Bailout, Russian Roulette and the Wine Dark Sea
As someone wrote – another day another bailout.
AIG American Insurance Group has been taken over by the federal government to the tune of some 85 BILLION dollars.
That’s not a small chunk of change – coming soon after the bailout of Bear Sterns, Freddie and Fannie Mac and the death of Lehman Brothers.
What this is simply the poof that we live in Donald Trump’s world – make sure you’re too big to fail owe more money than the bank can afford to lose (and have right connections) and nothing bad will happen to you.
Otherwise vultures will gnaw your skull. But those are the risks these days. The important thing is if you are a recipient of such largess that you need to hire shills who will endlessly bleat about the virtues of the Market and how capitalism and market forces are the best way to solve anything. As someone pointed out about Milton Friedman – who has much to answer for in regard to this current crisis – while there is no free lunch if you write about how companies are over taxed and over regulated, corporations will buy you lunch on a regular basis.
Well let me got off this damn economist hobbyhorse of mine – I have a deep suspicion of any discipline, especially in the social sciences that in the first place calls itself a science and then sets up a system – pure free market capitalism as perfect.
Capitalism is a human system – involving humans – which means there is no way it can be perfect. Hell science is a human system, which means imperfection is in the very warp and woof of the bloody thing. Science can give us things like nano-technology and genetic manipulation but it really isn’t fit to decide on if we should be doing it or not. (Personally, I’m suspicious of FrankenFoods as they are called – they haven’t really been around long enough for us to know what, well the long-term impact is – not to mention the corporations that make them are acting like thugs to expand market share – end side note).
Anyway $85 billion dollars is real money even by Washington DC standards and people aren’t really sure it’s going to work. Of course, they say that it because the faith in financial circles of positive re-enforcement is quite unshakeable – don’t say things are bad because they will get worse, accent the positive.
Other notes, in the elevators in my building there is this feature called captive audience – it’s a little screen that shows things like the stock market, sports scores latest news and what not. Anyway I was going up to work the other day and the news on the screen was that per actuarial tables, Sarah Palin has a 1-6 chance of becoming president in the next four years. They compared it to the odds of pulling a red M&M out of a bag first go.
It’s also the odds in Russian Roulette. Which seems right yes?
Been trying to read over the last few weeks a couple of Colin Wilson’s books The Occult and Mysteries – and I have come to the conclusion that Colin Wilson is utterly full of shit.
Which is somewhat bad because he’s a decent writer and has similar interests in the unusual and odd that I do but he seems determined to filter everything he sees through a complicated worldview and in the process facts bite the dust and the conclusions he draws are the start of another chain of well gibberish.
Quick example – he cites homer’s use of the phrase “wine dark sea” and from that concludes that early Greeks were color blind – saying how could they mistake blue for red?
Look at the water near sunset schmuck – red yes?
And it goes on like this – he has some kind or did have - these are older books – some kind of hobby horse about something he calls faculty X which seems to be a mish mash or artistic or scientific inspiration emotional exhilaration and just breaking out of the day to day and seeing. Satori the Japanese called it I think. Trouble is he layers so many attributes on Faculty X that really loses any meaning.
Some woman named Rothschild is calling Obama an Elitist – she’s a billionaire by the way. Frankly it sounds more like she’s upset Obama doesn’t know his place.
McCain has launched a Spanish language ad blaming Obama for the failure of immigration reform – my only explanation for this is that he thinks Spanish-speaking people are stupid because they can’t speak English.
Enough
Peace Love Wine Dark Sea. .
AIG American Insurance Group has been taken over by the federal government to the tune of some 85 BILLION dollars.
That’s not a small chunk of change – coming soon after the bailout of Bear Sterns, Freddie and Fannie Mac and the death of Lehman Brothers.
What this is simply the poof that we live in Donald Trump’s world – make sure you’re too big to fail owe more money than the bank can afford to lose (and have right connections) and nothing bad will happen to you.
Otherwise vultures will gnaw your skull. But those are the risks these days. The important thing is if you are a recipient of such largess that you need to hire shills who will endlessly bleat about the virtues of the Market and how capitalism and market forces are the best way to solve anything. As someone pointed out about Milton Friedman – who has much to answer for in regard to this current crisis – while there is no free lunch if you write about how companies are over taxed and over regulated, corporations will buy you lunch on a regular basis.
Well let me got off this damn economist hobbyhorse of mine – I have a deep suspicion of any discipline, especially in the social sciences that in the first place calls itself a science and then sets up a system – pure free market capitalism as perfect.
Capitalism is a human system – involving humans – which means there is no way it can be perfect. Hell science is a human system, which means imperfection is in the very warp and woof of the bloody thing. Science can give us things like nano-technology and genetic manipulation but it really isn’t fit to decide on if we should be doing it or not. (Personally, I’m suspicious of FrankenFoods as they are called – they haven’t really been around long enough for us to know what, well the long-term impact is – not to mention the corporations that make them are acting like thugs to expand market share – end side note).
Anyway $85 billion dollars is real money even by Washington DC standards and people aren’t really sure it’s going to work. Of course, they say that it because the faith in financial circles of positive re-enforcement is quite unshakeable – don’t say things are bad because they will get worse, accent the positive.
Other notes, in the elevators in my building there is this feature called captive audience – it’s a little screen that shows things like the stock market, sports scores latest news and what not. Anyway I was going up to work the other day and the news on the screen was that per actuarial tables, Sarah Palin has a 1-6 chance of becoming president in the next four years. They compared it to the odds of pulling a red M&M out of a bag first go.
It’s also the odds in Russian Roulette. Which seems right yes?
Been trying to read over the last few weeks a couple of Colin Wilson’s books The Occult and Mysteries – and I have come to the conclusion that Colin Wilson is utterly full of shit.
Which is somewhat bad because he’s a decent writer and has similar interests in the unusual and odd that I do but he seems determined to filter everything he sees through a complicated worldview and in the process facts bite the dust and the conclusions he draws are the start of another chain of well gibberish.
Quick example – he cites homer’s use of the phrase “wine dark sea” and from that concludes that early Greeks were color blind – saying how could they mistake blue for red?
Look at the water near sunset schmuck – red yes?
And it goes on like this – he has some kind or did have - these are older books – some kind of hobby horse about something he calls faculty X which seems to be a mish mash or artistic or scientific inspiration emotional exhilaration and just breaking out of the day to day and seeing. Satori the Japanese called it I think. Trouble is he layers so many attributes on Faculty X that really loses any meaning.
Some woman named Rothschild is calling Obama an Elitist – she’s a billionaire by the way. Frankly it sounds more like she’s upset Obama doesn’t know his place.
McCain has launched a Spanish language ad blaming Obama for the failure of immigration reform – my only explanation for this is that he thinks Spanish-speaking people are stupid because they can’t speak English.
Enough
Peace Love Wine Dark Sea. .
posted by Unknown at 3:57 PM
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