Shark-fin Soup

One of my greatest professors – quite possibly the greatest – was Dr. Bruce Craig at Ball State University’s Human Performance Laboratory. Armed with the Gospel of Arthur Guyton he guided his graduate students through the labyrinth of neurophysiology with maddening precision and monotonic poise that conveyed complete command of one of the world’s most complex electrochemical systems. And to this day, there are few facts that he imparted that I would not be able to recite if I was under even the slightest duress. Under extreme pressure, I could regurgitate it all (including his not-so-P.C. quips that offended the more sensitive of his students). So it was, as I trudged through the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union which was heralded as a significant step forward for the stabilization of the Eurozone, I found myself wishing that at least one policymaker or economist would have been a classmate of mine with Dr. Craig.

Allow me to explain using a simple lesson in neuromuscular physiology. Most reflexes are dumb. Now, before you rush to judgment about this dismissive assessment, allow me to clarify. They are mindless, as it were. There a few things you learn about reflexes (and how they work) that support the empirical truth of this statement. When a stimulus triggers a receptor it causes a nerve membrane to go from its resting state (a -70mV charge) to an activated state (a +100mV charge). But, here comes the dumb part. That “all-or-nothing” stimulus goes racing up the nerve to the spinal cord where it executes a hardwired response – hyperactivating certain muscles and rendering others flaccid. At no point does the brain kick-in and say, “Hey, let’s think about whether our response is actually helpful or whether it might do more harm than the thing we’re avoiding.” No, the brain plays no role whatsoever. It just hangs out and hopes that nothing too catastrophic happens. Like the nerves that stimulate them, the muscles go through the same “all-or-nothing” response and respond with unmodulated, unconsidered, unconscious action. Tragically, having been thus activated, the whole system goes into a refractory state where the ions that flipped the switch on have to re-equilibrate during which time no movement can be effectuated. Now, if your reflex, let’s say, had you punch a shark in the nose to get it to swim away and it worked, you’re in luck. If, however the shark decides to chase you, well your myoneural refractory period will get you well acquainted with the digestive juices of a shark.

And here’s the kicker: the Member States of the European Union just punched a proverbial shark in the nose. The stimulus in this case was the on-going contagion that has rendered the Greeks, Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese as at-risk states (with debt to GDP ratios of 142%; 120%; 60%; and, 93%, respectively). In the treaty, 60% debt-to-GDP is the resting nerve state over which the reflex of this treaty is activated. But, as if to evidence the absence of a cognitive involvement to attenuate the reflexive error of the theory of this treaty, the Member State that fails to get its fiscal house in order is subject to a variety of penalties adjudicated in the Court of Justice. However, assiduously absent from this treaty is any sanction for the Member State(s) who aids in the reckless indebtedness of a State by PURCHASING debt issued by the violating state. During the week where the Chinese continued to alter their purchasing of U.S. debt realizing that our investment-grade status is not likely to re-emerge with the impotent policies of the present administration – to say nothing of the sheer madness coming from the leading contenders to make the Obama’s join the ranks of the jobless and homeless in 10 months – it’s particularly noteworthy to see the European leadership fail to lead. The Chinese know that part of fiscal discipline includes NOT BUYING what is toxic. It would seem obvious that this lesson should be self-evident to a Europe awash with banks that don't have Tier 1 capital courtesy of bad sovereign debt.

The central problem that this treaty fails to address along with all the other ‘trained-economist-proposed’ solutions that preceded it is the fundamental problem of decoupling credit from productivity. In the name of efficiency, our central bank and capital markets’ impulse that leads to capriciously setting interest rates on debt issuance based on political winds rather than actual economic productivity is the curse from which we can’t seem to escape. Uncorrelated returns – a necessary corollary to enterprise-ignorant debt – is the malignancy which, if supported by mindless purchasers will insure on-going fiscal malaise. We may stimulate. We may artificially manipulate interest rates. And like the stupid spinal reflex, we’ll get a twitch. But also like the reflex, without cognitive engagement in which rates and productivity are linked, we’ll continue to create debt instruments that are fundamentally unsubstantiated. And, as long as buyers can consume these debt issues without consequence, the crisis of confidence will spread its malignancy across the markets. So, get used to the digestive juices of sharks ‘cuz there’s some sharp teeth sneaking up behind us.

Trafficking Humanity

The dogma that economic power is at the root of all evil must be discarded. Its place must be taken by an understanding of the dangers of any form of uncontrolled power. Money as such is not particularly dangerous. It becomes dangerous only if it can buy power, either directly, or by enslaving the economically weak who must sell themselves in order to live.

