Many things out there need to be discussed, but don´t fit the other topics. Here is some virtual space for them.
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July 15, 2004
Open Thread
Comments
This is very, very dangerous:
LA Times: Sailing Toward a Storm in China – U.S. maneuvers could spark a war.
According to Chinese reports, Taiwanese ships will join the seven carriers being assembled in this modern rerun of 19th century gunboat diplomacy. The ostensible reason given by the Navy for this exercise is to demonstrate the ability to concentrate massive forces in an emergency, but the focus on China in a U.S. election year sounds like a last hurrah of the neocons.
Seven US carrier groups plus the Tawanes navy are 50+ ships some 480 air planes and some hundred cruise missile launchers – all with nuclear capacity. This is a “Gulf of Tonkin” event waiting to happen.
At the same time, there is a report of an October suprise
…an American-Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Such an attack may very well be on the agenda as the “October Surprise,” the distraction George Bush desperately needs if the debacle in Iraq is not to lead to his defeat in November.
Energy questions and further Iran/China relations may connect the dots: Sino-Iranian LNG deal in pipeline
Oil giant Sinopec is in talks over a landmark multi-billion dollar deal with Iranian firms to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Middle Eastern nation, in return for the right to exploit some of the country’s richest oilfields.
The move, by China’s second-largest oil firm, which would be one of the biggest LNG purchase transactions in the world, was revealed by Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Sattarifar said.
Negotiations on the deal, which would give a major lift to trade between the two countries, come after Zhuhai Zhengrong — one of China’s four State-owned oil traders — signed a Memorandum of Understanding last month to import 110 million tons of LNG from Iran over 25 years.
Posted by: Bernhard | Jul 15 2004 10:00 utc | 1
Hadn’t France and Russia signed potential big oil deals with Iraq that would have kicked in post-sanction lifting?
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 15 2004 10:07 utc | 2
Thanks CP
Hersh describes videos of Iraqi boys sodomized in prison. Ed Cone had the first report.
Here is a Video Stream of Hersh talking on an ACLU event. He starts at 1:07:50.
Posted by: Bernhard | Jul 15 2004 11:45 utc | 4
Novak column today on Wilson/Plame:
Because a Justice Department special prosecutor is investigating whether any crime was committed when my column first identified Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA employee, on advice of counsel I have not written on the subject since October. However, I feel compelled to describe how the committee report treats the Niger-Wilson affair because it has received scant coverage except in a few media outlets. The unanimously approved report said, ”interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD (CIA counterproliferation division) employee, suggested his name for the trip.” That’s what I reported, and what Wilson flatly denied and still does.
more
Posted by: route66 | Jul 15 2004 14:13 utc | 6
While I am addressing basic necessities; Contract Meals. Disaster. That is the best way to describe the issues. Short hundreds of meals every feeding, bugs and dirt are found in the meals several times a week and for the past too days prisoners have been vomitting after they eat. That coupled with the fact that their arrival time varies tremendosly. This is of great concern as Ramadan has begun. We are now out of MREs for the prisoners and are attempting to get some today from the 541st. We are just about 4000 prisoners between the three locations,…
Email from Major David Dinenna, 320 MP Batallion, Oct 27, 2003 to his higher ups.
From some annexes of the Tabuga Report US News has online.
Posted by: Bernhard | Jul 15 2004 14:33 utc | 7
Anybody remember the late great columnist Herb Caen?
He used to write for the SF Chron…the main humor column for decades…in which one of his little routines was reporting Namefreaks…
Just saw this namefreak on Kevin Drum’s site:
“Ultimately, we will win this fight,” said Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas. “Marriage is the union of a man and a woman.”
These republicans are nasty nasty nasty.
Posted by: koreyel | Jul 15 2004 15:26 utc | 9
koreyel, I think herb caen was the smartest columnist of his day–along with Murray Kempton….
About the politics of the “gay rights amendment”:
it’s my guess–and only a guess–that this issue is of little interest to the rich members of those churces.
I suspect that the rich members of the community tolerate the attack on gays, because the ministers claim that only such attacks can keep the poorer members sufficiently fired up to tithe.
If this proved to be the case, then I’d expect the churches to raise the noise level on this and similar issues when the tithing revenue from the poorer members of the congregation starts to decline.
Or, to put it another way, by tracking the projections that a given church makes about the revenue stream over the next three or four years, we could anticipate the noise level of their “protests”–the noise increasing as the revenue from the poor threatens to fall.
The reverse would hold for court appointments, which matter very much to the rich–far more so than do abortion and gay rights, etc.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 15 2004 15:56 utc | 10
Juan Cole argues with Bush.
Even after Bush was dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing by Blair, he did it half-heartedly. He let Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri escape. (I’ll repeat that. He let Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri escape). Instead of rebuilding and stabilizing Afghanistan, as he promised, he put almost nothing into reconstruction for that country.
Posted by: Bernhard | Jul 15 2004 16:17 utc | 11
Bernhard, I have to scream this.
WHERE ARE THE FUCKING MEDIA!
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 15 2004 16:43 utc | 12
Kerry’s internationalism:
BBC News, 15 July 2004. Link
Democrats in the United States have contrasted UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s reaction to the Butler report with the reaction of President George W Bush to similar findings in Congressional inquiries.
“… John Edwards, said Mr Blair had shown leadership whereas President Bush had not (…) President Bush had tried to run from these reports but Mr Blair, according to Senator Edwards, had shown leadership by taking responsibility for any mistakes made in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. He likened the prime minister’s statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday to President John Kennedy’s acknowledgement of responsibility for the botched attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.”
Reading: Mistakes in preparation are not Blair’s fault; the lousy execution is Bush’s fault (‘botched’); Blair is similar to Kennedy … (!!)
Kerry promises to gratefully acknowledge Poodle’s support and throw some real favors (e.g. contracts in Iraq) his way.
