That is the term a good friend of mine used to describe us. Him because he has two kids and wants to make more money so his family can be more comfortable and me because i really have no idea what i need to be doing. Sometimes it feels as though you are standing at a cross roads, except that you just can't sit there and deliberate forever on which road to take. It's more like playing a certain kind of level in super mario brothers, you have to keep moving otherwise you are going to fall off the screen or get left behind (and unless you've been collecting some serious coin, you aren't going to have any extra lives). I've come to the conclusion that like everything else, life is one giant cycle. The economy is a cycle, human institutions live and die by cycles, history is a cycle, relationships with friends and girlfriends, family, it's all a process that keeps repeating itself. We know something until we forget it and the process of relearning it begins all over again. The last time i felt this way was my senior year of high school, things were changing rapidly, almost too rapidly to sift and sort through all of it. When times like this occur it can feel somewhat overwhelming, and when you are overwhelmed you tend to second guess some of the choices you make. Eventually in the end it all works out, but it's the journey, the filler between the two points where you learn more about yourself and what you expect from life and the people that fill it. When this cycle end's i won't be the same person i was when it began, but the peace of mind that you find when the trials and tribulations are over can be one of the best feelings in the world. Looking back it will be so simple, that you won't be able to believe it took so long to get to this conclusion. Perhaps what nature is trying to tell me is that what i used to gain a sense of self and identity all those years ago just isn't cutting it anymore. Time to discard what's not working and try new things, find a new source of inner power. I don't think i'm alone at this time, i think many people, perhaps even the entire country, is going through a process of self realization right now. The future seems so much more uncertain now for most, not just myself. I know for me at least that things will be for the better when the end does arrive, but what about the country in general? Are we living in denial? Can this empty consumer life style continue indefinitely? Or will some sort of austerity be forced upon the general population? I think Operation Ivy said it best "all i know is that i don't know". This song resonates with me alot lately
Operation Ivy- Freeze up
Empty factories to the east and all our waste
The shape of things that came shows on the broken workers face
To the west you'll find our silicon promised lands where
Machines replace our minds for systematic profit plans
The course of human progress staggers like a drunk
Its steps are quick and heavy and its mind is slow and blunt
I look for optimism but I just don't know
Its seeds are planted in a poison place where nothing grows
Its 1989 stand up and take a look around
Weathers bitter tension it seems is sinking down
Drunk with power and fighting one another
Every hour shows the winter getting harder
Theres a freeze up
(theres a freeze up coming)
Theres a freeze up
(freeze up coming)
Theres a freeze up
(theres a freeze up coming)
Theres a freeze up coming
One nation stands the tallest radiating blinding light
Plastic and fluorescent energy robbing us of sight
Set in our way content with our decay
We wave the flag of freedom as we conquer and invade
Ever ask yourself wheres my place in this hell
But no ones there to tell you cause they don't know that themselves
The well rehearsed lines from our elated politicians
No longer offer solace we can see the self destruction
Its 1989 stand up and take a look around
Weathers bitter tension it seems is sinking down
Drunk with power and fighting one another
Every hour shows the winter getting harder
Just one political song
Just one political song to drop into the list that stretches years and years long
Just one political song
Just one political song to drop into the list that stretches years and years long
Static and division is increasing like a storm
We are sheltered
We are forewarned
Nothing can be changed except ourselves
Nothing can be changed except ourselves
Monday, November 1, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
This about sums it up
Dan Weintraub: The Nominal Man
I am a nominal man living in a real world. Yesterday, I spent $16 on a bag of whole-grain rice, a bag of beans and a hunk of cheese.
One goal of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policies is debasement of the dollar. It is often argued that a weak dollar – relative to other currencies – promotes our supposed export-based economy. Lest we forget, however, our $14-trillion-plus economy is 70-percent consumer-dependent. The most productive capital in the U.S. was shipped overseas long ago. Economic growth over the past three decades has been predicated not on the creation of productive capital, but on access to cheap credit, and thus on consumer spending. The United States, despite beliefs to the contrary, is no longer an export-driven economy. And I remain a nominal man living in a real world.
