SELLER BEWARE !!

    

     I guess it’s apparent that I have a problem with Corporate America. That fact must bring great trepidation to those individuals within the highest echelons of Big Business. They live in fear of my every plan to take them down and the great power I wield over them.

     My disappointment in their species intensified back in the 1970’s when I participated as a photographer in Project Documerica, a photographic project that attempted to document in pictures the environmental crisis in America. It was organized by Gifford Hampshire under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Agency when that Agency was still young and idealistic, actually trying, on occasion, to protect the environment instead of the polluters. It was a throw back to the Farm Security Administration project that hired artists, photographers and writers to capture the essence of the Great Depression in drought-stricken rural America. The F.S.A. project remains the highest example of what can be achieved when the Federal Government establishes a meaningful collaboration with artists and writers for a worthy objective.

     What I discovered with my camera was that the General Electric Company along with numerous paper companies throughout New England were using some of our most revered rivers: the Hudson, the Housatonic, the Androscoggin, as their own personal sewers. A cocktail of raw sewage and toxic chemicals were being dumped into these convenient liquid exhaust systems rendering them unfit for fish and aquatic life and unsuitable for human recreation. What gave these companies the right to use our rivers for the purpose of depositing their waste products in order to make money? Can you imagine if you or I did the same thing; we’d be in the slammer so fast, we wouldn’t know what hit us.

     Then there was the issue of air pollution. It had always been my understanding that human creatures needed pure clean air in order to breathe. Yet, these same companies along with countless others were using our air as just another exhaust system for their noxious and dangerous waste products, again in the pursuit of that highest of spiritual values, making money. Let the individual dishonor our atmosphere, and the prison door would clang shut and the key would be indefinitely missing.

     If polluting our water and befouling our air doesn’t upset you, then how about outright murder. Which, of course, brings me to the tobacco companies. For more than one hundred years they have been given a license to kill under our “buyer beware” system known as Capitalism. When challenged in court, they usually come out unscathed by citing that the buyer of their products that cause premature death had the right not to buy them. “It doesn’t matter if we knew that what we were selling them would kill them, it is, after all, the buyer’s responsibility.”

     Well, I have a new approach to Capitalism which I’d like to try out when I assume power. Making a profit is not guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. It is not one of the Bill of Rights. In my administration, a corporation is allowed a profit as a bonus if and only if that company produces a product that is safe and beneficial to the consumer, treats its workers with dignity and class by providing a decent wage, substantial health benefits, fully-funded pensions, matching funds for employee 401K plans and safe working conditions. If it can do all those things without harming the environment in any way, then it is eligible for becoming a profitable organization (provided it pays its full share of taxes just like individuals). Welcome to the world of SELLER BEWARE.

     So you see, we’ve got things backwards in this country. Does Big Business have to be regulated? Of course they do. Every time we deregulate an industry, all hell breaks loose. Greed runs wild, and the consumers, otherwise known as people, get screwed. Putting the fox in charge of the hen house is a ticket to wholesale fraud. We tried it their way, and it obviously hasn’t worked. Now it’s time to do a 180 and hold Corporate America’s feet to the fire on behalf of the people. It’s part of what we call taking our country back. And it may take the Second American Revolution to accomplish it. Of course, the American people will have to come out of their endless collective coma before we can begin our reclamation project.

January 28, 2010

REGRETABLY SHORT THE USA

    

     One of the things I do is trade the futures markets. Most of the money is made going short because prices seem to fall faster than they rise. Perhaps it’s a function of gravity. In any case, most people just won’t short a market. Something to do with patriotism, I think. The other excuse they claim for avoiding a short position is that a market can only fall to zero, but the upside is unlimited. So what! Anyone with a brain cell left in his or her skull would place a stop loss order whether they were long or short a market. It’s called “money management,” and it’s the only trading system that’s ever worked in the long run. There’s a guy who’s had a national radio program on investing for many years who brags about the fact that he’s never advised going short the stock market. When he gets a so called sell signal, he tells his newsletter subscribers to get out of the market and put their money into a money fund until he gets his next buy signal. Why not tell them to go short in order to capture the incredible profits that his indicators are screaming are there for the taking in the impending bear market. Beats me.

