So for libertarians looking for a home away from home, what would I advise after three months wandering around the southern parts of Latin American?

1. Banking secrecy is on its way out everywhere, no matter what you’re told by expensive “relocation specialists,” escribanos, and lawyers.

2. Chile and Uruguay are the least corrupt countries. Argentina and Paraguay the most. Brazil is corrupt but not to the same degree.

3. If you’re looking for cheap, Bolivia or Paraguay fit the bill; none of the others really do. You can probably live as cheaply in some parts of America if you try.

4. Chile and Brazil are the best bets for investment and business. For the rest, it’s touch and go.

5. There are strong social movements in Latin America – and a good thing too. But that means there are also squatters’ rights and very tenant protective laws.

6. Monsanto and genetically modified food are everywhere. There’s not much of an organic movement, though it’s growing. It has to contend with soil depletion, agrifunds, asbentee landlords and tenant farmers who care only about making their quick buck and moving on.

7. Brazil is the best place to invest in housing. There are few other residential markets that are all that liquid, except in yuppie neighborhoods.

8. There’s no where in the world you can get away from vainglorious speculators, idiot marketers, shady operatives, the war on terror, Wall Street agitprop, and imperial sleaze-bucketry, all beating their drums, drooling and sneering, boasting, and stealing simultaneously. 

9. I give the innocent, tranquil places of Latin America 4-5 years before the vultures descend to leave their soil raped, the beaches over-built with Miami style condos, drugs, marketing hype, porn, neg am loans, and all the rest of the barbaric vulgarity of so-called advanced civilization that profits only the very wealthy.

10. The best place to call home is the place where you have friends and family.  Apart from a handful of dedicated humanists and activists, only people who share your race culture or faith will support you ultimately, not partisans  – this much I’ve learned in the last ten years.

This is the first time I’ve flown directly from Latin America to Asia, without going through London or Miami or Los Angeles. The flight was Buenos Aires direct to Singapore, and then a change of flight to Bangalore. Long, but not nearly as bad as some trips I’ve made. I’m told several airlines will be flying this route, often with a stop at Cape Town. South to South, eliminating London, New York, or Los Angeles. A sign of the times..

It’s good to be back home after several years..

From Alexander Cockburn:

“This indulgent posture towards the omens offered by Hasan’s political and psychic profile stretched from the FBI – which saw no excessive cause for alarm in his emails to the radical Imam Anwar al Awlaki, now based in Yemen, and a vocal enthusiast for jihad in its most violent forms – to his medical colleagues who in early 2008 they discussed Hasan’s indifferent performance and, in the words of an AP report, “saw no signs of mental problems, no risk factors that would predict violent behavior.” They seized on “other factors” that suggested Hasan would continue to thrive in the military.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell”, the famous summation of the Clinton-sponsored Army posture on gays seems to have become a more general  maxim , whether it concerned the phone intercepted emails  to the Imam, the praise for suicide bombers, the business card announcing him cryptically to be “a soldier of Allah”, or even the Arabic bumper sticker (“Allah is love”) which got his car scored with a key by a vet fresh back from the Crusades.

Talking of “Don’t ask”, it does seem reasonably clear that somewhat akin to some members of the Hamburg cell carrying out the 9/11 attack, if Hasan was hoping – a vulgar myth, to be sure –  for the reward of virgins in the aftermath of martyrdom, their sex might have been an issue. No girlfriend; local virgins not pious enough for marriage; fainted while watching childbirth during medical training; at Walter Reed would not allow his photo to be taken with female co-workers; killed a pregnant woman in his lethal rampage (her dead embryo may constitute the fourteenth charge of homicide in the string for which he faces the death penalty); mentored 18-year old Duane Reasoner, a convert to Islam he met at the local mosque and with whom he seems to have cemented ties of loyalty and affection. Reasoner, who was with Hasan at his apartment not long before the major’s lethal excursion, declines to condemn him, saying fiercely in his BBC interview that Hasan’s victims “were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims.”

