Greek Fire Sale

If You're Rich, It's A World Of Bargains

This is what happens when a country's National Debt becomes larger than it's Gross Domestic Product. And, as a Quid Pro Quo to obtain financing from central bankers to forestall wholesale economic collapse, that country's government has to agree to reduce its public spending.

One aspect of that reduction appears when government-owned buildings, infrastructure and service organizations (i.e., things once owned by "The People") are sold to corporations or groups of "wealthy investors". Generally, these people are foreigners -- though not always (Look at Russia). This is "Privatization".

Buildings which were once government offices, or of historical interest, now become resorts -- which ordinary citizens can't afford. Also, those same ordinary citizens may have to pay for the services they once had for free, or pay more for them. Where once you had water at a nominal rate, now you pay more -- and the quality of that water may go down. The same with Electricity, Sewage, Garbage Collection...

It's like a fun game of Monopoly. All you have to do to play is be fantastically rich.

At the same time, large property sales will take place as the wealthy in the affected country try to find ways to liquidate their interests, and move their money elsewhere.

London's Financial Times website ft Alphaville, had an observation shared by a reader of something I expect will become, sadly, all too common...


Island Of Skorpios, Aegean Sea: 100 Million Euros ($126M US)

glentzakis | June 2 1:55pm | Permalink
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further on island sales, Joseph.

[[ Breathtaking Skorpios island, located in the Ionian Sea, has been put on the market by Athina Onassis, granddaughter of shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

It seems the Mediterranean paradise has lost its sentimental value for the 24-year-old heiress, who is no longer willing to pay the annual upkeep of 1.5 million euros.

The main contender to buy the island – which reportedly has a 100 million euro price tag - is Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Madonna and billionaire Roman Abramovich are also said to have shown an interest.

Athina's grandfather married John F Kennedy's widow Jackie Onassis on Skorpios in 1968. The island is virtually empty of inhabitants and visitors are forbidden, with guards watching its shores to prevent trespassers. ]]

Or visit: http://www.private...ine.com/greece.htm

Private islands, with guards (armed, presumably) to prevent trespassing. Roman Abramovich. Bill Gates. Madonna. Onassis' 24-year-old-heiress.

These are the kinds of people who matter. Wonder whether the United States will have to go this route? Perhaps some of our Hedge Fund Master Of The Universe Will buy Yosemite as their private vacation paradise -- you know, for backpacking trips with their kids.

Not your kids. Not our kids. Theirs.

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Something Happen While I Was Gone?

The past ten days or so have been, as Tom Lehrer used to say, "That Was The Week That Was".

Let's do a quick review, shall we? And, yes; this may be on the Final.

• North Korea Pulls Another Nutter
  Some months ago, a South Korean navy vessel blew up and sank in the waters off the western coastline of the Korean peninsula (aka The Disputed Zone). The South believes, and apparently has evidence to support the charge, that a North Korean submarine torpedoed the ship. Tensions escalate, and everyone seems to be waiting for the Pyongyang crowd's next move. Rightists dance with glee: Democrats are soft on defense! Another thing to use against that awful negro socialist leader!
  
  Remember -- these are the same Guys who want to ship nuclear bomb-making technology wherever they can. The same Guys who built a reactor for the Syrians in the middle of nowhere, which the Israelis bombed to pieces, and which the Syrians cleaned up faster than you can say "Keyhole satellite" before denying everything.


• Gulf Oil Spill
  Bad to worse. The Obama administration inherited an U.S. Interior Department that was that has always been the paid whore of oil companies; but the administration also listened to British Petroleum's estimates of the rate of the oil leak -- and because, aber natürlich, those estimates were self-serving and far too low, made Obama appear slow to mobilize a government response. Rightists dance with glee: It's his 'Katrina!' Another thing to use against the scary black man illegitimate leader!
  
