Bailout: the Word of the Year 2008

Merry Webster, the dictionary, just released its "word of the year" statement. For 2008, ladies and gentlemen, the word of the year is bailout (http://theunquietlibrary.wordpress.com/)



Surprise, surprise? Not at all. Bailout made it to the top during the last weeks of the year thanks to US$700 billion that the US Federal Reserve pumped into the pockets of big money makers.



If you feel tempted to think that bailing someone out (or being bailed out, for that matter) is sort of trendy, think twice. A Word of the Year could mean that a stern judgment is being passed on the way things are being handled.



The recipients of the US$700 billion awards, hunger-makers as they are, are showing us that things are not going to improve. Not at least for the ones bailing them out, that is, the pedestrian tax payers. A point in case: one of these very clever winners, Citi Group, managed to get the US people come up with US$25 billion to its rescue so that it could cover its liabilities while pocketing its assets. Cam Harvey, from Duke University, finds this move to be very damaging:

"It wasn't that long ago that Citigroup was considered a "good" bank. Remember October 1, 2008? Citigroup announced it was acquiring Wachovia with the help of the FDIC. You had to be strong to do a favor to the government like that.
"Citi was also a recipient of $25 billion in the first tranche of the $125 billion TARP money. However, we know now Citi was not healthy. On Friday, Citi stock closed at $3.77 implying an approximate market cap of $19 billion -- just a few weeks after the Treasury had injected $25 billion in capital. This implied that the government was throwing $25 billion at something that was worth -$6 billion! It is the classic throw of good money at bad. I am fully aware that some type of intervention was necessary. Citi falling would have created even worse chaos in markets. But the recent injection of a further $20 billion and huge government guarantees on troubled assets is a spectacularly bad deal for the American (sic) taxpayer."

Stock market for dummies

Once upon a time, a well dressed gentleman arrived at a certain little town. After checking in at the only inn in town, he ordered an ad to be placed in the local paper. The ad was offering $10 for any monkey that could be captured alive.

The locals knew that the forest was full of monkeys; so they hurried out, got as many as they could and brought them to the gentleman. Just as he had promised, the gentleman paid $10 for each monkey on the spot.

As the monkey population in the forest dwindled the capture of the monkeys was becoming difficult and the locals lost interest in pursuing their newly found career. To re-energize the locals, the gentleman announced that he was raising his offer to $20 per monkey. The locals found a renewed vigor and managed to come back with more monkeys.

Consequently, there were even fewer monkeys now. The gentleman then raised the ante to $25 per monkey. A new wave of expeditions into the forest resulted and the last monkey was finally captured.

At this particular point, the gentleman announced that he was ready to buy any available monkey for $50, but there were no monkeys to be found in the whole forest. Pondering his monkey purchasing enterprise over, this well dressed gentleman left and asked his assistant to stay behind to consolidate his monkey empire.

A few days later, the businessman’s assistant summoned the locals and told them:

“Look. Come over here and see this huge cage. See? It’s full of all the monkeys my boss bought from you to complete his collection. This is the deal: I sell them to you for $35 and then, when he comes back, you can sell them back to him for $50 each, just as he said before he left. This monkey collection is extremely important to him.”

The locals pooled their resources and savings and bought the monkeys and waited for the gentleman to come back.

They have been waiting ever since. They never again saw the gentleman or his assistant. The only thing before their eyes was a huge cage full of monkeys they bought with their savings and retirement money.

This is how the stock market works.

************

(Translated from a story that was circulated in Spanish through the internet by the guys at PDA-Toronto. Proof reading: Mary Outhwaite. This could be a story that was originally written in another language -English?- then translated into Spanish and now... once again!).

Also check out this interesting blog: http://www.angrybear.blogspot.com

Más buena que el pan

Hace mucho tiempo, por allá cuando la Edad Media apenas amanecía y los de Castilla, en España, andaban tomando en préstamo palabras del griego, el latín, el árabe, el gótico y vaya uno a saber qué tantos otros idiomas, con la intención de crear su propia lengua, no podían ni imaginar que una de sus más bellas expresiones iría esta noche a incrementar mi salivación voraz.