While the world operates on numbers, I subsist on the relative value of those numbers. For several months now, commodity prices have been rising – and not just those of precious metals. The price of wheat, of cotton, of coffee, of cocoa: all rising sharply. But why would the price of commodities rise when a contracting global economy should equate to a decrease in overall demand (and thus to falling prices)? Commodity prices are rising because investors increasingly believe that the relative value of their financial assets is no longer assured. In a global financial system rife with fraud, in a system teetering precariously close to the brink of an all-out currency conflagration, investors and speculators are abandoning financial assets in lieu of commodities because these same investors believe that the world’s central banks are bent upon destroying the purchasing power of their money. And still I remain a nominal man living in a real world.
I am a middle-class citizen. I make a modest wage teaching history at a local independent school. Like many in the middle class, my nominal monthly income purchases less of the real goods and services that I need in order to get by. I understand that the federal government ultimately must increase its tax revenues in order to subsidize its growing debt-service obligations and to pay for an ever-expanding pool of necessary social services (unemployment insurance, food stamps, etc.), but the real impact of these tax burdens hits those of us in the middle class the hardest. For members of the shrinking American middle class, a seemingly modest nominal tax increase of perhaps $100 a month is, in real terms, far more expensive than the numbers convey.
I understand why economists like Paul Krugman are calling for trillions more in government spending. Fiscal austerity disproportionately hurts the middle class and working poor, and political extremists and opportunists are famous for promoting their nativistic and self-aggrandizing agendas while skyrocketing unemployment hurls millions of citizens toward the abyss. But in our credit- and debt-subsidized economy, virtually all stimulus monies are created, either directly or indirectly, by the Federal Reserve through its open-market operations – in this case, through the monthly purchase of billions of dollars in government securities.
And while such actions may increase systemic liquidity in the near term, these policies of debt monetization also further destabilize the world’s already shaky currency markets. As more people lose trust in the long-term viability of the world’s currencies, more people “buy” commodities. In other words, you may not be able to trust the value of the dollar from one day to the next, but you can always rely upon the hard value of such assets as food and energy. And so, one by one, investors abandon financial assets and move toward commodities, and as they do the price of commodities goes vertical. In nominal terms, this is disastrous for the majority of Americans who subsist on fixed incomes. In real terms, it is far worse. This is but one of the unspoken impacts of our government’s stimulus policies.
I am a nominal man living in a real world. In the real world, trillions more in government stimulus has no substantively positive impact upon my life. In the real world, a 2-percent cost-of-living (wage) increase for someone earning $40,000 per year, in terms of cost inflation, more closely resembles a 2-percent reduction in pay than it does a “raise.” In the real world, the majority of government stimulus monies are used by the largest and most powerful financial institutions to drive up the cost of those very commodities that the majority of us find increasingly difficult to afford. In the real world, as access to credit contracts (real deflation) and as the prices of food and energy increase, austerity arrives regardless of the Federal Reserve’s policy decisions.
I am a nominal man living in a real world, and in my world the numbers just don’t add up.
I am a nominal man living in a real world. Yesterday, I spent $16 on a bag of whole-grain rice, a bag of beans and a hunk of cheese.
One goal of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policies is debasement of the dollar. It is often argued that a weak dollar – relative to other currencies – promotes our supposed export-based economy. Lest we forget, however, our $14-trillion-plus economy is 70-percent consumer-dependent. The most productive capital in the U.S. was shipped overseas long ago. Economic growth over the past three decades has been predicated not on the creation of productive capital, but on access to cheap credit, and thus on consumer spending. The United States, despite beliefs to the contrary, is no longer an export-driven economy. And I remain a nominal man living in a real world.
While the world operates on numbers, I subsist on the relative value of those numbers. For several months now, commodity prices have been rising – and not just those of precious metals. The price of wheat, of cotton, of coffee, of cocoa: all rising sharply. But why would the price of commodities rise when a contracting global economy should equate to a decrease in overall demand (and thus to falling prices)? Commodity prices are rising because investors increasingly believe that the relative value of their financial assets is no longer assured. In a global financial system rife with fraud, in a system teetering precariously close to the brink of an all-out currency conflagration, investors and speculators are abandoning financial assets in lieu of commodities because these same investors believe that the world’s central banks are bent upon destroying the purchasing power of their money. And still I remain a nominal man living in a real world.
