Exit Through The Gift Shop, The Way We Now Live

What to make of this world we live in, or this world we now live in? Possibly the proper question is what to make of this world we appear to be entering? If the dawn of the 20^th century saw the setting of the stage for titanic global clashes between competing economic and political systems (socialism, communism, capitalism, fascism, democracy, autocracies, etc…) the dawn of the 21^st century appears to be the second chapter of that book. Despite the lingering traces of a bygone world in various spots around the globe, capitalism is king come hell or high water. Even China has gotten on board. So as the lights flicker on in the early stages of the next millennium we humans are being forced to accept the consequences of the choice we've made to make the free market our God. The good and the bad. Thus what we make of this new truly global world we're entering is as fascinating a story as there has ever been, and humans through the millennia have expressed their stories through art, and the preferred artistic form of storytelling in our times is movies. What could be better than a global story about capitalism and art, turned into a movie? Nothing. There is no better phrase for our times, and few movies that capture the pure essence of them as well as Exit through the Gift Shop.

Goldman Sachs is Robbing You Blind, But it’s Actually Kind of Funny

Last week the Federal Reserve announced it would engage a policy of quantitative easing. If you say the words quantitative easing (QE2) to me, my eyes glaze over. I have no clue what it means and I suspect most Americans don't either.  Turns out, it's all so simple it's actually kinda funny. 

Speaking Wealth to Power

"Mr. Paul you've just been elected United States Senator, what are you going to do?" "Well, Wolf, I'm going to stop this God awful war that's being waged against America's wealthiest citizens." We'll find out later this week he misspoke, I'm sure. American conservatives have been waging a philosophical war in this country since Ronald Reagan became president that is focused on letting the rich man run free and giving him a chance to spread his beautiful wealthy wings. Central to this war is the belief that government is smothering the invisible hand of the free market, capitalism, freedom of choice, I support the troops, God bless America, blah blah blah. ..The central philosophical strategy employed in this philosophical war were elegant terms developed in the Reagan administration such as "trickle down economics" and "starve the beast." Which in practice simply means cut taxes, particularly for the wealthy, allow the money of the wealthy to slowly trickle down to middle America and starve the federal government of money, forcing it to shrink in size. In practice none of this works. The government has at no point since and including Reagan shrunk in size, however conservatives have been masters at bankrupting the country. Reagan and Bush I quadrupled the debt, and we all know how W. Bush faired. Starving the beast amounts to nothing more than a magnificent way to make the government financially insolvent. The trickle down part? I'll let you figure out for yourself why rich people don't start "makin' it rain" on the rest us. 

Commence the Economic Recovery

The one bit of good news that can be taken from this week is that I think the economy is now likely to begin picking up.  The overwhelming majority of the money in America is now on Wall Street and in the highest income levels, and after they caused the financial crisis I think there was a genuine fear that the general public was going to institute "wealth spreading programs" aimed squarely at creating more economic balance.  Similar to what happened after the Great Depression.  Business, and banks, have been raking in profits for the last year, but they've been holding out on the fear that the freshly impoverished American citizen was coming after their money, with various taxes on the rich that would provide people with free healthcare, pay for some of these wars, etc...Obama had the unique ability to do what FDR did the last time wealth concentration brought the system down, but alas he didn't.  And now more importantly, given the make up of congress he can't.  The money will begin to trickle down to the rest of us again, now that we can all be sure the bulk of it is safely secure at the top.  The healthcare debate taught the American public a valuable lesson.  Concentrated corporate wealth will determine what and how much the general public deserves, not the other way around.  If we even debate tinkering with that system, 1/5  of us will be unemployed while the wealth concentration at the top financially rewards itself at record levels.  But that threat is over with so the economy will now begin to recover, from the top down of course.  The larger point: we're all poor now so we'd all be wise to start acting like it.  There is no middle class pathway to the top anymore, just get there however you can.  I don't know what you're doing, but my album will be dropping next month.