B07VKCDN1X
3.91
1,208
Apr 21, 2020
Apr 21, 2020
it was amazing
Identifying the questions you must ask and the data or evidence you will need is the first step in decision-making, and you can do that more effect
Identifying the questions you must ask and the data or evidence you will need is the first step in decision-making, and you can do that more effectively once you’re aware of the pitfalls posed by the cognitive biases and illusions I’ve cited in this book.Bob Feller is reported to have said “Baseball is only a game, a game of inches, and lots of luck.” There is plenty of truth in that. But with the technological advances we have seen in the last decade, it may be that baseball has become a game of microns and milliseconds.
The benefit of having so much more data available today than has ever been at the fingertips of field or general managers, not to mention bookmakers and bettors, (that means you, Pete) is that what’s been considered revealed wisdom in the national game can now be subjected to ever more penetrating analysis. What that analysis reveals is that many presumably valid ideas have now been shown to be demonstrably false. So why do so many baseball pros continue to rely on notions that are nonsense? Keith Law has some answers for that.
[image]
Keith Law - image from The Athletic
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argues that what makes a so-called free economy productive is that people will act with a rational self-interest to pursue desired ends. Did Smith ever actually meet people? Sure, we have the capacity for rational thinking. And we even use it sometimes. But it is only one factor in how decisions are made. Decisions must, for good or ill (mostly ill), pass through a gauntlet of possible errors and biases. Law has pulled together a rich collection of poor excuses. We are all subject to biases, fallacies, aversions, and other non-rational forces of one sort and another, but ferreting out where irrational tilt lies is in the realm of psychology, and its dismal relation, economics.
Law has been known to take on purveyors of bullshit before. You might enjoy his Twitter exchange with evolution-denier, Kurt Shilling, here. ESPN actually suspended his Twitter account for a while (without suspending Shilling’s) which suggests that they have a lot of evolving to do. He took considerable umbrage with purveyors of baseball-related bullshit in his first book, Smart Baseball. Tilting at the windmills of bovine droppings is clearly Law’s thing. And we are all the better-informed on account of that.
In the highlighted paragraph at the top of this review, Law makes clear that while it is baseball that he is using for his examples, it is a wider reality that he hopes to influence. In doing so he espouses the wisdom to be found in a seminal work of behavioral science, Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, which is referenced throughout. He bolsters his analysis with references to research done by other experts as well.
There are thirteen chapters in the book, well fourteen if you add the Conclusion, each looking in some detail at particular types of bias, showing how that bias, or those biases impact decision-making, by players, umpires, field managers, team owners, and probably you and me. He offers not only backup on the theories behind each, but demonstrates the applicability of the theory with very real-world baseball examples. If you are averse to strong-opinions, Law may turn you off. He showed some rough tonal ledges in his first book, mostly absent here, but if you still believe that your best hitter should bat third, and that Joe Dimaggio deserved the MVP over Ted Williams in the year when the former hit in 56 consecutive games and the latter hit 406, you should be prepared to back those opinions up with facts, because Law can, and he makes perrsuasive arguments.
One thing that Law does not do is dabble much in politics. It is clear from his introduction that it is his intent to show how biases enter into our judgments in all sorts of ways. Baseball is the lens through which he shows how diverse biases impact decisions in a bad way. But he wants to show how they impact all our decisions. Political creature that I am, a full Notre Dame (before the fire) of clanging bells was pushing my application of Law’s lessons to the political arena. Here are a couple of examples.
Law looks at the success of manager Bob Brenly’s 2001 World Series vs the Yankees. The D’Backs won the series despite, not because of, Brenly’s decision-making. Law offers a considerable stack of judgmental errors Brenly made that should have resulted in his team being drubbed. Yet, the D’Backs won, and thus Brenly will evermore be known as a World-Series-winning manager. This is outcome bias. Results matter more than anything. But only if you are not interested in the future. Could a bad manager expect to have success going forward with the same set of instincts? Not bloody likely. Law quotes Thinking, Fast and Slow for this:
We are prone to blame decision makers for good decisions that worked out badly and to give them too little credit for successful moves that appear obvious only after the fact.Fifty two Americans were taken hostage in Iran on November 4, 1979, after Iranian students took over the American embassy in Tehran. In April, 1980, President Carter ordered a rescue mission. The attempt failed, and Carter’s re-election prospects were irretrievably damaged as a result. There were plenty of other forces at play, including the GOP indulging in secret negotiations with Iran to encourage them to hang onto the captives until after the November 1980 elections, and the ABC show Nightline dedicating their nightly coverage to the “Hostage Crisis,” making sure to keep the issue at the top of everyone’s consciousness for the entirety of the election season. Whatever one may think of Jimmy Carter as president, it was a daring move to attempt a rescue. The failure was not his. It was in the implementation of Operation Eagle Claw. Yet, Carter took the blame for it, unfairly in my view. Results matter, but they are not all that matters. The unsuccessful resolution of the hostage crisis before the November 1980 elections doomed Carter, even though he made the best decision possible under impossible circumstance. He might have lost anyway, but the failure of the rescue mission made that loss a certainty.
The illusory truth effect.
Why do we cling to truths long after they’ve been disproven or lost their usefulness? Is it really just a matter of hearing something preached as true so frequently that our minds accept them not just as fact, but as the default perspective that must be actively dislodged by the jaws of life? Yes, as it turns out.In his examples, Law writes about batter protection in a lineup. (A batter will get a juicier selection of pitches to swing at if the batter following him is a more dangerous hitter.) Turns out there is no real statistical evidence to support the notion. Yet, through persistent repetition over time, by people who should know better, belief in lineup protection persists.
Can any of you offer a real-world number for how many times you have heard Donald Trump speak the words “no collusion?” I doubt any of us who do not live in caves really can. And if you are an adherent to right-wing media, Fox, Rush, Sinclair, or the like, you are probably speaking it aloud in your sleep, to the alarm of your bed-partner. Despite a detailed commission report that offers fine detail on just how that collusion was carried out, there are still people who believe that Trump did not collude with Russia in his 2016 presidential campaign. There are probably even people who are not of the cultish right who harbor doubts about it. It is pretty clear that repeating something over and over and over and over and over…continued ad nauseum, has the same effect on reason that the Colorado River had on the landscape of the Grand Canyon.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Law identifies a passel of these, including anchoring, availability, hindsight, optimism, order, outcome, recency, status quo and survivorship biases. He tosses in a handful of fallacies, some aversions, and a soupçon of other irrational tiltings.
I do not really have any gripes with the book, but there was one instance in particular in which I thought Law tilted the wrong way.
When a specific fact or example comes to mind more readily, we tend to overemphasize that fact or example—maybe we ascribe too much importance to it, or perhaps we extrapolate and assume that that example is representative of the whole. This phenomenon is called availability bias, and I think it’s one of the easiest biases to understand but one of the hardest to catch in yourself, because it’s not just natural, but easy. Your brain is just doing what you asked, right? You thought about some question, and your brain went right to the hard drive and pulled out something relevant. Your brain didn’t go to the archives, although, and it probably just gave you one thing when you actually needed the whole set.I believe Law dismisses a concern that should be obvious. For example, he regards the selection of the last place Cubs’ Andre Dawson for the 1987 MVP as a travesty, given that his numbers were bested by several players in the league. But that presumes that numbers are the only things worth considering in casting those ballots. Dawson, as Law notes, had taken on collusion by MLB ownership in their attempt to protect the notorious reserve clause. He offered the Cubs a contract with the salary left blank. He would play for any amount of money. It forced the Cubs’ owner’s hand, and helped advance the cause of possible free agency. His statistical value as a player may have been well below that of some other players, but his courage, and sheer value to the game was unparalleled. It was for this that he was likely rewarded by MVP voters. In this instance, Law contends that it was Dawson’s being in the news every day in coverage of the free agency issue that won him the award, the availability bias of frequent and recent repetition that moved voting Dawson’s way.
But do not be put off by that. There is a vast amount to love in The Inside Game. It offers a way to explain not only why so much misunderstanding bedevils baseball, but how such misunderstandings permeate all human activity. It is a look not just inside how baseball decisions are made, but how perspectives and decisions are arrived at inside our own heads.
2020 was a lost year for baseball, entirely for the minors, and largely for the top tier. 2021 again offered a 162 game season. Given that hospitalizations for Covid in Spring 2021, despite increasing numbers of people being vaccinated, have been increasing, made that prospect less than certain. The first game of the season for my Mets, for example, did not go off as hoped because at least one Washington Nationals player had come down with Covid, and at least four others were contact-traced into quarantine. You may find yourself with a few baseball-watching hours freed up by such forms of misery. If so, you can sustain your connection to the national pastime by passing some productive time with Keith Law. It will help you prepare for what games are actually being played in MLB, given whatever plague is making the rounds when you get to it, and offer you the bonus of offering insightful information about the wider world, and how we frail humans function. Check this one out. It’s the right call.
Review posted – March 27, 2020
Publication dates
----------April 21, 2020 - hardcover
----------April 6, 2021 - trade paperback
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages
You should know that his personal site is for things unrelated to sports. He had a blog on ESPN, but one must sign in to get the full benefit, and he no longer work there. These days he is a sen ior baseball writer for The Athletic, also a pay site. You can find his podcast for them here.
My review of the author’s prior book
-----2017 - Smart Baseball
Interview
-----Hittin' Season - Episode #376 - with John Stolnis
Thanks to GR friend (although, sadly, a Phillies fan) Regina Wilson for letting us know about this excellent interview
Items of Interest
-----Baseball Prospectus - Going Streaking by Russell Carleton
-----Fangraphs
-----Wiki on Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow
----- Wiki on Richard Thaler’s book Nudge
-----Wiki on Richard Thaler’s book Misbehaving
-----Baseball’s reserve clause
----- Operation Eagle Claw ...more
Notes are private!
2
1
not set
Mar 21, 2020
Mar 25, 2020
Kindle Edition
0062878824
9780062878823
3.97
5,189
Feb 18, 2020
Feb 18, 2020
it was amazing
With Trump in the White House there would presumably be extensive digging into every deal he’d ever done, every partner he’d ever worked with, ever
With Trump in the White House there would presumably be extensive digging into every deal he’d ever done, every partner he’d ever worked with, every loan he’d ever received—many of which involved Deutsche. And the facts that Trump’s election was under a cloud because of Russia’s efforts to sway the vote and that his leading lender had for years been engaged in money-laundering activity in Russia—well, it didn’t take a genius to realize that real or imagined dots would soon be connected linking Deutsche to Russia to Donald Trump. This was especially true since the bank a decade earlier had connected Trump with wealthy Russians as he prepared to build resorts in Hawaii and Mexico.We all know that those much anticipated revelations have had scant time in the sun, but we also know that Deutsche Bank (DB) is where a whole bunch of the bodies are buried. In looking at DB, Donald Trump makes up only a small part of the book, but he is the tale that wags the dog in this biography of a bank. Donald Trump is a deadbeat, a con man extraordinaire. After getting massive loans from a range of New York banks, and stiffing them, resulting in massive losses, he was essentially blacklisted in New York. No reputable bank would lend him anything. Yet, as he announced his candidacy for the presidency, there was one financial entity still willing to do deals with him. How did DB get to a point where they were the only bank in the world that would lend money to such a complete fiscal lowlife. How could any bank make loans of billions of dollars to him and his family?
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David Enrich - image from AirMail.News
Enrich introduces us early to a key figure in understanding DB’s secrets. Val Broeksmit was the ne’er do well stepson of Bill Broeksmit, a reasonably ethical guy who had been called on multiple times to step in at DB and make sure things were being done on the up and up. When they were not, he let upper management know. This does not mean that his advice was always heeded. But there came a time when regulators were closing in, and a part of DB where he had particular responsibility had been doing business in an unacceptable way. He had missed it. Years of working at this mad company had taken a toll. He had retired or tried to retire several times, but, like Michael Corleone in Godfather III, he finds it is not so easy to stay out. The years of major stress and this final failing, his internalization of the stresses of the company, became too much. Bill hanged himself. (although Val thinks he was killed) Val managed to get his hands on considerable quantities of stepdad’s communications. How he uses this trove, and how it is used by others, researchers, authors, and government officials, forms a tranche that permeates the modern story of the bank. As an example of how greed turns good people turn bad, though, it is never made clear that Broeksmit had ever really done anything illegal or clearly unethical. Maybe it is more that this criminal corporation had destroyed a guy who was basically decent, who had the temerity to ask how bank actions might affect their clients.
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Bill Broeksmit - image from The New York Post
Enrich gives us a look at the bank’s beginnings in the 19th century, its later alignment with Nazis, as it removed Jews from its board and staff, its financing of the construction of Aushwitz, and its survival, after the war. The USA wanted the bank liquidated, but the UK wanted it around to help in paying the UK the war debts Germany had agreed to.
[image]
Val Broeksmit - image from the NY Times
DB settled in to being a conservative bank, serving businesses, and scrupulously looking after their clients’ interests. But a new element entered as derivatives began to grow from a conservative way to hedge one’s risks to a form of casino gambling. DB looked to expand from its European roots to a global presence. They brought in people, from the USA and elsewhere, who had the expertise to establish DB in these new markets.
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Josef Ackermann - image from The Irish Times - DB CEO from 2002 to 2012 – he led the huge expansion of the corporation
It was wildly successful, even if the paper DB held, now that it was gambling with its own as well its clients’ money, might be wildly overvalued. DB had made itself into the largest bank in the world. Part of the success was because the top bosses demanded insane levels of growth. At one point it was expected that profits should grow 25% a year. In no sane world was this possible. But there were, however, insane ways to achieve the goal. Do business with dodgy characters with whom no one else wanted to do business, and charge them hefty fees for the privilege. People like Russian oligarchs, middle eastern royal families, and kleptocrats, were eager for ways to transform their local currencies into dollars or euros, and DB was more than happy to help. They were also willing to match eastern dirty laundry with western spin cycles, and thus were able to connect Russian officials busy looting their nation’s resources with, say, real estate developers in need of large cash infusions to pursue expensive projects, for a piece of the action. Legality was an unfortunate victim to such transactions. International sanctions were ignored. Adherence to fiduciary norms took a hit. The result was that DB eventually became known for the stain of its dishonesty with its own customers, and willingness to cut legal corners to sustain an unnatural level of growth. Neither did the Mad Max atmosphere at the bank do much for the people working there, except, of course, for those directing the crimes, who made off with staggering sums.
Enrich tells the DB story by focusing on a series of individuals at the upper levels of management, offering not only a look at where they came from and what they did in their executive positions, but a take on their personalities, what made them tick, even, for some, their family lives. This approach is a common, but effective one, that succeeds in making the DB story not one of a glass-encased corporate entity (or, a person, according to Mitt Romney) but a human story, with some decent people, some bad guys, and some really, really bad guys.
[image]
The DB towers in Frankfurt – image by Krisztian Bocs for Bloomberg
There are some fun bits in here that are likely to surprise you, like how Val and his trove of dad’s intel got connected with Adam Schiff by way of Moby. Mostly, though, Val’s doings seem sad rather than enlightening, but do offer a bit of a look at how difficult it can be, sometimes, for journalists and investigators to secure much-needed information, when the source is less than a standup sort.
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Anshu Jain - Co-CEO of DB from 2011 to 2015 – he left as a result of the the Libor Rate-fixing Scandal - image from FirstPost.com
By the end you will see how it came about that DJT had found a financial home with DB, and you will know what it took for a conservative institution to have totally lost its mind and evolved into a grand scale criminal enterprise. And you will be left wondering just how long it will take for the wheels of justice to grind their way to delivering actual justice to so many who flaunt the laws to the detriment of the rest of us.
In the final months of the Obama administration, all signs had pointed to charges soon being filed against bank employees and probably the bank itself. At the very least, a multibillion-dollar financial penalty looked all but certain.Something curious, however, had happened as soon as Trump took the oath of office. The investigation had gone silent. Week after week, Deutsch’s lawyers and executives wondered when they would get an update. At first, they worried that the delay spelled trouble. Perhaps, after campaigning as a populist, after vowing that he was “not going to let Wall Street get away with murder,” Trump planned an aggressive crackdown on banking malfeasance. Perhaps, after having his election victory tarnished by Russian interference, Trump would try to dispel those suspicions with a high-profile assault on Russian money laundering. But as the months passed, and nothing happened, executives’ fears faded. One source of relief was the realization that two of the Justice Department’s most powerful prosecutors, Geoffrey Berman and Robert Khuzami, both had previously represented Deutsche…Bank executives soon concluded that Russia was off-limits, too hot to handle, for the Trump administration. So, it seemed, was Deutsche.
Review first posted – February 28, 2020
Publication dates
----------February 18, 2020 - hardcover
----------December 16, 2020 - trade paperback
[image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image]
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s GR, Twitter, Instagram and FB pages
Interviews
----- Expected case against Deutsche Bank disappeared in Trump transition
-----Rachel Maddow - Transcript of the entire show
-----NPR - 'Dark Towers' Exposes Chaos And Corruption At The Bank That Holds Trump's Secrets - by Dale Davies
Items of Interest
-----Why are so many bankers committing suicide?
-----NY Times – by Enrich - Me and My Whistle-Blower
-----The Libor Scandal ...more
Notes are private!
1
Feb 07, 2020
Feb 24, 2020
Feb 24, 2020
ebook
0525575472
9780525575474
0525575472
4.35
15,164
Oct 01, 2019
Oct 01, 2019
it was amazing
I like driving a pickup and heating my house as much as the next person, and the through line between energy and economic growth and development is
I like driving a pickup and heating my house as much as the next person, and the through line between energy and economic growth and development is as clear to me as an electric streetlight piercing the black night. But the political impact of the industry that brings us those things is also worth recognizing as a key ingredient in the global chaos and democratic downturn we’re now living through.Rachel Maddow is the top news personality at MSNBC, host of The Rachel Maddow Show for the last eleven years. One of the smartest people to be found on your television, or screen of choice, she relies on research, facts, and informed guests to present her viewers with as high-end an hour of political news coverage as you can find anywhere, all while being upbeat, friendly, funny, and warm. Watching her show it might not be totally obvious, because she is so nice, but she is a first class hard-edged, incisive intellectual, a Rhodes scholar with a triumph of a book already to her credit, Drift, on our national tendency to war. One other gift Maddow possesses is a talent for story-telling. Watch her A-block (the opening 20 minute segment of her show) some night, any night, for a taste. In Blowout, Maddow looks at the centrality of oil (by which we mean oil and gas) to our history and to the events of the world today.
Rachel Maddow didn't set out to write a book. But a nagging question led her there: Why did Russia interfere in America's 2016 presidential election, and why attack the United States in such a cunning way? Although the MSNBC host regularly devotes ample airtime to the topic of Russia on The Rachel Maddow Show, her digging led her to a thesis she thought was too long for TV.[image]
- from the NPR interview
Rachel - image from Hooch.net
From her depiction of Vladimir Putin’s visit to NYC to celebrate the opening of the first Lukoil gas station in the USA, to the story of alarming means being used in an early attempt at fracking, from a look at how third-world dictators live large on oil revenues, while their people suffer, from the history of oil to the history of Putin, from the big personalities to the local damage, she takes you right there and walks you through the events like a docent leading a group through the Met, a very slippery, oily Met. Watch that glimmery puddle!
On our right is a family tree that echoes the shape of a gusher, noting the beginning of oil drilling in 1859, see where Rockefeller and Standard Oil gets into the game, and everything spreads out from there until the canvas is almost entirely covered in iridescent black goo.
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John D. Rockefeller - image from Curious Historian
This one over here is quite surprising. There is a story to the mushrooms. You think fracking for natural gas is a nasty, brute force extraction method, generating vast collateral damage? You would be right of course, but in the 60s and 70s an even scarier method of loosening up the gas trapped in underground shale and sandstone was tested, three times, Nukes! Yes, that’s right. As a part of Project Plowshare, three Hiroshima-level nuclear bombs were detonated in the continental USA. Thankfully, and unsurprisingly, the resulting gas carried a level of radioactivity that was considered unmarketable, so the project was abandoned. Guess it had a very short half-life.
Moving on, look over here. We have an excellent painting that shows how the oil/gas companies control academic research as well as government regulatory agencies. Notice how the energy company board overlaps the board of the local university, the one sponsoring the researcher who is looking into the possible causes for the steroidal increase in earthquakes in Oklahoma, an increase that occurred only after the introduction of fracking technology. You might recognize the large claw-like form in the painting, and the academic in that claw being squeezed. Definitely not OK.
On your left you will see a more modern image, a dynamic sculpture, showing the recent story of fracking, very angular, as the straight vertical lines veer suddenly horizontal, but are accompanied by vast volumes of a goo called slickwater being forced into the ground. If you look back up to the top, you will see a geyser of very crude crude being forced up out of the ground. The artist has included, as part of the exhibition, a special platform around the work. Go ahead, step up. That bouncing and rumbling you feel beneath you is meant to mimic the actual experience of residents in heavily fracked locations.
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Putin with his parents in 1985, before being sent to Germany as a KGB officer - image from wikimedia
These lovely gilded tryptichs up ahead tell the story of Vladimir Putin, his rise from KGB operative in Germany to possible anti-Christ. Each panel shows a step along his path, growing from unknown KGB agent to mayor of St Petersburg, to the accumulation of a group of loyalists called the siloviki (which would be a great brand name for one of the few products Russia still produces, vodka), to aligning with, then back-stabbing Boris Yeltsin, as the USSR descended from failed social experiment to full on gangster-state kleptocracy. We see in this one to your right how Pootee murders or jails not only political opponents, but anyone foolish enough to own a successful business he wants to steal. Doesn’t the blood red go so dramatically against the gold?
Russia's shaky economy, hampered by a reliance on oil and gas, helps explain the country's weakness, and "some of Russia's weakness explains why they attacked us in the way they did," Maddow argues. She says Vladimir Putin exploited Russia's lucrative oil industry to support his vision of making Russia a superpower again. "When you've got one resource that's pulling in such a big revenue stream, you tend to end up with very rich elites who will do anything to hold onto power who stopped doing the other things that governments should otherwise be doing to serve the needs of the people," she said in an interview with All Things Considered. - from NPR[image]
Aubrey McClendon - image from Business Insider
In the next room we have a few portraits of energy bigwigs, Aubrey McClendon, a genius at picking land to hold for resource development, promoter of shale and gas drilling in the USA and iconic Oklahoma City booster. Liked to use company money for his personal needs and had issues with price-fixing collusion. Got kicked out of his own company. Robert S. Kerr, founder of Kerr McGee, and a remarkably corrupt politician. Harold Hamm, a self-made billionaire who never saw an environmental regulation he did not hate, or a tax he was willing to accept. The big one at the end of the hall, the screaming T-Rex is, of course Rex Tillerson, still spreading carnage across the planet and not yet trapped in that tar-pit with the “DJT” inscription barely visible on it. As you can see in the painting, the artist was aware that T-Rex hunted in packs. No one is safe when these toothy critters were looking for a meal. The bones you see in the background are the remains of scientists who dared to describe the impact carbon-based energy usage has had on the planet, and residents who opposed the local leader siphoning off all the oil royalties for themselves.
[image]
Harold Hamm - image from AP via Politico
Up ahead the mural you see may remind you of Picasso’s Guernica, but this one is called The Resource Curse. It shows how a poor country discovers oil, the pastoral fields being flooded with black, the local leader growing at one end of the mural from a small bully to an inflated grotesque crushing his people alongside an even larger T-rex, the people fleeing and screaming in despair.