Posted by: Blackie | Jul 15 2004 17:11 utc | 13
@Blackie, goes to show that it’ll be more of the same if Kerry gets the ticket.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 15 2004 17:16 utc | 14
Is it worse when the US (w/UK) goes to Iraq and creates wholesale disaster and its seen as arrogant unilateralism, or is it worse when all our allies get on board for some new “Third Way” version of the war on Iraq and create a disaster they all agree is humanitarian effort?
There is a terrifying side to the unification effort and its bizarre-o world dissociative taint of collective schizophrenia. And I’ve seen that movie before. It’s called Kosovo. Taken a good look at it lately? How about all of Yugoslavia?
Posted by: x | Jul 15 2004 17:20 utc | 15
Am I a torturer? Am I a silent, passive, supporter of the torture policies in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and the rest of that Gulag we’ve been reading about? If my pension fund owns any Lockheed Martin stock, then yes, I certainly am.
I owe this charming discovery to the WSJ, which reports in today’s issue that the Lockheed Martin owns something called “Affiliated Computer Services, Inc.”–described, in the article, as a “technology services company based in Dallas”.
This company, owned by Lockheed, employs “dozens” of workers doing the dirty work under contract with the U.S. Army’s Southern Command.
I don’t think I’ll pursue this any further, because it’s not in my interests to do so. If my pension fund invests in Lockheed, it does so because Lockheed is a good investment.
Mostly I value this information as a form of self-evaluation: whenever I get I on my high horse about the war in Iraq, I will be obliged to admit that I’ve somehow put my money where my mouth is not. My mouth may say “no, no, no,” but my purse says “yes, yes, yes”.
Fighting the good fight is hardly an act of purification!
Posted by: alabama | Jul 15 2004 17:27 utc | 16
Lockheed wouldn’t be such a great investment except under a future predicated on a huge defense budget. Wonder who’s going to change that anytime soon?
In other news, SpinDentist at the AllSpinZone has this interesting find from the Guardian – a Doonesbury comment on his first cartoon, drawn to poke fun at GWB & his fellow DKE’s at Yale during a hazing scandal.
Posted by: x | Jul 15 2004 17:33 utc | 17
He let Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri escape. (I’ll repeat that. He let Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri escape).
Say it over and over, forever. Maybe someone will
hear you, Bernard.
Posted by: FLASHHARRY | Jul 15 2004 17:39 utc | 18
alabama,
I have been watching for the last couple of days as you fight the moral fight with your pension fund.
I have a book that I think would be enlightening for you to read, “The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy” by William Greider.
It proposes many arguments that don’t have anything to do with your moral plight (he argues that what we have in America is nothing like Adam Smith’s version of capitalism, but really just protectionist corporatism, which should be anethema to true capitalists).
But within the book there is a great section on pension funds, pension fund-subsribers such as yourself and their unrealized political power. He uses the example of CalPERS (I think it’s CalPERS), which recently began to assert a political force by threatening to uninvest in any companies that denied the right to unionize to its workers. Several companies actually bowed to this financial threat.
Greider makes the argument that some of the bigger pension funds, if they could just get their political and social priorities straight, could turn out to be the most powerful players in the investment market, exerting constant pressure on companies to comply with environmental standards, to stop outsourcing, to provide living wages, etc. He also claims that the PERS system as a whole is the single biggest investor on Wall Street today.
So you may want to look into how you can influence — or get an official voice on — where your retirement moneys are invested.
Posted by: SusanG | Jul 15 2004 18:00 utc | 19
@Alabama
There are several ethic funds around. See here for a list. There might be an alternative for your conscience.
Posted by: Bernhard | Jul 15 2004 18:03 utc | 20
Bernhard, I think “ethical funds” are a snare and a delusion. Their viability is due to an excess of circulating capital that can afford to support this investment and this distinction. It plays both sides.
And so we’re back to where I found myself a few posts ago: as a tax payer, I contribute to defense-related public capital; as a pension-fund or mutual-fund contributor, I do so as a private investor (even at the remove of an ethical fund).
I am, in my very normality, a party to the crime.
But it’s always possible for really ingenious criminals to mess up their gang’s operations. We can always function as “double-agents” and saboteurs. It’s an option, anyway, to explore.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 15 2004 18:28 utc | 21
@Alabama
Exactly right, I worked as an Investment Banker in the nineties and these so called “green” equity funds are managed by the same bastards that manage the other funds.
Look at the Vatican Investment Portfolio, they have invested in condoms for startes.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 15 2004 18:32 utc | 22
@Alabama again
My expectation on the US economy is not positive.
The markets are expected to go down significantly after the election. As the markets reflect expectation they will go down before the election. Also the most medium term scenario for the US is a stagnating economy with significant inflation (Stagflation), possibly followed by very high inflation and thereafter a depression (say three years?).
So my choices in the US would be:
– Prudend Bear Global Fund protects/wins when other things go down (and David Tice who runs the show is a very knowledgable guy). I do NOT know their ethic position.
– Jim Rogers Raw Material Fund is a commodity index fund. Rogers did the Quantum Fund together with Soros. This the best bet against inflation and as its an index fund, there are no ethic questions.
Disclaimer:
– I am not a financial advisor or anything near that
– I have no connection with any of those funds in any way (well – I do read Rogers books and Tices articles)
– I have a different investment strategy myself, as I do live in the Euro world
Posted by: Bernhard | Jul 15 2004 18:35 utc | 23
“He let […] escape” saith Bernhard and Flash.
I really don’t see what is so remarkable about that, in light of all the other crimes bushco has committed in the last few years. There are claims that he let Saddam escape too, which makes sense, given that bushco had a thing going with Saddam, and needed his cooperation.
“But they checked his DNA” may be a response. OK, who did? And there is the possibility that the two sons, Uday and the other one, sneaked away while stooge corpses were substituted.
I seem to always be the conspiracist here; sorry for stomping on what is left of the credibility bubble. To me it is ALL a scam. Way too many manufactured coincidences for one thing.
etc.
