The Frantic Force

Big Mac Daddy of all Things

2011-04-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

Arriving at the rendezvous point, a local McDonald’s® restaurant, renowned way-station for ‘delicious food to fit your lifestyle’®, I found Bubba to be every bit as earnest as he was plus-sized. I dare say even the Great One, no stranger to eccentric prophets, may have overplayed His hand with this gap-toothed denizen of saturated fat emporia. As I gazed at the corpulent splendor poking out from beneath a woefully short wife-beater T-shirt, I wondered, was it possible this dude could transcend his abysmal dietary choices and offer up metaphysical pearls? Only time, as they say, would tell and the veils of time were giving nothing up. I grimaced as the elastic waistband on Bubba’s too-snug running shorts struggled against the improbable girth of its occupant. Surely God wouldn’t spoil my lunchtime appetite with a wardrobe malfunction? Playing it safe, I kept my eyes glued to the tape-machine.

What follows is as un-redacted as a Dead Sea Scroll, hold the pickles. I poked absently at a McDonald’s® Strawberry Triple Thick Shake™ as Bubba’s trance-like state seemed to seize him mid-double-cheese. Quicker than you can say happy meal, his face went rigid. I experienced a sympathetic chill-burn from my own frigid confection. The voice was like nothing I’d ever heard before, something akin to Alvin and the Chipmunks meeting Sir John Gielgud.

“Greetings. My name is Arbitron. I am an ancient spirit with a yen for morbidly obese hosts like the one that sits before you now, Mr. Rathsbone ‘Bubba’ Bovinsky. I have come to speak to you, of all things, on the matter of your recent 911 Ground Zero mosque flap.

Please be warned, you are constructing, not so much a place of worship or a cultural center, as a New World Temple Mount--the name preferred by Jews and Christians or if you prefer the Muslim name, Noble Sanctuary. That is, a super-duper-in-yo-face-sacred space against which the various Judeo-Christian traditions can vent their spleens in a Murderous Compact of Redoubled Monotheistic Grandstanding, flaming planes optional.

The term 'Ground Zero' is far more apt than you realize. It has a ring of climactic nihilism, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end or what we in the spirit world like to call impending deep doo-doo. Seriously though what put the sudden oomph in your collective death-wish to construct a jihad-flashpoint in the heart of NYC? Why not erect a billboard of Jesus mooning Mohammed? You might even paint an ADA-approved bulls-eye on the site to assist virgin pilots fresh from paper-mill aviator academies. I believe the appropriate sound mandala is oy vey!”

Arbitron continued, “Though the great elders of the universe are rarely advocates for secular late-capitalist alienation and its attendant neon sprawl, we’re thinking this corner of urban space-time would be better served by a McDonalds®, thus spreading your deaths across a series of manageable whimpers as opposed to one big loud bang. Hence my recent theophanic manifestation with Bubba via a burning hot Big Mac--no sooner had he opened the biodegradable blue wrapper (open sesame seed!) than I launched into what only can be called an uncanny rendition of Charlton Heston. The shredded lettuce went everywhere. Bubba fell to his knees in a slurry of McFlurry®. His Supersize® fries went flying in the air. Though his distress was real his appetite, thank God, stayed true. He is now my terrestrial agent for averting Armageddon. That’s right: the 911 site is to become a Ray Kroc Memorial Garden.”

As though on cue, Bubba’s eyes opened like an overstuffed Dollywood marionette. In his own voice, he bellowed, “Clogged arteries of the world unite! Renounce the Ham-burglar of yore. Shake off your chains of befuddlement, your hypertension and join me in this crusade!" Some guy with a face-full of Deluxe Angus Third Pounder® burped at a corner table. A startled baby began crying near the jungle gym.

Unfazed by the bored reaction to Bubba’s jeremiad, Arbitron pressed on: “Bubba has received my marching orders and I can assure you they are slathered in superfluous calories and supersized urgency. The world has never needed the common man’s gargantuan appetite and patent disregard for roughage quite so much as it does now.”

At that moment, Bubba jerked upright before once again going limp. Was it a mild coronary event or the rapid departure of some insanely wise ethereal entity? I couldn’t be sure. Seized with a powerful craving for my own weird religion (a 1/3 Lb. Texas Toast Bacon Cheese Thickburger®) I turned off the recorder. There was a Hardee’s® around the corner.

