Inverted Totalitarianism

Chris Hedges

Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, a free press, parliamentary systems and constitutions while manipulating and corrupting internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens but are ruled by armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington, Ottawa or other state capitals who author the legislation and get the legislators to pass it. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion. Mass culture, owned and disseminated by corporations, diverts us with trivia, spectacles and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. “Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,” Wolin writes. “Economics dominates politics – and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.”

I relate.

Graeber: Debt, the sovereign, peasants and amargi

via Occupyweb

delanceyplace.com 10/14/11 - kings forgive loans

In today's excerpt - in ancient city-states such as Babylon, Sumeria and Judaea, rulers found it necessary to cancel all consumer debt from time to time to keep peasants from becoming permanent debt-peons and thus to keep society from being torn apart - a phenomenon all the more interesting from the perspective of our debt-laden 21st century:

"Mesopotamian city-states were dominated by vast Temples: gigantic, complex industrial institutions often staffed by thousands - including everyone from shepherds and barge-pullers to spinners and weavers to dancing girls and clerical administrators, [and these Temples owned many of the assets of the city-state]. ...

"We don't know precisely when and how interest-bearing loans originated, since they appear to predate writing. Most likely, Temple administrators invented the idea as a way of financing the caravan trade. This trade was crucial because while the river valley of ancient Mesopotamia was extraordinarily fertile and produced huge surpluses of grain and other foodstuffs, and supported enormous numbers of livestock, which in turn supported a vast wool and leather industry, it was almost completely lacking in anything else. Stone, wood, metal, even the silver used as money, all had to be imported. From quite early times, then, Temple administrators developed the habit of advancing goods to local merchants - some of them private, others themselves Temple functionaries - who would then go off and sell it overseas. Interest was just a way for the Temples to take their share of the resulting profits.

"However, once established, the principle seems to have quickly spread. Before long, we find not only commercial loans, but also consumer loans - usury in the classical sense of the term. By C2400 BC it already appears to have been common practice on the part of local officials, or wealthy merchants, to advance loans to peasants who were in financial trouble on collateral and begin to appropriate their possessions if they were unable to pay. It usually started with grain, sheep, goats, and furniture, then moved on to fields and houses, or, alternately or ultimately, family members. Servants, if any, went quickly, followed by children, wives, and in some extreme occasions, even the borrower himself. These would be reduced to debt-peons: not quite slaves, but very close to that, forced into perpetual service in the lender's household - or, sometimes, in the Temples or Palaces themselves. In theory, of course, any of them could be redeemed whenever the borrower repaid the money, but for obvious reasons, the more a peasant's resources were stripped away from him, the harder that became.

"The effects were such that they often threatened to rip society apart. If for any reason there was a bad harvest, large proportions of the peasantry would fall into debt peonage; families would be broken up. Before long, lands lay abandoned as indebted farmers fled their homes for fear of repossession and joined semi-nomadic bands on the desert fringes of urban civilization. Faced with the potential for complete social breakdown, Sumerian and later Babylonian kings periodically announced general amnesties: 'clean slates,' as economic historian Michael Hudson refers to them. Such decrees would typically declare all outstanding consumer debt null and void (commercial debts were not affected), return all land to its original owners, and allow all debt-peons to return to their families. Before long, it became more or less a regular habit for kings to make such a declaration on first assuming power, and many were forced to repeat it periodically over the course of their reigns.

"In Sumeria, these were called 'declarations of freedom.' - and it is significant that the Sumerian word amargi, the first recorded word for 'freedom' in any known human language, literally means 'return to mother' - since this is what freed debt-peons were finally allowed to do. ...

"Nehemiah was a Jew born in Babylon, a former cup-bearer to the Persian emperor. In 444 BC, he managed to talk the Great King into appointing him governor of his native Judaea. He also received permission to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem that had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar more than two centuries earlier. In the course of rebuilding, sacred texts were recovered and restored; in a sense, this was the moment of the creation of what we now consider Judaism.

