Just what do you want?!  What is your message?  What are your demands?:  questions asked by those in the media as though the cumulative effect of co-opting our government and, effectively, our economy over decades into corralling the rest of us into financial pillories can be distilled into a single grievance when our life’s earnings have been distilled into a few gold-plated door knobs in the Hamptons (or elsewhere)…?.  The fundamental here is demonstrating our awareness; eyeing the enemy:  corporate power and their greed – financial thuggery.

I’m posting to share my awareness.

July 2003 I decided to start throwing money at a retirement account.  I was finally in a position where deferring taxable income while I still paid off student loans actually yielded a modest gain (taxes higher than loan interest rate).  Also, the account value was supposed to grow with the economy.  Guess what?  8+ years later it turns out that if I could have put away that money in my own personal tax-shielded, savings account (if such a thing existed for Main Street savers) and at the CURRENT savings interest rate, my balance would be in the same, if not better place.  Although I am forgetting the formulae learned in several calculus classes, I have reason to believe I would have been better off if given the higher savings rate returns at the time, earlier in my account.  As one of the 99% I demand a tax-deferred personal savings account (at my local credit union).  I want to cut out the fat-cat Wall Street  middle-man handling my retirement savings / masturbating my money into their personal mega-mansions.  Personal savers would get taxed on withdrawals and accounts can be personally prioritized based on need:  retirement, unemployment, disability, etc. while incentivizing personal savings in general.  Until something like this happens, I have to pay my fees to the top 1% for a 1%-gain-retirement account or pay my taxes to close the account which will end up in the same fat-cat paws anyway (bailing out the too-big-to-fail failures / income pimps).

Meanwhile, at the time when I’m being approached about retirement accounts, my husband and I are being told we need to buy a house.  NOW is the time.  Interest rates were dropping and values were going up:  house values, supposedly, never decline.  In fact, here in West LA house values more than doubled in less than 4 years (2002-2006).  But LA’s unemployment rate was 6% at the time – significantly above the national rate of 2% for a healthy  national economy.  Hmmm – what exactly am I being urged to signup for?  My other demand is for the 99%:  have some critical awareness.  Quit being a God-forsaken lamb lead to slaughter.  Know the field and know what you’re signing up for!

When we’re living in a country where, after 9/11, nearly 3,000 people died (immediately) and our president tells us to “go shopping,” you have to know something’s gone awry.  All I can fathom is that our economy is in the hands of global-economy casino lords.  In this global system you’re either a gambler, a slave, or one of the 1%.  And given this scale and concentration of power, our corralled earnings can amount to little more than a few gold-plated door knobs somewheres:  http://www.losangelesdailynews.org/now-shy-of-glitz-owner-to-sell-mansion/

First of all, wherever there’s blame there’s a failure to take responsibility.  Take responsibility:    divest from the corporation.  Save your hard-earned money! Support your local credit union and KNOW their structure.  Don’t use plastic, debit or credit, use cash.  Shop local:  farmer’s market, crafts market.  Either grab the Wall Street bull by the horns and know how to join the 1%, or recognize the bull markets for the bull-shit bubble markets that they really are (bull farts then?).  Balance, if not prosperity, lies beyond Wall Street.

And so my questions are these:  what do the financial services sector produce really (other than the fees they take playing investors off one another)?  How is this sector relevant to the GDP – gross domestic product?  Fundamentally, what is the financial services sector producing other than money ethers?  What, really (in a GDP sense), is the cost-benefit ratio of saving banks that are running on ether?  Is it me or has the cost clearly outweighed the benefit?  I think we all know the benefit is limited to “1%” (in all it’s iterations).

I don’t suspect there’s anyone out there:  not Bernanke, not Geithner, not Paulson, and Bloomberg seems to be in denial, etc. who realizes just how inflated the financial services sector is and so the rest of us, the 99% pays.  And so all we can do for now is occupy:  recognize the vacancy or lack of will until there is a breakthrough.  Just what does the top 1% contribute?  Floating jobs in fee-based ether to mitigate the unemployment demand? – a modest show of responsibility when you’re in cahoots with the government anyway.