  And, the response of the general public for the first weeks (Hey! Folks! Oil has been gushing for 39 days!) seemed like, "Yeah; bad news, hah? So Whadya Whadya?". The Great Curmudgeon noted oil would have to hit the Gulf coast beaches before anyone in Washington and the media would believe there was a crisis. Essentially, he was right.
  
  So: "Top Kill" fails. "Junk Shot" fails. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil per day continue to flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Hey -- maybe people will really wake up when oil starts moving via the Atlantic Conveyor currents, and begins affecting ocean life more globally? Huh? Ya think?


• Scientists Create New Living Organism In Lab
  (Sigh) I don't even want to think very deeply about this. Science in the service of profit, particularly when it involves cutting-edge genetics or nanotic technology, has some real horrible bad crazy awful (a combination of 'Zombieland' and the last four years of the Go-Go, "Lil' Boots" Bush years) potential consequences.
  
  The boys and girls who did this will probably get a Big Award for it anyway. Alfred Nobel did soup up the manufacturing process of dynamite, after all. And, Rightists dance with glee: Science bad! Science against god! Evil evil evil evil Punish them in the fire!! It's all because of the evil awful negro leader in the pocket of oil companies!


• Continuing, Escalating Islamic Violence
  Every time I turn around, there's another report of another suicide bombing by the Taliban in a Mosque, or an attack on an American base in Afghanistan.
  
  And, I can't help but think that "Lil' Boots" Bush and President Cheney were the most criminally incompetent leaders the United States has ever had. Invading Iraq, for no reason beyond the fact that Saddam Hussein was a cheap, easy target, while ignoring the real danger in Afghanistan, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, was a mistake on the order of sending the 6th Army in to take Stalingrad.
  
  However, Rightists dance with glee: Islamists evil! Osama-Obama scary black man illegitimate leader is a secret Muslim! A Toyota truck full of Taliban and Linsday Lohan will come to your house and leer at your daughters!!


• Large Art Heist
  In Paris, a museum was robbed -- apparently by a lone burglar, though a job of this caliber being pulled off by Le Chat (Cary Grant's character in 'To Catch A Thief') is small; it takes a Crew. Taken were works by Matisse (sad), and Picasso (paint them over with gesso and reuse the canvasses, please), and Cezanne (Quelle Horreur!) However, Rightists dance with glee: Art bad! All art but Thomas Kincaid and Lawrence Welk bad! Burn it all in the fire!!


• Lindsay Lohan Appears In Court
  This is completely gratuitous filler; I don't give a damn what that spoiled [deleted] does with her life. However, Rightists dance with glee: Bad girl bad! Lesbians bad! Against god! Evil evil evil evil Punish her in the fire!!


• Celebrity Deaths
  Art Linkleiter. Gary Coleman. Dennis Hopper. Louise Bourgeois.
  
  When I was a boy, I liked watching Linkleiter in the 1960's as the host of a long-running afternoon teevee program, Kids Say The Darndest Things. The premise was simple -- take young children, put them in chairs and ask them gently revealing questions about life and their experiences.
  
  Linkleiter's son died after jumping off a roof while allegedly high on LSD -- which, I will attest, can make you do nutty things. I was always the Guy who, when everyone suggested driving to Marin County to eat, would look at you, note that your head was on fire, and say No, man; you're obviously too screwed up to drive -- I mean, your head's on fire, dude -- so give me the keys. C'mon! Fork 'em over.
  
  I never watched Different Strokes, and had assumed for years that Coleman was actually Mickey Rooney in makeup.
  
  Dennis Hopper. I enjoyed him as an actor, but knew he was not the Guy To Be Trapped With In A Bus Shelter During A Torrential Rainstorm, because he and I had been to similar places (See the bit about LSD and driving above). But, I'd had a tourist visa; Hopper had opted to live there.
  
  Louise Bourgeois: Didn't begin producing her most seminal work until she was in her sixties. I didn't always understand the language she spoke in, but admired her energy and persistence. Thought her 'Spider period' was pretty creepy, though.
  