"The problem was that Nehemiah quickly found himself confronted with a social crisis. All around him, impoverished peasants were unable to pay their taxes; creditors were carrying off the children of the poor. His first response was to issue a classic Babylonian- style 'clean slate' edict - having himself been born in Babylon, he was clearly familiar with the general principle. All non-commercial debts were to be forgiven. Maximum interest rates were set. At the same time, though, Nehemiah managed to locate, revise, and reissue much older Jewish laws, now preserved in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus, which in certain ways went even further, by institutionalizing the principle. The most famous of these is the Law of Jubilee: a law that stipulated that all debts would be automatically cancelled 'in the Sabbath year' (that is, after seven years had passed), and that all who languished in bondage owing to such debts would be released.

"Freedom," in the Bible, as in Mesopotamia, came to refer above all to release from the effects of debt."

Author: David Graeber
Title: Debt: The First 5,000 Years
Publisher: Melville House
Date: Copyright 2011 by David Graeber
Pages: 64-65, 81-82

author:	David Graeber
title:	Debt: The First 5,000 Years
publisher:	Melville House
date:	Copyright 2011 by David Graeber
pages:	64-65, 81-82
tags:
Should you click through our site to purchase a book, delanceyplace proceeds from your purchase will benefit a children's literacy project. Delanceyplace is a not-for-profit organization.

Pulled from Delancey Place, which has an odd habit of disappearing its excellent selections. This is from David Graeber - haven't yet read it, but it seems like it might be, uh, relevant. He's an anthropologist (Rick Scott says Florida needs no more of them). Graeber is busy, among other ways, suspending the ivied wall between academia and the world.

Hard to find

Mike, who used to blog frequently as informant38 among other personae, could well be - in fact, is - my candidate for Quartermaster of Microsustainability, if ever we all must go aboard a fragile ship in a dark time. He lives on virtually nothing in a rural area of CA. To get to a networked computer anymore he has to hike, or hitchhike, quite a ways.

This hasn't prevented him from blogging here and here, as well as other places. The top photo of informant38 always clicks through to another photo. The relationships between them are fascinating (often involving flags and pyramids).


Some of Mike's words:

http://furioso.blogspot.com/2006_03_19_archive.html#114305638524847629

http://furioso.blogspot.com/2006_07_16_archive.html#115312613820651069

http://furioso.blogspot.com/2004_04_04_archive.html#108141518144351282

http://furioso.blogspot.com/2003_11_09_archive.html#106854435453499361


Elements of the flag/pyramid juxtapositions can be found here and here.


He uses words, images, sounds, colors, links and does not stop, regardless of how precarious his perch on this world becomes. I used to hear from him fairly often, but now more rarely.

The donate button is here, or here.

Headlines from Marketplace read aloud

Poor neighbors, go fuck your brown selves.

Students, prepare for serfdom.

Maximizing Broadband can only mean, TV.

 Monetizing mortality efficiently.

 we do put a dollar value on human life everyday, we just put different dollar values on different human lives.

blowup risk, tail risk, and mere stupidity

Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the "Nobel" in economics, banning leveraged buy-outs, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties. Taleb

The overdetermined relevance of Edward Liddy

Spitzer on AIG


Mr. Liddy, I failed to note, was a director at Goldman:

The Fed stepped in after JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which were brought in to help assess AIG, failed to come up with a solution, according to a person familiar with the talks. Liddy is currently on the board of Goldman, the company Henry Paulson ran as CEO before becoming the U.S. Treasury secretary in 2006.

The rules of Capitalism were broken before they were made

"If our government were playing by the rules--which require shutting down banks with inadequate capital--many, if not most, banks would go out of business." Stiglitz

Programming opportunity

"I love this place and its people", says Mr. Stanford. That relationship deepened four years ago, he says, when he met a local Catholic priest with wounds in his hands and feet that he believed to be the stigmata of Jesus Christ. As a memento of that life-changing experience, Mr. Stanford carries with him a vial with the congealed fluids drained from the priest's foot. 