I am a middle-class citizen. I make a modest wage teaching history at a local independent school. Like many in the middle class, my nominal monthly income purchases less of the real goods and services that I need in order to get by. I understand that the federal government ultimately must increase its tax revenues in order to subsidize its growing debt-service obligations and to pay for an ever-expanding pool of necessary social services (unemployment insurance, food stamps, etc.), but the real impact of these tax burdens hits those of us in the middle class the hardest. For members of the shrinking American middle class, a seemingly modest nominal tax increase of perhaps $100 a month is, in real terms, far more expensive than the numbers convey.
I understand why economists like Paul Krugman are calling for trillions more in government spending. Fiscal austerity disproportionately hurts the middle class and working poor, and political extremists and opportunists are famous for promoting their nativistic and self-aggrandizing agendas while skyrocketing unemployment hurls millions of citizens toward the abyss. But in our credit- and debt-subsidized economy, virtually all stimulus monies are created, either directly or indirectly, by the Federal Reserve through its open-market operations – in this case, through the monthly purchase of billions of dollars in government securities.
And while such actions may increase systemic liquidity in the near term, these policies of debt monetization also further destabilize the world’s already shaky currency markets. As more people lose trust in the long-term viability of the world’s currencies, more people “buy” commodities. In other words, you may not be able to trust the value of the dollar from one day to the next, but you can always rely upon the hard value of such assets as food and energy. And so, one by one, investors abandon financial assets and move toward commodities, and as they do the price of commodities goes vertical. In nominal terms, this is disastrous for the majority of Americans who subsist on fixed incomes. In real terms, it is far worse. This is but one of the unspoken impacts of our government’s stimulus policies.
I am a nominal man living in a real world. In the real world, trillions more in government stimulus has no substantively positive impact upon my life. In the real world, a 2-percent cost-of-living (wage) increase for someone earning $40,000 per year, in terms of cost inflation, more closely resembles a 2-percent reduction in pay than it does a “raise.” In the real world, the majority of government stimulus monies are used by the largest and most powerful financial institutions to drive up the cost of those very commodities that the majority of us find increasingly difficult to afford. In the real world, as access to credit contracts (real deflation) and as the prices of food and energy increase, austerity arrives regardless of the Federal Reserve’s policy decisions.
I am a nominal man living in a real world, and in my world the numbers just don’t add up.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
I love the fall
I'm tired of everyone I know
Of everyone I see
On the street
And on TV, yeah
On the other side
On the other side
Nobody's waiting for me
On the other side
I hate them all, I hate them all
I hate myself
For hating them
so I'll drink some more
I'll love them all
I'll drink even more
I'll hate them even more than I did before
On the other side
On the other side
Nobody's waiting for me
On the other side
Here we go
I remember when you came
You taught me how to sing
Now, it seems so far away
You taught me how to sing
I'm tired of being so judgemental
Of everyone
I will not go to sleep
I will train my eyes to see
That my mind is as blind as a branch on a tree
On the other side
On the other side
I know what's waiting for me
On the other side
On the other side
On the other side
I know you're waiting for me
On the other side
Of everyone I see
On the street
And on TV, yeah
On the other side
On the other side
Nobody's waiting for me
On the other side
I hate them all, I hate them all
I hate myself
For hating them
so I'll drink some more
I'll love them all
I'll drink even more
I'll hate them even more than I did before
On the other side
On the other side
Nobody's waiting for me
On the other side
Here we go
I remember when you came
You taught me how to sing
Now, it seems so far away
You taught me how to sing
I'm tired of being so judgemental
Of everyone
I will not go to sleep
I will train my eyes to see
That my mind is as blind as a branch on a tree
On the other side
On the other side
I know what's waiting for me
On the other side
On the other side
On the other side
I know you're waiting for me
On the other side
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Funny how at a point you wake up one day and everything just feels lighter
Waiting by the mailbox, by the train
Passin' by the hills 'til I hear the name
I'm looking for a saw to cut these chains in half
And all I want is
Someone to rely on as
Thunder comes a rolling down
Someone to rely on as
Lightning comes a staring in again
I'll wait to be forgiven
Maybe I never will
My star has left me
To take the bitter pill
That shattered feeling
Well the cause of it's a lesson learned
Just don't know if I could roll into the sea again
"Just don't know if I could do it all again" she said, it's true
Waiting in my room and I lock the door
I watch the coloured animals across the floor
And I'm looking from a distance
And I'm listening to the whispers
And oh it ain't the same, when you're falling out of feeling and you're
Falling in and caught again
I'm caught again in the mystery
You're by my side, but are you still with me?
