This is video is of Michael Albert, an economic visionary and one of my favourite people, attempting to describe an alternative economy—Participatory Economics—in 30 minutes. I think he does quite well.
There’s more here, including a Q & A session and a description from Jessica Azulay on how she and others put one of the institutions of parecon—balanced job complexes—into practice as part of their business (see part 8).
This was hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry on Dispatches tonight. Is he really advocating the abolishment of fractional-reserve banking, a system where banks create money out of thin air and are required to keep only a fraction of their deposits in reserve. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see this unbelievable scam terminated, but does Hugh Hendry understand how anti-establishment such a suggestion is?
The boss of a successful US hedge fund has quit the industry with an extraordinary farewell letter dismissing his rivals as over-privileged “idiots” and thanking “stupid” traders for making him rich.
Yesterday the 37-year-old told his clients that he had hated the business and had only been in it for the money. And after declaring he would no longer manage money for other people, because he had enough of his own, Lahde said that instead he intended to repair his stress-damaged health; he made it clear he would not miss the financial world.
“The low-hanging fruit, ie idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking,” he wrote. “These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government,” he said.
“All of this behaviour supporting the aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.”
Lahde became one of the biggest names in the investment industry when one of his funds produced a return of 866% last year, largely by forecasting the US home loans industry would collapse.
In his farewell letter, which concluded with an appeal for the legalisation of marijuana, Lahde said he was happy with his rewards and did not envy those who had made even more money.
“I will let others try to amass nine, 10 or 11 figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck,” he wrote, citing a life of back-to-back business appointments relieved only by a two-week annual holiday in which financiers are still “glued to their Blackberries”.
With New Labour’s neo-liberal agenda and long record of socialising costs and privatising profits it comes as a surprise to me that Alistair Darling has turned to Keynes in the face of recession. I had assumed until now that they’d use this recession and the recent handout to bankers as an opportunity to cut back on social spending. Maybe we have the absence of Tony Blair to thank?
While I’ve increasingly been hearing news of architects being laid off over the past few weeks, the firm I’m employed by works nearly exclusively in the social housing sector, so it’s certainly good economic news for me:
The chancellor said housing, energy and small businesses would benefit in his new spending plans.
And I couldn’t agree more with Darling on this statement:
This is a time when you have to support the economy. You will see us switching our spending priorities to areas which make a difference.
It’s just a shame he includes in this the entrenchment of the military-industrial complex and the myopic decision to upgrade Britain’s nuclear weapons.
… plans for two aircraft carriers and a new nuclear deterrent would go ahead.
I might add that a decision to upgrade Britain’s nuclear weapons is a direct violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, something the UK and U.S. governments have been falsely accusing Iran of over the past year or so.
Simon Bowers reported yesterday that Wall Street bankers are to take $70bn in bonuses this year, 10% of the U.S. government handout. It’s a mistake, however, to blame the financial meltdown on bankers and their greed. These people are simply following the rationale of the capitalist system: take as much as you can, irrespective of the expense incurred to others.
If you think it’s scandalous to take such bonuses, especially in the current climate, as I do, then blame the scandalous framework they work within, not them for working within the framework.
I got talking to a homeless guy on the street the other day. He joked to me about how meaningless this crisis is to him, and while the current situation could make his predicament far worse I took his point: for a large number of people on this planet—about 80% of the population—capitalism is perpetually in crisis. Every day. What makes this a “crisis” is that a large portion of the other 20% are getting fucked too.
Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, a woman or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or ‘disappeared’ at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame. — Amnesty International, 1996
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