I wished Bubba good luck and implored him not to make a pig of himself with the dollar menu. After all there’s only so much inter-dimensional meddling one man’s heart can take.

Incendiary Catharsis: (Or, Pardon Our Bombs While We Rethink This Whole Thing)

2009-09-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

Incendiary Catharsis: (Or, Pardon Our Bombs While We Rethink This Whole Thing)

I was completely transfixed this morning by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen's comments. Though I concede I have not yet read the Admiral's full essay which I plan to do.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32589657/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/

My gut feeling is he's embarking, unwittingly I suspect, on far more than a military mission. What he characterizes here as perceptual challenges (a blurry lens that must only be turned 1/16 inch to the left) have their roots in a profound American self-confusion that too often employs faraway villages to exercise its funk.

Oh shit America's discovering itself again. Everybody duck! On the Road with napalm! Or is this some 'tail-wagging-dog' permutation of the Military Industrial Complex as it seeks to alter American culture for the Higher Purpose of waging more intellectually consistent warfare?Here we have the Admiral-as-social-engineer refashioning American culture in an effort to, what, win the hearts and minds of others? Victory becomes paramount, even if we must stop being ourselves in order to achieve it. If America decides it must change in order to capture those hearts and minds, why did we set off, armed only the prevailing vision of America in the first place? Presumably we were firm enough in that prevailing vision to venture war on others. Now we're there, we're stuck and we must change in order to prevail? Face-saving matters aside, wouldn't it be better to concede our inner confusion, and leave...yesterday --rather than cobble a new identity for America while dropping bombs on others as a weird form of catharsis?

A fascinating quote:

“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate,”

What of the actions themselves? Do they not by themselves possess communicable powers? Or is it only how we articulate these actions --in word and image-- to our adversaries (perhaps their intepretational faculties have been jiggered by shellshock? Let us rush to their narrative assistance while the fighter jets refuel!) Are Americans arrogant and insulting or is this simply a perceptual miscue on the part of our ostensible adversaries? Indeed are our adversaries existential or merely ostensible, that is, actualizable friends but for a ruffled feather here and there that can be ironed out with the appropriate communications. "We are good men though we bomb your villages. Our bombs take their origins from a fundamentally decent people. You leg was lost through kindness"

Is there a certain naive arrogance in the notion that Muslims can be better wooed with more 'strategic communication'? When I hear strategic, I think selective or premeditated, certainly a notch beneath authentic or full-throated, unflinchingly honest dialogue.

Have we as Americans become so seduced by the notion of promotional campaigns that we believe there is nothing endemic within our culture or identity that might potentially be anathema to another's culture or identity? Is there nothing in the world that won't collapse beneath a few judiciously selected winks and nudges?

Prince of Tears

2009-09-05T11:18:00.001-07:00

My latest attempt to keep this oh-so-diligent blog a breathin'...here's me singing an original song 'Prince of Tears' with fellow writer Tom Saputo at The Serbian Crown in Great Falls, Virginia on Sep 2, 2009. The actual video of the evening will appear on Fairfax County's Channel 10 at some point in the near-future. I promise to keep my vast blogger audience posted, literally.

Rehabilitating Huey Long: It's Long Overdue

2009-02-23T05:32:00.000-08:00

I'm a pretty religious reader of Jesse's Cafe Americain. Usually he's on the right side of the debate. But in his 2/23 entry 'The Word for the Week' he misses by a mile.

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot...this-week.html/

The problem is not an 'individual' one or else it involves so MANY individuals that the term becomes well-nigh useless and you might as well call it systemic-by-practical-default. Alright we won't swing the bank tellers from the highest trees. I'm all for teller amnesty. But this is more than a few bad apples. This is in many ways about a rotten apple cart.Then there's a picture of Huey Long trundled out for demogogic effect. There's a pretty good case that Huey Long was shot by the same scumbags who brought us the Federal Reserve. I've reconciled myself to the fact that I'm steadily claiming more and more traditional tin foil hat territory in recent months. So be it. It's all out there on the Internet for those with a desire to find it.