Posted by: rapt | Jul 15 2004 18:35 utc | 24
SusanG, I’d be interested to see how far CALPERS can, and does, go in divesting itself of defense-related investments. I wonder if such an investment even exists.
Suppose, further more, that the capital concentrations really pulled out of companies like Lockheed. What then? The company’s P/E becomes all the more attractive. At the right price, someone will buy in. Philip Morris is an instance of this.
Why don’t we just take it as a premise that we’re really culpable as all hell, and think out our resistance to the war(s) from that point of view?
It could still be an ethical resistance….
The “how” of this resistance hasn’t come to me yet.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 15 2004 18:36 utc | 25
alabama,
Two words then if you consider every stock/fund investment corrupt at the core:
Real estate.
Posted by: SusanG | Jul 15 2004 18:38 utc | 26
@SusanG
uuuchh
careful… Steve Roach chief economist of Morgan Stanley in todays Global Economic Forum asks Global Property Bubble?. The answer is yes.
Posted by: Bernhard | Jul 15 2004 18:44 utc | 27
Bernhard, I think the dollar is our most pressing problem in the near term. As a hedge against its weakness, gold is one option, and foreign real-estate is another.
But you still can’t avoid the curse of diversification: to stabilize, you diversify, and when you diversify, you dilute your position in one or another sector (defense, for example). Even if I’m as rich as Bill Gates, defense doesn’t count on me, and I don’t count on defense.
So we have to do as Clinton did–find a way to reduce the public investment in the defense sector. A lot. To put it in quasi-Libertarian terms, if we could reduce out defense spending to, say, $1 billion a year, then the likelihood of another Iraq would be somewhat diminished.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 15 2004 18:45 utc | 28
@CP
Ever work at a firm where they lose $100,000
in bearer bonds behind a file cabinet? Priceless.
@Bernard
I have a good 3 page analysis of Tora Bora, but the link’s expired. Can I post the text here?
@Alabama
Knowing the way your devious Southern mind works, I wouldn’t be thinking about file cabinets.
Thinking such things is probably a felony thought crime in Alabama.
Posted by: FLASHHARRY | Jul 15 2004 18:46 utc | 29
Bernhard,
Yes, indeed. There is a severe real estate bubble, especially here in California.
But I was addressing the issue of alabama’s conscience about investment … if the only question about where to park your funds for the future is going to be whether it’s a corrupt source (and if I’m reading him right, he’s positing that there is no such thing as a non-corrupt stock/bond/fund source), then real estate will assuage your ethics.
And if it’s a retirement fund, then so much the better (I’m no economist, I’m just trying to use common sense). Since the biggest lump of anyone’s income goes to housing, if in your earning years you can gather enough money to buy your housing outright with no mortgage, you’ve substantially reduced your income requirements in retirement. It also means, if you’re happy with the housing choice you’ve made, that the fluctuations of the market around real estate don’t matter to you in the long run because you’re planning on staying put.
As I said, I’m no economist, and I’d welcome other views of this. I want to be educated on it.
Posted by: SusanG | Jul 15 2004 18:55 utc | 30
You can think that felonious thought here, FLASHHARRY, you can say it, teach it, print it in the paper, and probably even act on it. For this is the Wild West: hereabouts, 400 parties own 90% of the wealth, and the majority of these live in places like New York City and Chicago.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 15 2004 18:57 utc | 31
This site, and related links, may help convince some that all may not be as it seems on the surface.
reptiles in NM
Posted by: rapt | Jul 15 2004 19:05 utc | 32
trying to link to
http://www.subversiveelement.com/Dulce.html
Posted by: rapt | Jul 15 2004 19:08 utc | 33
SusanG, if I can invest soundly in real estate, I owe at least some of this opportunity to the fact that other investors are currently putting their money elsewhere–in Lockheed, for example. However obliquely, therefore, I’m still a party to the crime, albeit as an enabler of sorts.
I see no way out of this one. We are parties to a crime.
We can affirm, and also protest, this state of affairs by pursuing some kind of resistance within the system.
First and foremost, perhaps, we need to help the entire country–the ethical left, first and foremost–to acknowledge its criminal ways.
If a hundred million Americans came to believe that they really belonged in jail because of their contributions to our actions in Iraq, then I think they’d effect a change of policy there.
This is possible to do–not by scolding, but by appealing to sweet reason. 100 million people will have to laugh at how their souls were tarnished by Bush–at how they allowed him to tarnish their very souls…..
We need our Dario Fo.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 15 2004 19:18 utc | 34
@Flash
The bank I worked for, I found out (Bank didn’t know) that we owned the rights for “The Playboy of the Western World”.
So it for $50K, and earned me a nickname. Came in handy at the Xmas party.
Priceless.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 15 2004 19:20 utc | 35
Bernhard, Property Bubble
This deserves a separate thread IHMO.
Two Questions to all posters here:
1) What is the average price of a three-bed house/apartment in the city you live in?
2) What’s the interest rate you’d get on a mortgage?
My answer:
1) $300,000
2) 4%
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 15 2004 19:34 utc | 37
The rhetorical mode of this resistance: not “look at how bad Bush is!”, but “look at how bad we are!”
And then, as Bush continues to tell us how good he is, we get to tell him, in larger and larger numbers, how bad, how very bad we are. And how we intend to mend our ways. And as he raises his voice, we raise our voices. We denounce ourselves with energy, brio, and Nietzschean glee. And we insist, ever more calmly, but in larger numbers, that we intend to mend our ways….Someone, eventually, will prevail, and it won’t be the one that doesn’t say it like it is….
But first things first: we must understand our criminal ways. Our relationships to property, whatever those relationships may be, are the most privileged (the most widely shared) instance of culpability.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 15 2004 19:35 utc | 38
I see a way out alabama.
By your reckoning we are all guilty, no matter what we do with our dirty money. The only ethical alternative is to drop out and do nothing, in fear of aiding the dark powers. Some do this of course; I have spent some years in that hidey-hole myself, and found that it adds to one’s powerlessness.
