Showing posts with label American Culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Culture. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Breaking: U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt... Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion
"I've spent 25 years in this room yelling 'Buy, buy! Sell, sell!' and for what?" longtime trader Michael Palermo said. "All I've done is move arbitrary designations of wealth from one column to another, wasting my life chasing this unattainable hallucination of wealth."
"What a cruel cosmic joke," he added. "I'm going home to hug my daughter."
Business
U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion
February 16, 2010
WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy ceased to function this week after unexpected existential remarks by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke shocked Americans into realizing that money is, in fact, just a meaningless and intangible social construct.
What began as a routine report before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday ended with Bernanke passionately disavowing the entire concept of currency, and negating in an instant the very foundation of the world's largest economy.
"Though raising interest rates is unlikely at the moment, the Fed will of course act appropriately if we…if we…" said Bernanke, who then paused for a moment, looked down at his prepared statement, and shook his head in utter disbelief. "You know what? It doesn't matter. None of this—this so-called 'money'—really matters at all."
"It's just an illusion," a wide-eyed Bernanke added as he removed bills from his wallet and slowly spread them out before him. "Just look at it: Meaningless pieces of paper with numbers printed on them. Worthless."
According to witnesses, Finance Committee members sat in thunderstruck silence for several moments until Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) finally shouted out, "Oh my God, he's right. It's all a mirage. All of it—the money, our whole economy—it's all a lie!"
Screams then filled the Senate Chamber as lawmakers and members of the press ran for the exits, leaving in their wake aisles littered with the remains of torn currency.
U.S. markets closed as traders left their jobs and resolved for once to do or make something, anything of real value.
As news of the nation's collectively held delusion spread, the economy ground a halt, with dumbfounded citizens everywhere walking out on their jobs as they contemplated the little green drawings of buildings and dead white men they once used to measure their adequacy and importance as human beings.
At the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday morning's opening bell echoed across a silent floor as the few traders who arrived for work out of habit looked up blankly at the meaningless scrolling numbers on the flashing screens above... [Yes... there's more!]
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Products and Services for the Permanently Unemployed Consumer - ClubOrlov
Does permanent job loss mean that someone is no longer a consumer? In some cases the answer is yes: (But) some people continue to spend as if they still had a job, and the inevitable result is eventual destitution. Once they run out of unemployment benefits, savings and credit, their purchasing ability decreases to the barest minimum provided by food stamps. I don't mean to sound harsh, but this makes them rather uninteresting from a new product marketing perspective.
Friday, February 12, 2010Also see: Closing The Collapse Gap by Dimitry Orlov (@ Energybulletin.net), a point by point comparison of the collapse of the Russian economy compared to what might happen under similar circumstances in the U.S.
Products and Services for the Permanently Unemployed ConsumerDeveloping and marketing products for a shrinking market poses an interesting set of challenges. Even if a company does an outstanding job and is able to steadily grow its market share, these gains are negated if the market itself continually shrinks by an ever larger amount. For instance, a company might have an outstanding electric vehicle design, but it is destined to fall by the wayside during a time when the number of consumers that qualify for a car loan is trending downward, the used car market is glutted by repossessions, and federal, state and municipal governments are unable to upgrade their car fleets because their budgets are far in the red.
Consumer product development caters to individuals who live in houses or condos, have jobs to which they commute by car, and generate a steady stream of disposable income. This is the group to which the business press often refers collectively as 'the consumer': one often reads that the consumer is retrenching, that the consumer's credit is tapped out, that the consumer's disposable income is shrinking and so on. The consumer is not growing.
What is there left to do except design and manufacture fewer and fewer products?
The answer is as simple as it is surprising...
In Full @ ClubOrlov
In full @ Energybulletin.net
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tis' The Season To Ask Ourselves... "What Would Jesus Buy?"
"Join the joyous gritty anti-consumerists Reverend Billy, Savitri D and the 40-voice Life After Shopping Gospel Choir, as they tour the country trying to stop the shopping frenzy.
From Buy Nothing Day in Times Square... to Christmas Day in Disneyland in 30 days.
Produced Morgan Spurlock (Where In The World Is Osama bin-Laden) and directed by Rob Van Alkamade. Created in 2005, before the Great Recession, the film conjures much of the tragedy that has happened since. Amen!"
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Fear & Loathing! Ominous Music Heard Throughout U.S. Sends Nation Into Panic
...or is that the OTHER way around?
Either way... Be Afraid.... Be VERY afraid!
Ominous Music Heard Throughout U.S. Sends Nation Into Panic
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Thought for the day: "Who really established the idea that a society could benefit hugely just by lying to itself, or simply pretending?"
{Click the thumbnails for full size images):
The American victory over manifest evil in World War Two was so total that there was no one else left on earth to compete with in making and selling useful articles...
