Tag Archives: Greed

We must change the way we perceive ourselves.

30 Sunday Nov 2014

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I don’t know if like me you see the urgent need for all of us to recognize our role in the world and the enormity of humanity’s responsibility we all have as stewards of the Earth.

Given humanity’s enormous alteration of the Earth we need our Governments/ Leaders and world organisations to change the way they view the world that we all live in.

What they now call economic “growth” amounts too often to a Great Recession for the web of life we all depend on. 

The need to build a culture that grows with Earth’s biological wealth instead of depleting it is more urgent than ever.

We have as a species a duty to protect it and manage it with love and intelligence. It is beautiful still, and can be even more beautiful, if we work together and care for it rather than what we have today a nightmare facing us all

It’s no longer us against ‘Nature.’ It’s we who decide what nature is what it will be.

I am tired of the well worn rhetorical trick for stirring the fears of people unperturbed by current, relatively modest changes that we are all can see are for the sake of the Financial world.

Imagine our descendants in the year 2200 or 2500. They might liken us to aliens who have treated the Earth as if it were a mere stopover for refueling, or even worse, characterize us as barbarians who would ransack their own home.

The Earth’s history shows that the planet can indeed tip from one state to another.

To underestimate the sheer scale of what is going on (caused by us) is a joke in the extreme.

A long-held religious and philosophical idea — humans as the masters of planet Earth — has turned into a stark reality.

Dam by dam, mine by mine, farm by farm and city by city is remaking the Earth before your eyes.

What are we doing about it?  Let me remind you.

To date while driving uncountable numbers of species to extinction, we create new life forms through gene technology, and, soon, through synthetic biology.

We have acidified the oceans and changed global climate with our use of fossil fuels.

We have bent more than 75 percent of the ice-free land on Earth to our will.

We have built so many dams that half of the world’s river flow is regulated, stored or impeded by human-made structures.

We have transported plants and animals hither and yon as crops and livestock and as accidental stowaway.

We have cut down rain forests, moving mountains to access coal deposits and acidifying coral reefs,

We have fundamentally change the biology and the geology of the planet.

We have infuse huge quantities of synthetic chemicals and persistent waste into Earth’s metabolism. Where wilderness remains, it’s often only because exploitation is still unprofitable.

We have through industry disrupted the key biochemical cycles. For good or ill, it will do yet more.

What we do now already affects the planet of the year 3000 or even 50,000 and I can hear you saying that Humans have been changing ecosystems for millenniums. Ecosystems are not — and have never been — static entities.

However if your definition demands that nature be completely untouched by humans, there is indeed no nature left.

First:

We need to learn to grow in different ways than with our current hyper-consumption.

We need bio-adaptive technologies to render “waste” a thing of the past, among them compostable cars and gadgets.

We need innovations tailored to the needs of the poorest, for example new plant varieties that can withstand climate change and robust iPads packed with practical agricultural advice and market information for small-scale farmers.

Global agriculture must become high-tech and organic at the same time, allowing farms to benefit from the health of natural habitats.

We need to develop technologies to recycle substances like phosphorus, a key element for fertilizers and therefore for food security.

We need to move towards “negative CO2 emissions,” e.g. by using plant residues in power plants with carbon capture and storage technology. In addition to cutting industrial CO2 emissions and protecting forests, large investments will be needed to maintain the huge carbon stocks in fertile soils, currently depleted by exploitative agricultural practices.

After years of stalemate and the infamous Copenhagen collapse, there is now at least a glimmer of hope that humanity can act together.

In Cancún, countries agreed that Earth must not warm more than 2 degrees Celsius above the average temperature level before industrialization. This level is already very risky — it implies higher temperature increases in polar regions and therefore greater chance of thawing in permafrost regions, which could release huge amounts of CO2 and methane.

The problem will not be solved soon enough to avert significant climate change unless the Earth system is a lot less prone to climate change than most scientists think. But that does not mean it will not be solved at all.

(For biodiversity, green remnants in a sea of destruction will not be enough.)

We need to build a “green infrastructure,” where organisms and genes can flow freely over vast areas and maintain biological functions.

We also need to develop geoengineering capabilities in order to be prepared for worst-case scenarios.

We need to stop Conservation management turns wild animals into a new form of pets for TV Documentaries. The impression that nowhere on earth is natural and because the concept of pervasive human-caused change may cultivate hopelessness in those dedicated to conservation and may even be an impetus for accelerated changes in land use motivated by profit. But that does not mean we inhabit an ecological hell.

We need to do far more than just hold back the tide of change and build higher and stronger fences around the Arctic, the Himalayas and the other relatively intact ecosystems.

We need to consider actively moving species at risk of extinction from climate change. We can design ecosystems to maintain wildlife, filter water and sequester carbon.

We need countries worldwide to stop striving to attain the “American Way of Life,” citizens of the West should redefine it.

We need Honesty in politics not the Hippocrates we see to-day.

We need to abolish modern-day slavery, stamp out corruption and poverty  by ensuring all round equality.

We need to fight sprawl and mindless development even as we cherish the exuberant nature that can increasingly be found in our own cities, from native gardens to green roofs.