You must be making the assumption that our civilization must have gone bad, doesn’t work any more or never did, because we are led by mindless warriors. I think they have finally stepped too close to the fire and may soon be consumed, but you must nudge them closer using all the power you can muster.
I’ll help.
Posted by: rapt | Jul 15 2004 19:38 utc | 39
…then if we live long enough maybe we can change the rules. I have faith.
Posted by: rapt | Jul 15 2004 19:41 utc | 40
My reasoning takes me a different way, rapt. It says that we are indeed capable of “mending” our ways.
But who’d bother to “mend” his or her ways without a concrete grasp of the need to do so?
That’s why I was so pleased to read the story in this moring’s WSJ: it spells out, in concrete terms, the direct complicity of the average man in the wild doings at Abu Ghraib.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 15 2004 19:54 utc | 41
4% mortgage? yeow! that’ll help a bubble along for sure.
30-year here (NYC) is low 6’s and 15 year is low 5’s. I imagine a 3br apt here is probably US$1.5 million average, maybe more. Even low-end studios in Manhattan are now 300k and up.
Posted by: mats | Jul 15 2004 20:05 utc | 43
I’m glad someone brought up the relationship of the value of real estate investment to the setting of the interest rate, just as the investment in defense related industry (Lockheed) and the federal budget for defense spending are inextricably linked.
Re real estate as a moral investment: economic expertise I cannot claim, but “I know someone who plays one on TV”, or let’s just say I have access to some expertise on this subject. Consider, if you will what the real estate manipulators and exploiters actually do to add value to the economy. Do they create something that gives us benefit (i.e. new software programs, a product that requires some sort of creativity that results in the enhancement of the quality of life)? Answer: nope. They go wherever they can get the green and nothing else much counts in that sort of business. It seems to me it’s the pure exploitation racket, without contributing to social good in any conventional economic sense (I am not speaking at all here of any Western economist left of the conventional capitalist center.)
Posted by: x | Jul 15 2004 20:14 utc | 44
“But we did have conviction that something big was coming at us. We have that same conviction now,” he said.
Sorry but 911 was supposed to be a surprise attack.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 15 2004 20:16 utc | 45
@Cloned Poster
4% is that an ARM (adjustable rate morgage)- must be. Es wird dich arm machen. It will make you poor. Today Producer Price Index monthly change was less than last month (-0.3 vs. +0.8). But it was up 4% year over year. Consumer price index is higher than PPI even when measured as crazy as it is (the measurement is some 2-3% too low y-o-y). What do people think what ARM rates will be in two to five years when the fed will have to try to catch runaway inflation? 12%, 15% will be small – its gone break them. One reason for the stagflation-hyper)inflation, depression szenario I talked about above.
I´ll try to have an economy thread up over the weekend (if Billmon doesn´t write about the theme)
In Hamburg, Germany (relatively expansive) the price is some $US 250 per square foot for a nice decent apartment and area. Fix 30 year is in the low 6%, but they will finance only about 80% of total.
Posted by: Bernhard | Jul 15 2004 20:29 utc | 47
@rapt
It’s a racket. And we are the MUGS!
You can buy a house on a decent bit of land in Bulgaria for $14,000.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 15 2004 20:32 utc | 48
x: when money earns money for itself, isn’t it “adding value”? Not as a manufactured product, but as a fortune? As when the real-estate investor then contributes to the local humane society, “adding value” to the community….
It’s not the mode of investment that matters here (I guess), it’s what’s being done with our wealth, and in our own names. That’s the fun of finding a concrete linkage between Lockheed and Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (in Dallas yet; shades of Ross Perot?), and Guantanamo Bay.
If I read in the WSJ that “…interrogators at the U.S. naval base in Cuba now number more than 40 and work for a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corp., which got the contract through acquiring part of Affiliated Computer Services Inc.”, then I have to feel that there’s some likelihood of my immediate involvement (however passive) in the goings-on at Guantanamo Bay. I take this as a lucky glance into the window into our reality.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 15 2004 20:34 utc | 49
Bernhard, that’s going for a 3 year fix. Negotiate the rest as you see fit. If I fixed for 25 years I’d get 5.5%.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 15 2004 20:36 utc | 50
@Cloned Poster
5.5% fixed on 25 years is insane for the people who give you the money. Who are they? Usually today mortgages are repacked and sold as mortgage backed securities (MBS) to institutional investors. Who – if not the Japanese Central Bank (to keep the Yen low) will buy this stuff. Hopefully not your 401k fund? Oh sure they will have “insured” themselfs against rate hikes by buying some over-the-counter rate swap derivatives. As Warren Buffet said: “Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction”
Posted by: Bernhard | Jul 15 2004 20:46 utc | 51
Bernhard, you’re probably right on the 25 year thing (The cash flow from where I work will pay the borrowings in 2 years) because in the midst of the bull they probably had so many caveats (pulled from the Iraq Dossier by Blair) that I didn’t see the woods from the trees.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 15 2004 20:56 utc | 52
hello alabama:
As when the real-estate investor then contributes to the local humane society, “adding value” to the community….
ah… this presumes some secondary non-exploitative behavior on the real estate investor’s part. Of course, the Lockheed investor could do the same.
re Lockheed: it’s interesting to think of the cycle of investment. Is Lockheed a good investment because it got that contract for its particular division that does some work you find odious? Or did they get that contract because of investors like TIAA? I rather find the motivation comes from the former.
Posted by: x | Jul 15 2004 21:10 utc | 53
Alabama: that is a problem for many – pension funds, mutual funds, even in many places ‘social security’ payments which people are obliged, or encouraged and practically forced to buy, to make your payments or ‘capital’ fructify.
The money goes to companies that use child labor, that ignore environmental and safety laws, and cheat wherever they can, because — well — they make money, and to rake in the required or desired 5% or far more, that is what has to be done.
