Krupmaniac

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 05:15:00 -0700

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Posted: 11 Oct 2011 12:37 AM PDT

I liked a YouTube video: Previous: http://ru.youtube.com/watch?v=UtIs0VFAxyU&fmt=18 Main principle of the previous rover is implemented in this cart. The single wheel (actually, it's duplicated to boost power) isn't outside of the cart and doesn't touch surface. On...

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 05:31:00 -0700

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Robert Reich Commentary for September 21, 2011

Posted: 21 Sep 2011 04:00 PM PDT

Stop calling it class warfare

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Wed, 7 Sep 2011 05:06:00 -0700

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Robert Reich

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 02:02 AM PDT

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent book, Aftershock. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes. This is a recorded program, so sit back and enjoy this Labor Day weekend program with Robert Reich and Bob McChesney. robertreich.org

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 05:30:00 -0700

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Robert Reich Commentary for July 27, 2011

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 04:00 PM PDT

Downgrading the credit agencies

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 05:28:00 -0700

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Ron Paul: The Purpose of a Central Bank Is to Deceive and Defraud the People

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 11:54 PM PDT

I liked a YouTube video: Please like, share, subscribe & comment! http://www.RonPaul.com http://www.whoradio.com/pages/pp_janmickelson.html 07/11/2011 -- Ron Paul is America's leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, a return to s...

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Mon, 23 May 2011 05:37:00 -0700

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#275: Is This Man A Snuggie?

Posted: 20 May 2011 01:41 PM PDT

Jonathan Coulton is a rock star for geeks. He used to work as a computer programmer. But now he writes songs about white-collar zombies and lovesick programmers. He doesn't have a record label, but he makes about $500,000 a year from his music. He tours, licenses his music, and sells songs and merch from his bare-bones website. On today's Planet Money, we talk to Coulton about his work. Jacob Ganz and Frannie Kelley from NPR Music are our special-guest co-hosts. The core question: Is Coulton a fluke, or is he a new model of how to make a living as a musician?

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Fri, 20 May 2011 05:20:00 -0700

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Subscribed to RTAmerica

Posted: 19 May 2011 12:36 PM PDT

I subscribed to RTAmerica's channel on YouTube.

krup's shared items in Google Reader

noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Tue, 10 May 2011 05:15:00 -0700

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John Perkins: "Zeitgeist: Addendum" Extended Interview 2008

Posted: 09 May 2011 10:46 PM PDT

I liked a YouTube video: John Perkins: "Zeitgeist: Addendum" Extended Interview 2008 - JOHN PERKINS - EXTENDED INTERVIEW http://www.johnperkins.org/ FROM THE FILM "ZEITGEIST: ADDENDUM" 2008 ©Gentle Machine Productions LLC www.zeitgeistmovie.com www.zeitgeistaddendu...

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 05:27:00 -0700

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Charles Ferguson: Inside Job (3/2/11)

Posted: 17 Mar 2011 03:12 PM PDT

Charles Ferguson: Inside Job, Academy Award Winner for Best Documentary (Feature)

Charles Ferguson, Documentary Filmmaker, Inside Job and No End in Sight

Adam Lashinsky, Senior Editor at Large, Fortune magazine - Moderator

Come hear from the filmmaker of this year's Academy Award-winning best documentary feature film. Could the global economic meltdown of the last few years have been prevented? Ferguson believes that the crisis was no accident. His latest documentary, Inside Job, makes the powerful case that an out-of-control finance industry took advantage of a deregulated atmosphere and purposely sought to get rich at the expense of others. Through extensive interviews with financial insiders and government officials, Ferguson crossed the globe to find proof that the financial industry intentionally engaged in unethical behavior. His gripping account of the global recession is sure to evoke feelings of disgust, anger, and concern that this all may happen again unless our regulatory system is changed. Ferguson's previous film, No End in Sight, was nominated for an Oscar, and Inside Job brought home the grand prize at this year's awards ceremony.

