Escrito nas Paredes

spike55151 (via: Flickr)

Quando For Grande Quero Ser

Papá, esta vez sí voy a montar una empresa! En esta ocasión no me podrás poner peros al modelo de negocio porque su viabilidad y rentabilidad está comprobada. He desistido en mi ánimo de ser innovador y voy a copiar el saber hacer de los hombres de negocios más admirados. Me voy a dedicar a la consultoría en la regulación del sector financiero y a la participación activa en el mercado de capitales. Te cuento en qué consiste.

Por un lado, cobraré asesoramiento a los gobiernos, los bancos centrales y todo tipo de organismos que regulen al sector financiero o a los mercados de valores. Por el otro, cobraré asesoramiento directamente o a través de la contratación de operaciones financieras a entidades reguladas como bancos, aseguradoras, inversores institucionales, administraciones territoriales, entes públicos e incluso estados sujetos a una normativa supranacional. Por último, invierto por cuenta propia en los mercados con toda la información que obtengo de mis clientes. 

Pintado de otra forma, es como cobrar a los profesores por recomendarles qué deben preguntar a los alumnos en los exámenes y cómo deben vigilar durante el tiempo que duran los tests. Por otro lado, cobraría a los alumnos por soplarles las preguntas y enseñarles a hacer trampas de una forma que no les pillen. Por último, yo me coronaría como el mejor estudiante de la promoción. La idea es la misma sólo que la recompensa no serían sobresalientes, sino dinero, mucho dinero.

Me dirás como siempre, que lo difícil es acceder a los clientes por primera vez. Pero para eso ya he encontrado la solución: una buena política de recursos humanos. Tendré que fichar a políticos y directivos entidades financieras como empleados para acceder a gobiernos, reguladores y las cúpulas de las entidades financieras. Con un poco de suerte, mis trabajadores acabarán en el gobierno, dirigiendo los organismos supervisores o al frente de las entidades clientes. En resumen, pagaré buenas nóminas pero la inversión será muy rentable. Entrando en detalle, te voy a poner algunos ejemplos de lo que puedo hacer con este modelo de negocio:

1) Vender a mis clientes productos financieros "basura" y yo apostar a que se depreciarán. 2) Recomendar a mis clientes comprar productos financieros que otro cliente quiere vender y me paga por su distribución. 3) Asesorar a países como Grecia para ocultar su deuda a Europa a través de swaps de divisa. 4) Asesorar al Comité de Supervisión Bancaria de Basilea sobre qué debe exigir Basilea III, cuándo debe implantarse y cómo debe vigilarse su cumplimiento. 5). Asesorar a la Unión Europea para definir, implantar y controlar el cumplimiento de la directiva de seguros Solvencia II. 6) Asesorar a la European Banking Autority sobre cómo debe realizar los stress tests de la banca europea. 7) Asesorar a la Reserva Federal y al gobierno americano sobre cómo dejar caer o rescatar a AIG, General Motors, Washington Mutual y otras entidades. 8) Asesorar al gobierno irlandés para realizar quitas a los acreedores privados en deuda subordinada bancaria. 9) Asesorar a los bancos centrales sobre qué deben hacer con los tipos de interés y cómo deben intervenir en los mercados financieros. 10) Enseñar y hacer operaciones con entidades financieras para mejorar sus ratios de capital sin que aumenten sus recursos propios. 11) Enseñar y hacer operaciones con entidades financieras para mejorar su beneficio presente aunque hipotequen sus resultados futuros o apalanquen el riesgo. 12) Enseñar y hacer operaciones con entidades financieras para mejorar sus ratios de liquidez sin que disminuya su riesgo de financiación. 13) Asesorar a gobiernos como el español sobre cómo debe reformar el sistema de cajas de ahorros, dar avales, inyectar ayudas a través del FROB, intervenir y subastar entidades.

Algunas de estas actividades serían menos rentables si existiesen de verdad las llamadas murallas chinas o áreas separadas, pero mientras todas las áreas de negocio pertenezcan al mismo grupo empresarial, eso de las murallas será un cuento chino. Es más, mis clientes, incluidos los reguladores, me presionarán que les ofrezca la mejor información y asesoramiento posible, aunque suponga saltarme las mencionadas murallas. Evidentemente, les daré el mejor asesoramiento que no me perjudique a mí como entidad sujeta a regulación. En principio quiero cobrar de todos los lados, pero si en alguna operación sólo puedo cobrar por uno o dos frentes, así lo haré. Lo que no me cuenten cobrándoles lo preguntaré a mis contactos, que cada vez serán más y mejores.

Por último, como no quiero engañar a nadie y quiero que todos tengan claro que con esto quiero hacerme rico, voy a llamar a mi nueva empresa Hombredeoro Bank. Papá, una vez me enseñaste un dicho español que dice: "Hecha la ley, hecha la trampa". Pues bien, yo con esta empresa quiero cobrar por hacer la ley, cobrar por enseñar a hacer la trampa y hacer yo todo tipo de trampas. Ya me dirás qué te parece.

Opá, Yo Voy a Hacer Un Investment Bank (Ángulo Inversor, 05/09/2011).

Fome e Especulação

Hace unos días la prensa focalizó parte de su atención en la alarmante hambruna que padecen los somalíes. Es el tema del momento en twitter y en otras redes sociales. Parece como si la gente hubiera despertado o como si la hambruna hubiera surgido hace unas semanas. Lo que sucede en Somalia y en medio mundo no es nuevo, pero si no se menciona en los medios, es como si no existiera. Y sólo ahora han hablado. Eso sí, lo que los medios callan es que ese hambre se ha convertido en negocio para unos pocos (pero muy poderosos). Ese hambre da pan a quien tiene una flota privada de jets. Ese hambre da pan a los sicarios financieros de Wall Street. Si teníamos poco con la estafa a la que llaman crisis, de nuevo nos topamos con los psicópatas de Manhattan. Esta vez no están jugando con nuestra vivienda. Esta vez están metiendo sus garras en lo más básico para nuestra subsistencia, nuestra comida. Antes era el negocio de la vivienda, de las hipotecas, de las CDO... ahora es otro negocio, el negocio del hambre, y ésta es su historia.