     I went short the United States of America on the Chicago Board of Trade in late November of 1963. Of course, as you might have guessed, I did so theoretically, as the actual contract was and still is not available on the CBOT or any other futures exchange for that matter. But if it were, and you subscribed to the old adage that “the trend is your friend,” then, other than some brief bear market rallies, my short position would have become more and more profitable over the ensuing 47 years. And since January, 2001 the position has been making an obscene amount of money. My futures contract has been dropping like a stone. Which is the direction you want it to go if you’re short.

     It is not easy to stay with a position for 47 years. In the past I had always gotten out too soon and thus missed out on most of the profits. After all, it is near the end of a trend that most of the money is made. Markets tend to overshoot on the upside and again on the downside. But the short USA position was a piece of cake to stay with. All you had to do was to forget anything you ever learned about technical analysis and concentrate on the fundamentals. And the fundamentals for this country have been relentlessly bleak.

     With the killing of the first Kennedy came the loss of hope. That loss was finalized with the assassinations of the second Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Hope is a vital commodity to the “have nots” in our society. Kill it off and you gain total control. It paves the way for the undoing of democracy and the takeover of mediocrity that appears in the form of such embarrassments as Nixon, Reagan and Bush. As you can imagine, I added to my short position in 1968, 1980 and 2000. In each case my order to the broker was the same: “Sell short X number of USA contracts at the market.” At this juncture, in the winter of 2009-2010, I have amassed the largest short position in my trading career. With Corporate America running the country in all matters domestic and foreign in conspiracy with the Federal Government, I am letting my profits run.

     I take no pleasure in this lucrative trade. In fact, I watch from the sidelines in shock as our jobs leave the United States of America along with our 1st Amendment Rights. I sit at my computer in awe as I observe the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of this country take place before our collective eyes. It is not the transfer from the few to the many that the Right Wing has always feared most about Communism and Socialism. This time we bear witness to the withdrawal of funds out of the bank accounts of the many and into those of the few.

     Am I getting greedy, do you ask? Shouldn’t I take some of my profits off the table? In normal times you would be right in making such a suggestion. But this time the “few” have a plan that guarantees even greater profits down the road for my short position. By combining wars for oil with tax cuts at the same time, this greatest of debtor nations will reach a point where it will be necessary for the “Authoritarians,” the “Controllers,” the “Few” to announce that we can no longer afford any entitlement programs i.e. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, whatever is left of welfare, corporate pensions and healthcare for corporate employees. That is when all bids will be withdrawn for the USA contract, and it will fall as if in a vacuum. Then I will take some, not all, of my profits and wait to see whether the “have nots” and the former Middle Class regain consciousness and start to push back.

January 28, 2010

MEDIOCRE FRED

     Mediocre Fred is a former person. But after having been bombarded with 3000 commercials a day and having accepted 21 credit cards, Fred has morphed into nothing more than a mere consumer. As such he has lost his way. No longer in touch with his inner voice, Fred has surrendered his soul somewhere in the endless aisles of mediocrity in that vast wasteland of homogenization better known as the American Mall.

     As a consumer, Mediocre Fred has become an esteemed member of that form of life known as a “wanter” and is easy prey for the insidious conspiracy that joins Corporate America, the banking system and the winking and nodding politicians on the take. Fred stands no chance against this rock-solid collusion that is carefully designed to separate the Middle Class from its wealth. As Fred and his kind buy more and more short term junk, and, in the doing, fall ever deeper in debt, the great transfer of wealth from the many to the few seals their fate and their Country’s standing in the world community.

     When I last looked upon Fred he was in the hospital on life supports. A team of eminent physicians, after having subjected their defeated patient to a brutal battery of tests, came to the unanimous diagnosis that Fred was suffering from both an acute and a chronic overdose of mediocrity. Unfortunately, the disease is always fatal to those members of the human race predisposed to something called sensitivity. It attacks the spirit first, then moves on to the mind and finally ravages the now empty package.

