The Path of Totality: Part 1 Transfiguration
jbm
The Lost Children
At the end of harrowing journeys the children arrive at border stations. Forever marked by their exile from homelands and the travails of crossing; parched tongues nudge blistered lips to form fractured words from cotton lined mouths, “Yo tengo sed.”
INS border guards oblige the request with a plastic milkjug half filled with water and a welcomed sanctuary of incarceration. Other citizens meet the refugees with cocked Bushmasters and dogeared bibles righteously proclaiming the sanctity of property rights, taxation risk and exclusionary platitudes affirming legalisms of citizenship.
The Latin American children seeking refuge in the United States is the emblematic problem of our time. Images of frightened, emaciated children crammed like cattle into detention camps transcends the metaphorical symbolism of this lost generation. The children amassing at the borders are the disenfranchised victims of globalization. Severed from family, exiled from homelands these stateless souls roam existential netherworld’s in search of humane sanctuaries; only to find at journeys end the embrace of resent and acrimonious shelters optimized to efficiently consign distressed commodities to the discount bins of humanity.
Their arrival and the political response of our present day Know Nothings mocks notions of morality and how a civilized nation marks civility. Escaping the mean estates of a predatory economic system, suffering the chattel like abuse from rapacious coyotes and the burning hardships of the water less Sierra Madre crowned deserts; the world’s debilitated children have come home to roost. Arriving on the doorstep of the world’s neocolonialist powers begging for meager portions of subsistence gobbled up by the cool facility of imperial gluttony.
In our flat world, complaining about taxes being consumed by immigrants is a disingenuous cover for the social instability global resource capture has wrought on the developing world. Taxes are being consumed by corporate welfare (generous tax credits), crony capitalism (See Chris Christie) , wasteful war expenditures (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) and tax avoidance by the money class. All enablers of a predatory economic system.
The large corporations routinely leverage the “free social capital” of the developed world. Deployed to lesser developed countries (LDC) it extracts huge amounts of surplus value from LDC.
These massive capital infusions transforms subsistence economies, radically altering local industries and agrarian based institutions. The windfall profits however, never seem to make it back to its homeland except in the form of a soaring stock price on home based exchanges. Profits leave LDC like a royal progeny and find luxurious sanctuary in tax friendly offshore banks.
Today huge swaths of the world population are refugees. All capital seeks optimal return. Human’s are no different as they move across artificial political borders in search of subsistence. Wealth inequality and ruthless exploitation of economic and human capital has created this problem.
It poses an ironic conundrum for self serving libertarians. They welcome the bounty of freewheeling global capital and the risk free handsome returns it provides for the wealth of a nation. They are in full league with the march of multinational capital. They dislike the burden taxation has placed on their wealth and seek relief and investment opportunities in the privatization of government services. Prison Inc., Charter Schools LLC, healthcare, lotteries, social services, roads, parks anything save police and military functions are privatization targets. Privatization displaces workers and further rationalize government services to the primary benefit of shareholders much like the impact of global capital on the LDC economies. Already one can see its impact in the broadening wealth gap and the disappearance of the middle class in the United States.
The lost children wander the roadways in every country. They cast off on unseaworthy crafts hoping to make landing on a friendly shore that will recognize their humanity. The stateless children pilgrim across dangerous borders leaving footprints on pious souls asking them to offer more than an admonition to take comfort in Old Timey Biblical instruction that drove Hagar and her unholy progeny Ishmael back into the desert to hie with the wild asses.
Dear global citizens, we are all lost children. Refusing to recognize the desperate condition of our distressed children is a finely honed disease of our common troubled condition. No doubt true believers thumping the gospels of the finest MBA institutions enunciate high church managerial speak when we alight the human condition to the impaired value of human capital. It should not come as any surprise to witness the obstinate refusal to act on gun control because gun manufacturers profits are more important than the slaughter of innocents. Cutting food stamps to the children in poverty is critical to shave a few points off the capital gains tax. This gives license to Palin and Boehner in Unholy alliance with Faux News Philistines and Teabagging Falangists to paralyze the government over their insistence that healthcare should not be extended to the marginalized and poor in service to Obama’s socialist agenda.
Partisan blindness is a poor excuse for ignorance; and I’m sure Palin can see the wandering lost children from the back window of her plush new Arizona digs; seeking passages across the dangerous borders that exclude them entry and deny their humanity.
We cannot brand them “others”, unworthy of sanctuary. They are the victims, refugees from imperialist war, their livelihoods crushed by the march of predatory capitalism, their farms expropriated by GMO slinging multinational agribusinesses, their drinking water polluted by the flowing slush of strip miners looting the mineral wealth of communities; tribal lands and verdant rain forests clear cut for loggers as offshore drilling destroys aquaculture industries forcing boat people to cast off on unseaworthy rafts drowning in seas of indifference. We must throw them a life raft because someday soon we’ll be asking the same of them.
The problems of the world are human problems. Ignorance does not excuse blindness. As the world watched The World Cup in Rio de Janeiro, FIFA cleverly gleaned over the fact that it came at the expense of many thousands of Brazilian’s being displaced from their homes.
Tonight as you watch the news video from Gaza, don’t look away from watching a father furiously digging through the rubble, his hands and knees bloodied and shredded by glass and spiked rebar, his nostrils filling with concrete dust, he’s choking. Yet he still furiously digs for his trapped daughter. We hope he can extract her. The world rejoices in one less lost child.