The Open Society and Its Enemies: Vol 2. Karl Popper, 1945


I grew up in interesting times. The first half of my young life was spent in Southern California in the waning days of the Vietnam War and its equally ineffectual social contemporary, the Peace Movement. “What do you want? Peace! When do you want it? Now!” was the angry chorus that accompanied the tie dyed floral festooned marchers of some of my most vivid early memories. And far from peace; what we got instead was the massive expansion of covert military action that took root in anonymous places across the globe with the likes of Oliver North and has metastasized into Obama’s sweeping doctrine of assassination drone diplomacy. Then my family moved to Pennsylvania where we lived among the religious conservative communities infused with doctrinal fervor to spare a select few of the throngs of fallen humanity from the fires of hell. “What do you want? Salvation! When do you want it? Before you might die in a car accident tonight on your way home from church so you better get it right now!” was the new refrain sung to the mournful meter of Just As I Am.

Whether it was the peace marchers that showed the government that a public informed of the scourge of a pointless war was too dangerous or the serial converts that fueled revivals to “Save the Lost”, the seventies and eighties marked a time when humanity’s sound-bite activism facilitated the tyrannical rise of uncontrolled power. From the tepid Tea Party evangelicals to dwindling Occupites to mercenary lords of corporate war, our uninformed militant impulses enjoy shorter half-lives these days with equal impotence. At present, more of humanity finds itself meeting Popper’s ominous warning “of enslaving the economically weak who must sell themselves in order to live,” than at any time before…, and their ranks are growing.

It’s easy to connect with the naked reality of our current paradox – a web-entangled information infested world where understanding is an endangered species – than when one spends a week in Papua New Guinea. Here, the simple transfer of knowledge – appreciated for its absence – unleashes genuine impulses to effectuate change. In the land of oil, natural gas, and gold, pirate corporations have preyed on those whom have been bypassed by the information super-highway and have enjoyed impunity by keeping both their local victims and their remote investors in equal blindness. Standing before an audience of 2,000 people just outside the capital of Port Moresby on Wednesday, in conversation with the most marginalized I shared information and pathways for action that neither their government nor the corporations who have fostered its enslavement were willing to address. And now there are 2,000 people who have been made aware that there’s an alternative to the abuse that has been commonplace. They stood, united in a moment, to be part of the change that they could all intuit to be possible.

There was a bit of irony that many of my colleagues were reading John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man on the trip we just completed. Perkins, like the serial converts of the evangelical movement decades ago, seems to celebrate his ‘conversion’ by recounting the wretched state from which he was redeemed. The refrain of his story is being aware of the carnage in which he participated but finding himself constantly seduced by the sirens of reward from his lords. Now, to be clear, I celebrate the fact that my recommendations of his book have enriched John (through his royalties). In it he cogently outlines the orchestrated hypocrisy of our hijacked bastardization of exclusive capitalism. It’s worth the read – particularly if you assiduously avoid reading the conclusion. Because tragically in the end, he offers the same helplessness that plagued his odyssey. Do something, he asks? Get people to read my book. Never a call to divest from KBR, Halliburton, Exxon, Bechtel and the like. Never a call to become personally known to (and in) the communities that have suffered at the hands of these despotic parasites. Never a call to actually use a fraction of your horded future security for a present intervention with those who have long been prey. You see, even the purveyors of ‘truth’ in our time create the illusion that ‘becoming informed’ is to have accomplished something to turn the tide. After nearly two millennia haven’t we learned that the canon “the truth shall set you free” has been the battle cry of those who most oppressively enslave? We don’t need ‘truth’, we need knowledge gained through direct human contact.

Popper’s fatalism suggests an inevitability that the Bretton Woods cabal will lead to the progressive enslavement of humanity’s innumerable most vulnerable. And regrettably, his postulate has held for over half a century. However what evidenced this week was that for the price of airfare, erasure of geographically advantaged ignorance unleashed a new narrative. Having trafficked humans in pursuit of wringing every ill-gotten profit into the coffers of the anesthetized sociopathic passive privateer, the human traffic that brings people into each other’s communities can disproportionately release the furies of opportunity and engagement.

In his social commentary film, In Time, Andrew Niccol has his villain callously state that for one to achieve immortality, many must die. Whether or not he meant to embrace the critique that the only contrivance afforded immortality in our time is the perpetual corporation, I cannot say. But Freudian or intentional, his observation is worth deeper reflection. Our more suitable humanity may be continue to be held at bay so long as we provide, through immortality, the “uncontrolled power” of the corporation. It is this institution that must be invited to serve a useful life and die. In our time, it is bloated, persistent corporations that kill and maim. It is bloated, persistent corporations that buy every form of government. It is bloated, persistent corporations that demand succor from governments while the governed are left to fend for themselves. And it is high time that we turn our collective attention to this autocratic abusive legacy of the Dutch and British and charter a new, mortal framework for our pursuits. In short, it’s time to reclaim humanity and all of its various pursuits for humans. Go beyond being informed – be engaged with the trafficked and share their humanity! You’ll never see the world the same again.