This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on March 2nd, 2011

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Thu, 3 Mar 2011 05:15:00 -0800

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Upon Hearing Criticism of Goldman Sachs, Fortune Magazine Gets the Vapors

Posted: 28 Feb 2011 08:15 PM PST

"I am really going to enjoy watching Goldman Sachs try to justify its nefarious schemes to a jury box with 12 Americans in it,' he said."

That was Fortune Magazine quoting me on January 28, 2011, regarding the escalation of Overstock's claims against Goldman Sachs, in an article entitled, "Nastiest CEO lashes out at Goldman". The title underscores their sympathies and journalistic objectivity. Displaying identical logic and equanimity there were, perhaps, similar "Nasty Belgians Lash Out at Fatherland" articles in the Nazi press of May, 1940.

Expecting Fortune Magazine to provide critical reporting of Wall Street in this first decade of the 21st century would be like expecting Sports Illustrated to provide critical reporting on Michael Jordan in the last decade of the 20th century. They cannot: it's a fan-mag. But Fortune's choice of title betrays its orientation more clearly than a dozen deconstructions of my own could accomplish.

One should note, however, that beneath its hysteria there are two facts on which Fortune Magazine is reporting. Those facts are:

1. As my Overstock colleague Jonathan Johnson, Esq., put it, "Recently discovered revelations of concerted action among certain market makers and these two brokerages necessitate that we amend our complaint to include additional claims. We expect that this conduct of Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch is fully actionable under anti-racketeering laws."

2. I wish to make Goldman Sachs explain its actions not to a White House to which Goldman is the largest donor ("Goldman Sachs was top Obama donor", CNN, April 2010); not to FINRA, its own industry's self-regulating body in which Goldman is the dominant member ("Goldman Action Highlights FINRA Facade"); not to an SEC which has been hopelessly captured beyond repair ("Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?", Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone); not to members of the Senate Banking Committee from both sides of the aisle ("Goldman Sachs Congressional Inquisitors Also Beneficiaries of Firm's Financial Largesse"). I simply want to see Goldman to explain itself to 12 Americans whom they don't own.

Because Fortune Magazine is allergic to both of these facts, this is how they treat them:

1. Regarding the escalation of our lawsuit to RICO, Fortune provides this anodyne description: "Overstock said it made a filing with a New Jersey court allowing it to seek triple damages in its 2007 suit against the brokers." In comparison, note how the same fact was treated by various news organizations whose business model is not tied to regular and profound supplication before Wall Street:

a. Reuters: "Overstock accuses Goldman. Merrill of racketeering. Overstock says RICO charges apply in case" (December 16, 2010).

b. Associated Press: "Overstock adds RICO claim to short-sale suit: Overstock.com Inc. said Thursday that it sought to add racketeering charges against Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch…." (December 16, 2010)

c. Benzinga: "Overstock Adds RICO Claim To Goldman Sachs/Merrill Lynch Suit: As a result of evidence gathered through discovery in its prime brokerage lawsuit, Overstock.com, Inc. has filed a motion in California State Court to amend the suit to include claims under New Jersey's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act." (December 16, 2010).

d. TechRockies: "Overstock Sues Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch Over Racketeering" (December 17, 2010).

e. Benzinga: "Goldman Sachs Engaged In Interstate Racketeering, Says Overstock's Patrick Byrne" (February 15, 2011).

2. Regarding my insistence that Goldman answer for itself within the one system it cannot rig, Fortune's title and subtitle say it all: "Nastiest CEO lashes out at Goldman: It is hard to know who (sic)to root for in this one". Overstock conducted four years of discovery, obtained documents to support a RICO action, and filed that RICO action, which in the eyes of Fortune Magazine makes me a "nasty CEO" who is "lash[ing] out" against Goldman Sachs. The thought of poor, defenseless Goldman Sachs having to answer to 12 Americans whom they don't own and cannot buy clearly gives Fortune Magazine's staff the vapors.