  (The Rightists are kind of standing around here, with nothing much to say; several try to get some chant going about Bourgeois being an evil feminist artist (Art bad! Against god!), but this peters out pretty quickly.)

Oh, right: Remember, kids: Art is both an individual and collective human response, in symbolic terms, to the fact of our own deaths in a Universe whose purpose cannot be known.

And that will definitely be on the final.

Normal

Louisiana Delta, May 27, 2010 (Photo: UPI / Joshua Drake - BP)

"I have anxiety attacks," said Sarah Rigaud, owner of Sarah's Restaurant in Grand Isle, La., where the public beach was closed ... "Every day I pray that something happens, that it will be stopped and everybody can get back to normal."

Since the late summer of 2008, the world's economy has been wounded, drifting, waiting for the next set of shocks to push it over an edge. Approximately 22 million people in the United States are unemployed; millions of jobs have been lost and may never reappear. The Barons of Wall Street are even richer than before. Regulation? Feh.

Our politics consist of Humanists, and fundamentalist True Believers. Centrist and Progressive Democrats who supported Obama (who then turned out not to be a Progressive himself) on the one hand, and on the other, people who talk like crazy schizophrenic mumblers you avoid on the street and mix faith in some idea of god with politics like their whiskey and water.



Things are more, not less, polarized. And, like the Taliban elsewhere, the crazies have guns and are showing more and more that they aren't afraid of using them. They also have large media operations spewing craziness -- lies, jumbled conspiracy theories and half-truth misinformation -- to the Faithful, 24 X 7.

A large oil company created the largest man-made oil spill in the history of our species, and tried to downplay the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf.

It also appears that the Department of the Interior during the Go-Go, "Lil Boots" Bush years was just another cheap whore for the Oil Lobby to play with. And, our current President doesn't appear to know how to cope with Big Oil, or deal with the consequences. Regulation? Feh again.

An in all these things, the peasantry -- that would be everyone down here in the Trench -- keep saying along with Sarah Rigaud that We just want things to go back to normal. We just don't want to feel frightened all the time.

That's a natural response to rapid change -- but the 'normal' we used to know is gone. The world at least half of us grew up in; the world before 9-11 and Lil' Boots' Unnecessary War, and all the rest, is gone.

The more change, the more fear; the more lies and mumbled craziness flooding over the airwaves, the greater the chance that (like some Middle Europeans in the late 1920's), the peasantry will begin to yearn for someone, anyone, who can claim to make the merry-go-round stop.

My fear is that our future will be determined by ideologically-driven purists carrying a bible, promising that everything will go back to being as it was. Europe and Asia have experienced religiously-driven repression, but not in America's history. And I'm afraid that's what's going to happen.

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I Don't Listen, I Really Don't Listen

Apparently, at my Place Of Witless Labor™ I stopped listening to some information I was given regarding a possible promotion past the part where I started getting upset.

Embarrassing behavior and several informative conversations later, I've come to the conclusion that I am a human being, and not something you see in the movies -- such as a Freeway Abutment or Carport Oil Stain, which are occasionally smarter than we are.

Promotion still in the hopper (Q: Will they or won't they? A: No Way To Know). Sit around and wait -- but listen more closely next time.

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They Don't Like Me; They Really Don't Like Me

Advised at the Place Of Witless Labor™ that there will be no promotion after all. Gee, tough sledding; that's the way it goes; we all have our little disappointments to live with; you should be grateful you have a job; I've had a difficult life myself so please stop whining; Thanks so much for your time.

Time to move on; nothing to see here...

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Tonight's The Night

The End


Terry O'Quinn, ABC's Lost Character, John Locke

Lost, the ABC-TeeVee series that began in 2004, ends tonight.

