Changing Places

As if they needed any more excuses for the state of their living quarters…

PureLandMountain.com

The neat room is a dangerous illusion, as history is de facto continuously pointing out to society at large via various financial, political, religious and activist groups of righteous room cleaners and organizers of the human race in general, but we in the developed world never seem to learn, because we insist on trying to get all our kids to clean all their rooms, thereby instilling in them the erroneous belief (as with most beliefs) not only that it should be done, but that it can be done. “A place for everything and everything in its place” is the most inimical and least natural thing I’ve ever heard, it is the seed of tyranny. Il Duce had that embroidered on his underwear. This is where it gets insidious, or is it invidious… My dictionary is around here somewhere… In this corner I think, at the bottom of that stack under the lantern… Used to be with my thesaurus, which because of this pile of hats I just moved to– hey this is interesting, I don’t think I’ve ever read this, didn’t know I had it, it’s in the neopile– discovery is a wonderful thing.

Shelves, for example, and drawers and their desks or whatever, impart the chronic and tragic misapprehension that our own thoughts, hence our creativity, are organized in such a way, when creativity clearly indicates otherwise (as evidenced by its loss through education). This has led for example to all the terrible poetry etc. we’ve had to endure down the ages, in amounts far exceeding the sublime bits that survive less and less each year, that came straight out of one wild room or another, created by the diminishing defenders of domestic wilderness.

Neatness interferes, whereas wilderness prevents senility, ever honing the mind to new sharpness. You think Einstein had a neat mind? DaVinci’s was a mess; Beethoven, forget it. Creativity is anarchic, unpredictable and cannot be summoned, as can the devil of neatness. No discovery in the room, no discovery in the resident. That’s a paraphrase of a Frost quote I’ve got in a book right about there, under the beeswax candles in one of those boxes in the corner, under the sweaters. Being one with the wilderness, like Tarzan or Geronimo, I know where all the vines, hideouts and escape routes are (there’s a river in that direction, there’s a butte over there, a canyon beyond etc.), which is quite enough to be getting on with. One only needs so much knowledge of where key things are; the rest is clutter.

My room has been purposely kept wild because at least some places on earth should be kept free of human interference, maintained as reverential venues where the primordial can still be experienced (such places are disappearing by the day). What greater insight can be gained in this modern world than by daily reminders of our primal origins, leading to fundamental understanding of what is truly possible? A room in its essence is our one clear chance at letting the world run free, insofar as this can be done in an enclosed space for which you’re paying rent, mortgage, maintenance, depreciation or whatever, paid for via time spent in a painfully neat office, so why waste what may be one’s only opportunity to experience the primordial on a regular basis?

“Trickster is a boundary-crosser. Every group has its edge, its sense of in and out, and trickster is always there, at the gates of the city and the gates of life, making sure there is commerce. He also attends the internal boundaries by which groups articulate their social life. We constantly distinguish — right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old, living and dead — and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction. Trickster is the creative idiot, therefore, the wise fool, the grey-haired baby, the crossdresser, the speaker of sacred profanities. Where someone’s sense of honorable behavior has left him unable to act, trickster will appear to suggest an amoral action, something right/wrong that will get life going again. ztrickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox.

That trickster is a boundary-crosser is the standard line… there are also cases in which trickster creates a boundary, or brings to the surface a distinction previously hidden from sight. In several mythologies, for example, the gods lived on earth until something trickster did caused them to rise into heaven. Trickster is thus the author of the great distance between heaven and earth; when he becomes the messenger of the gods it’s as if he has been enlisted to solve a problem he himself created. In a case like that, boundary creation and boundary crossing are related to one another, and the best way to describe trickster is to say simply that the boundary is where he will be found — sometimes drawing the line, sometimes crossing it, sometimes erasing or moving it, but always there, the god of the threshold in all its forms.” — Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World

I wonder how many of the boundaries we face are really the creation of Trickster. I find myself looking at the times I have crossed known boundaries and found myself entangled in a mess, but gained from it so profoundly. Perhaps Trickster does create our world, our thoughts, our illusions of separation from others. I’ve learned to respect the boundaries others create and observe them, but I am always questioning my own, wondering if they are something I still need or is it time to erase them, change the lines, move them around a little or get rid of them completely.

I guess I’ve absorbed enough of the Trickster to keep my personal growth constantly moving, and now find myself pressing once again on the boundaries around me. And I wonder where Trickster will next show up in my own life….