All who participate in such things are complicit. However, blaming oneself is not fruitful, many of us have no choice.
The answers often given are:
— if possible, taking better choices. I looked at some ‘Green / ethical funds’ and finally my banker even admitted it was BS. There are other ways and means, but all imply being ready to give and therefore ‘lose’ money, and being ready to invest time, etc. (E.g. setting up a micro-bank for laid off workers in the US; investing in community gardens…)
— checking out of the system.
— hoarding or buying and selling whatever commodity (e.g Art, gold), that is, doing one’s own little personal capitalistic thing!
— investing in something neutral and static like land. (However, land is a means of production, and if one counts on it appreciating with time, etc. etc., see other posters..)
— Finally: political activism and condemning the capitalistic system: tough call!
I have found some kind of peace in being aware at the level evidenced in this post and combining these different approaches, as best as I could. (I have dependents…).
Doing the best one can in tight constraints is never dishonorable.
Posted by: Blackie | Jul 15 2004 21:16 utc | 54
slightly tangential wandering here:
What has prison interrogation got to do with computer services? Or is that just some kind of cover-up name?
“Not everyone who wanders is lost.” JRR Tolkien
Posted by: x | Jul 15 2004 21:17 utc | 55
@CP
I’m sure a well-monikered gentleman such as yourself really enjoyed Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker.
@Alabama
I’m not sure whether it’s 400 families or only
5 or so. Harrimans, Hunts, and Corleones. Pretty
much the same to me.
@All
CP got me remembering. I notice considereable
angst here about investments. I will relate a
short story, perhaps with a moral to it.
In 1973 a major Wall Street banking house
(think Leadman Box) had had its best year ever.
Best bankers and brokers got year end bonuses
exceeding 100K–these were the precambrian days
of bonuses.
But Leadman wanted to cut costs and it looked
to it’s back office (the place where the
transactions and securities were housed and
processed). Parenthetically, back office people
weren’t very well paid then, probably not much
better paid now.
Leadman outsourced its back office. Took
bids. One employment agency came in 30 cents an
hour cheaper than the rest.
Two months later $20M, in negotiable
securities, disappeared. It appears that the
venerated Wall Street arbitrage firm Meyer Lansky
and Co. had set up its trading desks in Leadman’s
back office.
The fellow who told me this story worked in
the back office but was not in on the “deal”.
He spent 36 hours in lockup being
interrogated by the best feddie, state,city, and
internal had.
But he sure thought what happened was funny
as hell!
I would love to hear my friend Alabama analyze
and explain the moral and ethical nuances of this
event.
Posted by: FLASHHARRY | Jul 15 2004 21:19 utc | 56
Blackie, you missed one option:
Doing your own hand-picked investing, company by company, business by business, cherry-picking what you find acceptable and good.
alabama: Re TIAA–as I understand it they have various funds one can choose from. That is a bit more of option. Don’t know if you find any of them to your liking.
Posted by: x | Jul 15 2004 21:21 utc | 57
Flashharry-
Hilarious story, thanks for that. Some bond companies inner workings that I know of, who are supposedly on the up and up, are quite similarly entertaining (and in some cases, very sad).
Posted by: x | Jul 15 2004 21:26 utc | 58
@Alabama
This book is on my reading list. Maybe you are interested too.
May Day, money and morality
It is a catholic perspective -which is not my view- but it sounds interesting.
Posted by: Bernhard | Jul 15 2004 21:31 utc | 59
Torture in Iraq – the story that refuses to die
More Iraq prison torture allegations emerge
L. Paul Bremer may testify in torture hearings
Posted by: Nemo | Jul 15 2004 21:43 utc | 60
@Flash
Good post, and Goodnight (in Texas) y’all.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 15 2004 21:45 utc | 61
@nemo et al
please take a look at the Hersh video – fourth comment in this thread – its devastating – and there is more to come.
good night – all – (GMT+1)
Posted by: Bernhard | Jul 15 2004 21:51 utc | 62
@Bernhard, re: “Usually today mortgages are repacked and sold as mortgage backed securities (MBS) to institutional investors. Who – if not the Japanese Central Bank (to keep the Yen low) will buy this stuff. ”
Fannie Mae (FNM – NYSE) and Freddie Mac (FRE – NYSE) are where most of the US residential mortages end up. They are disasters waiting to happen, another ugly surprise coming for many pension and mutual fund holders.
Posted by: mats | Jul 15 2004 22:49 utc | 63
FLASHHARRY. O how I love that story about Deadman Sucks….It’s something out Chaucer….I should mention, by the way, that I’ve always regarded Michael Milken as an ethical and law-abiding person–a genius, and certainly driven, but ethical as well (I’m not alone in thinking this). I also believe that the folks who did him did a very unhealthy thing.
I’ve lost friends over this one; you might even say that it got to me, and that I’ve had to let it work its way through, as these things eventually do if we’re lucky and have the time.
For Bernhard, x, and others: I must not have expressed myself very well.
I feel very fortunate, very lucky, to have happened on that piece in the WSJ this morning. It rang a bell–a bell that should have rung a long time ago (and it probably did, but not so clearly as now).
Insofar as I’m an American, I’m not a pretty picture, ethically speaking. This is the truth. Accepting it is another matter. Maybe it’s helpful for me to read it in the WSJ–helps me accept it. Whatever it was that came down this morning, I find it very refreshing.
It’s that truth thing: the guy who said “the truth shall make you free” had a good point to make.
No more denial at this end, that’s how I feel about it. For all I know, TIAA-CREF doesn’t own a single share of Lookheed; I don’t very much care one way or the other: the point that matters to me is that our money, our goods, etc. are finding their way into actions that don’t really look very good. And it’s been going on like this for a while now. Just taking note of it, and just saying “yes, yes, that’s true,” is indeed a refreshing thing (I seem to be repeating myself!).