It is the thesis of DeepCapture that the banksters have hijacked not just the regulators and industry self-regulators, but the politicians who oversee them, the academics who serve them, and much of the New York-based financial press. Of this observation Fortune once again provides fine confirmation. I am sure that Soviet apparatchiks could have wished for no more supine and obedient press coverage from their own state media services as Goldman Sachs (and by extension, Merrill Lynch) have received here from Fortune Magazine.

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 05:19:00 -0800

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Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

Posted: 16 Feb 2011 06:00 AM PST

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary snowy night in Washington this past month a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer "Everything's fucked up and nobody goes to jail" he said "That's your whole story right there Hell you don't even have to write the rest...

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Fri, 4 Feb 2011 05:33:00 -0800

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Josh Silver: Future of Journalism and Internet Access

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 11:01 PM PST

Shared by krup
He nails it w/his speech

Josh Silver: Future of Journalism and Internet Access – The Nexus of Media, Technology, Policy and Politics

CEO, Free Press; Blogger, Huffington Post

The future of journalism and the Internet are both in jeopardy, says the president of the leading national organization working on media and technology policy in the public interest. Free Press chief Silver will address the three major fronts in the battle – Internet policy, journalism policy, and public media policy – and reveal how we can help solve this crisis at an individual level.

This program was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco on January 31, 2011

Josh Silver: Future of Journalism and Internet Access

Posted: 02 Feb 2011 10:40 AM PST

Josh Silver: Future of Journalism and Internet Access – The Nexus of Media, Technology, Policy and Politics

CEO, Free Press; Blogger, Huffington Post

This program was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco on January 31, 2011

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 05:18:00 -0800

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David Brooks: Politics and Culture in the Age of Obama

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 05:44 PM PST

David Brooks: Politics and Culture in the Age of Obama

Columnist, The New York Times; Commentator, PBS "NewsHour"

Dan Schnur, Chairman, Fair Political Practices Commission of California; Director, Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California - Moderator

New York Times op-ed columnist and American political and cultural commentator Brooks offers a fresh perspective on politics and culture in the age of President Obama. Is the country moving further to the left, right or center? What is the future of the tea party movement? As author of a twice-weekly column for The New York Times, Brooks has written extensively on regional and intergenerational differences in America, America as a consumerist society, the benefits of a free-market economy, and foreign policy. Brooks regularly appears on PBS' "NewsHour" and on NPR's "All Things Considered." A prolific writer and editor with a long career in journalism, he has also served as contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly, senior editor of The Weekly Standard, and editor for The Wall Street Journal. Brooks is the author of two books, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense. His eagerly anticipated new book will be released in March, 2011.

This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on January 11, 2011

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 05:27:00 -0800

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Deep Capture: The Elevator Pitch

Posted: 27 Dec 2010 04:33 PM PST

Point #1: Agents in a marketplace first commit to a trade, and then exchange the property rights they committed to trade. The financial jargon for the mechanism which permits this exchange of property rights is "clearing and settlement".

Point #2: In the USA there is much slop in these "clearing and settlement" mechanisms. Processes that you would expect to be one-to-one, or fixed-number-to-one, are actually sponge-to-one. People who understand this slop can loot the system knowing that it will not be discovered for a long time (and not in the ruins, if it comes to that). Unfortunately, their activity leaves behind a residue that is a form of financial derivative, which in large quantities poses systemic risk.[1]

Point #3: In the last two years this issue has been the common denominator underlying scandals involving stocks,[2] Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS),[3] Credit Default Swaps (CDS's),[4] commodities,[5] and Exchanged Traded Funds (ETF's).[6]

Point #4: The line between Organized Crime and the financial community has grown fuzzy.[7] In particular, clearing and settlement is all mobbed-up, and wherever one pokes into it one quickly comes upon Bad Boys and Bad Boy Firms.

