Tag Archives: Failure

The Real Scandal — Petty Corruption Destroys Institutions And Families

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Do we care if Gen. David Petraeus’ ego is so big he has to have a personal biographer follow him around a war zone? Do we care if a smart, beautiful, and physically fit Harvard doctoral student “works her magic” on a general? Not really.

U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commande...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is it scandalous? Based on the definition of “scandal,” the answer is technically, “Yes.”

But realistically, matters of ego, ambition, and romance are simply “human.” It’s strictly a private matter.

Until it begins to corrode the quality of work being done by important institutions, such as the U.S. Military.

Petty corruption pervades modern society, from highest to lowest.    Continue reading →

Dark Age Ruminations (Hurricane Sandy Inspired)

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Let’s think seriously about “apocalypse.” Stay with me. This will be brief. The dictionary definition is:

“noun, the complete final destruction of the world, esp. as described in the biblical book of Revelation; an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale: a stock market apocalypse / an era of ecological apocalypse.”

However, I’m not thinking of “apocalypse” in the biblical sense; or in the nuclear-annihilation sense.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Sandy this past week provided us with a  vivid picture of how the apocalypse of modern civilization might go. The suffering of the people of New Orleans, New Jersey, and New York could be widespread in the not-too-distant future. (Any city or state with “New” in its name has reason to be frightened.)

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Politics Out of Control: Somebody Please Say ‘Amen’

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Did anyone notice the color of the carpet on the debate stage?  It was an almost blinding shade of bright red? Unusual color to see anyplace but on a fire truck. Don’t believe I’ve ever seen a carpet of that color before.

The logical explanation is that the debate planners didn’t want you to see the blood on the floor.

Yes, I recused myself from criticizing the debate performance of President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney. But I have to say I’m appalled by the state of American political discourse in general. Maybe we should skip the debates and select the next president by mixed martial arts in a cage. Or if that’s over the top, maybe an old-fashioned fist fight with civilized rules and a referee.

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Darkness in India, Drought in America; You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

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The power grid in India failed this week, leaving half the population of the world’s largest democracy without electric power.

Half the counties in America have been declared drought disaster areas by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Half of India in the dark, half of America in drought. Makes you wonder: Where is the tipping point? How much failure can a country endure?

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Five Warning Signs of Continuing Economic Collapse

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It’s not Armageddon. But it’s not economic recovery. We’re not all going to live happily ever after.

The Statue of Liberty front shot, on Liberty I...

We’ll not be returning to the status quo ante 2006. That’s gone forever. The assumption of endless growth and prosperity is over in America. The American Dream of the past half-century is cooked.

What about more jobs, jobs, jobs for American workers, like the politicians pretend they believe? They can’t deliver it. Not going to happen. Glimmers of recovery here and there, maybe; but it will be the exception, not the rule.

Reindustrialization of America? Maybe a little bit, but new industry won’t need factories filled with unskilled workers. Or any kind of workers. Automation, robotization, computerization. All signs point to fewer jobs, not more jobs.

The promise of more jobs and economic recovery is a lie, or at least a mirage. I have to believe that many knowledgeable people in high places are aware of the truth. But they dare not say it out loud. Too many Americans are still in denial.

In order for people to accept the loss of the endless growth and prosperity model, they have to be able to replace it with a substitute. Leaders of government and business have not been able to come up with a substitute. They don’t know what to do except dissemble, and hope for a miracle.

The signs of continuing collapse in the near term and medium term are all around. Here are five of the most important warning signs, Continue reading →

American and European Workers in the New Economy

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It’s possible that we’re on the brink of historic collapse. Maybe not the Dark Age that Jane Jacobs suggests in her final book. Maybe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is not an apt comparison. Maybe it will be more like the decline and fall of the British Empire. Or the breakup of the Soviet Union. Maybe only partial collapse, failure of some systems, here and there.

Is the era of labor-intensive capitalism over in the U.S. and Europe?

You can trace the demise of the factory to decisions made in the 1950s. The actual dismantling of American industry began in the 1970s. By 1982, the process was so advanced that we spoke of the industrial heartland as the “rust belt.”

The remaining labor-intensive parts of American industry were taken apart and exported during the globalization of the 1980s and 1990s. After the manufacturing base was hollowed out to a shell, the next labor-intensive sector to collapse was the construction industry.