In my backyard today…..

Dear City of Poway,

Since I’ve customized my home to my own personal needs and added many features other people might not enjoy, I think my home is just as functionally obsolete as Larry Ellison’s. Please reduce my property taxes immediately!

Thanks,

Donna

Good grief, what a tard this man is.

$3 million tax cut on Larry Ellison’s estate

Larry Ellison, ranked 12th on the Forbes 500 list with a net worth of $25 billion, has bagged a $3 million tax break after arguing that his flamboyant Japanese-style estate in Woodside is functionally obsolete.
The chief executive officer of software giant Oracle Corp. will be paid from San Mateo County property taxes collected this year, which otherwise would have gone to schools, the county general fund and cities, among other things, Deputy Controller Kanchan Charan said. The hit to schools alone will be nearly $1.4 million.
Ellison’s Octopus Holdings LP acquired the 23-acre site in May 1995 for $12 million and spent nine years constructing the lavish property, modeled on a Japanese emperor’s 16th century country residence, according to the San Mateo assessment appeals board.
It consists of a nearly 8,000-square-foot main house with two wings, a guest home, three cottages and a gymnasium as well as a 5-acre man-made lake, two waterfalls and two bridges. Hundreds of mature cherry, maple and other trees were planted among nearly 1,000 redwoods, pines and oaks.

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BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Antarctic shelf ‘hangs by thread’

A chunk of ice the size of the Isle of Man has started to break away from Antarctica in what scientists say is further evidence of a warming climate.

Satellite images suggest that part of the ice shelf is disintegrating, and will soon crumble away.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf has been stable for most of the last century, but began retreating in the 1990s.

Six ice shelves in the same part of the continent have already been lost, says the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Professor David Vaughan of BAS said: “Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened.

“I didn’t expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread - we’ll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be.”

You’ve done enough damage.

No, really - we’ve had enough!

Jue. To perceive, to feel. Tao has to be known with the entire self, not through words.

What does one do in the face of the most fundamental flux in existence that is Tao? Well, you could either stand in one place and let it go all through you, or you could take advantage of your volition and try to act within the flux.

Some spiritual systems hold that a deity comes first. Therefore, they encourage obedience over perception - you have to know what the laws are, but you don’t have to know why. The ancients taught a different perception of reality. They felt that the cosmos was great, but impersonal. There was no chance to influence the workings of time and nature according to the wishful thinking of humans. Thus, the methods of Tao are not ones in which one tries to conform with what a Big Mother or a Big Father tells people to do. Instead, it studies ways to act wisely within a constantly shifting dynamic.

This makes perception paramount. One needs to become sensitive and experienced in operating within an always developing set of surroundings. What counts then is neither dogma nor obedience to some divine ruler. What counts is perceptive action within the all-encompassing flux of Tao.

Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao

__________

Perception is what causes so many problems between people in their lives. We all have our own perception of the world. I think what I gain most from studying Tao is an understanding that my perception of the world, of Tao, is limited. I can never know everything. I can do my best to understand, to see the world from as many viewpoints as I can, to try and study nature and learn how things work, and perhaps how I might work within them better, but my perception will always be limited. When I hear people trying to argue that they know best, that they have all the answers, who try to discredit the other side as “Unamerican” or “misguided” or whatever the buzzword of the day is, I smile a little.

But then I realize that others are being taken in by their words, and I wonder how we can reach out to those who are believing what they are told based on a party belief or a religious belief or whatever. Tao gives us tools, it gives us ways to reach out to others.

The shifting sands of time will move and change and this time of turmoil and strife will pass with it. But for now, we have to deal with where we are. Tao lets us stay calm and centered without letting the chaos of these times enter and affect our perception.

Find that quiet place within, and look for it in others. For those who lack it, try to gently guide them to it. Then, you can have a conversation. Without the anger, without the buzzwords, just talk gently about those things you find in common. That is where you can reach out to people.

Who do you need to talk with today? How can you reach out to them? Are you really trying to talk, or merely trying to force your viewpoint on them? And don’t forget to really listen.

I have never in my entire life noticed what kind of jeans someone is wearing, and anyone whose opinion is worth caring about doesn’t notice or care what kind of jeans you’re wearing, either. If they fit you well and look good, that’s all that really matters. Anything else is just getting you to pay too much for something that isn’t worth it.