Well, without the slightest desire to make myself look one bit better than I am–quite the contrary!–I believe that I can contribute a tiny bit of something to the amendment of this particular misdeed (the one we call “Iraq”). I can say, to anyone who asks, that we (or I) have a lot to answer for in our (or my) involvement in this thing. It’s a bad thing, and we really ought, for our own well-being, to cut it out right now.
That’s all, folks, and it ain’t much, except that I notice I’m not yelling at anyone. Hell, I’m not even yelling at Bush; yes, he’s bad, but the rest of us aren’t so hot either. To him, then, I would also say, “I think you’d feel a lot better if you accepted the fact that this has been a bad thing, said so, and proceeded to cut it out”.
I’d really say this to him (but only if he asked).
Posted by: alabama | Jul 15 2004 22:55 utc | 64
alabama writes:
the point that matters to me is that our money, our goods, etc. are finding their way into actions that don’t really look very good
There isn’t a doubt about that one. One way or another it’s all being done in our name, anyway.
Posted by: x | Jul 15 2004 23:04 utc | 65
1) What is the average price of a three-bed house/apartment in the city you live in?
$1 million
2) What’s the interest rate you’d get on a mortgage?
We have a 5.5 fixed 30-year rate.
Posted by: SusanG | Jul 15 2004 23:23 utc | 66
alabama,
I think your view of individual economic/moral culpability dovetails quite well with your expressed interest in Calvinism.
Both views maintain that no human is sinless, either morally/theologically or economically.
You seem to be working toward a grand unified theory, and it’s fascinating to watch it in action. Thanks for sharing.
Posted by: SusanG | Jul 15 2004 23:43 utc | 67
re Calvin, etc. I don’t know much about Calvin. In terms of “sinfulness” however I think a lot of Western Christianity is far too extreme on the subject, but that’s just me.
We are not each responsible for the choices of everyone else. We are responsible for responding to our own connection with that center that teaches us what is good and correct and most of all for listening to the role it tells us to play. Not for speculating on what that role might be, no matter how “rational” we may think it is. The heart of the matter is not “What Would Jesus Do?” The heart of the matter is, what am I being told is my job to do? And there’s only one place to find that out, and I can’t tell you what that is and neither can anyone else. You’ve got to find it out for yourself. Not doing that is “missing the mark” (Gk: amartia, sin — literally “missing the mark.”) It’s a question of what the mark is.
Posted by: x | Jul 16 2004 0:10 utc | 68
@BAMA:
We could just start a talk here, as a
beginning:
1.Who got done more brown, in the end,
Bunker Hunt in his silver corner in the 70s; or
Mike Milliken?
2.Next county over a constitutional officer
lost several $M by buying deriviatives, from a
New York sharpie who spoke sweet. This happened
all over the country . Orange Country California
almost went broke in it. It was all TAXPAYERS
money. And it sure the hell went into someone
else’s pocket.
I’ll close now. If you are still around
write back your thoughts. I got to call a sick
friend.
I’m not very passionate about this issue at
all. No attempted guttings and broken glass on
this one at all.
Just talking about it over time.
Posted by: FLASHHARRY | Jul 16 2004 0:13 utc | 69
oh PS “sin” as in our fallen state = “separation from God”
i.e. making that inner connection, keeping it alive, not ignoring it.
Posted by: x | Jul 16 2004 0:14 utc | 70
SusanG–you’re right, except that the guy who really counts for me is Luther (along with his twin brother, Machiavelli–a relationship that takes some explaining).
Calvin is very, very important on the theocratic side. He had a mighty agenda, and we’re living with it right now. Luther didn’t think that way at all.
Anyway, thanks for the salute–I’ll keep you posted….
Posted by: alabama | Jul 16 2004 0:15 utc | 71
Alabama,
i think i remember you saying you were 65. i’m 63. i’ve been interested in investing in a small community of friends that jointly own a medium sized property. i’ve got little real response ($ ready to invest) but a lot of “moral” support. i don’t want to grow old in an old age home. i want to have some community around me as i progress toward the ‘end’.
i’m within Dec 04 of burning my mortgage. My boss just told me that we won’t be funded past March 05 unless he can secure a new nasa, nsf, nooah contract/grant.
i’m on the board of directors of a local foundation that is committed to education (presently high school), ecology, and artists endeavors (my words).
We have just secured a contract on 230 acres with funding for all but 40 acres. i have made a commitment to $350 a month for the next 2 ½ years to help secure this whole property and save it from the ultimate McMansion development that is inevitable otherwise.
My investment will (i hope) secure me a place to park my computer and guitar and bed and grow enough real food to store/preserve that will last me through the winter. i see it as the beginning of a clustered community that will have a preplanned infrastructure (designed by the kids and not me (i’ll try to be sure i protect my little space where i can eventually let go of all of this)).
i think real estate is what is really real. Primary productively reliance, whether due to the decline of oil or the conscious decision to accept and embrace our sun, is our apparent immediate future.
Probably gone far enough for you to get the idea. That’s where i’m headed.
OT. political blog within a political blog:
Went out person to person petitioning today. Got the required number of petition signatures to be placed on the ballot, but have till Monday and am going to double it just to be sure. i’m psyched. Getting signatures today was a blast. Talked face-to-face/heart-to-heart with quite a few people who didn’t know me and learned a lot as well as articulated a few of my ideas. Absolutely no negative response. A lot of positive. To repeat myself, i’m psyched. Hope i can keep it up. i know how entropy is omnipresent.
Posted by: Juannie | Jul 16 2004 0:23 utc | 72
x, I believe I’m with you about Calvin, and I know I’m with you about one’s person. No one else can die my death, for one thing….I also wouldn’t want to forego my responsibility for sharing in unhealthy acts with a lot of other folks–and the paying of taxes to a government engaging in war crimes is not something I’m inclined to pass over (and I don’t refrain from paying those taxes, either).
Posted by: alabama | Jul 16 2004 0:27 utc | 73
alabama writes:
I also wouldn’t want to forego my responsibility for sharing in unhealthy acts with a lot of other folks–and the paying of taxes to a government engaging in war crimes is not something I’m inclined to pass over (and I don’t refrain from paying those taxes, either).
