We Need Consciousness, Not Just Political Reform Journalist Faiz Sakir of Think Progress wrote on October 5,2011: “The original “Occupy Wall Street” protest has grown beyond its name — it is no longer solely about the courageous people camped out at Zucotti Park; it is a nationwide movement bonded by a shared refrain: “We are the 99 percent.” This slogan has entered our political and financial lexicon and refers to the 99% , the vast majority of Americans, and their opposite, the 1% who have the exceedingly disproportionate share of the wealth. There is a mounting disgust and anger in America’s citizenry with a political and financial system that rewards the 1 % at the expense of the rest. The Occupy Wall Street protest reflects this by moving outside of it’s original platform as a protest against Wall Street, and has become a nationwide movement that is bringing awareness to ordinary Americans, not just about income inequality, but the declining median household incomes, the growing numbers of people getting kicked out of their homes, increasing numbers of adults and distressingly children falling below the poverty line, the millions joining the ranks of those without health insurance, and the corruption and unjustifiable political influence by greedy banks and corporations in the financial services sector. So far, the proposed solutions of the 99% have been political in nature at the level of national policy and are encoded in a list of demands called “99% Declaration” and a more loosely defined set of [...]
market economy
Occupy Wall Street
Evidence Of Our Human Spirit The upheaval that our world is experiencing is a sign of the human spirit behind our culture, and that has been the case in every place in every time. For those who study history, the condition of the United States in our time is no surprise. It happened in Rome. It happened for the British Empire. The fall of every empire was presaged by the increasing disparity between the haves and the have-nots. When we comprehend how dire the state of the economy is, the impact on our lives can feel chaotic. The wake-up calls that are pulling us out of our sleep can feel shocking, dismaying, and depressing. It is no wonder that many people are afraid. Historically, chaos has meant that things aren’t working. But humanity is resilient, and within chaos resides our capacity to open up into something new. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche said “I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.” We can see evidence of this capacity in the Occupy (Wall Street) movement, which has as of this writing has 2,668 occupy communities spread not just around the United States, but in more than eighty other countries as well. Note 10 People want a voice and they want change. Matt Taibbi said this in the November 24, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone magazine: ”Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks [...]
Money as Circulation
Why Hoarding by the Few is Death One of the principles of money is that it is fluid and dynamic.. It’s purpose is to go on moving from hand to hand, and that is why it is called currency. Greed and hoarding, destroys its whole purpose and the current becomes stagnant. The more money flows the richer a society, as it supports the unfolding of human potential of all of it’s citizens rather than for just a few. When it flows, money can be a servant of all rather than a master by a few. When there is only fiscal liberty for a few, it creates a hierarchy in society from which follows competition, ambition, dependence, helplessness, possessiveness, power over others, oppression and even tyranny. In our current society, money has stopped circulating. If we liken it to blood, we can see that when blood is circulating it is life. But when blood has stopped, it is death. It is the same with money. Money stopped is death. The more money circultaes the more there is. The more money is used the more it circulates, and the richer the society is. The fact that almost all of the money has been hoarded by a few- and it is getting worse not better- is leading to a death. Our money system, our society, and there are some who say even our species and/or planet earth cannot continue without the death of the organism. This is at the macro level. Now lets [...]
Two Practical Matters- Social Security and Health Care Insurance
The Turning Tide One fantasy that is becoming dangerous to embrace is the illusion of security in the form of Social Security in the United States. I have heard many people say that they have no savings or investments, and instead intend to rely on these monthly payouts to support them in their old age. It has recently been announced that Social Security has become permanently cash-flow negative. In other words, more will be paid out yearly in benefits than will be taken in as revenue. Some people are shocked when I tell them that there is actually no “trust fund” sitting there that they and everyone else who has been working (or their employers) have been paying into for all these years. Rather, the government has always been “borrowing” those funds. What’s more surprising to these people is that the total amount that “should” be in there isn’t even a legal debt. It is a government liability that is backed by a moral obligation only. It could be eliminated by political will, which is a significant probability given the current economic situation. If it is allowed to wind down, many who are paying into it today, and have been for all their working lives, won’t see any benefits. Social Security cannot survive without raising taxes and/or decreasing benefits. So when creating your financial plan, it is better to know now rather than later that you cannot rely on it as a source of income. Other countries do have [...]
The Permafrost Melt
Money and the Unsustainability Confluence Stephen Leahy is an international environmental journalist who covers international environmental issues in the public interest. In his website he says his work focuses exclusively on important stories that go unnoticed by mainstream media, often which are about climate change. On February 17, he posted an article “Permafrost Melt Soon Irreversible Without Major Fossil Fuel Cuts”. In his article he says that global warming could cause up to 60% of the world’spermafrost to thaw by 2200 thereby releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere that would further speed up climate change. Without major reductions in the use of fossil fuels, as much as 2/3 of the world’s huge storage of frozen carbon will be released pushing temperatures several degrees higher thus making large parts of the world uninhabitable. And we are only about 20 years away from the tipping point. The study he refers to in his article does not include methane release from the sea nor something called thermokarst erosion of the permafrost from warmer water. Politicians nor policy makers have taken any of this into account when looking at the amount carbon emissions need to be reduced. So we are at the top edge of a dangerous precipice. Clearly we our out of balance. It is not hopeless however according to the study Leahy is quoting. If we were able to phase out fossil fuels by 2050 by using renewable energy sources, we could find a safer path. But that would require [...]