We need to pioneer a modest, renewable, mindful, and less material lifestyles.

We need to cut the consumption of industrially produced meat and changing from private vehicles to public transport.

We need to replace the wasteful fossil-fueled infrastructure of today with a system fueled by solar energy in its many forms, from artificial photosynthesis to fusion energy. Our troubles will deepen exponentially if we fail.

We need to build a world culture that grows with Earth’s biological wealth instead of depleting it.  Remember, in this new era, nature is us.

We need to far surpass our current investments in science and technology.

We need to cap Greed by introducing a world aid commission of 0.05% on all High frequency trading, Sovereign wealth funds and foreign exchange transactions over $20.000$. ( See previous posts)

Finally, we need to adapt our culture to sustaining what can be called the “world organism.”

Human population will approach ten billion within the century. Between now and 2020, however, the commitments on paper must be turned into real action.

To prevent conflicts over resources and to progress towards a durable “bio-economy” will require a collaborative mission that dwarfs the Apollo program. We must invest at least as much in understanding, managing, and restoring our “green security system” — the intricate network of climate, soil, and biodiversity.

Global military expenditure reached 1,531 billion U.S. dollars in 2009, an increase of 49 percent compared to 2000.

The Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed. Gandhi pointed out that To accommodate the Western lifestyle for 9 billion people, we’d need several other planets.

On a planetary scale, intelligence is something genuinely new and powerful from which the planet, and its people, cannot simply revert to the status quo. Our management and care of natural places and the millions of other species with which we share the planet could and should be improved.

We humans are becoming the dominant force for change on Earth. — This phrase was not coined by an esoteric Gaia guru, but by eminent German scientist Alexander von Humboldt some 200 years ago. Humboldt wanted us to see how deeply interlinked our lives are with the richness of nature, hoping that we would grow our capacities as a part of this world organism, not at its cost.

His message suggests we should shift our mission from crusade to management, so we can steer nature’s course symbiotically instead of enslaving the formerly natural world.

So the Question is can man create Institutions to save him from the dark forces of his own nature and from the overwhelming consequences of high technological successes.

In this disturbed world, there is nothing left that has not being touched by man who still does not have a clue how to manage the planet.Man-vs-machine.jpg

There you have it. What do you think? Don’t be shy lets have your comments, or contributions.

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http://preview.discovery.com/tv-shows/klondike/videos/man-vs-nature/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We don’t live in a digital world – the washing machine has changed lives more than the internet.

23 Sunday Nov 2014

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We do however live in a Capitalist World.

Capitalism is woven into nearly every aspect of our lives, yet it’s rarely subject to substantive conversation.

If we’re to move forward as a society, capitalism needs to be up for serious discussion, honest evaluation and, ultimately, systemic change. Capitalism is often discussed—even dismantled—in academia, but not in terms that make sense to non-specialists.

If there is a problem with capitalism, it is with the greedy few who occasionally foul up the system for the rest of us. The 85 richest people in the world hold as much wealth as today’s “other half”—3.5 billion of the world’s 7 billion humans. Who thinks that’s a fair system? How can it be acceptable that anyone, let alone 2.4 billion people, lives on less than $2 a day?

With more free time, we could build a more robust democracy by engaging with the political issues that affect our lives and organizing more participatory structures to make decisions in our communities. If there’s anything threatening to capitalism, it’s that!

It’s convenient for capitalists to have everyone else thinking they don’t work hard enough and that any ill fortune is their own fault.

How well can capitalism be working when so many say it doesn’t? Capitalism can’t work for everyone. If it did, it wouldn’t be capitalism.”why do we settle for a system that fails so many?

So here is a hypothetical question.

If you were asked to explain Capitalism to an individual who had never experienced or heard of Capitalism what would you say it is.

Here are a few Quotes to get you started then have a look below at what I think.

Gustave Flaubert

“As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.” ― Gustave Flaubert

Carl Sagan

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of thebamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. Thebamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Edward Abbey

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” ― Edward Abbey, The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West

Michael Parenti

“The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.” ― Michael Parenti,  Against Empire

Napoleon

“The hand that gives is among the hand that takes. Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.” ― Napoleon

George Carlin

“Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.” ― George Carlin

Gustave Flaubert

“As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.” ― Gustave Flaubert

Philip Slater

“Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.” ― Philip Slater

Russell Brand

“Perhaps if we could popularise through the techniques of branding and consumerism, a different idea, a different narrative, perhaps the world can change. After all it changes constantly and incessantly, it’s just the perceptions that we have are governed by people with self-interest and are not in alignment with the health and safety of us as individuals or as a planet.” ― Russell Brand

Jonathan Sacks

“To whom is an international corporation answerable? Often they do not employ workers. They outsource manufacturing to places far away. If wages rise in one place, they can, almost instantly, transfer production to somewhere else. If a tax regime in one country becomes burdensome, they can relocate to another. To whom, then, are they accountable? By whom are they controllable? For whom are they responsible? To which group of people other than shareholders do they owe loyalty? The extreme mobility, not only of capital but also of manufacturing and servicing, is in danger of creating institutions that have power without responsibility, as well as a social class, the global elite, that has no organic connection with any group except itself.” ― Jonathan Sacks