Note that this applies to handbags and shoes as well. I really don’t even notice them most of the time. I know as a woman I am supposed to somehow care about this stuff, but — I don’t. I’ve carried the same handbag for three years now and nobody has ever commented on the fact that it’s always the same bag, not even once.

Really — people don’t care about that stuff, unless they are fashion victims. Don’t be one. Your life will instantly become easier, simpler, and much, much less expensive.

Come to think of it, I imagine anyone who associates with Bush and Cheney would develop a layer of poison around them. Probably explains all those clownfish around them.

So my dogs are outside enjoying the sunshine and fresh air while I’m cleaning up the house after my mad weekend alone painting and making collages and listening to loud music and any number of other fun things while the boys were off to visit with his family and go to the Ren Faire in Apache Junction.

And suddenly I had this thought, about the dogs being so comfortable with dirt and mess and never feeling the need to clean any of it up.

The terrible thing about having opposable thumbs and a big brain is this need to constantly use them instead of simply enjoying ourselves.

But then, my kids are comfortable with mess as well, and they have opposable thumbs and big brains, too. I guess I just never guilt tripped them enough into cleaning things up, the way my mom did to me.

Hmmm.

I always cleaned up after the parties I had as a teenager while my parents were away, and never got caught except for the one time they came home and found three hundred beer cans in the storage room, waiting to be recycled.

Yeah, I would’ve felt guilty about not recycling them, too.

Stoopid guilt.

You know who you are…. happy birthday!

Love’s End

Though many years have passed since last we met,
Thoughts of thee can make me smile most gladly;
While parting left us echoes of regret,
Golden haze lights love that ended badly.
Time cannot change true feelings of the past,
Nor distance dim the brightest fire’s glow;
Yet love doth change and is not meant to last,
And lovers minds cannot the future know.
There lives a part of me inside of thee,
And part of thee resides within my breast;
The better part of us remains most free,
To love another, better-suited guest.
I would not change what passed between our hearts,
But love is ended when the lover parts.

Diamond Girl
(Lyrics by James Seals; music by James Seals & Dash Crofts, 1973)

Diamond Girl, you sure do shine. Glad I found you, glad you’re mine.
Oh my love, you’re like a precious stone, part of earth where heaven has rained on.
Makes no difference where you are. Day or nighttime, you’re like a shinin’ star.
And how could I shine without you, when it’s about you that I am?

Diamond Girl, roamin’ wild. Such a rare thing, radiant child.
I could never find, another one like you. Part of me is deep down inside you.
Can’t you feel the whole world a-turnin’. We are real, and we are a-burnin’.
Diamond Girl, now that I’ve found you, it’s about you that I am.

Diamond Girl, you sure do shine. Diamond Girl, you sure do shine.
Diamond Girl, you sure do shine. Diamond Girl, you sure do shine…

We May Never Pass This Way (Again)
(Lyrics by James Seals; music by James Seals & Dash Crofts, 1973)

Life, so they say, is but a game and we let it slip away.
Love, like the Autumn sun, should be dyin’ but it’s only just begun.
Like the twilight in the road up ahead, they don’t see just where we’re goin’.
And all the secrets in the Universe, whisper in our ears
And all the years will come and go, take us up, always up.
We may never pass this way again. We may never pass this way again.
We may never pass this way again.

Dreams, so they say, are for the fools and they let ‘em drift away.
Peace, like the silent dove, should be flyin’ but it’s only just begun.
Like Columbus in the olden days, we must gather all our courage.
Sail our ships out on the open sea. Cast away our fears
And all the years will come and go, and take us up, always up.
We may never pass this way again…

So, I wanna laugh while the laughin’ is easy. I wanna cry if it makes it worthwhile.
We may never pass this way again, that’s why I want it with you.
‘Cause, you make me feel like I’m more than a friend. Like I’m the journey and you’re the journey’s end.
We may never pass this way again, that’s why I want it with you, baby…

Stirling states the economic case for regime change….

Party Like It’s 1926 | The Agonist

Bernanke has now allowed brokers to borrow directly from the Federal Reserve, and created a series of instruments which, in effect, allow the creation of money based on speculatively held money. Bernanke’s moves in the last few days have, in effect, created a new basis for the US currency. It is one that has been building for some time. That basis is the value of stocks held. This was visible by the “Poor Pound” thesis: that priced in independently generated currencies, the American stock market has been remarkably flat.