Long has been maligned/marginalized of course as a corrupt drunken fool. With all due respect what politician is not laden with venality about an inch beneath his surface? So that's selective character assassination. If they're all croooks to one degree or another why sanction one as a crook --unless of course you have damned good reason? After all, some crooks are better than others. Long was all over the banking cartel. And along the way he delivered near-universal literacy to Louisiana. As we know, the elite hardly welcomes a literate underclass. Long was for the poor, a soon-to-be burgeoning class in 21st century America. So we would do well to get the revisionist pens writing on this fascinating character.

Demagoguery is in the eye of the beholder. Some leaders pose a clear and distinct threat to the powers-that-be. In these cases, the term is often wielded as a slur. Long was one of those. He scared the bejeevers out of the same guys who led the aborted FDR coup and whose offspring are no doubt in the forefront of the current TARP coup. The current wholesale theft of the public treasury requires a man --or people-- of Long's charismatic appeal to countervail it and rally the common man. Some will be demagogues in the worst sense of that word. Some will be leaders with fire in their belly and with a pulse on the legitimate outrage of the average American. We need a sustained progressive counterweight in this country like never before. It's 1932 all over again.

Poor is Cool

2009-02-19T07:54:00.000-08:00

Earthlink just slashed its monthly Internet dial-up rate to $7.95 from $9.95. The report of the demise of dial-up --this looming Depression will soon prove-- was somewhat exaggerated. McDonald's value meals are the rage.

Poor will be cool again soon. Or if not cool, then at least damn common. I'm writing an article right now on the death of Free TV. People are gonna to miss Free TV. I recorded a Channel 10 FCAC show on this very subject this past weekend. We're doing another one this Saturday.

This site FreeDTVPlus discusses the issue more fully. It happens to be my Dad's site. He's an Emmy-award winning television engineer and executive and has been a voice in the wilderness on this topic for years.

The Fix Is In

2009-02-11T03:04:00.000-08:00

Brace yourself for a series of I-told-the-world-isms...

I was castigated in many places for showing bad faith and unsportsmanlike conduct for not allowing Obama his ceremonial victory lap. The implication from some was that I was ungracious. My sense of these folks is that many are fully-seduced Obama girls, easily duped, predisposed to pomp and permanently affixed to spectacle.

I said on TV we would know in his first month who we had as president due to the banking crisis falling on his doorstep. I maintained that the stakes to our nation were so huge they should trump our self-celebratory dance about electing a transformational African-American president. I said it remained to be seen whether indeed his 'transformationalism' had a substance component. I voted for Obama knowing 3 of his top 7 corporate contributors were Wall Street banks. I applauded America for electing an African-American as it represented true social progress, knowing that this time especially we needed a helluva lot more.

After allowing him the longest possible honeymoon that can be allowed in these precarious times, I've concluded, as the Financial Times appears to be edging towards in the link below, that Obama is a paper tiger. The Geithner plan fell well-short of seizing the moment. It's the only moment he --and we-- had. What will follow is social unrest by 2010. Obama was the last great hope offered up by this System. My concern all along was Systemic --how the required fixes really lie beyond the ken of this System. Railroad engineers can't build bridges. The train will first have to hurtle into the ravine.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9ebea1b8-f794-11dd-81f7-000077b07658.html

Prozac IndigNation

2009-01-07T00:04:00.001-08:00

What Engels failed to understand was advanced capitalism's deft wielding of complexity, the cloaking of risk, the originate-and-distribute 'hot potato' model, securitization as camouflage, the democratization of credit, the false hope of counter-parties and unanticipated concentration risk, etc. Heck, who beyond a select few people understood it even nine months ago? Even now, the rationale of post-bubble fervor is hard to reconstruct. My guess is Engels would resist the anomalous language of 'bubbles' and argue that the so-called anomaly is simply the business-as-usual, crisis-to-crisis nature inherent in capitalism. He might also marvel at the financial capitalist's ability to 'feed at the socialist trough' whenever it suits him. Should we be surprised? Greed observes the ideology of expedience. Or is it that capitalism is institutionalized greed and not an ideology at all?

