Blood Into Gold

CNBC Captured the Inverted Alchemy message in their coverage of the Blood Into Gold release...
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29883286/


Following a meeting with Peter Buffett in January, I had a dream in which I saw all of the attempts at alchemy in the world. In the dream I saw that the only thing that had been successfully turned into gold was the blood of humanity - both those explicitly oppressed and those who are enslaved by their obsessions. Peter and recording artist AKON took that dream and created a masterful song calling for accountability which will be debuted at the UN International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, March 25, 2009. Please share this video with all you know and join in the effort to see the wealth in the essence of things and people rather than in the gold that from them can be extracted...

http://think.mtv.com/044FDFFFF018195C2001700996974.
(Copy the link and paste it into your browser to avoid the mtv homepage)


Think, Inform, Act....

De-nominating the Common Wealth

The Newtonian impulse to recognize as verifiable and real only that which can be named and measured finds itself at an untenable boundary. Most matter is “dark matter”. Most energy is “dark energy”. Most DNA is “junk DNA”. And most financial products are ephemeral bets against uncertainty – with the majority of them bets against a better future. After all, default swaps accounted for five times the global GDP before they unraveled in 2008. The Bank of International Settlements or BIS – the party responsible for establishing the framework for international banking standards – still puts on an equivalent footing, cash, cash-equivalents, and gold as surety against financial loss. Is it not ironic that in an age defined as the “knowledge economy” we have been entirely unimaginative in how we describe, measure and exchange value?

The time has come to free humanity from the tyranny of reductionism in the denomination of wealth. Part of that process is to carefully examine the consensus myths and their consequences around reflexive norms. Think for a moment. If gold sells for $1,000 per ounce and it takes 22 tonnes of ore to get one ounce, have we honestly priced gold? Could you move 22 tonnes of anything any distance for $1,000? Did we price in the cost of the expropriated land? Did we price in the oppression of labor? Did we price in the only alchemy that inhumanity has perfected – namely turning human blood into gold? Clearly, no. Are cash and cash equivalents a necessity for social exchanges of value or are they the reductionist efficiency for power structures to maintain control (and taxation basis)? Can the BIS bring accountability and transparency to the globe when the G-20 seeks to return to the asymmetries of the past?

The G-20 ministers met in London this weekend as I found myself in a sandstorm in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I was puzzled as I saw the economic leaders of the current paradigm struggling to find a path to bring accountability to a process that was explicitly set up to avoid it. Remember, the innovation of a corporation per se was a creation to buffer individuals from the liability of their enterprise. Limited liability and limited accountability go hand in hand. Humanity has a chance to have a voice right now - a clarion call to suggest that we don't want to go back but rather, we want to move forward. We want to have infrastructure built and financed in such a way as to allow for the immediate inclusion of innovation rather than waiting for a bond to expire and an asset to waste. We want to have exchanges between people, communities and cultures which don't have to be reduced to balance sheets. When "goodwill" is written off to zero and tangible assets are tested for impairment, is there any wonder that we aren't evolving into a more transparent and accountable future. The world is more complex than Excel displays it. It's time to take back the dimensionality of humanity and celebrate its complexity in the accountable stewardship to which we are being invited.

The AIG Shell Game – Part 2

If the Government wasn’t at the helm, the SEC would call this a Ponzi scheme


Many of my earlier writings going back to 1998, have pointed to the fundamental “weakest link” in the global capital markets which has been the disconnect between the understanding of collateral and the retail cost of capital leading to precipitous risks to the public and private investor. Long before it was thinkable, I commented to the executives at AIG that their opaque counterparty risk management products were going to result in global market calamity. In contrived bull market enthusiasm, such a warning was unheard. Even now, as President Obama and his team work to stem the hemorrhage of calamity in the markets, there is NO evidence that he or his advisors actually understand where the tumor is that is causing the spreading cancer. So, in an effort to shed some light on this, I’m going to take a basic approach to explain what’s going on and what to do about it.