Como decía, de nuevo nos encontramos con Wall Street. Y de nuevo, Goldman Sachs. Como carroñeros financieros, estos banqueros vieron en el pan un valor seguro, un valor que nunca perdería su precio. Al fin y al cabo, vivir podemos vivir en casas o en la calle, pero tenemos que comer, no hay más remedio. Podemos vivir en cavernas, en la calle, o en chalets, pero si no hay comida, nos morimos. El pan se convierte en un bien valiosísimo. Y donde hay valor, hay dinero. Y cuanto más valor, más dinero y mayor interés para los especuladores (yo prefiero llamarlos sicarios o carroñeros financieros).

Corre el año 1991. Goldman Sachs, liderado por Gary Cohn, creó un nuevo producto financiero, un derivado que tomaba en cuenta el valor de 24 materias primas (desde metales preciosos hasta granos de café, soja, maíz o trigo). Analizaron el valor de la inversión de cada una de esas materias por separado y redujeron todo ese complicado entramado de materias primas reales en una simple fórmula matemática de cara a la inversión, conocida de ese momento en adelante como la Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI).

Durante la primera década, el GSCI se mantuvo como inversión estable, debido a que la banca estaba más interesada en las inversiones de riesgo y en las CDO (ver Inside Job -completo y subtitulado- para más información sobre este asunto). Pero en 1999 se abrió la veda para esos nuevos derivados financieros, debido a la desregularización del mercado de futuros por parte de la Comisión de Comercio de Bienes Futuros (Commodities Futures Trading Commision). De la noche a la mañana, los bancos podían invertir cantidades ingentes de dinero en materias primas, una oportunidad que sólo habían tenido a su alcance quienes verdaderamente estaban involucrados en la producción de nuestra comida, la industria alimentaria. La banca irrumpió con fuerza en ese mercado.

Hasta ese momento, la industria alimentaria de los Estados Unidos había vivido con relativo éxito gracias a los contratos de futuros, por los cuales se acordaba entre comprador y vendedor un precio razonable por unidad, aun cuando ésta no hubiera sido producida en ese momento. Esos acuerdos mantenían los precios estables y permitían a los granjeros sortear los riesgos inherentes de la profesión (visicitudes del tiempo, desastres naturales...), ya que podían invertir en sus granjas y pequeños negocios. El resultado de este sistema se traduce en una bajada del precio real del trigo a lo largo del siglo XX y en una producción de cereal en Estados Unidos que abastecía a su población y a la de otros rincones del mundo.

Pero el nuevo sistema de Goldman Sachs pervertió la simetría del sistema. La estructura del GSCI no tenía en cuenta a los participantes de esos contratos de futuros. El nuevo derivado financiero era "long-only", es decir, construído para comprar, y sólo comprar. En el transfondo de este nuevo producto estaba el intento de convertir la inversión en bienes en una inversión en acciones. Se buscaba en las materias primas un activo financiero sobre el cual los especuladores pudiera reposar su dinero durante años, esperar a que el precio suba y así enriquecerse, como si se tratara de una acción de Microsoft. Este nuevo sistema llevaba implícito el aumento constante del precio de la comida. Los inversores compraban y compraban para poder vender a un precio mayor en un futuro. Era un valor seguro. A Goldman Sachs se le unirían Barclays (340 millones de libras en beneficios anuales derivados de esta especulación), Deutsche Bank, Pimco, JP Morgan Chase, AIG, Bearn Stearns y Lehman Brothers, entre otros. Y con la "crisis" de 2008, cuando el dólar, el euro y la libra dejaban de tener la confianza de los inversores, ¿qué mejor sitio que la comida, un bien necesario que nunca perderá su valor? En los primeros días de 2008, los especuladores invirtieron 55.000 millones de dólares en el mercado de materias primas, y para julio, esa cantidad ascendía a 318.000 millones. La inflación en el precio de la comida ha seguido su escalada desde entonces.

El dinero iba y venía y la banca se frotaba las manos. Los nuevos derivados alimenticios crearon una nueva burbuja: la alimentaria. Una unidad de medida de trigo costaba de 4 a 6 dólares. Poco despúes, se batió el récord, costando esa misma medida 25 dólares. Desde 2005 a 2008, el precio de la comida aumentó en un 80% y no ha parado de subir desde entonces. La propia ONU llegó a reconocer este hecho por boca de Olivier De Schutter, Relator Especial sobre el Derecho a la Alimentación aseguró que en 2008, "una parte importante del aumento del precio de la comida se debe a la burbuja especulativa".

El resultado de esta nueva aventura de los sicarios financieros de Manhattan ha causado un nuevo shock global, esta vez en la producción y consumo de alimentos. Ahora no sólo nos encontramos con un limitado suministro de alimentos y aumento de su demanda, sino que los banqueros de inversión han creado una obra de ingeniería financiera por la cual es el trigo imaginario el que determina el precio del trigo real que consumimos.

Para las casi 2.000 millones de personas que gastan más del 50% de sus ingresos en comida, los efectos de este sistema han sido devastadores: 250 millones de personas engrosaron el número de personas en hambruna en 2008, ascendiendo el total a 1.000 millones de personas, un número nunca visto. Y estos son datos de 2008, cuando la estafa inmobiliaria a la que llaman crisis llegaba a nuestras puertas, momento idóneo para los sicarios financieros para penetrar en este nuevo mercado alimenticio. Han pasado 3 años y todos sabemos que estos psicópatas no habrán perdido el tiempo. Es ahora cuando se escucha en los medios los problemas alimenticios en el Cuerno de África y es ahora cuando se nos pide al pueblo que prestemos ayuda a esa pobre gente que vive en una tortura constante desde hace décadas. Lo que no nos dicen los medios es porqué viven así y quiénes podían hacer algo para evitarlo. No lo dicen, porque precisamente quienes han generado esta situación, son quienes controlan los medios. Así de sencillo, así de triste.

Para más información: How Goldman Sachs created the Food Crisis, Barclays 'making up to £340 million' on food price speculation, El negocio de matar de hambre, EE.UU. y Etiopía matan de hambre a los somalíes, Gráfico de cotizaciones en vivo para el trigo en Chicago.

El Negocio del Hambre (Yo y Punto, 22/07/2011).