Point #5: You hope that financial regulators and journalists are protecting you from things like this, but they are not. Why not? Some have been co-opted intellectually: Our financial intelligentsia holds an inappropriately fervent commitment to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, and this leads them to overlook the ways that slop in the system is pernicious (even if is fungible slop).[8] Some lack the horsepower to follow along.[9] And some, like Jim Cramer, are dirty.[10]

=====================================================================

[1] As Warren Buffett's partner Charlie Munger put it, "Those delays in delivering sometimes reflect tremendous slop in the clearance process. It is not good for a civilization to have huge slop. Sort of like how it isn't good to have a lot of slop in nuclear power plants." Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders' meeting, May 2007.

[2] "SEC Extends Naked Short-Sale Order on Fannie, Freddie" ("The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission extended an emergency limit on short sales in shares of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and 17 brokerages as it prepares broader rules to thwart stock manipulation"), Bloomberg, July 29, 2008. "Naked Short-Selling Blamed in Wall St Crisis" Associated Press, 9/16/2008.

[3] In "The End of Wall Street" (Portfolio Magazine, November 2008) Michael Lewis wrote:

""That's when Eisman finally got it. Here he'd been making these side bets with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank on the fate of the BBB tranche without fully understanding why those firms were so eager to make the bets. Now he saw. There weren't enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors' appetite for the end product. The firms used Eisman's bet to synthesize more of them. Here, then, was the difference between fantasy finance and fantasy football: When a fantasy player drafts Peyton Manning, he doesn't create a second Peyton Manning to inflate the league's stats. But when Eisman bought a credit-default swap, he enabled Deutsche Bank to create another bond identical in every respect but one to the original. The only difference was that there was no actual homebuyer or borrower. The only assets backing the bonds were the side bets Eisman and others made with firms like Goldman Sachs. Eisman, in effect, was paying to Goldman the interest on a subprime mortgage. In fact, there was no mortgage at all. 'They weren't satisfied getting lots of unqualified borrowers to borrow money to buy a house they couldn't afford,' Eisman says. 'They were creating them out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That's why the losses are so much greater than the loans. But that's when I realized they needed us to keep the machine running. I was like, This is allowed?'"

For an explanation of how this ties in to the ongoing foreclosure crisis, see "Foreclosure Crisis: Punchline to a Michael Lewis Joke from 2008?" (Deep Capture, October 18, 2010). For an explanation of the systemic stakes, see "The Real Danger From the Foreclosure Crisis", Zerohedge, 10/15/2010.

[4] "Regulation: EU Comes Out Against Naked CDS Shorting", Euromoney Magazine, March, 2010. Regarding the claim that naked shorting of CDS is a benign activity, "Richard Portes, professor of economics at the London Business School, says that's a nonsense. He uses the example of the 1992 sterling crisis, when George Soros bet around $10 billion against sterling, which most observers believe significantly affected the market and the outcome, even though daily trading volumes at the time were $100 billion. As Portes sees it, naked CDS as a speculative instrument might be a key link in a vicious chain that eventually could lead to a run on a sovereign's credit quality."

[5] "Silver Market Probe: Act Now, CFTC Is Urged", Wall Street Journal, October 27, 2010. "The CFTC's investigation of silver has heated up in recent weeks. The agency's enforcement staff has circulated a packet of information to CFTC lawyers and commissioners, outlining some of its findings in the silver probe, including documents that could suggest there have been attempts to manipulate prices."

[6] "New Report Outlines Causes of Market Distortions Choking Recovery and Preventing New Growth Companies from Going Public: Derivatives known as 'ETFs' are the true culprits in artificially setting stock prices and posing threats to market stability", Kaufman Foundation, November 8, 2010. "New Report Blasts ETF's For Systemic Risk" CNBC, November 8 2010. "Can Naked Shorts Collapse an ETF?", Barron's, December 7, 2010.

[7] See FBI Operation Uptick: "In what authorities are calling the largest securities-fraud bust in U.S. history, 120 defendants — including members of all five New York City Mafia crime families and the treasurer of New York City's police-detectives pension fund — were indicted Wednesday…" CNN, June 14, 2000. For a more recent investigation into how Organized Crime has become entwined in our market, see "Michael Milken, 60,000 Deaths, and the Story of Dendreon", DeepCapture, July 2009.