Song of Farea

Beyond the paved road bordering Jackson Field, left down three miles of mud and gravel, through the river crossing, right at the peanut patch and through the last half mile of waist high grass now stands a triumph of humanity. If our myths tell us of a tower erected on a plain where, when humanity came together to climb to the gods, a threatened deity “confused their language”, we now have a tower where tribes of many languages came together and made a little heaven on Earth! As I stood one last time atop 10 meters of steel side-by-side with my dad, Aaron and looked across the treetops to soak in the last views of this past week’s efforts, thunder and lightning danced just beyond the hill that looked down on us. And walking through the downpour on the mud filled trails with Greg Smith, Dylan Korelich, my bride of nearly 25 years, Colleen, and nearly 40 villagers from the Eastern Highlands, I could hold, for a moment, the knowledge that every myth that has separated us from each other and Heaven from Earth is just that – a myth. For when people choose to come together to address humanity’s most intractable challenges and sweat and bleed and toil together all the heavens can do is clap.

Together with my parents, Aaron and Ruth, a team totaling 9 of us (the aforementioned plus: Katie Martin; Dustin DiPerna; Theresa Arek) became woven into the fabric of one of Papua New Guinea’s newest communities – Farea Model Village. Hosted on S.K.’s expansive land to the east of the airport and built on the vision of Clemence Kanau and Tivien Aya, five tribes dislocated from the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea now have water. Shipped from the generous team at Aermotor in San Angelo Texas via California and Singapore, a 5 meter windmill now is pumping water to hydrate the land and its new inhabitants. Using M•CAM’s Sovereign Technology Credit Obligation fusion business model, this community now owns a water utility that will sell water services to an estimated 5,000 people – many of whom are displaced from their ancestral homes by Exxon’s LNG project. The proceeds of this utility will be placed in trust to reinvest in expanding additional water projects (including the building and acquisition of similar windmills) to equally situated groups throughout the country.




This project, the first of its kind in Papua New Guinea, was also supported by Ken Dabkowski, Edward West and Andrew Trabulsi together with the M•CAM and Fusion Lab teams. To be in Farea yesterday was to see raw, unrestrained joy – from the tears of joy when the water flowed to the loud songs and dances that turned the once quiet land into a land echoing with the chorus of humanity.

Many themes will flow from this week’s events but, for now, join us in singing the Song of Farea and celebrate the land where water now flows!

Ant-inmal Farm

Not a Fairy Tale

On this week’s anniversary of Peter Kropotkin’s death I found myself traveling to India for a reprise of my periodic lecture series with Indian Institute for Management – Ahmedabad Professor Anil Gupta. For three days, we would circumnavigate the topic of intellectual property and its role in competitive and collaborative market utility with a group of technocrats and business managers from across India. Vainly I set into motion an effort to locate the original works of Kropotkin’s self-proclaimed inspiration, Karl F. Kessler, Dean of the University of St. Petersburg which set into motion the quite popular notion of Mutual Aid contrasting the Malthusian – Darwinism inspired Survival of the Fittest. Regrettably, the trail for his work, save copious references thereto, were entombed in the Artic ice below the plane – long lost to the West’s loving (albeit seasoned with schizophrenic disdain) embrace of Darwin’s laws of competition over collaboration.

In a world teeming with ideological conflict, it is perfectly reasonable to see why, in the 1880s, the social debate had equivalent fuel arguing for an aspirational emergence of humanity actively choosing a path away from barbarism and bloodshed while confronting the empirical evidence of gladiatorial predispositions sacrificing humanity on the industrial alter of Labor. Thomas H. Huxley’s The Struggle for Existence fatalistically preconditions his arguments with what amounts to his epitaph on the species.

“The finer spirits look to an ideal civitas Dei; a state when, every man having reached the point of absolute self-negation and having nothing but moral perfection to strive after, peace will truly reign, not merely among nations but among men, and the struggle for existence will be at an end.”
“Whether human nature is competent, under any circumstances, to reach, or even seriously advance toward, this ideal condition, is a question which need not be discussed. It will be admitted that mankind has not yet reached this stage by a very long way, and my business is with the present.”
"…the weakest and stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest and shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not the best in another way, survived. Life was a continuous free fight, and beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence.”