Philosophically, we need to understand the ubiquitous nature of perceptions of risk and how it has allegedly been managed over the past 75 years. Established in 1933 as part of the Banking Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was chartered to shield the public from economic disruption arising from liquidity crises and bank failures. In theory, by building public confidence in bank security, depositors would be comfortable supplying the reserve liquidity (in the form of deposits) to allow banks to issue credit. Sold to the public as a way to insure their safety, the FDIC was and remains, in truth, a tax on the public to incentivize private depositors to fund banks and their operations.

Recognizing how well the “public interest” insurance premium "tax" argument worked to entice depositors to support the U.S. banking infrastructure, other similar structures were equally incentivized. For example, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) formed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, like the FDIC, receives its reserve funding through insurance premiums paid by the public. Like the FDIC, the PBGC is in a position of near illiquidity. While more indirect, federal tax policy has funneled the majority of tax-deferred investments into IRAs, 401(k)s, and other defined benefit programs which have consolidated asset allocations into a very limited swath of financial products – the bulk of which are bonds. This incentive has been used as a way for the Federal government to underwrite corporate and municipal debt without telling the public that they're actually being charged a tax. After all, the theory goes, this is an investment in the future productivity of the country. Which would be great it we had a GDP. This was, at inception, supposed to insure against wild volatility swings in equity markets and other investment products. However, this “risk management”-based-on-insurance strategy built a catastrophic risk overhang into the market which is moments away from full failure.

Heralded as financial market innovation by brokers and academics alike, many saw pools of cash sitting in conservative yield financial products during the bull run of the late 90s and again in the first half of this decade as wonderfully under-utilized. Since most of the public didn't really "need" their money until retirement, the accountability for where it was double and triple leveraged wouldn't really matter, would it? As long as S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch were willing to sell their ratings to prop up unsubstantiated investment products and bless them as investment grade, conservative investment managers of reserve accounts leveraged these public insurance policies against increasingly ephemeral financial products. Among the providers of liquidity were insurance companies (like AIG, MBIA, FGIC, Ambac, and FSA) who used premium deposits (not income) as the collateral for short-term credit guarantees joined by a host of life insurance companies around the world. Also getting in the act were endowments from major universities, sovereign pensions like Singapore’s Central Provident Fund (CPF) or Canada’s Pension Plan Investment Board, and anyone else who had contractual requirements (supported by tax deferral policies) to hold the public’s money for future obligations.

Unfortunately, few people understood that these pension and annuity obligations were being put at risk and, since the managers of such programs were being incentivized to leverage their reserves for promises of short-term gains, they were being seduced into deepening their exposure by providing ever greater amounts of credit insurance. Credit insurance, by the way, is an interesting, Ponzi-like program where to gain investment grade ratings so that fixed income buyers can purchase bonds, other fixed income accounts (pensions, annuities, and insurers) provide balance sheet support for a fee. This fee – a credit insurance premium itself - is then used to support income which, in turn, is invested. Like any Ponzi scheme, the racket works as long as there are buyers and until the risk matures. Then, like every Ponzi scheme, the house of cards falls.

So imagine the irony when the house of cards begins to crumble. Based on their reports today, March 9, 2009, the FDIC has $41 billion. Not to worry. With over half of that set aside for the next 12 months of losses alone, Sheila Bair, the person at the helm of the FDIC has cast any concern for premium collection aside now saying that the FDIC has the “full faith and credit of the United States government”. “We can’t run out of money,” she said in a Reuters report.

On the same day of this announcement, the newly-minted federally insured bank, General Electric corporation, announced TLGP and FDIC backed debt in the amount of $8 billion to add to their existing Aaa (Moody’s) and AAA (S&P) corporate bonds. Why does the U.S. government need GE to originate these products? Well, quite simply, because it’s desperately trying to get someone to plug the gap in investment grade bond instruments to fulfill the quasi-statutory demands of pensions who are now both illiquid and, with the down-grading of credit insurance providers, no longer holding investment grade investments. Bottom line, there is insufficient inventory for annuities, pensions, endowments and other conservative long-term buyers to remain out of default so the government is attempting to shore this up with, you guessed it, a Ponzi-scheme. Is it any wonder that the SEC is making so much noise about the Madoff's of the world to distract from their own more egregious program? In short, the GE deal is part and parcel of the AIG cover-up.