It’s the rationale most respectful to Hasan. No kook he, but indeed a Soldier of Allah.  Of course, amid the thunderings of the Right about the army’s hospitality to a gay Palestinian terrorist  General Casey retreats into the well-mannered sanctuary of “diversity”, even if there are no doubt enlisted men in Afghanistan saying right now , “No Muslims in my foxhole.” In Fort Hood the war came home with a vengeance, as it has been doing there at regular intervals with the suicides and savage domestic violence of vets driven crazy by what they’ve done in the service of Empire.”

My Comment:

The psychological profile is again oddly similar to the profile of Virginia Tech shooter, Cho. But aside from that, why does the army invite this sort of thing? If you’re planning to launch a global war on Muslim majority countries, you’d think common sense would tell that it might not be best to hire Muslims to prosecute it.

I was reading through Ellen Brown’s “Web of Debt” site, which I first discovered when I saw that she – like me – had been the target of a rant by the same individual.

I like a lot of what Ellen is doing. I’m in favor of networks of individuals forming credit pools for investment or to create businesses. That already exists at higher economic levels – Angel Investing, for instance. And at the lower level there are organizations like the Grameen Bank. Or versions thereof, like Grama Vidiyal, Opportunity International, Islamic banking, and others mentioned in this piece.

[Note: Grameen Bank has come in for criticism on a number of grounds.]

Browsing through the comments on the site,  you realize that many people sense there’s something fundamentally wrong with the system.

Which there is.

And that they sense that language has been taken out of our mouths and used for propaganda.

Which it has.

But after that initial perception, the logic sometimes falls apart….

Here’s one comment, broken down line by line, with my response in brackets.

Comment:

“Just because everyone believes rich people create jobs, doesn’t make it true.”

LR:

1.  False.

Rich is a relative term. American working class people are much richer than people sleeping on roads and railway stations in Asia. When an American (even a working class American) goes to a poor country and sets up a business, he does create jobs. He is rich relatively speaking and his capital (such as it is) enables him to start a business. In that sense, riches (rather than rich people) can indeed create jobs.
Of course, they need not. Riches can also stagnate uneconomically if they’re not deployed correctly.

2. False

Everyone doesn’t believe rich people create jobs. A much larger group of people world-over believes that the government creates jobs. That’s why governments everywhere are tasked with that function  – which is unfortunate, because they don’t do it very successfully, usually.

What’s the only truth in the comment then? The statement that because every one believes something, that doesn’t make it true.

But the problem is that this truism should be applied not to the “rich people don’t create jobs” assertion, but to the much more common assumption behind the assertion – the assumption that the government creates jobs.

Comment: “Rich people don’t create jobs. Rich people can’t create jobs.”

LR:

1. The first part of this is a half-truth.

Rich people may (or may not) create jobs. It depends on their entrepreneurial ability.

The second part is just false. Rich people can and do create jobs.

Comment:

“Only DEMAND creates jobs. No demand = no production, period. Only demand can create and does create jobs.”

LR:

1. This would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. Demand creates jobs? Obviously, the writer’s never been anywhere where there’s demand all year round for things that  can’t be found on the shelves of the stores. There’s plenty of demand, but where is the production?

2. The existence of demand is necessary to genuine economic activity, but not sufficient to create it. You can in fact have production without demand (for instance, state-mandated production in China). This is entirely wasteful and a dislocation, but it exists. And it exists because China has money..riches…not because it has people (Africa has people too). (June 28: I realized I had this backward and switched it around. I thought I’d corrected it before but apparently the ‘save’ function didn’t go through. Apologies).

Comment:

“Which means, as any rational person can see with a moment’s thought, that it is the people who create their own jobs. We create our own jobs.”

LR:

1. Another half-truth. People…some people… create jobs.

People with access to money, entrepreneurial ability, and supported by structures that defend economic activity and ownership. Without all that, production declines.

2.  Half-truth again. “We” is used to invoke emotion – populist emotion. But the populism obviously excludes “rich people.”