Anyway as the elite stole from the top via stock options, ridiculous salaries, acquiescent boardrooms etc., they simultaneously (and ingeniously) created credit models that augmented stagnant wages and sustained the workers' consumption patterns against the Marxist cul de sac of overproduction. In short, cheap credit caused the worker to believe he was still keeping ahead and enjoying the fruits of his production. For a time it masked his real wage declines.

The Freddie/Fannie paper factory also benefited from an implied govermental (read: socialist) backstop which, as it turned out, was ultimately invoked; this aggressive credit creation relied upon the gumption of relatively less sophistocated and emergent capitalist markets (many prior Marxist-Leninist states ironically) that, for a variety of currency and developmental reasons, were happy to remain production-bound and vendor-oriented.

Like any Ponzi scheme, this dog-and-pony trick can only succeeed once. No one will be fooled again. Meanwhile the American worker is being unceremoniously dumped back into a classic Marxist overproduction trap as credit sources evaporate, home equity disappears, manufacturing jobs vanish and inflation looms. The new cars and houses are stacking up. Absent credit, no one can afford them. Which is to say, no one can afford them. When the deleveraging process completes itself, we will be back to 'merely' wages --and horrendous wage disparities-- a more classic Marxist playing field.

The question to me is, when will the American pot finally boil over into meaningful social unrest? Or are Americans so naturally docile (and/or medicated) that outrage is not an available response? Is Prozac Huxley's soma? If so, they sure as hell better find a way to keep the pills rolling.

2009-01-05T13:17:00.000-08:00

The world economy seems in need of a world war that is 'well-crafted and geographically strategic' i.e. one that preserves the productive capacity of Asia (seems a waste to raze good factories) while destroying the consumption/demand centers such as N. America and Europe. Human need is easily replicable. If mindless consumption has in fact become the American Way, as it seems to have, what would Jefferson say of preserving 'the right to consume toasters and iPods'? The West inhabits a moral vacuum that nature will invade one way or another. Let it be a rapacious and well-conceived war.

A bout of good old fashioned destitution in the developed world would topple the Mazlow Hierarchy and bury the Rostow post-industrial pretensions once and for all. These were the self-actualization springboards that led the West into a narcissistic cul de sac. I'm thinking a collapse of first-world into third and third into first, rendering Martin Luther King's 'higher synthesis'.

The trouble is, the military industrial complex is on the wrong side of the conflict --unless China stops bankrolling it. Post-war, Asia can serve as the Marshall Planners. You need an untrammeled space (similar to post-World War II America) to serve as the launching point for renewed development.

Call it Pax Sino.

Achtung Baby!

2008-12-31T06:35:00.000-08:00

I think there are times in history when an impending reality can be so eclipsing --so anathema to the status quo-- that denial is the only available psychological response, especially among those with the most to lose, the so-called elite, our feckless leaders.

I understand the theme of this year's Davos confab is 'Shaping the Post-Crisis World'. Post-crisis? Mid-crisis perhaps? The end-of-the-beginning-crisis? Even the bumper sticker is an exercise in denial. The crisis hasn't been navigated yet. How presumptuous to postulate a post-crisis world until we get there (God willing.) Then the ultimate hidden inference glossed by today's elite: shaped by whom? Of course we know who THEY think the shapers are going to be. Quite possibly we haven't met the shapers. Not yet. And more than likely it ain't Bono. Achtung baby!

2008-12-28T10:29:00.000-08:00

"The U.S. is, in dollar terms, bankrupt. How did this happen? Well, there are $800 TRILLION dollars in over-the-counter derivatives floating around in the market. That’s 10 times the GDP of the WORLD. These dollar-denominated paper assets are likely worthless or close to it. Which means that the dollar is already...effectively worthless." --Richard Young

This may be the re-start button I've been pondering. The US dollar is worthless. So we HAVE been reset back to zero. It's the restart PROCESS that's being hindered. The reality is too horrific to be publicly acknowledged. So don't expect a ribbon-cutting ceremony or a Wall Street Journal headline. No one standing on a podium is going to come clean. Political instituions --governments and central banks-- will never openly acknowledge the obvious: "Dear America, due to an epic dereliction of duty we ground your currency down to nothing." Nah, they're going to sidestep the pomp and circumstance.