     When the initial crisis passed, and since there was nothing that modern medicine could do for Fred, he was released from the hospital and sent home to shop while he still could. He would likely go on living until his credit ran out. At that point Fred would undoubtedly lose his will to stay in the game.

     Several months later I called his wife, Martha, who was no slouch herself when it came to the utilization of plastic. I inquired about the condition of her fallen spouse. “Mediocre,” was her bland reply.

January 27, 2010

SHOCKED BABIES ARRIVE ON THE PLANET IN DEBT

    
     We all know that babies cry when they enter this world. But doctors in America are reporting a curious phenomenon that has been occurring in hospitals across the country in recent months. 2010 babies are arriving with a silent scream. While the obstetricians are puzzled, you and I understand perfectly well what’s at work here, now don’t we. After all, you would scream, too, audibly or otherwise, if, after taking your first breath, you learned that you were already $175,000 in debt.

     Babies are a lot smarter than we think. In that brief instant before they are brainwashed by Government lies and media complicity, they understand in their unmanipulated souls that the United States is broke.

     For instance, they know that the Federal deficit is not over $12 trillion as reported in the press. Babies know that the true figure, when you add all the future obligations promised to millions of Americans in entitlement benefits down the road, is approaching an incomprehensible $176 trillion and rising. Politically untouchable, financially unpayable.

     Newborn babies know that the United States is slowly being economically bled to death in the Middle East. These same babies know that the U.S. is, and will continue to be, held hostage to our dependence on permanently high-priced foreign oil. They “get it” that the game is over in the housing market whose dependence on the “greater fool” theory placed those who came late to the party in the telescopic gun sights of foreclosure and bankruptcy.

     Babies fresh from the womb see clearly that the $8 trillion currently held in the reserves of foreign countries will surely come back to bite us. They think it curious that we tell the Chinese what we want them to do about their currency and their trade practices when, in reality, they are our bankers on whom we are totally dependent. As one baby put it: “Imagine a debtor telling a creditor what the rules are.” And all the new arrivals agree on one intractable proposition: our “bankers” will ultimately act in their own self interests and move away from holding trillions of dollars that are all doomed.

     The babies I interviewed are terrified of something else that they inherently know is yet another economic time bomb waiting in the wings for ignition. They had heard about the $500 trillion dollars in unregulated derivatives while they were still in the womb. But it wasn’t until they saw the light of day that they realized that these privately negotiated missiles of mass destruction really existed and were floating around the planet just looking for another trigger. “Why, they could bring down the entire financial system,” said one of them, trying gamely to inhibit a scream.

     I showed one of these clairvoyants a dollar bill. “Are you serious?” asked the baby in amazement. “That’s just a piece of paper. What’s behind it? Hopefully, something intrinsic, something of value.” “Not a thing,” I said, “except perhaps a politician’s promise to pay.” At that point the baby became inconsolable. When she finally got a hold of herself, she cried out, “Surely, you don’t accept these worthless pieces of paper for your products and services and hard work?” “Not only do we accept them,” I assured her; “we are very impressed by them.” “That’s absurd,” replied the baby. “I could write any number on these pieces of paper—–$1, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100—–and they’d all be worth the same: the price of the paper.” “Don’t forget the ink,” I said, trying desperately to defend the world’s reserve currency.

     While these 2010 babies come into the world knowing the news is bad, they do not know all the particulars. Do I dare tell her more? Yes, an educated baby is a prepared baby who can take evasive action to protect her assets. “Mrs. Baby, do you know that there has never been a paper currency that has not been completely destroyed? And do you know that the U.S. dollar has lost 97% of its value since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 (most of it since 1971 when Nixon terminated the last vestiges of convertibility into gold)? And finally, do you know that this same Federal Reserve, which is, by the way, a private organization, whose principal benefactors are our biggest investment banks, has stopped reporting M3 money growth? Do you realize what that means, Baby? They are now free to create papers dollars out of thin air without any transparency or accountability.”