Quanto Tempo o Tempo Tem

(Manipulados por el Tiempo) Dealing with Time, 2009: Why are we lacking in time? Through a quirky documentary style, this film digs through history to explore how time perception has changed through the centuries, show hidden cameras of our time-pressured peers, and follows rebel thinkers who are fighting to live without clocks. "Dealing with time" gives a fresh and insightful perspective into society's growing problem.

Causas Ambientais

The World Health Organization projects that this year cancer will become the world’s leading cause of death. Why the epidemic of cancer? Death certificates in the United States show cancer as being the eighth leading cause of death in 1900. Why has it skyrocketed to now surpass heart disease as number one? Is it because people live longer and have to die of something? That’s a factor, but not the prime reason as reflected by the jump in age-adjusted cancer being far above what could be expected from increased longevity. And it certainly doesn’t explain the steep hike in childhood cancers. Is it lifestyle, diet and genetics, as we have often been told? They are factors, but not key reasons.

The cause of the cancer epidemic, as numerous studies have now documented, is largely environmental — the result of toxic substances in the water we drink, the food we eat, the consumer products we use, the air we breathe. (Some of the pollution is voluntarily caused, by smoking. But most is involuntary).

As the President’s Cancer Panel declared in May, in a 240-page report titled “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now”: “The American people — even before they are born — are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures”. It said: “With the growing body of evidence linking environmental exposures to cancer, the public is becoming increasingly aware of the unacceptable burden of cancer resulting from environmental and occupational exposures that could have been prevented through appropriate national action”.

It pointed to chemicals and radiation as major causes of cancer and stated: “Cancer continues to shatter and steal the lives of Americans. Approximately 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and about 21 percent will die from the cancer. The incidence of some cancers, including some most common among children, is increasing…The burgeoning number and complexity of known or suspected environmental carcinogens compel us to act to protect public health”. The panel urged President Obama “most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives”.

In 1980, another presidential panel, the Presidential Toxic Substances Strategy Committee, came to the same conclusion. It declared: “Of the hazards to human health arising from toxic substances, cancer is a leading cause of concern. Cancer is the only major cause of death that has continued to rise since 1900. It is now second only to heart disease as a cause of death… Some of the increase in cancer mortality since 1900 is a function of the greater average age of the U.S. population and the medical progress made against infectious disease. But even after correcting for age, both mortality (death) rates and incidence (new cases) of cancer are increasing. Many now believe that environmental (nongenetic) factors — life style and work and environmental exposures — are significant in the great majority of cancer cases seen”.

Meanwhile, through the years solid science done by independent researchers — not those taking money from the chemical or nuclear industries — has extensively documented this cancer/environment connection. “The evidence is there that the majority of cancer cases are environmentally caused”, says Dr. David Carpenter, founding dean of the University of Albany School of Public Health and now director of the Institute for Health and the Environment there. Among the research he points to is a 2000 study involving examining health records of 44,788 pairs of twins in Sweden, Denmark and Finland. If genetics were the main cause of cancer, if one twin developed cancer the other probably would, too. This was not found. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, concluded that “inherited genetic factors make a minor contribution” in most cancers. “This finding indicates that the environment has the principle role in causing sporadic cancer”.

Dr. Samuel Epstein, professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, in his book The Politics of Cancer concludes that cancer is a preventable disease “caused mainly by exposure to chemical or physical agents in the environment”. The huge problem, he said, is how “a combination of powerful and well-focused pressures by special industrialized interests, together with public inattention and the indifference of the scientific community” has warped public policy and thwarted “meaningful attempts to prevent the carnage”. Dr. Epstein now chairs the Cancer Prevention Coalition committed to eliminating those toxins that are causing the cancer epidemic (www.preventcancer.com).

The initiative, Prevention is The Cure, was founded by breast cancer survivor Karen Joy Miller and on its website declares that four decades have passed, “and the wake-up call put forth by Rachel Carson” in her book Silent Spring “and other activists has been blocked by powerful political interests that profit from pollution”. These powerful interests have long had allies in government. The late James Sibbison, who went from being a reporter for the Associated Press to press officer at the Environmental Protection Agency, would tell the story of how immediately after Ronald Reagan became president, orders were given to the EPA press office “never to use the words cancer-causing in front of the word chemical”. Now the number of chemicals in commercial use in the U.S. totals 80,000. The EPA under the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 has been required to assess all of them. In over 30 years it has gotten around to examining 200.

The poisoning, and consequent cancer — is not necessary. The report by the President’s Cancer Panel emphasize how “the requite knowledge and technologies exist” to provide safe “alternatives” to cancer-causing agents. But this doesn’t suit those doing the polluting — who have such a hold on government.

Alan Grossman, Cancer, The Number One Killer, And Its Environmental Causes (Huffington Post, 17/08/2010)

Roleta Russa

Graphic: Size of the financial industry

Speculators are betting against the euro, banks are taking incalculable risks and the markets are in turmoil. Three years after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the financial industry has become a threat to the global economy again. Governments missed the chance to regulate the industry, and another crash is just a matter of time. By SPIEGEL Staff.

The enemy looks friendly and unpretentious. With his scuffed shoes and thinning gray hair, John Taylor resembles an elderly sociology professor. Books line the dark, floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves in his office in Manhattan, alongside a bust of Theodore Roosevelt and an antique telescope. Taylor is the chairman and CEO of FX Concepts, a hedge fund that specializes in currency speculation. It's the largest hedge fund of its kind worldwide, which is why Taylor is held partly responsible for the crash of the euro. Critics accuse Taylor and others like him of having exacerbated the government crisis in Greece and accelerated the collapse in Ireland. People like Taylor are "like a pack of wolves" that seeks to tear entire countries to pieces, said Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg. For that reason, they should be fought "without mercy," French President Nicolas Sarkozy raged. Andrew Cuomo, the former attorney general and current governor of New York, once likened short-sellers to "looters after a hurricane". The German tabloid newspaper Bild sharply criticized Taylor on its website, writing: "This man is betting against the euro." If that is what he is doing, he is certainly successful. While Greece is threatened with bankruptcy, Taylor is listed among the world's 25 highest-paid hedge fund managers. A well-read man, Taylor likes to philosophize about the Congress of Vienna and the Treaties of Rome. But is this man really out to speculate the euro to death? And does he have Greece on his conscience? Taylor grimaces and sighs. He was expecting these questions. "The big problem is that in some cases these politicians are looking for the easy way out and want to blame somebody else and say speculators are taking Europe apart, taking the euro down and ruining the prosperity of our country," he says, characterizing such charges against hedge fund managers as "nonsense." "My capital isn't the capital of the Rothschilds," he says, insisting that he is working with the "capital of the people," and that his goal is to protect and increase this capital. Taylor points out that no one from any of the German pension funds that invest their money with him has ever called him on the phone to tell him not to bet against the euro.