This change was inevitable, and predictable. Sooner or later the American Dollar must be based, in a global economy, on the global evaluation of our production. However, the question, as with every previous monetary order, is whether the pieces fit together. Presently, they do not.

The reason they don’t is because there is no narrow channel which keeps the powers that be from leaning too far in one direction. There is no consequence for those temporarily in power from simply spewing dollars in every direction, and letting those that they do not like pay the costs. That is what is happening now, the coalition of farmers and oil men that held Bush in power, are doing very well. The defense contractors have made out very well, and those that loan money to the government are doing well. Those that are being bailed out have seen their share of national wealth and income skyrocket.

The key is not re-regulation, but a Nash equilibrium, a state where no group can unilaterally improve its position at the expense of others. This state is the challenge for the next administration. It will require a fundamentally different political order, as the great overturns of monetary basis in the past have been based on different constitutional orders to both create, and navigate, the narrow channel which their monetary system rests upon.

The pieces must interlock to the regulation of the financial system, and they must end the disequilibrium where the wealthy can dump risk on others, and take the profits for themselves.

This is one of my early Tao postings, from November 2004.

_______________________________________________________

Beginners acquire new theories and techniques until their minds are cluttered with options.

Advanced students forget their many options. They allow the theories and techniques that they have learned to recede into the background.

Learn to unclutter your mind. Learn to simplify your work.

As you rely less and less on knowing what to do, your work will become more direct and more powerful. You will discover that the quality of your consciousness is more potent than any technique or theory or interpretation.

Learn how fruitful the blocked group or individual suddenly becomes when you give up trying to do just the right thing.

Tao of Leadership

____

I think a lot of people are running around with cluttered minds these days. We worry about what to do about the direction the country has taken, we worry about how best to deal with personal situations in our lives, we worry about work, way too much. Perhaps the way to unclutter our minds is to stop worrying and start taking more direct action. Talk to the people around you, find out their real concerns and help them find some answers. Take your own problems and solve the ones you can, without worrying about whether you are creating the optimum solution. Get out of your head for a while and take a walk somewhere full of nature.

For me, my uncluttering spot is in my garden. I go outside and wander in the garden for a bit, and find myself feeling better about things. No matter what worries and concerns I have, they are small compared to a day full of sunshine and flowers and growing things. It helps living in San Diego where I can almost always count on a beautiful sunny day.

I think Americans really have a disease about getting things right, though. We want to live in the right house, drive the right car, send our kids to the right schools, live the right moral values. Yeah, sure we do. But how many people do you know who are simply happy with their lives? How many don’t worry about having enough money, even though we are among the richest people on the planet? Do you hear many people saying, “I have enough, I think I’ll just relax this year and not work too much?” No, we just go on with our disease, not realizing that if we stopped caring about having the right things and living the right way, our lives would be so much easier and better.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve come to focus on what is left. What’s left of my life, where I would like to go, what I would like to see, how I would like to live. Not what other people think is right, or even what I may think is right, but the things that are left out of most people’s lives. Beauty, simplicity, artful living instead of filling our houses with cheap crap. Time spent learning and growing instead of watching TV or spending yet another day working at jobs we hate to buy more stuff we don’t need. Why can’t America be about spreading fun and laughter instead of spreading war and trying to control everything? We have enough, people. Let’s learn to enjoy it, instead of wanting more. Unclutter our minds, our houses, our lives, and let’s learn to live again. Let’s share a new American dream - one about making life fulfilling again instead of filling our gas tanks, bellies, and houses full of crap.

Talking Points Memo | Unfit for Duty

Josh Marshall:

The idea that fighting jihadists in Iraq or policing the country’s sectarian and ethnic disputes is the calling of this century is one that is belied in virtually everything we see in flux in today’s world and which seems certain to affect us through the rest of our lifetimes and our children’s.

It is very difficult to draw practical lessons from history. But one of the closest things to a law is that military power is almost always built on economic might. And the former seldom long outlasts the latter. Indeed, countries with sound finances have routinely been able to punch over their weight — great Britain and the Netherlands during different periods are key examples. So fiscal soundness even over the medium term is much more important than any particular weapon system or basing right.