[image]
Teodorin Nguema Obiang Mangue, son of the Equatorial Guinea president, living large on the oil revenues siphoned from the country – image, one of many showing his impressive array of insanely expensive vehicles, from Ghafla!
Not all the reporting in the book is horrifying or depressing. Here is one that shows a ring of Russians holding hands, dressed like Americans, living in America. Russian spies, sent here to infiltrate the western enemy, sleeper cells, waiting for the day they would be summoned into action. It was the only part of the book that was laugh-out-loud funny. You’ll see why when you read it.
[image]
Ten members of the Russian spy program – the inspiration for the TV series The Americans - maybe you recognize a former neighbor here? – image from ABC.Net.AU
The next room is kept nicely refrigerated. The ice sculpture in the middle of the room shows an oceanic drilling rig, with dark lines standing in for the inability of the rigs to keep from leaking, and the parts scattered on the icy ocean surface standing in for the advanced safety rig elements that were not used in these early drilling attempts.
[image]
The Discoverer - grounded in Unalaska, AK, unable to handle Arctic winds – not reassuring – image from Pew Trust
As our tour comes to an end, you can leave those parkas in the bin by the door, and be sure to load up with paper towels from the table ahead. It would appear that the billions invested by the energy business in advancing the technology of extraction has in no way been matched by investment in researching clean-up tech. You hold in your hands the state of the art in oil spill clean-up. Pause briefly to smile.
Before you read Blowout, you should stock up on your blood pressure medication, maybe schedule some extra time for mindfulness, meditation, or whatever works to keep you from completely losing your mind to absolute rage.
Recently a religious friend wondered whether the current president might be the anti-Christ promised in the epistles of John, (and in Islamic lore as well). I suppose Trump would serve as well as any, but on further thought, it seemed to me that, as Trump was very much a puppet of Putin, and thus deserved a demotion, and as Putin was not only running Trump, but has his tentacles around many political and non-political people of importance around the planet, it was Pootee who deserved the title more. On reading Maddow’s book, I am having third thoughts.
If Putin is the source of most of the evil in the world (well, certainly a lot of it, anyway) who or what is it that is moving Putin? As you will see in Blowout, much of the mischief Putin has engaged in regarding the USA elections stems from a desire to remove the sanctions imposed after Pootee hacked off the Crimean piece of Ukraine to be absorbed into the Russian Borg. Limitations on the fluidity of the oligarch funds in the West were problematic, particularly as Pootee was the biggest oligarch of them all. But even worse was the limitation placed on western investment in Russia. On its own, and despite its spectacular glut of natural petro/gas resources, Russia is just this side of a failed state, unable to keep up with advances in technology that are now widespread in the West. Russia NEEEEDS the western investment of contemporary extraction technology to retrieve the resources with which it has been blessed, having placed all his national development chips on oil and gas. It is only the nerve of western leaders like Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Joe Biden, with the bi-partisan support of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and other western nations, that saw to it that sanctions were imposed. This kept Pootee from being able to fully exploit Russia’s carbon-based fuel supplies. Not that he or his minions are gonna starve any time soon, but they cannot come close to realizing their ultimate avaricious or nationalistic fantasies without modern means of sucking every last drop out of the ground. And as energy resources have become a primary usable weapon (really, if he let loose the nukes, Russia, and much of the world, would be in cinders in an hour, so not really a practical weapon for immediate needs) in Russian geopolitics, (along with cyber-crime of diverse sorts) he would like to be as well-armed as possible.
==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that, I have moved it to the comments section directly below.
[image] ...more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 02, 2019
Dec 14, 2019
Nov 02, 2019
Hardcover
1501175513
9781501175510
1501175513
3.87
63,145
Sep 11, 2018
Sep 11, 2018
really liked it
…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - Franklin Delano Roosevelt Inaugural address – March 4, 1933
Real power is—I don’t even want to use the
…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - Franklin Delano Roosevelt Inaugural address – March 4, 1933
Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear. - Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa on March 31, 2016FDR was correct. The fear that gripped the nation in the Great Depression may have had a basis in reality, but acceding to that fear could have hindered any attempts to make the dire economic situation better. Would Roosevelt feel the same way today? Do we have nothing to fear but fear itself? Well, we do have a very concrete problem that generates a fair bit of concern, anxiety, nervousness, and yes, fear. The guy in the White House. The fear that Roosevelt addressed was a concern that the nation, under the weight of the latest in a series of economic collapses, might not be able to recover from it soon enough to matter, leaving the nation impoverished, riven with internal strife, and in danger from external enemies. The fears we contend with today include a widespread concern about a declining standard of living, a whipped-up concern about minorities, both foreign and domestic, distrust of those who worship differently, or not at all, confusion about increasing gender fluidity, and diversity. But there are specific fears that center on the guy in the Oval Office, both of the incoming and outgoing sorts.
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Bob Woodward - image from the Washington Post
As illustrated in the opening quote above, (which is the opening of the book as well, the Trump quote, that is) Donald Trump believes the application of fear in dealing with people and nations is the proper course. Threats, bullying, and intimidation are the favorite irons in his bag. In the application of this approach, it is distinctly possible that he might miscalculate to the point of sparking economic mayhem, or even war. But the other element of fear that should terrify us all is his fear for himself.
Donald Trump has paid vast sums of money to see that his under-the-covers philanderings remain under cover. (“You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women,” he said. “If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead.”) He is terrified that the world might see what an empty vessel he truly is. You may recall his conversation with the Mexican president in which Trump pleaded with El Presidente to give him some political cover so he would not have to face his supporters with the news that building the wall was really only a campaign scam. He is afraid that he will be shown to be a mobbed-up front-man, a tool for the Russian mafia, living large by laundering their ill-gotten rubles. He is terrified that he will be exposed as an asset of the Russian government, impacting American foreign and domestic policy in ways that advantage his Russian handler. Where those fears become kinetic is in how he attempts to protect himself. He has done his best to shred the two American institutions that might hold him accountable, the justice system and the fourth estate, waging war on truth itself.
Trump has been griping about the media, well the media that is not Fox, Infowars, Clear Channel, Rush Limbaugh, or any of the far right-wing outlets that serve as a public relations propaganda support system for him, at least since his campaign. It has always seemed clear that the intent here is to erode the standing of news organizations that were likely to expose his many misdeeds. His attacks on judges handling suits against him, on the FBI, which was investigating his campaign’s potential ties to Russia, and on the Justice Department, which controls the FBI, and under which the Special Counsel was appointed, are all attempts to undermine the authority of agencies that are likely to bring his crimes to light and him to justice. If he can persuade the American people that the cops and judges are all corrupt he might get away with his particular responsibility for decades of money-laundering, at the very least, and quite likely a traitorous alliance with Putin, whether entered into willingly or via blackmail. Fending off investigators, public and journalistic, is an existential challenge for him, driven by his fear of exposure.
The focus of Woodward’s book is on one particular form of fear, the concern the people who work for Donald Trump have that he might do serious damage to the United States, and even to the world, either in his handling of potentially fraught negotiations, domestic or international, (there is particular attention paid to dealings with South and North Korea that illustrates this very well) or in his need to preserve his freedom, and privilege, by destroying respected norms and institutions. He is Godzilla, and we are all Tokyo.
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Another substantial element is the chaos that is the White House, where established lines of communication and authority are regularly crossed, where the staff are constantly on the edge, wondering when the next absurd and/or dangerous presidential action may require their intervention, to try talking him out of it, slow him down, or make the requisite paperwork vanish.
A third theme that permeates is Trump’s flaws as a leader, his lack of intellectual curiosity, his adherence to preconceived notions regardless of research and advice that would lead a flexible human to a more informed opinion, (for example, accusing Iran of violating the treaty despite his own people telling him that they had not) his inability or unwillingness to take in more than a minimum amount of information on pretty much any subject, suggesting an attention deficit disorder.
You have probably heard quite a few quotes from this book, as coverage of its contents has been widespread. Perhaps the most significant are in the prologue
It was no less than an administrative coup d’état, an undermining of the will of the president of the United States and his constitutional authority.
In addition to coordinating policy decisions and schedules and running the paperwork for the president, Porter told an associate, “A third of my job was trying to react to some of the really dangerous ideas that he had and try to give him reasons to believe that maybe they weren’t such good ideas.”
Another strategy was to delay, procrastinate, cite legal restrictions, Lawyer Porter said, “But slow-walking things or not taking things up to him, or telling him—rightly, not just as an excuse—but this needs to be vetted, or we need to do more process on this, or we don’t have legal counsel clearance—that happened 10 times more frequently than taking papers from his desk. It felt like we were walking along the edge of the cliff perpetually.
…the United States in 2017 was tethered to the words and actions of an emotionally overwrought, mercurial and unpredictable leader. Members of his staff had joined to purposefully block some of what they believed were the president’s most dangerous impulses. It was a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world.As with Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, Steve Bannon has clearly offered the author considerable information on the goings on inside the White House. It is also clear that there are many other insiders who have talked to Woodward. One must always wonder, of course, where reporting events accurately leaves off for these sources, and where reputation embellishment begins. Thankfully, Woodward has gone to great lengths to corroborate diverse accounts to arrive at an accurate picture. I would be inclined to take what is reported in this book as the best obtainable version of the truth.
Here are some other details that are worth remembering.
-----Reince Preibus, as head of the GOP, had invested heavily in analytics and big data, over $175 million, and was very effective in using the drill-down intel to target neighborhoods with battalions of volunteers in the 2016 election. The intel even allowed targeting of individuals.
-----It was in 2015 that the NSA first found that Russia was looking at US voter rolls.
-----After pussygate, while almost all of his advisors urged Trump to drop out of the presidential race, there were two who urged him to stay in, Bannon, which is no shock, and Melania, which is, given the general view that she wanted no part of a presidential run.
-----Woodward also reports that, while Trump and Melania operate in pretty much separate spheres, there is genuine affection between the two. Color me skeptical.
----- It was interesting to learn how much influence and access Lindsay Graham had at the White House, which goes a long way to explaining how Graham could have pulled such a 180 on Trump. Graham had called Trump a “race-bating xenophobic bigot” in 2015, but in 2018, Graham said “He’s not, in my view, a racist by any stretch of the imagination.” It’s enough to give a guy whiplash.
-----Fascinating to read about Trump’s lawyer John Dowd and his dealings with Trump and Robert Mueller.
-----It was somewhat alarming learning of the sundry notions that were floated by presidential advisors re how to deal with North Korea’s acquisition of ICBM capability.
-----And also alarming, although not at all surprising, to read of John Kelly’s avid hostility toward Dreamers.
----- His people manage Trump’s time so he gets home after the weekend news on CNN and MSNBC goes into softer mode at 9pm.
Much of the book goes into specifics on the hirings and firings that keep the doors of the White House in need of constant oiling. Sometimes the idiocy is mind-boggling. Trump, early on, passed over John Bolton for a significant position because he did not like his moustache. Not that I have any particular fondness for Bolton, myself, but you do not base such decisions on the quality of someone’s facial hair. I mean he hired Ty Cobb, for god’s sake, or had him kidnapped from another century.
Gripes – Woodward sticks by his public position that the Steele dossier was a “garbage document” and that Comey should not have presented any of it to the president. It is unclear on what Woodward bases this position, given the solidity of the investigator, and the ongoing verification of information reported in that document.
You have probably heard/read this, but here are some of the lovely things said about Trump by his own appointees
-----Cohn had witnessed this for over a year—denial when needed or useful or more convenient. He’s a “professional liar,” Cohn told an associate.
-----He’s a fucking moron,” Tillerson said so everyone heard.
----- Trump had failed the President Lincoln test. He had not put a team of political rivals or competitors at the table, Priebus concluded. “He puts natural predators at the table,” Priebus said later. “Not just rivals—predators.
-----The president’s unhinged,” Kelly said
-----Trump normally wouldn’t listen long or very carefully to his national security adviser but it had gotten much worse, McMaster told Porter. “It’s like I can’t even get his attention.”
-----Cohn realized that Trump had gone bankrupt six times and seemed not to mind. Bankruptcy was just another business strategy. Walk away, threaten to blow up the deal. Real power is fear… Applying this mind-set from his real estate days to governing and deciding to risk bankrupting the United States would be a different matter entirely.
----- In a small group meeting in his office one day, Kelly said of the president, “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown.
“I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.
-----McMaster said that he believed Mattis and Tillerson had concluded that the president and the White House were crazy. As a result, they sought to implement and even formulate policy on their own without interference or involvement from McMaster, let alone the president.
----- In the political back-and-forth, the evasions, the denials, the tweeting, the obscuring, crying “Fake News,” the indignation, Trump had one overriding problem that Dowd knew but could not bring himself to say to the president: “You’re a fucking liar.”
The man really commands loyalty in his people. And then there are the insults, the abuse to which he subjected that staff, regardless of their level of loyalty to him. It is amazing anyone will even speak to the man. I will spare you those.
It is obvious that there is a clear and present danger to all Americans from the man currently resident in the White House, a man who is not only unfit to hold this highest position in the nation, but a man whose dull intellect, exuberant venality, core-deep corruption, contempt for American values and laws, authoritarian inclinations, and unsurpassed greed have made him the worst president in the history of the nation. His rigidity and ignorance have caused even people who share the political values he espouses to engage in activities that are probably criminal in order to spare the nation the downsides of his ill-informed, and often darkly-intentioned decisions. Fear is not the only thing we have to fear. We have just cause to fear what Donald Trump might do with the gigantic instrument he has been charged with operating. While busying himself looting the national treasure for himself and his pals, while paring back sane restrictions on polluting industries, while dismantling much of the mechanism of government that produces and distributes factual information for the nation, while engaging in border practices that make us remember the 1930s and 1940s, he is also busy tearing down respected institutions, shredding political and moral norms, and making the USA the laughingstock of the world.
So, President Roosevelt, it is most certainly NOT THE CASE that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. There are plenty of fear-generating people, nations and events on our planet that can justify our fears. But the one that supersedes all, for the moment, is Donald J. Trump. He is a danger to us all, and, as the investigations into his dark deeds progresses, he is only getting more paranoid and desperate. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American Eagle in order to feather their own nests.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, State of the Union Address, Jan. 9, 1941
Review first posted – 9/21/18
Publication date – 9/11/18
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages
September 5, 2018 - I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration - by Anonymous
Interviews
-----September 15, 2018 - New York Magazine - Bob Woodward on the ‘Best Obtainable Version of the Truth’ About Trump - by Olivia Nuzzi
-----September 5, 2018 – CNN - 13 totally bananas moments from Donald Trump's phone call with Bob Woodward - by Chris Cillizza. – a fun piece
----- September 14, 2018 - The Guardian - Bob Woodward: 'Too many people are emotionally unhinged about Trump'
- by David Smith
----- September 14, 2018 - KQED.org – Washington Week Washington Week episode: ‘Fear’ inside the Trump White House - with Robert Costa – Woodward’s final line in the interview - “He’s really disabled. He can’t tell the truth.”
Items of Interest
-----October 15, 2018 - A nice short video that puts the current danger into historical context - If You’re Not Scared About Fascism in the U.S., You Should Be
-----February 22, 2019 - Atlantic Magazine - The Alarming Scope of the President's Emergency Powers - by Elizabeth Goitein - When push comes to prosecute or impeach, do you really expect Trump to accede to the rule of law? This alarming article points out the many tools available to Swamp Thing that might be misused to keep his crooked ass out of jail. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
-----March 7, 2019 - NY Times - Nicholas Kristof offers an optimistic perspective on the unlikelihood of a Trump Reich - We Will Survive. Probably.
-----March 14, 2019 - NY Times - Donald Trump’s Bikers Want to Kick Protester Ass - building a brownshirt militia - this is really bad
-----But Lawrence O'Brien Lawrence O'Brien thinks it's just gas. Sure hope he's right. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 18, 2018
Sep 18, 2018
Hardcover
1250074312
9781250074317
1250074312
4.01
2,600
Jan 23, 2018
Jan 23, 2018
it was amazing
If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harde
If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be … For the poor you will always have with you in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’ - (Deuteronomy 15:7-11)
The law, it its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -- Anatole FranceThe poorhouse. These days, it’s common parlance for extreme financial misfortune. Someone who has had a particularly bad fiscal spell could be said to be heading to the poorhouse. These days, we do not have literal, brick and mortar poorhouses. Those were usually fetid places, ill-maintained, offering meager shelter and food to the detritus of society, the poor, ill, elderly, and disabled, often requiring labor in return. These days, we have something new.
America’s poor and working-class people have long been subject to invasive surveillance, midnight raids, and punitive public policy that increase the stigma and hardship of poverty. During the nineteenth century, they were quarantined in county poorhouses. During the twentieth century they were investigated by caseworkers, treated like criminals on trial. Today we have forged a digital poorhouse from databases, matched algorithms and statistical risk models. It promises to eclipse the reach and repercussions of everything that came before.The most famous poorhouse resident in literature is one Oliver Twist. In the novel of that name, Dickens intended to highlight the inhumanity of the Poor Law Act of 1834. The world of poverty he described was, while literarily thrilling, a horrifying exposé of man’s cruelty to man. Poorhouses found a home in the USA as well. The first poorhouse in the city of my current residence was established in 1863. In my erstwhile lifelong home, New York, an 1824 law directed the counties of the state to erect poorhouses. Residents could be required to do whatever work the superintendent demanded. Any resistance resulted in being kicked out. Among other sources for the poorhouse population, children younger than 15 caught begging could be legally remanded there until the person in charge of the poorhouse let them out. There were certainly poorhouses in NY earlier than that. The first poorhouse in the USA was in Boston, in 1662.
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Virginia Eubanks - from her Twitter page
Virginia Eubanks has been involved with economic justice movements for over twenty years. She is an associate Prof of Poli Sci at the SUNY Albany campus. Her writing about tech in social justice has appeared in The American Prospect, The Nation, Harper’s and Wired. She is a founding member of the Our Data Bodies project, which looks at how the gathering and use of digital info by government impacts our rights. In Automating Inequality, Eubanks offers a bit of history on the poorhouse, noting, with particular relevance for the operation of today’s prisons, and other bits of outsourcing of government welfare responsibilities, that privately run poorhouses led to the residents being particularly exploited and deprived of necessities in order to increase profits for the owners, not that the publicly run ones were any great shakes. Her central notion is that the physical poorhouse of the past has been replaced in the 21st century by a modern version.
For all their high-tech polish, our modern systems of poverty management—automated decision-making, data mining, and predictive analytics—retain a remarkable kinship with the poorhouses of the past. Our new digital tools spring from punitive, moralistic views of poverty and create a system of high-tech containment and investigation that I call the digital poorhouse. The digital poorhouse deters the poor from accessing public resources; polices their labor, spending, sexuality, and parenting; tries to predict their future behavior; and punishes and criminalizes those who do not comply with its dictates. In the process, it creates ever-finer moral distinctions between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, categorizations that rationalize our national failure to care for one another.She takes two approaches. First is tracking the history of how the poor have been treated, noting the Dickensian era preference for punishing the poor overtly, by shunting them into miserable institutions, if providing any aid at all, then a revolutionary approach called Scientific Charity, which employed caseworkers applying the methodology of police work in examining the merits of a person’s application for aid,
As Mary Richmond wrote in Social Diagnosis, her 1917 textbook on casework procedures, “the reliability of the evidence on which [caseworkers] base their decisions should be no less rigidly scrutinized than is that of legal evidence by opposing counsel.” Scientific charity treated the poor as criminal defendants by default.the reversal of reliance on private charity with the New Deal, the paring back of benefits in the 1970s, beginning the use of computer technology to exclude applicants, and sundry mechanisms being used today.
The second is to offer case studies, on-site looks at three locations. Homelessness is the focus in Los Angeles, the outsourcing of welfare systems in Indiana, and child custody issues at the Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth and Families (CYF) in Pittsburgh.
In short, Eubanks offers a history of US public policy on poverty, along with the mechanisms employed in various eras to manage, and limit public outlays to address it, a look at the mechanisms now in use that serve to exclude applicants rather than enhance service, and an analysis of how those systems impact people today. She very successfully bridges the gap between theory and reality with her field studies. This is what’s going on. This is how it affects people.
Instead of being shunted to three-dimensional concrete buildings, today’s poor are far too frequently denied public services, while the state, in addition, often erects barricades to the poor finding a way out of their situation by making it more difficult for them to get a job. Apparently biblical predictions were not considered adequate to the task, so we appear to be committed, as a society, to keeping the poor poor. We apparently prefer for them to remain that way. Hating the poor has been a national addiction since the invasion of North America by religious extremists. We are so addicted to hating on the poor that we have managed, with very few exceptions in our national history, to define poverty at such an insanely low level of income that the majority of poor people are denied even the dubious comfort of fitting the official definition. For example, the US Census Bureau defines its poverty threshold as $12,331 for a single person. So, if you are a single person, earning, say, $12,500 a year, you are not considered poor. Congratulations! And if you are over 65, that line drops to $11,367. I guess we seniors must eat less. Right, whatever.
I am no stranger to such topics, and while the broad strokes of her Bruegelesque depiction of our welfare system might not be all that surprising, as with the painting, there is much to be appreciated by looking at the details. There were pieces of information in here that were surprising. Did you know that the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps of the New Deal era) imposed a cap of 10% black recruits during the Depression, despite the dramatically higher unemployment rate they experienced? Or that half of us spend at least some portion of our lives in poverty?
Eubanks offers many instances of Kafkaesque, sometimes deadly results of how people are treated by welfare systems. It is amazing to me that there have not been thousands of incidents of people so frustrated by this mean-spirited, cruel system that they go postal on social service agencies across the nation. Probably because they can’t afford the hardware. God knows it’s easy enough to buy.
When you are poor you surrender your rights as a citizen, hell, as a human being. Innocent until proven guilty? Not once you apply for any sort of public assistance. The right to parent your own child? The right to confront your accusers? Not if a hostile neighbor calls in an anonymous false report accusing you of neglecting your kid. The right to choose your sexual partners? Not if the welfare agency deems that person inappropriate. The right to counsel? Nope. You are on your own, with the entire resources of the state aligned against you. Offer any resistance to or question the caseworkers who are assigned your case and you are denied benefits. It’s yes, Massa, no, Massa, or you are out on the street, and in many places you can be fined and/or put in jail for being homeless.
While I am a senior citizen, retired, with only Social Security for my personal income, I am blessed with a spouse who remains employed full time. But I have had my share of interactions with the welfare and legal systems. When I was 18 years old, I had my own apartment. But after a significant industrial accident, (I was working at a large Postal Service facility in Manhattan) I was unable to work for a long time, several months of which was spent in hospitals. I was covered by worker’s comp, but it took so long for benefits to begin that I lost my apartment. Thanks, guys. At least I had a fallback, however unpleasant that may have seemed at the time. I have had just loads of fun dealing with unemployment, having endured that most American of experiences, the layoff, more than once. After one particularly frustrating interaction at an unemployment office, I ripped a large piece of hardware off the wall of the men’s bathroom. (Statute of limitations is passed for that one, right?) In another I was denied benefits, because I made a typo (press 1 to be insulted, press 2 to be denied, press 3 to be put on permanent hold) in an interactive system that would not allow human contact. While out of work for most of four years, and being held responsible for child support (while having joint custody) based on what I had earned in my highest earnings year ever, I had my driver’s license suspended by the state of New York, because I was unable, not unwilling, unable to pay the considerable monthly sum. Not a small thing, as many of the companies that hired people with my skill set were located in suburbia. Way to help. It took several years before the court accepted the fact (helped along by the reams of documentation I produced) that I had been unable to get work in systems, and had taken a shit-paying job as a security guard because it was the only thing I could get. The support arrears that accumulated during this period helped force me into dire financial straits. So, while I am decidedly middle-class by education and inclination, I have first-hand knowledge of how systems that at least purport to be helpful can do their best to make a bad situation worse, permanent even. I live in dread of the day when I have to face these systems again. (It will almost certainly come) And I am doing ok. The people Eubanks writes of are, mostly, not.
