I never liked the cocky young jerks sauntering around New York City in Armani suits with slicked-back hair making obscene commissions selling financial products they knew little about for billions of dollars, mostly to their colleagues working in banks and hedge funds who knew even less. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, in the wake of the deregulation of the savings and loan industry, these same punks brought the economy to its knees kiting investments, sending the real business people down the tubes in the aftermath. They just did it again, concocting investment units securitized by dodgy mortgages. The grand economy of the past six years took it on the chin. Add in media glee that the economy is wobbly and a crisis raises its ugly head.
Fortunately, this time we are riding a high tide of worldwide capitalism raising all ships. And under the Bush presidency, interest rates have been kept down, preventing investment flight to cash instruments — thus bolstering stocks over the ups and downs of economic activity. And stocks will continue to hang in there, even in the face of greedy opportunists and unexpected events. Under global capitalism, most workers have an IRA-type instrument invested in equities: Every hour automatic drafts purchase huge chunks on world markets in good times and bad, keeping stock investments fairly stable.
Yes, the mortgage instrument damage was severe, but the economy righted itself — at least thus far — without taking all hands down to a watery grave. The financial leadership of the United States had learned to act — and to act fast — a lesson learned from the 1989-1994 tsunami when banks, left to their own devices, became cowardly predators, exacting their several pounds of flesh from their own customers.
I think that the greedy worms that cause these economic dislocations should be tracked down and water-boarded for the crime of risking our economic well-being. Sure, some companies and individuals perform heinous enough acts to be prosecuted. But the legal process is too slow to lasso them all as they slither away to await another opportunity to sacrifice the reputation of honest capitalism for their own enrichment. It’s the bane of free enterprise.
Notes From La-La Land
OK, I give up. I criticized the rail transit plan now under study by the new Triangle region Special Transit Advisory Commission in the December 2007 issue. Upon investigation, I now feel it has merit — perhaps because it follows suggestions I made months back by addressing the big weakness of the old TTA plan — its insistence on running rail where no one wanted to go. The old plan was politically driven and factually bereft, ignoring the reality that the critical mass of population to justify rail transit resides in Raleigh and Wake County — not Durham and Chapel Hill. The new plan radiates outward from Raleigh to destinations that make sense: the RDU International Airport, RTP and other termini. If it works, plans call for spurs to Durham and Chapel Hill. Go with my blessing.
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Once again reality trumps theoretical utopian policies in vogue in university, media and government circles. A recent study discovered that the $200-$300 million spent annually in the US on forced diversity training is actually counterproductive. Using 31 years of data from 831 companies of varying size, the research found that forced diversity training led to a 7.5 percent decline in the number of women in management, a 10 percent decline in the number of black women managers, and a 12 percent drop in the number of black men in top positions.
The study says voluntary diversity training is far more effective, especially when mentoring programs are included. According to study leader Alexandra Kalev of The University of Arizona, “forcing people to go through training creates a backlash against diversity.”
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For sheer entertainment, the BBC World News is better than most radio fare. The Beeb reaches new heights of incredulity trying to explain — in serious tones — European Union policy, lapsing into a patois equivalent to jive talk for eggheads. With global warming heating up, BBC is covering the compulsion of the Euro-apparatchiks to spin out regulatory energy demands that rival the best from the moribund command economies that flourished during the Cold War.
Having issued a “target” for the amount of energy consumption that must be “green” by the year 2017, the planners ran into criticism from their own side, who maintained that increasing the requisite use of biofuels to reach their goal would decimate the rain forest, a venerated icon of the green movement equivalent to the holy cross in Christianity.
As the argument unfolded on BBC, advocates of the EU goals defended their theoretical position, causing the druids of the sacred rain forest to trot out their opposition, saying further depletion to feed the biofuel targets adds to the devastating catastrophe that economic growth — fueled by energy consumption, don’t you see — is leading to people eating more meat. They say world capitalism has enriched so many of the former poor, they are forsaking a vegan diet and turning into bellicose red meat-eating war-mongers who demand that more land be cleared (including the venerated rain forests) to raise cows, sheep and pigs … and on like that.
You can imagine the concern of the BBC hosts. What to do? Clear more rain forests or forego biofuel regulations? Answer? Bring on air an American economist, who settled the matter with finality. Simply cease consumption by greedy humans and all will be well, he intoned confidently. And there you go: The utopian theorists, sidelined by the failure of their doctrines worldwide, and worried that the proletariat and peasants are becoming capitalist too, have sidled up to the environmentalists to fight by other means the capitalists who are responsible for global warming — and, due to eating meat, causing more warfare. Except now it’s not the plutocrats who control the means of production they want removed, it’s all of us for daring to exploit Mother Earth.
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An obscure skirmish taking place between the British and Russians over the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, one of the suspected killers of Alexander Litvinenko, is slowly escalating. Litvinenko, a former Russian spy, who published articles critical of Russian president Vladimir Putin, was assassinated with radioactive polonium in London in 2006.
In defiance of the insistence of the British to extradite Lugovoi, Putin’s henchmen have been ordering the closing of UK cultural offices outside Moscow. Keep an eye on this one. Remember it was the Russians who murdered English royal family cousins Nicholas and Alexandra in 1917. Neither side shows signs of standing down.