"Más bueno que el pan" es una vieja frase española que es útil cuando uno quiere hablar de la bondad de una persona. Tiempo atrás, cuando los españoles apenas inauguraban esa cláusula, el pan lo hacían a partir de harina de granos enteros. Lo de la harina refinada todavía no había hecho su entrada. Esta dieta, junto con la energía que los antiguos habitantes de Castilla invertían en sus rutinas diarias (que incluían perseguir a musulmanes, judíos y herejes, y más tarde atropellar a los nativos americanos y violar a sus cónyuges) significaba que el pan y la bondad iban de la mano.

Los dos todavía hacen buenas migas, con todo y la mala propaganda con que hoy se castiga a los alimentos ricos en carbohidratos. Sin embargo, cuando tanto el pan como el idioma de Castilla cruzaron el charco para sentar sus reales en los corazones, mentes y lenguas de los descendientes de españoles, nativos americanos, esclavos africanos y uno que otro mercenario procedente de otros vecindarios, la palabra “bueno” asumió otra acepción mucho más emocionante: ya no se refería únicamente a la bondad en su sentido medio teológico sino que también le apuntó a una cualidad similar en el terreno de lo erótico.

Este es, entonces, el punto para darle paso a una actriz procedente de Castilla y poseedora de una belleza apabullante. Ella es Paz Vega, a quien vi hace poco en una de sus muchas películas: "Teresa, el cuerpo de Cristo". Admitámoslo: la Vega está "más buena que el pan."

Hubiera sido agradable haberla invitado a cenar después de haber visto su película… o antes, o incluso si nunca hubiera sabido nada de ella. Pero este no es el punto. El asunto es que la película trata de otra mujer, ella también "más buena que el pan;" una mujer que ha ejercido sobre mí una influencia poderosa. Ella es Teresa de Avila, la mística del siglo XVI, cuyas prosa, poesía y espiritualidad sacudieron lo fríos pórticos de hormigón reforzado que todavía pretenden dizque proteger a la Cristiandad (y cualquier otro artificio masculino-céntrico) de las preguntas demoledoras de una mujer.

"Nada te turbe

nada te espante

todo se pasa..." (Teresa de Avila)

…there goes the beer?

Food riots are breaking out all over the place: Haiti, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Burkina Faso… you name it. Food scarcity is so serious that even steel-hearted people like the World Bank and IMF executives are concerned.

According to Bloomberg’s information services on business and finances, the world prices of cereals over the last 12 months (one year to March 08) have increased in percentages hard to imagine:

• Wheat 130%


• Soya 87%


• Rice 74%


• Corn 31%

(...well, soya is not a cereal, you got me! but it's going up anyway)

What remains unchanged is the overall picture of losers and winners. Just check up the map below. No surprises. Same winners, same losers:

To add insult to injury, a nasty effect of this world wide scenario is being felt in lovely beer-ville. The end prices of suds are going up as well. According to Nora Lacey, of Canada’s ANBL, “a lot of brewery costs have gone up: fuel cost has risen, hops price has gone up, and even the price of glass has changed significantly for some breweries. Those items will affect the price” (http://www.telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/).

It seems that it is about time for us to send some of our key policy makers to the Czech Republic. It is out there where this token of wisdom is found:

“The government will fall that raises the price of beer.”

They’d better follow such warning because at the end, some of us endorse to the Egyptian admonition that goes:

“Do note cease to drink beer, to intoxicate thyself, to make love, and to celebrate the good days.”

Moreover,

Fighting hunger: community kitchens

A community kitchen entails a gathering of people on a regular basis to cook. Community kitchens offer the opportunity to share skills, socialize and reduce costs by purchasing collectively. Kitchens are as diverse in their purpose and organization as the people who participate in them –– some groups only prepare enough food to sit down and eat one meal together. Others prepare several meals in large portions to take home to their families. One group of immigrants may want to get together to cook "foods from home", another may prefer to practice their English or learn new recipes

(Community kitchen, Toronto)

· There are vegetarian kitchens, kitchens for new moms, kitchens that cater primarily to psychiatric consumer/survivors.

· There are no hard and fast rules about how to organize a community kitchen, just a few pointers and guidelines (and a knowledge and love of food helps).

Want an example? Check out: http://www.foodshare.net

(Community kitchen, Pascua, Arizona)

Bogota, Colombia: 9 de abril, 6 decadas atras

(Mensaje sin tildes)

9 de Abril, 1948: es asesinado Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, lider liberal de corte socialista, critico acerrimo de las castas privilegiadas que aun gobiernan el pais.