Whom does “we” represent then? Isn’t it the people who are “have-nots” – i.e. lack money, or credit, or skills? If so,  aren’t these just the people who do not create jobs, emotional appeals notwithstanding?

Comment:

“Fight the fog.”

Lila: Indeed. Starting at home.

Comment:

“Fact: capital formation is highest in the most egalitarian countries.”

Lila:

Not true. Capital formation is high in China (as high as 50% according to this report in 2007)* and India (savings rate of about 25-30%, with 29.2% in 2004-5 ).  Both are highly unequal societies (India more so than China) where households save a far greater percentage of their income than in America (about 2%).

Correction: the numbers above were rough averages computed from over the last several years. To be more specific, the US savings rate rose to 6.9% in May 2009 to from zero in April 2008 and less than 1% in 2005 (negative 0.5%), 2006, and 2007.

Other studies also measure the Chinese savings rate differently and return a figure of around 22% for the 2000-2004 period. and 30% in 2006.

America is also unequal – though less so –  but it has a much lower rate of capital formation.

This isn’t an endorsement of inequality. It’s merely a recitation of the facts.

Comment:

“We do not have to give away our money to wealthpower [sic] giants, to make it work for commerce.”

Lila:

I presume what the person is trying to say is that you don’t have to keep your money in banks owned by the banking conglomerates in order for business to flourish.

That’s perfectly true. Solution: don’t keep your money in the banks.

Keep it in the form of businesses, or farms, or bullion in vaults, or in guns, or in commodities or whatever else will retain some value during a time of universal monetary debasement.

But when you do that you are, by definition, a rich person (i.e. an asset-owning person). And it’s your riches – husbanded – that will create jobs.

It’s almost worth the Great Depression to learn how little our big men know.”
– Will Rogers

On November 5, 2009, 14 more money managers and lawyers  were named in the Galleon Insider Trading case:

1.STEVEN FORTUNA, formerly a Managing Director of S2 Capital LLC (“S2 Capital”), a hedge fund based in Boston, Massachusetts

2. ALI FAR, founder of Spherix Capital LLC (“Spherix”), a hedge fund based in California

3. RICHARD CHOO-BENG LEE, former President of Spherix

4. ROOMY KHAN, a California trader who served at certain times as a paid consultant to a hedge fund based in New York, New York and

5. GAUTHAM SHANKAR, a proprietary trader at Schottenfeld in New York, New York.

6. ZVI GOFFER (pictured here), who formerly worked at The Schottenfeld Group LLC (“Schottenfeld”), a broker dealer in New York, New York, and currently operates a trading firm called Incremental Capital (“Incremental”), in New York, New York

7. ARTHUR CUTILLO, an attorney at the law firm of Ropes & Gray LLP in New York, New York

8. JASON GOLDFARB, an attorney in New York, New York

9. CRAIG DRIMAL, who worked in the offices of the Galleon Group in New York, New York, but is not employed by Galleon

10. EMANUEL GOFFER, who formerly worked at Spectrum Trading LLC, a trading firm in New York, New York, and currently is associated with Incremental in New York, New York

11. MICHAEL KIMELMAN, currently associated with Incremental in New York, New York

12. DAVID PLATE, formerly employed by Schottenfeld, and currently associated with Incremental in New York, New York and

13. ALI HARIRI, a Vice President of Atheros Communications, Inc. (“Atheros”) in California

14. DEEP SHAH, who was formerly employed by Moody’s Investors Service, Inc. (“Moody’s”), in New York, New York, remains at large.

My Comment:

Glee at anyone’s misfortune, however deserved, is unseemly. But can I indulge in a little satisfaction that at least once the high and the mighty didn’t get away with it.