Anyone feel like they wished they hadn’t started reading this post long about now? Well, read on, my intrepid friends because the evidence of Huxley’s despondency is alive and well. But before we hurl ourselves over the ledge, I will do my level best to argue for Kessler once more.

I’ve frequently mentioned the prevailing utility of “Ignorance Arbitrage” in our current micro- and macro economic systems. I was visited by this phantasm on several occasions across the past several days. An Australian apologist for abusive business practices in selected corporations in the mining sector attempted to defend practices which explicitly violate the laws of host countries and induce governments into indebted faux ownership in illiquid shell corporations while being seduced by World Bank and IFC sirens promoting ‘economic development’. Countless voices in our conference echoed the empty mantra that intellectual property protection generally, and patents specifically, are an essential element of ‘defending innovation’ while knowing full well that the WTO elixir is more akin to Socrates’ hemlock. U.S. representatives implored their Indian counterparties to pile economic sanctions on the citizens of Iran while President Ahmadineajad amplified his rhetoric and while the Times of India quietly ran an article on the commercial bonanza potential to expand trade with Iran as the sanctions created their inevitable vacuum. An investment manager for a $10 billion fund callously told me that the Mining Minister in Papua New Guinea was “irrelevant” as he had no “real consequence” in the operating reality of resource extractors in the country. Over a year after we delivered a report to the Government of Mongolia on the debt-trap they were placed in by a Goldman Sachs-advised financing racket, a now more indebted request came to re-examine our evidence as it suddenly appeared to be somehow more relevant than when it was drafted at the outset.

I suppose I should take some solace in the fact that George Orwell’s Animal Farm, written in the shadow of the Spanish Civil War and on the eve of the Second World War, was rejected by publishers for years because it was too critical of Stalin’s tyranny tolerable as he was an ally of the U.S. and Britain while being criticized on the other hand as being to ‘communist’. Then, as now, in a world where dogmatic adherence to ideology provides noxious sanctuary for the masses, we find ourselves predictably succumbing to the python of prevailing propaganda rather than becoming animated by information accumulated through engagement.

My Australian anonymous heckler has apparently not read the audited financial statements of companies like New Guinea Gold which reported “fully impairing” $4,841,978 in accrued debt (a liability nearly 7000% greater than the total consideration paid to the community) charged against the entity in which the landowners of Sinivit were allegedly going to receive equity benefit. The company’s accountants at BDO clearly had reason to believe that the illiquid, indebted shell corporation in which the landowners were going to receive “benefit” was unlikely to ever pay out. However, while writing down Gold Mines of Niugini Holdings Ltd., the company insisted on having state police protection to “defend their interests” against landowners who felt that they were being abused. The Indian Government and its agencies must have failed to see that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission report indicting the patent system as not serving its intended purpose or Dr. Sara Boettiger’s seminal work empirically showing the ineffectiveness of the Bayh-Dole Act. And let’s face it, when it comes to sanctions against regimes, can anyone say Cuba? They hurt citizens, not autocrats or dictators. Masking our campaign against Iran under the guise of the trumped up, “If they build it, Israel will succumb” rhetoric ignores our inconsistent nuclear weapons record across the globe. The British Mandate of Palestine was colonialism writ large in 1922 and if we don’t address that legacy, we should just transparently state an alliance rather than hiding behind a manufactured common enemy (ironically also a legacy of British map drawing skills). But, and here comes the sunrise of my reason for Kesslerian optimism, they have all made one significant error in their calculation. Information and a new class of its purveyors!

You see, the Old Majors and Napoleons count on the fact that they can drive out Snowball and that, at best, morality will serve the patronizing role of the paternalistic Clover. But what they don’t expect is the emergence of an internuncio who is willing to first exchange education and then inform. And vital in this is the EXCHANGE of education. You see, industrial colonialists have presumed themselves to be the sole keepers of alacritous cunning and have held community values and knowledge with benign or violent disdain. However in an emerging reality, the fig leaf of ignorance that has shielded both the actors and their apologists has been gnawed to its proverbial stem exposing the naked truth of inequitable conduct. And given the hubris of the abusers, the caterpillar doesn’t have to suffer a varied appetite. The same predictable cheats conduct themselves with the same behavior whether it’s in Central Asia, the Pacific, South America or Africa. In fact, it is the very fact of their predictable conduct that makes their identification so effortless and the unmasking of the fraud so efficient.