Este blog le rinde un homenaje a su memoria, y a su legado que se mantiene vigente en las luchas de quienes buscan construir un pais fundamentado en la justicia social y economica.

Mas buena que el pan: Better than bread

Way back at the dawn of the Middle Ages, when those from Castille, in Spain, where heavily borrowing from the Greek, the Latin, the Arabic, the Gothic and who knows how many other languages in order to craft their own, little they knew that one of their most beautiful expressions would make my mouth water this evening.


"Mas bueno que el pan" -better than bread- is an old Spanish clause that is used to speak of the goodness of a person. Back then, bread was made out of wholesome grain, and this coupled with the energy the Castilians from of old invested in their daily activities (that included persecuting Muslims, Jews, and later on killing American natives while raping their mates) meant that bread and goodness went hand in hand.


They still do, in spite of today's anti-carb propaganda. However, when bread and language crossed the pond to plant their tent pegs in the hearts, minds and tongues of the descendants of Spaniards, native Americans, African slaves, and one or two mercenaries coming from other quarters, "bueno" took on a way more exciting nuance: this is not only goodness in the theological sense, but a similar quality in the erotic field.

And here comes a stunning Castilian actress, Paz Vega, whom I just saw in one of her many movies: "Teresa, el cuerpo de Cristo" (Teresa, the Body of Christ). There's no doubt, she is better than bread, "mas buena que el pan."






It'd be nice to take her out to dinner after seeing her flick, or before, or even if I've never heard of her. However this particular movie is about another woman, also "mas buena que el pan," who has been influential in my life for years. She is Teresa de Avila, a 16th century mystic, whose writing, poetry and spirituality shook the foundations of the cold steel panels that still pretend to protect Christendom (or any other male centered arrangement) from the shattering questions of a woman.

No rice, no nice

I grew up loving rice, longing for a spoonful of fluffy, steamy, white rice cooked the tasty way so typical of my mother. I wasn't born in a rice laden country, nor do I have the privilege of having even the slightest drop of oriental blood in my family tree (to my knowledge). But in my culture of origin rice is a delicacy. Most of us back home just cannot make it through the day without rice. Even at breakfast, as warmed up leftovers from the evening meal of the previous day, rice mixed with a local omelette that sees the charm of the eggs enhanced by finely chopped green onions and red tomatoes makes life worth living. You're right. I was brought up as a country boy.

Thus, when I hear that the price of rice is skyrocketing I cannot help but feel alarmed. A cluster of factors are making it more difficult to put rice in billions of bowls:

• Poor harvests resulting from extreme weather
• A rise in demand in some rice-importing countries, where populations and incomes are growing
• The expectation of further price increases - resulting in hoarding
• Low stockpiles and a long term lack of agricultural investment

As it always happens, the poor are already being sorely hit by these developments. Countries that depend on rice aids will see their supplies greatly reduced.

You know the real price of your banana?

The United Fruit Co.

Pablo Neruda

When the trumpet sounded,
it was all prepared on the earth,
and Jehovah parceled out the earth
to Coca-Cola, Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other entities:
The Fruit Company, Inc.
reserved for itself the most succulent,
the central coast of my own land,
the delicate waist of America.
It rechristened its territories
as the “Banana Republics”
and over the sleeping dead,
over the restless heroes
who brought about the greatness,
the liberty and the flags,
it established the comic opera:
abolished the independencies,
presented crowns of Caesar,
unsheathed envy, attracted
the dictatorship of the flies,
Trujillo flies, Tacho flies,
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, damp flies

of modest blood and marmalade,
drunken flies who zoom
over the ordinary graves,
circus flies, wise flies
well trained in tyranny.
Among the bloodthirsty flies
the Fruit Company lands its ships,
taking off the coffee and the fruit;
the treasure of our submerged
territories flows as though
on plates into the ships.
Meanwhile Indians are falling
into the sugared chasms
of the harbors, wrapped
for burial in the mist of the dawn:
a body rolls, a thing
that has no name, a fallen cipher,
a cluster of dead fruit
thrown down on the dump.

La faim dans le monde

Toutes les six secondes, un enfant meurt de faim ou de maladies liées à la malnutrition.

Cada seis segundos muere un nino en el mundo debido al hambre o enfermedades relacionadas con la desnutricion.

Every six seconds a child dies of hunger or food deprivation related illnesses

However...