The cover-up is quite simple and profound. Few, if any tax deferred pensions, annuities or endowments now have the funds to redeem their current or future obligations. If the public were to find this out, it would be a disaster far worse than we’ve already seen. Imagine a Depression-era run on pensions. Foreign investors, as evidenced by the Saudi Arabian, Singaporean, and other sovereign funds’ losses in the Citigroup bailout, no longer have an appetite to buy U.S. government debt so the U.S. government is pulling out its last chip before complete insolvency – shore up pensions with faux corporate debt. The problem with this strategy is simple. As soon as we see that the insurance liabilities at present outstrip the U.S. Government’s “full faith and credit”, the collapse is visible and there’s nowhere to hide. The very companies that were put in place to protect the investments of the public have long ago placed your deposits at risk, taken their fees, and are, by and large, in technical or actual default to you, the private citizen. Now, your pension fund is trying to buy FDIC-backed bonds and other fixed income products with your money. This is another bailout tax and you should not participate in it.

What can one do? Quite simply, an immediate review of tax-deferred investments is of immediate import. And by immediate, I mean today. Any investments that are covered under credit insurance programs should be carefully considered and probably re-rated as speculative. At this juncture, it appears prudent to review all equity investments which have balloon maturity debt (many companies financed acquisitions from 2002-2005 with short term maturing bonds and commercial paper) and exit them in favor of equities issued by companies which have reproducible revenue coming from essentials for health, food and food security, and logistics and an innovation pipeline supporting future efficiencies. And finally, realize that all of this problem grew out of the fear of the 1930’s and anything built on a foundation of fear will not yield good fruit. It’s time that we look forward, not at a fix of the old, but at the new. We are beginning to build the Idigna network which will allow the reintroduction of commodities and essentials as well as the introduction of innovation futures which will pay premium prices for creative new production into the new economy that is coming. We would love to enter into a dialogue with you on how these new (albeit inspired by ancient approaches) products can help you weather the storm.

__________________________

Obama's Moment of Truth (or the last Black Swan to Fall)

Charlottesville. February 23, 2009 - 4:04 pm

All U.S. pensions are managed to balance short-term riskier investing and long-term “safe” investments. These safe investments come in the form of bonds which are a type of debt. Virtually all managed pensions need to have up to 40% of their asset allocation in these perceived “safer” instruments. However, since 2001, the asset that underpins debt – collateral – has been largely out of the sight or mind of regulators due to what was called a financial innovation – credit insurance.

Tomorrow, the Obama Administration faces an untenable decision thrust upon it by the opaque management of AIG which has led to the largest (and incomplete) charge-off in U.S. history. If it saves AIG in some federally-owned shell, it will delay disclosing to the U.S. citizens that their pensions are technically insolvent due to the erasure of credit insurance and the future failure of the insured bonds. You see, AIG has both primary and reinsurance risk on an estimated 4 trillion dollars of credit risk insurance and in their current default and bankrupt position, they will, with their announcement tomorrow, technically default on the credit insurance obligations meaning that tomorrow, EVERY pension fund will no longer be compliant under ERISA laws and management practices.

If the government allows AIG to fail, the exact same reality will be evident however, it will not have appeared to cover up the problem. Rather, as with the Nixon administration’s decision in departing from the gold standard on August 15, 1971, President Obama can declare an immediate federal adoption of the ERISA obligations under to 2006 pension fund laws and simply use the federal money to create an immediate bond insurance liquidity pool. By doing this he would save his credibility and allow the “intervention” to directly benefit the public rather than trying to bail out an entirely failed financial institution.