Thank you occupiers!

Is it me? because it seems to me that this whole debt ceiling angst can be solved by threatening to propose a bill that taxes credit-rating agencies (since they stand to cut America’s triple-A credit rating). Really, if you take the Republican’s modus operandi one step further, it’s not just me.

And where was the veracity of these credit rating agencies when they triple-A rated mortgage-backed securities????  I suspect in the pockets of the top 1% that finance the Republicans.

That’s me!  I’m channeling Kurt Cobain and playing the power chords to Teen Spirit.  I’m at the Experience Music Project (EMP) in Seattle thanks to John’s conference there.  The evening also included a trip up the Space Needle too.

I loved Seattle.  It’s my favorite (American) city yet.  It’s walkable, I relished the daylight to well after 9 p.m. (summer solstice), Pike Place Market gives it a lively focal point, it possesses a wealth of beautiful old buildings (visit the Seattle Architecture Foundation for guided and self-guided tours), and I LOVE their library by Koolhaas (much to my dismay).  AND we were treated to amazingly bright, comfortable, summery weather.  It was the “perfect storm” that left me sufficiently entertained.

I’m definitely going back.

Our "too big to fail" CEO's

They cornered the market on collective bargaining rights too.

Keep up the fight Wisconsin!

His first conference was on Oahu and accommodations were in Waikiki.  A beautiful beach but the resort there is a bit over-packaged and crowded (a.k.a. touristy – beautiful beaches surrounded by a density of highrises just doesn’t take you “there”).  I was eager to explore the island and so when the conference was over, we rented a car and drove all over the place.  Highlights, thanks to the valued advice from my comrade from Oahu, include Manoa Falls and the Diamond Head farmers market where we grabbed lunch:  kalua pork sliders (OMG!  BFF!) – juicy kalua pork with cabbage on a taro roll.  Unforgettable.  I wish I (porked out) ate 2 more, but we got to the market late and they were closing down. From there, we were (fortunately) thwarted from taking a hike of Diamond Head (parking was full) and so headed out to Manoa Falls (as it turns out, a significant upgrade of plans).

The trek to Manoa Falls is a muddy, slippery climb – even before the light rain shower we later experienced - through lush tropical forest that terminates at a waterfall.  If you ever get the chance to take this hike, be prepared to be dabbled with mud and mosquito bites (although John didn’t get any…?) and be thankful you’re not one of the number of bozos you cross paths with who think flip-flops will serve the trek sufficiently.

On to the island of Kauai where I horned in on the accommodations of a second conference.  I planned my visit to maximize the time on Kauai because I suspected it would be less crowded.  When I got there, it seemed desolate.  Our resort was 5 minutes away from the airport and there were chickens at the airport, along the roadside and at the resort.  I wondered and worried just what I had signed up for and what I would do for the next few days.  I felt cut off.  So while John attended his conference, I was determined to find the best beach.  I took to our rented PT Cruiser (white and super-fun to drive in Kauai) and Kauai’s 2-lane highway that belts around the island driving through charming towns with their roadside chickens, and through side roads to find just the right beach:  not rocky, not scraggly with seaweed, with clear water and warm, soft waves.

Meanwhile, my beach shopping was interrupted by one of John’s elective conference activities:  a catamaran cruise up the Na Pali coast.  It was the first time I’ve been out on the ocean and I delighted in the sun and its reflection off the water, the “desert” surround of the ocean and its waves and the bounce and splash of the boat as we raced up the coast.  We even caught up with a herd of spinning dolphins and everyone amazed at their presence and their spinning jumps and dancing swim.  But on Kauai it rains, somewhere, everyday.  And that’s where we were headed.  My clothes got damp from the splash of the waves but then, as we headed under grey clouds, I became soaked from the rain and then chilled from the winds.  I stayed on deck, despite the chilling cold, to take in the amazing scenery:  shock-scale, storybook cliffs draped high by gray, gossamer clouds and skirted low, by diminutive, but powerful ocean waves.  When we were past the mesmerizing scenery, the “cruise” became interminable.  I was shivering, John became seasick, and all I could focus on in those moments is that not only would the cruise have to end (in the then-distant future) but I would even be back home in LA at some point (sigh).  But even now, here, from the comfort of my home I can tell you:  although the cruise offered some worthy vistas, it was still too long.