I was among the first two generations of humans who grew up to the rhythms of mid-1950's television: The sound of teletypes, and a man saying "The CBS Evening News -- with Walter Cronkite"; or Chet Huntley and David Brinkley's voices (actually, I'm old enough to remember watching Edward R. Murrow); the theme music to everything from Checkmate and McHale's Navy and Combat!, to Police Story and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

I grew up like a good, trained American consumer with the habit of following story lines in episodic weekly series, and it took some effort on my part to wean myself off what Harlan Ellison calls The Glass Teat. Now, I watch very little commercial television; I haven't purchased cable access in ten years, and am very selective about what I want to watch on commercial stations -- which is all I receive via my Analog-Teevee Converter box.

Even when I still had the habit, I was always a latecomer to whatever teevee series became popular. Partly, it's been a knee-jerk response to following crowds: I don't like to. So, when it seemed everyone was following Thirtytsomething (1987 - 1991) and having conversations on public transportation about its characters as if they lived down the street, I still never watched it when it was on regular, commercial broadcast television. It took being laid off in the early 90's, and having time to watch the 'Lifetime' channel to get me to watch it, and I loved it. Ditto with Seinfeld -- everyone was watching it; I wouldn't follow the crowd, and I realized I'd missed out on the action while it was happening. I was determined not to do that again.


The Cast Of ABC's Thirtysomething (On Floor: Cousin Gonzo)

So with STNG (1986 -1994) and Star Trek: Voyager, I simply jumped in and started watching -- both series had been broadcast long enough that they were already in syndication, and I could catch up on the arc of the plot through prior episodes.


Jerri Ryan, Seven Of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager:
And -- Yeah, I Watched The Series For The Science. Sure.

My favorite series of all time is (aber natürlich) the X-Files, and after missing the first two years of it never skipped an episode, straight through until The End in 2002.

I didn't go to see the recent, second X-Files film, X-Files: I Want To Believe (even though Billy Connolly was in it); Chris Carter, the X-Files' creator, had said that if the film did well enough he would bring the series back to television. It didn't, and I guess... Rats.


David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson; X-Files: I Want To Believe

For six years, I developed -- along with a lot of other Dogs in America -- a deep and abiding crush on Gillian Anderson; and when in a high-rise-side elevator at my Place Of Witless Labor™ (which displays an 'X' when passing some lower floors), I occasionally had an idle wish that the car would slow, stop, and the doors open; I would look out into a corridor at the Hoover building in Washington, D.C., and Mulder and Scully would be standing there. "Where the hell have you been?" Mulder would say, and I'd reply You won't believe me when I tell you -- well; maybe you will..


Gillian Anderson (Like You Had To Be Told)

With Lost, I never made the connection with the characters as I did with X-Files -- with the exception of the John Locke character, played by Terry O'Quinn (who turns 58 this year, as I will). I've been an on-again, off-again viewer, and in point of fact don't intend to watch the final concluding episode tonight. I may invest in the box set of the series which undoubtedly will be on the market.


The Main Cast Of Lost, Third Season

Lost has been an intriguing dramatic experiment; television has come a long way since The Twilight Zone, which was seen as a risky gamble in 1959 but became the trailblazer that made 'Outer Limits', 'Lost' and 'X-Files', 'Star Trek' and STNG and 'Voyager', 'Deep Space Nine'.

And, if I really want to see it on the tiny screen at a specific time every week, there's always syndication...

UPDATE: I watched it. I caved. I'm such a tool, etc., not to put too fine a point on it.

And, (1) I enjoyed it; (2) The ending made sense, even though I'd missed over four years of the show. Does that mean Lost was the television equivalent of an Egg Cream (tasty withal, yet free of substance), or that I'm just smarter than the average Dog? Who knows.

There was however, a dog in the last scenes, which guaranteed the finale had my vote.