[8] For explanation, see "The Deep Capture Analysis: Systemic Risk".

[9] See for example "Anti-Investigative Reporter Joe Nocera and the Newspaper of Non-Record (New York Times)".

[10] See Jon Stewart's magisterial public dismemberment of Jim Cramer at "Daily Show: Jim Cramer Extended Interview Parts 1, 2 and 3". For fuller background, see "Deep Capture: Jim Cramer is a Complicated Man".

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Sat, 5 Jun 2010 05:02:00 -0700

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Hedge Funds and the Global Economic Meltdown (Part 1)

Posted: 04 Jun 2010 10:57 AM PDT

I liked a YouTube video: Short selling hedge funds lit the spark that led to the global economic meltdown. Now they want to help craft the laws Congress will pass to fix our broken regulatory system. That's insane.

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Tue, 18 May 2010 05:24:00 -0700

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Lady Gaga - Speechless (Live at the VEVO Launch Event)

Posted: 18 May 2010 01:22 AM PDT

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Sat, 15 May 2010 05:06:00 -0700

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Subscribed to councilonsper

Posted: 14 May 2010 12:29 PM PDT

I subscribed to councilonsper's channel on YouTube.

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Sat, 3 Apr 2010 05:12:00 -0700

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Subscribed to dwightshrude

Posted: 02 Apr 2010 03:52 PM PDT

I subscribed to dwightshrude's channel on YouTube.

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Sun, 7 Mar 2010 05:30:00 -0800

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OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - Rube Goldberg Machine version

Posted: 07 Mar 2010 03:10 AM PST

I favorited a YouTube video: From the new album "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky" available at http://www.okgo.net/store Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of "This Too Shall Pass" off of the album "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky". The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The "machine" was designed and built by the band, along with members of Syyn Labs ( http://syynlabs.com/ ) over the course of several months.

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 05:11:00 -0800

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Little Dragon

Posted: 19 Nov 2009 12:02 AM PST

Gothenberg's Little Dragon make their highly anticipated return to Los Angeles to play songs from their new album on Morning Becomes Eclectic at 11:15am.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:39:00 -0800

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Panettone artigianale con lievito naturale

Posted: 09 Nov 2009 10:51 PM PST

I favorited a YouTube video: Panettone artigianale con lievito naturale classico e al cioccolato

krup's shared items in Google Reader

noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:26:00 -0700

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AH NOM NOM: Pizza Hacker- Best Pizza Food Cart

Posted: 22 Sep 2009 01:08 PM PDT

I favorited a YouTube video: AH NOM NOM is a vlog that brings you best eats nationwide with a hip twist. We give you the food for the people by the people. Come check out food that would make you say "AH NOM NOM!" Enjoy! AH NOM NOM: Pizza Hacker - Best Pizza Food Cart in San Francisco http://www.yelp.com/biz/pizzahacker-san-francisco http:www.twitter.com/pizzahacker AHNOMNOM.com

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 06:07:00 -0800

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Someone Take Away Thomas Friedman's Computer Before He Types Another Sentence

Posted: 22 Jan 2009 09:12 AM CST

When some time ago a friend of mine told me that Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, was going to be a kind of environmentalist clarion call against American consumerism, I almost died laughing.

Beautiful, I thought. Just when you begin to lose faith in America's ability to fall for absolutely anything -- just when you begin to think we Americans as a race might finally outgrow the lovable credulousness that leads us to fork over our credit card numbers to every half-baked TV pitchman hawking a magic dick-enlarging pill, or a way to make millions on the Internet while sitting at home and pounding doughnuts -- along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-'stached resident of a positively obscene 11,400-square-foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism.

Where does a man, who needs his own offshore drilling platform just to keep the east wing of his house heated, get the balls to write a book chiding America for driving energy-inefficient automobiles?