Daniel Pinchbeck

“The capitalist mind perceives the world purely in terms of material resources to be used for its benefit, to increase productivity and profit without thought of long-term consequence. If there is still a vague and oppressive sense of guilt, of wrongness and imbalance, this gnawing guilt spurs capitalism on to greater acts of consumption, more …  more violent attempts to subjugate nature, more totalizing efforts to create distractions. To the “rational materialist” mind, death is the end of everything; this thought feeds its rage against nature, which has placed it in this position of despair.” ― Daniel Pinchbeck

Barry Unsworth

“Money is sacred as everyone knows… So then must be the hunger for it and the means we use to obtain it. Once a man is in debt he becomes a flesh and blood form of money, a walking investment. You can do what you like with him, you can work him to death or you can sell him. This cannot be called cruelty or greed because we are seeking only to recover our investment and that is a sacred duty.” ― Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger

Chris Hedges

“Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.” ― Chris Hedges, The Death of the Liberal Class

My Thoughts:

In fact, the term capitalist, is a remnant of sloppy, hysterical, anti-commerce, 19th Century thinking that survives to this day.

I guess it all depends on what kind of capitalism we are talking about and the problem with capitalism is that it is rarely practiced in its entirely.

You might say it is a rat race for the worker who must live a life in which there is a real possibility that changes in consumer demand or in technology will eliminate his/her livelihood and in which his/her ability to find a new job is conditioned by his/her “ability to compete”.

There is not a single day that passes that I don’t hear some complaint about the state of capitalism. “What is wrong with capitalism today?” is dependent on who you ask.

Modern market capitalism has shifted recently with the emerging supremacy of money markets and the financial system over the actual trade of goods. The new capitalism” is based on mathematics rather than trade and its currently practiced is simply not sustainable.

We do not have global organizations capable of managing these tension points nor are societies willing to curb growth and consumerism.

Under capitalism insensitivity to human needs has developed. One of the fundamental faults of capitalism is the basic axiom that if everybody tries to accumulate as much property/money as possible the general interest of the people will be served.

For years now I have watched the gradual drift in the minds of the average person from an understanding of our political economic reality and the need for corrective actions.

The reality is fear and greed are part of the human condition and Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

The mass media is becoming more and more an opiate, an aid for living the unexamined life.

The current world tensions are a result of a struggle for spheres of influence and trade—the socialist markets are essential not open to trade from capitalist countries.

So if I were to explain to days Capitalism I would tempted to say that the essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many.

But no economic order to date has so obviously displayed such an enormous productive capacity as has capitalism.  However whether it aids the poor in escaping their poverty or abets the forces that perpetrate that poverty is still to be seen as Capitalism is inherently exploitative in that it forces people to be “competitive” rather than “cooperative”.

As long as Capitalism exists, there will always be people who will be rich and those that are too poor. One longs for a kind of economic “peaceable kingdom”; such cannot exist under an economic system in which competition plays such a large role as it does in capitalism. For the most part, capitalism can be viewed as complex system based on inequality and monopoly.

In a true Capitalist market economy, we would not price fix, bail out banks, give subsidies, etc.

Peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

In what they call the third world we have glittering mansion overlooking a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force. Let nothing interfere with economic growth, even though that growth is castrating truth, poisoning beauty, turning a continent into a shit-heap and riving an entire civilization insane.

The hand that gives is among the hand that takes.

Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.

Our political problems have deepened with the demise of unions as an effective political force, the continued growth in the belief in the desirability of pyramid economics and class structure (which has been sold by a media controlled by those at the top of the pyramid), and the dependence of our two-party system upon those at the top of the pyramid for funds to cover their election expenses.
Here’s no such thing as a ‘free’ market.
Globalisation isn’t making the world richer.
Poor countries are more entrepreneurial than rich ones.

Higher paid managers don’t produce better results.

We are quickly reaching the tipping point where growth in GDP in any particular country comes at the expense of growth in GDP of another.

What would replace it (capitalism)?

It’s too late to replaced it by any other system and extremely difficult to prompt any-other system but not too late to rectify its glaring weaknesses.

It’s not to late to suggest/generate ideas to create a better society where everybody is properly fed, clothed, and housed; where everyone worked and received a fair return for their work with none receiving too much; where intellectual development for all is encouraged; where businesses are the servant to man; where the production of war materials end; where the ending of all exploitation, including one region by another or one class by another; where and the ending of a press which is controlled by those who make up the ruling class.

To find the world that could exist after capitalism, we must look to the worlds already being created in the countless cracks of capitalist domination.

Switzerland is to debate the introduction of a living income for all its citizen’s rather than a living wage and social welfare. Perhaps the first step in the right direction. In the meantime Capitalism is still alive and well.

All we can do is to keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us.

Today’s economy profitability is important, but there are also a plethora of external and internal factors involved which determine the type of model that exists today.

(See Previous Posts. Create a World Aid Fund by capping Greed/profit with a Commission of 0.05%)

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The illusory market.