The answer's somewhere deep in it, I'm sorry that you're feeling it
But I just have to tell that I love you so much these days
Have to tell you that I love you so much these days, it's true
My heart is in economy
Due to this autonomy
Rolling in and caught again
Caught again
My heart is in economy
Due to this autonomy
Rolling in and caught again
Caught again
Passin' by the hills 'til I hear the name
I'm looking for a saw to cut these chains in half
And all I want is
Someone to rely on as
Thunder comes a rolling down
Someone to rely on as
Lightning comes a staring in again
I'll wait to be forgiven
Maybe I never will
My star has left me
To take the bitter pill
That shattered feeling
Well the cause of it's a lesson learned
Just don't know if I could roll into the sea again
"Just don't know if I could do it all again" she said, it's true
Waiting in my room and I lock the door
I watch the coloured animals across the floor
And I'm looking from a distance
And I'm listening to the whispers
And oh it ain't the same, when you're falling out of feeling and you're
Falling in and caught again
I'm caught again in the mystery
You're by my side, but are you still with me?
The answer's somewhere deep in it, I'm sorry that you're feeling it
But I just have to tell that I love you so much these days
Have to tell you that I love you so much these days, it's true
My heart is in economy
Due to this autonomy
Rolling in and caught again
Caught again
My heart is in economy
Due to this autonomy
Rolling in and caught again
Caught again
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Feeling better
Somewhere along the way, my hopefulness turned to sadness
Somewhere along the way , my sadness turned to bitterness
Somewhere along the way, my bitterness turned to anger
Somewhere along the way, my anger turned to vengeance
And the ones that I made pay were never the ones who deserved it
And the ones who deserved it, they'll never understand it.
Yes, I know I'm going to Hell in a purple basket
'Least I'll be in another world while you're pissing on my casket...
How could you be, oh
So perfect for me?
Why can't you ignore, oh
The things I did before?
Somewhere along the way, exacting vengeance gave excitement
Somewhere along the way, that excitement turned to pleasure
Somewhere along the way, that pleasure turned to madness
But sooner or later that kind of madness turns into pain
And the ones that I made pay were never the ones who deserved it
Those who helped me along the way, I smacked 'em as I thanked 'em
Yes, I know I'm going to Hell in a leather jacket
'Least I'll be in another world while you're pissing on my casket
And all that I can do is sing a song of faded glory
And all you got to do is sit there, look great, and make 'em horny
Together we'll sing songs and tell exaggerated stories
About the way we feel today and tonight and in the morning...
How could you be, oh
So perfect for me?
Why can't you ignore, oh
The things I did before?
Take all your fears, pretend they're all true
Take all your plans, pretend they fell through
But that's what it's like...
That's what it's like for most people in this world
The rich or the poor Oh,
Muslims or Jews Oh,
When roles are reversed Oh,
Opinions are too..No oh oh
That's all I'm gonna say now
Before they come knocking on my door now
Somewhere along the way , my sadness turned to bitterness
Somewhere along the way, my bitterness turned to anger
Somewhere along the way, my anger turned to vengeance
And the ones that I made pay were never the ones who deserved it
And the ones who deserved it, they'll never understand it.
Yes, I know I'm going to Hell in a purple basket
'Least I'll be in another world while you're pissing on my casket...
How could you be, oh
So perfect for me?
Why can't you ignore, oh
The things I did before?
Somewhere along the way, exacting vengeance gave excitement
Somewhere along the way, that excitement turned to pleasure
Somewhere along the way, that pleasure turned to madness
But sooner or later that kind of madness turns into pain
And the ones that I made pay were never the ones who deserved it
Those who helped me along the way, I smacked 'em as I thanked 'em
Yes, I know I'm going to Hell in a leather jacket
'Least I'll be in another world while you're pissing on my casket
And all that I can do is sing a song of faded glory
And all you got to do is sit there, look great, and make 'em horny
Together we'll sing songs and tell exaggerated stories
About the way we feel today and tonight and in the morning...
How could you be, oh
So perfect for me?
Why can't you ignore, oh
The things I did before?
Take all your fears, pretend they're all true
Take all your plans, pretend they fell through
But that's what it's like...
That's what it's like for most people in this world
The rich or the poor Oh,
Muslims or Jews Oh,
When roles are reversed Oh,
Opinions are too..No oh oh
That's all I'm gonna say now
Before they come knocking on my door now
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