Risk: morality, humanity, civility, compassion
The Yin and Yang of Inflation
Inflation like all risk is a double edge sword. Its negative nature will upset the apple cart and pose uncomfortable challenges for SME managers that have grown accustomed to the status quo.
It will force managers to reconsider their well conceived business plans and perhaps more closely scrutinize this quarters P&L or the company balance sheet. It will present serious challenges for businesses supply chain and client relationships. It may raise the eyebrows of your shareholders and credit providers perhaps provoking some pointed questions concerning your management skills and the validity of your business model.
That said inflation does have an upside. Like all risk factors it has the potential to create opportunities. Inflation will drastically alter market conditions. It will reveal inefficiencies that nimble SME can actively engage and manage to turn those market conditions to their advantage. The key operative words are management, intentionality and active engagement.
Inflation is a silent killer. It stalks all SME threatening to gobble up product margins, revenue opportunities and bottom line profits. It diminishes customer buying power and may threaten the solvency of large customers and suppliers. It drives up the cost of capital, making credit more expensive while it forces state and local governments to raise taxes and fees.
The inflation bogey man lurks in the profit and loss statements of all businesses with SME being particularly vulnerable to its effect. Inflation dramatically shows itself on the expense side of the ledger in the increases for basic materials, energy, delivery services, T&E, administrative expenses and employee benefits. Inflation also affects the income side of the profit loss statement. It erodes the buying power of your customers and threatens collection of receivables by extending days outstanding, increased write offs or the sale of uncollected debt for pennies on the dollar.
SME profitability is particularly sensitive to the effects of inflation because of economies of scale, concentration of risk factors and lack of pricing power.
Many SME lack pricing power. Pricing power suggests that if price of a product rises to a certain level demand for that product will not diminish. For a SME to have pricing power it must offer value add product to dependent buyers. Its product or service cannot be easily replicated or widely available from other sources.
While pricing power escapes most SME numerous factors inhibit their ability to become low cost producers. They deliver product or service differentiation to their customers by other means then low price. Inflation erodes consumer purchasing power driving buyers to seek low cost producers. In this environment SME may suffer when buyers trade down to low cost providers. Key customers may compel SME to lower prices to be more in line with lower cost producers. This is a major threat to SME.
SME tend to have greater risk concentration in their business model. Heightened risk concentrations are most pronounced in small businesses due to a limited product line, geographical risk, market cyclicality and in client and supply chain relationships. Consider a small manufacturer of finished steel products for the home construction industry. Generally, manufactures profitability is highly correlated to the price it pays for basic commodities and has an extremely high concentration of supply chain and product risk. Small businesses may not be able to recover or adjust its product prices to cover increased commodity prices due to existing contractual agreements with customers or its lack of pricing power. The abatement of market demand due to a recession may provoke larger customers to demand price concessions by threatening to move their business to lower cost producers. The pressure on this small manufacturer is compounded by a spike of smaller account losses and moribund demand due to weak cyclical market conditions in its target market.
It’s almost a perfect storm of negative business conditions. Small businesses managers need to understand how inflation touches all aspects of their business and must manage its impact to maintain profitability and sustainable growth.
Managing Inflation Risk with a WIN Campaign
SME can meet the challenge of inflation head on by implementing a Whip Inflation Now (WIN) program that engages the numerous risks inflation poses. In deference to our former President Gerald Ford, business managers can initiate WIN Programs and actions to temper the impact of inflation and to seize opportunities that rapidly changing market conditions create. Small businesses must be extra vigilant and proactive in managing all classes of business risks.
Some small businesses will cave into the demands of their large accounts to cut prices to prevent them from going to a lower cost provider. This is very dangerous for small businesses and can result in “death by a thousand cuts.” Managers should not wait for their largest account to approach them seeking price concessions. Now is the perfect time to go on the offensive and alter the value proposition that only your firm can uniquely deliver to key accounts. Remember your largest accounts are experiencing the negative effects of inflation as well. Go to them and propose a WIN Campaign.
A company’s WIN Campaign can offer a joint marketing program using advanced web enabled technologies. Your WIN Campaign can implement an expanded training and support program tied to a business development program or supply chain rationalization. You may suggest a partnership to develop a new product or put in place a customer loyalty program. Your job is to create a unique value proposition that adds value to your product and convey it to your customer so they cannot commoditize your product. Together you and your clients can WIN the fight against inflation and turn it into a business development initiative. Your clients will appreciate the fact that you are thinking about their business success.
Another common knee jerk reaction to fight rising business costs is to reduce expenses by cutting expenditures on areas that do not support the mission critical functions of the business. Capital is allocated to maintain funding to support sales, production and product delivery. This is coupled with a lean administrative management structure and this model is seen as a recipe for economic survival. Being good stewards of corporate capital is essential during these times. Capital leakage is always a threat to business profitability and needs to be even more diligently managed during times of economic duress. But this strategy is a subsistence survival strategy. It is based on investing the barest minimum of capital to address fluctuating market conditions. This strategy may limit small businesses ability to literally capitalize on opportunities that changing market conditions present.
Cutting expenses for marketing is usually another budget casualty when businesses look to cut costs. This will reduce your current expense line for this quarter and will certainly help bottom line profitability; but skipping this year’s trade show will not help you to locate that new customer who is looking for a supplier because his current provider is struggling with product quality issues. Cutting this expense won’t provide you with the critical insights you need to stay competitive and ahead of new market entrants that are attending trade shows. Who by the way are also aggressively courting your largest account to get just a tiny slice of your business to demonstrate their “superior value proposition.”
