In the news:

“In what could prove to be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures in U.S. history, prosecutors filed a civil complaint in federal court seeking the forfeiture of more than $500 million in assets of the Alavi Foundation and an alleged front company.

The assets include Islamic centers in New York City, Maryland, California and Houston, more than 100 acres in Virginia, and a 36-story office tower in New York.

Seizing the properties would be a sharp blow against Iran, which has been accused by the U.S. government of bankrolling terrorism and seeking a nuclear bomb.

A telephone call and e-mail to Iran’s U.N. Mission seeking comment were not immediately answered.

It is extremely rare for U.S. law enforcement authorities to seize a house of worship, a step fraught with questions about the First Amendment right to freedom of religion.”

An interesting, if incomplete, chart on the relationship between major hedge funds, journalists, and some pols. Please note that the Jim Chanos -Bethany McLean connection (from Enron) isn’t included.

Chanos is the same short-seller who’s recent comments (that China’s growth was exaggerated) seem to have made the risk currencies give back some of their gains and gold take a slight breather…at least for the moment.  (At least, that’s my insight into it).

So who’s short and who’s long gold and which journalists are in which pockets? Take your pick because that’s probably got everything to do with the various tidbits of news that get floated in the media and then disappear…

Welcome to the free and independent media of the free and independent, liberty-loving, morally superior, culturally advanced, genetically gifted wonder world of the “international community” of nations, aka, crap-shoot-cum-criminal syndicate.

The global recession has cut into the retail business another way. World-wide shoplifting is on the rise..by about 6% (versus a normal increase of 1.5%)., says the Global Retail Theft Barometer. That’s putting a $115 billion dent in businesses.

The interesting angle here is that, besides the usual suspects, there’s an upswing in middle-class thieves who simply must have that bottle of wine or the Gucci bag that the economic downturn is denying them.

Here’s how the new crime-spree breaks down globally:

 “In terms of total losses, retailers in North America topped the charts at $46 billion, followed by Europe’s $44 billion and $17.9 billion in the Asia-Pacific region. In North America and Latin America, store owners and employees were the leading pilferers; in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, it was customers who were swiping the most loot.”

Now a good part of the theft is still by criminals who resell the stuff. But the middle-class folks who are doing it are not doing it to keep body and soul together. They’re doing it because they think the whole system is rotten from top to bottom and there’s no reason they shouldn’t get their piece of the pie too. Which is the thinking that drove the housing bubble, and before it the tech bubble.

But the more fundamental reason for the crime-wave lies elsewhere. People become de-moral-ized in every sense of the word when the ground on which they stand starts shifting.

“Whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast,” said Bob Dylan, little knowing at the time he had nailed the philosophy of the financial industry for the next several decades.

When goal-posts move, when rules are changed post-facto, when it’s clear that cronyism not competence is the way ahead – then, anything goes. This is the subject of  “Hyperinflation and Hyperreality”,  an excellent piece by Paul Cantor on Thomas Mann’s short story, “Disorder and Early Sorrow.” Its theme is the moral effect of one form of severe economic dislocation – hyperinflation.

Hyperinflation is not our problem now, but it might be wise to think about what it might entail ahead of time.

Marcie Angell on how to fix health care simply:

“Recommendation #1: Drop the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55. This should be an expansion of traditional Medicare, not a new program. Gradually, over several years, drop the age decade by decade, until everyone is covered by Medicare. Costs: Obviously, this would increase Medicare costs, but it would help decrease costs to the health system as a whole, because Medicare is so much more efficient (overhead of about 3% vs. 20% for private insurance). And it’s a better program, because it ensures that everyone has access to a uniform package of benefits.

Recommendation #2: Increase Medicare fees for primary care doctors and reduce them for procedure-oriented specialists. Specialists such as cardiologists and gastroenterologists are now excessively rewarded for doing tests and procedures, many of which, in the opinion of experts, are not medically indicated. Not surprisingly, we have too many specialists, and they perform too many tests and procedures. Costs: This would greatly reduce costs to Medicare, and the reform would almost certainly be adopted throughout the wider health system.

Recommendation #3: Medicare should monitor doctors’ practice patterns for evidence of excess, and gradually reduce fees of doctors who habitually order significantly more tests and procedures than the average for the specialty. Costs: Again, this would greatly reduce costs, and probably be widely adopted.

Recommendation #4: Provide generous subsidies to medical students entering primary care, with higher subsidies for those who practice in underserved areas of the country for at least two years. Costs: This initial, rather modest investment in ending our shortage of primary care doctors would have long-term benefits, in terms of both costs and quality of care.

Recommendation #5: Repeal the provision of the Medicare drug benefit that prohibits Medicare from negotiating with drug companies for lower prices. (The House bill calls for this.) That prohibition has been a bonanza for the pharmaceutical industry. For negotiations to be meaningful, there must be a list (formulary) of drugs deemed cost-effective. This is how the Veterans Affairs System obtains some of the lowest drug prices of any insurer in the country.

