Win On Diagonals

The trick to more restful sleep, may indeed involve a few teaspoons of peanut butter an hour before bed time.

I felt the urge to repost an article written by Tariq Ali, well, a portion of a recent article I read of his off Counterpunch web site. The context involves the protesting of certain Islamic women in France, one of which was involved in an anti-capitalist group. She wore a head cover (religious reasons of course,) and there was much misplaced anger directed towards her and this particular group (NPA) for doing so. It was as if her right to be more active in protesting against some of the ravages inflicted by what we will simply call ‘capitalism,’ (as if this means what Adam Smith, or an enterprising farmer in early 20th century United States may have understood it!) was somehow fatally compromised by her religious traditions/belief…anyway….. one does think of some of the typically barbed hypocrisy connected to the past, including those who are now considered to have been part of an ‘enlightenment’ tradition…. (don’t get me wrong…I’m not pissing on Voltaire and the Gang, as if they (men of their time, and able to ‘transcend it) are to be fully slapped till their souls turn an acrid smoke spewing orange…..but as a corrective, as a… well here’s the damn excerpt!

Bye! 

“How many Western citizens have any real idea of what the Enlightenment really was? French philosophers undoubtedly took  humanity forward by recognizing no external authority of any kind, but there was a darker side. Voltaire: “Blacks are inferior to Europeans, but superior to apes.” Hume: “The black might develop certain attributes of human beings, the way the parrot manages to speak a few words.” There is much more in a similar vein from their colleagues. It is this aspect of the Enlightenment that appears to be more in tune with some of the Islamophobic ravings in sections of the global media.

Marx famously wrote of religion as the ‘opium of the people’, but the sentence that followed is forgotten. Religion was also ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature’ and this partially explains the rise of religiosity in every community since the collapse of Communism.”

EKATER TO YELSTIN’s SPLEENY

 

A lot has been written about the humiliation Russia experienced when it ceased to be a superpower; a lot has also been written about the rapid immiseration of a vast segment of the post-Soviet population. But these things were affected by the daily experience of fear. It was certainly bad to be ruled by the senile bureaucrats of the Communist Party, but for a lot of people it was worse to be ruled by thick-necked thugs in tracksuits and Mercedes. It’s notable that the one work of cinematic art to come out of Russia in the 1990s was Alexei Balabanov’s Brat (Brother), a revenge fantasy in which a young man comes to Petersburg after serving in Chechnya and, somewhat reluctantly, finds himself killing all the mafiosi in town. It’s a Russian Taxi Driver, a film animated by a profound wish to wipe the scum from the streets, born in the collective unconscious of a social class (the emasculated intelligentsia) incapable of doing any such thing.

As currently structured, Wall Street investment banks have no incentive to bring viable companies to market.  Wall Street makes the same huge fees for putting lipstick on a pig and dumping it on the public as they do for launching solid companies with real job growth potential. Over the past decade, trillions of dollars of investors’ life savings have been misallocated to bogus business models.  Those companies are now worthless or are trading for pennies on the Pink Sheets, the graveyard for investment banks’ misfired ideas.

The Pink Sheets provide quotes on these stocks to broker dealers.  It’s not responsible for the legitimacy of the companies and, in fact, warns investors on its web site that these “are small companies with limited operating histories or are economically distressed…Investors should avoid the OTC [over the counter] market unless they can afford a complete loss of their investment.”  In many cases, this is far more disclosure than licensed brokers at the “venerable” firms told their clients when the companies first went public at fat share prices.

A study done by Tyler Shumway and Vincent A. Warther for the University of Michigan Business School and University of Chicago Graduate School of Business found that between 1972 through 1995, 4,188 companies were delisted by Nasdaq, the stock exchange that facilitated the boom and bust in dotcoms and tech start ups in the late 90s. After delisting, many ended up on the Pink Sheets.  In March 2000, the Nasdaq index stood at 5,048.  Today, a decade later, it’s still down 58 percent from its peak.

It’s time for Congress to open its eyes to the reality that this massive decline in Nasdaq is telling us Wall Street is not bringing enough good companies to market.  And the mergers Wall Street has put together, typically traded on the New York Stock Exchange, have created Frankenbanks and debt-laden conglomerates too bloated to figure out their own balance sheet let alone create new jobs.  Two poster children come to mind: AOL-TimeWarner and Citibank-Travelers-Smith Barney-Salomon, a/k/a Citigroup.

Thank you Pam Martens….

Hello Chummies,

I write for an on line music magazine (Perfect Sound Forever,) and they just posted a 2009 best album list…….perhaps we are now removed far enough away from such lists to make it more tolerable to look at…. This general concept is becoming more an more irrelevant for a variety of reasons…but with that said…fuck it…

 http://www.furious.com/perfect/2009writerspoll.html

Feb 3 2010

“What will a Grounds Hog do now?”

By: Ossip Maltempi

He called on friendly acquaintances

Phone calls that were never answered

Choosing minor holidays

(chiefly American minor holidays)

caller would wish them well

hoping that holiday would be enjoyed

thinking to himself that children’s favorite holidays

tend to be those where they receive the most gifts

hardly surprising of course

but amusing when wondering how most children

felt about President’s day or Grounds Hog Day

where at best

they may not receive a garbled lesson of some sort

from a well meaning adult

a mortgage underwater

a debt obsessed government

promising ameliorating conditions

would eventually thaw off the big horses hind legs

and spread to cover all of us

These acquaintances usually never call back

I could pretend to be calling from

A cookie cutter tax preparation business

Letting them know how most accountants

Aren’t aware of the deductions one could make

If they are taking certain medications for syphilis

These acquaintances

They will remain

In the back of the poorly working

refrigerator

Of never to be friendships