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Book by John Maxwell
How to Make Our Own News: A Primer for Environmentalist and Journalists
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Too Good to be True?
The Profound Fall of American Politics
By John Maxwell
My late great
friend and neighbour, Mavis Virtue was fond of saying
that most people's heads existed merely as decorative
accents at the ends of their spinal columns, rather
like finials on gateposts. We were discussing the
reasons most people seemed to lack bullshit detectors
and persisted in falling for baubles, bangles, beads and
similarly meretricious inducements.
If something seems
too good to be true, like Anansi's generosity or a
perpetual motion machines, it probably was. We were at
the time discussing the South Sea Bubble [1720] and
other manic events when reason went absent without leave
(AWOL) and people threw good money after lunatic
schemes.
When I first heard
about our brand new investment schemes which returned
money like a one armed bandit with its innards in an
endless loop I told my wife simply that anything that
seemed too good to be true almost certainly was too good
to be true. The willing suspension of disbelief helps
when we're watching Othello or listening to a DJ boast
about his 'conquests' but one knows that reality will
soon supervene and that the whole thing was imaginary.
The South Sea
Bubble was a gigantic stock market speculation that
began when the South Sea Company bought the British
government's outstanding short-term war debts, not
funded by a specific tax, be converted into equity in a
new joint-stock company. Briefly, the South Sea Company
bought the British national debt, expecting two things—a
return of 6 percent and a monopoly on trade with the
South Seas, i.e., Latin America. There, the company
expected to deliver English wool and other manufactures,
to be repaid in gold by the benighted inhabitants for
whom Axminster carpets and woollen blankets were
obviously worth more than gold.
The company it
was said, could not fail
The problem with
this expected monopoly was that it did not exist. The
King of Spain hadn't been consulted and made it known
that there would be no monopoly of trade for anyone and,
in fact, instead of the fleets of ships carrying gold
back to Britain he would allow only three or four
British ships a year into his colonies.
That didn't stop
the speculation. The South Sea Company's shares rose and
kept on rising and their success stimulated other
speculators and fraudists who set up thousands of
companies for a variety of purposes including such
esoteric enterprises as one to distill sunshine from
vegetables and the classic "an enterprise whose purpose
shall in due time be revealed". It made no sense but
people threw their money into the bubbling pot,
borrowing money to make fools of themselves.
Sir Isaac Newton,
one of its victims had realised early on that the bubble
was just that and took his money out making a profit of
£7,000. Unfortunately the bubble continued for so long
that against his better judgment, he put in another
£20,000 and lost all of it. He was led to muse "“I can
calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but not the
madness of people”.
Nobody noticed when
Spain and England went to war again and reality clocked
in only when the promoters of the South Sea Company
realised that their company would never have assets
matching their investment and sold out. This of course,
precipitated a crash heard round the world. During the
mania the government even passed a law (the Bubble Act)
making it an offence for a company to do anything that
was not in its original charter.
The bursting of the
Bubble meant ruin for masses of people and for several
generations its reverberations continued to be felt.
Britain's blossoming into the financial centre of the
known universe was postponed.
I was reminded of
all this by a curious text message I received on my
cellphone on Wednesday. It read in its entirety
CASH PLUS XMAS
BONANZA. CALL620 4506 REFER AND GET:5PPL.W/END @
HILLSHIRE MOBAY A CAR DOWNPAYMENT; 40 PPL HOME DOWN
PAYMENT.
It would seem that
Cash Plus needs more people, investors, to generate cash
flow. If I manage to bring in five people I will get a
reward of the downpaymewnt on a car and 40 people will
produce a downpayment on a house. Just what these
down-payments are valued is not noted. I have decided
after mature consideration that this offer is too good
to be true.
None of the
Above
Watching this
week's televised debate between the US Republican
Party's presidential aspirants made me realise to what
profound depths tdisbelief, contempt and probably,
rotten eggs and tomatoes. Apart from Ron Paul, the
Great Unknown, it seemed almost impossible to get a
straight answer out of anyone. John McCain, as expected,
was righteous and right on the question of torture,
magisterially rebuking Mitt Romney for his reptilian
evasion of the question of whether 'waterboarding' is
torture.
Mr Romney, whose
father was I believe an honest man, was unable to say
what he thought about waterboarding preferring to defer
his conscience until he had had a chance to talk to
military advisers if he ever became President. As a
'presidential candidate" he thought it impolitic to
declare that a practice condemned by all civilised
people, prohibited by the Geneva Convention, was
torture. I believe that torture is just as much an
offence to human dignity as Mr Romney himself.
Mr Mike Huckaby,
rapidly gaining strength at the expense of his
mealy-mouthed opponents, scared the daylights out of me
when he said he would abolish the Internal Revenue
Service in favour of a so-called "Fair Tax"—
in reality a super sales tax which would impoverish the
poor and fatten the wealthy.
Someone needs to
remind Americans that they are supposedly disciples of
Adam Smith who, fifty years after the South Sea Bubble,
gave it as his opinion that the wealthy should pay a
sort of ground rent for the opportunities they have in
becoming rich. I quoted him two weeks ago in my column
"Self-Inflicted Wounds" :
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The subjects of every
state ought to contribute toward the support
of the government, as nearly as possible, in
proportion to their respective abilities;
that is, in proportion to the revenue which
they respectively enjoy under the protection
of the state—Adam
Smith, An Inquiry Into The Nature and
Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776. |
The Republican
Presidential candidates were falling over each other to
declare how anti-human they were, anti-immigrant
(Mexican) anti-welfare (blacks) anti-education
(everybody) and apparently anti-anything on the agenda
of the civilised world since 1776. In any European
country and in a majority of developing countries their
opinions would be greeted by disbelief, contempt and
probably, rotten eggs and tomatoes.
The brontosaurian
Fred Thompson delivered it as his opinion that people
should be able to fly the Confederate flag privately but
not publicly for fear of giving offence. Everyone paid
homage to Ronald Reagan, that intellectual giant of the
Republican Party.
I am old enough to
remember the Barry Goldwater campaign of 1964 when the
world looked on with astonishment at the Neanderthal
politics of the Senator from Arizona. This was worse.
The Press, of
course, is a prime culprit in these developments. I know
that television is basically aimed at people well below
the age of consent, but this debate really brought home
to me how much American civilisation has been devalued
in a relatively short time. It was instructive to hear
one Republican voter in a Florida focus group assembled
by CNN, a middle aged woman who had come expecting to
make up her mind on a Republican candidate. When she was
asked after the debate who she favoured she answered
that she was thinking about voting for John Edwards. My
sentiments exactly.
The Press or the
Media as it is now fashionably called, has dumbed down
the politics of the American people by mischief-making,
trivialising important matters and distorting the views
of anyone left of Winston Churchill. In fact, Winston
Churchill's welfare reforms of a hundred years ago would
probably not pass muster in the corridors of TIME Inc or
the Washington Post. Richard Nixon is rightly
reviled for his dishonesty, but I feel that some of the
obloquy heaped on him is because he was actually, a
relatively civilised human being compared to some of his
successors.
Adam Smith redux
While American
markets, financial, commodity and other, are braced for
weeks and months of turmoil consequent of the meltdown
in the sub-prime mortgage market, some people are as
happy as pigs in a wallow. It has been announced that
the bankers and traders of Goldman Sachs the investment
bankers, are to share a bonus pot of US$18 billion this
Christmas. They will get bonuses equivalent to nearly
twice the national income of Bolivia.
Obviously these guys have worked
really hard.
Copyright ©2007
John Maxwell
jankunnu@gmail.com
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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2007
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