Once stabilized, President Obama can then establish a management function (modeled after the FDIC but NOT the illiquid FDIC) which can take the appropriate time and process to assess the true collateral inadequacies in municipal and corporate debt and then adjust the insurance demands commensurate with measured risk rather than impulsive guesses.

To hear the way another President managed this crisis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRzr1QU6K1o


______

Why Obama’s “Rescue” Misses the Mark and the Coming Financial Collapse Just Got Worse

If the Disease is Misdiagnosed, the Cure Won’t Help

In July 2006 I gave a lecture on the “House of Cards” in which I discussed the certainty of bank failures in 2008[1] and in a subsequent speech in 2007 identified the failure of Washington Mutual and the rest of the TARP recipient banks.[2] In these speeches I discussed the certainty of systemic failures which, barring immediate intervention would lead to certain catastrophes. The forecast was based on data, not hunches and the data was right. Ironically, as recently as this weekend, the Obama Administration continues to parrot the Bush Administration’s error in proposing the purchase of “toxic mortgages” without acknowledging the fact that it is consumer credit defaults on home equity loans – NOT Real Estate – that has created the precipitating event and the Congressional and Administration belief that consumer debt will save us this time is as wrong now as it was in 2001.

As the one voice countering the “no-one-could-see-this-coming” years before the banking collapse I am in the unenviable position of pointing out a bigger crisis on the horizon – one from which we will have greater difficulty in recovering. A number of corporate and municipal bonds and other credit facilities are going to start defaulting in the next three quarters based on the convergence of a new perfect storm. I’ve been encouraged by many dear friends to try to make this understandable and accessible as some of my earlier warnings were “inaccessible”. So here goes.

From 2001 to 2005, the market response to the dot com bubble burst was to migrate investment funds from venture capital for launching new enterprises to private equity and hedge funds to finance merger and acquisition activity so that by 2005, over $8 trillion was being bet against enterprise value. What I mean is that, in the absence of IPOs, “liquidity events” came in either consolidations in public and private firms (out-sourcing costs and labor and gaining market efficiencies) or short-selling in public equities and commodities. Value investing meant finding ways where the market could generate short term gains by extracting longer term infrastructure investment – betting, if you will, against the future.

Unfortunately, from GE and AOL TimeWarner to Quantum and Millennium Pharmaceuticals, large and small companies with access to artificially low cost debt vastly over paid for acquisitions. In June 2001, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) changed accounting rules to require companies to charge off the goodwill premiums they paid in acquisitions. This meant that a company could debt-finance an acquisition for $500 million and, while holding onto the bond or debt instrument used for the purchase, have little or no collateral backing the purchase it just made. Not to worry, regulated banks, investment banks, and hedge funds were more than happy to provide the capital (typically with 5 to 10 year maturing terms) and fueled speculative pricing that kept the merger and acquisition premiums going up. So part one of the perfect storm is that beginning in 2009, many of the first generation balloon maturities hit precisely at a moment when few companies can refinance or repay their obligations and, they have no collateral to attract new capital.

Thinking that private investors shouldn’t have all the fun, many regulated banks were more than happy to provide capital to enter this lucrative but increasingly competitive market. A regulated bank, unlike a hedge fund, included in its financing package a “general intangible lien” or “UCC Article 9 lien” which said that all of the intangible assets (patents, brands, copyrights, trademarks, franchise rights, etc) belonged to the senior secured creditor. This means that the only asset retained in the post-outsourcing world, the innovation and brand, belongs to the bank until the note is repaid. What few people considered is the fact that when banks have to assess their reserve adequacy, they are required to look to their borrower’s collateral position. If there is no collateral – or at least none that can be valued – the bank must set aside up to 5 times the reserve funds that would be required if the borrower was appropriately collateralized. To date (save present company), no method exists to value these liens and, as such, banks seeking to stabilize their balance sheets, can create technical defaults requiring their borrowers to accelerate their loan payments or call them en masse. In short, because there is no consensus on how to recognize or value the intangibles, the only collateral that could save borrowers or creditor’s balance sheets, has been written off (due to the FASB rule) and does not exist for all intents and purposes. So part two of the perfect storm is that beginning with annual reports in this quarter (first quarter 2009), record impairments and charge-offs of goodwill will lower creditor collateral adequacy forcing borrowers into default risks well beyond any historical period. At the same time, banks will have no flexibility to have forbearance due to their own balance sheet scarcity.