Dealing with welfare agencies, with or without their associated, gun-toting uniformed sorts, or their legal enforcers, is horrifying enough. With the expansion of data collection, and monitoring, real and potential, with the widespread sharing of collected information (privacy rights? You’re kidding, right?) with a vast array of other government entities (and private entities too, where service provision or data collection is outsourced) as well as any law enforcement agency that asks for it, Big Brother has become more like the entire Manson Family. They are watching, and any mis-step, real or imagined, any spark of resistance, real or imagined, any error on your part, real or imagined, can get you cut off whatever public benefit you are on, thus increasing your poverty, reducing your life expectancy and increasing your risk of being incarcerated in what has become that contemporary replacement for the poorhouse of old, jail. There are even systems in place that look at projected behavior, that put one darkly in mind of the film (and story) Minority Report.
Virginia Eubanks has written a piercing appraisal of how the new technology of the digital age has given the state unimaginable power over the lives of any who are forced into contact with it. The needs of the poor are not different from the needs of the middle class. But the latter, with the means to take care of those needs in the private market, can minimize contact with the beast that is the welfare/legal system. Once one comes into contact with that beast, a person is marked, indelibly, for decades or forever.
What can be done? As is often the case, big problems do not lend themselves to simple fixes. Eubanks offers an array of actions that might be taken to help in the Dismantling of the Data Poorhouse. She has highlighted truths we should be aware of, and notes groups that should be targeted for a bit of consciousness raising. Mostly the proposed remedies sound sane, but unlikely, not a rare thing in books about sociopolitical ills.
The strengths of this book are many. I was reminded very much of Barbara Ehrenreich’s perceptive writings on diverse important matters of public policy. Eubanks has dug deeply into the underlying realities of being poor in America and filled in a lot of the blanks. (BTW, it make a perfect companion to the excellent book White Trash), and should find a natural home in college and graduate school classes on poverty and public policy. People who are poor already know a lot of what is in here, although even the reader of meager means will still find fascinating information. The middle class, or wealthy reader will, hopefully, have their eyes opened (dare we say their consciousness raised?), finding serial unsuspected revelations in Automating Inequality. But the most significant group of readers who should read this are those who, like me, have lived at least a bit in both worlds, particularly those who, currently not a part of the public welfare/legal system, expect they never will be, and disparage those who are as lazy or morally suspect.
poverty is not an island; it is a borderland. There’s quite a lot of movement in the economic fringes, especially across the fuzzy boundary between the poor and the working class. Those who live in the economic borderlands are pitted against one another by policy that squeezes every possible dime from the wallets of the working class at the same time that it cuts social programs for the poor and absolves the professional middle class and wealthy of their social obligations. - [see recent tax cuts for the 1%]As the powers in Washington, and in many of our states, seek to dim the lights of our shining city on a hill, it will be up to those who are not wealthy or connected, those who work for low wages, those who are jobless, those who earn, while knowing that a layoff could happen any day, those who can see through the porous barriers between the middle class, the working poor, and the distraught, to comprehend and act on the need to join forces in order to rekindle that flame. As Eubanks points out, and as you probably already know, in your heart of hearts
…systems designed for the poor will eventually be used on everyone.It’s enough to enrage and/or depress Dickens.
Review first posted – January 19, 2018
Publication date – January 16, 2018
==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. Then in Summer 2021 they decreed that external links would not longer be allowed in comments, where I used to put the review overage. So I have included the entirety of the review on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi!
[image] [image] [image] [image] ...more
Notes are private!
1
Jan 02, 2018
Jan 15, 2018
Jan 02, 2018
Hardcover
1250117771
9781250117779
1250117771
4.02
323
unknown
Jan 30, 2018
it was amazing
What frightened me? Certainly the prediction by Bill Gates and his team that an epidemic like the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed 50 million p
What frightened me? Certainly the prediction by Bill Gates and his team that an epidemic like the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed 50 million people could happen again today—and that in the first 200 days it could kill 33 million people. That’s almost as many people as AIDS has killed over four decades. Even scarier was the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch assessment that the threat of a global pandemic could claim more than 300 million lives and cost the global economy as much as US$3.5 trillion.There are many things to be concerned about in this world, justifiably. Terrorism, global warming, the undermining of democracy by dark forces. (The Patriots winning yet another Super Bowl) I know that we are, or certainly should be, concerned about the potential carnage that might be wrought by some lunatic (you know the one) doing something in a fit of pique over an insulting tweet, and sending considerable supplies of glowing ordnance rocketing about the planet. Millions would perish. Landscapes would be rendered uninhabitable for decades, if not centuries, if not forever. A worldwide engagement in such insanity would slaughter hundreds of millions. We have experienced large-scale human die-offs before, in wars, of course, but there are other sorts of global catastrophes (defined as events that could wipe out 10% of humanity) that could kill even more.
The Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 may have killed as much as 5% of the world population. Some outbreaks since then infected over a third of the world’s population (e.g., pandemic influenza), whereas others killed over half of people infected (e.g., Ebola or SARS). If a disease were to emerge that was as transmissible as the flu and as lethal as Ebola, the results could be catastrophic. Fortunately, this rarely transpires, but it is possible that it could, for example with the H5N1 influenza virus. - from the Global Catastrophic Risks reportThere may not be a lot we can do about deranged leaders, other than vote them out of office, where untampered voting is an option. But there is a lot we can do to take on the growing challenges of potential epidemics and pandemics. Preventing the emergence of a global deadly pandemic afflicting vast swaths of the world’s people can save as many lives, and maybe even more lives, than averting a nuclear war. This is the point of The End of Epidemics.
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Jonathan Quick - Image from Scribe Publications
Dr. Jonathan D. Quick, MD, MPH, a family physician, has been working in international health since the 1970s, was Director of Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy at the World Health Organization from 1993 to 2003. He is a fellow at Management Sciences for Health (MSH), a non-profit founded in 1971 to assist local communities in distressed nations establish health care delivery systems. He has authored over a hundred books, articles and book chapters, and is a long-term advisor to health care projects in Afghanistan and Kenya. He has gotten up close and personal with some of the worst threats to human health and decided to put together a plan of action after the West African Ebola epidemic killed over 11,000 people and orphaned more than 16,000 children.
Once the world woke up to the crisis, there was a generous outpouring of assistance. As the response peaked, I was consumed by nagging questions: Where will we be four or five years from now? Will the world have gone back to sleep? What’s needed to protect the world from future outbreaks? To find the answers, I explored the lessons from epidemics over the last century – smallpox, AIDS, SARS, avian flu, swine flu, Ebola, Zika – and I drew on some of the best minds, experienced professionals and committed citizen activists in global health, infectious disease, and pandemic preparedness. - from the MSH site[image]
Influenza victims at Fort Riley, Kan., during the 1918 epidemic - image from the Boston Globe
He lays out a seven-step program for averting future epidemic crises, (lofty goals) then drills down into each of the seven to add flesh to the bones, specifics to the generalities. In doing so, he offers considerable historical perspective. This is what happened here at this point in time. This is what was done to address the medical problem. This is what was done to raise public awareness. This is what was done to use the fuel of that awareness to effect change in laws, resource allocation, and results.
Here are his Seven sets of actions needed for preventing and coping with epidemics
(1) Ensuring bold leadership at all levels
(2) Building resilient health systems
(3) Fortifying three lines of defense against disease (prevention, detection, and response)
(4) Ensuring timely and accurate communications
(5) Investing in smart, new innovation
(6) Spending wisely to prevent disease before an epidemic strikes
(7) Mobilizing citizen activism
If your brain works at all like mine, your first instinct is to engage in a little recreational eye-rolling, accompanied by mutterings such as, “uh huh, and how do you define that?” Or, “Oh, really? And who gets to say what constitutes “timely and accurate”, “smart”, and “wisely?” All seven sound like lofty, and very ill-defined goals. But Quick addresses each of these goals using real-world experience and translates them into examples, offering actions that can be taken. I soon parked the snark and took in what was being offered. While there are plenty of short-sighted, self-serving jerks who will stop at nothing to interfere with making the world a better place (Even today, needle exchanges are banned in almost every state in the southern U.S., where the AIDS epidemic is now concentrated and HIV infection rates are ten times higher than in other parts of the country.), there are also a lot of knowledgeable, committed people, care providers, religious, political and business leaders, eager to identify and implement mechanisms for change, for improving access to health care, for developing new vaccinations and treatments, for organizing distribution networks where few or none now exist, for educating populations on the realities of transmissible disease exposure and for working with local communities to address today’s health challenges and defend against potential horrors.
[image]
The AIDS virus – image from Avert.org
There is frightening intel in this book on the sources of new pathogens, from bush meat to factory farms, to unemployed bio-engineers. In addition, there is brain-candy material on how several of the all-star list of epidemic diseases got their start, and how they were brought from their birthplaces to the rest of the world. Fascinating, powerful stuff. One particular bit of important analysis here is on the secondary impact of epidemics. The damage is not just to those immediately afflicted, but to those around them and to entire economies.
As with war, where common illness can take more lives than war injuries, epidemics sometimes take more lives from disruption of primary healthcare than from the epidemic itself. Because health workers are diverted to emergency response centers and health facilities are sometimes closed, epidemics can also disrupt routine public health care needs such as immunization, treatment of acute illness, and facility-based births.He looks not only at how we manage to put our hands over our ears and rattle out sound-blocking la-la-la-la-la-la noises, but takes it a step further to try to understand why we do that. He also reports on some remarkable success stories, including, over a long-term, the West coming to grips with the HIV crisis to the point where, while still a major life-threatening disease, it is now a manageable long-term condition and not an instant death-sentence. With concentrated and persistent effort progress can be made. Quick cites some other remarkable success stories in Africa that have received scant coverage in Western media. He gets specific on how much money would be needed to undertake the program he proposes, (chicken feed) and compares that with the cost of failing to do so.
New diseases are cropping up at a faster rate than ever before. Since 1971, scientists have discovered at least 25 new pathogens for which we have no vaccine and no treatment. Where do new diseases come from? What is the impact of actions by people on the creation of new diseases? We face threats from bioterror. What would ISIS do with a designer virus? Bio-error presents another risk. I can certainly image a future president (Merkin Muffley?) getting on the phone to a foreign leader to fill him or her in on the oopsy release of an engineered bug, even if it had been intended only for testing and defense purposes. Well, how do you think I feel about it, Dmitri? Hopefully, a sufficient number of forward-looking world leaders will have already established protocols to make that call one that is intended to deliver information, and not induce a retaliatory doomsday panic. And what about unintended consequences from bio-engineered materials that go rogue?
[image]
The Ebola virus – image from Wikimedia
If you are a public health policy junkie (it was my first career out of graduate school, and that monkey took up permanent residence on my back), this is mainlining material. The stakes could not be higher, the need for long-term-planning could not be clearer.
We provide considerable funding for the military and charge them with the broad mission of keeping us safe from foreign threats. Given the potential for danger to the lives of citizens, doesn’t it make sense to direct resources toward preventing such losses where the potential for carnage is greatest? And don’t forget that many of the diseases that we fear here have their origins elsewhere, as air travel allows stowaway bugs to cross the globe in a matter of days. So, in our ever-smaller world, resources need to be directed to the sources over there of some of our exposure here at home.
[image]
H5N1 Influenza Virus – image from Wikimedia
I have two gripes about the book. Quick calls his program The Power of 7. Sorry, but that sounds like a Sesame Street segment, or yet another group of Marvel superheroes, maybe a vitamin drink. I am sure there is a PR firm somewhere that would be happy to earn some pro-bono brownie points by coming up with something better. Second, and this is a more passing thing, early in the book the author tended to sound like one of those people whose focus is more on himself than his message. Even if the content of what he is saying is true, it’s just poor form. Sentences like I was hosting a videoconference for the global health nonprofit that I led… or it comforts me to know that I’m part of an organization that’s truly committed to saving lives. Thankfully this sort of thing vanishes pretty quickly, and focus on the message proceeds without further such asides.
While I can definitely see this being of particular interest to readers who share my personal addiction, I could see it being used even more productively in colleges and graduate schools. It should be required reading in all MPH (Master of Public Health) programs and in any courses, graduate or undergraduate, that address global health issues. It should certainly find its way to every political leader in a position to impact public health legislation, and to all those charged with managing health care institutions, public and private. It wouldn’t hurt to slip a copy over the transom of every foundation that funds such things. Maybe the Gates Foundation, or a similar entity could see to such a global distribution.
[image]
SARS-associated coronavirus- image from ThingLink.com
The End of Epidemics is reality-based, offers fully-informed analyses of existing and projected medical dangers, and presents a well-thought-out program for averting catastrophic loss of life across the planet. It is a significant distillation of current knowledge on how to go about ensuring that we actually have future generations, and for anyone involved in public policy it is a must-read. For the rest of us, it is a readable, worthwhile, informative look at a potentially imminent global danger. I hope the knowledge presented in this book and the optimism of its author, infects readers, and is passed on to many, many others.
Published – 1/30/18
Review first posted - 2/2/18
Added bit on February 2022 reposting - The prescience of Quick’s concerns is impressive, even though his predictions were, in fact, conservative, and based on established science. Thankfully, COVID was not as lethal as Ebola or Marburg. It was, and remains, lethal enough. The importance of this book, looking back from 2022, cannot be overstated. I can only hope that it finds a readership among public health officials and legislators sitting on health-care-related committees.
[image] [image] [image] [image]
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages
From This Week in Global Health - a fascinating interview with Dr. Quick
A short video in which Quick talks about his End of Epidemics project
ResearchGate offers a list of Quick’s writings, many of which can be downloaded in their entirety for free.
From Science Alert, a short article on the ranking of potentially horrific events - New Report Officially Ranks All The Catastrophes That Could Wipe Us Out in 2016
The report cited by the above article is from the Global Priorities Project - Global Catastrophic Risks - 2016
Flue Near You is a crowd-sourcing system for early detection of you-know-what. It takes data from participants across the country, anonymously. Check it out.
January 18, 2018 - NY Times - Flu Hospitalization Rates Are the Highest in Years. Here’s Why. - by Donald G. McNeil Jr
in some places — including Southern California, Pennsylvania and central Texas — some hospitals have seen so many flu patients that they had to set up triage tents or turn other patients away. Local shortages of antiviral medications and flu vaccines have been reported, and the C.D.C. said patients may have to call several pharmacies to find shots or to fulfill prescriptions....more
Notes are private!
1
Jan 22, 2018
Jan 30, 2018
Dec 19, 2017
Hardcover
0670785970
9780670785971
0670785970
3.76
23,770
Jun 21, 2016
Jan 01, 2016
it was amazing
“All history is the history of class struggle.” Sound familiar? It should. Well, the actual quote, from Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’ Communist Mani
“All history is the history of class struggle.” Sound familiar? It should. Well, the actual quote, from Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’ Communist Manifesto, is “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Doesn’t have quite the same ring, but it gets the job done, however transmogrified it might have been in popular recollection and various translations. And it may or not be the case. Certainly in America one is considered suspect for subscribing to the notion, usually by folks who are better off. But whether class is the be-all and end-all of historical analysis, it would be difficult, and dishonest, to contend that it does not hold, at the very least, a very significant role in human history. It is the history of class in America, and the myths that accompany it, to which Nancy Isenberg has applied her considerable labor and intelligence.
She begins at the beginning, the 1500s. Richard Hakluyt a well-known 16th century writer, promoted development of the New World to the English leaders of the time.
[image]
Nancy Isenberg - from PRS Speakers.com
In an addled vision (and altered history) of America, many thought that, for various reasons, the New World was or would be the place where class came to die. You’re kidding me, right? It never was. It is not now, and it never will be. What we have now is less of a class struggle, which implies two opponents, and more of a class massacre. For example, the Republicans propose an ACA replacement that absolutely has to include an extra tax break for CEOs earning more than $500K, while effectively denying coverage to millions and raising costs catastrophically for millions more? Clearly those who have, well those who are of a Republican (Koch-brother-backed) frame of mind and have, seem to think that those of us who do not have shouldn’t. But it has almost always been thus. Isenberg traces the history of class in America, with a specific look at the lower echelons of white America. Slavery, of one sort and another, is never far from the history she describes, but she is not writing about slavery, per se.
She traces the persistence and character of class in America, from its English (and presumably Dutch) roots, up to modern times. She looks at the structures that have enforced a lower level of existence on so many in diverse parts of the nation, with particular attention to the English ideal of connection to (meaning ownership of) land, as a core defining measure of one’s civic virtue. Only those with land were considered worthy of voting. Even after the American Revolution, the old ways persisted:
We are introduced to a wealth of class slurs from the pages of our past, many of them news to me. Here are a few: Waste people, Clay-eaters, Mudsills, Briar hoppers, sandhillers, lubbers, tackies, scalawags, low-downers, hoe wielders, offscourings, bog-trotters, swamp people. And the more familiar: degenerates, crackers, squatters, rednecks, hillbillies, and trailer trash. And for what it’s worth, some whites were even treated to the n-word.
Isenberg takes us from the teenaged indentured servants of our deep past, when voting with your feet meant running away from an intolerable, and often illegally never-ending indenture, to Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty, from the reality of class exploitation over the centuries to viewing people (not limited to the poor) as cattle, and looking to breed desired traits. From how the poor, particularly lower class whites, were viewed in the 16th century to how they are portrayed in popular media today. She looks at how some have seized on a sort of hillbilly chic to further their own ends.
Isenberg looks at experiments like Oglethorpe’s in Georgia, in which slavery was banned, and how his predictions of what would happen were slavery to be allowed came to pass.
Sometimes Isenberg’s analysis goes a bit too far.
Overall, I found White Trash wonderfully, if depressingly informative. Any who are foolish enough to see America as a class-free place would do well to check this book out. Class is as real today as it has ever been, and merits our attention as an ever growing number of people are being pushed by automation, globalization, and seizure of more and more of the nation’s wealth by the wealthy, into the lower rungs of class distinction. Any who are interested in American history, in how we got from there to here, are in for a real treat. But whether or not you have a particular interest in American history or class, particularly my fellow and sister Americans, I would urge you to give White Trash a look. The myth of equality of opportunity in America has never been clearer. You have nothing to lose but the chains of ignorance.
Publication date – June 21, 2016
Review posted – March 10, 2017
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal, and Twitter pages
More items by Isenberg
-----NY Daily News opinion piece - Donald Trump’s perverse class war -November 2, 2016
-----Salon - American history: Fake news that never goes away — and empowered the Trumpian insurrection - “Fake history is fake news, only more widely believed.”
Interviews
-----The Baffler - Born and Bred - Q & A with Nancy Isenberg - by Emily Carroll - November 07, 2016
Audio
-----On the Media ’White Trash’ and Class in America by Brooke Gladstone
-----WNYC – How America's Landless Poor Defined Politics for Generations - by Leonard Lopate
-----The Takeaway – The Angry Ghost of America's Unresolved Class Warfare - 8:59
Video
-----PBS News Hour - The origin of ‘white trash,’ & why class is still an issue - by Jeffrey Brown
Other
-----February 3, 2018 - NY Times - Who’s Able-Bodied Anyway? by Emily Badger and Margot Sanger-Katz - a familiar extra-legal method for keeping people from getting needed benefits, reveling in a notion of some people as being undeserving of public aid ...more
She begins at the beginning, the 1500s. Richard Hakluyt a well-known 16th century writer, promoted development of the New World to the English leaders of the time.
… what Hakluyt foresaw in a colonized America was one giant workhouse. This cannot be emphasized enough. As the “waste firm of America" was settled, it would become a place where the surplus poor, the waste people of England, could be converted into economic assets. The land and the poor could be harvested together, to add to—rather than continue to subtract from—the nation’s wealth. Among the first waves of workers were the convicts, who would be employed at heavy labor, felling trees and burning them for pitch, tar and soap ash; others would dig in the mines for gold, silver, iron, and copper. The convicts were not paid wages. As debt slaves, they were obliged to repay the English commonwealth for their crimes by producing commodities for export. In return they would be kept from a life of crime, avoiding, in Hakluyt’s words, being “miserably hanged,” or packed into prisons to “pitifully pine away” and die.Large numbers of the earliest Europeans to inhabit these shores were not so much the vaunted seekers after freedom of one sort or another that highlight our usual imagery. They were in fact the social detritus that England was looking to offload. Along with the poor, the criminal, and the unconnected, our mother country dropped off their toxic class system. Even in promotion of the New World in the earliest times, it was portrayed as a place where England could throw out the garbage, or at least put society’s waste people to some use during their brief time above the ground.
[image]
Nancy Isenberg - from PRS Speakers.com
In an addled vision (and altered history) of America, many thought that, for various reasons, the New World was or would be the place where class came to die. You’re kidding me, right? It never was. It is not now, and it never will be. What we have now is less of a class struggle, which implies two opponents, and more of a class massacre. For example, the Republicans propose an ACA replacement that absolutely has to include an extra tax break for CEOs earning more than $500K, while effectively denying coverage to millions and raising costs catastrophically for millions more? Clearly those who have, well those who are of a Republican (Koch-brother-backed) frame of mind and have, seem to think that those of us who do not have shouldn’t. But it has almost always been thus. Isenberg traces the history of class in America, with a specific look at the lower echelons of white America. Slavery, of one sort and another, is never far from the history she describes, but she is not writing about slavery, per se.
She traces the persistence and character of class in America, from its English (and presumably Dutch) roots, up to modern times. She looks at the structures that have enforced a lower level of existence on so many in diverse parts of the nation, with particular attention to the English ideal of connection to (meaning ownership of) land, as a core defining measure of one’s civic virtue. Only those with land were considered worthy of voting. Even after the American Revolution, the old ways persisted:
During the colonial period, the right to vote for the lower house of colonial legislatures had been defined in traditional British terms: Only people who had freehold landed property sufficient to ensure that they were personally independent and had a vested interest in the welfare of their communities could vote. - from The Right to Vote and the Rise of Democracy, 1787–1828 by Donald RatcliffeI am nobody’s idea of a history nerd, but I have read a fair bit over the last fifty years or so, and am no virgin at looking at class structures. Yet, I found this book filled with stunning revelations. In particular, the views of some of our foundering fathers are particularly unkind when it comes to working class people. Franklin and Jefferson both believed that the availability of vast swaths of new land would provide all that was needed for the new breed of Americans that was emerging, a safety valve on the social and economic pressures of rising population and limited resources. It did not work out quite as hoped, as the wealthy moved west as well, sucking up most of the good land, and bringing along the means to develop the land, slaves and tools, that less favored pioneers lacked. Franklin was boldly in favor of class distinction:
Franklin understood that maintaining class differences had its own appeal. In the Pennsylvania Gazette, the newspaper he edited, an article was published in 1741 that exposed why people preferred having a class hierarchy to having none. Hierarchy was easily maintained when the majority felt there was someone below them. “How many,” the author asked, “even of the better sort,” would choose to be “Slaves to those above them, provided they might exercise an arbitrary and Tyrannical Rule over all below them?” There was something desirable, perhaps even pleasurable, to use Franklin’s utilitarian axiom, in the feeling of lording over subordinate classes.The notion of breeding is paramount in how class has been viewed over time. It makes it so much easier, I suppose, for the haves to justify their position if they can persuade themselves that those who have not suffer because that is their genetic destiny. Fantasy does become reality often enough as the poor, who often have to struggle just to get fed, watch their children’s development be stunted by malnutrition, some going so far as to eating clay just to feel full, and by a lack of access to good medical care. Some particularly awful examples are noted. Forced sterilization was very much an approach favored by some to keep those they disparaged from reproducing.