I’m with you on all that too, my dear sir 🙂
Posted by: x | Jul 16 2004 0:30 utc | 75
That sounds very cool indeed, Juannie! And you’re way ahead of me on this one. I’m not legally obligated to retire from my job–funded by the state, and not about to be made redundant by the state–so I just don’t think about retirement in any shape or fun. I lack the courage or clarity to do this. On the whole, it’s easier for me to pretend I’m 27…..
FLASHHARRY, I know of no one who lost money investing with Milken. Lots of people got hurt by Bunker Hunt. What do you make of those guys? I always figured that they wanted to prove that they were as smart as their dad. The experiment definitely failed.
Orange County–that was a futures market thing, no? I don’t think it had to do with high-risk, high-yield bonds, though I could be mistaken about that. But whatever it was, it was a total disaster.
One thing I’m sure of is this: the emergence of a new market with a new product, like those junk bonds, or the oil spot-market in the seventies, or those financial futures–these are really disruptive things. An emergence of this kind is always a thing of amazing violence; all hell breaks loose, people get mad as hell, they go crazy, they act like maniacs…. God save me from inventing anything of the sort!.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 16 2004 0:41 utc | 76
1)3 br house here in Greater Vancouver area (at least where i live) $350-400k @ around 7% for 25 yrs.
ready to sell my $300k shack and move to Bulgaria into that $14k house. hope its near the coast.
Posted by: lenin’s ghost | Jul 16 2004 1:09 utc | 77
It seems that there is more dirty linen coming out about Riggs bank (the one to which Shrub’s uncle Jonathan is connected).
Scandal and more scandal involving hiding millions of dollars from that rogue Pinochet.
But then, it runs in the family I suppose.
hiding Pinochet’s millions
Posted by: wtreat | Jul 16 2004 1:17 utc | 78
The link above at 09:17 is not working. Here is the real link:
hiding Pinochet millions
Posted by: wtreat | Jul 16 2004 1:19 utc | 79
@BAMA
Typepad just ate my post.
I am about ready to get homocidal with this
little troglodyte.
Our differences are very nuanced and
inconsequential.
Posted by: FLASHHARRY | Jul 16 2004 2:12 utc | 81
This “all the green funds are BS” attitude is very far off the mark. I work daily with (though not for) teams who work in Socially Responsible Investing – and while SRI does not resolve the issues of the inequity of some folks having money to invest and others none, etc. the SRI movement is an active force for change. Yes, lots of investment folks who know nothing or have interests that conflict with SRI, dismiss it – and the mainstream media ignores or misrepresents the issues – but I’m surprised at the easy acceptance here of such misinformation.
The institutional investors are mostly not as active as CALpers but numerous state pensions are doing things such as refusing to invest in companies who are not reducing their impact on climate change – and the mutual fund activists are challenging the corporations on a daily basis on issues from military budgets to hiv/aids programs for workers to sweatshops and more. A key tool they use is proxy voting and shareholder resolutions – and these efforts are beginning to cause real progress …
Two examples to get you started:
Institutional investors such as CALpers challenge the SEC to enforce it’s own rules that require environmental reporting:
Pension Funds demand SEC action on Climate Risk
or take a look at the update chart on the most recent proxy campaigns at
Proxy Status Chart
This chart, by the way, is compiled by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Reponsibility, a coalition of “275 faith- based institutional investors, including national denominations, religious communities, pension funds, endowments, hospital corporations, economic development funds and publishing companies. ICCR and its members press companies to be socially and environmentally responsible. Each year ICCR- member religious institutional investors sponsor over 100 shareholder resolutions on major social and environmental issues. The combined portfolio value of ICCR’s member organizations is estimated to be $110 billion.”
For general information on the issues, the performance of SRI funds, etc. check the information at SocialFunds.com.
All of these sites have further information on the whole are of using investments to push for change – and it’s a movement that deserves notice. With government losing real control and corporations gaining control globally, many of us see these efforts as the critical movements for the future.
@Alabama – you might find the information on the ICCR site particularly interesting given the theological slant of the investors involved – I’ve had a chance to meet many of the folks who work at ICCR and they are amazing activists and an honor to know.
The entire movement to challenge corporations to be socially responsible has tremendous promise and dismissing it without knowing what is really going on … argh! Pick up at copy of Jeffrey Hollender’s What Matters Most (which I also mentioned on the Annex last night) for a good introduction to this whole area and a very forthright analysis of the pros and cons – with a lot of good inside gossip besides!
Posted by: Siun | Jul 16 2004 2:46 utc | 82
juannie that sounds great, that is a dream of mine. i’m curious to know what part of the country you’re in.
i like real, estate because it’s real. i buy baltic avenues remodel them w/recycled stuff , make them nice by the way, then sell them for pretty close to what i have in them. usually i carry the note which allows people who normally wouldn’t qualify be able to purchase. also there’s no loan fee. i feel good about it and my money is not wrapped up at a bank doing terrible things while i’m sleeping.
alabama, if you don’t feel good about what your money is doing, move it. its your responsibility. we are all ultimately responsible for our investments. money talks. you want to send a message, do it w/ your pocketbook.
Posted by: annie | Jul 16 2004 3:06 utc | 83
Sium and annie, I try to pick my fights wisely, and I have to admit that the medium of money is not my battlefield of choice. Language is.
I’ve been trying to use the example of money as a weapon in another argument–as a blunt weapon, really, to argue a point about being human: namely that we are, morally speaking, always in arrears (not only, or not merely, in arrears, but in arrears all the same, and at all times).
What to make of this predicament, allowing that it may be so, is the question that currently interests me (it does not, I hasten to admit, interest everyone else).
But oh, that article in the WSJ–what an irresistible invitation to carry on!….
Posted by: alabama | Jul 16 2004 3:23 utc | 84
alabama —
what Suin and annie said . . .