14 Friday Nov 2014

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I have just realized that I have been rattling on about High Frequency Trading ( HFT) without justifying why they should be subject to a World Aid Commission of 0.05%.

I have and still do advocate that the vast accumulation of wealth and political power” that is currently undermining democracy in the west must be caped in order to contribute to the world as a whole and not just the rich.(See previous Postings on Sovereignty Wealth Funds, Foreign Exchange Transactions and High Frequency Trading.)

The stock market has become a virtual space – an interactive, computer-driven system of staggering complexity. An Illusory Market. In many ways we’ve all become vassals again.

Why do I call it an Illusory market. Because the market that the investor sees when he looks at his monitor, is anywhere from 1,500 to 900 milliseconds old. That doesn’t sound like much, because the blink of an eye is 300ms. But that’s a long, long time in the world of HFT. 

HFT have been around as long as computer systems have been in our lives.

As computers get more technically advanced, trading practices have increased in size and algorithms have become more sophisticated. The trades are done at close to the speed of light. Remarkably, HFT firms have moved their server farms near an exchange computer to further increase trading speeds.

High Frequency Trading (HFT) involves the execution of complicated, algorithmic-based trades by powerful computers.

The objective of HFT is to take advantage of minute discrepancies in prices and trade on them quickly and in huge quantities. Algorithms trade on price movements past a certain threshold, corporate actions, price ceilings, price floors, and discrepancies in bid/ask spreads. The trades are executed without any human action except for initial programming.

In most cases, the trades are executed before individual investors know the quotes of prices, or that the trades happened at all.  For instance, a computer recognizes when one exchange quotes an ask price of one cent more than the quote on another exchange. This computer then trades in extraordinarily large volumes on this information, taking advantage of the arbitrage opportunity in a split second. Before individual and other investors who do not possess the same sophisticated technology realize, the one-cent spread between the two exchanges is erased and the stock price trades at the same level. There are entire hedge funds devoted to this strategy.

Managers pool capital based on a proven computer technology and allow the program work for them. In addition, large trading shops incorporate these HFT strategies as part of their overall practice. Such large volumes of HFT trades are being executed that most of the liquidity in daily trading is a result of these trades. By some estimates, HFT makes up 60 to 70% of all trades done in the US on a daily basis and 40 percent in European markets.. Other estimates project that if these strategies keep proliferating at their current rate, 80% of trades will be HFT trades by 2015.

It would be naive of me to think that we could stop using HFT purely for morality’s sake. When large amounts of money stand to be made any Morality goes out the door.

When an algorithm is processing information, this last one doesn’t consider if its actions will have consequences for third parties; the only target is to make money, it is totally irrelevant as what is happening around. Whether it is fleecing the public – the ordinary savers and workers with pensions is the least of its worries.

It is Greed personified.

 

High Frequency Trading Profitability Potential
Trading Frequency Average Maximum Gain per period Range Standard Deviation per Period Number of Observations in the Sample Period Maximum Annualized Sharpe Ratio*
10 Seconds 0.04% 0.01% 2,592,000 5,879.80
1 Minute 0.06% 0.02% 43,200 1,860.10
10 Minutes 0.12% 0.09% 4,320 246.40
1 Hour 0.30% 0.19% 720 122.13
1 Day 1.79% 0.76% 30 37.30
*The Sharpe ratio is also called the Reward-to-Variability Ratio.  It measures the excess return per unit of risk.

The above chart shows the potential for higher returns exists based on the strategy alone.  In fact, the Sharpe ratio is over 200% higher for the 10 second trading frequency than for the 1 minute frequency.

Perhaps it is naive to believe that morality should even come into it.

O! by the way when you are bidding on those Internet Auctions site you are up against bid sniper software, which is placing bids on items milliseconds before auctions ended.

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When Money Talks.

26 Sunday Oct 2014

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There can never be power, of a political or economic nature, without responsibility.

WHILE OUR WORLD LEADERS AND OUR WORLD ORGANISATIONS ARE PREOCCUPIED WITH GROWING THE ECONOMY TO THE DETRIMENT OF OUR PLANET AND EQUALITY THE POWER OF MONEY HAS ANOTHER ALLIE SOVEREIGNTY WEALTH FUNDS.

When Money Talks, undue financial power is affecting their policies.

We are all abhorred by the rise of ISIS, the pending disaster of Climate Change, the spread of Ebola and the current conflicts in the world but if we are not vigilant we are all going to end up living in a Privatized World – Called World Corporate Inc.

I think that where ever there is money there is power.  A critical point that we are all ignoring at our peril.  This is why it’s necessary to put the lime light once more on Sovereign Wealth Funds. ( See Previous Posts)

Now I don’t believe sovereign wealth funds will tilt the balance of power in the near future. However someone must put them in their proper context, because the forces that give rise to sovereign wealth funds are in fact already beginning to influence the balance of power in a global.

With all that is going on in the world you might think that this is a storm in a tea-cup, but Inequity and Greed are the two elements that contribute the most to the Worlds problems.

At the moment there is SWFS designed to affect trans-generational wealth transfers, and those designed to enable economic stability as a result of changes in global production forces, are resource-based funds designed to transform physical wealth into financial wealth.