Even the markets, normally politically unbeholden, are still grappling with the almost-unimaginable implications. The financial engineers created so many dollar instruments that they soared beyond the intrinsic measure of global wealth (GDP) by an order of ten. That is, it would take ten years of the world's productivity to 'pay them down'. The whole world will not submit to a decade of debt peonage to bail out the banking elite. At least, not willingly.

Gold seems to be a no-brainer.

Eat the Rich

2008-12-20T12:11:00.000-08:00

I had imagined a financial elite that, inordinately perhaps, enriches itself during periods of economic prosperity. This is a tax, if you will, on broad-scale prosperity, a necessary toll. As sure as taxes.

I had not considered an elite that turns to preserving its 'boom time' earnings during hard times by such unconscionable methods as nationalization and socialization of risk. Suddenly the rich look unvarnished, almost ridiculously in love with their mansions. They have no ideological purity. They are not capitalists --they just sport just vanity plates with 'laissez-faire' stamped on them. There is nothing to recommend the rich. They are craven. They are nakedly opportunisitc. They are greedy. Period.

Devil's Dictionary

2008-12-02T07:20:00.000-08:00

We need a Devil's Dictionary for the New Economics...

Globalism: the consolidation of incompetency set atop massive complexity while awaiting epic catastrophe.

Cronyism is the greatest impediment to a rational prescription. The attempt to rescusitate Wall Street while Main Street burns is a huge tragedy. It makes you want to cry 'cause it ain't gonna happen. I think the economy is screaming for simplification. By supporting small regional banks, we reduce the network effect and break the risk into manageable bite-sized pieces. The food chain is tied to small-time, regional lines of credit. Who needs Manhattan?

Obama's no Huey Long. He's not even FDR. He's Clinton/Blair.

Bikini Sand Wrestling!!

2008-12-01T11:34:00.000-08:00

Here it is. The video your mother warned you about --while your father surreptitiously slipped it under your arm. That's me an' the kid in the vid, and me covering vocals (D.L. Roth called in sick with an ingrown hair plug.)

The Mohican (a poem)

2008-11-28T12:05:00.000-08:00

Here's a poem of mine, The Mohican:

A night of tunes

2008-11-27T21:13:00.000-08:00

I got to sing Wednesday night at a local club in town with some of our area's great musicians. We're blessed with some real talent around here. I'm working steadily towards a blues-rock CD of original material. However this night belonged to covers. And cover we did.

The kid on drums didn't know the Allman Brothers' Whipping Post. But he couldn't resist saying that he thought 'his parents had the album'. Little shit.

Inflation vs Deflation: Interminable Debate?

2008-11-27T05:34:00.000-08:00

I find people discussing deflation versus inflation eventualities as though both terms express book-ended equivalents. Yes, the words differ only in prefix. However one might say the color black is existential. Whereas white is merely conditional, i.e. merely the absence of black. This fundamental inequivalence is routinely discarded. We often talk of black and white as though they are oppositionally equivalent --two sides of the same coin.

If one recalls the textbook definition for inflation, too much money chasing too few goods, the operable term, for our current debate, may be chasing. Deflation at its worst can mean the cessation of economic activity as people succumb to deflationary expectations and forestall purchases today, thinking goods will be less expensive tomorrow. When people stop giving chase to goods and services, the value of the money in their pockets increase.

So in one crucial sense, an economy suffering from inflation is preferable to an economy in deflationary collapse. That's because at least you have an economy where transactional activity is occurring (the chasing part, a measurement of which would be the velocity of money), which is to say, at least you have an economy. Deflation by contrast is a graveyard. Suddenly the macroeconomic debate veers towards more fundamental societal questions: Can a society exist in the absence of significant levels of commerce? Doesn't transactional activity serve as a sort of societal glue? This all suggests that deflation is a far more profound phenomenon. I’m wondering whether the truly biblical potential of deflation to shut down a modern economy (with possible resort to a non-currency based or barter system?) has been taken fully into effect. As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard said recently: “Deflation is sometimes likened to Dante's Inferno. "Abandon all hope" once you step into that Hellfire.” Even given his tendency towards purple prose, the danger of deflation seems incommensurate to that of inflation. In the context of ka-poom, I also wonder if the ka phase can be so culminating that the ‘relative luxury of high inflation’ –the poom-- never arrives.