The Reemerging No-Growth Economics
Living Instead of Consuming There is a great article in the Nov/Dec issue of Utne Reader entitled “Nothing Grows Forever”, which is a reprint of the article from Mother Jones by Clive Thomson. It is a very hopeful article both for us and for the planet, as it not only questions the consumption economics that we have been living in, but provides a viable alternative. It provides a third way other then the dilemma that has been presented to us by growth economists, that without growth we would spiral into poverty and with it we deplete the planet. This third alternative is aptly names no-growth economics. It asks the questions of whether we could have a healthy economy that doesn’t grow. It also asks if we could halt the inescapable movement toward ecological catastrophe. The point of view of no-growth economics fits perfectly with the movement toward more consciousness in our economics. According to Thompson, in then 19th Century the economist John Stuart Mill had the point of view that growth only served up to a certain point where everyone would enjoy a reasonable standard of living. After that point he believed, people would be able to live their lives with a focus on things like child rearing, art, leisure and not get caught up in the “trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heals” that he saw in unrestrained capitalism. This chase of more is better is part of what I have spoken about earlier when I spoke about consciousness.This [...]
The Rubber Is Meeting The Road
The Spiritual Opportunity Of Our Money Pain I really like this guy , Matt Taibbi, who writes for the Rolling Stone magazine. He again has a great article this month on the continued betrayal of the American people. The article is called “Wall Street Strikes Back” and the table of contents description on Page 5 tells a lot of the story: “Congress looked serious about financial reform until the country’s biggest banks unleashed an army of 2000 paid lobbyists”. In the body of the article, Matt talks about the watering down of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act and ends with a few points that In feel are important to mention here. On the positive side, the bill will curb some of the predatory lending I have spoken a lot about. But the more important issues the bill was supposed to address, like breaking up large risky banks, requiring financial giants to set up a fund to pay for their own bailouts, and probably most importantly, forcing the derivatives market to be more transparent, won’t happen in any meaningful way. So the $600 trillion derivatives market will continue to work without the light of day, and that in my mind is criminal. Matt’s conclusion foretells the continuing impact on the American people- “a war the once looked winnable will continue to drag on for years, creating more havoc and destroying more lives before it is over”. So the results of the financial fiasco keep getting put back onto the shoulders of [...]
Concentric Circles of Recession
We Are Not Out of the Falling Bubble Woods Yet. I heard a joke the other day, that might have been funny if it weren’t so close to the truth. “The last will and testament of the Icelandic financial sector requested their ashes be spread over Europe”. I loved what my husband’s friend said in response to hearing that: There was a special bequest to England who replied “We said cash not ash”. But this is what is happening not just around Iceland debt, but debt in general all over the world. The debtors are being blamed, and the creditors have been given cash. The US government bailed out the banks- who were responsible for making bad loans, but gave nothing to the debtors. In effect, the bankers have been paid for their bad loans. As our economy is shrinking, these same creditors are grabbing as much as they can and in the process making the debtors feel guilty. The creditors are more guilty. They supported predatory lending- lending knowing that the debts could never be paid. It is another chapter in the wealth grab. The 10,000,000 Americans who are probably going to lose their homes didn’t cause the problems, but they and the American people whose taxes funded the bailouts are going to be left holding the bag. The economist Michael Hudson has likened the American democracy at the moment to an Oligarchy. He said that 25 years ago, 1% of the American public owned 27% of equity income, [...]
The Money Split
The Spiritualization of Money At the core of all great spiritual teachings is the recognition that as human beings we have two natures. In Hindu, this is talked about in terms of Shiva and Shakti. In Buddhsit Mahamudra, it is the union of luminous clarity and emptiness (Shiva) and Phenomenon. In Dzogchen, it is the union of awareness and phenomenon. In Tantra it is the Masculine (Emptiness) and Feminine (Form). In Christianity, it is the Father and Holy Ghost (Shiva) and the Son. In The Diamond Approach, it is the Absolute and the Logos or Realization/actualization. The shakti/phenomenon, form, the Son and actualization all point to us as human beings incarnate, as embodiment. So what is implied is that human life has meaning only insofar that we consciously and intentionally occupy two worlds, the spiritual and the human, at the same time. And that meaning appears at the place where these two worlds meet these two worlds- in the relationship between the two worlds. In our secular world, where we have not recently (I mean in terms of a few centuries) by and large not paid attention to that relationship, that meaning has largely been lost. I thought this was a good subject to cover today, because we have just passed Easter, where we have been reminded of the divinity of Jesus and hopefully also, of our own spiritual nature. So, let’s begin by looking at the symbolism of the cross. We have a horizontal and vertical segments meeting at the [...]
The Wall Street Hustle
Opting Out of the Big Bank Fiasco and Moving Toward Self Sufficiency The Rolling Stone March 2009 issue had an article by Matt Taibbi called Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle in which he likens the financial crisis bailout to a street con and makes a very good case of it, taking us step by step through the con game led by Goldman Sachs. In the article he makes a case that the big banks aren’t just pocketing the trillions that were given them to rescue the economy, but that they are engineering another crash so that they can continue to feed at the trough. There is one paragraph that is such a concise summary, it is worth quoting: “Take massive sums of money from the government, sit on it until the government starts printing trillions of dollars in a desperate attempt to restart the economy, buy even more toxic assets to sell back to the government at even more inflated prices,- and then, when all else fails, start driving toward the cliff again with a frank and open endorsement of bubble economies”. He goes on to say, that” con artists have a word for the inability of victims to accept that they have been scammed. The call it the “true believer” syndrome.” It is time to quit believing that someone else- the government, the banks- are going to take care of you and will have your best interests at heart. It is time to wake up, smell the coffee and take [...]