Battle For the Soul of Capitalism

I've been reading Bogle's book over the last week, and I've come to a conclusion ithat he writes around but doesn't actually hit on. That's that the real commodity in our economy is stock. The definition of stock as a representation of a piece of ownership in a corporation has changed, and that the ownership of stock, and the trading of stock is an economy unto itself. Not in the way that stock is traded on the expectation that partial ownership of a corporation engaged in a particular set of industrious actions will increase the price of the stock in the future, rather, there is a "deep branding" effect, where a perception of a fictional other's place in the market of stock trading effects the willingness of a stock owner to purchase at a given price. Deep branding in this case being something I've just made up which suggests a brand unawareness so embedded in any micro-culture that it becomes a pseudo fact.

All this is said in addition to Bogle's commentary on managers capital and municipal complacency.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

"Bush doesn't know anything; he doesn't want to know anything...but he's not stupid"--William J. Clinton (citations in the ether)

This is consistently the meme that has developed among the political elite in this country, and in a triumph of trickle down theory, which has permiated into the ranks of truck stop dialogue. So we must ask ourselves: what is stupid?

Stupidity defined might most easily slip into a clinical description of intellegence quotient and or IQ extablishment testing methodologies. Let us accept first that an expeditionary stupid hunt with origins in this arena leaves the nacent Bushologist stepping away from the intended proposition vis a vie "stupid is defined as..." and turning instead to plant a flag some where on a positivist, anti-positivist, postpositivist type spectrum. I propose that this clinical technique identifies more clearly the Bushologists biases and inevitably diverts focus from the task at hand,namely, how can the Bushological community claim and apply the term stupid.

In this forum we propose that the most apt strategy is comparison in binary oppositions, on the one hand fictional character Forrest Gump and on the other fictional POTUS George W. Bush.

Paper to follow

WHAT AN EMBARASSMENT OF RICHES

The Democratic party is in a position where a woman or a minority will be the titular head of the party. What a gift.

Imagine if either of them were democrats.

The Rationality of Rational Irrationality

In the wake of the NIE concerning Iran's nuclear weapons plan the speculation has been arroused concerning the history, success and future of our foriegn policy visa vie Iran. So just for a lark let's summarize our Iran policy and see what we can make of it:

A statement:
As rational actors, the United States and its allies, trying to curtail the threat from an irrational actor, Iran; we must act irrationally to force them to act rationally.

Let that sink in.

Here's how I come that that conclusion.

1) The United States, et al. are rational actors:
The United States are rational actors, because we are for freedom. Since we have a positive freedom agenda we are also for Democracy. These are not two sepparate argumentative statements, because we propose that given freedom democracy always follows. And because democracy is proposed to be the only rational form of government and we are promoting democracy via our pro-Freedom agenda, we must be rational.

2) Iran is an irrational actor.
Iran desires a nuclear weapon so they may attack sovriegn nations without provocation and without regard for the consequences. This desire is irrational, ergo Iran is an irrational actor.

3) The United States must act irrationally
The attack of Iraq was not the result of a direct provocation or threat to the United States and was therefore irrational.

4) Iran will react rationally to an irrational act.
The United State's irrational invation of Iraq is what caused Iran to rationally evaluate their desire for a nuclear weapon and therefore cease their program.

We'll flesh this out more later.

John Edwards

Hillary will not be the POTUS.

Barack will not be the POTUS.

If John Edwards is not the democratic candiate for President of the United States, in 2009 we will swear in to office a pro-theocratic phsychopath.

I just want to go on record with this prediction.

A FEW THOUGHTS

The mortgage industry is bigger than the construction industry. If the mortgage industry is actualized around the profitability of interest based lending and fees for providing lending services, how in terms of annual revenue, is the interest based lending market larger than the construction market?

Let's say a house is built for 100k and sells for 150k.
Some of the 50k goes to the builder.
Some goes to the real estate agent.
None of this 50k goes to the lender, in fact the lender buys the house. A mortgage is actually a rent-to-own system, where the lender buys the house and you're allowed to live in it provided you pay off the 150k plus some interest to make this worth the lenders time.

Now there are two "products" floating around, both of them owned by the lender. A tangible asset, the house, and a "collateralized debt instrument", the interest expected to be paid on the loan.

Now, how many times have you heard anyone mention the house in discussions of the credit crissis? Never. We only discuss the agreement to pay interest on a loan, meanwhile thousands upon thousands of tangible assets sit there collecting dust, because the lender makes way more money on the fees involved in mortaged lending and even more in "bundling" mortgages as investment vehicles for people who have nothing to do with the tangible asset.

What's happened to the houses? Are the prices comign down so the pool of potential buyers could increase, or rather so the people who bought them when they couldn't afford them now can afford them? No, becuase the neo-conservative free market has nothing to do with buyers of products, producers of products or even servers of services, it has to do with rubbing money up against money and producing more money.

The result being the pyramid scam that our global system has become.

ONE PARTY SYSTEM ALERT!!!

H.R. 1955 The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorist Act.

Keep your eyes on this one. This bill will be moving to the Senate soon and the debate will either be non-existant or scary as hell.