nature and mother nature only gave us some light slaps on the wrist with the recesion of the 80s and the Asian Credit Crisis and... now she gave us a nice hard slap with the ongoing Financial Collapse of 2008, but soon Mother Nature is going to really get angry.... what was the name of those 4 renowned horsemen? I think first there was Peace (I guess he's the calm before the storm) and then there was Famine, and then.... you know how it goes, it ends with the horseman with the big sword... the one that brings a swath of misery and destruction... like those warlords of Africa who, in the absence of Real lLaws that offer Real Protections, swoop down, cut off limbs, carry off children, and bring misery to everything in their path (the boogeyman). Ps. DIOS INEXPRESABLE - the rest is and expression of our own limited expression.

I've always found it interesting how all the people of Vision see clearly how life and man is bound by Laws, whether its the prophets of the Bible, or Mohamed or Confucsius or Buddha or Lincoln... all of them pushing for integrity... and warning of the miseries found outside the Law.

And the rest of us poor blind scrappers haven't figured out that the reason that being outside the Protections of Law is so horrible, is that we love the Law..... we hate living in chaos... we are disgusted by liars and cheats... and yet , we're them, the liars and cheats.

The Law or the Laws of Nature or the Laws of Science... everywhere we recognize that even the movement of inanimate objects are bound by Laws, every molecule and atom of our bodies follows those Laws... we follow those laws, even when we think we're standing beyond them.

We're either a productive part of a greater system or a cancer that will eventually kill the system and the cancer with it, even if in the short-term the cancer seems to be gaining resources and growing ever bigger.

But this story need not end like this. We are bound by Laws greater than those we write for ourselves, but WE ARE MORE than unthinking strings of data or biology. We are the ultimate creation, a Self-Transforming creation.

Already those who led us here are changing course, re-thinking ways, and working to self-regulate. A system in which each industry self-regulates. If we manage this step, and do it as if the very future of the nation and more hinges on it, then we will truly be stepping into the 21st century with tools of maximum effectiveness, a system that regulates not from the top down, but internally by independent sections. Aligned with Transparency and simplicity in methods and products, all market participents would be acting in self-regulating ways, strengthening the system as a whole while maintaining its individual and independent flexibility and creativeness, requiring minimal though still necesary government oversight. A system of maximum flexibility and creative power. Even Phillip Morris is agreeing to new regulations !

Instinctively, from the beginning of human society, we start to walk in this direction, even if later diverted. Parents encourage children to regulate their own actions and find their way. Families determine their own values and systems of learning and protections. Schools, hospitals, grocery stores and all businesses determine their internal cultures and rules. Industries form associations. Cities and nations develop their own individual flavor and laws. The greater the internal, independent, self-regulation, the smaller the role left for government, which is as it should be, and the greater the ability of each section to adapt, react, create and grow. Governments that grow too large, grow cumbersome, slow and inflexible, and are slow to adapt to new circumstances and threats, weak to attacks both internal and external, fiscally oppressive to the citizenry.

DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM:What does it provide?

Prowling the world like the Cougar, following his own dream.

Swift and cunning like the fox

Organized in productive super structures of the anthill

Massing, like the great buffallo heards, toward an idea or product

Like the wolf pack, loyal to its small group and unwavering in its hunt for resources.

Riding the waves like the dolphin

The dual Principles of Democracy and Capitalism frees the individual to be all of Natures bounty and its unlimited creative vision. A Free People, able to be all things at all times, any thing at any time.... changing, growing, always new, always creating...

In one elective moment, transformed... And may 4 years come again, and again, and again... our collective vision re-formed///expressed/re-chosen//re-established. A system of ultimate flexibility.

Must we choose between extremes, socialism or oligarchy ?
Why not just choose a rational system ?

We have an amazing example to follow. What system has stood impregnable against all comers? NATURE ! Which system does Nature use? Checks and Balances...

Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton were able to devise a system for a Free People that has stood for 233years. Can we do less? Washington refused the powers of a tyrant and chose instead to believe that a Free People could guide themselves, to believe that a governent of the people, by the people, and for the people was both possible and feasible. We who have seen Democracy at work, can we believe less?

We are a nation of Laws, but when those Laws cease to protect us and become instead a yoke, what path will we choose then?

What did the forefathers of the nation answer?

We write the future in the actions of today..... maybe we should be careful to write ourselves the best of all possible futures?

happy blogging
elizabeth Julia Diaz Rosell

on CHARLIE ROSE 042809 : charlie always picks the best
BILL ACKMAN (Pershing Square Capital Management): This past weekend Larry Summers was on Meet the Press and he talked about Asset/Liability Swaps as a means to raise capital for the banks. I translate that as.. Debt for Equity swap, Junior Debt for Equity swap, Preferred stock for Equity Swap. ..the banks in this country have all the Capital they need. The problem is too much is in the form of Debt (like to Bond Holders).. They way we solve that problem typically in America is through the REORGANIZATION PROCESS, where a judge adjudicates a bankrupcy or some other form of Conservatership or ReOrganization. They figure out the value of the firm, how much Equity needs to be raised, and they compromise the Bond Holders, until the Bond Holders end up owning the Firm. Imagine a bank that needs $100 Billion of Capital. You can put $100BIllion in from the Tax Payer, in the case Joe the Plumber, ..money which unfortunately is going out the door to pay Interest to .. Bill the Bond Holder. That doesn't seem quite fair to me. What You can do instead is Bill the Bond Holder has to convert $50 BIllion of his debt (Debt the bank owes him- a Bond) to Equity and that magically raises $100 Billion of Capital because for every $1 of Debt that becomes Equity your canceling a $1 of debt, your creating $1 of Equity....Once you do that, now the banks are adequately Capitalized, and you restrict dividends, and you restrict the only way the banks can earn an adequate return on its capital is by... MAKING LAONS." Great Explanation!.. Larry, Go For It !! This is worth forgiving all the errors of the past. Dump that PPIP garbage. Please Mr President, if more is needed for the banks do this !!!
JOSEPH STIGLITZ co-winner 2001 Nobel Prize of Economics: "It's what they should have been doing all along... Financialy reorganized.. the bond holders don't like it. They would prefer the tax payer give them the money... But it's not in our National Interests. The banks would be stronger after they go through this kind of financial reorganization... The Toxic Assets.. they want to take all that trash and dump it on the US taxpayer (even if it's thru PPIP guarantees).. and it doesn't make it disappear. That's why you need to convert the Debt Into Equity. If it turns out then that the banks are right, and the toxic assets are woth alot more, then the Equity of the banks will go up automatically and they (ex-BondHolders) get fully compensated. The issue here is WHO'S GOING TO BEAR THE RISK OF THE UNCERTAIN VALUATION? IS IT THE PEOPLE WHO GAVE THE MONEY TO THE BANK (BOND HOLDERS) OR IS IT THE US TAX PAYER? As simple as that." He definitely deserve that Nobel Prize, thank you!
BILL ACKMAN (Pershing Square Capital Management): Think of a bridge, the bridge collapses thetruck that was going on it falls and kills a thousand people.. When they go rebuild the bridge that had a 10,000lbs capacity.. before people feal comfortable crossing that bridge again, what you do is make the bridge 40,000lbs capacity, knowing that only 10,ooo lbs trucks are going to travel on it. You create an enourmous margin of safety. What doesn't work is to create a stress test which is not the exteme stress and say that a bunh of banks passed. We don't need well capitalized banks under historic conditions. What we need is EXTRAORDINARILY WELL CAPITALIZED banks. Ask yourself, what is the downside if the US banking system is the best capitalized banking system in the world? The beauty of converting Debt for Equity is that it's NOT a taking from the tax payer and it's NOT a taking from the Bond Holder. THE BOND HOLDER IS GETTING EXACTLY WHAT THEY OWN. They don't have an opption and here's why... The Ultimate test on whether our banks can survive going forward is whether they can stand on their own 2 feet; Can they raise Capital on their own. No private sector person is willing to take the risk of investing in a bank. So what we need to do is we need to build the 40,ooo lb bank. The bank the can withstand the stress of 4 trucks even though only 1 is allowed. The alternative is we have more AIGs." YES YES YES. Thank God for Creative People!

PRESIDENT BARRACK OBAMA 042909:
"I am surprised by the number of critical issues that appear to be coming all to a head at the same time. I'm ....sobered by the fact that change in Washington comes slow, that there is still a certain quotient of political posturing and bickering that takes place even when we're in the middle of really big crisis. I would like to think that everybody would say, you know what, let's take a time out on some of the political games, focus our attention for at least for this year, and then start running for something next year, and that hasn't happened as much as I would have liked."

We happen to have gotten a big set of chalenges, but we're not the first generation this has happend to and I'm confident we are going to meet those challenges just like our grandparents and our forebears before us."

"It's been said before, 'The ship of State is an ocean liner; it's not a speed boat.' And so the way we are constantly thinking about this issue, of how to bring about the changes that the American people need, is to say, if we can move this big battleship a few degrees in a different direction, you may not see all the Consequences of that change a week from now or three months from now but 10 years from now or 20 years from now, our kids will be able to look back and say that's when we started getting serious on clean energy, that's when health care started to become more efficient and affordable.... I have a much longer time horizon."

"With respect to the auto companies, I believe America should have functioning Competitive auto industry. I don't think we should simply attach an umbilical cord between the US treasury and auto companies, so they are constantly getting subsidies. But I do think helping them restructure at this unique period... I don't think there is anything inappropriate about that." (me: NO more subidies for anyone, unless New Industry that's in the PUBLIC'S CLEAR INTEREST ! Like Green Energy - to save the planet and ourselves !)

"When I meet our service men and women,... I am so profoundy impressed and grateful to them for what they do. They're really good at their job. They're willing to make extraordinary sacrifices on our behalf. They do so without complaint. They are fiercely loyal to this country." President Barack Obama

GENERAL DAVID PATRAEUS: MAY 2007 LETTER TO THE TROOPS:
'Our values and the laws governing warfare teach us to respect human dignity, maintain our integrity, and do what is right. Adherence to our values distinguishes us from our enemy. This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we -not our enemies- hold the moral high ground.'

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER TO CONGRESS: 042309
'I have faith in the system... The system and how we deal with those people at dfferent ends of the spectrum, says a lot about who we are as Americans. It seems to me that if we have faith in the system, as I do, we should have confidence that that system can handle in a fair way Kahlid Sheik Mohamed and deal with him appropriately. Jorge Washington said, after the victory at Trenton, ...he said to his troops that the British soldiers that were captured had to be treated in a certain way even though our soldiers were not being treated in an appropriate way by the British. '