Kropotkin, Kessler and Orwell suffered marginalization from their clarion calls for an alternative hypothesis to the Huxley-Darwin-Malthus dogmatic underpinning of a Rockefeller animated industrial juggernaut. Only a fool would argue that the last century was largely owned by the latter ever seeking to exterminate the former. Yet it is equally the fool that sees the economies of Europe and the U.S. – the alleged victors – entirely embrace selective aristocratic socialism in the form of absolute state intervention and conclude that calculated consumerism and capitalism (in its current manifestation in the same countries) performed suitably. So, on this sunny day in India, I would encourage you to celebrate the fact that, at long last, the seeds of cooperation are landing in fertile soil far faster than Monsanto’s back-room can concoct their herbicide. And, with a little bit of luck, a few of you will forward this post and be the wind that insures their scatter as far and wide as possible. Your choice: Huxley’s “…the weakest and stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest and shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not the best in another way, survived” OR become a disseminator of the seeds of knowledge and collaboration which fruits into a world where “…peace will truly reign, not merely among nations but among men, and the struggle for existence will be at an end.”

Of Camels and Needles

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of God. - Matthew 19:24

You may want to print this blog post as a collector’s item. I have a hunch, as we go into the Presidential election madness, that this may be the one of the few times that you’ll see my deep empathy for Gov. Mitt Romney. To be clear, Governor Romney is a contender for the Republican nomination not because he’s the greatest civic leader the party can field. He’s not the front-runner because he has the courage to truly confront the nationalist denials which keep us from confronting the structural problems facing our economy and society. He’s not getting media attention because he can evidence leadership based on the power of an American ideal of liberty over the recent legacy of anonymous drone-laden assassinations of our ideological foes. He’s on all of our radar screens because, among other attributes, he’s rich and in our society, that means he can buy our attention.

My heart truly aches for him this week. In what will undoubtedly be a defining moment for all of the wrong reasons, his careless comment seeking to highlight his commitment to addressing the priorities of the middle class has been ravenously devoured by those who love nothing more than to begrudgingly envy wealth only to decimate its incarnations the moment they see any alloy of inhumanity. I do not know Governor Romney but I am certain that he “cares” about the poor. And watching pundits from the Utopian left to Pharisees on the militant right pile onto this gaffe reflects not our vigilance for social justice but our most distasteful lust for gladiatorial butchery.

In a meeting yesterday, one of the world’s leading private wealth managers observed that, “Being just a little bit richer is not as good as being a lot poorer is much worse.” [For those of you not given to word puzzles; consider this. If you have $100,000 and gain $10,000 your happiness does not increase at the same proportion as the disappointment experienced if you had $200,000 and lost $90,000. While you’re still, in the moment holding an absolute $110,000, the instance of gain pales in comparison with the agony accompanying the perception of loss.] The wealth manager’s firm handles in excess of $4 trillion and, as such, he’s seen the emotional tsunamis of perceived loss eclipse countless apathetic compounding years of modest and stellar gains.

The manager’s comment echoed off the cavernous walls of inhumanity perpetuated by relentless media drumbeats on the too-late penitent Governor. But as I contemplated this present dissonance, I was invited to reconsider one of my life’s most poignant lessons.

My recollection of an event in India (described in a blog post last year) raced into my consciousness. The idea that we can place ourselves in a position of feigning sympathy or empathy for those we deem to be “poor” or “disadvantaged” while expressing none of the same impulses for those we deem as “rich” or “privileged” says more about ourselves than those we judge. The only reason why Mitt’s apparent insensitivity is garnering so much attention is because we hold up an artificial standard. Somehow we convince ourselves that because we’ve acquiesced to the illusion that with his wealth comes some level of insulation from careless insensitivity or simple misstatements, his comment becomes far more than it is. To be clear, it was in poor taste and lacked sensitivity. You know it as does he. But equally lacking in taste is the elephant in the room – namely, our frequent incapacity to see that position (either granted by merit or purchased by money) has never assured an evidence of perpetual refinement or grace. Regrettably, what the events of the past week demonstrate is that we’re far more likely to pillory those whom we’ve exalted rather than engage in genuine, respectful critique of the deeper questions we all face as a society.

And by the way, enough with the temporal and moral relativism! Let us recall that the same Bible that is embraced Governor Romney and so many liberal and conservative self-proclaimed Christian adherents reports a crusading Jesus being equally dismissive if taken out of context: Matthew 26:11 records the statement that, “the poor you will always have with you.” And lest you think that there’s any air-gap between the mis-contextualization of a week ago versus two millennia ago – let’s be clear. This Gospel account has been frequently used by those who want to rationalize non-engagement or discontinuation of purposeful, compassionate action when it comes to those who society has most marginalized. Isolating statements uttered in error or in malevolence as a point of dogmatic contention is inappropriate as it masks the genuine issues that are pleading for attention. Remember that from 1980 – 1988, those officially under the poverty line increased during what we called the Reagan revolution – worst among the urban disadvantaged and children (can anyone remember “the least of these…”?). But with 1980s gas prices low, official unemployment low, and wealth transfer for the top 5% of asset holders expanding at a then-record rate, our indifference allowed this gap to widen to a point where now we’ve expanded the ranks of those left behind to levels unimaginable under the Actor-in-Chief. We’ve spent three decades “not caring about the poor,” so when a careless statement utters the truth of our consensus behavior, we may be well advised to take care in casting the first stone.