The safety net behind corporate and municipal debt for the past 5 years has been credit insurance in a variety of forms. Much of this insurance is provided by – you guessed it – insurance companies. Both life insurers and re-insurers (sorry, I can’t make this understandable in this brief) have seen their premium income fall precipitously over the past six quarters both weakening their own business capacity but also rapidly shrinking their ability to guarantee the credits that they’ve insured. Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch – the largest rating agencies – have presumed that credit insurance has intrinsic value but have not been providing adequate risk assessment on the credit insurance providers setting up a calamitous event made worse by recent events. While the market can already see the strain on household names like Ambac and MBIA, what it hasn’t seen is the profound instability in the insurance market in part due to the Federal Government’s intervention in AIG which has preserved the opacity of the firm’s exposures and the collateral damage arising therefrom which reaches deep into the re-insurance markets around the world. And tragically, at the same time when the FDIC is running for cover with growing banking collapses, the Federal Reserve has audaciously suggested creating Term Asset-Backed Lending Facility or TALF which would serve as a quasi-insurance facility to restart securitization. By creating the illusion of insurance – goes the theory – the private sector will buy what they otherwise wouldn’t. Well, the bad news is the TALF may be dead before it ever really lived. So part three of the perfect storm is the imminent failure of credit insurance – either the actual collapse of one or more of the major players or the withdrawal of credit insurance providers from offering guarantees leading to the down-grading of investment grade assets.

Now, that’s the storm. Where’s the levee breach?

The answer is where we’re least prepared to deal with it. If you have a 401(k), you know that you’re retirement fantasies have been pressure tested lately. The sailboat has become a kayak, the trip to far off lands has become TiVo of the Travel Channel, and so forth. However, many people are counting on pensions and other ERISA-styled managed funds. Unfortunately, a number of pension funds have a dual exposure to the coming storm. First, the equity market value erosion of the last four quarters has erased much of the value of managed pension funds. Second, the “secure” investments in corporate and municipal bonds are now about to be severely impaired forcing many pensions into a distressed position where the obligations they have to pay benefits will have insufficient liquidity to meet those obligations. Municipalities and corporate balloon maturities are coming due over the next 6 quarters at a rate as much as three times historical precedent and no one is talking about how to deal with this. These, after all, were supposed to be the safe investments. When President Bush signed the Pension Protection Act of 2006, he did so on the eve of one of the most grievous times for pension security while the equity market was still generally bullish. However, one of the key figures in this legislation – a name that most of us don’t know now but we will soon – is the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation or PBGC. By the end of 2008, the top 1,500 companies who have administered pension benefit funds were over $400 billion in the hole. The PBGC is absolutely incapable, at present, of filling this hole and the number is growing. And regrettably, to stave off present capital shortfalls, many corporations (including insurance companies) have actually borrowed from their pension funds to meet current cash-flow obligations. This levy is going to breach and Congress – fresh off of a $800 billion dollar stimulus package – is going to be faced with more staggering liability – and this says nothing about entitlements of Medicare and Medicaid in case you were wondering.