Costs: If Medicare paid the same prices as the Veterans Affairs System, its expenditures on brand-name drugs would be a small fraction of what they are now.”

My Comment

Point one. Some libertarians take the purist position that the simple solution would be to get the government entirely out of health.  But I wonder if that isn’t utopian at this point. 

Point two. Since the financial crisis has obviously resulted in a huge and criminal wealth transfer, it’s morally untenable to use a libertarian argument, when it wasn’t used to stop the bail-outs of the banks. In other words, now that we’re in the wealth redistribution business, we can’t suddenly become principled when the population demanding the transfer isn’t the financial industry. 

Point three.  An incremental improvement of the dislocations caused by years of market intervention is the least likely to cause more problems. Angell’s ideas seem like one good place to start.

That said. I still think paying in cash as you go, with small private insurance pools, is the only libertarian solution. 

“A psychologist in the field of trauma, Bessle Van der Kert, made an observation several years ago; he noted that survivors heal when they find a greater passion for something other than their trauma. For me, this is my research on Centeotzintli or sacred maiz. It is a many-years story, but it involves the search for origins and migrations. At a certain point, I was told by elders from throughout the continent: “If you want to know who you are, follow the maiz.” That’s what I do now. In the process, I learned that the stories I had been looking for were right in my own home… from my own parents who are 86 and 81… the stories they had told me when I was growing up that became the basis for my dissertation: Centeotzintli: Sacred maize – a 7,000-year ceremonial discourse.

To be beaten is dehumanizing. To be treated as a suspect population and to be told to go back to where you came from is violating. To be denied one’s human rights makes us less than human. To fight for one’s rights is rehumanizing. To find one’s roots – one’s connections to that which is most sacred on this continent – to that which is many thousands of years old and part of one’s daily life – is affirming and it is to find one’s humanity.”

from “Running Past PTSD,” by Roberto Rodriguez

“Is China Headed Toward Collapse” asks Politico, relying on legendary short-seller, Jim Chanos, of Enron fame, who is China-bearish.

So are we, as we’ve been hearing the numbers in China are as frothy as souffle. But on the other hand, we’ve also become bearish about hedge-fund managers in bed – ahem, we’re talking metaphors here – with the media, since dipping into the naughty dirt dished up at Deep Capture.

“Chang argues that inconsistencies in Chinese official statistics — like the surging numbers for car sales but flat statistics for gasoline consumption — indicate that the Chinese are simply cooking their books. He speculates that Chinese state-run companies are buying fleets of cars and simply storing them in giant parking lots in order to generate apparent growth.

 Another data point cited by the bears: overcapacity. For example, the Chinese already consume more cement than the rest of the world combined, at 1.4 billion tons per year. But they have dramatically ramped up their ability to produce even more in recent years, leading to an estimated spare capacity of about 340 million tons, which, according to a report prepared earlier this year by Pivot Capital Management, is more than the consumption in the U.S., India and Japan combined.” 

 My Comment

We’re obviously in the middle of info-wars. 

First there was “green shoots,” the mother of all rumors. Then there were the rumors about the US government asking embassy officials to use local currency (we heard that one down here in August); then there was the one about the Chinese walking away from oil derivative contracts; then came the Fisk report about the Gulf Arabs (and others) diversifying away from the dollar; next came rumors about China buying gold from the IMF; following on that it was actually India that stepped up and bought half of the IMF’s gold  – although since the purchase is against IMF SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) and since the Federal Reserve uses several CBs around the world as depositories, this may be just a book-keeping entry for ought we peasants know.

 Mixed in with the financial psyops comes a healthy doze of fear-mongering over swine flu and random shooters….while what we should really be terrified about* slips by under the radar with nary a squawk from the populace.”

*for eg. the approach of biometric IDs, the restriction of free speech, the end of banking secrecy, and the centralization of medical information online

Half of Brazil was plunged in darkness from 10:15 PM Tuesday for four-six hours, ostensibly because a storm shorted one (or in some reports, three) of five transmission lines at the Itaipu hydroelectic power station that straddles the border between Paraguay and Brazil. The outage affected 50 million people in Brazil. The station also supplies 90% of Paraguay’s power so that Paraguay was blacked out for 15 minutes. 

The company in charge, Furnas, which is owned by the Brazilian state, denies that there was any problem in the transmission from Itaipu to the national grid and dismissed the reports as speculative, though they were affirmed by several other officials

More at AP:

“Despite Furnas’s statement, the ministry’s secretary, Marcio Zimmerman, speculated that an unspecified “adverse meteorological condition” set off a “domino effect” through the grid.

Itaipu has an output of 14,000 megawatts, which supplies 20 percent of the energy needs of Brazil, Latin America’s most economically active nation. All of that was off-line overnight.

The blackout occurred two nights after the US television network broadcast a report in which unidentified former US national security officials claimed massive power outages in Brazil in 2005 and 2007 were caused by cyber hackers attacking control systems.”