Then you step back and see the huge number of dollars we’re pouring into Iraq, the vast mountains of capital being piled up in China, the oil-fueled resurgence of Russia, the weakness of the dollar (not only in exchange rate but in its future as a reserve currency), the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything from John McCain that suggests he’s given serious consideration to any of these issues, except as possible near term military challenges — i.e., is China building a blue water navy to challenge the US, Russian weapons systems, etc.

Candidly, I do not think I’ve heard sufficient discussions or solutions to these challenges from my preferred candidates. But neither has the myopia that McCain has about Iraq. Or the willingness to spend — how else to put it — like a drunken sailor in that country at the expense of everything else now going on in the world.

Hillary Clinton has stipulated to McCain’s qualifications as Commander-in-Chief; and Obama, implicitly, does the same. But his record actually shows he’s one of the most dangerous people we could have in the Oval Office in coming years — not just because he’s a hothead in using the military, but more because he seems genuinely clueless about the real challenges and dangers the country is facing. He’s too busy living in the fantasy world where our future as a great power and our very safety are all bound up in Iraq.

And the rich are still not paying for this war. Our young men and women in the services are paying their all for it, though.

Lies and more lies, almost 4000 young American lives gone, tens of thousands of young Americans injured, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and injured, millions of Iraqis who have fled their homes. And Bush calls this “worth it”. Worth what? The neocon dream of empire, the ridiculous oil profits, the billions to war contractors? Worth it. To whom, Mr. Bush — not to the American people or the Iraqi public, that’s for sure.

Economics Blog : The Double Dissent: Dallas’s Fisher and Philadelphia’s Plosser

It seems if your a business you just drive up to the FED ATM without a card and take your money - no problem. If you have a home and ask for 60 days to try and come up with a solution to save it, they want three hundred pages of information and then tell you no way. I’m an Iraq veteran whose unit was activated 4 times for there and keeping a regular job was not an option as my employers wouldn’t tolerate the abscences despite laws to the contrary. I have a number of medals for bravery but no home for my family, Ironically JP Morgan Chase has it now and they are just agents for Deutsche Bank. Now, it looks like I may be called up again to go to Iraq. Before all this I was as stable as iron. Not anymore, health problems and homelessness is my reality, with a family on the streets. and a projected return to Iraq. I guess I fought for nothing! America’s not my dream anymore, it’s someone else’s and I just don’t understand it. I’ve done everything by the book with honor and yet it’s been a diaster. I’m pretty well done at 21.
Comment by Fred Martinez - March 18, 2008 at 7:20 pm

Thank you for so much, Sir Clarke….

Arthur C. Clarke, 90; scientific visionary, acclaimed writer of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ - Los Angeles Times

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who peered into the heavens with a homemade telescope as a boy and grew up to become a visionary titan of science fiction best-known for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick in writing the landmark film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” has died. He was 90.

The British-born Clarke, who lived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, for decades, died early today after experiencing breathing problems, an aide, Rohan De Silva, told the Associated Press.

Clarke, a former farm boy who was knighted for his contributions to literature, wrote more than 80 fiction and nonfiction books (some in collaboration) and more than 100 short stories — as well as hundreds of articles and essays.

Among his best-known science-fiction novels are “Childhood’s End,” “Rendezvous With Rama,” “Imperial Earth” and, most famously, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“It’s better to be recognized for one thing, especially something of which I’m quite proud, than not to be recognized at all,” Clarke told The Times in 1982.

Although he never intended to write a sequel to “2001,” he wrote three: “2010: Odyssey Two,” “2061: Odyssey Three” and “3001: The Final Odyssey.”

Clarke, who was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1986, won innumerable international awards for his fiction and scientific writing.

The Two Economies | The Economic Populist

Guess what? Now there are two economies, one for the investors, super elites and the real one for the rest of us. We should not pay attention to the paper economy according to financial advisers, it’s just the place where the super elites create investment vehicles, derivatives, hedge funds, bonds…and all of that stuff which is simply the trading of paper. Nope, the real economy is just fine. The trouble is this paper economy.

I’d say so. Corporations get $200B. Americans, of which over 2 million homeowners are facing foreclosure, get…$600 dollars.

Corporations trading bad debt to the point of insolvency and guaranteed bankruptcy get bought out with Fed intervention….Americans get their jobs offshore outsourced and bankruptcy bills that don’t allow them to get out of their debt despite being dirt poor.

Even worse, it seems there is an entire economy just for the super rich that consists of new investment vehicles which when discovered to be pure fiction, get a bail out.