Governor Romney is a wealthy man. I am a wealthy man. I know a bunch of wealthy men and women measured in every dimension by which one can measure wealth. I’ve never met anyone on Earth that has enjoyed the breadth of experience; the dynamic range of joys and sorrows; the access and privilege that I’ve had as I have been fortunate to participate in the lives of what likely numbers in the millions by now. While I have chosen a mode of transacting my life that has consciously elected not to be dependent on money – the object of so much violent conflict, aspiration, derision, fear and hatred – this choice in no way alters the truth that I have unfathomable wealth. And, if you’re reading this blog post, you’re probably among the world’s most privileged if you truly measure your life in all dimensions of value.

With wealth – in any form – comes accountability. And it is in this spirit that I would kindly suggest that to Form a More Perfect Union, those of us who seek to transform the tide of inhumanity hold a touch of discerning Mercy. Whether Governor Romney is a man of compassion, I do not know. Whether he would embody that quality of mercy that, in Shakespeare’s eloquence, “becomes a throned monarch better than his crown,” I do not know. But what I absolutely know is that attacking any person for a moment of insensitivity – particularly when the energy animating that attack is at times amplified by a deeply suppressed schizophrenic envy which seeks to accumulate the artifact of derision – serves to destroy our humanity. I trust that we don’t deepen our poverty of spirit by standing in self-incriminating judgment on a man and his ill-considered utterance. After all, it is We the People who have allowed his currency to buy our attention and until We the People lessen our idolatry elevating everyone from kings to Kardashians, we will be standing behind the asses of a lot of queuing camels.

We Are The 0.00000021928% and We Vote

Alright all you conspiracy theorists, Occupites (#OWS), adherents to the economics of Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul, and inquiring minds who just want to know; it’s time to finally name names. It’s time to establish beyond all reasonable doubt who it is that really runs the show. It’s time to get into the weeds and I’m not talkin’ about this nonsense 99% / 1% divide that has galvanized so many for so long. No, I’m talkin’ about the real, hardcore, scientific notation kind of global population derived REAL power behind the entire global economy.

In no particular honorific order save the inspiration from the seventh century BCE Etruscan, Greek, Phoenician, proto Semitic, Visigothic mash up we now know and love as our alphabet (props to the Visigoths!):

Bank of America*
Barclays*
BlueMountain Capital*
BNP Paribas
Citadel LLC*
Citibank
Credit Suisse*
D.E. Shaw Group*
Deutsche Bank*
Elliott Management Corporation*
Goldman Sachs*
JPMorganChase, N.A.*
Mizuho
Morgan Stanley*
Nomura
Pacific Investment Management Co. LLC (PIMCO)*
Societe Generale
The Royal Bank of Scotland
UBS*

*Indicates an entity that has determination control over the Americas, Asia Ex-Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Europe/Middle East/Africa, and Japan.

The most recent action taken by these folks is a wonderful Kodak Moment which offers a snapshot (which you can print on some EktaChrome, well, not so fast) of the constitution of the group that holds Damocles’ Sword over the global economy. Their meeting reportedly took place on Thursday, January 19, 2012 when they unanimously voted to determine that Eastman Kodak Co. had indeed become bankrupt. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to hear the debate on this one. After all, the company had filed its Chapter 11 business reorganization petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on, are you ready for this, January 19, 2012. The actual proceeding is even more fascinating.