Capitalism remains strong. But for the first time, capitalism doesn’t need many workers, at least not in America and Europe. What about the knowledge industry? Won’t that provide jobs? Google is big, but its workforce, not so much. Yes, there will be jobs for the lucky, the talented, the highly educated. But ask a recent college grad how easy it is to find a job.

We have what’s left of retailing. Count the vacant stores at your local mall. Walmart thrives. We have fast food. Many jobs, minimum wage.

The new capitalism is technology-intensive and finance-intensive. And coming soon, computers that “think,” to compete with slow, old-fashioned humans.

As manufacturing jobs slipped away, the financial sector created an illusion of growth and wealth.

The workings of the financial sector are a mystery to me. But the events of the past few years have caused me to view banking and finance with fear and loathing. Based on what little I know, the world financial system — many currencies and fluctuating values, with competing central banks and regulators — is dysfunctional and completely irrational. Finance is a crazy system, more likely to create chaos than order. It’s FUBAR (go ahead, look it up).

The institutions of finance have no soul or conscience to oppose corruption. American banks, corporations and wealthy individuals are awash in money, while average Americans, especially underwater “homeowners,” are awash in debt. For whatever reasons, the wizards of finance refuse to spend or invest.

If high-tech, high-finance, American and European capitalism can profit without much labor input, what happens to the surplus workers?

Economic, political and social systems will have to adapt rapidly, or risk collapse. The European Union looks kind of unstable. In the U.S., some states are financial basket cases. Maybe collapse is happening now.

— John Hayden

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News Flash — Jon Taplin Is Back!

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New Anarchy vs. New Fascism? — Talk About “Living in interesting times!”

Jon Taplin has returned to his blog. Please read Jon Taplin’s insights into the deepening political and economic crisis. See his posts,  “Why Now?” and  “Brave New World Redux.”  Jon Taplin is the writer who explained the ongoing disconnection and unreality in America and the Western world with his series of essays on the “Interregnum.”

Now, in his two recent essays, prompted by the riots in London, Jon Taplin suggests that a “New Anarchy” may lie ahead for the Western World.  If for every action there is a reaction, I’ll up the ante by suggesting that the New Anarchy may be an attempted revolt against a New Corporate-Fascism.

We may live to see, in the near or medium future, a great struggle between the forces of Anarchy and Fascism.  Some may believe it will be the Apocalypse.  Whether or not you believe in Apocalypse, the struggle will likely feel like an upheaval of apocalyptic proportions.

The following words are Jon Taplin’s; I took the liberty of highlighting some words in bold:

“Whatever political will the country might have had for a WPA style program —putting millions of unemployed construction workers back on the job fixing America’s third world infrastructure—now seems to have evaporated. It was perhaps our last chance to avert the Coming Anarchy. With no government infrastructure programs to put people back to work, the private sector is left  trying to create jobs for the 28 million people who are either officially unemployed, working part time but wanting full time work or “discouraged workers” who have stopped looking for a job. This of course is not going to happen—and so we are all facing the problem of a “new normal”, in which a large portion of the high school only population may never find work. Liberal pundits mourn the loss of good jobs for this cohort, but as Bernard Avishai warned in “Strategy and Business” way back in 1997, “Any job that is still simple and repetitive enough to employ a semi- or non-skilled person is going to be even more pressured by new software or by contractor-suppliers in China and Brazil.”  — from Brave New World Redux

I would have some hope for America if President Barack Obama would appoint Jon Taplin to his inner circle of advisers at the White House. Also needed at the White House, Washington Post business and economy writer Steven Pearlstein. See “Who’s to blame for this mess? Let’s start with the corporate lobby.” on page G1 of the Post, Sunday, Aug. 14, 2011.

— John Hayden

London Is Burning

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This just in from a blog in London:

Tonight, in one of the greatest cities in the world, society is ripping itself apart.

If you want to know the latest in the American-European Political-Debt Crisis of 2011, I recommend you read blogs like Penny Red.

If you want a preview of what’s coming to an American city near you, California is no longer the barometer. Look at what’s going on in London, or Dublin, or Greece, Italy, Portugal, and the entire European Union. Europe is now in worse shape than America, but maybe not for long.

Here’s an excerpt from today’s report in Penny Red:

Tonight in London, social order and the rule of law have broken down entirely. The city has been brought to a standstill; it is not safe to go out onto the streets, and where I am in Holloway, the violence is coming closer. As I write, the looting and arson attacks have spread to at least fifty different areas across the UK, including dozens in London, and communities are now turning on each other, with the Guardian reporting on rival gangs forming battle lines. It has become clear to the disenfranchised young people of Britain, who feel that they have no stake in society and nothing to lose, that they can do what they like tonight, and the police are utterly unable to stop them. That is what riots are all about.