Historically, political power was created by military power.

Now the question is, instead of armaments, if I’m bringing investable dollars, does that actually play the role that nuclear warheads used to play in an earlier geopolitical era?

Global economic forces are tilting or, as I like to say, reorienting – and the pun is absolutely intended – the balance of power.

What we are seeing is a conscious effort to leverage shifts in capital flows and momentum for economic development into a degree of political power globally, whether they are in the form of blocks or even as individual entities.

The immensity of these foreign exchange reserves exceeds the typical buffer that a country requires, thereby enabling these rich states to make strategic foreign investments buying critical foreign assets, resources, energy, land, air and water.

The top 400 of these “global public investors” hold about $29 trillion in assets—equal to about 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product.

State sovereign wealth funds from China to Africa are reshaping the global economy and at their current growth rate will surpass current U.S. economic output by 2015.

By 2016, analyst group Global Insight said the funds, which grew 24 percent a year in the last three years, would outstrip the current output of the European Union.

The Lethargy of our Political leaders is allowing Sovereign wealth funds (being non-transparent) to invest globally for political or strategic purposes. They are supported them by pushing Privatizations of public assets.

Example: The New proposed Nuclear Plant in the UK to be built by the EDF is 40% financed by a Chines SWF against guaranteed. EDF will receive a guaranteed power price of 92.50 pounds per megawatt-hour for 35 years, more than twice the current market rate, once the plant begins operations in 2023. The Hinkley Point C project has been agreed between the UK Government and French company EDF Energy and its two Chinese partners – China National Nuclear Corporation and China General Nuclear Power Corporation. The decision could lead to China taking a future majority stake – and even be allowed to own up to 100 pc – in the development of the next generation of British nuclear power. And England wants out of the EEC. Immigration comes in many forms. If your English have a look at what else SWFs own in your back yard you will be surprised.

The lack any enforcement mechanism to monitor these funds is lunacy. In spite of the fact they have been around for years, so much remains to be understood about their processes and activities. Companies should consider contractual provisions requiring disclosure of the SWF’s policy purposes, governance framework, financial statements, general voting approaches for risk management and legal relationship with other state bodies.

We should be concern that as government-operated investment funds, politically captured, used to distribute patronage and undermined by corruption the ongoing transformation in the global balance of power over the past and the future decades is going to end up

Accepting money from an SWF comes with some risk—at least on the surface.

THE current shift of financial power from multi-national organisations such as the World Bank to be used to effect none-financial outcomes.

China:  Never in world history has one government had so much control over so much wealth. China’s overall trade surplus has enabled it to run up the world’s largest current account surplus (US$213.8 billion) and amass foreign exchange reserves of US$3.3 trillion. China holds one-fifth of all foreign-owned US Treasury securities.

Norway : Commonly known as the oil fund, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund invests the revenues from the offshore petroleum sector in foreign shares, bonds and properties in order to spread the wealth across generations.

The fund’s value could hit almost 6 trillion Norwegian crowns ($973 billion) by the end of the year.

With economic power comes political power. The motives of SWFs will be guided by the interests of the state rather than those of international business community.

You might wonder why we never hear much discussion by our world economic gurus on SWFS. Acquiring that information is difficult, however, since hugely rich entities mostly accountable only to their national governments. You tell me.

SWFs are well known for their opaque, tightly-guarded investment decisions.

They all have one thing in common they will ensure that the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.

AUSTRIA/

 

 

 

 

 

Are we now just beginning to reap the dark side of the Industrial Revolution

17 Friday Oct 2014

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The Historiography of the first World War bear witness to destruction and death made possible by the Industrial revolution.

The present day turmoil that we see in the world has its roots created by man during this period.

So has the Industrial Revolution improved life or not? Is the world a better place? A safer place? Do most people have more material wealth than they did two centuries ago? Are we healthier? Are we happier? Is the world more socially and economically just? Is the world headed in the right direction?

It’s not possible to answer all these questions without an in-depth examination of the Industrial Revolution and its effects. There is no definitive answer, other than in short, we cannot hope to understand the modern world without understanding the Industrial Revolution as it resulted in the most profound, far-reaching changes in the history of humanity.

Perhaps it is adequate to say that its influence continues to sweep through our lives today. Just look at the last 250 years of industrialization.

It has altered our lives more than any event or development in the past 12,000 years: in where we live, how we work, what we wear, what we eat, what we do for fun, how we are educated, how long we live and how many children we have.

It greatest failure is that it has not spread wealth evenly across the globe, and the consequences have often been unjust.

For example, to-day in developing countries, where 85% of people in the world live, 16,000 children die each day from hunger-related causes—that’s one child every five seconds.

It did provided the countries that first adopted it with the technological and economic advantages necessary to eventually rule most of the world. In short, the Industrial Revolution is the “game changer” of modern world history. More than anything else, it’s what makes the modern world, well, “modern.”

But how has it come about that 10% of the world’s wealthiest people controlled 85% of the world’s wealth? Mostly because they were born into wealth that was made during the Industrial revolution.

So what exactly is the Industrial Revolution?