A second note.  Khans, Shankars, Shahs. Never let it be said that Asians cannot steal with the best of them. And if this is what’s being dredged up from the capital markets in New York, I’d just love to know what’s going on in Mumbai, Shanghai, and the rest of the globe…

From Hell Survivor’s Reality Check:

“Collectivizing investments into Wall Street maximizes fees, involves vast geographical distances, minimizes transparency, operates in an asymmetric knowledge market that always favors the insiders, the sophisticated investors, and maximizes opportunities for corruption.

German emphasis on local and regional investments minimizes these negative elements. Re-injecting the money back into the economy aggravates the already intensely collectivized private sector of the U.S. economy in the form of chain fast food outlets, chain restaurants, chain hotels, chain stores in sharp contrast to the German economy which still maintains highly attractive family owned restaurants and family owned hotels. It is not surprising that Wal-Mart has become, in the last 20 years, the largest corporation. It tried to export its disease to Germany but was rebuffed.

It must be understood that in sharp contrast to popular myths, the private sector of the U.S. economy is, in fact, intensely collectivistic/socialistic. A parasitic cost shifting pulsates intensely throughout the U.S. economy far more than in Germany. It is exemplified in the broadcasting industry and even in free restrooms. Rush Limbaugh’s 50 million annual income causes the products of his corporate sponsors to rise and the cost to be passed on to those not in the market, those who receive no benefit, who had no choice and who have no transparency.”

“Tilt” is frustrated, reactive behavior that sends a rush of blood to activate our instinctual behavior – fueling “flight or fight” response (fear/anger). Symptoms of “on tilt” behavior include over-trading, continually increasing position sizes, inability to understand why you made certain trades when you look back. Since we want the logical, rational parts of our mind to be in charge instead, here’s a quick summary of trading psychologist Brent Steenbarger’s remedies for “on tilt” behavior:

1. Focus on breathing slowly and on body movements that center and connect the mind and body (such as moving hands up and down in front of you).
2. Focus on process, not on outcome or expectation. Focus on making each trade a good one and on being a good trader, not on the money.
3. Build up “self-efficacy” (confidence in yourself as a person who can reach your goals) by not reacting to the market, but being proactive

In the news, myth making at the Fort Hood shootings:

“Though the official version of events won’t be available until the military releases the results of its investigation, Todd told the New York Times in an interview Thursday that it was indeed he who fired the shots that brought down Hasan. He said that he and Munley both pulled up to the scene at the same time and, after receiving fire from Hasan when they ordered him to drop his weapon, each broke in different directions. After aborting an attempt to circle the building, Todd said he headed back to the front of the building where he saw Munley wounded on the ground. He said that he then ordered Hasan to drop his weapon a second time, which again prompted the gunman to fire upon him. It was at this point that Todd told the Times that he “neutralized him and secured him.”

In the aftermath of the week-long confusion over who brought down Hasan, some are not holding back in criticizing the media and the military for their roles in the chaos — the media for not not digging deeper and thus performing their jobs properly, and the military for being too secretive. Some have even questioned whether or not there might have been a racial component involved with crediting a white woman over a black man as the day’s hero.”

My Comment:

“Might have been”?

Ah.

No one usually would intentionally write out the role of a heroic black man to give it to a white woman. Probably not. But unintentionally they often do. That’s a form of unconscious racism that becomes institutional, to use the in-vogue word.

People “just assume” that it wasn’t the black man who did it…..if they even saw him as a subject… and not just background.

This isn’t exaggeration. It’s the way the contributions of most people in the world is appropriated.

We just assume that non-white people do menial things in between tribal wars, and that the heroic, the creative, the original, the value-producing things are done by non-tribal whites.

We assume this not because we’re racists but because empire blinds us.
Having your thumb on the scales to fix the game so that you always come out the winner tends to make you swallow your own mythology and believe that you really are always the winner. Which on its face is absurd, since intelligence and creativity are found much more widely distributed.

Again, it’s not intentional racism. It’s the underlying arrogance of empire. It’s the distortion in morality produced by the distortion in markets. Which is ultimately caused by the state.

Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self needs strength.

See simplicity in the complicated,
Achieve greatness in little things.

Lao-Tzu