This is the CBS report  mentioned in the AP article. For those concerned this is a cybercrime of some sort, here’s a ranking of countries by their contribution to malware – malicious software that takes over your computer to send out spam or anything else your attacker might fancy (Note this is not a report on cybercrime in general, to which China’s contribution is minimal, but just a ranking of where malware comes from. In cybercrime overall, the US accounts for over 60% – more later..)

1. Americans and other non-British English speakers (more than 30% of world’s total, with the Americans contributing about 23%)

2. China (30 %)

3. Brazil (14.2%)

4. Russia (4.1 %)

Two technologically strong countries that use English, the UK and India, both ranked low, jointly contributing only 1.3%, with most of that from the UK, according to this Forbes report. According to the report, Russian security guru, Eugene Kaspersky, explains this as due to cultural differences. A Businessweek-Symantec report from September 7, 2007 puts India’s contribution at 3%. (the report can be found in a more user friendly format here at engimasoftware).

Business Insider  has a list of 12 places to go if the world goes to hell – i.e., war, massive food/resource shortage, currency collapse.

The number one spot is Chiang Mai in Thailand – where Marc Faber lives. 

Hmm. Faber is married to a Thai, runs a long-standing financial advisory service from Hong Kong, and has global ties. In other words, he’s nicely embedded, economically and culturally.  I am not sure Joe Citizen who relocates there is going to find things that easy. The dozen cities listed in the article include Rio de Janeiro, Guam, Denver, Kansas,  Bern, Capetown – definitely a motley crew.

Being a cynic, I ask myself who’s holding property there that they want to off-load on some scared-witless member of the erstwhile middle-class. 

Seriously. The only survival blog that I think is worth much time, Ferfal’s, is dead on when he says unequivocally that survival first of all requires having a network of close friends who can help you if you need it. It means having some fairly stable source of income or means of living.  It means knowing the language well enough to be able to keep your ear to the ground and follow nuances of mood. It means being fluent not only in the language, but in the culture, history, economics and politics of the place. At least, fluent enough so that you can spot changes coming ahead of time.

Without any of that, you really are better off staying at home and building up community resources to help with what’s ahead.

Yes, the US government isn’t exactly your friend on a number of things. But the government is no longer a territorial entity. You can be taxed anywhere in the world. You can be located anywhere in the world. You can be dragged home from wherever you hide by a court order….if the country has extradition treaties with the US. Your finances can be found anywhere. Government and police officials can be bought off anywhere. Laws can change in a heart-beat. Banking secrecy isn’t strong anywhere, unless you’re very wealthy. And if you’re very wealthy, you can protect yourself even from the US.

Set up a foreign trust in an off-shore haven, start traveling to remote countries, start googling for information about secrecy and false identities and see how fast you’ll attract the authorities. Trying to save yourself a few thousands in tax dollars – or even tens of thousands – and ending up in prison, broke, sick, injured in a stand-off, or devastated some other way is not what I’d call a good trade-off.

At Counterpunch, Lynn Washington writes:

“One glaring example is photos of the December 1981 crime scene taken by police investigators that do not show a critical element of the prosecution’s case against Abu-Jamal. The eyewitness testimony of cab driver Robert Chobert was a central pillar of the prosecution’s case against Abu-Jamal but police crime scene photos do not show Chobert’s cab behind the slain officer’s patrol car where prosecutors claimed it was parked when Abu-Jamal killed Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Four police photos capturing different angles of the crime scene contained in the trailer for a forthcoming film about Abu-Jamal’s case do not show Chobert’s cab.

There are only two possible scenarios for the missing cab in those crime scene photos: either police tampered with the crime scene by removing the cab or the cab was never there. Either scenario is a major legal violation warranting a new trial.”

My Comment:

It’s interesting to me how much support from the establishment media Roman Polansky got over irregularities in his trial. That support, although mistakenly easy on Polansky’s crime, was correct. But where is the establishment media on an even worse case – that of Mumia Abu Jamal?

As a side-note, Abu Jamal gave my first book, “The Language of Empire,” an unsolicited endorsement. A thumbs up from someone with that much first hand-knowledge of the prison and judicial system, I must say, pleases me more than approval from the powers that be.

I find it amazing how much anger boils over for a Van Jones (Obama’s supposed Green Czar) or for an Abu Jamal. Yet for the real perpetrators of the biggest heist of the last hundred years, for the diseased greed and rapacity of vast numbers of the upper economic and political echelons, for neocolonial policies that have brought not just the USA but most of the globe to the edge of the abyss, for endless and savage wars fomented behind the sham of peace-keeping and policing, for relentless and shameless expropriation of the labor, creativity, and earnings of ordinary people all over the world, for the sordid complicity of the media in all this, where is the shame? Where is the outrage? Where is the hectoring?

President Obama was in Africa telling governments there to shape up. Well and good. They should. But perhaps he should address his moral sermons to those closer at hand…say, in the White House, and the Pentagon, and Treasury, and the SEC, and the Federal Reserve – which hide fish of a rather larger size.