Antigua in the shadow of R. Allen Stanford, from the Wall St. Journal, as cited in the Guyana Chronicle, March 31, 2002 (h/t to Kia). (The page reverts but search on Stanford and it'll pop up.)

So, really: if one were to go back over the last eight or nine years, and remove all things Texan from all things economic, all FIRE wheels and deals since the end of Clinton, what would the global economy look like? Could someone please devise and run that program? Then tweak it a bit, and delete all Republicans -- just for mierdas y huelgas. pls?

Oikos

Slide [9] One important element of collapse-preparedness is making sure that you don't need a functioning economy to keep a roof over your head. D. Orlov, via Gifthub.

In Florida, there's an abundance of homes filled with five families trying to make ends meet. And there's an abundance of housing stock, standing empty, waiting to be squatted in, vandalized, or converted to interior agronomics.

Can't wait to see what the market does.

zimbucks too

Next I tried another online micro-job site that posts small jobs requiring a tiny bit (and nothing more) of human intelligence. Sample writing work there? 1000+ word product guides. Pay: $5.00. In 1986 I would have made about $1,000 for that job. In 1999 I would have made $3,000 for that job. Today, some one will do it — maybe not well, but they’ll do it and search optimize it — for five bucks. Jeneane.

what the dickens

The inquest was over, the letter was public, the Bank was broken, the other model structures of straw had taken fire and were turned to smoke. The admired piratical ship had blown up, in the midst of a vast fleet of ships of all rates, and boats of all sizes; and on the deep was nothing but ruin: nothing but burning hulls, bunting magazines, great guns self-exploded tearing friends and neighbours to pieces, drowning men clinging to unseaworthy spars and going down every minute, spent swimmers, floating dead, and sharks. Little Dorrit.

numbers game

... the task before us is the introduction of a real state of emergency. Benjamin #8.

Volcker also understood that financial markets need to be regulated. Reagan wanted someone who did not believe any such thing, and he found him in a devotee of the objectivist philosopher and free-market zealot Ayn Rand. Stiglitz #1

Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Eco #3.


...when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... Source concealed by the New York Times.

When repeal of Glass-Steagall brought investment and commercial banks together, the investment-bank culture came out on top. There was a demand for the kind of high returns that could be obtained only through high leverage and big risktaking. Stiglitz #2.

"Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style." W

...the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death. Eco #11.

The flood of liquidity made money readily available... But it should have been clear that we were living on borrowed money and borrowed time. Stiglitz #3.

During the evening of the first skirmishes, it turned out that the clock-towers were shot at independently and simultaneously in several places in Paris. Benjamin #6.

The rating agencies, like the investment banks that were paying them, believed in financial alchemy...Stiglitz #4

Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise. Eco #12

The administration talked about confidence building, but what it delivered was actually a confidence trick. Stiglitz #5

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule. Benjamin #8.

The above involved Capitalist Fools, Joseph Stiglitz; Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt, Umberto Eco; On the Concept of History, Walter Benjamin. Ayn Rand via Mystic Bourgeoisie.

Mean Business

Insuring Insurance is Good Business, Clearly

"Risk controls at the company were clearly inadequate." That's Bill Bergman, an analyst at Morningstar Inc. in Chicago, who also said, "AIG keeps getting hit square between the eyes by the housing-finance meltdown."

Given the new bad news about AIG's weakness, and the new good news therein for certain elements in the market, one might want to press Bill Bergman to pin down more exactly what he understands by "clearly."

For his sentence to be clear and adequate, he must mean: "Fraud enabled AIG to operate with these clearly inadequate risk controls."

Or he means something like, "These risk controls were so inadequate that they have resulted in losses so clearly catastrophic that it's clear we'll do all we can to mitigate them, hastily, without clear policy controls, without clear monitoring -- without, in short, clarity. Some, of course, will profit."



Interestingly, the AIG site sports no AIG logo, and doesn't even pretend to be a company. It's just: "Insurance Website."



The company, or website, or whatever, remains under the stewardship of Edward Liddy.

[update] See Golby.