Employee benefits and training is another area that is often the focus of budgetary cutbacks. Many SME need to closely consider the gains they will realize by cutting back on benefits offered to its employees. Cutting benefits could increase employee turnover. Training and hiring new employees are an expensive proposition for SME. The loss of key employees can potentially devastate a small business. Expertise, intellectual capital and critical business intelligence leaves the organization when a key employee walks out the door. This is doubly true if some key employees leave the firm and walk some major client relationships out the door with them.
SME can also try to employ risk transfer strategies. Insurance purchases may help in some areas but to fight inflation small businesses can use financial instruments (capital permitting) to hedge against rising prices. The purchase of TIPs, FX forward contracts, commodity or energy futures can help to offset the negative effects of key inflation business threats. As the price of oil rose this summer a modest equity position in oil or other energy company would have helped to offset the increase in energy expenses.
Thankfully adverse economic conditions will force SME to take an honest look at their product lines and business model. Economic adversity provides an opportunity for management to make hard decisions concerning product lines. This is an ideal time to focus and fund the development of products that offer the greatest potential for long term profitability and sustainable growth.
Inflation is a significant problem for small businesses but it is a problem that can be managed. Changing economic conditions alter the landscape for all businesses that accelerate and starkly reveal market inefficiencies. These inefficiencies create market anomalies and opportunities that astute small business owners and managers can capitalize on through an intentional practice of a risk management and opportunity discovery program.
Sum2’s objective is to assist clients to implement corporate sound practices that enhance profitability and sustainable growth. Sum2’s offers a wide stable of risk management apps for SME. The Macroeconomic Risk Assessment App helps managers review macroeconomic and event risks to better manage its potential effect on their business. Sum2 offers a Macroeconomic Risk App and can be downloaded from Google Play or by visiting http://www.sum2.com or by calling us at 973.287.7535.
risk: #sme, #inflation, #macroeconomic, #supplychain #office365, #mobileoffice, #metasme, #smeiot #eventrisk, #marketrisk, #WIN, #sum2
SMEs Dance to the Basel III Shuffle
Bonfires of the Banalities
When the mundane becomes revelatory, when banal pronouncements are considered startling epiphanies, when orchestrated spectacle is considered the apex of statesmanship; a society is fast approaching the finish line in its race to the bottom.
The corrupt leaders of society’s broken institutions remain busy spinning a self serving zeitgeist of denial, sowing gardens of ubiquitous ambivalence. The liturgy of mass self delusion anoints a polity comfortably numb and safely ensconced in a political paralysis; keeping the Bozos bouncing along on the bus sans wheels, happily enthralled in the reverie of their disillusionment.
Sarah Palin, looking slim and extremely fit slugs down a mega calorie Big Gulp on the CPAC dais. Sarah’s slurp becomes an iconic moment in GOP history, as fawning star struck conservatives believe it to be the symbolism of a new Statue of Liberty.
Morning Joe stuffing handfuls of Captain Crunch into his mouth to tweak the eat healthy nose of liberal manikin Mika, cheers the American driving public for making the 6 mpg Super Duty pickup the best selling truck in the USA. Morning Joe relishes any opportunity to confirm the resplendent truth of America’s voracious appetite for radical entitlement.
Newly elected Pope Francis closes his first Sunday address by advising visiting pilgrims to “have a good lunch” and the media falls all over itself with adulatory elation.
In a world understood as a branded sound bite, the affirming credo an individual adopts as holy gospel is self serving institutional propaganda that vigilantly defends the status quo.
In such a world, sound bites have become a school of famished piranhas that are devouring the body of rational understanding and the ability to peek beyond the veil of obfuscation.
The messages and symbolism signaled from our leaders and political celebrities is clear, loyal constituents are offered an absolution to remain stuck in the certitude ensuring the perpetuation of failing institutions badly in need of reform.
The CPAC crowd cheers Palin’s clownish moxie as she charges the battlements of Bloomberg’s Nanny State. Though I wonder if Palin’s salute to Seven Eleven was more of a product placement exercise than astute Kabuki theater; Palin’s masterful pandering played well to the partisans. She brought down the house and successfully sidestepped the issue of a commercial food chain that is progressively poisoning their customers with unhealthy food due to lax regulatory oversight, harmful food additives and corn fructose syrup infused processed food that is driving an obesity epidemic amongst the poor and minorities residing in the food deserts of America’s cities.
Palin’s showmanship appeals to the growing libertarian streak in the GOP. Let the market decide is the mantra. The jury is out but when the toxic food chain has killed off enough of the process food industries customers, General Foods will hire a Stanford MBA as a new product manager to design and market better foods for a better world. After all that’s how responsible job creators work.
Mornings Joe’s insistence on his free market right to be a mindless consumer is codified in the divine celestial ledgers of Laissez-faire capitalism. His fattened bank balance is the sole moral imperative to drive an inefficient gas guzzling truck that poisons the environment with carbon emissions. This is the same mind set that insists on building vacation homes on barrier islands. If a major storm destroys the dwelling so be it. FEMA and private insurance have socialized the risk to preserve the right of these homesteaders to settle on endangered land, tipping into the swelling seas, fueled by a changing climate brought on by excessive carbon emissions from Morning Joe’s Super Duty.
In the aftermath of the Newtown Massacre the yearning of citizens to strengthen gun control laws is met by the intransigent commercial interests of gun manufacturers. In a society bleeding from gun violence the NRA got busy greasing the palms of senators with filthy lucre to encourage diligence to protect 2nd amendment right to market high powered automatic rifles and 30 round magazines that can spray instant death into a room full of 1st graders.
Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the NRA gave an impassioned speech at the same CPAC conference pointing to “the Washington elites” and “liberal media” as the root of all evil. States LaPierre, …gun control advocates “insult [us], they denigrate, and they call us ‘crazy’ for holding fast to [our opposition to gun control]. In their distorted view of the world, they’re smarter than we are; they’re special; they’re more worthy than we are; they know better than we do,” he said. “The liberal media can keep hating on me, but I’m still standing.”
How the CPAC attendees and the three million members of the NRA can fail to see the irony in Mr. LaPierre’s condemnation of “Washington elites” escapes me. To be sure, like many CPAC attendees, Mr. LaPierre and the NRA are fully integrated with the elites of Washington. In point of fact many are on the NRA payroll. His pernicious attack on a free press belies his unquestioned fealty to the constitution.
Which brings us back to Pope Francis. He is hailed as a much needed change in a scandal ridden Vatican. The global prevalence of sexual abuse by clergymen and the institutional protection of predatory pedophiles continues to trouble the church. Money laundering and other untoward financial transactions conducted by the Vatican Bank is another explosive issue that continues to fester. The rising voices of women and LGBT communicants seeking reforms to fully enfranchise them as equal citizens in the church are liturgical and theological issues that will continue to be repressed. These questions beg an urgent response from the ossified paternal hierarchy that resists transparency and fails to transcend practices that sacrifices the faith in service to the institutional religion.
Yes the monied pilgrims that made their way to Rome will enjoy the day and most surely find a wholesome meal to eat. What will sate today’s pilgrims and sustain the future generations will be to sit at an inclusive communion table to richly feast on the bread of truth. Throw the institutional banalities into the ovens to stoke the fires capable of baking a rich wholesomeness into the glorious bread of life.
Music Video: Fleetwood Mac, Hypnotized
Risk: political, religious, psychological, cultural
Blog Action Day: The Power of We
We the People, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Thus begins some of the opening words to the constitution of the first constitutional republic of the modern world.
Seems fair, simple and plainly spoken. We the people ordain a constitution, a social compact, consenting to be governed in the expectant hope that domestic tranquility and the blessings of liberty for all living and future citizens will be respected and protected. It was a revolutionary notion for its time and is still the ideal democratic republics aspire to realize and practice. It is an idea that moves masses of people throughout the world to come together, demonstrating the collective strength of the “power of we”. It’s very notion sets people in motion to force intractable power elites whose rule is based on custom and the vanity of tyranny to cede authority to the democratic impulses of a people’s fight for the consent to be governed.
Last years Arab Spring demonstrated that the democratic aspirations of people remain alive. It took a massive movement of people, willingly sacrificing life and limb and the safety of loved ones to dispose of dictators and their self serving regimes. The fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya were startling events in the rapidity of their downfall; and as an emblematic revelation of the fragility of tyrannical rule. It also born hope in the hearts of people living under unelected rulers that change could happen if the “power of we” was focused on the task of disposing a regime whose sole goal was self enrichment and the perpetuation of its rule. As the conflict in Syria grinds on, the world witnesses the awful cost of the struggle against tyranny. It’s a damning condemnation of Bashar al-Assad’s vanity of power and a moving example of the price human beings are willing to pay to realize the blessings of liberty that many citizens living in western democracies too often take for granted.
As the United States contentious presidential election comes to a close, I hope that my fellow citizens understand the dear price people are paying to have some semblance of a representative democracy. I also hope my fellow citizens realize that the duopoly of power exercised by the ruling democratic and republican parties represent economic and political interests that run counter to the interests of the vast majority of We the People. I hope my fellow citizens understand that the two ruling parties are a class of political elites that have governed to serve the perpetuation of their rule, financed by an embedded plutocracy that continues to enrich itself with the complicit enabling of democratic and republican party officials.
In this election cycle, my fondest hope for America is for my fellow citizens to break the stranglehold of self serving two party rule. We must begin to adopt the ideas of progressive third party candidates, like The Green Party. We must elect candidates that are free from the bought shackles of favoritism and patronage. Thus remaining free to pursue a moral and ethical conscience that advocates liberty, equality of opportunity and civil rights for all citizens. We must also prepare to engage a political movement that goes beyond the ballot box, becoming activist citizens to win a future that promotes the ecology of a balanced sustainable path of growth, peace and prosperity for all.
risk: politics, economics, environment
Music Selection: John Lennon, Power to the People
Blog Action Day Post: The Power of We
Let the Hunger Games Begin
I find it near impossible to listen to the 911 calls recording the murder of Trayvon Martin. We are allowed to eavesdrop into George Zimmerman’s call to the Sanford Police; a rumination of an executioners song. The self anointed captain of the neighborhood watch reports he is observing a hoodie clad Trayvon looking suspicious and up to no good. Says Zimmerman, “I don’t know what his deal is. He’s got something in his hand. He’s looking at me. I know he’s up to no good.” The 911 dispatcher asks Zimmerman if he is following Trayvon. Zimmerman answers in the affirmative. The dispatcher instructs Zimmerman, “we don’t want you to follow him.” Zimmerman answers, “they always get away.” Not this time. Next we hear another 911 call from a resident of the housing complex asking police assistance for an assault in progress. This is followed by screams of a terrified child and the sound of gunshots that ended the life of a young boy carrying a can of ice tea and a pack of Skittles.