     The infant was silent. She appeared to have become a depressed baby right before my eyes. Finally, she spoke. “Well, aren’t the people concerned, frightened out of their freakin’ minds?” she asked incredulously. “No,” I responded. “They’re totally complacent, buying all the stocks and bonds and other such pieces of paper they can get their hands on. They got a wake up call in September of 2008 when the stock market lost 50% of its value. They blamed it on the subprime mortgage mess which froze the credit markets. Of course, we know that “subprime” is the buzz word, the spin, put on a much larger over-the-counter derivative problem, now don’t we, Mrs. Baby? But those savvy investors rationalized this warning as just another ‘blip’ and nothing more. They’re back at it, buying and selling, as if nothing happened.” The bemused baby shook her little head. “Pieces of paper, electronic entries…...here today, gone tomorrow,” she replied.

     And so babies everywhere are putting on their helmets and heading for their bunkers. They know what’s coming at us. They understand in their new untainted souls that the economic threats to this country are every bit as terrifying and far more destructive in their potential than any terrorist’s bomb. Perhaps adults can learn something from these new arrivals. Maybe, just maybe, the older folk will stop believing the nonsense they read in the newspapers or see on television about the so-called “economic recovery.” As one brand new baby put it: “The whole global financial system is a charade backed by sheer illusion.” That baby is papering the walls of her bunker with brand new Federal Reserve notes. What’s your plan?

January 27, 2010

THE FLOWER CHILDREN HAVE BECOME CONSERVATIVES.......HELP !!!

I never dared to be radical when young for fear

it would make me a Conservative when old

                                                                                      
                                                             ROBERT FROST

    
     So I ask you, where have all the flower children gone? I know Pete Seeger must be asking the same question.. Well, I’ll tell you where they’ve gone. The “flower children” have done a 180 on us like no other generation in the history of the planet. And if you want to really find the female element of this proud generation, look for her in the isles of Bergdorf Goodman. You can locate her male counterpart amongst the canyons of Wall Street. From love and peace they have given us a new meaning to the words “materialism” and “greed.” Their worship of “stuff” is the stuff of legends. From demonstrating for causes outside of themselves, they have become a self absorbed group of people who want what they want when they want it. Instant gratification of the self has replaced concern for the plight of their fellow sojourners on this earth. With the usual exceptions, they have been a disgrace.

     It is amazing, isn’t it, how U.S. dollars, pathetic as they are, can turn a Liberal into a raging Conservative. No matter how fast they’re depreciating, once you’ve got them, your prime motivation is to protect them from others. At that point you are in it for yourself, baby. Reality has become stocks, bonds and 401K’s.

Shopping ladies and Wall Street warriors have traded the richness of life for mere riches.

January 27, 2010

LET US PRAY

    

     My friends, let us pray.

     Please God, if there is a hereafter, a life after death, I implore You to make it a life without commercials.

I beg You to spare me from all the fucking products being thrown at me everywhere I turn. Oh, God, please excuse my language, but You must try to understand how dehumanizing it has been living in a world where someone is always coming at me trying to sell me something. Surely, there is a place in the Universe, in the Spirit World, that is devoid of all the stuff and those who hawk it incessantly.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley

of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil:”

IF...... You will give me but a signal that I will be free from the ubiquitous advertising that has so battered my spirit. Please Lord God, promise me that there is a place where I, a former human person, will not be turned against my will into a mere consumer, but can, instead, be free, to transform myself into the soul I was meant to be.

Amen.

January 25, 2010

THE END OF DEMOCRACY

Just when President Obama, forced by the result in the Massachusetts Senate election, showed his desperation by belatedly tapping into the public's rage against the big banks, the Supreme Court rendered the most far-reaching decision in more than 100 years. It said, in its usual politicized 5 to 4 vote, that corporations can give unlimited amounts of money in order to directly interfere with elections by running advertisements for or against candidates right up to the actual date of the election.

In my opinion, this ruling places the final nail in the coffin. In this, the United Corporations of America, big business will now be free to choose the candidates of its choice. Those politicians who play along will be rewarded; those who don't will be severely punished. While the Ambien-induced electorate sleeps on in what has become a corporate nation, democracy as we know it has been abolished.

January 23, 2010