The first question voted on by this august body was, “Has a Bankruptcy Credit Event occurred with respect to Eastman Kodak Company?” There were 15 recorded “Yes” votes and 0 recorded “No” votes. The second question – which is slightly more existentially mysterious given that they had just determined that Kodak was BANKRUPT was, “If a Credit Event did occur, is that date of the Credit Event January 19, 2012?” Once again, a unanimous vote in the affirmative. Then the third question, “Is the date on which the DC Secretary first effectively received both a request to convene the Committee and Publicly Available Information that satisfies the requirements of Section 2.1(b) for the Credit Event with respect to Eastman Kodak Company January 19, 2012? (This question is asked to determine the Event Determination Date.)” Yet again, all voting “Yes”. And the final question, “Should ISDA hold one or more auctions to settle Relevant Transactions with respect to which a Credit Event Resolution has occurred in accordance with the terms set out in the form of Credit Derivatives Auction Settlement Terms with respect to Eastman Kodak Company?” By now, I bet you’re on pins and needles with the suspense kind of like watching the NY Giants stick it to the 49ers in OT. But no surprise here – they all voted “Yes”. This model of democratic process and consensus should make our hearts beat in patriotic unison as, finally, we see a group of independent parties come together with such magnanimous unanimity to confirm…well, let’s see, an undisputable, publicly disclosed event that had ALREADY BEEN PUBLICLY REPORTED marking the long heralded demise of one of America’s iconic industrial brands.

Alright, so what’s up here? What is ISDA and why is there democratic process so important when determining when a publicly reported event has, in fact, been publicly reported. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association “… fosters safe and efficient derivatives markets to facilitate effective risk management for all users of derivative products.” It’s pretty important to understand that, while nominally representing as much as the entire world’s GDP at their peak in 2007 and now representing notional value exceeding that of any sovereign nation on Earth, these swaps are (and I will simplify) quasi-insurance products sold by financial institutions like banks to investors who buy a bet against one day owning a defaulted credit.

My personal favorite part about the ISDA and its mission is the fact that the decisions on when a “default” has been triggered is NOT based on what you and I would necessarily see as rather empirically derived from a credit agreement. Say that you don’t make a payment on your credit card or mortgage. That’s an event of default and, based on a series of remedies set forth in your contract with the financial entity, you may have a time during which you can cure the breach of your contract after which the financier can take action such as foreclosure on your assets. By the way, that’s been happening a lot lately. But the institutions that extend this debt financing to customers do not agree to play by the same rules. For them, they get to decide when a literal default is actually a default. And remember, they are NOT disinterested third parties with ANY independence. Every decision they make triggers an event when the bank, for example, has to lose the ‘asset’ of the defaulted loan, and the investor has to pay up on the insurance policy and ‘own’ the defaulted instrument. So it’s no surprise that the board is made up of a mutually assured destruction membership of sellers and buyers who get to decide when they have to pay up to each other.

ISDA is made up of real people who work for real institutions with real names. And before you start feeling squeamish about this conspiratorial sounding event fixing (note my diplomatic avoidance to suggest that any of these actions should be reviewed by the Justice Department under the Sherman Act despite the fact that ALL competing institutions agree on prices), be delighted to know that you are likely one of the beneficiaries of this scheme. If you’ve got a retirement plan, a life insurance policy, or any other managed fund where you don’t know the company into which all of your money is invested, you’re assuredly pumping liquidity into this dance.

And, not surprisingly, it is this system that gives us the seemingly endless headline about whether Greece has “defaulted”. For those of us who actually live in the non-collusive illusion world of swaps, the answer is that Greece defaulted when their capacity to service their debt ended. Kind of like when you don’t make your mortgage payment because you’re out of work. But that’s not the world that counts. The world that counts is made up of the arbiters of consequence identified above and these are the ones who would have to pay up big time if a default was declared. The “Determination Committee” – an unregulated group of real people – gets to decide whether they are accountable when the chips are down. And, I know you’ll be stunned to find this out but they have a remarkable track-record of deciding that their problem is… well, not their problem.

Let’s face it. ISDA isn’t “them”; it is “us”. It has 825 members who happily benefit from the complete opacity that the public has with respect to their specific activities. During the heady up markets when “wealth” was being created, no one was occupying anything screaming for transparency from this legacy of the Reagan Administration. And now that they control more financial instruments than the notional value of any nation’s GDP, they have become the un-elected, unaccountable, inaccessible, arbiters of all of our futures. It is OUR blind participation with blind investments that pumps the blood that animates this supranational organism and it’s OUR conscious decision to reclaim our individual responsibility and accountability that is the ONLY path to build A MORE PERFECT UNION!

If you didn’t know about ISDA before reading this, send this blog link to 10 of your friends and see if we can all start waking up!

To understand the importance of this group, you may want to refer to this sample Auction document to get a clearer picture on how the economy in which you’re participating actually works.

Intrepid Into the Unknown

From last Spring’s loyalist cavalry punctuated protests in Tahrir Square to the shivering tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe in #OWS enclaves and police lines dotting chilly cities across America, the rhythm of disenfranchisement seems to undergird the vox populi. Ironically, this primordial stirring seems to gyrate combatants on both sides of the 99th percentile battle lines. From the 20-something Occupite who cannot find gainful employment with her liberal arts degree with a specialization in conflict studies to the recently engorged Goldman Sachs executive wondering how he’s going to make ends meet with his paltry slice of his government-subsidized $1 billion profit sharing bonus, the future holds terrifying opacity for both. With the eurozone in free-fall, the U.S. in insolvency denial, and the BRIC hunkering down with protectionist policies for the foreseeable future, our economic and social system failures are now well past transient and have become a fixture.