Its sickening to envision Zimmerman, sitting in his truck eying his pray from the safety of his lair, palming the smooth shaft of his warm gun then commencing a deliberate stalk of a child. Zimmerman’s actions elicits the desperate screams of a frightened child being hunted down; culminating in the execution of a person whose killer is moved by a perception of his entitlement to be the judge, jury and executioner of an innocent boy.
Its even more sickening to think that his behavior is sanctioned by the State of Florida “Stand Your Ground” law. The law entitles citizens to use deadly force to protect themselves in an act of self defense. After the execution of Trayvon, the state corners office performed a battery of drug tests on the corpse of the victim to gather evidence to classify the deceased as a reprobate. None was found. No tests were conducted on Mr. Zimmerman. The killer of Trayvon walked away from the murder of a child without so much as a disorderly persons citation.
Since 1987 Florida has issued over two million permits to carry a handgun. Its a sobering realization to consider the firepower legally roaming the streets of Florida and a body of law that entitles and protects the deadly use of force if one of these gun toting entitle-istas feels the least bit threatened to his person or property.
This is the fruit of a society steeped in a sense of privilege, radical entitlement and fear. A culture and a super structure of law codifying the notion of entitlement and privilege, its Second Amendment protection and its deadly enforcement at any cost is a culture bereft of moral value. The National Rifle Association, lobbyists working on behalf of firearms manufacturers and conservative political groups are vocal proponents in support of America’s gun centric culture. Arms manufacturing to support a vast gun ownership market and to supply the largest military in the world with guns and bullets is a huge business. Gun manufacturers are actively promoting the adoption of Stand Your Ground laws in numerous states. Its a profitable business opportunity for the gun runners of capitalism; sure to result in mounting body counts of Americans. It is also a major driving force as to why America is in a permanent state of war.
The proliferation of Stand Your Ground laws should be viewed against the backdrop of a rising conservative political culture that preaches the sanctity of private property and the right to employ extreme measures to protect that property. All justified under the guise of free markets, virulent patriotism and the God given right to the pursuit of property.
The acceleration of the concentration of wealth into fewer hands has created an extreme political economy of “haves and have nots”. The viral spread of the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS) grew as a reaction against the growing bifurcation of America. The power and privilege of the monied classes, (the 1%) enjoys the liberty and freedom only money can buy, while the liberty and security of the remaining majority is continually eroded due to diminished economic capacity and political disenfranchisement.
As the deconstruction of the liberal welfare state proceeds and the social safety net it affords taken down, the roiling mass of the remaining 99% of citizens will be left to fend for themselves, fighting for survival in a Social Darwinist dystopia.
The stirring open to the US Constitution, “We the People” is undermined with a nation populated with “the other”. We no longer share a republican kinship of a free people united under a common Bill of Rights, equally sharing the common liberty protected and assured by a federal government. America is quickly devolving into a confederation of “others” exempted from the common rights and responsibilities of citizenship due to a sense of radical entitlement. The notion that an individual right to a pursuit of happiness trumps all others and must be defended at all costs is killing the republican ideal of free and equal rights of citizenship. It is also the mindset that puts a bullet into the heart of a Treyvon Martin. It is the Rebel Yell that prompts Rush Limbaugh to call Sandra Fluke a slut, the Tea Party to insist that President Obama is not an American, Muslims are Islamo Fascists and illegal aliens are undermining the economic and cultural underpinnings of America.
The dehumanization of people is the driving compulsion that led Sargent Bales to madness. His action was a psychotic attempt to purge his pain by murdering “the thing” he believed lay at the root of his pain. A similar perversion is played out everyday from the safety of underground bunkers in Oklahoma. Here, Air Force technicians guide deadly drones to targets in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. They push buttons, delivering death on innocent civilians, creating mounting piles of collateral damage as the unfortunate price foreigners are compelled to pay for the liberty of Americans.
The commodification of humanity escalates as the devaluation of human life proceeds. The mounting human wreckage from the underclass internecine warfare results in either death or prison for combatants. America boasts the largest population of prison inmates in the world. The privatization of this industry is music to the ears of bankrupt state penal systems begging relief and a slice of the growing pie of penal colony profits. In China, the state recoups its penal expenditures by harvesting the organs of inmates. A striking example of taking from the distressed and giving to the society’s elites.
This weekend a sure to be blockbuster movie, The Hunger Games hits the cinema multiplexes. The premiers were sold out weeks in advance. Americans are eager to buy a ticket to watch young Americans driven to slaughter other young Americans in an orgy of Social Darwinist blood lust.
As the liberal welfare state continues to be deconstructed and the services and protections of the social contract eliminated or placed into the profit driven care of private enterprises; the hunger games of distressed citizens will play out in an ugly pantomime of violent civil discourse. Save yourself the price of a ticket to admission to The Hunger Games. We are all players and the game is being played in a hoodie near you.
Music Selection: Taylor Swift, Civil Wars: Safe and Sound
Risk: culture, prisons, social contract
The Party of Values, Thoroughly Bankrupt
Republican’s fancy themselves to be the party of values. They profess to love God and country. They believe themselves to be the real Americans. They are the absolute definition of righteous patriots. They see themselves and their families basking in the light of a celestial exceptionalism. They occupy the center of a universe anointed by the invisible hand of free market capitalism, governed and sanctified by the benevolent love of their heavenly father, Jesus Christ.