An Industrial Revolution at its core occurs when a society shifts from using tools to make products to using new sources of energy, such as coal, to power machines in factories, oil, electricity. nuclear power.

It began at the end of the 18th century, but it has yet to end.

It has transformed into much more complex global phenomena recently. Multi-national corporations design, build, and assemble products using resources and labor from around the world.

Proponents of the benefits of industrialization point to amazing inventions, technological advances, and increased global wealth. Global GDP per capita—the most common measurement of national wealth—has increased 800% over the past 200 years.

I would say to them that it also developed into a global economic system that seems exploitative and unsustainable, fueling unbridled capitalism that has led to exploitation of the weakest and most vulnerable on a global scale.

Giving Birth to multinational corporations that owe their loyalty not to any nation but to the profit motive.

So what happens in a country when free-market capitalism has no constraints.

The record of the last five thousand years of history clearly suggests that every single preceding civilization has perished, no matter where or how long it has been able to flourish, as a result of its sustained assault on the environment, usually ending in soil loss, flooding, and starvation, and a successive distension of all social strata, usually ending in rebellion, warfare, and dissolution.

They all seem unable to appreciate scale or limits, and in their growth and turgidity were unable maintain balance within or without.

Our Industrial civilization is no different only in that it is now much larger and more powerful than any known before, by geometric differences in all dimensions, and its collapse will be far more extensive and thorough going, far more calamitous.

We are now in the technology age and you might say that The Industrial age is water under the bridge.

No matter how you look at it we are staring down the barrel of a gun with many different bullets. Climate change,  Killer virus, World conflicts due to unadulterated Greed/ Rampant Inequality, Technology deserts and disfunctional non resourced World Organisations.

While demand for depleting resources are skyrocketing ,water, clear air and energy. By any biological gauge we moving beyond sustainability.

So is it time to abandon the concept of sustainability? altogether, or can we find an accurate way to measure it.  If so, how can we achieve it? And if not, how can we best prepare for the coming ecological decline?

The most important resources that drive current industrialization are finite. If billions of people replicate the same level of consumption, they will hasten? ecological and economical disaster.

So who or what will keep us from creating pollution or exploiting weak, desperate countries?

Who will stop global resource depletion?

Is there any point to the Technology Revolution, other than brain work instead of muscle work, if history is only going to repeating itself.

Now you don’t have to be a raw prawn to know that most of our all-powerful politicians and world organisations live in what I call a reactivate state.

By the time they have called a conference and blabbered on for days it’s too late. Now many times have you witnessed the pathetic sight of the UN and its world Organisations pleading for funds, equipment. Just look at the current Ebola outbreak. Growing the economy at all costs and keeping Wall Street happy seems to be their solution to all or woes.

Here are a few things that could be done.

Restore meaning to sustainability as more than just a marketing tool.

Share knowledge, share capital, and investments around the world.

Remove the Veto in the United nations and give all nations an equal standing.

Remove Carbon Credits. Set trading admission penalties for pollution.

And Make Greed contribute by,

Place a world Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over £20,000, and Foreign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. This would create a perpetual fund removing the need to beg for funds every time there is a disaster. The funds could replace the World bank, the IMF, Save the Children, fund Conservation, and make enormous inroads into Inequality the scourge of our Technology Age.

For me there has be a greater willingness by our politicians to question conventional measures of economic growth in favor of more sustainable models with a greater emphasis on well-being.

Before you bombard me with all the good things the have come out of the Industrial Revolution I refer you to the title of this post.

Yes we would not have the Internet, Landed on the moon, developed drugs, and invented this and that, but there is no point in relying on all the answers coming from Google than experiencing it in reality.

IF WE DON’T WANT THE LEGACY of the Industrial Revolution to be a divided world due to Inequality we must conquer Greed by harnessing it to contribute to all or there will be nothing left to be greedy about.

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The universe can only be observed through a brain.

15 Monday Sep 2014

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Have you got one ?

You would be right to say that we are all endow with one, but fuck me, just look around the World at the moment and you would be lead to believe that we are all using some prototypes.

It is a no Brainer when it comes to understanding what the future will holds if we don’t cop on to ourselves soon.

Worldwide, some 827.6 million people live in urban slums.

By 2020, it is estimated the world slum population will reach almost 1 billion.

About 50 percent of the world’s population now live in urban areas. Every day millions of people world-wide call our streets their home.

Lack of clean water and sanitation claim the lives of more than 1.8 million young children every year.

In the United States, 48.5 million people are living in poverty. One third of Londoners using Food banks.

A child dies of poverty in the world every minute.

Now while I appreciate that with seven billion human beings in the world, it generate’s diverse problems in different social areas and that the entirety of the human populous does not express the same comprehension of morals. It is beyond me that we are all in the process of building a world worse than hell.

We might be perplexed and disoriented by the Higgs boson

and a life in the shadows of science and technology.

But let’s face the facts. If asked, 99.9% of us could not give a dogs bollix whether the Higgs boson matters or not.  An Inconvenient Truth.

At the current rate of births in fifty years ( most of you will be still living) there will be around 12 billion people. Hopefully Five billion more with brains asking where was our common sense and compassion when it was needed.