(sssh! you’re not supposed to call it all a bail out!)

Finally, don’t forget for the small investor, those financial journalists must be prudent, after all they cannot accurately report on this other economy because after all, that might cause a run on the banks….

Under Heaven, nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;
It has no equal.
The weak can overcome the strong;
The supple can overcome the stiff.
Under heaven everyone knows this,
Yet no one puts it into practice.
Therefore the sage says:
He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people
is fit to rule them.
He who takes upon himself the country’s disasters deserves
to be king of the universe.
The truth often sounds paradoxical.

– Tao Te Ching, 78

Neo-conservative thought has been shown to be a failure at everything else it has attempted - now it is destroying our financial system. Long, hard ride down is ahead, people. The market is now into a dangerous game of Liar’s Poker.

Rattling Apart: Captain Carnage and the Bear | The Agonist

In 2001, as soon as he was made the economic advisor to Bush, I stated repeatedly that Ben Bernanke would be made the Federal Reserve Chairman after Greenspan, and that he would be a disaster. This was based on a reading of his academic work, which was, essentially, a series of attempts to prove that such a neo-conservative system could avoid the collapse that lead to the Great Depression. No Great Depression, no FDR. No FDR, no situation where the rich would have to accept regulation and restriction in return for bailing out. In essence the first problem is the “Great Contraction.” The United States and other nations, to attempt to re-impose the Gold Standard after allowing it to lapse for the First World War, had to at a certain point accept prices at the new levels, or had to dramatically reduce the money supply. They chose the later, creating a massive contraction of the money supply. This was done in the face of a downturn, because it was feared that a downturn would lead to easy money, and this to hyper-inflation of the kind witnessed in Germany, or very high inflation, as seen after the First World War. For them, coming after a two generation period where deflation was the norm during the classical gold standard and the consolidation of the first Conservative Era, globally, inflation was a horror.

Bernanke and others, argued that the Great Depression was not in any way a structural event, but strictly a macroeconomic monetary event. That strictly macroëconomic policy measures could have been used to effect the bailout. There were two major intellectual problems. One of them is the point where monetary policy is “pushing on a string.” Or what Bernanke called “the zero point”. The “bold” steps turn out to be the same sort of maneuvers used in the first decade of this century: finding deep pockets and hiding the losses.

Bernanke’s failures begin as economic advisor to the President and continue in his time on the Federal Reserve. The culminate with his failure to either deal with the liquidity crisis, or to face inflation head on. By allowing the housing bubble, and the financial bubble built on it, to explode he set up the very circumstances. By dragging his feet on raising interest rates, and then by ignoring the expanding monetary crisis, Bernanke has set the stage where neither he, nor anyone else, is in a position to act. With a President who is content to give imaginary orders to imaginary armies, there is no center of power that can move. It also indicates that the opposition party has made a series of gross miscalculations about the situation, believing the rhetoric that things were going well, and that they were getting the best deal they could. They were facing people who were bluffing all the way, and are now realizing that there is no rush to give way on anything.

The “slow” rate raising campaign was a double disaster, it neither headed off inflation nor did it keep credit easy enough. This is because the problem was not the level of interest rates, per se, but what we were spending the money on. As many, many, many commentators, many, many times have pointed out, the US was consuming too much, and exporting too little. The Neo-Conservative happy monsters said that this could go on for ever, giving other people our paper for their oil and goods.

While it is possible that we will emerge from this functional, the likelihood is that we are going to see a continued fall for the next 9 months, as the crisis deepens, a die hard illegitimate executive burns his last brands on our skin, and a feckless opposition folds its cards over and over and over again, allowing ordinary people to bear the brunt of the continued contraction.

We are riding this bucket down a ways farther, because there is nothing to right the equilibrium, and without the stimulus from war spending, on which we are so dependent, there will be no pick up in business activity soon. There will be some increased exports, but not sufficient to take the place of the cratering of housing.

What needs to be done? Re-regulation is obvious. Making the Fed serve elected policy makers is a no brainer. Restating numbers to prevent the white washing of bubbles is essential, a public sense of ownership of the financial system as part of the “high ground of the economy” seems essential. Firing Ben Bernanke is a pink do this to day post it note.

But most essentially there needs to be a change in the basis of money, simply because the obvious stability of real estate assets in the United States will no longer be enough.