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The Fire Next Time

I clothe my naked villainy with old, odd ends, stolen forth from holy writ -- and thus I seem a saint when most I play the villain. William Shakespear, Richard III


Glenny Tells Us To Revolt Against Scary Socialist Black Man --
Oh, And Buy Lots Of Bullion -- Through Goldline...

Little Glenn Beck, one of America's Taliban, went on the air today in his ClearChannel-syndicated raido program to say he wants people to know "the good news" that "a blaze is coming [that will] burn everything down" (Want to listen to this drivel? Go here).

Beck also said he believed we were about to enter into a time like Steven King's novel, "The Stand" -- in which an influenza virus, created as a bioweapon, escapes from its containment lab to destroy 99% of humanity; and puts the survivors in two camps: On the side of God and a 100-plus-year-old woman as His spokesperson; or with the devil, acting through a grinning psychopath named Randall Flagg.

At the same time, Beck is losing viewers on his Little Rupert Network program: Huffington Post reports "Beck's Fox News program saw its worst ratings of 2010 on May 14th, averaging just 1.776 million total viewers."

This is more than his competition pulls in on MSNBC, CNN, and HLN combined, but represents a continuation of a deterioration in Beck's marketshare that began in April. Beck's May 14th number of viewers was "50% off [his] peak audience of 3.4 million" total viewers, said Politicususa's Jason Easley.

That decline in viewers coincides, strangely enough, with Beck's shift in April toward more religion and more religious references in his broadcasts, and a statement that he is delivering a message inspired directly from god about current events.

And, god's message just seems to tie in with the political agenda of the American Far Right -- and with Goldline, a business which sells bullion and gold stocks, and for whom Beck is a spokesman. In today's broadcast, Beck said flatly that "Goldline is the escape" from the coming economic collapse he predicts.

Sigh.

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Anthony Hopkins Gets Life Plus 51

Not This One -- But Wouldn't It Be Weird If It Were?

My personal opinion is that often, fervent and public professions of religious faith are only an excuse for an abuse of power, personally, or on a broader scale. Ask the Office of the Holy Inquisition. Ask any of the local 'pastors' who participated in lynchings in the American South. Ask the Taliban, or their U.S. equivalents. And ask the families of people like Anthony Hopkins (no, not that one).

In Jackson, Alabama, a 37-year-old evangelical 'pastor' and "model church-goer and worship leader" named Anthony Hopkins was arrested for the murder of his wife. Herr Hopkins had kept his wife's corpse in a freezer, for four years -- thoughtfully preserving evidence for forensic and homicide investigators.


Anthony Hopkins of Jackson, Alabama, 2008

Hopkins' wife, Arletha, had not been seen since 2004; he had told friends that she had died in childbirth and was buried in Georgia. As it was later reconstructed by investigators, Hopkins' wife arrived home one day in 2004 to find him in flagrante with a young girl; after the girl fled, Hopkins killed his wife and stored her in a large freezer.

Plainly, not an individual who stops to ask himself, "What would Jesus do?"

Details emerged during his trial that Hopkins had terrorized his family for nearly a decade with alternating threats of heavenly punishment -- and sexual and physical abuse, which intensified after murdering his wife.

Hopkins was arrested in 2008 after one of his oldest children apparently approached police with a statement that their mother was stored with the Christmas ham and bags of Ore-Idas ("Timmeh, get me that bag of frozen peas" "Where, Daddy?" "Don't know -- lift your Ma's feet and look around under there, or god will strike you").


Portion Of 2004 Announcement From Hopkins' Church,
Reporting His Wife's Alleged Death In Childbirth

As I used to say in another job role, this guy's a real solid citizen.

Hopkins was convicted, primarily on the basis of physical evidence he had preserved and his own family's testimony. This week, he was sentenced to life imprisonment plus fifty-one years for the murder, and additional counts of rape, sodomy, child abuse, and poor sanitation in food storage.