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:11:00 -0800

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Gmail Labs' New Task Manager Can Add Email to Your To-Do List [Gmail]

Posted: 08 Dec 2008 07:05 PM CST

For years now, the gaping hole in Google's online suite of applications has been a to-do list manager, but not anymore: today Gmail Labs adds a lightweight Tasks module to your email account. The killer feature? You can add a Gmail message to your task list in one click or keystroke. To get started, enable Tasks in the Gmail Labs section of your Settings area, and a Tasks link will appear below your Contacts link. Click on that to make a Task list appear on the bottom right of your screen (like chat), and there you can create multiple lists and switch between them, indent items, mark them as complete, drag and drop to reorder items, and view or clear completed items. To turn an email into a task, from the More Actions drop-down, choose "Add to Tasks." There are also copious keyboard shortcuts.

The Googlers explain:

1. Manage your email workflow better by converting emails into tasks: "More Actions > Add to Tasks"

2. ENTER creates a new task, TAB and SHIFT-TAB indent and un-indent, CTRL-UP and CTRL-DOWN let you reorder from the keyboard, and SHIFT-ENTER toggles back and forth between the detailed view for a task and the main view

3. After turning Tasks on, turn on Keyboard shortcuts in "Settings > General" and then use "SHIFT-T" to create tasks from your emails - even faster than using the More Actions menu

You can also pop out the Tasks module into its own window, like you can with chat. If you select a particular item, click on the gray arrow pointing to the right to edit the task's details, add a note and/or a due date, or remove the related email message, as shown.

The new Tasks module is huge news for GTD'ers who love Gmail, and while it's an experimental feature that's pretty lightweight, at first blush Tasks is looking very nicely done. Is Labs' Tasks feature looking good enough to lure you away from your current online to-do manager? Let us know what you think in the comments.

New in Labs: Tasks [Official Gmail Blog]

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noreply@blogger.com (Krup) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:11:00 -0800