We are introduced to a wealth of class slurs from the pages of our past, many of them news to me. Here are a few: Waste people, Clay-eaters, Mudsills, Briar hoppers, sandhillers, lubbers, tackies, scalawags, low-downers, hoe wielders, offscourings, bog-trotters, swamp people. And the more familiar: degenerates, crackers, squatters, rednecks, hillbillies, and trailer trash. And for what it’s worth, some whites were even treated to the n-word.
Isenberg takes us from the teenaged indentured servants of our deep past, when voting with your feet meant running away from an intolerable, and often illegally never-ending indenture, to Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty, from the reality of class exploitation over the centuries to viewing people (not limited to the poor) as cattle, and looking to breed desired traits. From how the poor, particularly lower class whites, were viewed in the 16th century to how they are portrayed in popular media today. She looks at how some have seized on a sort of hillbilly chic to further their own ends.
Isenberg looks at experiments like Oglethorpe’s in Georgia, in which slavery was banned, and how his predictions of what would happen were slavery to be allowed came to pass.
Sometimes Isenberg’s analysis goes a bit too far.
A prison official said it all: “One dies, get another.” Poor whites were inexpensive and expendable and found their lot comparable to suffering African Americans when it came to the justice system. Nothing proves the point better than the fact that both black and white convicts were referred to as "niggers."The prison systems in America have never treated people decently, but I would find the claim of equal abuse more persuasive were some research offered to back the claim. She also refers to the TV show The Honeymooners as a satire about the working class. It was nothing of the sort. What it was was a situation comedy that portrayed working class life, during a time when the norm was to show an idealized suburban Ozzie and Harriet world. It was not satirizing working class people, but bringing them to viewers’ consciousness. I would have liked a strong, overt connection to have been made between the mean-spirited right of today. (Why are these people so bloody cold-hearted towards the poor?) and the extant views of the poor from history. There is DNA to be traced there, even if it is mostly the history of excuse-making for hating on those lower down on the ladder.
Overall, I found White Trash wonderfully, if depressingly informative. Any who are foolish enough to see America as a class-free place would do well to check this book out. Class is as real today as it has ever been, and merits our attention as an ever growing number of people are being pushed by automation, globalization, and seizure of more and more of the nation’s wealth by the wealthy, into the lower rungs of class distinction. Any who are interested in American history, in how we got from there to here, are in for a real treat. But whether or not you have a particular interest in American history or class, particularly my fellow and sister Americans, I would urge you to give White Trash a look. The myth of equality of opportunity in America has never been clearer. You have nothing to lose but the chains of ignorance.
Publication date – June 21, 2016
Review posted – March 10, 2017
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal, and Twitter pages
More items by Isenberg
-----NY Daily News opinion piece - Donald Trump’s perverse class war -November 2, 2016
-----Salon - American history: Fake news that never goes away — and empowered the Trumpian insurrection - “Fake history is fake news, only more widely believed.”
Interviews
-----The Baffler - Born and Bred - Q & A with Nancy Isenberg - by Emily Carroll - November 07, 2016
Audio
-----On the Media ’White Trash’ and Class in America by Brooke Gladstone
-----WNYC – How America's Landless Poor Defined Politics for Generations - by Leonard Lopate
-----The Takeaway – The Angry Ghost of America's Unresolved Class Warfare - 8:59
Video
-----PBS News Hour - The origin of ‘white trash,’ & why class is still an issue - by Jeffrey Brown
Other
-----February 3, 2018 - NY Times - Who’s Able-Bodied Anyway? by Emily Badger and Margot Sanger-Katz - a familiar extra-legal method for keeping people from getting needed benefits, reveling in a notion of some people as being undeserving of public aid ...more
Notes are private!
1
Jan 10, 2017
Jan 27, 2017
Jan 10, 2017
Hardcover
0743288785
9780743288781
0743288785
3.83
19,378
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016
it was amazing
...the newcomers did not care to understand the strange new country beyond taking whatever turned a profit. They knew only what they knew. The fore
...the newcomers did not care to understand the strange new country beyond taking whatever turned a profit. They knew only what they knew. The forest was there for them.Barkskins is Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx’s (the author of Brokeback Mountain and Pulitzer winner for The Shipping News) magnum opus, a wide ranging historical novel in which the central character is the land itself, more particularly the primeval forested land of (primarily) North America. Proulx plants a pod with two seeds, the arrival in New France of René Sel and Charles Duquet in 1693. They are contracted to remain with a local seigneur, in essence a feudal lord, for a limited number of years. Duquet flees the seigneur’s cruelty, and uses his considerable native intelligence, strength, guile, and ruthlessness to become a fur trader and much more. Sel suffers greatly at the hands of the lord, even being forced to marry a native woman.
From these roots, there grows an overview of more than three hundred years of history, as the Sel (towards the Native American side) and Duquet (to a logging dynasty) lines branch out in numbers and geography, are periodically pruned back by disasters both natural and political, but persist through time, like the trees some of their representatives are often so eager to fell. Proulx takes us all the way up to 2013.
For me, the chief character in the long story was the forest, the great now-lost forest(s) of the world. The characters, as interesting as they were to develop, were there to carry the story of how we have cut and destroyed the wooden world. - from The New Yorker interviewIt was not solely the wooden world that was ravaged. The native peoples who lived in and near those woods were cut down no less than the trees that had helped sustain and define them.
[image]
Annie Proulx - Photo by Wiqan Ang for the Wall Street Journal
There are ten parts in the book (not noted by rings) covering diverse durations, from 10 years at the low end to 227 in the final, hurry-up part. Proulx walks us through stages in the denuding of North America’s woodlands, beginning in what is now Canada, then moving east and south to Maine, heading west to take in the Ohio Valley, then up to Michigan and touching briefly on southern and western woodlands. There are forays outside the continent as well, with looks at forestry practices in the Old World of Germany, a look-see at some of the magnificent old giants of New Zealand and a quick trip to take in the unimaginable diversity of the Amazon. She shows us how native peoples were driven off the land, pressured into accepting European ways and interbred, willingly and not, with the eastern invaders.
Proulx paints a bleak portrait of what life was like for those unlucky enough to make their living at the bottom of the logging world power structure. Death was a daily visitor, danger a constant companion, and discomfort and worse from wet, cold, fire, disease and buzzing pests offered persistent hardship. One of the lumber barons, a female head of a logging business family, demonstrates how the media was used to manipulate workers.
She urged editors to praise the manliness and toughness of shanty men, inculcating axmen with the belief that they could take extreme risks and withstand the most desperate conditions because they were heroic rugged fellows; the same sauce served settlers into the third generation, who believed they were “pioneers” and could outlast perils and adversities. Loggers and frontier settlers, she thought, would live on pride and belief in their own invulnerability instead of money.The European loggers’ approach to their work was not based, at least at first, on pure greed. There was that, of course, but there was also a considerable shortage of actual knowledge.
“How big is this forest?” asked Duquet in his whinging treble voice. He was scarcely bigger than a child.While the book is a long-term scan of the despoilation of landscape by the ignorant and avaricious, it is not entirely charcoal and birch. We know a lot more now about the worldwide supply of woodland than it was possible to know then. This is reflected in Proulx’s characters, who consider decisions made in the light of what was known at the time. This changes, as eventually it becomes known that the woodland is not mythically eternal. But she also points out that in certain areas there was indeed knowledge available of less horrific forestry practices used in other parts of the world that was largely ignored by the North American logging industry.
“It is the forest of the world. It is infinite. It twists around as a snake swallows its own tail and has no end and no beginning. No one has ever seen its farthest dimension.”
Even if everyone knew it was too late, we’d still keep on. There seems to be something in the human psyche that is unable to stop and step back and repair and fix things. It’s not willing to. It’s like we can’t shift easily. There’s just something in people. It’s the fatal flaw in humanity, I think. Once we start doing something, we keep on. - from the Globe and Mail articleThere is much in here about what one might call the American spirit, or more likely the entrepreneurial spirit, as there are plenty of representatives more than willing to undertake daring ventures, risking much and sometimes all in hopes of reaping a reward. But there are several sorts of enterprise on display. When a logging executive, newly arrived from Europe, sees a relative greasing the palm of a state official to ensure access to attractive parcels of forest, he remarks that the man had truly become an American. Strong women play key roles here. I was reminded in one case of Jeanne Anne McCullough from the The Son, another historical of eastern invaders and local devastation.
[image]
A Maine clearcut From the Forest Ecology Network
Proulx offers some beacons of hope (a light in the forest?) in her grim landscape. One European forester brings a notion of sustainability to the lumber business. We are thus exposed to extant theory of the era of how it might be possible to carve out a modus vivendi between humanity and nature. Not that this happens, of course, but the ideas are introduced. There are also sprigs of the family bush that find more interesting ways to think about the land than in terms of potential board feet. One dedicates his life to studying the diversity of the Amazon, another, well, several others, devote themselves to studying the complex interactions and interdependence of ecosystems.
And just as some seek to restore a sense of understanding, of sanity, to human interaction with natural resources, others feel the pull of their family, of their cultural roots, and seek those remaining stands of tribal knowledge and life.
Proulx tosses into each chapter bits about the time that allow us to place where we are, and what is happening Oh, that first came in there? Cool. And that began there, and then? She accomplishes this quite deftly, so that it does not at all come across as excess exposition. More like easily identifiable road signage that fits in nicely with its surroundings. Changes in fashion and foods mark the times as well. Part of the progression is a look at the step-wise changes in logging technology.
The downside of this book is that because it takes in such a long period, it is impossible to give enough time to any of the many wonderful characters that inhabit the space. Of course, had she attended to more of them fully, the book could easily have tripled in length. And there are certainly plenty of characters who will engage your interest and many episodes that will touch your heart, however brief the encounter. Proulx is a master of saying a lot with few words.
[image]
From the Forest Stewardship Council
There is a considerable body count here, as one might expect in a novel covering more than three centuries. Character A is dispatched so we can move on to characters B and C in the next step of social and economic development, or landscape rape, as the case may be. And they are carried off in diverse ways, some that were new to me. One unlucky fellow is tossed overboard during a cold-weather storm and is later found encased in ice. (a corpsesicle?) Infections, fires, starvation, a scalping, More than enough to fill an Edward Gorey couplet book or three (S is for Steve who got stuck in a tree, T is for Tom who was frozen at sea). A cough here or a pain there are likely, within a page or two to turn terminal. Hi, lovely to meet you. Where are you going? Oh nooooo! There is definitely a “They’ve killed Kenny” vibe that pops up with some regularity. I suspect Proulx had a bit of fun figuring out how to off so many of her tale-bearers. Not as much as Tim Dorsey, maybe, but still. Perhaps she uses Annie’s Spin-the-Death wheel. Ok, what are we gonna do to this one? Crushed by floating logs? shot by invaders? a surprise scalping? (could we call that skullduggery?) nifty house fire? forest conflagration? done in by unfriendly natives? infected cut? heart attack? contract assassination? Go ahead, give it a turn. (I think we’re gonna need a bigger wheel.) The list goes on.
these things happened to people. ... I mean, if you've got to kill off a character, you might as well do it with a bit of panache. - from the NPR interviewThere are some magical scenes of sylvan idylls as native people traverse remote lands to engage in a traditional hunt. And moments of beauty dapple the tale as those open to the glory of the wild allow the wonder all about them to find its way inside. But beyond that there is nothing enchanted about these woods, although a cleric at a residential school for Indians might bear a strong thematic resemblance to the woodland resident encountered by Hansel and Gretel. People are indeed transformed by their experiences in the forest. But, while it may be a place of opportunity, it is hardly a place of refuge. There are indeed dark scenes in this book that would seem suitable for the woodsy horrorlands of the Grimms. Plenty of two-legged troll-like monsters to go around, more than happy to engage in unspeakable acts of violence and cruelty. Were Tom Bombadil to have been found by the invaders, his home would soon have been burned to the ground, and he would have been lucky to escape with all four limbs, his head on his neck, and his scalp still covering its top. And were any ents to wander in from Middle Earth they would well recognize the sort of holocaust being practiced on their cousins. The enchantment has been driven from these woods, with sharp steel edges and fire. For North American forests after the arrival of Europeans, it is winter all the time and never Christmas.
In his seminal look at how human societies have gone to ruin, Collapse, Jared Diamond identifies one of the most important elements in furthering this destruction as national deforestation. While Proulx looks primarily at forests here, she is using them to stand in for a range of short-sighted activities that are ruining our home planet. Reliance on fossil fuels, for example, overpopulation, over-fishing, pollution. That is not in the book, per se, well, not much, but it is pretty clear that this is what her intended larger picture includes.
Film rights have been bought by National Geographic and are being developed by Scott Rudin. It seems to me that the best possible cinematic outcome for this work would be as a lengthy series of The Game of Thrones sort. This would allow the story to be told without racing off to the morgue every ten pages or so to clear a path for the next set of characters. There are many wonderful personalities in this book, and a more leisurely look at their experiences would be most welcome, and well supported by the material. Fingers are crossed.
Barkskins is a triumph. It cuts a swath through a large historical spanse, offering a brilliant and engaging look at how the traditional rape-and-plunder formula for resource extraction has scarred the landscape, ruined many of its inhabitants, destroyed endemic culture, and contributed to making our planet one that is choking on its own smoke, warming to the boiling point and threatening to extinguish those who have treated it so fecklessly. In folklore the forest may be a place where people are afraid, but today, and for many centuries now it has been clear that it is the forest that must shiver at the sight of man. Many have gone into the woods, but far too few have allowed the woods to go into them. In the Anthropocene we have become the darkness we feared.
Published - June 14, 2016
Review First Posted – August 26, 2016
==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below.
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Notes are private!
1
Aug 07, 2016
Aug 24, 2016
Aug 07, 2016
Hardcover
0062458191
9780062458193
0062458191
3.71
13,295
Jun 28, 2016
Jun 28, 2016
really liked it
…technology entrepreneurs are society’s chaos monkeys, pulling the plug on everything from taxi medallions (Uber) to traditional hotels (AirBnB) to
…technology entrepreneurs are society’s chaos monkeys, pulling the plug on everything from taxi medallions (Uber) to traditional hotels (AirBnB) to dating (Tinder). One industry after another is simply knocked out via venture-backed entrepreneurial daring and hastily shipped software. Silicon Valley is the zoo where the chaos monkeys are kept, and their numbers only grow in time. With the explosion of venture capital, there is no shortage of bananas to feed them. The question for society is whether it can survive these entrepreneurial chaos monkeys intact, and at what human cost.If you want to learn about sex you will get a lot more useful intel from a hooker than you would from a nun (hopefully). If you want to learn about what life is like in Silicon Valley, you would do well to let to someone who has done the deed and lived the life show you the way. Antonio Garcia Martinez is our Virgil through a dark landscape where every great fortune is founded on a great crime, where morality is not only violated, but where its very existence is not recognized, where millionaires are a dime a dozen and where any sort of social consciousness is kept nicely sedated, a place where greed is king, fast is worshipped to the exclusion of better, and death is always at the door.
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Antonio Garcia Martinez - from Money.cnn.com
Martinez has the cred to offer the tour. Having toiled as a quant at that paragon of virtue, Goldman Sachs, he eventually found life on The Street less than fully rewarding. He says that quants at Goldman were
mostly failed scientists like me who had sold out to the man and suddenly found themselves, after making it through years of advanced relativity and quantum mechanics, with a golf-club-wielding gorilla called a trader peering over their shoulder asking them where their risk report was. We were quantitative enablers, offering the new and shiny blessings of modern computation to the old business of buying and selling… quants were the eunuchs at the orgy. The fluffers on the porn set of high finance. We were the ever-present British guy in every Hollywood World War II film: there to add a touch of class and exotic sophistication, but not really consequential to the plot (except perhaps to conveniently take some bad guy’s bullet.)As someone with pretty high end analytical and programming skills, he saw (or says he saw, who knows?) the impending meltdown in the 2007 financial world, and opportunities in the new frontier out west, so traded The Street for The Valley, taking a chance on a job on the other coast.
The book follows Garcia’s chronological trail from startup to finish, from employee to entrepreneur, to buy-out target, to middle-manager at a monster Valley corporation to…well, you’ll see, if you read the book, or just Google the guy. It is a well-worn trail, but not for you or me, most likely. So a tour guide is definitely called for. And Martinez is nothing if not an informative and eager cicerone through what can be a very dark and sulphurous place. Of course, there is plenty of that brimstone stench emanating from the author, an indication of just how well he fit in.
anyone who claims the Valley is meritocratic is someone who has profited vastly from it via nonmeritocratic means like happenstance, membership in a privileged cohort, or some concealed act of skullduggery. Since fortune had never been on my side, and I had no privileged cohort to fall back on, skullduggery it would have to be.It does not seem like it was out of character for AGM to engage in a bit of back-stabbing, double-dealing, and multiple instances of self-serving justification for his various dark deeds. When he talks about his income and net worth, for instance, which would be a pretty sweet take for most of us, yet regarding it as subsistence level, one might be forgiven for gleefully imagining Martinez in his thirty-seven-foot sailboat having a very unfriendly encounter with a pod of large, angry, breaching sperm whales.
He offers an entertaining, if sometimes off-putting, alarming, even rage-inducing account of his experiences, offering many a word to the wise, or at least the ambitious, on how deals are made, how organizations are structured, and how to interpret some of the observables you might see. He is incisive and funny, and has a wicked way with words. I have added a selection of quotes as part of the EXTRA STUFF bit at the bottom of the review. You will definitely see what I mean. And he demonstrates quite a gift for selecting absolutely fabulous quotes to introduce most chapters.
Martinez covers the highs and lows of the struggle to rise up in The Valley. This includes the ABCs of doing a startup, getting funding, how to divide your equity for the most efficient operation, handling media to get the most buzz for your launch, researching the people you will be dealing with, and, if things go well, negotiating with the bigger blobs that want to absorb your company. One revelation was that acquisition of startups by the big players is just a higher-ticket form of HR recruiting.
There are worse ways of monetizing sociopathy than startups. If you know any better ways, I’m listening.For policy wonks, you will learn about the H-1B sort-of immigration program that brings thousand of foreign workers to American jobs in a form of high-end indentured servitude.
Martinez offers a peek inside the operations of Twitter and Facebook, which is either entertaining or depressing, depending. But every company has its own culture, and AGM has a keen eye for the differences, and an analyst’s talent for examining structure. His take on large corporations functioning like nation-states, to the point of exchanging what are essentially diplomats, adds definite texture to the notion of corporations as the trans-national entities they truly are. Worse, he points out not only how corporations are like religion, but how, in that, they are very like the cult-world of some communist nations.
There are a few things that made this less than an entirely effervescent read. First, while part of his story line was how he worked towards installing a particular form of ad-revenue generation at FB, the details tended to get in the way of the overall picture. Office politics are nothing new, even in this bubbly narrative. Second, while AGM is obviously an uber-bright guy, with a keen mind for some things, and a talent for writing, he comes across as (and probably is) someone with the soul of a slave-trader. If you can hold your nose at his unnecessary tales of sexual adventure, his willingness to endanger the lives of regular folks with childish antics, and his casual acquaintance with ethical standards, there is much to be gleaned in Chaos Monkeys. It is a look at the sausage factory, a peep-show of how
Review Posted - August 19, 2016
Publication date – June 28, 2016
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages
August 24, 2016 - A really interesting NY Times Magazine article on how FB has become a very large kahuna in the delivery of political ads - Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine - by John Hermann
==================================QUOTES
-----196 - humans, even at the rarified heights of the economic elite, are in truth scared, needy children playing at dress-up and pretending to be grown-ups.
-----324 - Here’s what people don’t understand about advertising. Facebook is simply a routing system, almost like an old-time telephone exchange, that delivers a message for money. The address on that message can be approximate (e.g. males aged thirty five in Ohio), or it can be specific (e.g., the person who just shopped for a specific pair of shoes on Zappos). But either way, Facebook didn’t make the match of user and messenger, and at most decides secondary things like how often the ad is seen in general, or which of two ads addressed to you is seen that particular instant. In this sense, ads on Facebook are no different from phone calls or emails.
-----355 - At their extremes, capitalism and communism become equivalent:
Endless toil motivated by lapidary ideals handed down by a revered and unquestioned leader, and put into practice by a leadership caste selected for its adherence to aforementioned principles, and richly rewarded for its willingness to grind whatever human grist the mill required?
Same in both
A (mostly) pliant media that flatters the existing system of production, framing it as the only such system possible?
Check!
Foot soldiers who sacrifice their families and personal lives for the efficient running of the system, and who view their sole human value through the prism of advancement within that system?
Welcome to the People’s Republic of Facebook.
But one can simply quit a job in capitalism, while from communism there is no escape, you’ll protest.
As for the actual ability to opt out under capitalism: look at Seattle or SF real estate prices, and the cost of a decent US education, and consider whether Amazon or Facebook employees could really opt out of their treadmill I’ve never known one who did, and I’ve known many.
Ask your average family providers, even those in a two-income family, whether they felt they could simply quit when they liked. They could barely get a few weeks off when they had a child, much less opt out. Switching jobs would amount to nothing more than changing the color of the shackles.
... The reality is that capitalism, communism and every other sweeping ideology feed off the same human drives—the founder’s or revolutionary’s narcissistic will to power, and the mass man’s desire to be part of something bigger than himself—even if with very different outcomes...yoking together the monomaniac’s twitchy urge and the follower’s hunger for a role in some captivating story.
-----359 – What was intriguing was how the unwealthy embraced the system, even if they weren’t the beneficiaries of this new social order we’d all joined. The junior hire was sucked along by enthusiasm and cluelessness, but the more senior employees at the middle-manager level knew the score. They knew that they lived one lifestyle, but their old-timer supervisor, who wasn’t necessarily more talented, lived very much another.
This was a textbook case of the Marxist argument that capitalists instill the values of the property owners into their managerial classes, while still keeping most of the fruits of labor, in order to make common cause against the exploited proletariat, even though manager and worker have more in common than either does with the senior leadership. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Jul 08, 2016
Jul 22, 2016
Jul 08, 2016
Hardcover
4.31
25,660
Jan 19, 2016
Jan 19, 2016
it was amazing
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. - Louis D. BrandeisIt h
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. - Louis D. BrandeisIt has been a consistent element of modern life in the USA that the public polls as more progressive than our elected officials. Given that in a democracy one would expect representatives to more or less reflect the views of the people who make up the population, and not speak in opposition to them, this seems surprising at first blush. Yes, we have our extremist elements, but by and large, the political position of the majority of the nation is a bit left of center. And yet, there has been a remarkable shift in the nation’s political direction. At least the political direction of the professional political class, elected officials, lawmakers, government executives, members of the judiciary, political operatives, lobbying organizations, interest groups. This pushing of the political gauge, this redefinition of what constitutes the center in American political thought, can only be understood by looking below the surface at actions that have been going on for decades, stealthily, effectively, dangerously.
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Jane Mayer - from WashingtonNote.com
There is a cancer on American democracy. It began with the accumulation of unimaginable amounts of capital in a few hands. It spread through targeted application of that money to the political process, under the fig leaf of philanthropy, and has metastasized into a life-threatening malignancy. It does this through the application of billions of dollars to stealth organizations, set up specifically to propagandize against government programs and policies that the uber-rich oppose. It does this through the application of billions of dollars to tar political candidates who are not with the program, regardless of party affiliation. It does this through application of billions of dollars to programs promoting the redrawing of voting districts to minimize and eliminate, where possible, the chances that candidates with any respect for democracy might be elected to public office. It does this by applying untold millions to target those who expose their secret doings, whether that means going after whistle blowers, within their own organizations, whose consciences have outgrown their need to earn a living, their fear for their personal safety, or following, investigating, smearing and attempting to intimidate journalists who dare to speak (and document) truth to power. The only question at this point is whether it is, even now, too late to prevent the oligarchs from amassing total power within the USA, and beyond. Is democracy already at Stage 4? If it is, it will be no problem identifying those guilty of democricide. Of course it will be impossible to prosecute them, as they have gained considerable control of the courts that were once upon a time a barrier to the dismissal of the national interest by the uber-wealthy. Consider, even now, how none of those responsible for the economic meltdown have seen the inside of a cell. The truth is becoming ever more stark, ever more frightening. There is no law, only power. And the big money group has the biggest army in town, having gained control of Congress, and the judiciary, and they are very much hoping to get their greedy paws on the presidency. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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Charles Koch - from USA Today
So how did this dire state of affairs come to be? Jane Mayer digs through history and shows us, stage by stage, how fanatical right wingers with vast sums, have moved from the political fringes to the mainstream, not by, themselves, shifting, but by using the gravity of their money to pull the mainstream closer to their far-right positions, positions erstwhile right-wing centerfold William F. Buckley once called ”Anarcho-Totalitarianism.”
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David Koch - from artnews.com
There are two parallel tracks in Dark Money. One looks at the mechanisms by which the oligarchs have converted their money into political power, and thus into even more money. And the other is the personalities behind this movement. Although calling it a movement may be offering more credit than is due. It is less a movement than a well planned putsch. Think of the dark-hearted spouse who feeds an ailing partner increasing doses of poison, evading suspicion, and then inheriting an entire estate.
There are plenty of billionaires on display in Dark Money, but the primary focus of the book is the brothers Koch, particularly David and the leader of the pack, Charles. We peek into the family history, which includes providing significant material support to Stalin and that other moustachioed European dictator as they ramped up for WW II. The brothers’ father, Fred, was so smitten with what he saw as the German work ethic that he hired a German nanny for his sons. Think Nurse Ratched, complete with white uniform and pointed cap. Freud would have had a heyday with this one. She made the boys defecate at the same time every day, and if they did not produce, it was cod-liver oil and enemas. And read them stories from sundry cruel German children’s books, including Der Struwwelpeter, which includes warnings about horrifying things that might happen to misbehaving children. These include being burned alive, starving to death for refusing to eat a particular kind of soup, and having ones thumbs cut off for the crime of sucking on them. It is the sole place in the book where one can actually feel sorry for these kids. Excited about the Nazi conquest of France, this anti-Poppins spit-spotted back to Germany to join in the celebrations. Papa Fred was not one to spare the rod, and physical abuse of his children was a significant feature of their less than joyful upbringing.
Frederick Koch the elder was certainly a dark force. Ever eager to bring the joys of fascism home, he was an ardent supporter of the fanatically and paranoiacly anti-Communist John Birch Society. (In 1978, he declared, “Our movement must destroy the prevalent statist paradigm.” - p3). Charles embraced the Birchers as an adult, but it may have been just to suck up to his old man and gain a favorable seat at the inheritance table. However, while his allegiance to the Birchers may have less than whole-hearted, he does appear to have incorporated much of what they stood for. Charles was much taken with a nutjob named Robert Lefevre, who established what he called The Freedom School. Notable among its teachings was a view that the robber barons were heroes. LeFevre was basically opposed to any form of government. Charles seems similarly inclined. The Brothers Koch have also had their own power plays within the family, dragging each other through lawsuits, and even threatening to out one brother suspected of being gay. Other members of the billionaire (mostly) boys club and their political fellow travelers come in for a look as well. Richard Devos, head of Amway, for example, and Richard Mellon Scaife. And there does seem a considerable proportion of these folks who suffer from significant mental illness and/or substance abuse issues. But the peregrinations of the Kochs is the primary focus on the personality side.
Of far greater interest is learning what these people want and how they have gone about building a massive machine to manufacture it.
In 1980 David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian Party line.
The party’s platform was an almost exact replica of the Freedom School’s radical curriculum. It called for the repeal of all campaign-finance laws and the abolition of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). It also favored the abolition of all government health-care programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. It attacked Social Security as “virtually bankrupt” and called for its abolition too. The Libertarians also opposed all income and corporate taxes, including capital gains taxes, and called for an end to the prosecution of tax evaders. The platform called for the abolition too of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, and the CIA, among other government agencies. It demanded the abolition of “any laws” impeding employment—by which it meant minimum wage and child labor laws. And it targeted public schools for abolition too, along with what it termed the “compulsory” education of children. The Libertarians wanted to get rid of the Food and Drug Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, seat belt laws, and all forms of welfare for the poorThis is what they want. And this is how they have gone about getting it.
[In the late 1980s, Richard Fink], after studying the Kochs’ political problems for six months, drew up a practical blueprint, ostensibly inspired by [right-wing icon, economist Friederich] Hayek’s model of production, that impressed Charles by going beyond where his own 1976 paper on the subject had left off. Called “The Structure of Social Change,” it approached the manufacture of political change like any other product. As Fink later described it in a talk, it laid out a three-phase takeover of American politics. The first phase required an “investment” in intellectuals whose ideas would serve as the “raw products.” The second required an investment in think tanks that would turn the ideas into marketable policies. And the third phase required the subsidization of “citizens” groups that would, along with “special interests” pressure elected officials to implement the policies. It was in essence a libertarian production line, waiting only to be bought, assembled and switched on.In the same way that those seeking to promote war use mercenaries, so that voters need not be concerned about Johnny becoming cannon fodder in some pointless foreign adventure, the warfare that is politics has likewise been outsourced. Prevented by law from contributing mass quantities to your favorite tax cutter? Not to worry. Just set up a non-profit foundation and have the foundation redirect your contributions to Astroturf political creations where foundation money is magically transformed into a paid-in-full army of attack ads. And this is legal? Democracy? We doan need no steenking democracy.
==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. You can find it in comment #41
[image] ...more
Notes are private!
1
Feb 05, 2016
Feb 10, 2016
Feb 05, 2016
ebook
081299342X
9780812993424
081299342X
4.22
7,531
Apr 03, 2014
Apr 08, 2014
it was amazing
There is no law, only power.The author looks at some of the details of how this is manifested in the USA, and offers, in addition, some insight in
There is no law, only power.The author looks at some of the details of how this is manifested in the USA, and offers, in addition, some insight into the psychology of criminal targeting. Matt Taibbi is widely known and respected as a hard-hitting author and financial reporter/editor for Rollingstone Magazine. His previous book, Griftopia, went into considerable detail about how debt is used by large corporations to ensnare customers, how commodity speculation screws us all, how some politicians are selling off public assets for their private political gain and how the vampire squid that is Goldman Sachs has been draining the fiscal blood from the planet. If you get off on seeing what is going on behind the curtains, this constitutes good times. Well, Taibbi is at it again.
He decided to look at how the legal system treats street crime and fiscal malfeasance. See? Even the terminology that pops to mind is a form of cover-up. If Al Capone stole, say, a million dollars from a bank there would be no question that he was a bank-robber and a dangerous felon. But if a corporate leach like, say, Barclay’s Bank, steals $10 billion, no one goes on the FBI’s Ten-Most-Wanted list. Newspaper headlines about a massive theft are remarkably absent, and ultimately, unlike the situation with Capone, no one goes to jail. (Yes, I know he went to jail for tax evasion, not bank-robbery, sheesh) The pension funds and other investors whose resources were stolen are left holding the very empty bag, with no Lone Ranger riding to the rescue. It is almost as if the prosecutors and regulators responsible for keeping the foxes from slaughtering the hens are wasted on heroin, nodding off in a corner while the predators go about their business.
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The author
At the other end of the economic spectrum, the police-judicial system seems to be zooming along on speed or Angel Dust. Taibbi spent some time with illegal immigrants, working class blacks, and even a white musician to get a good look at how the legal system operates at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.
We’re creating a dystopia, where the mania of the state isn’t secrecy or censorship but unfairness. Obsessed with success and wealth and despising failure and poverty, our society is systematically dividing the population into winners and losers, using institutions like the courts to speed the process. Winners get rich and get off. Losers go broke and go to jail. It isn’t just that some clever crook on Wall Street can steal a billion dollars and never see the inside of a courtroom; it’s that plus the fact that some black teenager a few miles away can go to jail just for standing on a street corner, that makes the whole picture complete.Taibbi offers plenty of examples.
Uptown, (generically, yes I do know that Wall Street is geographically downtown, geez) corporations routinely and knowingly engage in illegal behavior, confident that no one will ever go to jail, certainly not anyone who counts, and if the company is ever dragged into civil court for its crimes, the worst that will happen is that it will have to pay a fine, the cost of which will be borne by shareholders. Executives are never held personally liable, and any fines that may be levied against them are paid by the company. Corporations routinely hold their employees hostage in negotiations with regulators and prosecutors, threatening that if they are actually held to account for their crimes, thousands of innocent people will lose their jobs. This is the essence of the too-big-to-fail problem. When Arthur Andersen was actually prosecuted for its crimes, 27,000 people were put out of work. The political cost of such an impact is unacceptable to the politicians who run government and decide who gets charged with what. Yet, the regulators, prosecutors and legislators do nothing to reduce the size of these Godzilla-like corporations, leaving them free to roam the planet leaving a trail of smoking ruins in their wake.
On the other hand, it is stunning how much public investment there has been in stomping on the downtrodden. The welfare system, in particular, seems to feed on misery, doing its utmost to make needing help a scourge-worthy offense. If any of you have had to deal with this system, you will be familiar with horrendous lines, wait times, incompetent employees, contradictory requirements, byzantine regulations, and the complete surrender of your constitutional rights that is entailed when you are a poor individual in need. This is where all the moral hazard concern is focused, on whether a potential welfare recipient might have a pair of nice underwear in her drawer, or might somehow be trying to get over on the public welfare system. Somehow that moral hazard is not applied to organizations that borrow billions of public dollars at virtually no interest, then use those funds to engage in illegal activities. Nope, no moral hazard there.
Street crime has been dropping nationally for some time, but governments federal and local have been ramping up their wide net approach to filling jails and local coffers. Turns out arresting people willy-nilly is good business for local governments, regardless of the merits of the arrests. And apparently it offers career advancement for those who net the most fish. And if millions of people are irreparably harmed by this Orwellian practice, well tough titty. Who cares about those people anyway? They don’t write large checks to people running for office.
Taibbi looks at collateral consequences. When corporations are accused of anything they hide behind the collateral damage actual prosecution might cause, and battalions of lawyers. Overwhelmed, under-resourced and probably chicken-shit prosecutors advance straight to deals that not only entail no jail time for perpetrators of massive crimes, but not even an admission of guilt. When some poor schmo is gathered up in a street sweep, even if there is no actual justification, that person can spend months in jail, merely for being accused. The person’s family can be thrown out of their home. The person can be made ineligible for a whole raft of potential public benefits. Parental rights can be lost. But these collateral consequences are never considered when the person charged is poor, and particularly when that person is a minority.
It is a truism that life is not fair. But fairness should at least be a goal. We should at least try to apply the law equally to all people, certainly to all citizens. And yet we are headed in the opposite direction. Rule of Law has become a cynical joke. When punishment is routinely applied only to the powerless, and the powerful continue their illegal practices with no effective punishment, the law is no longer merely an ass, it is a trained attack dog, a weapon used by society to torment those it disapproves of.
That’s what nobody gets, that the two approaches to justice may individually make a kind of sense, but side by side, they’re a dystopia, where common city courts become factories for turning poor people into prisoners, while federal prosecutors on the white-collar beat turn into overpriced garbage men, who behind closed doors quietly dispose of the sins of the rich for a fee.As more and more folks are being pushed over the side of the middle class to swim the waters of working class America, more and more folks are coming into contact with the legal horrors that swim those waters.
Taibbi is always very successful at pointing out the flaws in our systems, the inequities, the underhandedness, the corruption. He is extremely gifted at boosting his readers’ blood-pressure. I do wish he had devoted some more effort to offering suggestions as to how things might be nudged back toward a less toxic level of unfairness. He does so, in bits here and there, by noting, for example, the radically dimorphic funding allotments for white-collar prosecutors versus, say, immigration enforcement. But there really needed to be more of that. A tea-kettle opening, at least, through which we might direct some of that screaming steam. But Taibbi has indeed succeeded in pointing out the big-picture gross unfairness that permeates our nation. And if he allows himself to vent his rage at times, making not-wholly supported assumptions, stretching his canvas a bit, I suppose it is forgivable. Sometimes he goes too far, such as when he suggests that unfairness is an aim of our system. It may work out that way, but I do not accept that there is intentional unfairness at play here.
The American people are notoriously passive, having dined for a very long time on the empty calories of so-called personal responsibility. (Less filling! Tastes great!) People, it is not your fault that you got laid off. It is not your fault that the company your bank sold your mortgage to is foreclosing on you even though your payments are up to date. They are probably using feloniously false signatures to do the deed. It is not your fault that the local constabulary finds it convenient to take you in for being in the wrong place at any time, just so that some boys in blue can make their daily quotas. It is not your fault that corporate profits keep rising while salaries stagnate, or worse.
At some point you should begin to get really pissed. Divide will certainly fuel that justified rage. It seems sometimes that contemporary life, for many in the dwindling middle and working classes, is a series of frustrations designed to test our commitment to non-violence. Hopefully, by the time that pressure builds up, there will emerge some way to vent it other than in pointless street rioting or guillotine-fueled mass destruction. But at the rate we are going I would not bet on it. This is not a class war that is going on out there. War presumes multiple combatants. What is happening now in America is class enslavement. And it is not gonna get any better any time soon.
Any legal system that allows the biggest thieves in history to walk off scot free is a joke and does not deserve our respect. This is not to say that there are not good people in government, people who truly want to do right for all of us. And it is not to say that the system is incapable of locking up seriously bad people. And sometimes legislators and government executives do manage to get something positive, something reasonable, something fair, done. But the wins are few and far between, while the losses accumulate and accelerate. So long as the super-villains in finance and transnational corporations continue to loot the planet with impunity, it remains the truth. There is no law, only power.
=============================EXTRA STUFF
NY Times Magazine article about Why Only One Top Banker Went to Jail for the Financial Crisis
A NY Times op-ed by Thomas B. Edsall, Supreme Injustice, on how the top court is taking sides in the class war
A May 7, 2014 article from the Dealbook section of the NY Times on prosecution of big financial crime, Seeking Tough Justice, but Settling for Empty Promises
An August 26, 2014 NY Times Op Ed by Thomas Edsall,The Expanding World of Poverty Capitalism, notes the increasing privatization of not only prisons, but public fine and fee administration, all with virtually no oversight. Guess who suffers?
In this August 26, 2014 opinion piece in the NY Times, How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops Erwin Cheminsky argues for recognition of what anyone who is paying attention should know. There is no law, only power.
Money in elections is the rotten core of the American electoral apple. Happily residing in that core is the Federal Elections Commission. This September 2, 2014 NY Times op-ed offers a fix for that particular problem. Some de-worming is in order.
Following the non-indictment in Ferguson (when was the last time you heard of a prosecutor offering a grand jury exculpatory evidence?) the notion of division is back on the front page - NY Times - 11/26/14 - After Ferguson Announcement, a Racial Divide Remains Over Views of Justice
A fine example of how the law tilts against the poor in a Dickensian version of debtors' prison - Can't Pay Your Fines? Your License Could Be Taken
Here is another way in which our legal system criminalizes being poor - Skip Child Support. Go to Jail. Lose Job. Repeat. - by Frances Robles and Shaila Dewan - April 19, 2015
Sued Over Old Debt, and Blocked From Suing Back - By Jessica Sinver-Greenberg and Michael Corkery - NY Times - December 22, 2015
in his op-ed piece, Is It a Crime to Be Poor?, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof looks at the growing trend of, effectively, a revival of debtors' prisons in the USA - June 11, 2016
3/8/2018 - Buzzfeed - an in depth report on how secret NYPD files show that many NYC police guilty of serious crimes are left unpunished - dark stuff and not all that surprising - BUSTED - by Kendall Taggert and Mike Hayes
5/20/2018 - NY Times - A chilling article on how unscrupulous landlords abuse the housing court system in NYC to push poor and working class people out of their apartments, so they can jack rents up to astronomical amounts - Unsheltered: The Eviction Machine Churning Through New York City - by Kim Barker, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Grace Ashford and Sarah Cohen
==============================THE AUTHOR
Links to the author’s Twitter and FB pages
I could paste a gazillion Taibbi refs here, (not all of them complimentary) but if you are interested in more than the few listed here, the Google machine will happily spit up scads when you enter the author’s name.
Matt at Rollingstone (he left there in February 2014)
Matt’s pre-2011 blog
Matt’s prior book, Griftopia ...more
Notes are private!
1
Apr 30, 2014
May 07, 2014
Apr 30, 2014
Hardcover
0062218018
9780062218018
0062218018
3.50
162
Jan 01, 2013
Mar 04, 2014
it was ok
Anne Thompson is an on-online Hollywood reporter. Aware that the what’s-happening-right-now world of just-in-time digital journalism (or most print jo
Anne Thompson is an on-online Hollywood reporter. Aware that the what’s-happening-right-now world of just-in-time digital journalism (or most print journalism for that matter) does not allow for much reflection, she was looking for a way to tell her story of change in the movie business. Thompson was inspired by William Goldman’s The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway, which covered one year in the theater and, in The $11 Billion Year, applies that formula to the business of tinsel town.
[image]
The author
While Thompson’s book hardly qualifies as a rom-com there are definite elements of affection. She headed into the ‘wood some time back, working as a film columnist and editor at Variety. She hails from that other big cinematic locale in the US, New York City. Clearly she carried a bit of home with her, as she remains a Yankees fan. She worked for Entertainment Weekly, Hollywood Reporter, and other entertainment media as well. She began her blog “Thompson on Hollywood” in 2007, which conjures for me an image of the writer in a saddle atop the sign (not gonna go with cowgirl here), and heightens the disappointment I feel at my lack of expertise with Photoshop. It is not nearly a bio-pic either, as Thompson keeps herself pretty much in the background. Nor is it likely that this book will begin a franchise or constitute a blockbuster and be a tentpole to support her other endeavors, but hopefully it will find an audience.
The $11 billion of the title refers to film income for one year, and that’s just domestic. Sounds like H’wood is doing nicely, able to put food on the dining room table, and maybe a few lines on the coffee table. In fact, according to Thompson
[image]
She says that Hollywood studios, increasingly profit centers in Blob-like corporate behemoths, are narrowing the range of product they are willing to put out, going increasingly for the formulaic, the tried-and-true, and thus are pushing talent into other venues, TV, internet, VOD, Netflix, et al. This represents the real core of the book, the migration from a studio-centric film world to a more dispersed digital environment.
[image]
This is not necessarily a terrible thing, as technological changes have put the means of production into the hands of more and more potential film-makers, and a broad range of potential venues has arisen to provide places where these films can be sold and seen. One interesting bit of history Thompson looks at is the rationale for and the transition from film (1999) to digital (2012), and how the diverse parties came to an agreement.
[image]
She tracks the annual festival migrations, from Sundance in January to the SXSW in Spring, Cannes in May and the Fall festivals in Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York, stopping at other annual events along the way. At Cinemacon, filmmakers show their upcoming product to theater owners. And fan-boy nerds rule at Comic-Con. Part of this is to track the progress, or lack of progress of films through this gauntlet, whether the end result is to gain notice for awards season or merely to get some distribution at all and make back production costs. You will get at least a feel, and sometimes more, for each of these festivals.
She writes in some detail about a handful of films whose titles are familiar and others you may not have heard of. Attention is paid as well to gender issues in the industry, with a focus on Kathryn Bigelow. The book offers for your consideration a look at some of the politicking that goes on before and into Oscar season, and some bits of info on AMPAS (The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) membership, which is about 6,000 strong, and is by invitation only. You will pick up some terminology too, and a few more abbreviations to add to your alphabet soup. “IP”, for example has nothing to do with an initial public something or other, but refers to “Intellectual Property,” the from part of an Oscar nomination for Adapted Screenplay. You will find that NATO can be something other than a plot device in a war flick. (National Association of Theater Owners). MG is not a car or a medication dosage but a Minimum Guarantee, a cash advance payable to the producer upon delivery of the completed film in exchange for exclusive rights to distribute a film in a sales territory. One last term, “four-quadrant” refers to a film that can attract viewers from diverse demographics, including the young, the old, male and female. There are plenty more expressions and letter combinations to take in.
As with any survey-type book, there is always the problem of wanting to know more about this or that element.
Thompson’s prose is fluid, as easy to read as a film treatment . If you are a fan of the cinema (Yes, yes, me, me) there is plenty of scene stealing material here, and a bit of comic relief, but the end result is a fascinating documentary look at how the whole business has changed, a long tracking shot of the running of the festivals, a bit of close-up on Oscar season machinations, and some previews of what might lie ahead. While I could not say for certain that The $11 Billion Year would walk away with a statue for best book about the business of Hollywood, not havingscreened read other candidates, there is no denying that it has earned at least a nomination. And that’s a wrap. Let’s do lunch. I have a project I’d like to tell you about. I’ll have my people call your people. Okay?
Publication date – March 4, 2014
Review first posted - 2/7/2014
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s blog, Twitter and FB pages. Seriously, if you want to keep up with things Hollywood, Thompson’s blog is a can’t miss, four-quadrant, blockbuster product.
Thompson mentions Emma Fitzpatrick’s wonderful send-up of Anne Hathaway in a satirical version of I Dreamed a Dream . If you have not yet seen this you absolutely must.
A nice profile of the author
Thompson’s top ten films of 2012, the year covered in the book ...more
[image]
The author
While Thompson’s book hardly qualifies as a rom-com there are definite elements of affection. She headed into the ‘wood some time back, working as a film columnist and editor at Variety. She hails from that other big cinematic locale in the US, New York City. Clearly she carried a bit of home with her, as she remains a Yankees fan. She worked for Entertainment Weekly, Hollywood Reporter, and other entertainment media as well. She began her blog “Thompson on Hollywood” in 2007, which conjures for me an image of the writer in a saddle atop the sign (not gonna go with cowgirl here), and heightens the disappointment I feel at my lack of expertise with Photoshop. It is not nearly a bio-pic either, as Thompson keeps herself pretty much in the background. Nor is it likely that this book will begin a franchise or constitute a blockbuster and be a tentpole to support her other endeavors, but hopefully it will find an audience.
The $11 billion of the title refers to film income for one year, and that’s just domestic. Sounds like H’wood is doing nicely, able to put food on the dining room table, and maybe a few lines on the coffee table. In fact, according to Thompson
Hollywood is like Harold Lloyd in Safety Last, hanging desperately to the hands of that old (silent) clock, which is moving inevitably toward future time.
[image]
She says that Hollywood studios, increasingly profit centers in Blob-like corporate behemoths, are narrowing the range of product they are willing to put out, going increasingly for the formulaic, the tried-and-true, and thus are pushing talent into other venues, TV, internet, VOD, Netflix, et al. This represents the real core of the book, the migration from a studio-centric film world to a more dispersed digital environment.
[image]
This is not necessarily a terrible thing, as technological changes have put the means of production into the hands of more and more potential film-makers, and a broad range of potential venues has arisen to provide places where these films can be sold and seen. One interesting bit of history Thompson looks at is the rationale for and the transition from film (1999) to digital (2012), and how the diverse parties came to an agreement.
[image]
She tracks the annual festival migrations, from Sundance in January to the SXSW in Spring, Cannes in May and the Fall festivals in Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York, stopping at other annual events along the way. At Cinemacon, filmmakers show their upcoming product to theater owners. And fan-boy nerds rule at Comic-Con. Part of this is to track the progress, or lack of progress of films through this gauntlet, whether the end result is to gain notice for awards season or merely to get some distribution at all and make back production costs. You will get at least a feel, and sometimes more, for each of these festivals.
She writes in some detail about a handful of films whose titles are familiar and others you may not have heard of. Attention is paid as well to gender issues in the industry, with a focus on Kathryn Bigelow. The book offers for your consideration a look at some of the politicking that goes on before and into Oscar season, and some bits of info on AMPAS (The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) membership, which is about 6,000 strong, and is by invitation only. You will pick up some terminology too, and a few more abbreviations to add to your alphabet soup. “IP”, for example has nothing to do with an initial public something or other, but refers to “Intellectual Property,” the from part of an Oscar nomination for Adapted Screenplay. You will find that NATO can be something other than a plot device in a war flick. (National Association of Theater Owners). MG is not a car or a medication dosage but a Minimum Guarantee, a cash advance payable to the producer upon delivery of the completed film in exchange for exclusive rights to distribute a film in a sales territory. One last term, “four-quadrant” refers to a film that can attract viewers from diverse demographics, including the young, the old, male and female. There are plenty more expressions and letter combinations to take in.
As with any survey-type book, there is always the problem of wanting to know more about this or that element.
Thompson’s prose is fluid, as easy to read as a film treatment . If you are a fan of the cinema (Yes, yes, me, me) there is plenty of scene stealing material here, and a bit of comic relief, but the end result is a fascinating documentary look at how the whole business has changed, a long tracking shot of the running of the festivals, a bit of close-up on Oscar season machinations, and some previews of what might lie ahead. While I could not say for certain that The $11 Billion Year would walk away with a statue for best book about the business of Hollywood, not having
Publication date – March 4, 2014
Review first posted - 2/7/2014
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s blog, Twitter and FB pages. Seriously, if you want to keep up with things Hollywood, Thompson’s blog is a can’t miss, four-quadrant, blockbuster product.
Thompson mentions Emma Fitzpatrick’s wonderful send-up of Anne Hathaway in a satirical version of I Dreamed a Dream . If you have not yet seen this you absolutely must.
A nice profile of the author
Thompson’s top ten films of 2012, the year covered in the book ...more
Notes are private!
1
not set
Jan 23, 2014
Feb 02, 2014
Hardcover
1451642326
9781451642322
1451642326
3.94
836
Aug 14, 2012
Aug 14, 2012
really liked it
I’m pretty tired of this depression we’ve been having. Unemployment that hit 12% in 2009 and kept rising, states from ocean to ocean laying off tens,
I’m pretty tired of this depression we’ve been having. Unemployment that hit 12% in 2009 and kept rising, states from ocean to ocean laying off tens, hundreds of thousands of public employees each. No more auto industry, and vast swaths of the Midwest losing jobs and industrial capacity faster than Mitt Romney changes policy positions. And things have not been looking up either. The federal government is investing nothing in alternate energy R&D, leaving such things to private enterprise, and doing nothing to change the pencil-and-paper recordkeeping that characterizes our national medical system. In fact, the federal government invested nothing in the future or the present, and left to the states the cost of repairing increasingly decrepit roads and bridges. Reduced demand in America for imported products has had a harsh impact overseas as well, depressing foreign economies. And with governments in powerful nations like Germany demanding austerity as a response to diminished national revenues, the international downturn picked up speed and we are now heading towards a global economic conflagration.
What? You don’t remember?
I know, I know. Times are tough. And they have been tough for a while, but envisioning what the world might have looked like in the absence of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act should give one pause. We are not talking Recession, major or minor. We are talking capital-D Depression, which is exactly where the US economy was headed in the final quarter of 2008. And whether it is great or mediocre, enduring another one of those SOBs is not something any sane person wants to do.
So what does one do? If, as most economists contend, the problem in the late Bush economy, the result of the housing bubble and certain Wall Street criminality, was one of lax demand, and if the private economy was in no position or mood to ramp up demand, then the only player capable of doing so was the federal government. Both Democratic and Republican administrations, true Keynesians, have a history of providing the demand that the market has not always generated on its own. Been there, done that. It works. That’s why they keep doing it. This time the problem was bigger. It was with the intention of preventing a second Great Depression that the Obama Administration proposed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA, an acronym only a pirate could love. But there was more than simple economic stimulus involved. The administration wanted to change some long term trends, in health care, energy and education, as well.
Amazingly, within a month of taking office, the Obama Administration managed to get through Congress the largest stimulus bill in the nation’s history. It’s nice to have a large enough majority in the Senate that only a few of the opposition need be persuaded in order to make a bill a law. National media, more than happy to carry water for the party of “Just Say No,” took great delight in trying to dig up dirt on what became an $800 billion program. And when that did not satisfy, as there was rather little dirt to be dug, they made things up. A consensus was forming in the DC bubble, as soon as the program came into being, that it was a complete boondoggle.
In 2010, a reporter for Time magazine, Michael Grunwald, was in Florida working on a book:
For one, vast sums were directed toward ravaged state governments to keep them from laying off hundreds of thousands of state employees. You know the sort, public leaches like teachers, cops, firefighters, sanitation workers, and many thousands more.
Hundreds of billions were allocated to tax cuts. And the money was not sent out in a lump sum, as had been done in the past. The reason is that when folks get such a windfall, they tend to save all or some of it. Of course it is politically advantageous to send out the money in a lump sum, with the president’s face on it, but while that may boost the standing of the president, it is not the most effective way to get that money into the economy. The intention with the ARRA was to get money flowing through the economy ASAP and the best way to do that was to put it in people’s pockets right away. Thus the reduction was largely in the form of cutting payroll taxes. It may not have been all that obvious to most folks, but there was an extra $10 or $20 dollars following you home every week. And that money was spent, as anticipated, accomplishing the aim of the program.
How many people did the federal government hire? Practically none. No CCC here. But the stimulus prevented a bad situation from becoming catastrophic. Yes, any unemployment sucks, below 5% since early 2016, but in the absence of the stimulus it would have been much worse. And that leads us to another reason why this stimulus was perceived so differently from, say, the New Deal.
Back in the 1930s the economy had gone nicely to hell during the Republican Hoover administration, whose plan for getting the nation out of a depression was to tell people to suck it up. A few years of this particular form of heartlessness and folks were ready for action, any action. Thus when FDR began stirring up the alphabet pot, the American people were highly receptive. In late 2008, the economy had gone completely off the rails. How’s that tax-cuttin’ and de-regulation stuff workin’ out for ya? But the economy had not yet reached its potential bottom by the time the new administration took office. So there was not yet public knowledge of just how bad things were and thus no large natural constituency for a huge stimulus. BTW, the largest stimulus proposed during the 2008 campaign was by one Willard Mitt Romney, who seems to have had his Road to Damascus moment after the fact, discovering that the light of stimulus spending was too blinding for his delicate sensibilities.
Because economic report numbers lag behind the reality, the new administration did not have all the data they needed when they took office to make a fully informed judgment of just how bad things were. Their analysts were under the impression that economic growth (an oxymoron here) was at negative four percent. As in the economy was not only not growing, it was shrinking. Pretty bad, huh? Except that that was not even half right. It turned out that the economy was shrinking at a rate of almost nine percent in the final quarter of 2008. That is Depression territory.
It is pretty significant, if you are trying to sell a program, that you have your baseline correct, to know how quickly your ship is sinking. If, say, you figure your program will boost the economy by four percent a year, so that it is no longer sinking, and it does just that, well, you have succeeded rather nicely. But it you propose a program that will improve the national economy by four percent and it is in fact plunging at a rate of nine percent, even if you meet your expectations, the economy will still be seen to be going glug, glug, glug, and your program, even if it is completely successful, will be seen as being all wet. Oh and toss in the fact that the opposition party, in order to keep the administration from appearing to have any success, did all they could to scuttle attempts to keep the economy afloat. They must have learned this from ghetto kids back in the days of the crack epidemic, who would set fires and then throw rocks at the firefighters who arrived to put the blazes out.
The Administration allowed out an economic report using the negative 4 % number and thus promised to keep unemployment under 8%, but with the real problem being much larger, 8% was no longer a realistic target. That did not stop the reality-free Obama opponents from repeating the 8% number daily, even though they knew better.
The final piece here is, I think, the most interesting. And that is the Reinvestment “R.” Grunwald focuses considerable attention on the green technology mega-boost supported by the Recovery Act. The act included $90 billion for sundry green energy initiatives, from funding insulation programs for homes, to esoteric research in algae-based biofuels, to investing in battery research, which has helped cut the cost of electric vehicle batteries in half, to replacing over 400,000 streetlamps with energy-sipping LEDs. The Quarterly-P&L-focus of American corporations has resulted in the USA falling further and further behind other nations, which have been investing in a green future. China, for example, recently announced a plan to invest over $300 billion over five years. Germany and Spain are world leaders in developing and manufacturing solar technology. For the USA to remain viable we need to make major strides in this area. In the absence of the Recovery Act, we would be sinking into the darkness of increasing dependence on foreign suppliers. Improving our energy standing in the world is, ultimately, a matter of national security. While it is an amazing thing that the ARRA helped prevent a depression in 21st century America, what the lasting legacy of the act is likely to be is the new industries that it created, in green power generation, electrofuels, batteries, and other advanced green tech that will generate hundreds of thousands of domestic jobs and significantly reduce our dependence on foreign resources. In addition, this public support for the nascent industry has attracted hundred of billions in private investment. One of the few new entities created by the Recovery Act was the ARPA-E section of the Department of Energy. You may recall that ARPA was the government entity that came up with the idea of the internet, among other things. ARPA-E is a version designed to find and promote advances in energy science and technology. Extremely cool stuff.
American medical record-keeping is a joke. The world has been moving ahead with digitizing medical records, while the USA is still in the paper and pencil era. Considerable Recovery Act money was put into moving 21st century record-keeping technology into the medical world.
Transportation was another area addressed, with money being allocated more to improving existing infrastructure than in building new roads and bridges. Although not all the work promoted sexy tech like high speed rail, a lot of it is promoting higher-speed transportation, in particular removing impediments to the movement of rail freight. Not sexy, but ultimately very, very smart and effective. Grunwald tells some tales about the hope of the administration to develop a high-speed system somewhere in the country. Maybe in Florida, maybe in the Chicago to St Louis route, maybe LA to San Francisco. That effort makes for fascinating and illuminating reading.
There is more in the book, particularly on the education pillar of the Act, but I will leave that for you to find for yourself.
Grunwald has offered a fairly detailed look at how the Recovery Act was put together, how it was passed (sausage was made), how the right did everything in their power to scuttle it, and how it has been treated by the media. (scorned by the DC echo chamber). Most importantly, he looked at the facts on the ground, at what the Act accomplished (stopped a Depression, among other things) and how it promises to change our future. (creation of new green technology industries, improved energy efficiency, reduction in reliance on foreign oil). Was the Recovery Act imperfect? Sure. Should it have been larger? Yep. Was it politically possible for it to have been larger? Probably not.
I have some issues with Grunwald. There is a seam in the Democratic Party, probably a product of the Clintonian third way clique, of which Obama is a member in good standing, that unions are fair game. Take the charter school movement, please. Somehow it has evolved into a privatization model, in which most, if not all teachers, who work for such entities are no longer allowed to be union members. Instead of working out deals with unions to form partnerships with movements to try new educational models, teachers unions have been perceived as dead-enders, resisting progressive change at every turn, implicitly comparing them to white southerners resisting integration. Grunwald seems to be a subscriber to that notion. His index, for example, skips straight from “American Economic Recovery Plan” to American Jobs Act,” somehow skipping “The American Federation of Teachers”; he skips from “Tea Party” to “Technological,” without an intervening “teacher.” It also skips from “National Economic Council” to “National Endowment for the Arts” with nary an NEA (National Educational Alliance) in sight. You can find a reference under unions, teachers, but with so many other players being named and incorporated it seems more than an oversight that organizations representing teachers are so poorly noted.
He also takes issue with those in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party who expressed disappointment that Obama seemed to be a lousy negotiator because he appeared to always be starting not from a position of demanding pie-in-the-sky, but from a position of having moved to the center before even sitting down with the other side. Really? Grunwald sees no merit to that view? It seems to me and plenty of other progressives that in at least some instances, it would have served the nation well if our national leader had demanded the moon before settling for what he eventually got, which was pretty good, but in no way lunar. You don’t start negotiating in the middle. You wind up there. Starting in the middle only guarantees that the final outcome will wind up being to the right of center. Even if that is not the position a leader wants to take in closed-door sessions with legislators, it most certainly is one he should be taking with the American people. Bloody hell, man, use that bully pulpit, embarrass some of those bastards. Sometimes the American people listen. Sometimes they pressure their representatives. It seems that this approach was never considered, to the detriment of us all. Grunwald castigating even the notion of such an approach, echoing administration folks like Rahm Emmanuel, does a disservice to those of us who hoped for more. If the president only feels the wind from one direction it is pretty clear which way he will tack.
Spleen has been properly vented.
So, bottom line, if you like basing your views on major public policies on facts instead of talking head bloviation and innuendo, this is a book for you. Grunwald is an excellent writer, so do not shy away, fearing that you will be overwhelmed by charts and graphs, or by very dry discourse. This is an exciting read, informative and insightful. Although Joe Biden may have been referring to the Affordable Health Care Act when he uttered the words, he could have justifiably said them about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, “This is a big fucking deal.” Yes it was, and still is. A big piece of the hope and change we voted for. You would do well to invest some time in reading Grunwald’s book. The understanding you gain will pay dividends for a long time.
LINKS
This is a must read item – A Slate interview with Grunwald - a nifty summary, in effect, of the book
The website for the act itself
A piece by Jeff Weintraub looking at right wing complaints that the Recovery Act was unsuccessful ...more
What? You don’t remember?
I know, I know. Times are tough. And they have been tough for a while, but envisioning what the world might have looked like in the absence of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act should give one pause. We are not talking Recession, major or minor. We are talking capital-D Depression, which is exactly where the US economy was headed in the final quarter of 2008. And whether it is great or mediocre, enduring another one of those SOBs is not something any sane person wants to do.
So what does one do? If, as most economists contend, the problem in the late Bush economy, the result of the housing bubble and certain Wall Street criminality, was one of lax demand, and if the private economy was in no position or mood to ramp up demand, then the only player capable of doing so was the federal government. Both Democratic and Republican administrations, true Keynesians, have a history of providing the demand that the market has not always generated on its own. Been there, done that. It works. That’s why they keep doing it. This time the problem was bigger. It was with the intention of preventing a second Great Depression that the Obama Administration proposed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA, an acronym only a pirate could love. But there was more than simple economic stimulus involved. The administration wanted to change some long term trends, in health care, energy and education, as well.
Amazingly, within a month of taking office, the Obama Administration managed to get through Congress the largest stimulus bill in the nation’s history. It’s nice to have a large enough majority in the Senate that only a few of the opposition need be persuaded in order to make a bill a law. National media, more than happy to carry water for the party of “Just Say No,” took great delight in trying to dig up dirt on what became an $800 billion program. And when that did not satisfy, as there was rather little dirt to be dug, they made things up. A consensus was forming in the DC bubble, as soon as the program came into being, that it was a complete boondoggle.
In 2010, a reporter for Time magazine, Michael Grunwald, was in Florida working on a book:
I was only vaguely aware of the Beltway consensus that President Obama’s stimulus was an $800 billion joke. But because I write a lot about the environment, I was very aware that the stimulus included about $90 billion for clean energy, which was astonishing, because the feds were only spending a few billion dollars a year before. The stimulus was pouring unprecedented funding into wind, solar, and other renewables; energy efficiency in every form; advanced biofuels; electric vehicles; a smarter grid; cleaner coal; and factories to make all that green stuff in the U.S. It was clearly a huge deal. And it got me curious about what else was in the stimulus.So what was different about this one? A few things.
For one, vast sums were directed toward ravaged state governments to keep them from laying off hundreds of thousands of state employees. You know the sort, public leaches like teachers, cops, firefighters, sanitation workers, and many thousands more.
Hundreds of billions were allocated to tax cuts. And the money was not sent out in a lump sum, as had been done in the past. The reason is that when folks get such a windfall, they tend to save all or some of it. Of course it is politically advantageous to send out the money in a lump sum, with the president’s face on it, but while that may boost the standing of the president, it is not the most effective way to get that money into the economy. The intention with the ARRA was to get money flowing through the economy ASAP and the best way to do that was to put it in people’s pockets right away. Thus the reduction was largely in the form of cutting payroll taxes. It may not have been all that obvious to most folks, but there was an extra $10 or $20 dollars following you home every week. And that money was spent, as anticipated, accomplishing the aim of the program.
How many people did the federal government hire? Practically none. No CCC here. But the stimulus prevented a bad situation from becoming catastrophic. Yes, any unemployment sucks, below 5% since early 2016, but in the absence of the stimulus it would have been much worse. And that leads us to another reason why this stimulus was perceived so differently from, say, the New Deal.
Back in the 1930s the economy had gone nicely to hell during the Republican Hoover administration, whose plan for getting the nation out of a depression was to tell people to suck it up. A few years of this particular form of heartlessness and folks were ready for action, any action. Thus when FDR began stirring up the alphabet pot, the American people were highly receptive. In late 2008, the economy had gone completely off the rails. How’s that tax-cuttin’ and de-regulation stuff workin’ out for ya? But the economy had not yet reached its potential bottom by the time the new administration took office. So there was not yet public knowledge of just how bad things were and thus no large natural constituency for a huge stimulus. BTW, the largest stimulus proposed during the 2008 campaign was by one Willard Mitt Romney, who seems to have had his Road to Damascus moment after the fact, discovering that the light of stimulus spending was too blinding for his delicate sensibilities.
Because economic report numbers lag behind the reality, the new administration did not have all the data they needed when they took office to make a fully informed judgment of just how bad things were. Their analysts were under the impression that economic growth (an oxymoron here) was at negative four percent. As in the economy was not only not growing, it was shrinking. Pretty bad, huh? Except that that was not even half right. It turned out that the economy was shrinking at a rate of almost nine percent in the final quarter of 2008. That is Depression territory.
It is pretty significant, if you are trying to sell a program, that you have your baseline correct, to know how quickly your ship is sinking. If, say, you figure your program will boost the economy by four percent a year, so that it is no longer sinking, and it does just that, well, you have succeeded rather nicely. But it you propose a program that will improve the national economy by four percent and it is in fact plunging at a rate of nine percent, even if you meet your expectations, the economy will still be seen to be going glug, glug, glug, and your program, even if it is completely successful, will be seen as being all wet. Oh and toss in the fact that the opposition party, in order to keep the administration from appearing to have any success, did all they could to scuttle attempts to keep the economy afloat. They must have learned this from ghetto kids back in the days of the crack epidemic, who would set fires and then throw rocks at the firefighters who arrived to put the blazes out.
The Administration allowed out an economic report using the negative 4 % number and thus promised to keep unemployment under 8%, but with the real problem being much larger, 8% was no longer a realistic target. That did not stop the reality-free Obama opponents from repeating the 8% number daily, even though they knew better.
The final piece here is, I think, the most interesting. And that is the Reinvestment “R.” Grunwald focuses considerable attention on the green technology mega-boost supported by the Recovery Act. The act included $90 billion for sundry green energy initiatives, from funding insulation programs for homes, to esoteric research in algae-based biofuels, to investing in battery research, which has helped cut the cost of electric vehicle batteries in half, to replacing over 400,000 streetlamps with energy-sipping LEDs. The Quarterly-P&L-focus of American corporations has resulted in the USA falling further and further behind other nations, which have been investing in a green future. China, for example, recently announced a plan to invest over $300 billion over five years. Germany and Spain are world leaders in developing and manufacturing solar technology. For the USA to remain viable we need to make major strides in this area. In the absence of the Recovery Act, we would be sinking into the darkness of increasing dependence on foreign suppliers. Improving our energy standing in the world is, ultimately, a matter of national security. While it is an amazing thing that the ARRA helped prevent a depression in 21st century America, what the lasting legacy of the act is likely to be is the new industries that it created, in green power generation, electrofuels, batteries, and other advanced green tech that will generate hundreds of thousands of domestic jobs and significantly reduce our dependence on foreign resources. In addition, this public support for the nascent industry has attracted hundred of billions in private investment. One of the few new entities created by the Recovery Act was the ARPA-E section of the Department of Energy. You may recall that ARPA was the government entity that came up with the idea of the internet, among other things. ARPA-E is a version designed to find and promote advances in energy science and technology. Extremely cool stuff.
American medical record-keeping is a joke. The world has been moving ahead with digitizing medical records, while the USA is still in the paper and pencil era. Considerable Recovery Act money was put into moving 21st century record-keeping technology into the medical world.
Transportation was another area addressed, with money being allocated more to improving existing infrastructure than in building new roads and bridges. Although not all the work promoted sexy tech like high speed rail, a lot of it is promoting higher-speed transportation, in particular removing impediments to the movement of rail freight. Not sexy, but ultimately very, very smart and effective. Grunwald tells some tales about the hope of the administration to develop a high-speed system somewhere in the country. Maybe in Florida, maybe in the Chicago to St Louis route, maybe LA to San Francisco. That effort makes for fascinating and illuminating reading.
There is more in the book, particularly on the education pillar of the Act, but I will leave that for you to find for yourself.
Grunwald has offered a fairly detailed look at how the Recovery Act was put together, how it was passed (sausage was made), how the right did everything in their power to scuttle it, and how it has been treated by the media. (scorned by the DC echo chamber). Most importantly, he looked at the facts on the ground, at what the Act accomplished (stopped a Depression, among other things) and how it promises to change our future. (creation of new green technology industries, improved energy efficiency, reduction in reliance on foreign oil). Was the Recovery Act imperfect? Sure. Should it have been larger? Yep. Was it politically possible for it to have been larger? Probably not.
I have some issues with Grunwald. There is a seam in the Democratic Party, probably a product of the Clintonian third way clique, of which Obama is a member in good standing, that unions are fair game. Take the charter school movement, please. Somehow it has evolved into a privatization model, in which most, if not all teachers, who work for such entities are no longer allowed to be union members. Instead of working out deals with unions to form partnerships with movements to try new educational models, teachers unions have been perceived as dead-enders, resisting progressive change at every turn, implicitly comparing them to white southerners resisting integration. Grunwald seems to be a subscriber to that notion. His index, for example, skips straight from “American Economic Recovery Plan” to American Jobs Act,” somehow skipping “The American Federation of Teachers”; he skips from “Tea Party” to “Technological,” without an intervening “teacher.” It also skips from “National Economic Council” to “National Endowment for the Arts” with nary an NEA (National Educational Alliance) in sight. You can find a reference under unions, teachers, but with so many other players being named and incorporated it seems more than an oversight that organizations representing teachers are so poorly noted.
He also takes issue with those in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party who expressed disappointment that Obama seemed to be a lousy negotiator because he appeared to always be starting not from a position of demanding pie-in-the-sky, but from a position of having moved to the center before even sitting down with the other side. Really? Grunwald sees no merit to that view? It seems to me and plenty of other progressives that in at least some instances, it would have served the nation well if our national leader had demanded the moon before settling for what he eventually got, which was pretty good, but in no way lunar. You don’t start negotiating in the middle. You wind up there. Starting in the middle only guarantees that the final outcome will wind up being to the right of center. Even if that is not the position a leader wants to take in closed-door sessions with legislators, it most certainly is one he should be taking with the American people. Bloody hell, man, use that bully pulpit, embarrass some of those bastards. Sometimes the American people listen. Sometimes they pressure their representatives. It seems that this approach was never considered, to the detriment of us all. Grunwald castigating even the notion of such an approach, echoing administration folks like Rahm Emmanuel, does a disservice to those of us who hoped for more. If the president only feels the wind from one direction it is pretty clear which way he will tack.
Spleen has been properly vented.
So, bottom line, if you like basing your views on major public policies on facts instead of talking head bloviation and innuendo, this is a book for you. Grunwald is an excellent writer, so do not shy away, fearing that you will be overwhelmed by charts and graphs, or by very dry discourse. This is an exciting read, informative and insightful. Although Joe Biden may have been referring to the Affordable Health Care Act when he uttered the words, he could have justifiably said them about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, “This is a big fucking deal.” Yes it was, and still is. A big piece of the hope and change we voted for. You would do well to invest some time in reading Grunwald’s book. The understanding you gain will pay dividends for a long time.
LINKS
This is a must read item – A Slate interview with Grunwald - a nifty summary, in effect, of the book
The website for the act itself
A piece by Jeff Weintraub looking at right wing complaints that the Recovery Act was unsuccessful ...more
Notes are private!
1
Sep 09, 2012
Sep 27, 2012
Sep 09, 2012
Hardcover
0393088774
9780393088779
0393088774
3.94
4,823
Jan 01, 2012
Apr 28, 2012
it was amazing
Is what we are living through in the USA at present (2012) a recession, or something worse? And if so what can be done about it? In his latest outstan
Is what we are living through in the USA at present (2012) a recession, or something worse? And if so what can be done about it? In his latest outstanding book, Paul Krugman argues persuasively that we are indeed in another depression. Not as horrible as the one labeled “Great” but bad enough. He examines how we got to this state, what might be done to get the nation out of this depression, and considers the difficulties entailed with getting that done.
I cannot promise that after reading this book, the world of economics will become entirely clear, but you will definitely have a better big-picture handle on where we stand, economically, what should be considered to alleviate the problem, where resistance to sanity resides and why. You will learn about liquidity traps, Minsky moments, repos (nothing to do, unfortunately, with one of my favorite films, Repo Man), expenditure cascades, bond vigilantes and why it sucks to be on the euro when your economy is in the crapper. Krugman writes for a general audience, so don’t be intimidated by this jolt of jargon. He makes it all very understandable. Likewise the few charts that are included here are pretty simple, clear and illustrative. No arcane, Greek-symbol math to contend with.
Krugman is econ-Moses, trying his best to lead us all out of this mindless economic desert and into the promised land of prosperity. (Sorry, no burning Bushes atop that mountain) But those with a monopoly on golden calves seem happy to keep things as they are, and even some who might be able to tear themselves away from the odd Mammon-worship-fest, can’t handle admitting that they led us into this godforsaken land in the first place, and so refuse not only to ask for directions, but even to listen when they are offered. I picture the classic middle-schooler with hands over his ear, eyes tightly shut and yelling LALALALALALALALALA to drown out any incoming responsibility or truth.
Bottom line is that we are suffering from a crisis of low demand. Businesses are sitting on their assets. Yet, in order to get some forward momentum some actor needs to get out there and spend. The only entity capable of doing this is the federal government. The impact will be worth it, as investment now, whether in current employment or in rebuilding/improving infrastructure, will yield benefits long beyond the paychecks that will be generated in the short term. Krugman does the math, explains it all, and offers recommendations for how we can fix it.
However depressing the state of our economy might be, Krugman offers a map to get us to the Promised Land, if only leaders who count can get their heads out of the sand.
Links
A very informative Wall Street Journal article on Minsky and his moment
...more
I cannot promise that after reading this book, the world of economics will become entirely clear, but you will definitely have a better big-picture handle on where we stand, economically, what should be considered to alleviate the problem, where resistance to sanity resides and why. You will learn about liquidity traps, Minsky moments, repos (nothing to do, unfortunately, with one of my favorite films, Repo Man), expenditure cascades, bond vigilantes and why it sucks to be on the euro when your economy is in the crapper. Krugman writes for a general audience, so don’t be intimidated by this jolt of jargon. He makes it all very understandable. Likewise the few charts that are included here are pretty simple, clear and illustrative. No arcane, Greek-symbol math to contend with.
Krugman is econ-Moses, trying his best to lead us all out of this mindless economic desert and into the promised land of prosperity. (Sorry, no burning Bushes atop that mountain) But those with a monopoly on golden calves seem happy to keep things as they are, and even some who might be able to tear themselves away from the odd Mammon-worship-fest, can’t handle admitting that they led us into this godforsaken land in the first place, and so refuse not only to ask for directions, but even to listen when they are offered. I picture the classic middle-schooler with hands over his ear, eyes tightly shut and yelling LALALALALALALALALA to drown out any incoming responsibility or truth.
Bottom line is that we are suffering from a crisis of low demand. Businesses are sitting on their assets. Yet, in order to get some forward momentum some actor needs to get out there and spend. The only entity capable of doing this is the federal government. The impact will be worth it, as investment now, whether in current employment or in rebuilding/improving infrastructure, will yield benefits long beyond the paychecks that will be generated in the short term. Krugman does the math, explains it all, and offers recommendations for how we can fix it.
However depressing the state of our economy might be, Krugman offers a map to get us to the Promised Land, if only leaders who count can get their heads out of the sand.
Links
A very informative Wall Street Journal article on Minsky and his moment
...more
Notes are private!
1
Jun 20, 2012
Jun 27, 2012
Jun 20, 2012
Hardcover
0062088289
9780062088284
0062088289
3.35
226
Jan 01, 2012
Jun 12, 2012
liked it
UPDATED - 7/19/13 - see item at bottom
We are all doomed, I say, doomed! The only question is which event or combination of events will get us first.
Jo UPDATED - 7/19/13 - see item at bottom
We are all doomed, I say, doomed! The only question is which event or combination of events will get us first.
John Casti offers an analysis of contemporary trends that focuses on an increase in institutional complexity. One result of this is that major upheavals, the X-events of the book’s title, occur. He is separating these out from natural events over which we have little control. Things like incoming asteroids, the God-based stuff (euphemism alert) of that “stuff happens” phrase.
I found his analysis intriguing, and in many instances it was compelling. But at times I felt that he was like a desperate Prince Charming trying to stuff over-sized stepsister piggies into his delicate solo Manolo. Sometimes complexity is not at issue, but the usual suspects, like Malthusian pressure, class warfare, greed, bloody greed, short-sightedness, garden variety corruption and stupidity, are.
Take for example the problem of potable water supply
He is on firmer ground when addressing complexity in telecommunications. But even there, is it primarily complexity that is problematic or the dark urges of our species to seek treasure and carnage in whatever environments we exist in or create? Think computer viruses. The complexity of extant systems is certainly a factor in allowing these creatures a new form of feces to fling, but it is not the complexity of contemporary systems that is at fault, only the dark side of humanity.
In the financial world, Casti decries growing national indebtedness. Yet he manages not to mention, in the case of the USA, that our national treasure has been systematically looted since 1980 by the monied class as they reduce their own taxes, while indulging in military spending in an unprecedented, and generationally long spree on technology and questionable wars. This is not complexity. This is corruption on a massive scale, classic class warfare, in which only one side is armed. I guess that makes it more like class slaughter. The changes in class distribution of wealth in the USA will happily support the contention. Nothing complex about that.
Some of his concerns seem more appropriate for X-files rather than X-events. The noosphere is not about to wake up and broadcast, “I’m sorry, Dave” (and for fans of League of Gentlemen, I would enter an ecstatic state were HAL to speak in the voice of Papa Lazarou) in hundreds of languages. On the other hand petroleum reserves are finite.
I know I may sound ticked off by what I see as Casti’s fixation. It is possible to over-analyze systems in trying to develop a kind of doomsday Theory of Everything, a la physics. But I did rather enjoy the book. Forgetting the overlay of complexity, Casti has offered up a list of serious concerns. The potential (or inevitable in some cases) problems he addresses are public policy issues that merit our attention. We should be concerned about our future water supply, about the expected 40-year exhaustion of crude oil supplies, about the vulnerability of our power grid and so on. For highlighting many of these concerns this book is compelling reading.
PS – If human-generated X-events are not enough to fill you up, consider for dessert a serving of spotted…no, not that…sun.
=======================UPDATE - Yes we are doomed
August 12, 2012 - More cheery news about drought from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as reported in the NY Times - Ya ain't seen nuthin' yet.
February 16, 2013 - Although Casti's book focuses on man-made miseries, the recent impact of an incoming in Russia seems relevant. Here is a piece or two from the NY Times on that.
July 19, 2013 - In my travels, I happened across an article in the April issue of The Journal of Cultural Anthropology (yes, just a part of my usual daily reading) titled Disaster: Integration. The author is Kim Fortun, a Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (and not the unacknowledged love child of Bib Fortuna and Kim Novak). The piece includes quotes from this review and also quotes from some Massachusetts Representative named Markey. Who? And here we were thinking the likeliest external notice we would receive for our GR contributions would be an appreciation of potty jokes in the Journal of Jejune Jesting.
...more
We are all doomed, I say, doomed! The only question is which event or combination of events will get us first.
Jo UPDATED - 7/19/13 - see item at bottom
We are all doomed, I say, doomed! The only question is which event or combination of events will get us first.
John Casti offers an analysis of contemporary trends that focuses on an increase in institutional complexity. One result of this is that major upheavals, the X-events of the book’s title, occur. He is separating these out from natural events over which we have little control. Things like incoming asteroids, the God-based stuff (euphemism alert) of that “stuff happens” phrase.
X-events of the human—rather than nature-caused—variety are the result of too little understanding chasing too much complexity in our human systems. The X-event, be it a political revolution, a crash of the Internet, or the collapse of a civilization, is human nature’s way of reducing a complexity overload that has become unsustainable.Casti identifies eleven different, but inter-related, areas in which such X-events might occur. In each, he identifies the potential for catastrophic failure and considers what that might look like. These include a long-term failure of the internet, a breakdown in the global food supply system, EMPs reducing electronics to pulsing doorstops, weird destruction by exotic particles, nukes gone wild, exhaustion of the global oil supply, global pandemics, failure of the power grid and/or water supply, Battlestar Galactica, or if you prefer, Terminator-level takeover by intelligent artificial life and for dessert, global deflation and general economic collapse. What’s not to like?
I found his analysis intriguing, and in many instances it was compelling. But at times I felt that he was like a desperate Prince Charming trying to stuff over-sized stepsister piggies into his delicate solo Manolo. Sometimes complexity is not at issue, but the usual suspects, like Malthusian pressure, class warfare, greed, bloody greed, short-sightedness, garden variety corruption and stupidity, are.
Take for example the problem of potable water supply
Overpumping of underground water aquifers in many countries, including China, India, and the United States, had artificially inflated food production in the past few decades. For example, Saudi Arabia was self-sufficient in wheat harvesting for over twenty years. Now the wheat harvest there is likely to disappear entirely over the next couple of years due to a lack of underground water to irrigate cropsReally? These guys did not see this coming? Helluh-oh, deh-sert. What were you thinking? This is not a matter of complexity but of world-class arrogance and stupidity. Cash uber alles is not a viable program for securing the future of much of anything other than collapse and probably angering members of the underclass.
He is on firmer ground when addressing complexity in telecommunications. But even there, is it primarily complexity that is problematic or the dark urges of our species to seek treasure and carnage in whatever environments we exist in or create? Think computer viruses. The complexity of extant systems is certainly a factor in allowing these creatures a new form of feces to fling, but it is not the complexity of contemporary systems that is at fault, only the dark side of humanity.
In the financial world, Casti decries growing national indebtedness. Yet he manages not to mention, in the case of the USA, that our national treasure has been systematically looted since 1980 by the monied class as they reduce their own taxes, while indulging in military spending in an unprecedented, and generationally long spree on technology and questionable wars. This is not complexity. This is corruption on a massive scale, classic class warfare, in which only one side is armed. I guess that makes it more like class slaughter. The changes in class distribution of wealth in the USA will happily support the contention. Nothing complex about that.
Some of his concerns seem more appropriate for X-files rather than X-events. The noosphere is not about to wake up and broadcast, “I’m sorry, Dave” (and for fans of League of Gentlemen, I would enter an ecstatic state were HAL to speak in the voice of Papa Lazarou) in hundreds of languages. On the other hand petroleum reserves are finite.
I know I may sound ticked off by what I see as Casti’s fixation. It is possible to over-analyze systems in trying to develop a kind of doomsday Theory of Everything, a la physics. But I did rather enjoy the book. Forgetting the overlay of complexity, Casti has offered up a list of serious concerns. The potential (or inevitable in some cases) problems he addresses are public policy issues that merit our attention. We should be concerned about our future water supply, about the expected 40-year exhaustion of crude oil supplies, about the vulnerability of our power grid and so on. For highlighting many of these concerns this book is compelling reading.
PS – If human-generated X-events are not enough to fill you up, consider for dessert a serving of spotted…no, not that…sun.
=======================UPDATE - Yes we are doomed
August 12, 2012 - More cheery news about drought from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as reported in the NY Times - Ya ain't seen nuthin' yet.
February 16, 2013 - Although Casti's book focuses on man-made miseries, the recent impact of an incoming in Russia seems relevant. Here is a piece or two from the NY Times on that.
July 19, 2013 - In my travels, I happened across an article in the April issue of The Journal of Cultural Anthropology (yes, just a part of my usual daily reading) titled Disaster: Integration. The author is Kim Fortun, a Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (and not the unacknowledged love child of Bib Fortuna and Kim Novak). The piece includes quotes from this review and also quotes from some Massachusetts Representative named Markey. Who? And here we were thinking the likeliest external notice we would receive for our GR contributions would be an appreciation of potty jokes in the Journal of Jejune Jesting.
...more
Notes are private!
1
May 21, 2012
May 30, 2012
May 21, 2012
Hardcover
0062107992
9780062107992
0062107992
3.95
349
Jan 01, 2012
Mar 20, 2012
it was amazing
Covering the period from the mid-term elections of 2010 to 2012, David Corn offers readers a look inside the Obama Administration through a host of ba
Covering the period from the mid-term elections of 2010 to 2012, David Corn offers readers a look inside the Obama Administration through a host of battles. The overall takeaway is that Obama seriously wants to be the adult in the room in DC and tries his best to fulfill that mission. There is a lot of difference between campaigning, in which you can say whatever you like, stake out whatever positions you prefer and not have to temper your rhetoric to accommodate opposition, and actually having to run the federal government. Once in office, your opponents, who might not be able to keep you from talking, can prevent you from enacting your desired legislation unless you play ball.
[image]
David Corn
I am of the opinion that the president had staked out initial negotiating positions that were not nearly far enough to the left. At least propose single-payer. At least propose a public option. While Corn’s look into the administration thought process may not go far enough to remove that dissatisfaction it does offer very concrete reasons why Obama chose to do what he did in all the battles explored in this book. The item that stands out the most for me is how Obama was willing to take on considerable political risk, and go against the advice of many of his advisors, in deciding to go ahead with the Osama Bin-Laden mission. Major guts there. Hardly the no-brainer that it was portrayed as being by Mitt Romney. Also, how he approached the Libya uprising, seeing to the core of what was needed tactically and having the ability to maneuver the international politics towards that end. Obama is a much tougher and slicker character and deft political player than I had realized.
Corn looks at several of the budget negotiations the administration entered into with Republican leadership. One thing that stood out very clearly is how much control John Boehner did not have over his barrel of Tasmanian-Devil Tea-Baggers. Whatever deal he made with the administration he was constantly back-tracking, denying he had said what he had said and basically proving to be an ineffective leader. Of course he always had to worry about House Whip, and full time reptile, Eric Cantor, trying his best to insert sharp objects between his ribs from the rear. It is remarkable that any deals were made with the Republicans at all.
There are plenty of instances in which reasonable people might ask simple questions
Regarding an administration decision to scale back public statements critical of Republican opposition during budget negotiations:
It is clear that when two parties at the negotiation table do not share core values there is trouble. Here, the president was determined to see that the American economic recovery suffered as few hits as possible, while the Tea-Bagger-driven Republicans would be more than happy to cause global economic chaos in order to get their way.
So one comes away impressed, maybe less dissatisfied when one sees what the president is up against. It certainly increases our appreciation for the damage that might be done to our nation by the barbarians at the gate. The prospect of putting in charge of the country the same drivers who landed the national vehicle in a ditch is daunting enough. Now we have to worry about a party heavy with ideological Thelma and Louises, unwilling to wait for a bathtub drowning, who are champing at the bit to drive the country off a cliff. It is a lucky thing that we have an administration that can steer the ship of state away from such peril, and knows when to step on the brakes when needed. This is an enlightening read.
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s Twitter and FB pages
Corn’s articles in Mother Jones ...more
[image]
David Corn
I am of the opinion that the president had staked out initial negotiating positions that were not nearly far enough to the left. At least propose single-payer. At least propose a public option. While Corn’s look into the administration thought process may not go far enough to remove that dissatisfaction it does offer very concrete reasons why Obama chose to do what he did in all the battles explored in this book. The item that stands out the most for me is how Obama was willing to take on considerable political risk, and go against the advice of many of his advisors, in deciding to go ahead with the Osama Bin-Laden mission. Major guts there. Hardly the no-brainer that it was portrayed as being by Mitt Romney. Also, how he approached the Libya uprising, seeing to the core of what was needed tactically and having the ability to maneuver the international politics towards that end. Obama is a much tougher and slicker character and deft political player than I had realized.
Corn looks at several of the budget negotiations the administration entered into with Republican leadership. One thing that stood out very clearly is how much control John Boehner did not have over his barrel of Tasmanian-Devil Tea-Baggers. Whatever deal he made with the administration he was constantly back-tracking, denying he had said what he had said and basically proving to be an ineffective leader. Of course he always had to worry about House Whip, and full time reptile, Eric Cantor, trying his best to insert sharp objects between his ribs from the rear. It is remarkable that any deals were made with the Republicans at all.
There are plenty of instances in which reasonable people might ask simple questions
…had Obama allowed the Republicans to turn the national debate into nothing other than a debt seminar? “We can be faulted for this,” Axelrod said later. “Nobody anticipated the degree of Republican obstreperousness and implacability. We knew there would be strident voices, but the degree to which that tail would wag the dog—we didn’t assume.”Really? Don’t you guys read the papers, watch TV, check out internet sites? Yes, the administration most definitely can be faulted. They paid no attention at all to the thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, and maybe even millions of us who were sending the White House e-mails wondering why he could not see the obvious. This is a prime example of how politicos slip inside the DC bubble and fail to appreciate what is going on in the world beyond.
Regarding an administration decision to scale back public statements critical of Republican opposition during budget negotiations:
Axelrod subsequently explained. “The decision was made to go out and talk about jobs and the economy and allow the negotiations to proceed until the president needed to intervene.” And as Robert Gibbs put it, “It’s difficult to put out your right hand to shake their hands and then strike them with your left hand.“Why the hell not? The other side has no such compunctions. They never stopped accusing Obama of being an alien, never stopped claiming he was a secret Muslim, never stopped accusing him of being an anti-American, even a terrorist. Are they so completely lily-livered that they can dish it out but they can’t take it? Well, yes they clearly are, given their hysterical reaction to any criticism, but why should Democrats give these nut-job hypocrites an inch? They did not exactly soften their stance at the negotiating table because Obama kept the gloves on. The arena of public opinion counts, and it was, and remains important for progressives to not allow the fear-mongering and divisive hatred of the right to blare unchallenged. Bad call, Mister President.
It is clear that when two parties at the negotiation table do not share core values there is trouble. Here, the president was determined to see that the American economic recovery suffered as few hits as possible, while the Tea-Bagger-driven Republicans would be more than happy to cause global economic chaos in order to get their way.
So one comes away impressed, maybe less dissatisfied when one sees what the president is up against. It certainly increases our appreciation for the damage that might be done to our nation by the barbarians at the gate. The prospect of putting in charge of the country the same drivers who landed the national vehicle in a ditch is daunting enough. Now we have to worry about a party heavy with ideological Thelma and Louises, unwilling to wait for a bathtub drowning, who are champing at the bit to drive the country off a cliff. It is a lucky thing that we have an administration that can steer the ship of state away from such peril, and knows when to step on the brakes when needed. This is an enlightening read.
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s Twitter and FB pages
Corn’s articles in Mother Jones ...more
Notes are private!
1
May 19, 2012
May 19, 2012
May 19, 2012
Hardcover
0062092553
9780062092557
0062092553
3.77
2,434
Sep 20, 2011
Sep 20, 2011
None
Notes are private!
1
Nov 02, 2011
Dec 22, 2011
Nov 02, 2011
Kindle Edition
0393081818
9780393081817
0393081818
3.90
45,995
Oct 03, 2011
Oct 03, 2011
really liked it
Checking in with the whiz kids who predicted the Wall Street crash that he wrote about in The Big Short, his excellent look at the latest Wall Street
Checking in with the whiz kids who predicted the Wall Street crash that he wrote about in The Big Short, his excellent look at the latest Wall Street meltdown, Michael Lewis finds that the next big bust will be on the nation-state scale. His construct for analyzing how nations deal with the economic environment of the 21st century is to imagine each of these countries in a dark room in which piles of money were dumped, the easy credit available in the first chunk of the 21st century. What would the different countries do, based on presumed national characteristics?
[image]
Michael Lewis - image from The Guardian - photo by Cody Perkins
The answer, obviously, varies from nation to nation. In the case of Ireland they used the money to buy up property, Irish property, and sold it to each other for increasing prices, generating a nifty real estate bubble that eventually burst. In Greece they used their largesse to continue what, in Lewis’s description, seems a corrupt, kleptocratic society in which the national cookie jar needed a much larger mouth to accommodate all the hands that were yanking out the koulourakia. Lewis looks at Iceland, Germany and the USA as well, each offering its own response to the sudden availability of great gobs of cash. His national portraits are very interesting, and at times amusing. It does seem a simplistic way to judge the behavior of entire nations though. Particularly when the problems that resulted were created, for the most part, not by working men and women, but financial high fliers, gambling with other people’s money. Perhaps a view of that smaller group might have been more illuminating.
OK, so suspend disbelief for a bit and go along for the ride. What Lewis finds is disturbing. It is only a matter of time before nations begin defaulting on their national debts. The likely result of such a failure would be a ratcheting up of interest rates in the defaulting nation, which would impair the nation’s ability to pay off the initial debt as investment would grind to a halt, reducing the government’s ability to cover its costs, thus increasing its need for debt, and so on in a lovely death spiral. In the USA there is a very specific way in which the debt crisis will find its way into your life and mine. That was, for me, the most interesting piece of the book. That Lewis got to hang with Ah-nold makes for a fun read, but his analysis is where the real beefcake is.
How did all this come to be? There are several reasons for this international debacle, but much of it comes down to simple greed. It may be comforting to know that the USA still exports something, even if it is a form of corruption. For example, that bastion of righteousness, Goldman-Sachs, or as Matt Taibbi prefers to call it, the Vampire Squid, did the Greek government the favor, for a stunning fee, of offering advice on how to lie to the European Community about the state of their economic affairs.
In a larger view, Wall Street monetization of assets, toxic and otherwise, took the western world by storm. Perfect. Not only are American companies drowning in lie-based securities, now investors and nations across the world are able to go glug-glug in the same waters. And in most cases, financial institutions (think AIG and Wall Street investment houses), and banks, private, public, or some combination, manage to externalize their debt, their greed and stupidity onto the national taxpayer and somehow keep themselves afloat. Thus working people in Ireland are being soaked to pay back loans made by German banks, among others, caught up in the mindless feeding frenzy. Why should the taxpayers of Ireland be stuck with that bill? American taxpayers have been hit with hundreds of billions of dollars in cost to prop up corrupt financial predators, while the hyenas continue to treat themselves to astounding salaries, bonuses, and stock options. Similar externalizations of cost have become standard operating practice, as governments step in to keep afloat too-big-to-fail corporate entities, often under the guise of keeping nations above water.
A significant point is made here about the fuzzing of the line between public and private indebtedness. As governments trend towards privatizing public assets they are increasingly on the hook for private debt, by guaranteeing private loans, or buying toxic assets. One result is a gross understatement of how much debt governments are truly responsible for, since not all the indebtedness shows up on the public ledgers. The numbers are staggering, and frightening. Big changes are needed, but all Lewis offers at the end is a feeble optimism that we (in the USA) will figure something out.
Boomerang is a fascinating read, rich with information, range and insight. It could have used a bit more analysis, and seems to refer to, without naming, a significant current trend, namely that governments are becoming little more than mechanisms through which private corporations can shift their indebtedness and failure onto the backs of taxpayers while keeping their profits nicely private. There is plenty of personal responsibility to go around. Yes, there are people who have taken on more debt than they can manage, bought more house than they could afford, but as often as not, they were misled when applying for their mortgages. (A subject that seems outside the purview of this book is that in the face of skyrocketing prices for medical care, housing, and energy, among other things, millions of people have taken on more and more debt, not to live large, but merely to be able to pay their bills) But the major culprits here are not middle class people trying to achieve or sustain a decent standard of living. Lewis, on the other hand, sees much greater responsibility lying with middle class folks, in tandem with big speculators.
The answer to so much of this is simple and clear. More fairness in our tax structure and regulation of our financial system that takes account of the street’s ability to go out of its way to create unregulated products and corporate entities.
In the United States the wealthy began kicking up the rate at which they were looting the nation in 1980. It has only gotten worse in the years since. How about we start by returning, more or less, to the tax rates extant before the Reaganauts took power? Even if we forget about trying to get back the money the rich stole from the rest of us since then, the increased fairness of the tax burden would make a huge difference in government’s ability to cover costs, including the cost of interest on the national debt that the looters incurred, and saddled us with, in order to feed their greed. How about the long-hairs at the top taking a haircut instead of them continually trying to trim the newly-bald middle class and making the lives of the poor even more intolerable.
A whole new financial economy has come into existence in the last few decades. And those making big bucks from it have paid off our legislators to keep those areas away from government regulation. It is the absence of such regulation that has allowed the madness to go on. Clearly there are more than just banks involved in the world of finance these days, and the regulators (and also the legislators that provide the laws that regulators enforce, or somehow manage not to) need to get serious about keeping up with the latest attempts to evade scrutiny. It might be nice if the financial regulatory agencies were run by people other than former Wall Street CEOs or their fellow travelers. And it is beyond ironic, into the level of evil, that those who push laws limiting government’s ability to raise revenue, and who rail against the horrors of regulation, are the very ones who gripe about the ineffectiveness of the governments they choose to starve.
Lewis doesn’t venture into such territory, but he does successfully give us a big-picture inkling of what lies ahead. As with civilization, the Greeks led the way. Will the rest of the world, the Western world anyway, follow in their steps?
==============================EXTRA STUFF
I would heartily recommend for any who have not yet read it, Naomi Klein’s great book, The Shock Doctrine. What is happening in Europe will make much more sense after you read that.
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man , by John Perkins, details how international debt is consciously used as a way of virtually enslaving entire countries.
Another outstanding analytical book is Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia , which looks closely at more domestic economic abominations
Gary Rivlin’s Broke USA shows how predatory lending practices affect our lives here at home.
November 9, 2011 - New York Times article: Crisis in Italy Deepens, as Bond Yields Hit Record Highs
January 18, 2012 - a Nation of Change article that looks into banks hoarding cheap public subsidy money while governments face increasing costs as a result of supporting private financial entities - Bailouts + Downgrades = Austerity and Pain
January 24, 2012 - Krugman on what is happening in Greece vis a vis German push for reducing the public sphere - Rooted in Politics, Austerity Worsens the Greek Tragedy
February 18, 2012 - a NY Times article offering a harbinger of things to come -
Budget Woes Prompt Erosion of Public Jobs, With a Heavy Toll in Silicon Valley
April 19, 2012 - TARP on steroids for the EEU furthers the demise of democracy - The European Stabilization Mechanism, Or How the Goldman Vampire Squid Just Captured Europe
May 17, 2012 - Relating to how Lewis sees local government as a major point at which austerity-driven service cutbacks and worse will be inflicted on regular folks, here is a Barbara Ehrenreich article on how local governments and the private sector are squeezing the poor. Dickens would find 21st Century America far too familiar.
June 18, 2012 - Joe Nocera's NY Times column on how ALEC-based programs are gutting democracy in Rhode Island
July 18, 2012 - What a Republican America looks like
July 28, 2013 - Tana French piece in the NY Times re actions and consquences in Ireland The Psychology of an Irish Meltdown ...more
[image]
Michael Lewis - image from The Guardian - photo by Cody Perkins
The answer, obviously, varies from nation to nation. In the case of Ireland they used the money to buy up property, Irish property, and sold it to each other for increasing prices, generating a nifty real estate bubble that eventually burst. In Greece they used their largesse to continue what, in Lewis’s description, seems a corrupt, kleptocratic society in which the national cookie jar needed a much larger mouth to accommodate all the hands that were yanking out the koulourakia. Lewis looks at Iceland, Germany and the USA as well, each offering its own response to the sudden availability of great gobs of cash. His national portraits are very interesting, and at times amusing. It does seem a simplistic way to judge the behavior of entire nations though. Particularly when the problems that resulted were created, for the most part, not by working men and women, but financial high fliers, gambling with other people’s money. Perhaps a view of that smaller group might have been more illuminating.
OK, so suspend disbelief for a bit and go along for the ride. What Lewis finds is disturbing. It is only a matter of time before nations begin defaulting on their national debts. The likely result of such a failure would be a ratcheting up of interest rates in the defaulting nation, which would impair the nation’s ability to pay off the initial debt as investment would grind to a halt, reducing the government’s ability to cover its costs, thus increasing its need for debt, and so on in a lovely death spiral. In the USA there is a very specific way in which the debt crisis will find its way into your life and mine. That was, for me, the most interesting piece of the book. That Lewis got to hang with Ah-nold makes for a fun read, but his analysis is where the real beefcake is.
How did all this come to be? There are several reasons for this international debacle, but much of it comes down to simple greed. It may be comforting to know that the USA still exports something, even if it is a form of corruption. For example, that bastion of righteousness, Goldman-Sachs, or as Matt Taibbi prefers to call it, the Vampire Squid, did the Greek government the favor, for a stunning fee, of offering advice on how to lie to the European Community about the state of their economic affairs.
In a larger view, Wall Street monetization of assets, toxic and otherwise, took the western world by storm. Perfect. Not only are American companies drowning in lie-based securities, now investors and nations across the world are able to go glug-glug in the same waters. And in most cases, financial institutions (think AIG and Wall Street investment houses), and banks, private, public, or some combination, manage to externalize their debt, their greed and stupidity onto the national taxpayer and somehow keep themselves afloat. Thus working people in Ireland are being soaked to pay back loans made by German banks, among others, caught up in the mindless feeding frenzy. Why should the taxpayers of Ireland be stuck with that bill? American taxpayers have been hit with hundreds of billions of dollars in cost to prop up corrupt financial predators, while the hyenas continue to treat themselves to astounding salaries, bonuses, and stock options. Similar externalizations of cost have become standard operating practice, as governments step in to keep afloat too-big-to-fail corporate entities, often under the guise of keeping nations above water.
A significant point is made here about the fuzzing of the line between public and private indebtedness. As governments trend towards privatizing public assets they are increasingly on the hook for private debt, by guaranteeing private loans, or buying toxic assets. One result is a gross understatement of how much debt governments are truly responsible for, since not all the indebtedness shows up on the public ledgers. The numbers are staggering, and frightening. Big changes are needed, but all Lewis offers at the end is a feeble optimism that we (in the USA) will figure something out.
Boomerang is a fascinating read, rich with information, range and insight. It could have used a bit more analysis, and seems to refer to, without naming, a significant current trend, namely that governments are becoming little more than mechanisms through which private corporations can shift their indebtedness and failure onto the backs of taxpayers while keeping their profits nicely private. There is plenty of personal responsibility to go around. Yes, there are people who have taken on more debt than they can manage, bought more house than they could afford, but as often as not, they were misled when applying for their mortgages. (A subject that seems outside the purview of this book is that in the face of skyrocketing prices for medical care, housing, and energy, among other things, millions of people have taken on more and more debt, not to live large, but merely to be able to pay their bills) But the major culprits here are not middle class people trying to achieve or sustain a decent standard of living. Lewis, on the other hand, sees much greater responsibility lying with middle class folks, in tandem with big speculators.
The answer to so much of this is simple and clear. More fairness in our tax structure and regulation of our financial system that takes account of the street’s ability to go out of its way to create unregulated products and corporate entities.
In the United States the wealthy began kicking up the rate at which they were looting the nation in 1980. It has only gotten worse in the years since. How about we start by returning, more or less, to the tax rates extant before the Reaganauts took power? Even if we forget about trying to get back the money the rich stole from the rest of us since then, the increased fairness of the tax burden would make a huge difference in government’s ability to cover costs, including the cost of interest on the national debt that the looters incurred, and saddled us with, in order to feed their greed. How about the long-hairs at the top taking a haircut instead of them continually trying to trim the newly-bald middle class and making the lives of the poor even more intolerable.
A whole new financial economy has come into existence in the last few decades. And those making big bucks from it have paid off our legislators to keep those areas away from government regulation. It is the absence of such regulation that has allowed the madness to go on. Clearly there are more than just banks involved in the world of finance these days, and the regulators (and also the legislators that provide the laws that regulators enforce, or somehow manage not to) need to get serious about keeping up with the latest attempts to evade scrutiny. It might be nice if the financial regulatory agencies were run by people other than former Wall Street CEOs or their fellow travelers. And it is beyond ironic, into the level of evil, that those who push laws limiting government’s ability to raise revenue, and who rail against the horrors of regulation, are the very ones who gripe about the ineffectiveness of the governments they choose to starve.
Lewis doesn’t venture into such territory, but he does successfully give us a big-picture inkling of what lies ahead. As with civilization, the Greeks led the way. Will the rest of the world, the Western world anyway, follow in their steps?
==============================EXTRA STUFF
I would heartily recommend for any who have not yet read it, Naomi Klein’s great book, The Shock Doctrine. What is happening in Europe will make much more sense after you read that.
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man , by John Perkins, details how international debt is consciously used as a way of virtually enslaving entire countries.
Another outstanding analytical book is Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia , which looks closely at more domestic economic abominations
Gary Rivlin’s Broke USA shows how predatory lending practices affect our lives here at home.
November 9, 2011 - New York Times article: Crisis in Italy Deepens, as Bond Yields Hit Record Highs
January 18, 2012 - a Nation of Change article that looks into banks hoarding cheap public subsidy money while governments face increasing costs as a result of supporting private financial entities - Bailouts + Downgrades = Austerity and Pain
January 24, 2012 - Krugman on what is happening in Greece vis a vis German push for reducing the public sphere - Rooted in Politics, Austerity Worsens the Greek Tragedy
February 18, 2012 - a NY Times article offering a harbinger of things to come -
Budget Woes Prompt Erosion of Public Jobs, With a Heavy Toll in Silicon Valley
April 19, 2012 - TARP on steroids for the EEU furthers the demise of democracy - The European Stabilization Mechanism, Or How the Goldman Vampire Squid Just Captured Europe
May 17, 2012 - Relating to how Lewis sees local government as a major point at which austerity-driven service cutbacks and worse will be inflicted on regular folks, here is a Barbara Ehrenreich article on how local governments and the private sector are squeezing the poor. Dickens would find 21st Century America far too familiar.
June 18, 2012 - Joe Nocera's NY Times column on how ALEC-based programs are gutting democracy in Rhode Island
July 18, 2012 - What a Republican America looks like
July 28, 2013 - Tana French piece in the NY Times re actions and consquences in Ireland The Psychology of an Irish Meltdown ...more
Notes are private!
1
Oct 12, 2011
Oct 15, 2011
Oct 12, 2011
Hardcover
0195326342
9780195326345
0195326342
3.65
583
Aug 01, 2007
Mar 10, 2008
really liked it
When George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," he must have been thinking about the sorts of political l
When George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," he must have been thinking about the sorts of political leaders we have today (2011, when this review was originally posted, but still applicable to the USA of 2024) as Republicans and some Democrats seem determined to repeat the errors of that earlier time. Those who espouse looking forward only, it can usually be seen, are eager to avoid responsibility for what lies behind. And so it is today. Looking backward, or learning from experience, not looking to recreate an idealization of such times, is what intelligent people do, in order to attempt to better understand extant conditions, and better evaluate ways of overcoming difficulties. What better place to cast one’s rearward gaze than the Great Depression?
[image]
Eric Rauchway - image from UC Davis
The Great Depression & The New Deal is hardly a comprehensive look at one of the darkest episodes in American history, but it offers a very nice summary indeed. It tells of various New Deal programs, their derivations, their purposes and some of the political wrangling and compromises that were infused into their DNA. There were things in the book that I found fascinating, if a bit alarming. FDR, this icon of 20th century liberalism, began with a fairly conservative perspective. I was not aware that many local governments delayed or even repudiated their debt obligations. The way we could be headed, pending the results in November 2024, looking at the likelihood of demand-free, cut-only recovery programs, it would not surprise me to see that happen again. In 2020, faced with the depression-inducing corona-virus calamity, Republicans yet again looked to minimize public expenditures, in a slavish short-termist view of the world. The lesson of The New Deal is that when problems are huge, a huge response is merited.
The intention of the book is fairly straight ahead information provision, with no obvious partisan view in evidence. And it does a pretty good job of not only covering the broad strokes of what was going on during this time, but offering a look at underlying issues, and some of the history of what brought on the madness. Good stuff, and a definite spur for further investigation. It abets this by providing a considerable bibliography of recommended reading.
Failure to cast a glance into the rear-view mirror could be fatal, particularly if one cannot be bothered keeping track of the semi that is barreling down one’s lane with dark intent. This small volume gives readers a small mirror to help stave off disaster. ...more
[image]
Eric Rauchway - image from UC Davis
The Great Depression & The New Deal is hardly a comprehensive look at one of the darkest episodes in American history, but it offers a very nice summary indeed. It tells of various New Deal programs, their derivations, their purposes and some of the political wrangling and compromises that were infused into their DNA. There were things in the book that I found fascinating, if a bit alarming. FDR, this icon of 20th century liberalism, began with a fairly conservative perspective. I was not aware that many local governments delayed or even repudiated their debt obligations. The way we could be headed, pending the results in November 2024, looking at the likelihood of demand-free, cut-only recovery programs, it would not surprise me to see that happen again. In 2020, faced with the depression-inducing corona-virus calamity, Republicans yet again looked to minimize public expenditures, in a slavish short-termist view of the world. The lesson of The New Deal is that when problems are huge, a huge response is merited.
The intention of the book is fairly straight ahead information provision, with no obvious partisan view in evidence. And it does a pretty good job of not only covering the broad strokes of what was going on during this time, but offering a look at underlying issues, and some of the history of what brought on the madness. Good stuff, and a definite spur for further investigation. It abets this by providing a considerable bibliography of recommended reading.
Failure to cast a glance into the rear-view mirror could be fatal, particularly if one cannot be bothered keeping track of the semi that is barreling down one’s lane with dark intent. This small volume gives readers a small mirror to help stave off disaster. ...more
Notes are private!
1
not set
Aug 17, 2011
Aug 18, 2011
Paperback
0307269647
9780307269645
0307269647
3.56
6,247
Jan 12, 2010
Jan 12, 2010
really liked it
There are many ideas floating about in the mind of Jaron Lanier, the guy who popularized the term virtual reality, was with Atari in the beginning and
There are many ideas floating about in the mind of Jaron Lanier, the guy who popularized the term virtual reality, was with Atari in the beginning and has, for decades, been involved with VR as a teacher, consultant and architect. One of his notions, the core argument of this book, is that much of current internet interface design, so-called Web 2.0, is hazardous to users.
Jaron Lanier- image from Smithsonian Magazine
He takes issue as well with the idea that content should not have to be paid for.
There are loftier concepts in the air as well in the book. Lanier looks at what he calls the “hive mind” and examines assumptions regarding the likelihood of artificial consciousness arising from increasingly vast connected cloud computer resources.
He examines why it is that software advances cannot match Moore’s Law, namely that hardware efficiency doubles every 18 months. Current software at any time is, of necessity, the tip we see of a very large iceberg.
Lanier dabbles into the implication of things like NCLB
I enjoyed the book and it made me think, but I also must confess that I drifted a bit while reading some of the latter chapters. Sometimes he wanders afield. Otherwise You are Not a Gadget made me hopeful that at least some people are aware of the darker implications of current trends, and are thinking about not only how we got here, but some ways in which we might avoid some of the problems that are beginning to emerge.
============================EXTRA STUFF
Lanier's personal site. He does not maintain Twitter, FB, or Reddit accounts
Items of Interest
-----January 5, 2013 - I came across this fascinating interview with the author in Smithsonian magazine
-----August 24, 2020 - GQ - The Conscience of Silicon Valley By Zach Baron - on the fulfillment of Lanier's predictions and possible correctives looking forward ...more
certain specific, popular internet designs of the moment—not the internet as a whole—tend to pull us into life patterns that gradually degrade the ways in which each of us exists as individuals. These unfortunate designs are more oriented toward treating people as relays in a global brain.[image]
Jaron Lanier- image from Smithsonian Magazine
He takes issue as well with the idea that content should not have to be paid for.
the idea that information should be “free” sounds good at first. But the unintended result is that all the clout and money generated online has begun to accumulate around people close to only certain highly secretive computers, many of which are essentially spying operations designed to sell advertising and access or to pull money out of a marketplace as if by black magic. The motives of the people who comprise the online elites aren’t necessarily bad…but nevertheless the structure of the online economy as it has developed is hurting the middle class, and the viability of capitalism for everyone in the long term.He points out that those who make their living from creativity, writers, artists, photographers, designers, are under an all out assault by on-line providers eager to deliver art only as a means of generating ad revenue, to themselves, not the creatives who actually produce content. Lanier sees the rise of what he calls “digital serfdom,” yet another attack on the middle class. With the bi-polar tax code in the US that punishes actual work, the demise of support for working people by a viable, liberal Democratic Party, and the off-shoring of as much work as possible by capital that encounters fewer and fewer limitations on trans-national transit, the middle class does not need yet another drain on our resources and ability to earn a living, yet here it is. Lanier makes a compelling case that value, in the form of dollars, accumulates increasingly in the pockets of internet giants like Google and Amazon, and the ability for individual content-producers to make a living from their creative product is declining. And further that any economic gains we might see from technological advances will be swallowed up by the really big fish, leaving us, ultimately, worse off.
the notion that cheaper computers, smartphones, etc., will compensate for the growing economic gap is just not true. Ultimately mounting poverty will outpace cost savings and everyone will suffer. We can’t count on anything but a strong middle class to maintain many things dear to us: widespread self-determination and liberty, a dynamic commercial market filled with surprises, and a democracy that can’t be bought because ordinary people have enough clout to stand up for themselves. Some of the current popular online designs , as appealing as they might seem at first, are leading us away from these wonderful things.The rest is details. But the details are pretty interesting. Lanier goes into specifics re how users are being sliced, diced and re-sold like toxic assets, as the extant interfaces rely increasingly on our giving up more and more of ourselves.
There are loftier concepts in the air as well in the book. Lanier looks at what he calls the “hive mind” and examines assumptions regarding the likelihood of artificial consciousness arising from increasingly vast connected cloud computer resources.
He examines why it is that software advances cannot match Moore’s Law, namely that hardware efficiency doubles every 18 months. Current software at any time is, of necessity, the tip we see of a very large iceberg.
Lanier dabbles into the implication of things like NCLB
what computerized analysis of all the country’s school tests has done to education is exactly what Facebook has done to friendships. In both cases, life is turned into a databaseLanier offers a wealth of intriguing ideas in this relatively small volume. I was most fascinated with what he had to say about cephalopods and a possible source for our species’ appreciation of metaphor.
I enjoyed the book and it made me think, but I also must confess that I drifted a bit while reading some of the latter chapters. Sometimes he wanders afield. Otherwise You are Not a Gadget made me hopeful that at least some people are aware of the darker implications of current trends, and are thinking about not only how we got here, but some ways in which we might avoid some of the problems that are beginning to emerge.
============================EXTRA STUFF
Lanier's personal site. He does not maintain Twitter, FB, or Reddit accounts
Items of Interest
-----January 5, 2013 - I came across this fascinating interview with the author in Smithsonian magazine
-----August 24, 2020 - GQ - The Conscience of Silicon Valley By Zach Baron - on the fulfillment of Lanier's predictions and possible correctives looking forward ...more
Notes are private!
1
Jun 30, 2011
Jul 2011
Jun 30, 2011
Hardcover