And more from Penny Red:

 This morning, as the smoke begins to clear, those of us who can sleep will wake up to a country in chaos. We will wake up to fear, and to racism, and to condemnation on left and right, none of which will stop this happening again, as the prospect of a second stock market clash teeters terrifyingly at the bottom of the news reports. Now is the time when we make our choices. Now is the time when we decide whether to descend into hate, or to put prejudice aside and work together. Now is the time when we decide what sort of country it is that we want to live in. Follow the #riotcleanup hashtag on Twitter. And take care of one another.

I also recommend Baroque in Hackney, who can provide other pertinent links in Britain.

And today, in Wisconsin, the people are voting. I wonder if what they decide, one way or another, will be able to slow down, one iota, the spread of the chaos in the Western World.

I have to go to work now.

— John Hayden

Connect The Chaos: Acedia, American Debt Crisis, Failure of Democracy

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America is not in the grip of mass hysteria. It’s more like mass acedia.

Americans are jamming the Congressional switchboards with telephone calls, as political and economic chaos draws near, but what’s the message? We have no consensus for constructive action. And surprisingly, we lack even a widely shared impulse to avoid self-destructive behavior. What we see and hear is more like a combination of teen-aged indifference and childish impatience: “Do something. Do Anything. Just stop bothering me.”

Democratic processes are failing, and we have no King Solomon, no leader with the sure wisdom to know the right thing to do in the present circumstance.   Continue reading →

Wildcat Debt Strike in Autumn of 2011

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At rock bottom, the interlocking political and financial structures of the U.S. are based on trust. Recently, a string of financial failures has shaken the credibility of the U.S. political-financial-industrial complex, resulting in a rapidly spreading failure of trust.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, Wikimedia Commons photo

Trust is frayed to the point where, at the end of this week, Speaker John Boehner severed negotiations with President Barack Obama on raising the U.S. debt ceiling and averting financial crisis. At this point, you really couldn’t call the Tea Party a party of “loyal opposition.”

Question:  What do you think will happen when the government is forced, starting August 2, to choose which bills to pay and which bills to default on — which promises to keep and which promises to break?

Answer:  I wouldn’t be surprised if a Wildcat Debt Strike sweeps across the U.S. like a prairie fire in the fall.

Consider the events that brought us to this convergence:

SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER, Wikimedia Commons photo

  • Strike One — The financial bubble burst, and Wall Street persuaded the pillars of the U.S. government — the Treasury Department, the President, the Congress — that the world economy would collapse without a sudden government bailout. (Presidential candidates of both parties endorsed the bailout in 2008.) Wall Street extorted billions under TARP, but continued to pay bonuses as usual to Wall Street executives.  In 2009, billions more were spent in a giant stimulus package, propping up the profits and cash reserves of corporations and the compensation packages for CEOs.
  • Strike Two — The real estate bubble burst, and banks throughout the U.S. foreclosed on mortgages, further driving down the value of houses. As people found their mortgages underwater (that is, the mortgage is worth more than the house), they considered whether or not to continue making the monthly payment. Some homeowners lost jobs and were unable to pay; some calculated that it made no sense to throw good money after a bad house. It is now widely accepted that people can and will walk away from a mortgage.  Banks are not willing to modify impossible mortgages, and debtors are not willing to pay impossible mortgages.
  • Strike Three — The debt bubble bursts. That comes in August, if the U.S. government decides not to pay its bills, especially its obligations to individual American citizens.

It’s all reciprocal, isn’t it? I’ll play fair with you as long as you play fair with me. As long as my house has value, I’ll continue to pay my mortgage. As long as you pay me, I’ll pay my debts.

Everything depends on our belief in the myths that George Washington will own up to cutting down the cherry tree; and that Abe Lincoln will walk six miles to return a penny.

The entire system could come undone in a cascade of individual decisions to hoard cash and ignore debts. When the government refuses to pay someone — whether it be a Social Security beneficiary, a veteran, a bureaucrat, a soldier, or a Medicare bill to a hospital — that someone will in turn refuse to pay an obligation.

The autumn of 2011 might deteriorate into a general Wildcat Debt  Strike, with individuals following the government into spontaneous default on taxes, mortgages, car payments, and most of all, credit card bills.

— John Hayden

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