Wealth is power — it can be used as a force for good, as a force for ill, or . . . the optimum return on investment.
It’s all part of the economic and social ecosystem.
The choice is: what role will you, and your money — play . . . in the greater scheme of things.
Posted by: ck | Jul 16 2004 3:26 utc | 85
a point about being human: namely that we are, morally speaking, always in arrears (not only, or not merely, in arrears, but in arrears all the same, and at all times).
oh we are, are we? is this the same as original sin?
Posted by: annie | Jul 16 2004 3:28 utc | 86
annie —
I’m with you — we are not, by nature, in arrears —
But our tendency load ourselves up with petty things, tends to put most of us in arrears, most of the time.
We have a choice: live as well as we can, most of the time, and balance the accounts — or not.
Posted by: ck | Jul 16 2004 3:38 utc | 87
ok , this may sound a little far fetched but i want to speculate here.
alabama when you say you want to pick your fights wisely, and your weapon of choice is language, are you trying to work around this moral dilemma you’re in about your investments by wrapping everyone into it, like say, mankind.
i think there are indeed ways to invest and to live a good life without going against ones morals. i don’t think anyway you formulate your words will make you feel better about your money ending up in iraq.
Posted by: annie | Jul 16 2004 3:42 utc | 88
ck , he said morally speaking, always, all the time. that made me wonder if he was stating it as a fact about human nature.
i’m not saying i’m not in arrears.
Posted by: annie | Jul 16 2004 3:45 utc | 90
annie, that’s one of the names that people use for it. But trying to figure out how it works is hard, and old names can sometimes cloud the picture. For one thing, that’s a big concept, and in capital letters–Original…Sin….It makes me worry about my competence as a theologian (I don’t have any). But we can always test the question with other words, other phrasings.
And I’m trying less to work around the dilemma than into it–rather like exploring a cavern or a labyrinth.
I’ve had the time and opportunities to try out various political gestures involving money–meaningful gestures. They’ve been a good thing, an essential thing (amd crucial, I agree, to one’s sense of action), but there’s something left over that I’m also trying to understand. Call this an option of old age–which is also a deadline of sorts: I’m trying to figure out what I haven’t figured out yet….
Posted by: alabama | Jul 16 2004 4:12 utc | 92
annie
juannie that sounds great, that is a dream of mine. i’m curious to know what part of the country you’re in.
Champlain Valley.
Paul Bremer bought a home further south-east from here in March & the front page of the Rutland Hearald just gave us a glimpse of the secret service agents he brought with him. Moving companies have claimed they are moving more people here than any other part of the country. i don’t like it but that’s just my fear mode kicking in. i’m hoping beyond hope that i will be able to help stabilize our situation before we destroy the green gold around us. i’m hoping that the young people here will be motivated to develop and build beyond my generation’s limited forsight.
alabama
to argue a point about being human: namely that we are, morally speaking, always in arrears.
i have some trouble with that alabama.
If i were a Jain, i would always be arrears because i couldn’t breathe or eat without killing.
How can any of us live without treading on something? i believe from what I’ve read and from the few indigenous peoples of the world that i have encountered, these people who are closer to nature kill with respect but kill without guilt.
I’m trying not to preach but to try to answer for myself the dilemma you pose and that we all (who choose to try to be conscious) probably confront.
Maybe for me it’s seeking the logical alternative to Randian/Libertarian/Social Darwinism that i know in my gut is incorrect.
Posted by: Juannie | Jul 16 2004 4:14 utc | 93
You have a great gut, Juannie. It’s telling the truth–so let it speak out now and then….
I’m right about the “arrears”, but I owe you a clearer accounting of the problem. Let me sleep on it for a while, but remind me to bring it up if I forget. (I forget a lot these days, do you?)
Posted by: alabama | Jul 16 2004 4:22 utc | 94
Bernhard,
Your first post at 6:00 am brought chills to my spine, but i lost contact with it as i read through the following streams of consciousness.
i agree with you,
This is very, very dangerous
What a process we are all being subjected to as we watch this evolutionary juncture unfold and try to bring our droplets of consciousness to bear on the onrushing tidal wave.
After that attempt at creative expression, i think i’m going to bed. Good night all. i’ve very much enjoyed this thread today/tonight.
Posted by: Juannie | Jul 16 2004 4:30 utc | 95
Juannie and Bernard —
I for one, am not afraid of war breaking out because of the provocative naval maneuvers.
Both the Chinese and North Korean Governments are sane, sober, and rational — compared with the lunatics in the White House.
Posted by: ck | Jul 16 2004 4:37 utc | 97
ck
…am not afraid of war breaking out because of the provocative naval maneuvers.
Both the Chinese and North Korean Governments are sane, sober, and rational — compared with the lunatics in the White House.
I knew needed to hear that before i could get to sleep tonight. Thanks. Good night for real this time.
Posted by: Juannie | Jul 16 2004 4:55 utc | 98
Interessting to read:
All Together Now
Terrorism and the Election: California is the Target!
No postponement, just bedlam at the polls and a low turnout on the west coast is Bush’s plan for ‘victory’
This is all this morning, work is calling.
Posted by: Fran | Jul 16 2004 5:31 utc | 99
original sin… too much to say on the concept to put it here. But the atonement deal which came about (I think) beginning roughly in the 12th cent, and in the West as opposed to Eastern Orthodoxy put a whole different emphasis on guilt, sinfulness, suffering, sacrifice than was there for the entire first millenium of Christianity. (And which the Orthodox still do not hold truck with for the most part. Viz. controversy over the Gibson “Passion” film.)
The Fall: we live in a world which we can plainly see is pretty far separated from Love. Don’t need to argue about that, just take a look around. (Or listen to our conversation.) Am I supposed to feel personally guilty about that all the time no matter what I do? That misses the point of what the correct response is, and what love is all about.
sorry to bore anybody
Posted by: x | Jul 16 2004 5:33 utc | 100