...at least for a while. And it produced a middle class so well-paid that it could express itself in a vast spewage of plastic and leisure across the land.The human race will look back on this society with wonder and nausea for whatever remains of its time on Earth. For at least twenty years, though, this way of life has been running on fumes, inertia, and promissory notes.
The amazing thing is that these life-extension strategies worked, especially the past ten years when there was really nothing left besides a Ponzi structure of interlocked swindles and rackets.
When the time comes when we do look back to understand what went wrong, I think we'll see that the Woodstock generation went off the rails in 1980, with the election of the actor, Ronald Reagan, who really established the idea that a society could benefit hugely just by lying to itself, or simply pretending...
[In Full at Clusterfuck Nation]
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Meanwhile, In America - And It Came To Pass They Prayed to God For Cheap Gasoline - Die Tageszeitung Germany Via Watching America
In a deep sotto voce:
"And it came to pass"
"And it came to pass"
Praying to GodFor Cheap Gasoline
By Karin Deckenbach
Translated By Ron Argentati
August 15, 2008
Source: Die Tageszeitung, Germany
As usual, the world’s most powerful nation exaggerates: First, gas was ultra-cheap at $1 a gallon. Now it’s super-expensive at $4.40 a gallon. When one considers that the average American drives 20,000 miles a year and their beloved monstrous SUVs only get about 7.4 MPG, it was obvious something had to be done.And it came to pass that Rocky Twyman, leader of a Washington church choir, stood in front of a filing station and prayed. "God is the only one we can turn to at this point," Twyman prayed at the pump. "Our leaders don't seem to be able to do anything about it. The prices keep soaring and soaring." Anyone who wished to follow his example-–and this was broadcast far and wide on American television--was advised to keep it simple: "God, deliver us from these high gas prices," Twyman said. "That's all they have to say." But Twyman quickly added a couple of secular tips: "People have to walk more, leave their cars at home, and carpool," he said.
Gone were the believers. Trying to get around without a car isn’t practical in a country where there aren’t even any sidewalks in the suburbs. In rural areas, there are only long-distance buses, and even in a big city like Los Angeles there’s no subway. The fact is, many commuters now avoid getting stuck in traffic jams by hitchhiking on those freeway lanes designated for two or more passengers per vehicle only.
Just a couple of months ago, congress set new fuel efficiency standards for the auto industry by mandating a fleet average of 35 MPG by the year 2020.
Meanwhile, a popular new sport has developed: “hypermiling.” Brake as little as possible, shift into neutral as often as possible, draft the vehicle ahead of you, turn off your built-in refrigerators and rooftop floodlights-–the internet is brimming with such tips to save fuel. All these things so people won’t have to sell their over-sized Ford Ranger Pick-ups (there’s no market for them now, anyway) and meanwhile, sales of hybrid models have tripled within a year.
Dealers react to the crisis with typical American marketing gimmicks: in Virginia, a supermarket promised free gasoline vouchers at their grand opening. Expectant customers had already created a tent city in front of the store the night before the event. In Nevada, a bordello enticed customers with promises of discount gasoline, although no customers would admit to taking advantage of the offer. The fast-food chain “Five Guys” offered to give customers 6 gallons of free gasoline for every 100 hamburgers they ate. If they haven’t exploded in the meantime, they’re probably still driving today.
But maybe Rocky Twyman’s prayers did manage to help. In June, Americans drove 12.2 billion miles less than the same period the previous year, a reduction of about 4.7 percent. Just like that, the USA was able to lower its crude oil consumption over the first six months of the year by 800,000 barrels a day as compared to 2007.
See? It worked.
Source, and link to original in German:
Thanks For Stopping By
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Why the 11 o'clock hour on Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week - McClatchy
"What is eminently clear is the degree to which the black church is still largely misunderstood and routinely caricatured in U.S. popular culture. ... We now realize why the 11 o'clock hour on Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week,"McClatchy Washington Bureau
Sat, Mar. 29, 2008
Black church leaders back Obama's pastor at Texas event
Terry Lee Goodrich | Fort Worth Star-Telegram
DALLAS — In the wake of the controversy over statements by a former pastor of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, leaders of a black church summit took issue with characterizations of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as racist."What is eminently clear is the degree to which the black church is still largely misunderstood and routinely caricatured in U.S. popular culture. ... We now realize why the 11 o'clock hour on Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week," said Stacey Floyd-Thomas, director of black church studies at Fort Worth's Brite Divinity School, during a news conference Friday at Dallas' Friendship West Baptist Church.
About 20 scholars from the summit stood with Floyd-Thomas, an associate professor of ethics, among them Wright's cousin, the Rev. Dennis Wiley of Covenant Baptist Church in Washington D.C. Wright was to have appeared at the summit Saturday, but canceled.
The summit was moved to Dallas from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth out of security concerns....
Read the full story at Star-Telegram.com
Source
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