You think, humans are capable of heart-breaking compassion and, on rare occasion, will sacrifice their own sense of self to reach out to another in a time of need..selfish genes, tried to eliminate the “soul” from our professional vocabularies.

The mundaneness of our daily lives cause us take our existence for granted — but every once in a while we’re cajoled out of that complacency and enter into a profound state of existential awareness.

The media influences the public by broadcasting starving children, misrepresenting poverty showing us only the worst cases of poverty that have led to the formation of the “haves” and “have-nots”. “Those poor people! I need to call and donate.” Reluctantly, you never pick up the phone to pledge your money.

Instead we have come to accept that we are entering a world where all truth is relative. Where power struggles are assassins with an insatiable appetite for destruction, where beggar thy neighbor banking, misery merchants ruin lives for the sake of profit, where inequalities are creating terrorist groups such as ISIS, NATO, where greed is king, where making sense of humanity is a measure of madness.

So how do we find meaning? through experiential values, that is, by experiencing something – or someone – we value. To choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Just look at Kashmir if you don’t believe what I am saying. 76000 people displaced by recent  flooding, 13 year after 9/11, 50 years after partition, thousands disappeared, mass graves, a scar on the conscious of Humanity.

Are we all insane?

Our world right now is being shaped by water not by the like of ISIS, not by ethnic or religious differences, not be the Higgs Boson, or anything else.

Game, set match is coming.

By not tackling Climate change, Inequality, and unadulterated greed, which those with brains are crying out to do so the coming Tragedy is our home Earth not the observable universe.( see previous postings)

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LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION THAT WE SHOULD ALL BE ASKING ?

14 Thursday Aug 2014

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Where do the problems of modern existence lie?

WHEN YOU LOOK AROUND THE WORLD CAN ANY OF US HONESTLY SAY WE HAVE WON THE BATTLE FOR LIBERTY ?

It seemed to me that these days the enemies of our collective flourishing are more likely to lie in the troubles of unrestrained corporate and individual appetites and the unlimited pressure to generate immediate profit without regard for human and earthly costs.

Another words the fundamental problem facing us all is Inequality of Education, Health, Wealth, combined with unequal control over assets. These include natural resources such as land, water, minerals and other fruits of nature, as well as produced productive and financial assets.

Things have reached such a pass that incremental measures are not likely to be enough: “trans-formative changes” are required, with the ultimate aim of zero discrimination.

So measures to reduce inequality have to be part of a wider economic and social policy framework to control financial activity and direct it towards socially desired goals. ( These include natural resources such as land, water, minerals and other fruits of nature, as well as produced productive and financial assets.)

Even business leaders in Davos recently identified Inequality as one of the biggest threats to the world.

But what have we got?  Sovereignty Wealth Funds buying up the lot.

For hundreds of years now, humans have tended to believe that the best sort of government is one which leaves its citizens maximally ‘free’.

We’ve all come to associate good government directly and complicatedly with the promotion of ‘freedom’: freedom to worship as one pleases, to publish what one wants, to dress as one likes, to love whomever one desires.

In the meantime, those who have opposed ‘freedom’ have been presented in horrifying terms: They have been the wicked priests, the murderous Communists, demented Nazis, and Terrorists.

The painful fact is that the pursuit of what matters to us in the long-term and collectively may at times be in sharp conflict with our short-term and individual pleasures.

Promoting freedom above all other values may now be turning out to be deeply unhelpful to the long-term and collective interests of a nation and the earth as a whole.

It has grown too easy for corrupt and venal organisations to operate under the banner of ‘freedom’ in order to get away with activities that covertly run sharply counter to the public good.

Freedom is evidently not a virtue when it involves the freedom of bankers to offload ruinous financial instruments on an uneducated public, just as censorship – that bogeyman of contemporary politics – is evidently far from a vice when it prevents corporations from pushing alcohol on children or denying affordable housing to the poor.

Freedom is not a baseless word, but it is in general simply too vague, ambiguous and emotive a term to guide policy or to be an ideal around which a nation or people can reasonably cohere.

Instead of being in favor of ever falling prices for consumer goods, government should promote the notion of a just price, a floor for prices reflecting the cost of humane and decent employment and production. To get all of us into the habit of paying the just price: a price that would allow high quality goods attuned to genuine needs to be put together by workers employed at an adequate wage.

Government is the institutionalization of our long-term and collective interests. It is not ultimately responsible just for freedom, but its highest calling is to act as the guardian of long-term collective prosperity of all its citizens.

The governments of the future will have to accept that two idiots cannot remove one genius. They will have to measured and in skillful ways constantly step in to say ‘no’ to certain vested interests, without this in any way meaning that it is systematically anti-capitalist.

So what am I saying here?

Although we bridle at folk memories of police states Governments of the future with greater intelligence and democratic accountability will have to often be interested in restricting freedom.

Freedom = good/restriction = bad, has blinded us to a vital nuance with a grave potential to derail and corrupt public life:

An others words there will have to be a more important and ambitious view of what government is for than merely freedom. We are all threatened by aggressive and uncontrolled commercial interests determined to quash our peace of mind and confuse us about our real needs and we’ve overlooked that there are better and worse kinds of freedom.