Markets Control Politicians: Taylor's arguments echo those of everyone in the financial industry -- the executives, the bankers and the big fund managers. They all insist that they are not responsible for the crisis in the euro zone and the turbulence in the financial markets, and that their actions are purely rational and in the interest of their investors. The truth is that the financial markets are controlling the politicians. If Sarkozy interrupts his vacation, the markets interpret his sudden return as a sign that the situation there is worse than they thought -- and promptly set their sights on the country. And if there is an argument between Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti, then the markets target Italy, because they doubt that the Italian government is serious about introducing austerity measures. The markets take advantage of every weakness and every rumor to speculate against one country after the next.In doing so, they aggravate the crisis. Once a country has become the subject of rumors and speculation, other investors become nervous. Fearing further price declines, pension funds and insurance companies also start selling stocks and bonds. In the end, fear nurtures fear and a panic ensues. Stock markets are currently in turmoil. Even the most experienced equity traders cannot remember a time when prices fluctuated as widely from day to day -- and often even within a single day -- as they have in recent weeks. The German stock index, the DAX, fell by 5.8 percent last Thursday and lost another 2.2 percent the next day. There is no calm in sight for the global economy. Sharp declines on the stock market and crises have become an everyday reality. This raises the question of why the financial markets are so erratic. They have developed into a permanent threat to the global economy. But what can be done to avert this risk? It cannot be a coincidence that the number and scope of disruptions have increased with the expansion of the financial industry. The Asian financial crisis in the 1990s was followed by the bursting of the Internet bubble at the turn of the millennium. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008, the financial world suddenly found itself on the brink of collapse. Now that the euro is at risk, and millions of people are afraid of their currency collapsing. A number of countries, including the United States, are groaning under debt burdens that run into the trillions.

Incalculable Risk: Naturally the financial industry -- all those who trade in securities, currencies, money and the products derived from them, known as derivatives -- is not responsible for all the crises in the global economy. Politicians also share some of the blame, for having accumulated too much debt and given the banks too much leeway. But without the destructive power of the banks, hedge funds and other investment companies, the world would not be where it is today -- at the edge of an abyss. The financial industry grew rapidly, as did the sums of money with which its players speculated on the prices of stocks, commodities and government bonds. The products they developed to turn money into even more money became more and more complex. At the same time, the risks they were willing to accept became incalculable. The sector's high salaries tend to attract the best and brightest university graduates. The members of this youthful elite don't devise new products that make people's lives better, nor do they found new companies that further progress. Instead, these young financial wizards invest a great deal of money and effort to develop sophisticated financial products, the sole purpose of which is to generate more profit for both their employers and, ultimately, for themselves -- sometimes at the expense of other market players or even their customers. Many things that happen on Wall Street and in London's financial district are "socially useless," says Lord Adair Turner, chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority (FSA). The values that are created there are often not real or of any use to society, Turner adds. Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, once remarked that the only truly useful financial innovation in the past 20 years is the cash machine. Once upon a time, the sole purpose of banks was to supply the economy with money. They were service providers, sources of energy for the economy, so to speak, but nothing more. But now the financial industry has largely disconnected itself from the manufacturing economy, transforming its role from subservient to dominant in the process. The potential upshot of this shift became evident less than three years ago. The banks had excessively foisted mortgages on Americans without paying much attention to their customers' ability to repay these loans. They packaged the risks into new financial products and sold them on. But apparently very few people understood how these products actually worked. When the subprime bubble finally burst, it dragged down the entire financial industry with it. The major financial firms found themselves on the brink of bankruptcy and were forced to appeal to the government for help. 

Lost Opportunity: The assistance was provided, but a historic opportunity was squandered in the process. None of the powerful banks was broken up, and only a few of the dangerous financial products were banned. With the central banks lending money at low rates, speculation could continue. The financial industry recovered quickly as a result, and now it is just as powerful as it was before the crisis -- and just as dangerous, for both the economy and society as a whole. Even passionate advocates of the market economy are now questioning how an economic system that functioned so well for so long could spin dangerously out of control. In a hard-hitting opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph on July 30, British journalist Charles Moore sharply criticized the banks for keeping profits while passing on losses to taxpayers. "The banks only 'come home' when they have run out of our money," he wrote. "Then our governments give them more." Moore asks himself whether the left, with its criticism of the capitalist system, might actually be right. The prominent German journalist Frank Schirrmacher, expounding on Moore's commentary in the Sunday edition of the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, wrote that a decade of economic policies based on loosely regulated financial markets is proving to be the "most successful" way to make the left-wing critique of free-market capitalism, which had fallen out of favor, popular again. Western societies have seldom been more divided, and never have income disparities been as great as they are today. In no other industry can someone get rich as quickly as in the financial industry, where investment bankers divide up a large share of the profits among themselves and hedge-fund managers earn annual incomes in the millions -- and sometimes even in the billions. At the same time, the markets are constantly demanding higher returns. Those who do not meet their expectations are punished with declines in the price of their stock and higher borrowing costs. Companies, forced to adjust to these requirements, keep wages down and their workforces at a minimum. These differences are especially glaring in London, Europe's most important financial center. Bankers live in the lap of luxury in the city's exclusive neighborhoods, while poor neighborhoods are home to people who have abandoned all hope. Many observers see this disparity and loss of hope as one of the causes of the recent unrest.