Their values are based on a fundamentalist foundation of the King James Bible and the US Constitution as it was originally conceived and authored by the Founding Fathers in 1787. They are resolute in the belief of the correctness of their interpretation of this hallowed literature and remain adamant in how the instruction of these sacred tomes should be applied and implemented to shape and govern our Federal Republic.
If you question the basic supposition of their position they will tarry your thrust by questioning your love of country and your belief in God. Those same questions must be asked of them. The virulent defenders of the cross and crown of liberty consistently undermine the spirit of both. They serve the corporate objectives of church, military and industrial institutions that have formed an unholy alliance to rule and exploit the hearts and minds of an enslaved consumer market that cannot discern the difference between political liberty and a have it your way experience at Burger King.
America’s political ignorance is a poverty exploited by the oligarchs; giving them full sway to control and manipulate the levers of power to secure and advance selfish interests. They cloth their motives in priestly robes, medal adorned military uniforms, Rotarian flannel suits and Joe “the wannabe” Plumber overalls feigning a martyrdom of being crushed by the menacing liberal elites by standing for the values of free markets, Christianity, class mobility and a military spreading the global march of democracy.
The GOP presidential debates provided some telling political theater of how the party of values advanced the cause of individual liberty and governance informed by moral precepts. In one session a gay officer serving in Iraq asked the candidates “now that DADT has been repealed and gay service personnel can serve in the military would they support same sex marriage”. The gay serviceman unselfishly serving his country in a theater of war was roundly booed by the uber patriots sitting in the audience before Rick Santorum piled on and asserted not only would he not sign a same sex marriage bill into law, he would also reinstate DADT.
In another session the question concerning the mandatory requirement to purchase health care insurance was raised. The moderator asked a hypothetical question, “if a person failed to purchase insurance and required a life saving procedure who should pay?” One of the more compassionate conservatives shouted “let him die”. This was undoubtedly the same guy who condemned Jesus for healing on the Sabbath.
Another high water mark of GOP moral turpitude occurred when the debate moderator questioned Rick Perry about the State of Texas position as the leader in capital punishment executions. The audience erupted in cheers. The United States is home to the worlds largest penal colony with an inmate population that exceeds 2,000,000. This belies the myth of the United States as the land of the free; particularly for the people of color who account for the largest proportion of the inmate population. This is good news for the free marketeers as the privatization of prisons is a growth industry. The profiteers of misery require the judicial apparatus of the states to maintain a prison occupancy rate of 90% to assure profitability for private investors. The threat to a fair trial has never been more at risk. This is a business opportunity right up the GOPs free market alley. The devaluation of the rule of law an unfortunate consequence. The value of money trumps the grace of justice.
The GOP’s deep investment in the culture of death mirrors a country thoroughly committed to the continued militarization of the economy regardless of its cultural cost. Republicans eagerly beat the drums of war and use the poetry of destruction to articulate a cutesy point. Remember John McCain using the melody of Barbara Anne to sing, “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” The neocons ate it up. The peacemaker may be considered children of God, but in the GOP the business of war and righteous crusades are divine.
Republicans pledge undying fealty to the Constitution and the rights of citizens. One would think that this would encourage vocal opposition to President Obama’s Executive Order to execute suspected combatant citizens without due process in respect to the right of a trial by a jury of their peers. Not a single word has been raised against this grievous violation of a basic constitutional protection. Where are all the freedom loving, constitution waving Teabaggers? It’s a natural extension of Republican’s refusal to recognize the full civil rights of citizens. As in the case of LGBT civil rights, the GOP’s vision of America protects civil liberties only for select citizens they deem worthy. The rights of the republic’s citizens and the rule of law be damned.
It is in this light that we can understand Rush Limbaugh’s misogynistic characterization of Sandra Fluke as a slut. Dehumanizing a group of people as “the other” or “less then” because they hold a contrary position is a dangerous sedition that undermines democracy.
Democracies need its citizens to reach an informed consensus to function. Consensus requires dialog to assimilate disparate views from multiple viewpoints and perspectives. This presupposes that the participants in the discussion recognize and value the rights of citizenship for all participants in the dialog. The highest value in a secular democracy is respecting the equal rights of all citizens. Without this value democracies crumble. Our democracy is in shambles.
This weekend Rick Santorum sat upon the alter at the Greenwell Baptist Church to accept the endorsement of Pastor Dennis Terry for the upcoming Louisiana primary. After laying his hands on Santorum to bless his candidacy, Pastor Terry delivered a sermon that spewed fire and brimstone onto the reprobate head of our secular democracy. “America” he said “was a Christian Nation ruled by Christ the King. He said American’s don’t worship Buddha, Allah or any other false Gods. He said American’s worshiped the God on High, Jesus Christ. And if they don’t like it they can get out.” As a Christian I can’t tell you how much I loathe this blatant bigotry. Jesus was all about inclusion and tolerance and I’m sure he would make short work of this Pharisee. As an American citizen, I can’t think of a more ignorant and damaging characterization of America’s promise and the democratic values it professes to uphold.
GOP wunderkind Paul Ryan, yesterday unveiled a budget that assiduously accounts for the price of every tax loop hole, generous corporate welfare allocation and tax reduction for the wealthy while demonstrating a chilling indifference for slashed social programs and its impact on human beings. Republican’s know the price of everything and the value of nothing. The party of values is thoroughly bankrupt.