As someone who committed acts of child molestation in addition to murder, he should have an interesting time in the Joint. Hope you enjoy being locked down 23 out of 24 hours a day, segregated in population, Tony! Otherwise -- hoo boy; you're dead, greymeat.

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Blame 'Em All; Blame 'Em All; The Long And The Short And The Tall...

Barry Ritholtz, via his financial blog The Big Picture, recently provided a chart of the National Debt as its accumulated during the administrations of various Presidents:



There was some discussion that, in showing how this monstrous public debt (that we know about) has been nurtured and grown, who controlled Congress is an important perspective as well -- and so Herr Ritholtz provided that as well:



Read 'em and weep. There's not much else to do these days.

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If This Is Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium

Twenty-Euro Note: The EU Has Some Beautiful Currency

David Marsh is an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times, which published one of his pieces yesterday entitled "The Euro's Lost Promise".

It's a good example of how a large topic can be presented in relatively few words -- and is one of the best brief descriptions of the history of the Euro I've read in a while.

Americans don't really care about that history, or a common European currency -- unless you're a currency trader, or are vacationing there just now (and now would be a good time: 1.00 Euro is worth 1.24 US. A few weeks ago, the exchange rate was 1.48 US to the Euro, and San Francisco was full of German and French tourists).

Can't we all just get along?

Europe, a collection of nationalities and near-tribal subgroups, has a history of trade wars and religious wars and wars of national conquest and national unification going back over 1,300 years.

The dream of a Europe united under a single set of laws and currency wasn't really Napoleon's -- though he's often credited with it, that idea was just an extension of his personal ambitions; the same is true for German hegemony in Europe between June, 1940 and June of 1944. Unification has swirled around the edges of European history for generations, mostly gaining traction around the rise of Socialism before the Great War, and Communism after. But, the reasons it was so attractive as an idea (national chauvinism; right- and left-political radicalism; trade) were the same reasons it was politically dead: European governments couldn't get over themselves.

A case in point are Franco-German relations. Germany took the province of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, a war that humiliated France, which plotted Revanche and a final reckoning with the hated Hun... which didn't occur until 1919, when France got Alsace back, but the Versailles Treaty paved the way for Hitler, with a little help from Wall Street and the Great Depression, ver. 1.0. A resurgent (and nazi) Germany kicked France to the curb in May of 1940, which endured years of occupation until being liberated in the high summer of 1944.

It took the rise of the nazis, the Holocaust, and the Second World War (also known as the Great War, Part II) and its political aftermath to make any European government believe unification was desirable, even possible.

We Don't Get Fooled Again

The specter of fighting another intra-European war was too terrible to contemplate. In addition, the Soviets had swallowed up the eastern third of the continent, and Western Europe was dependent on the United States for financial and military aid (and, particularly in Germany, for lots of bulldozers).

Ultimately, the EU and the Euro were attempts to force Europeans to interrelate with each other in the face of what was then still a Communist Russian threat, and to build a political and financial structure which could hold its own in the face of American domination and the eventual rise of China.

These are serious ideas for Europeans. It's an opportunity for them to create a model of separate, sovereign states acting in collaboration, not competition. There's an obvious tendency for Americans to perceive the EU in terms of 'states', like those in the U.S., but that's laughable, because, well... Europe is not America!!!

There are other questions involved here -- whether Europe's privately-owned banks were ready for a common currency; whether human beings can ever cooperate through long-term coalitions like the EU or the UN; or if 'human nature' is inherently selfish and evil. (A good number of Europeans like the cooperative model, and might ask If not now, when? If not us, then who?).

But, read Marsh's article. You'll learn something.

UPDATE (5/21/10): The German Bundestag has given a vote of support to the EU/IMF $750-Billion Euro (about $1 Trillion US) loan package to Greece and other EU countries through the European Central Bank, primarily due to the efforts of Die Eisenen Kanzellerin, Angela Merkel, and her CDU-dominated coalition.

We'll see what happens next.

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