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In the Reality Lounge

Posted: 19 Nov 2008 07:42 AM CST

   The G-20 came to Washington for the weekend and sucked all the air out of the city before announcing that they were really serious about patching all the leaks in the foundering ship of globalism. Well, they have to at least pretend that they are doing something. Meanwhile, the former bit player known as reality has taken center stage in the ship's main lounge. It is putting on an act even gnarlier than the Kit Kat Klub show in Cabaret.
     This reality show is sending some clear signals to the denizens of the real and really crowded world. The main signal is that the trade and financing rackets of recent decades are over. The extravaganza of economic hypergrowth based on cheap resources is over. The promiscuous swapping around of risk and rewards is over. There is no global institutional framework for managing the impairment left in the wake of this binge. It will be up to the individual nations now to figure out their national lives and livings.
     Alas, the financial impairment is still on-going world-wide and has quite a ways to run before it's finished working its hoodoo on the so-called advanced economies. The lame duck US economic posse so far has done everything possible except the two things that really matter: allow the fraudulent securities at the heart of the problem to be exposed to the light of day to determine their actual value; and allow those companies who trafficked in them to suffer the full consequences by going out-of-business. For the moment, they're content to shovel cash into the truck-bed of every enterprise in America that shows up at the Treasury loading dock. This can only have the effect of eventually destroying the value of that cash.
      President-elect Obama's cagey appearance on 60-Minutes showed that he's hardly in a position to say anything of substance about this country's predicament as long as the old posse holds the levers of the economic machinery -- and retains the ability to run it into the ground before January 20, 2009. So many tribulations are now underway in our Republic that it is hard to fathom what the head of the federal government might do besides act as a kind of psychological counselor-in-chief to a land full of people in distress.
     The world has changed faster than anyone realizes. One big question is how long the American people will stumble around in a daze before we get back to work doing constructive things in this country -- and by that I mean activities scaled to the resource realities of the years just ahead. More specifically, I mean how we are going to grow the food we eat without massive quantities of diesel fuel and petroleum-based "inputs" and also how we are going to make any of the useful products we need in an energy scarcer time.
      Perhaps Mr. Obama knows that we're not going back to anything even close to the business-as-usual that shaped our lives for the generations born after 1945. I would advise him to begin thinking about this by dividing the problem into two parts. The first part is how his government might handle the sheer emotional fallout of a people whose standard-of-living will be pulled out from under them. For a while, perhaps the first year or so, the public is apt to be trusting and generous, especially regarding a president who has had some acquaintance with being short of cash himself, and who can speak English both clearly and empathetically. Mr. Obama stands a good chance at playing that role successfully, at least for a while.
      The second part, though, is the more difficult operational and administrative matter of promoting the necessary downscaling of all the essential activities of daily life. This is especially difficult given the current trend of the government suddenly taking ownership of everything, from the banking system perhaps to certain areas of heavy industry (if Detroit gets its way). The Obama government will have to resist the temptation to prevent enterprises from failing. These failing things have to get out of the way before new activities can get underway. It will also require government leaders to tell the public the hard truth that it can't do everything we would like it to do.
    The fiasco of medical care is certainly a product of connivance between greedy and heartless insurance companies, profit-driven hospitals, and avaricious drug-makers. But the public itself is responsible for its own suicidal diet of double cheez burritos and Dr. Pepper. How about a national health-care system with one basic requirement: to qualify, participants must be within ten pounds of their appropriate weight. Pretty harsh, huh? Maybe. But times are harsh too, and bound to get harsher. This system would have the great advantage of being absolutely clear. Let the United Way and other charities devote their resources to educating the recklessly obese about diet and exercise so they can eventually qualify.
     The transportation quandary suggests that we have to move away from the private automobile and commercial trucking, and that the airline industry is certain to contract dramatically. When are we going to start the discussion about rebuilding a US public transit system that was once the envy of the world? It no longer matters how much Americans love their cars, or even how much investment we've made in car infrastructure. At some point, we just have to face the fact that democratic mass motoring is no longer on the program. Nor is a commercial economy based on incessant motoring. One other implication of this is the necessity to use our waterways for moving things and people again. Has anybody noticed, for instance, that the once-bustling New York City Harbor, possibly the biggest and best sheltered deepwater harbor in the world, has next-to-zero operating docks left along its massive perimeter? While you're at it, have a look at the waterfronts of Louisville, Cincinnati, Kansas City and a score of other inland port cities on great navigable rivers. What you'll see are condo sites, festival marketplaces, picnic grounds, and plain old empty lots -- everything but the infrastructure for commerce. We can't afford this anymore. We have to put these places back to work.
     The G-20 leaders in Washington last week made a lot of noise about ramping up domestic spending. In the decades to come, this will not happen without import replacement -- which is just what it sounds like: instead of importing things you need, you make them at home, and people get paid a living wage to do it. Import replacement, by the way, is exactly how the United States rose in the 19th century to become the world's preeminent manufacturing nation. It doesn't foreclose trade with other countries, but it self-evidently changes the terms of that trade, and it would spell the end of the kind of predatory "globalism" that has led to the current state of gross imbalance and reckless destruction.
      I believe this will happen whether we like it or not, because these things occur in cycles and the current cycle is obviously ending with a thundering crash of economies, modes of operation, habits and practices, and expectations. For better or worse, we have to move on to new ways of doing things.
      I regard the most dangerous fantasy in America right now to be the wish that we can keep running things just the way they are now (my recurring synecdoche of WalMart, Walt Disney World, and the interstate highway system) by replacing oil and gas with "alternative fuels." This just ain't gonna happen. We're going to use every kind of alt.energy there is and they will still require us to live very differently than we did the past sixty years. The public just doesn't get this. I don't know whether President-elect Obama gets this. I hope he does, and I hope part of his new mission will be to clarify this state of affairs for the public in clear and effective speech. It's going to tick off a lot of them, but it's the theme music playing in the reality lounge right now, and Mr. Obama would be advised to take up the tune.
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My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers.