This is the final chapter in the section on economics, Attack of the Petrodactyls, from my book How to Dismantle an Empire. It looks at the growing wealth disparity in the US and how that’s been manipulated through college debt and housing costs. The 2008 ‘subprime mortgage crisis’ is examined for who benefited: Blackstone, Colony Capital, Barclay’s, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley. I show that even billionaires are struggling to keep up! You will be forgiven for not shedding a tear.
Dang, that opening quote by Tom Englehardt: "A society that programmatically trains its young into debt and calls that “higher education” is as corrupt as a wealthy country that won’t rebuild its own infrastructure"... how accurate a description of two of the (multiple) cons! And most don't see the con, just as they don't see the obvious Rockefeller medicine con (convince people that they need drugs for "symptoms", which then creates new "symptoms" in a perpetual negative feedback loop).
Well done (and thank you) for reading out this entire section! When I have time, I will listen properly with the book next to it. Since my return, I've been working multiple gigs (grateful for the work though I'm always juggling) and relaxing by making things I can sell. I don't know where the time goes but it is going. Hope all is going splendidly at the Garaj... <3
Yes, isn't that a telling comment? At a point where kids aren't considered old enough to drink, they can sign away their lives with the full blessing and collusion of all the people they've been taught to look up to.
Thank you for listening improperly, SF! I thought of you and Tonika and my friend Ernest (also a videographer) when making this because I wanted to be outside but the light was making weird shadows on my face. When it went low enough for me to move, I think I turned the mic backwards and so had to mess with editing the sound. I'd decided to record the whole again when my neighbors had a graduation party. And even listening to the final edit, I took a nap--there's just so many boring statistics in this chapter, even though I think they show important points.
So the takeaways are: they're scooping up the assets before the money fizzles; we should do the same. But we can only do the same with system change, not with their rigged money system. The chapter in a nutshell!
Love the Cliff notes version! Love that you took a nap whilst listening improperly (to) yourself.
Would a jugglin’ lil’ freelancer like me who is approaching her monthly target and may even earn more than her bills for the first time this year ever stand a chance in this system? Yes, if she believes in miracles.
Tereza, call me if you ever need audio trick-learning too. N, xo
It was lucky I wasn’t drinking my tea when I read the title. “suction up, trickle down.” My first thought was: mooncups. As we had touched on menstrual cycles recently. (Would’ve caused me to spit out my tea in laughter). And second thought was “is Tereza writing about the toilet plunger economy??” 😂
I imagine the numbers look much worse now after covid in terms of wealth and income distribution. My main question after reading this…where are the pitchforks??? If banks create money out of nothing then all loan/mortgage contracts are baseless, so everyone should be protesting outside the banks everyday all day…but we don’t see this.
Thanks for having the courage to post the first comment, LoWa! This was such a number-intensive chapter, I appreciate you slogging through it. More and more, the pretense of ownership is being dropped so it's all rentals. I think Richard Werner provided us with the perfect pitchfork to pop that bubble. Knowing that it all rests on a tiny exception to a small regulation within the financial industry--no revolution needed! Just a small informed cadre who knows what we want.
We also recently talked about pain, and I've been slammed by that tooth with the root canal scheduled in two weeks. It came back with a vengeance. And it reminded me of this poem called Over and Over Tune by Ioanna Carlson:
You could grow into it,
that sense of living like a dog,
loyal to being on your own in the fur of your skin,
able to exist only for the sake of existing.
Nothing inside your head lasting long enough for you to hold onto,
you watch your own thoughts leap across your own synapses and disappear --
Love these poems!! The NSN one on happiness was beautiful too. Yowchies, that root canal sounds like no fun. When I had tooth pain last year, literally every person I knew was telling me to apply clove oil. I’d never tried it…then was like, holy batman, this sh*t really works!?!?
I suppose you’re right about it being *just* the small word change to banking regulations …but there’s a globe-spanning empire with a full monopoly on violence that backs this relatively little known piece of soporific legalese…
I always divide strategies into two: logistically, how would it work. And politically, how do we bring it about. The second one stops all discussion about the first. Because we don't see a way it will ever happen politically, we don't bother thinking or testing what would work logistically.
I had looked at the power of seignorage as a way to get around the Supreme Court ruling that the Federal Gov't could only coin money, literally. And the Social Security Trust Fund is another end-run--rather than asking for money, it would be allowing them to not give back what they owe and instead issue it as credit to the commonwealths, where it would never enter into circulation.
So these are ways that don't need a change to the Constitution, or for any law to be passed. Since the commonwealth isn't a State, it gets around the prohibition against the States issuing any kind of credit. Richard Werner made the logistics of my plan even simpler. But the politics are up to Goddess.
Dang, that opening quote by Tom Englehardt: "A society that programmatically trains its young into debt and calls that “higher education” is as corrupt as a wealthy country that won’t rebuild its own infrastructure"... how accurate a description of two of the (multiple) cons! And most don't see the con, just as they don't see the obvious Rockefeller medicine con (convince people that they need drugs for "symptoms", which then creates new "symptoms" in a perpetual negative feedback loop).
Well done (and thank you) for reading out this entire section! When I have time, I will listen properly with the book next to it. Since my return, I've been working multiple gigs (grateful for the work though I'm always juggling) and relaxing by making things I can sell. I don't know where the time goes but it is going. Hope all is going splendidly at the Garaj... <3
Yes, isn't that a telling comment? At a point where kids aren't considered old enough to drink, they can sign away their lives with the full blessing and collusion of all the people they've been taught to look up to.
Thank you for listening improperly, SF! I thought of you and Tonika and my friend Ernest (also a videographer) when making this because I wanted to be outside but the light was making weird shadows on my face. When it went low enough for me to move, I think I turned the mic backwards and so had to mess with editing the sound. I'd decided to record the whole again when my neighbors had a graduation party. And even listening to the final edit, I took a nap--there's just so many boring statistics in this chapter, even though I think they show important points.
So the takeaways are: they're scooping up the assets before the money fizzles; we should do the same. But we can only do the same with system change, not with their rigged money system. The chapter in a nutshell!
Love the Cliff notes version! Love that you took a nap whilst listening improperly (to) yourself.
Would a jugglin’ lil’ freelancer like me who is approaching her monthly target and may even earn more than her bills for the first time this year ever stand a chance in this system? Yes, if she believes in miracles.
Tereza, call me if you ever need audio trick-learning too. N, xo
It was lucky I wasn’t drinking my tea when I read the title. “suction up, trickle down.” My first thought was: mooncups. As we had touched on menstrual cycles recently. (Would’ve caused me to spit out my tea in laughter). And second thought was “is Tereza writing about the toilet plunger economy??” 😂
I imagine the numbers look much worse now after covid in terms of wealth and income distribution. My main question after reading this…where are the pitchforks??? If banks create money out of nothing then all loan/mortgage contracts are baseless, so everyone should be protesting outside the banks everyday all day…but we don’t see this.
Thanks for having the courage to post the first comment, LoWa! This was such a number-intensive chapter, I appreciate you slogging through it. More and more, the pretense of ownership is being dropped so it's all rentals. I think Richard Werner provided us with the perfect pitchfork to pop that bubble. Knowing that it all rests on a tiny exception to a small regulation within the financial industry--no revolution needed! Just a small informed cadre who knows what we want.
We also recently talked about pain, and I've been slammed by that tooth with the root canal scheduled in two weeks. It came back with a vengeance. And it reminded me of this poem called Over and Over Tune by Ioanna Carlson:
You could grow into it,
that sense of living like a dog,
loyal to being on your own in the fur of your skin,
able to exist only for the sake of existing.
Nothing inside your head lasting long enough for you to hold onto,
you watch your own thoughts leap across your own synapses and disappear --
small boats in a wind,
fliers in all that blue,
the swish of an arm backed with feathers,
a dress talking in a corner,
and then poof,
your mind clean as a dog's,
your body big as the world,
important with accident --
blood or a limp, fur and paws.
You swell into survival,
you take up the whole day,
you're all there is,
everything else is
not you, is every passing glint, is
shadows brought to you by wind,
passing into a bird's cheep, replaced by a
rabbit skittering across a yard,
a void you yourself fall into.
You could make this beautiful,
but you don't need to,
living is this fleshy side of the bone,
going on is this medicinal smell of the sun --
no dog ever tires of seeing his life
keep showing up at the back door
even as a rotting bone with a bad smell;
feet tottering, he dreams of it,
wakes and licks no matter what.
Love these poems!! The NSN one on happiness was beautiful too. Yowchies, that root canal sounds like no fun. When I had tooth pain last year, literally every person I knew was telling me to apply clove oil. I’d never tried it…then was like, holy batman, this sh*t really works!?!?
I suppose you’re right about it being *just* the small word change to banking regulations …but there’s a globe-spanning empire with a full monopoly on violence that backs this relatively little known piece of soporific legalese…
I always divide strategies into two: logistically, how would it work. And politically, how do we bring it about. The second one stops all discussion about the first. Because we don't see a way it will ever happen politically, we don't bother thinking or testing what would work logistically.
I had looked at the power of seignorage as a way to get around the Supreme Court ruling that the Federal Gov't could only coin money, literally. And the Social Security Trust Fund is another end-run--rather than asking for money, it would be allowing them to not give back what they owe and instead issue it as credit to the commonwealths, where it would never enter into circulation.
So these are ways that don't need a change to the Constitution, or for any law to be passed. Since the commonwealth isn't a State, it gets around the prohibition against the States issuing any kind of credit. Richard Werner made the logistics of my plan even simpler. But the politics are up to Goddess.