The first step in the right direction is to cap Greed. ( See Previous Postings)

 

 

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There are no military solutions to ‘environmental insecurity’.

07 Monday Jul 2014

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earth from space wallpaper hd 1024x576 Earth from space wallpaper hd

In the middle of the 20th century, we saw our planet from space for the first time.

From space, we see a small and fragile ball.

Over the course of this century, the relationship between the human world and the planet that sustains it has undergone a profound change.

The traditional forms of national sovereignty raise particular problems in managing the ‘global commons’ and their shared ecosystems – the oceans, outer space, and Antarctica. Many such changes are accompanied by life-threatening hazards.

Our Common Future, does not have to be a prediction of ever-increasing environmental decay, poverty, and hardship in an ever more polluted world among ever decreasing resources but the time has come to take the decisions needed to secure the resources to sustain this and coming generations.

 

This new reality, from which there is no escape, must be recognized – and managed.

There are more hungry people in the world than ever before, and their numbers are increasing. So are the numbers who cannot read or write, the numbers without safe water or safe and sound homes, and the numbers short of wood fuel with which to cook and warm themselves. It is impossible to separate economic development issues from environment issues; many forms of development erode the environmental resources upon which they must be based, and environmental degradation can undermine economic development.

Poverty is a major cause and effect of global environmental problems.

The gap between rich and poor nations is widening – not shrinking – and there is little prospect, given present trends and institutional arrangements, that this process will be reversed.

Humanity’s inability to fit its activities.

There is a growing scientific consensus that species are disappearing at rates never before witnessed on the planet, although there is also controversy over those rates and the risks they entail. Yet there is still time to halt this process

The changes in human attitudes that we call for depend on a vast campaign of education, debate, and public participation. A new international programme for cooperation among largely non-governmental organizations, scientific bodies, and industry groups should therefore be established for this purpose.

By the turn of the century, almost half of humanity will live in cities; the world of the 21st century will be a largely urban world. A safe and sustainable energy pathway is crucial to sustainable development; we have not yet found it

The world manufactures seven times more goods today than it did as recently as 1950. There is only one solution. CAP GREED AT SOURCE.( See previous blogs)

JUST LOOK WHAT COULD BE ACHIEVED IF WE RE-FOCUS GREED TO MAKE A CONTRIBUTION TO THE WORLD

17 Saturday May 2014

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There is (or now it might be better to say there has always been) an ill-conceived policy ( promoted only by the rich) that if you put in place policies that help the wealth to become wealthier it will somehow benefit us all.

Down throughout THE AGES this has proven to be a fraud.

However Conventional rich or power wisdom’s seldom, collapse on their own.

They collapse only when challenged by advocates for change that trust forward initiatives that expose the bankruptcy of the conventionally wise.

The world needs NOW MORE THAN EVER to re- focus greed that is holding a lock-grip over our economies and democracies.

Just think what could be achieved with a 0.0O5%  UP TO 0.5% WORLD AID COMMISSION IF APPLIED TO ALL STOCK EXCHANGE TRANSACTIONS IN THE WORLD.

Every day trillions of dollars change hands in currency exchange, share dealings and more complex financial
products like futures, derivatives and so on.

The market in these transactions has exploded over recent years and all the transactions together constitute an amazing 75 times global GDP.

Often, the trading is done by computers which react to small shifts in price, and money, shares and exotic financial products change hands many times an hour, all over the world. Most of the trading is speculative and serves little useful purpose –indeed it can harm companies, livelihoods and even whole national economies, as the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s did.

Such a tiny commission (0.005% to 0.5%) on each of the millions of financial transactions that take place every day would provide a new source of finance to pay for a range of desperately needed changes to our world of inequalities.

It would change the very face of capitalist Democracy.

Helping to deliver the Millennium Development Goals and tackling the challenge of climate change.

It would be far more progressive than other tax rises as it would ensure that those with the broadest shoulders contribute most to the cost of the economic recovery.

It would be easier to collect because all the financial transactions to be taxed are conducted
or registered electronically. A minor change to computer programs would deduct the commission at source and direct it straight to the Fund. This has been tested by supportive financial institutions, and already operates in many share transactions.

It would enable the establishment of Rapid Aid Centers around the world in case of Natural Disasters. Fully funded, fully equipped, fully maned, able react at the drop of a hat.

The daily volume of business deals on the Foreign exchange markets in 1998 was estimated to be over $2.5 trillion dollars. Now it well above $5 trillion. This is just Foreign Exchange.

Small currency transactions could be exempted from taxation (and at 0.005%, you’d pay £1 on every £20,000
you changed – some holiday money!

Add on small share transactions, although they’re already taxed at 0.5% – and pension funds would pay the tax, but they tend to hold shares for many years:

The people who would really pay the commission would be speculators like hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and merchant banks who buy and sell shares every hour.

Just Imagine.  

How could this be achieved, who would managed the fund, how would we ensure transparency, avoid corruption, and political manipulation etc, I will address in my next blog.

It is my firm belief that this initiative is the only viable solution to present day world problems. If you agree or have some useful observations or comments let’s hear them.