So, what’s an average citizen to do? First, be informed. At present the Congress and Administration have allowed unconscionable opacity to persist within the FDIC, the PBGC. These programs are not adequately funded and you, the American public must stand up and demand accountability. Second, prepare for significant adjustments in standards of living. There is no question that 2008 was the opening act on a much longer show. This one is a bit more tragedy than comedy in the first couple acts. Remember that we got here based on the belief that we could out-source our manufacturing, kill off growing enterprises to get rid of their inefficiencies (also known as employees) through merger and acquisition consolidation, and, use our homes as ATMs. Well, none of these messages were true. And now, when we have to pay for the excesses, we need to take stock in what future we wish to have. We must be creative in how we move, how we power our lives, how we consume what is necessary rather than what is excessive, and how we engage with each other. And third, we must be creative. There is a world of opportunity that was passed over in our last eight years of ignoring the innovative front line while we let the colossal get bigger. Your neighbor has a great idea and while you might not be able to invest cash, you may be able to invest your time, creativity, contacts and talents. See yourself as a part of the next solution rather than a victim of the failure of excess. And, if you want to invest in these challenging times, help clean a highway, mow a park, or invest more of your scarce resources in your local grocery store or restaurant. By seeing yourself choosing a destiny, you will be empowered to see the calm after the storm.

[1] http://archive.arlingtoninstitute.org/library/ArlingtonInstituteAddressTranscript_eng.pdf

[2] http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/tai-alert-11-major-financial-disruption


_______

In Memoriam: A Scientist and Statesman You Should All Know

Today we join the family, friends and colleagues around the world in celebrating the life and passing of one of the world’s most compassionate scientist statesman – Dr. Naoyoshi Suzuki. Born in 1931, Dr. Suzuki spent his life working to enhance the well-being of humanity through unprecedented, humble pursuit of scientific excellence specializing in protozoan diseases and their detection and treatment. For over 16 years, Dr. Suzuki was a dear friend and collaborator to M∙CAM and its predecessor companies Mosaic Technologies Inc. and IDEAmed. Through a collaboration with the Hakuju Institute for Health Sciences in Tokyo and MariCal in Portland Maine, he assisted in the development of basic scientific understanding of the regulation of calcium at cell membranes – research that has already contributed to improvements in pain management, fisheries productivity, and cancer kinetics. While his scientific contributions were legion, his role as a statesman was even greater. Championing the importance of international technology transfer and collaboration was particularly poignant in his life as his family had suffered the constraints imposed by the national dishonor, including technology transfer restrictions, imposed by the Allies on September 2, 1945 on board the USS Missouri. Without Dr. Suzuki’s tireless efforts and ceaseless enthusiasm, M∙CAM’s pioneering work in international technology transfer and financing would not have achieved its global status and success. From his gentle teachings of Bushido to his warm embrace of his “foreign friend”, we all are indebted to the life of Dr. Suzuki.

When the stories of success are told in the enterprises that I've had any hand in starting, they should always whisper gratitude for this great man. His inspiration and dedication to the intersection of science, industry, and the public good fueled my passion for close to two decades and his spirit will continue to live on in all that we do and conspire to do.

Rest well dear friend. You have given us so much and for that, we are in your debt.

Let but a prince cultivate virtue, people will flock to him; with people will come to him lands; lands will bring forth for him wealth; wealth will give him the benefit of right uses. Virtue is the root, and wealth the outcome. – Confucius

_______

The Ascent of Money
An Integral Review of Niall Ferguson's History of Money


The (A)Scent of Money

When will Historians and Economists Stop Fueling the Economic Crisis Myths?

An editorial by Dr. David Martin, Executive Chairman, M·CAM
February 7, 2009

The African proverb reminds us that until the lions have their storytellers, the hunters will remain the heroes. Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money is a masterful case study in the consensus of economists and historians to ignore this admonition from ancient wisdom. To his credit, his financial history is a delightfully rich exposition representing the prowess of an exceptionally talented and expansive inquiry into the stories that support a consensus myth. As a historian and author, a finer compilation may not exist. However, the evolutionary supposition that hails financial innovation (an oxymoron which I will address shortly) as the catalyst for the improvement of the human condition across the millennia not only lends itself to the historical myopia rife in the narrative but endangers those who would seek a deeper understanding to conclude in error that they are gaining a balanced perspective. Not surprisingly, in his treatment of the immediate financial challenge, he joins his Harvard and establishment economist colleagues in lamenting the inability to have apprehended the certainty and depth of the economic collapse, and impending propagation thereof, upon whose precipice our economy now stands.