We are finding there is little in the Fed monetary arsenal that can compel people to buy when they don't want to. The Fed can fight inflation. Fighting deflation however may be tantamount to wrestling a vacuum --or putting lightning in an empty jar. Thus there is an institutional fear of deflation as the powers-that-be discover themselves powerless to avert it. What master of the universe wants to ponder his impotency?Another frequent fallacy is that both forces seize an economy monolithically, that is, an economy suffers either inflation or it suffers deflation. Period. We won't even delve the variant strains, disinflation, hyperinflation and dis-deflation (a term I've seen bandied about on iTulip), nor the critical discussion of rates, trends and time intervals. In truth, all these forces are operating in different areas --and in different durations-- of the economy at any given time. There can be simultaneous price level increases in food and other staples AND asset deflation, as we seem to have had of late. But aren't we comparing income statement to balance sheet phenomena –a flow of funds as opposed to a reservoir of value?

After all debt deflation is not price level deflation. Clearly an aggregating methodology must be employed before we can decisively label an era 'inflationary' or 'deflationary'. But why pain over descriptive exactitudes if no advantage is gained from the descriptions? If it walks like a duck, then let it be a duck with no further ado. If you prefer calling it an elephant then that will do too. The debate would be almost entirely semantic if not for the fact that, in identifying certain phenomena, we are better able to apply prescriptive remedies or take defensive action in a portfolio strategy. Or as the cynic might say, armed with the proper description, the government can prescribe more surgically destructive medicines.Perhaps the aggregate is meaningless on a practical level.

If I am a buggy whip maker at the turn of the century, my market is collapsing. You can call it a profound hyper-deflation if you like. My livelihood is ruined --all against the backdrop perhaps of macro-level inflation. Maybe inflation and deflation are personal phenomena occurring, as in Tip O'Neil's politics, at the local level. I’m intrigued by how people keep interrogating anyone and everyone as to whether we’re in deflation or inflation. This is almost a semantic appeal. People need to name their devil as it restores some small sense of control.

Towards a 'Higher Synthesis'

2008-11-26T05:32:00.000-08:00

In Web Del Sol's current issue of The Potomac, D.R. Thompson offers a fascinating Dr. Martin Luther King quote within an equally compelling essay "Emerson Meets Wall Street: Systems Think, the Citizen Dividend, and Economic Democracy":

"Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of Capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both".

The Economic Convergence theory suffered a setback in 1989 with the fall of the Soviet Bloc. The Economy Professor website defines this theory as:

"The division between capitalist democracies in Western Europe and North America, and communist states in Eastern Europe, is fading. The nature of industrial society leads both types to converge towards a common centre. Capitalist societies are becoming more organized and managerial, communist societies more open to market methods and to greater political and civil freedoms."

As we discussed on a recent Point Taken TV program, capitalism (or was it Reaganism?) rushed into the 1989 vaccum, claiming an unfiltered victory for free markets. Convergence yielded to sycophancy as the East sought to copy the West. Alas this 'crushing victory' was shortlived (if twenty years can be called short --and it is, in historical terms).

Now it seems convergence has resumed with a vengeance. That, or the death of ideologies has indeed come to pass and we inhabit an age of renewed pragmatism. I'm thinking here FDR's credo of trying everything and keeping only what works. Let the professors catalog the conceptual inconsistencies. We have a world to restart!

Verily, the pigs are resembling men, and the men, pigs. The Party of Mao has become the lender of last resort to the Great American Experiment as the latter embarks on an aggressive nationalization campaign of its financial system. Stay tuned for more ideological non sequiturs.

In the meantime, let's hope that MLK's dialectical vision (as opposed to outright economic collapse) looms in our future...