Music Selection: Sen. John McCain, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran
Then They Came For Me
The ones shouting loudest with greatest vehemency for liberty are ironically the proponents of its gravest threat. Rep. Peter King, the Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee has scheduled hearings on the radicalization of the US Muslim community and its threat to the homeland. Mr. King said the hearings are the result of a growing concern by law enforcement officials that the US Muslim community has not been cooperative in rooting out the home grown terrorists multiplying within their midst. In service to liberty’s highest ideals, the ever vigilant Mr. King looks to initiate an assault on the civil liberties of our brother and sister Muslim citizens.
A group calling themselves The Liberty Alliance are in full support of Mr. King’s ethnic profiling and the grave threat it poses to the civil liberties of all citizens. Mr. King’s committee hearings will be a resplendent grand standing platform for him to play to the basest prejudices of his constituency and stoke up the fear of American angst already overloaded with a symphony of terrors. Muslims, like the LGBT community and illegal aliens, labor unions and teachers make convenient scapegoats for the myriad problems confronting the nation. Mr. King and The Liberty Alliance would like us to believe that labor unions have plundered the wealth of the nation. Teachers have destroyed the schools. The poor have bankrupted our federal treasury while the LGBT and foreigners continue to undermine the true American Judeo-Christian culture by defiling the purity of its heritage.
Its a grand irony to witness self styled libertarians mobilized into action to attack civil liberties and right to privacy of their fellow citizens. They clamor for disclosure and transparency with the diabolical refrain, “if they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to be afraid of.” Such seditious thinking undermines the spirit of liberty. It is a direct assault on a society governed by laws and its citizens shielded by due process and protected by a Bill of Rights. These democratic virtues once distinguished America as the shinning city on a hill. Now The Liberty Alliance denigrates it with an Orwellian platitude believing civil rights, privacy and due process are covers for terrorist cells that must be dispensed with at all costs.
It is not difficult to divine that Peter King’s committee will encourage a number of informants to come forward to meet a specified quota for stool pigeonry. A legion of rats and informants are the armies of despots not agents of democracies. But these are the same Real American Freedom Fighters who led the charge against American Muslim’s right to build a mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero. Ask them about religious tolerance and the freedom to worship as guaranteed in the US Constitution and they’ll concede the point with the promise to serve Halal meals and build a mosque with extra capacity at Gitmo.
The ones shouting the loudest for liberty do indeed pose the greatest threat to it. The libertarians who opened the door to 527 llcs have turned Lady Liberty into a common prostitute hiring her out to the highest bidder. The zealots waving the Constitution with the fervor of a Red Book sprouting Maoist, forms a reactionary vanguard eager to deny the very same sacred civil liberties and rights to fellow citizens in their deranged constitutional republic of unfree and unequal citizens.
Despots and non-democratic societies do not offer or practice universal rights, freedoms and liberties for all its citizens. Pitting one group against another, scape goating, delineating special classes of people or dual classes of citizenship are hallmarks of repressive societies. Mr. King’s committee hearing of racial and ethnic profiling divides citizens and denies the constitutional rights and liberties for Muslims. This is apartheid. Gov. Walker’s and Chris Christie’s attack on labor unions and teachers as the source of our economic debasement obfuscates systemic inequities and masks the identities of the perpetrators who plundered the wealth of this nation. The economic elites are trying to beat the rap by forcing their public elected shills to make the working people of America pay the price for their own victimization.
Peter King’s sons of liberty are complicit agents of enslavement to the power and privilege of corporate oligarchs; hiding behind the billowing smoke of America’s civic strife and brewing internecine struggle. They are gravely mistaken in believing that they are safely ensconced behind the golden walls of their enclaves the piles of cash allowed them to build to protect themselves from the seething masses. Mubarak nor Gaddafi’s moat protected strongholds could protect them from the volatile tide of history.
Peter King opening up hearings on radical Islam and its role in creating home grown terrorism is of course just in time for the 2012 election. It will provide some red meat for rabid Teabaggers screaming for blood. Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin and other righteous Falangist Crusaders can use the grist of Peter King’s xenophobic fear mill to paint our Mau Mau loving President and any progressive opponent a Fifth Columnist for the new Caliphate they are working to establish in the last stand of the land of the free and the home of the brave.
You Tube Video: James Cagney, Yankee Doodle Dandy
Risk: tolerance, politics, civil liberties, Bill of Rights
Economic Recovery Gathers Steam
Private-sector employment increased by 217,000 from January to February on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report released today. The estimated change of employment from December 2010 to January 2011 was revised up to 189,000 from the previously reported increase of 187,000. This month’s ADP National Employment Report suggests continued solid growth of nonfarm private employment early in 2011. The recent pattern of rising employment gains since the middle of last year was reinforced by today’s report, as the average gain from December through February (217,000) is well above the average gain over the prior six months (63,000).
The fears of a jobless recovery may be receding but the US economy has a long way to go before pre-recession employment levels are achieved. As we stated previously the economy needs to create over 200,000 jobs per month for 48 consecutive months to achieve pre-recession employment levels. The six month average of 63,000 is still well below the required rate of job creation for a robust recovery to occur. The Unemployment Rate still exceeds 9%.
The February report is encouraging because it points to an accelerating pace of job creation. The post Christmas season employment surge represents a 30,000 job gain over January’s strong report that triples the six month moving average. The service sector accounted for over 200,000 of the job gains. The manufacturing and goods producing sector combined to create 35,000 jobs. Construction continues to mirror the moribund housing market shedding an additional 9,000 jobs during the month. The construction industry has lost over 2.1 million jobs since its peak in 2008.