Ironically, Ferguson dances on the edge of a breakthrough but avoids the temptation to let it take flight. His siren song of innovation fails to contemplate that each hero epic innovation recounted in this sweeping tale was, at its core, the opportunistic leveraging of information asymmetry. Innovation, in The Ascent of Money has the stench of swindle at every turn. From the early risk management swindles of the Scottish clergy to the LTCM swindle rewarded with the Nobel Prize (caution noted to Grameen whose focus on credit rather than profitable industrial output has launched a thousand usurers), it is disingenuous in the extreme to suggest that progressive, willful obfuscation of knowledge and understanding should be dubbed “innovation”. A phone call to a few behavioral psychologists could have made a much-needed breakthrough in unmasking the progressive fervor with which information opacity - rather than the democratization thereof - is the real story underpinning this piece.

It is lamentable that this book will enjoy its own ascent in readership on the eve of even greater financial calamity – an event that with greater care, Ferguson's work could have helped alert and attenuate. On this day, February 7, 2009 – when the New York Times reported the massive U.S. facilitated massacre of innocent civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo – a reader of Ferguson and the Times could see this and his book as unrelated. A closer (and more informed perspective) could have shown the linkage between the Potosí silver genocide documented in 1638 (page 23) from which Ferguson quotes Fray Antonio de la Calancha, “Every peso coin minted in Potosí has cost the life of ten Indians who have died in the depths of the mines,” and the fact that the U.S. government’s interest in bombing the Lord’s Resistance Army is inextricably linked to the economic interests of those who benefit from the life-blood of regional metals which support our modern portable music necessities. Where is the historical warning calling humanity to consider the alchemy that has turned blood to gold – the only alchemy that the esoterics have mastered and the modern alchemists have rendered infinitely scalable? Where is the clarity of inquiry recognizing that it was the drug addiction of an opium obsessed United Kingdom that cowed China (page 289) such that today’s reader can see that the self-same drug and its new imperial user’s addictions is being used to create the liquidity that flows in the form of the exsanguinated blood of Coalition and local combatants alike in conflicts from the Tigris to the Pacific Ocean? In the argument that it is monetary and banking innovation that alleviates poverty, where will we find discourse about the earnings disparity between Chinese laborers and their consuming U.S. counterparts that has propped up the Chimerica myth (page 335-337) which will fuel the political unrest that makes 1914 look like an afternoon street-fight?

No, it isn’t banking sophistication that has vaulted the world’s elite into their self-congratulatory utopian advancement. It is in the consensus coalescence of the empowered few repeating the pervasive myth that in an era of Google and CNN, we are breaking down “dangerous barriers” that humanity has become more impoverished. After all, despite his laudatory assessment of our improvement, more and more children are falling below the poverty line in the U.S. Regression-based prediction – the elixir of economists from Chicago to Washington D.C. to New York to Massachusetts to London – is not hard or mysterious as alleged, rather it is irrelevant. All of the bubble bursting that has come before was not only known well in advance but, by watching the actual audacious bravado of its co-conspirators, it was fully knowable. The problem is that we all have failed to realize that a system built on knowledge asymmetry and the colonialization of the mind is entirely imbued with self-evident failures. When the nominal trade bets against transparent value accretion (in the form of Credit Default Swaps in Planet Finance) eclipses the total productivity of Planet Earth, we invite certainty, not surprise. 2007 and 2008 were neither meteor nor asteroid. Rather, they were entirely reported, fully characterized maturations of a series of factors that this treatise carefully avoided. I trust in Volume II – The Descent Ferguson can speak with a bit more lion and a bit less hunter.