Giving Uncle Sam a partial break

2008-11-26T04:41:00.000-08:00

In early 2006, I wrote an essay for Identity Theory called “Big Government and the Big Easy”.

http://www.identitytheory.com/social/ball_bigeasy.php

The essay was an attempt to defend public service and to highlight its many accomplishments. It was also an attempt to rehabilitate the idea of spirited, competent public sector participation in a well-balanced society. Here’s an excerpt:

“Produce a private sector resume that boasts the equivalent of The Marshall Plan, The Manhattan Project, The Interstate Highway System and the Apollo Program, and this peon to public sector accomplishment will be abandoned forthwith. Think of that apocryphal moment in American achievement when a bunch of government bureaucrats navigated a near-inoperable Apollo 13 safely back to Earth. It's hard to recall a private sector accomplishment that rivals this moment of quintessential American genius. Stock options can only gnash their teeth enviously. Some pages from history demolish the best right-wing polemics.”

Now comes Jim Bianco of Bianco Research who has adjusted Uncle Sam’s more signature accomplishments for inflation. As it turn out (and thanks to Barry Ritholz’s blog for assembling this information), the cost to date of the current Credit Crisis bail-out, $4.6 trillion, now exceeds all of government's 'wasteful forays' combined. Ah yes, the power of unfettered markets indeed:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

I am far from a gloating neo-Marxist. But folks, can we re-introduce some balance into the debate? An unregulated financial economy has led us to the brink. Moreover Uncle Sam’s track record is surprisingly impressive. What private sector can stand a comparison against Uncle's resume? GM? GE? Lehman Brothers? Citicorp?

Alas the private sector bumblers are too epic and too numerous to count. So is government the solution? Certainly not exclusively. Does it play a crucial role in the larger context of a functioning society? Absolutely.

When are free market apologists going to learn how to walk and chew gum at the same time?

My Resume (in PDF)

2008-11-25T13:42:00.000-08:00

John Thomas of the new arts and community website Ambush Arts has been kind enough to let my PDF resume reside at his site (complete with clickable links and chewable squares) where I will periodically update it.

Thank you John.

Macroeconomics

2008-11-25T12:33:00.000-08:00

The macroeconomy has been a source of angst in recent months. Here are some of my recent, mostly grim, musings.

The Potomac: A Journal of Poetry and Politics
"When Currency Becomes a Fiat for Oxygen, All Breathing Must Leave the Room"

"The Home is the Temple of the Dole" (a satire overtaken by the farce of real-life)

Ambush Arts
"Sometimes, It Really Is Different This Time"

Houston Literary Review
"Fresh Hard Times" (music video with accompanying essay)

Bright Lights Film Journal
"Metropolis, Ezra Pound, Mammon And the Law of Too-Large Numbers"

The Frantic Force

2008-11-25T12:12:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about establishing a central waystation for my essays, poetry, videos and music. Currently, my 'web existence' consists of an isthmus here and an isthmus there. So I plan to create a reservoir --or unleash a hundred-year flood. Let's see what the tide brings in.

As a preface to a book-in-progress, I had this to say about the name of this blog, Frantic Force:

"In his 1986 Time magazine essay, Poetry and Politics, Roger Rosenblatt identifies a trait common to poets and politicians as, ‘the frantic force of their opinions. When either speaks his mind, he is like the Ancient Mariner; he seizes the public by the collar as if to say: Accept my perspective and be converted.’

In the popular imagination, the poet is an effete distant figure whose voice epitomizes, as Rosenblatt characterizes the misprision, ‘indirection and repose’. Rosenblatt is right. The poet is a polemicist, no less eager to drive a point -- his point -- home than is the politician or the overt political hack. True, the sublime is a realm poets love to wax from –but it’s usually just before they reach down and snatch your wallet. Camouflaging their bids for power in a velvet crush of roses, autumnal shades and periphrastic mischief, the poet is more artful at the dodge.

As for the powerful, they are either delicate flowers or they know a subversive when they read one. Witness the vitriol routinely greeting Merwin when he strays into ‘political relevancy’, or the two bullets Lorca earned for his anti-fascist exuberance. Sometimes the complexities of reality are an affront to the expectations of genre. When Robert Bly cited America’s ‘famous unconcern’ towards the Vietnam War’s atrocities during his 1968 National Book Award acceptance speech, there were more jeers than cheers for this uninvited polemicist. Where was the poet? Poets have always been in the fray. To quote Merwin: ‘all poetry is politics’..."