Out of Control, The Destructive Power of the Financial Markets (artigo completo: Spiegel OnLine, 22/08/2011)

Dupla Face da Moeda

The Two Faces of Money, 2006: Money has become the drug of our societies. Confronted with this phenomenon, citizens all over the world are inventing complementary currencies for social ends and are opening the debate: What is money for? The film is made of reports of different complementary currencies: Chiemagauer (Germany), Time Bank (England) and Lets (in Paris), and interviews with Margrit Kennedy, Michael Linton, Bernard Lietaer and Patrick Vivere. This film started with the First Forum of Complementary Currencies (July 2004 – Bad Honnef, Germany). During this meeting we interviewed a lot of specialists like Margrit Kennedy or Michael Linton. Then Christian Gellery received us in Bavaria for a shooting about the Chiemgauer currency. We continued in England where Martin Simons explained us the Time Bank System. And we finished at home with the Lets of Paris.

Moedas Complementares (Wörgl, Áustria)

The Wörgl Experiment: On July 5th 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression, the Austrian town of Wörgl made economic history by introducing a remarkable complimentary currency. Of its population of 4,500, a total of 1,500 people were without a job, and 200 families were penniless – Wörgl was in serious trouble and prepared to try anything.

The mayor, Michael Unterguggenberger, had a long list of projects he wanted to accomplish, but there was hardly any money with which to carry them out. These included repaving the roads, street-lighting, extending water distribution across the whole town, and planting trees along the streets.

Rather than spending the 40,000 Austrian Schillings in the town’s coffers to fund only a few projects, he deposited them in a local savings bank as a guarantee to back the issue of a complimentary currency known as 'Stamp Scrip'. This requires a monthly stamp to be stuck on all the circulating notes for them to remain valid, and in Wörgl, the stamp amounted 1% of each note’s value. The money raised by these stamps was then used to run a soup kitchen that fed 220 families.

Because nobody wanted to pay what was effectively a hoarding fee, everyone receiving the notes would spend them as fast as possible. The 40,000 Schilling deposit allowed anyone to exchange Scrip for 98% of its value in Schillings. However, this offer was rarely taken up. Of all the businesses in Wörgl, only the railway station and the post office refused to accept the local money. When people ran out of spending ideas, they would pay their taxes early using the Stamp Scrip, resulting in a huge increase in town revenues.

Over the 13-month period the project ran, the council not only carried out all the intended works projects, but also built new houses, a reservoir, a ski jump, and a bridge. The people also used Scrip to replant forests, in anticipation of the future cash-flow they were to receive from the trees.

The key to its success was the fast circulation of Scrip within the local economy, 14 times higher than the Schilling! This in turn increased trade, creating extra employment. At the time of the project, Wörgl was the only Austrian town to achieve full employment. Six neighbouring villages copied the system successfully. The French Prime Minister, Edouard Dalladier, made a special visit to see the 'miracle of Wörgl'. In January 1933, the project was replicated in the nearby town of Kirchbühl, and in June 1933, Mayor Unterguggenberger addressed a meeting with representatives from 170 different towns and villages. Two hundred Austrian townships were interested in adopting the idea.

At this point, the Austrian Central Bank panicked, and decided to assert its monopoly rights by banning complimentary currencies. The people successfully sued the Bank, but later lost in the Austrian Supreme Court. It then became a criminal offence to issue 'emergency currency'. The town went back to 30% unemployment. In 1934, social unrest exploded across Austria. In 1938, when Hitler annexed Austria, he was welcomed by many people as their economic and political saviour.

The Mayor got the idea for his new currency from the work of the German economist Silvio Gesell. Central to Gesell's ideas was the use of a hoarding fee of the kind used in Wörgl (technically known as 'demurrage'). The soundness of such an idea was affirmed by John Maynard Keynes in his 1936 work 'General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money' in which he wrote “in future the world will certainly learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx”.

Inflation and deflation are also reputed to have been non-existent for the duration of the experiment. However, it was in the United States that the implementation of Stamp Scrip came closest to becoming official public policy.

Professor Irving Fisher of Yale University was considered the most prominent American economist of his time – he had written a classic book on interest rates – and he was convinced that Stamp Scrip was the way out of the Depression. Indeed he went on record as saying – “The Correct application of stamp scrip would solve the Depression crisis in the US in three weeks".
The then Undersecretary of the Treasury, Dean Acheson, was intrigued by what Fisher said and asked Russel Sprague, a well-respected Harvard Professor for his opinion. Sprague said that this approach would indeed succeed in bringing America back to work out of the Depression…but it also had certain political implications which he may want to check with the President.

Shortly afterwards President Roosevelt made a speech announcing a series of impressive centralized new initiatives to counter the crisis – his New Deal – he also announced that by executive decree he would henceforth prohibit all emergency currencies.

Interestingly, today there are grave doubts that the New Deal did much to get the US out of the Great Depression – that was done by shifting the economy to prepare for the Second World War – both in the US and Germany/Austria.

However we are not in 1932 but in 2011– not in the Great Depression but in the Very Great Depression as some would have it – the first Depression of the Globalized Age.

Because the introduction of local Stamp Scrip currencies inevitably leads to a decentralization of power – away from a central authority and towards local communities – central authorities such as central banks and governments have traditionally opposed such initiatives – irrespective of the fact that they may be in the best interests of their people.

Ultimately therefore, any such initiative boils down to an issue of power – a successful introduction of it will return power to the people in a real way – while a failure of such an initiative can only lead to more and more centralized authoritarian power – this time on a global level – raising the spectre of the much-touted and feared New World Order.

Xecnet.com

Vinhetas: Pawel Kuczynski

Pawel Kuczynski

Pawel Kuczynski

Pawel Kuczynski

Autofagia

Bill Rees on the Self-cannibalizing Nature of Neoclassical Economics: The Promethean myth of ever ascending will and development is one that has played itself out largely to the detriment of the global ecology. Today, our extractive economies have grown to violate the biophysical functioning of the planet in that the entire industrial complex depends upon the utilization/exploitation of natural resources for its survival. Aside from just taking from its finite bounty, we pollute with materials and emissions that nature, for the most part, cannot ingest into its normal organic processes, resulting in a litany of dire consequences- from climate rise to extensive loss of species diversification. Here, professor William Rees, creator of the ecological footprint concept, speaks to the self-cannibalizing nature of an economic model singularly obsessed with growth. J.P. Hayes (Kickitover, 21/02/2011).