This week we saw the media, the government, and the markets callously misrepresent the employment picture yet again as the Department of Labor released its January 19th data. The alleged improvement to a seasonally adjusted rate of 325,000 new benefit seekers (supposedly good news) was the statistical façade for the ACTUAL number of people seeking state benefits which was a whopping 521,316. Civilian Federal employee unemployment rose nearly 100% in the week’s data and newly discharged veterans’ unemployment rose as well. And most alarming, while totally neglected by media and markets, is the fact that from 2008 to the present, we’ve permanently lost close to 6 million ‘covered employment’ jobs. In other words, with unemployment still placing millions in distress, our government and its interlocutors have shrunk the denominator by 4.7% placing even the flawed statistics at an unemployment rate pushing 13%. Getting better? No chance in hell.

In the face of these blatant abuses of data to evoke the illusion of progress, it is no wonder that many in the public find themselves certain of the fallacy of the established order. In this conclusion, they are correctly taking the measure of things. Regrettably, however, I have encountered, during this same time, the thus-repulsed masses clinging relentlessly to the agents of the incumbency as they clamour for an alternative experience. “Give me change,” they cry, “but make sure that it comes in a form that I find palatable.”

Georg H. W. Hegel (German philosopher; 1770 - 1831) in his Philosophy of Right ponders the question of public deception in ways few modern thinkers dare inquire.

“A great mind has publicly raised the question, whether it be permitted to deceive a people. We must answer that a people does not allow itself to be deceived in regard to its substantive basis, or the essence and definite character of its spirit; but in regard to the way in which it knows this, and judges of its acts and phases, it deceives itself.”

“No matter what passion is expended in support of an opinion, no matter how seriously it is defended or attacked, this is no criterion of its practical validity. Yet least of all would opinion tolerate the idea that its earnestness is not earnest at all.”

“Public opinion deserves, therefore, to be esteemed and despised; to be despised in its concrete consciousness and expression, to esteemed in its essential basis. At best, its inner nature makes merely an appearance in its concrete expression, and that, too, in a more or less troubled shape…. Who does not learn to despise public opinion, which is one thing in one place and another in another, will never produce anything great.”

Allow me an example. Last May, I wrote a blog post in which I challenged the world to get engaged with a dislocated community that needs to have its basic needs addressed including developing reliable access to clean water. Since then, hundreds of people have ebbed and flowed around the idea; some passing through the arena as spectators and some suiting up to go out onto the field to play in the match. For over two decades – first in Mosaic Technologies and then in M•CAM – I have become accustomed to the voyeurism inspired by our fusion economy ethical engagement structures that indict all conventional business and social narratives. I have also become somewhat immune to the wistful attraction predictably preceding the near unanimous passive or violent repulsion experienced when individuals become aware of the completeness with which we animate our activities outside the realm of conventional thinking and acting. But what I find the most amazing is the number of individuals who profess a desire to learn how to engage transformative processes that we’ve demonstrated can be reliably replicated throughout the world but would like them to have boundaries of time, budget, logistics, and hierarchical (un)certainties – NONE of which exist when you’re truly operating outside the enslavement of the mechanized colonial industrial complex and memes.

Which brings me back to Hegel and the succor provided by his nearly two century old wisdom. Incumbency (the ‘bad guys’ in many popular circles) and transformationalists (the ‘good illumined beings’ in many popular circles) too often find themselves equivalently enslaved by “acts and phases” by which they deceive themselves. The axiom which states that “Problems cannot be solved with the same consciousness that created the problem,” needs to embrace the corollary that “Solutions cannot be manifest through the application of metrics conventionally used at the time the problem was defined.” (This corollary is my humble contribution to the greatest philosophers of all time!) Your impulse that ‘something needs to change’ is an intuition that is trustworthy. Your reflex to look for both the utilities with which you’ve become comfortable (schedules, budgets, creature comforts, etc.) and the validation of others (encouragement, praise, peer validation, etc.) through which you’ve come to expect affirmation are in absolute error. If We the People seek to engage the needs of humanity and the ecosystem in ways that alter our collective experience of enslavement and extractive wont, we must embrace a liberty from the trappings of convention at all levels and accept that the world we seek will be unrecognizable through the optics with which we’ve existed in the consensus illusion of the present.