Castro St. store window. San Francisco
Bob Morris @ Jun 30th 2008 22:23 - Category: Unfiled ;
Archive for June 30th, 2008
This Brave Nation. Tom Hayden and Naomi Klein
Bob Morris @ Jun 30th 2008 14:43 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Naomi Klein, Tom Hayden;
From FireDogLake.
The final discussion in the This Brave Nation series is up — between Tom Hayden and Naomi Klein — and like all the others, it is fascinating. And inspiring. But, in this case, there is also a moment where Tom and Naomi are talking about how much activity and organization there is online…and how little there is in the streets.
It’s not enough to upload the movement to the net, something which happened instantly and with dramatic effect during the Battle of Seattle anti-globalization protests. Indeed, it was precisely because they were in the streets that they had something to upload! In the video Hayden says writing is fine but when you take action, you start to change what you are writing about and no longer are just an observer.
They both agree it is crucial to get out of one’s reality tunnel and talk to people outside of it. Hayden learned this talking to black sharecroppers in Mississippi during the civil rights struggles in the early 60’s and found they knew things about how the system worked that he, being a middle class white, had no clue about. Klein spoke with people working in Third World sweatshops. Same thing. We need multiple perspectives in the movement - including working class whites who too often and unfairly now get categorized as lumpen racists. Most aren’t. But do resent being approached in a patronizing manner.
Does the net itself deflect energy that could be going into the streets? Yes. The presidential elections are doing the same. So the movement is at a low ebb now. There’s a sense that old tactics are no longer effective. An Obama presidency will indeed raise expectations for change very high, and that presents a real opportunity for change. The net is a useful tool. But we need to be in the streets, organizing person to person too.
Hay is up 76% in nine months
Bob Morris @ Jun 30th 2008 10:41 - Category: Unfiled ;
That’s what Asymptotic Life discovered when they went to buy more hay for their goats. The increase is due to the drought, which has cut supply, and oil prices, which has increased production costs. Those tractors run on diesel. So do they trucks that ship it.
Fertilizer is getting more expensive too, because natural gas is used to produce it.
Farmers and ranchers will be getting squeezed, and the price of food will continue to rise.
Financial markets worldwide getting shaky
Bob Morris @ Jun 30th 2008 05:55 - Category: Credit crisis ;
I was emailing a friend recently about the stock market. He thinks the markets are “totally divorced from the reality of the time” and in many ways he’s right. They exist in a bizarre other universe, seemingly not affecting the rest of us much.
Except when they do, as witness the subprime debacle that has now morphed into a worldwide credit crisis.
- Former Sec. of Labor Robert Reich: “The economy is failing” and Congress needs to pass a massive stimulus package now, deficit spending be damned.
- Former Sec. of the Treasury Lawrence Summers: “In the months ahead there is the real possibility that significant financial institutions will encounter not just liquidity but solvency problems“
- Mish says forced sales of bank assets are coming soon as banks desperately try to raise money. WaMu is toast and Citigroup will be broken into pieces.
- Barclays Capital is warning clients that a major financial storm is coming and blames the Fed for not moving against inflation.
- The Royal Bank of Scotland advises all the chickens will be coming home to roost after the current excesses and that the contagion will be worldwide.
Banks will fail. Companies that rely on revolving lines of credit will find them more expensive or not available at all. Mortgages will continue to be harder to get. Businesses that rely on consumer spending will face slowdowns. Pensions fund will have serious losses. And so on.
The toxic waste spawned by subprime and its esoteric cousins, the CDOs and SIVs, has now spread to the financial system in general. And that means to all of us too.
Crude today is dirt cheap: Matthew Simmons
Bob Morris @ Jun 30th 2008 01:35 - Category: Unfiled Tags: oil prices;
Matthew Simmons is founder and CEO of Simmons and Co, an investment bank to the energy industry.
He says the Tata Nano at $2400 is the future of cars, that the US needs to get off its ravenous appetite for oil now, and that the primary driver of high oil prices is increasing demand and declining supply.
As for those evil speculators.
Speculators are mostly betting that crude will soon crash, so I suspect this group of investors is net short, and if they are banned from speculating, oil prices will jump higher.