Prosperidade e Riqueza

The reigning policy orientation today holds that greater economic growth leads to greater wellbeing or prosperity. So for the last five decades the pursuit of economic growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was fifty years ago. At the individual level, higher income will increase wellbeing or lead to prosperity, according to this view. Prosperity means a higher salary, a big house in a posh locality, an expensive and a latest model car, and holidays in exotic places. What is apparent today is prosperity is understood in economic terms with continual rise in national and global economic output, with a corresponding increase in people’s income. This economic ideology has assumed the status of a modern state religion.

Prosperity, however, is not synonymous with wealth or income. Greater prosperity is not the same as economic growth or rise in income. “To prosper” (from Latin word prosperus) means “to flourish”, “to enjoy vigorous and healthy growth”. Prosperity means to flourish physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. It does not mean to succeed in material terms or to be successful financially. Although wealth is an element in prosperity, material wealth does not necessarily indicate a happy and fulfilled life, and emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Most of the time the expensive material things we surround ourselves with convey a void in life and a craving for acceptance, recognition and identity − the basic human needs. One may have all the money, yet live with the nagging feeling of emptiness, restlessness and even boredom. A void that can not be filled with wealth and material things.

But in the present day highly unequal societies the importance of income and wealth in prosperity or wellbeing is played out through relative effects. Income disparities indicate status differences. So what matters is having more income and wealth than those around us. At times it gives power and authority. Income and wealth also give access to “status goods” that is very important in establishing one’s social standing. Because in unequal societies status competition is intense and we are sensitive to how we are perceived or judged by others. Robert Frank’s books Luxury Fever or Falling Behind show how consumption is about status competition. People spend thousands of rupees on accessories such as handbags and sunglasses with the right labels to make statements about themselves. It is not that they want to spend so much of money on mere “things.” Money is spent on the value attached to some of the consumer goods in society. Because we experience ourselves through each other’s eyes. That is the reason for right labels, designer clothes, latest model cars and branded accessories. Consumer goods are not mere stuff, but “language” in social relationships. Through things we convey with one another our identity, social status, social affiliation and feelings – through giving and receiving gifts − for one another. Consumer goods play a role in our lives that goes way beyond their material functionality. That is why they continue to captivate us even beyond the point of usefulness.

Consumerism is powerful. We continue to invent or reinvent our social identity and status through accumulation of latest “status goods” that have arrived in market. Novelty carries with it important information about status. Companies continue to stuff market with new “status goods” and promote them by hiring popular brand ambassadors to entice consumers to emulate these popular figures in order to reposition themselves on the social ladder. Thus, there is a direct correlation between restless desire for new consumer goods and their continual production by corporate companies. The relentless pursuit for novelty creates anxiety, which in turn affects physical, psychological and spiritual wellbeing.

Consumerism interferes with the workings of society by replacing the normal common sense desire for an adequate supply of life’s necessities, community life, a stable family and healthy relationships with an artificial ongoing and insatiable quest for things and the money to buy them, with little regard for the true utility of what is bought. An intended consequence of this, promoted by those who profit from consumerism, is to accelerate the discarding of the old, either because of lack of durability or a change in fashion. This makes people to work for long hours to have more income to place themselves in a conspicuous position in the social hierarchy through acquiring latest consumer appliances, accessories and fashions. This is a vicious cycle. People have less time because they work more. They work more because they want more to maintain a higher standard of living. That means, as a society we are choosing MONEY over TIME. It creates anxiety and stress, and undermines physical and mental health and family relationships. Spending time with spouse and children, and having rest and relaxation become secondary to the chasing of mirage called social status and identity in a consumer society. The moment we think we have got it, entrepreneur invents new consumer goods and with that the social identity and status will change. We will never arrive there in our life time, because it is a MIRAGE.

The wisdom of the old says, “I made great works; I built houses, and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines. So I became great…” (Ecclesiastes 2.4-9). He asks, “What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?” and declares that it is like “a chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 1.2; 2.11).

Consumerism numbs us and we live in delusion that it gives “fruits of life” − fruits that satisfy basic human needs and sustain human life. When common sense prevails we will realize what all important things we have lost in life like the joy of spending time with spouse, children and friends, and physical and mental health in rest and relaxation.

Surely material goods are essential to meet our basic needs: food, clothing and shelter. In order to buy food, clothing, housing and other basic needs money is required. However, once a person’s basic needs are met, money takes on a different meaning. Money brings happiness only insofar as it lifts people out of poverty. Once that level is crossed, the link between material wealth and wellbeing and happiness is very thin. Psychological studies show that more income and more consumer goods do not lead to lasting gains in our sense of wellbeing or satisfaction in our life. Psychologist Tim Kasser highlights what he calls the high price of materialism. According to him, materialistic values such as popularity, image and financial success are psychologically opposed to intrinsic values like – self-acceptance, affiliation and a sense of belonging to a community. He further says that people with higher intrinsic values are happier than those with materialistic values.

Take, for example, the people of the Scandinavian countries: Sweden and Denmark. The people of these countries have consistently been found to be among the happiest in the world. According to the same studies the people of Costa Rica are happier that the Scandinavians, although the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of Costa Rica is only one-fourth that of Sweden and Denmark.

Similarly, Guatemalans are happier than those of the United States, despite its low income level than that of the latter. So there is hardly any correlation between levels of wealth and levels of happiness and wellbeing, once poverty level is crossed. Economic growth and higher incomes in the US are supposed to deliver prosperity − that, at least, is the conventional wisdom. But the ground reality does not support the conventional view. In the US, the economic super power, the rates of depression, obesity, heart attacks, divorces, and suicides have skyrocketed. Antidepressants are now the most commonly prescribed drugs. The nation consumes two-thirds of the global market for drugs prescribed to combat chronic sadness and hopelessness. One study found that today the average American child experiences higher levels of anxiety than did the average child under psychiatric care in the 1950s.

After analyzing more than 150 studies on wealth and happiness, Diener and Martin Seligman, two of the world’s top experts on the science of happiness, wrote: 
”Although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction… and there has been a substantial increase in depression and distrust.”

Inequality affects our ability to trust and our sense that we are part of a community. Thus, it affects social relations, and promotes individualism and self-centeredness. People become insensitive to the needs of others. “Inequality takes the form of dominance hierarchies, based on power and coercion and privileged access to resources…That’s why power, status and wealth all go together at the top and why powerlessness, hunger and poverty go together at the bottom.”