Avec seulement US 25 cents par jour, on peut fournir un repas scolaire à un enfant (selon le World Food Program)

Solo se necesitan 25 centavos de dolar estadounidense para que un nino o nina en edad escolar disfrute una comida (segun el World Food Program).

I takes only US 25 cents for a school child to have a meal (according to the World Food Program).

http://www.wfp.org

The world is hungry

Food used to power your car, more wallets willing to be depleted in India and China, drug resistant plagues... the world is hungry.

Moins il y a d'argent, moins il y a de nourriture

Les trois piliers de la sécurité alimentaire sont: la disponibilité, l'accessibilité et l'utilisation de la nourriture. Examinons ces trois piliers en action:

Peter Menzel est allé dans 24 pays différents. Il a voulu savoir combien d'argent on a besoin pour nourrir une famille pendant une semaine dans chaque pays.

Menzel a publié les résultats de sa recherche dans son livre "Hungry Planet" et il note l'écart entre les nations riches et pauvres (http://menzelphoto.com/hungryplanet).

Par exemple, en Allemagne une famille de quatre personnes dépense US$500 par semaine pour faire ses courses, tandis qu'un groupe similaire au Tchad peut survivre avec un petit peu moins de US2.00 par semaine.

Quel est le problème?

Est-ce que le Tchad est-il plus fort que l'Allemagne sur le plan de la securité alimentaire?

Jugez-en vous-mêmes...

http://blogsurlaplanete.blogspot.com

Time to go food banking

I read today of a woman (pic) in California who went from making $70K/year to becoming a food bank regular (www.cnn.com/living). She spoke of embarrassment, dispair and depression as she tries to make do with no money, no employment and not a safety net of any nature. A sign of the times, to be sure.

The middle class gang is hit the hardest whenever the economy fluctuates to the worst thanks to the cards that huge corporations are fond of playing from time to time: they start lending money and spending trusting that by the time the ensuing bubble burst, the government will come to bail them out. This game strikes me as funny: big governments are so hated by the corporations and their neo con prophets, but since it's up to governments to regulate public funds (that is, your pocket and mine) they provide the shelter so that big money makers won't lose it all.

The woman in California, ironically a former employee of one of these huge money lenders, cannot find the safety net that perhaps she herself with her votes unwillingly helped to dismantle back in the good old $70K days.

What can a food bank do to restore a person to her or his dignity? Giving away to every person 4 cans of beans, 2 cans of tuna, 2 cans of vegetables, 2 Kraft dinners, 1L of milk, 1 box of cereal, 1 bag of bread, every other week (in the best case scenario) to someone just about to lose his or her house seems like a fitting punishment for being a high risk debtor. However, in a context of crumbling markets and Wall Street inspired panic, a volunteer-managed, community sponsored miniscule food bank is one of the positions that a powerless neigborhood can take in order to confront the excess of big investors, who at the end are the ones profitting from sub prime risk takers.

Having too little?

Having too little renders you poor, right? It might be that there is not enough money to pay the bills, to treat yourself to a balanced diet or to go out partying like crazy every weekend. It hasn't been easy to come with a clearly spelled out list of what makes you poor.

This blog wants to enter into this landmine infested territory. I know... I'm just a couple of two pairs of millennia late, but, hey! I'm not even a century old, and I wasn't even blogging when Jesus Christ reportedly said once: "The poor, they will always be in your midst."

Anyway, here we go. Let me start by mentioning something most of you must be already familiar with. From Ireland comes a recent and quite original definition of poverty. I read it on the Canadian magazine, Macleans (for the whole thing, just click here:

http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20080227_56700_56700&source=srch)

"The Irish government recently unveiled a new official definition of
poverty — what it calls "consistent poverty." Determining exactly who is and
isn't poor involves a two-stage process determined by random household surveys.
To be considered poor you must, first of all, earn less than 60 per cent of the
median income. Then you're measured against a list of 11 standardized
necessities, including: a warm waterproof overcoat, "two pairs of strong shoes,"
meals with meat, chicken or fish (or vegetarian substitute) at least every
second day, "a roast joint or its equivalent once a week," a warm house and the
wherewithal to buy presents for family members once a year, have guests over for
a drink once a month, and a night out every two weeks. Lack any two of the 11
necessities on the list, and you're officially poor. "

I never knew how poor I was! Anyone care for a pint of Guinnes?