You betcha

A reviewer of Robert Kuttner's new book, Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency:

If it sounds like I'm angry, I am. I hate that most of my adult life has been lived in a country that has become the testing ground for so many hare-brained ideas and crack pot nostrums.

Between the poles of faceless regulation and unbridled markets, that's a good description: a testing ground, with human guinea pigs.

It's one thing to attempt creative approaches to finance; it's another to allow them to run amok throughout municipal, state and global economic systems.

Who gave us the dispensation to introduce the fraudulent language of marketeers and advertisers into the realm of governmental prudence and our derived sense of what actually works? At what instant did bullshit become normative evidence for critical decisions?

In the Rumsfeldian world of that which we don't know we don't know, we do not need Ms. Palin or Mr. Fuld supplementing the void with their inspirations. Kuttner was on Democracy Now today.

Poltergeists from the anus of Mr. Paulson, all rise

The banks using cash from the $700 billion U.S. rescue plan for bonuses, acquisitions and other purposes unrelated to lending are clearly not thinking like the working man. Still, their corporate scams are likely run by so-called "conservatives" who, thrilling to the new-nazoid urgings of Arnold, will consider it their Joesixpack-like duty to vote, if they do at all, for McCain/Palin.

If one proved to these sincere politicians that they are attracting the scum of the earth to their ticket, would they have the decency to see the error of their ways?

It's enough to snuff a good man out.

Here's hope he'll haunt them from above while the wraiths of Hank seek them from below.

incasinato

CLEVELAND -- Campaign advertising in the battle over bringing a casino to Ohio is approaching $47 million -- nearly $6 for every registered voter in the state. Plain Dealer

'Capitalism Has Degenerated into a Casino'

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus says that greed has destroyed the world's financial system.

rules of the game

Today (2007) any wealthy individual can take $1 million and go to a prime broker and leverage this amount three times; then the resulting $4 million ($1 equity and $3 debt) can be invested in a fund or funds that will in turn leverage these $4 million three or four times and invest them in a hedge fund; then the hedge fund will take these funds and leverage them three or four times and buy some very junior tranche of a CDO that is itself leveraged nine or ten times. At the end of this credit chain, the initial $1 million of equity becomes a $100 million investment out of which $99 million is debt (leverage) and only $1 million is equity. So we got an overall leverage ratio of 100 to 1. Then, even a small 1% fall in the price of the final investment (CDO) wipes out the initial capital and creates a chain of margin calls that unravel this debt house of cards. roubini

More from The Great Crash 1929

...[Paulson] doesn’t dispute that he changed direction. Mr. Paulson said that by Oct. 2, as he was departing for a weekend getaway to an island with his family — his first weekend off in nearly two months — he told his staff, “We are going to put capital into banks first.”

Although the bailout bill still had not passed, the financial markets had deteriorated. He did not, however, inform Congress of his change of heart, and the House debate revolved almost entirely around the asset-purchase plan. media entity

Times misses coffee spewing story opportunities

The New York Times gives us breathless drama, quotes Paulson:

“I’ve always said to everyone that ever worked for me, if you get too dug in on a position, the facts change, and you don’t change to adapt to the facts, you will never be successful,” he said in the interview.

The paper did not seem to think it worthwhile to ask at what point in the change authorization from Congress might be, uh, something to do. Or how much it adds up to ($2 trillion). Or whether the bankers are required to think humanely, ethically, responsibly about lending. You know, shite like that.

The million derivatives newspaper

October 07:

AGE OF RICHES

$6 Million for the Co-op, Then Start to Renovate

“There’s the new rich and there’s the old rich. There’s the poor rich and the rich rich.”

What would you do with $25,000? Buy a new Toyota Camry? Pay for six months at Harvard?

Instead, how about some really fancy chocolate?

THE NEW YORK TIMES WILL LOCATE EXEMPLARY PRODIGALITY. IT IS SPIRITUALLY NECESSARY. - George (Bush) Bataille




October 08:
As one former dancer observed, if a stripper is doing her job right, the patron’s bald spot, his mortgage (and maybe even his huge portfolio losses) cease to exist.