In egalitarian societies, where there is a strong community life, there is more trust, caring, sharing and people give higher priority to common good. They experience greater joy and satisfaction when they share and work together for common good. In such societies there is less importance to social status, and so less positional competition. That means, less importance for “status goods”. This reduces anxiety, and enhances the quality of life. This is what prosperity means. Tim Jackson, Economics Commissioner, Sustainable Development Commission, says, “Prosperity goes beyond material pleasures. It transcends material concerns. It resides in the quality of our lives and in the health and happiness of our families. It is present in the strength of our relationships and our trust in the community. It is evidenced by our satisfaction at work and our sense of shared meaning and purpose. It hangs on our potential to participate fully in the life of society. Prosperity consists in our ability to flourish as human beings – within the ecological limits of a finite planet.”

Kamalakar Duvvuru, Prosperity and Wealth  (Dissident Voice, 18/08/2011).

Carlos Taibo: Decrescimento

En esta entrevista Carlos Taibo nos explica qué es el decrecimiento, nacido como crítica al crecimiento ilimitado en un mundo con recursos limitados, y como propuesta de debate social. El decrecimiento es una corriente de pensamiento político, económico y social favorable a la disminución controlada de la producción económica con el objetivo de establecer una nueva relación de equilibrio entre el ser humano y la naturaleza, pero también entre los propios seres humanos.

Tanta Generosidade

Warren Buffet wants to tax the rich, Forbes warns about a global class war and Nouriel Roubini says that Marx was right about capitalism. What’s going on?

It was a week of opposites. As stock markets around the world continued to nosedive into financial meltdown, the world’s third wealthiest man told US Congress to stop coddling the super-rich; Forbes, the ultimate magazine of the rich and famous, warned about the “coming global class war“; and Nouriel Roubini, one of the world’s leading economists, told the Wall Street Journal that Karl Marx was actually right in saying that capitalism is doomed.

And as if that string of radical comments from some of the world’s least radical sources weren’t enough, Business Insider piled onto the scrimmage stating that “Karl Marx is hot” and TIME Magazine called on the West to “heed Marx’s warning” and realize that capitalism simply won’t survive without heavy-handed state intervention. Even on Wall Street a specter was haunting investors, with several leading analysts quoting Marx favorably in important research notes.

What’s going on here? Why this sudden mainstream interest in issues that the radical left has been crying out about at the fringes of the political debate for the past 20-30 years? Certainly these capitalists didn’t turn into revolutionary socialists overnight? Indeed, all of them make it very clear that they disagree with Marx on the crucial issue of socialism. They just believe he “might have been right” about capitalism’s tendency to self-destruct.

In other words, the sudden (superficial) interest in the work of Marx points at the growing sense of fear among the ruling classes. As Business Insider put it, “you know it’s a real panic when everyone’s trotting out the old guys, and even capitalists think Marx got the endgame right”. In an op-ed, Roubini pointed out that “Karl Marx was right that globalization, financial intermediation, and income redistribution could lead capitalism to self-destruct”.

But it’s not just the fear of financial collapse that’s driving Marx’s comeback. Apparently, the ruling classes are fearing an imminent rising of the masses. As Fortune wrote, “the riots that hit London and other English cities last week have the potential to spread beyond the British Isles. Class rage isn’t unique to England; in fact, it represents part of a growing global class chasm that threatens to undermine capitalism itself.”

The only “logical” conclusion for the more enlightened bourgeois press, therefore, is old-fashioned progressive liberal reformism. Consider TIME‘s conclusion: “capitalism can be saved from the excesses that Marx warned would be its downfall, but only through the sort of state intervention that has become almost as politically unfashionable as Karl Marx himself”. In other words: capitalism needs socialism to survive — but we still want to keep capitalism!

Stefan Stern, a professor in management at Cass Business School in London, just echoed a similar conclusion in the Independent: “Marx said that while interpreting the world was all very well, the point was to change it. If capitalists want to keep their world safe for capitalism, they need to face up to what is wrong with it, and change it, fast”. But is changing capitalism to save the system really the same as “changing the world“? It certainly doesn’t seem to be.

Indeed, what we are witnessing here is the ultimate case of a “passive revolution“. As Antonio Gramsci (wiki), the great Italian philosopher, wrote in his Prison Notebooks, Marx was wrong to put so much faith in his “economic determinism”. Capitalism, Gramsci observed, did not rule merely through force or oppression. Neither would its internal contradictions automatically lead to a socialist revolution. Instead, Gramsci accorded a major role to culture.

For Gramsci, the ruling groups in society maintained their position in two ways: firstly, through the traditional Marxist form of physical and economic oppression; and, secondly, through cultural hegemony, which operates via ideological consent. Thus Gramsci opened up a major new battlefield in the revolutionary process: civil society. There, outside of the realm of the state or the economy, ruling groups clashed with subordinate ones in a discursive “war of position” to gain or retain popular legitimacy.

It was this brilliant theoretical innovation that allowed Gramsci to explain capitalism’s resiliency to an all-out popular revolution. When their dominant position came under fire, Gramsci observed, and the ruling classes were about to lose the crucial consent of the people, they could always accommodate for the concerns of the masses by going against their own direct short-term interests in order to retain the dominant social order in the long-term.

In this respect, while we may feel an intuitive moral appreciation for the seeming selflessness of Warren Buffet or the sheer frankness of Nouriel Roubini, we have to realize that these enlightened capitalists, for all their “Marxian” rhetoric, are even more dangerous than the blunt ones like Lloyd Blankfein or the Koch brothers. For it is the Buffets and Roubinis of this world who, through their passive reformism, will allow the latter to keep controlling the rest of us.

Jérôme E. Roos, Passive revolution: are the rich starting to get scared? (Reflections on a Revolution, 20/08/2011).

Transição Energética

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba's economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call "The Special Period". The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope. The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, 2006.

Pico de Hubbert

Este documental viene a ser algo así como un curso acelerado sobre los nuevos paradigmas que ya estamos enfrentando ante la gran anomalía planetaria denominada Pico del Petróleo. Participan una serie de especialistas de reconocida trayectoria en sus respectivas áreas profesionales y de investigación, quienes ofrecen en conjunto las piezas fundamentales para que el espectador pueda armar su propio mapa de la situación. Blind Spot, 2008.