The robust recovery in the service sector is welcomed but sustainable economic growth can only be achieved by a robust turn around in the goods producing and manufacturing sectors. Service sector jobs offer lower wages, tend to be highly correlated to retail consumer spending and positions are often transient in nature. Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises (SME) is where the highest concentration of service jobs are created and the employment figures bear that out with SMEs accounting for over 204,000 jobs created during the month of February.
Large businesses added 13,000 jobs during the month of February. The balance sheets of large corporations are strong. The great recession provided large corporates an opportunity to rationalize their business franchise with layoffs, consolidations and prudent cost management. Benign inflation, global presence, outsourcing, low cost of capital and strong equity markets created ideal conditions for profitability and an improved capital structure. The balance sheets of large corporations are flush with $1 trillion in cash and it appears that the large corporates are deploying this capital resource into non-job creating initiatives.
The restructuring of the economy continues. The Federal stimulus program directed massive funds to support fiscally troubled state and local government budgets. The Federal Stimulus Program was a critical factor that help to stabilize local government workforce levels. The expiration of the Federal stimulus program is forcing state and local governments into draconian measures to balance budgets. Government employment levels are being dramatically pared back to maintain fiscal stability. Public service workers unions are under severe pressure to defend employment, compensation and benefits of workers in an increasingly conservative political climate that insists on fiscal conservatism and is highly adverse to any tax increase.
The elimination of government jobs, the expiration of unemployment funds coupled with rising interest rates, energy and commodity prices will drain significant buying power from the economy and create additional headwinds for the recovery.
Macroeconomic Factors
The principal macroeconomic factors confronting the economy are the continued high unemployment rate, weakness in the housing market, tax policy and deepening fiscal crisis of state, local and federal governments. The Tea Party tax rebellion has returned congress to Republican control and will encourage the federal government to pursue fiscally conservative policies that will dramatically cut federal spending and taxes for the small businesses and the middle class. In the short term, spending cuts in federal programs will result in layoffs, and cuts in entitlement programs will remove purchasing power from the demand side of the market. It is believed that the tax cuts to businesses will provide the necessary incentive for SME’s to invest capital surpluses back into the company to stimulate job creation.
The growing uncertainty in the Middle East and North Africa is a significant political risk factor. The expansion of political instability in the Gulf Region particularly Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia; a protracted civil war in Libya or a reignited regional conflict involving Israel would have a dramatic impact on oil markets; sparking a rise in commodity prices and interest rates placing additional stress on economic recovery.
Political uncertainty tends to heighten risk aversion in credit markets. The financial rescue of banks with generous capital infusions and accommodating monetary policies from sovereign governments has buttressed the profitability and capital position of banks. Regulatory uncertainty of Basel III, Dodd-Frank, and the continued rationalization of the commercial banking system and continued concern about the quality of credit portfolios continue to curtail availability of credit for SME lending. Governments are encouraging banks to lend more aggressively but banks continue to exercise extreme caution in making loans to financially stressed and capital starved SMEs.
Highlights of the ADP Report for February include:
Private sector employment increased by 217,000
Employment in the service-providing sector rose 202,000
Employment in the goods-producing sector declined 15,000
Employment in the manufacturing sector declined 20,000
Construction employment declined 9,000
Large businesses with 500 or more workers declined 2,000
Medium-size businesses, defined as those with between 50 and 499 workers increased 24,000
Employment among small-size businesses with fewer than 50 workers, increased 21,000
Overview of Numbers
The 202,000 jobs created by the SME sectors represents over 90% of new job creation. Large businesses comprise approximately 20% of the private sector employment and continues to underperform SMEs in post recession job creation. The strong growth of service sector though welcomed continues to mask the under performance of the manufacturing sector. The 11 million manufacturing jobs comprise approximately 10% of the private sector US workforce. The 20 thousand jobs created during February accounted for 10% of new jobs. Considering the severely distressed condition and capacity utilization of the sector and the favorable conditions for export markets and cost of capital the job growth of the sector appears extremely weak. The US economy is still in search of a driver. The automotive manufacturers have returned to profitability due to global sales in Latin America and China with a large portion of the manufacturing done in local oversea markets.
The stock market continues to perform well. The Fed is optimistic that the QE2 initiative will allay bankers credit risk concerns and ease lending restrictions to SMEs. A projected GDP growth rate of 3% appears to be an achievable goal. The danger of a double dip recession is receding but severe geopolitical risk factors continue to keep the possibility alive.
Interest rates have been at historic lows for two years and will begin to notch upward as central bankers continue to manage growth with a mix of inflation and higher costs of capital. The stability of the euro and the EU’s sovereign debt crisis will remain a concern and put upward pressure on interest rates and the dollar.
As the price of commodities and food spikes higher the potential of civil unrest and political instability in emerging markets of Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America grows. Some even suggest this instability may touch China.
The balance sheets of large corporate entities remain flush with cash. The availability of distressed assets and volatile markets will encourage corporate treasurers to put that capital to work to capitalize on emerging opportunities. The day of the lazy corporate balance sheet is over.
Solutions from Sum2
Credit Redi offers SMEs tools to manage financial health and improve corporate credit rating to attract and minimize the cost of capital. Credit Redi helps SMEs improve credit standing and demonstrate to bankers that you are a good credit risk.
For information on the construction and use of the ADP Report, please visit the methodology section of the ADP National Employment Report website.
You Tube Video: John Handy, Hard Work
Risk: unemployment, recession, recovery, SME, political
Risk Rap 