Sobre a Exposição Voluntária

CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs: The CIA's invention of Facebook has saved the government millions of dollars. Onion News Network.

Marx Profético

We have a dearth of knowledge in the U.S. regarding Marxist economic and social theory. Marx is not taught in our economics departments. The reason is clear. I was sitting in the office of an MIT economics professor once, in the early to mid 1970’s, and during our conversation, I asked why. He explained that those providing the government and corporate grants to MIT would not tolerate a Marxist on the faculty and the same was true at other top universities. Chicago, were I was taught economics, certainly had no Marxist on its faculty. Things haven’t changed. I went out of my way once earlier to take a course on Marxist economics from Paul Sweezy, a Harvard Ph.D and an excellent economist. Because he was a Marxist scholar and taught Marxism, he could not find employment at a top university commensurate with his skills and credentials.

The consequence, sadly to say, is most of us don’t have much of a clue about what Marx had to say. In a nutshell and stripped of his own inflammatory terminology and technical economic errors, Marx had this to say in his book, Das Kapital.

Marx argued that at capitalism would succeed in its initial stages quite well in promoting growth by means of capital investment in new technology and improved means of production. Everyone would prosper. As capitalism developed, however, he argued that capitalists would appropriate to themselves more and more of the profits or income from the economy and that laborers would come to have increasingly less.

Over time, in time and such circumstances, Marx claimed that, first, capitalistic economies would undergo ever more vicious cyclical swings from boom to bust. These cycles and the on-going process of capitalism would, second, result in ever richer capitalists and ever poorer working classes, until, finally, at some point, laborers would revolt and take over the means of production, causing Socialism to ensue as a result. Socialism, in turn, was merely a transitional step to Communism.

This is Marx’s macro socio-economic theory stripped to its bare essentials. Are the central themes now clear and do we see them in our own macro situation. His expanded theory may be found in Das Kapital. It is not a book you likely have in your back bar bookcase or even your home library. Reading it, to see through to the encapsulated description I provide, requires several things. First, you must ignore Marx’s inflammatory language such as the bourgeois = capitalists, the proletarians = the laborers, the “surplus value” of labor = profits and the like. Second, Marx also argued that the “surplus value” had its origin in surplus labor, which he took to be the difference between what it costs to keep workers alive and what they can produce. Ignore all that. Marx’s surplus theory of value has been demonstrated to be incorrect, albeit, according to Nobel Laureate George Stigler, not by a great deal.

Focus on the big issues, the maximal, macro socio-economic view, if you will. It is as I have described it above and in a nutshell, and it makes for some uncomfortable reading and thought.

What we observe of the American economy, at its present stage, is exceptionally close to what Marx described, whether we like it or not. Let me describe the ways:

1. Earlier in our history, up until about 30 years ago, capitalism as it was practiced in the United States did do very well and materially aided a good standard of living for most Americans; 2. Since then, real wages have stagnated and income has become seriously concentrated in the upper income households. The top 1/10 of 1%, get 6% of all income. As Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren explains it, for long stretches of time in recent years, the growth in the nation's GDP has gone almost entirely to the top 1% or less of the population. The top 40% get about 78% of all income. Now couple this with the following fact: 3. Productivity Growth Quarter in 4Q 2009 was 6.2%. For the year, it came to 5.1%. As Brad DeLong describes this current slice of reality, “The flip side of the jobless recovery is a high productivity-growth recovery and, with stagnant wages, a rise in the profit share (read, capitalist’s take)". This is becoming more prevalent; 4. The distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. has progressively become worse over the last several decades as real wages have stagnated or declined a bit; 5. So to have our cyclical booms and busts become more severe over the last decade. We have had the dot com boom and bust and now the housing boom and bust. We are anything but stable, especially now as we are loaded up with debt and deficits; 6. The share of income or profits being generated by small business is falling and the share of total profits being generated by large businesses is increasing; 7. Government has enacted much special interest legislation contrary to the public interest, to aid the concentration of wealth and income in the hands of the wealthiest and feather representatives own beds; 8. Now, what we see with increased productivity and the maldistribution of income and wealth is a growing surplus of labor or the unemployed; 9. We are beginning to see embryonic development of reactionary grass roots political movements, such as the Tea Party crowd. While now small, without good leadership and ill-focused, grass root movements do not have to stay that way. Once started, they can change quickly and gain good focus and leadership; 10. As a matter of public policy, we are adamantly and deliberately ignoring entirely too much that is important here, all to our prospective detriment. In short, we are asking for public upheaval and revolt; 11. The public, both right and left, are truly exasperated with our federal government, frustrated with our economy, mad at Congress and the Administration and ripe for something new that offers us all a better prospect.

Marx is timely here, possibly even prophetic and above all, at this stage in our developing economy and social order, he is quite disturbing.

Kimball Corson, The Fate of Capitalism: Was Marx Right? (Seeking Alpha, 07/02/2010).

Luta de Classes

There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning. Warren Buffett (New York Times, 26/11/2006).

Distopia

Who was right, Huxley or Orwell? Few things delight me on a daily basis more than The Writer’s Almanac, which I receive by e-mail. Today’s Almanac reminds us that it’s the birthday of Aldous Huxley. He is perhaps most famous for his 1932 book Brave New World, which portrays a world eerily like our own. Brave New World is often compared with George Orwell’s 1948 book, Nineteen Eighty Four. The Almanac summarizes an intriguing comparison between the two famous books by the cultural critic Neil Postman in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death:

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. … In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us”.

At the outset Huxley planned to parody H.G. Wells’ utopian novel Men Like Gods (1923). But his book envisions a society like an automobile production line - a mass-produced culture in which people are fed a steady diet of bland amusements and take an antidepressant called Soma to keep themselves from feeling anything negative. Huxley saw us winding up as consumer bots drugged by trivia. Given the eerie placidity of the American electorate in the face of ever more sovereign power and personhood for corporations, whose dystopian vision comes closer to present reality, Huxley’s or Orwell’s? Are we consumer bots or citizens in charge of our destiny?

Djelloul Marbrook, Is This The Brave New World? (26/07/2011).

Consciência

José Saramago: La alternativa al neoliberalismo se llama conciencia.