Back to the beaches.  John was done with the conference and I could almost surgical-strike our idyllic beach hang out – I just needed to inventory a couple more spots on the north shore one of which was Ke’e – that was still too rocky and crowded – although we found an ocean cave there to check out.  Our prize beach was between Black Pot and Ke’e.  And so I changed into my swimwear, took to the waves – pausing to wait for a school of silvery, minnow-sized fish to swim by – and let the warm, turquoise waves envelope me.

Growing up in the boonies (in the foothills past the last dirt road) of Albuquerque I longed for the city.  And now that I’m in the big city, I’m enamored with Kauai because it reminds me of the back road to Santa Fe and it’s small old towns remind me of Madrid (that’s ‘MAD-rid, NM; mah-’DRID is in Spain) along the way to Santa Fe.  In Kauai that age-old question becomes a koan:  why did the chicken cross the road?  to remind you you’re on vacation.

The “Big Zero” decade may be over, but there’s still no escape hatch from this pyramid scheme of an economy.  We’re still beset with deflated (if not vaporized) retirement accounts, paying mortgages that are more than the home’s worth, paying usurious interest and fees to the big credit card banks – to get by, paying premium health insurance rates to health insurance companies that will ditch you as soon as you sneeze, and keeping our chins above or below the water of record unemployment.

Essentially, what started off as “trickle down” economics and deregulation of the Reagan Era has spun (with the reversal of the Glass-Steagall act of the Clinton era followed by Bush era “go shopping” leadership and Greenspan’s interest rate reductions) into Wall Street alchemy :  while the middle class was studiously diversifying their earnings into:  1.   failsafe savings & mortgage; 2. insurances; 3.  retirement; 4.  (if affordable) investment; the boys in the smoke-filled back room stirred 1 through 4 (savings, insurance, and investment) into one big usurious, fraudulent bank.  Additionally, not only did they restrict the safety-valve (vest) bankruptcy clause out of the financial contract, our interest rates on our savings went bear-market too.  Trickle down economics has become a washed up economy.  We’re all victims of this economic Katrina.  Slavery may have been sanitized by exporting it to overseas sweatshops, but while we were charging up our credit cards with dollar-store tchochkes, Wall Street seduced our government into prostituting the middle class and delivering it into middleman slavery.

Obama may be President, but here is our Pharoah (Lloyd Blankfein, CEO, Goldman Sachs:  doing, as his holier-than-thou-self says, “God’s work”):  

This guy’s so enrapt with his financial jihad that he can’t see the water rising.

Fortunately, among the sentient, there is Elizabeth Warren rendering the financial fiasco for what it is with her article America Without a Middle Class.  Additionally, tune into Huffington Post’s “Move Your Money” if you’re interested in undermining the big bank alchemy and supporting local lending.

It surprises me that for all the  financial “talent” lost and dispersed from the big investment banks that closed down through the financial crisis (Bear Stearns et al) that no one has developed the infrastructure to facilitate microlending in our own country.  Between the gaseously high risk of the stock market and the one-point-something percent savings rate of CD’s, I’d love to help chip away at the big banks’ fangs and buy someone else’s debt at half (or anything better than one-point-something percent) the interest rate being paid – if there was some safe (for both parties – no thuggery), secure, insured way to lend money directly.  We have Paypal, we have Kiva Lending, why don’t we have something to help our fellow citizens out?  That’s REAL deregulation.

Happy New Year and New Decade!  Goodbye “Big Zero” (Blankfein), this decade the dime is ours!

It’s actually pretty tricky to figure out what to do and how to entertain yourself without spending

money -particularly in LA.  In general, ”going out” costs. Nevermind the expense of gas or commuting, just parking your car begs for a fine:  $9 to hang out downtown on the weekend; $5 to park to take a hike.  Fortunately it’s free to park and watch the planes land at LAX.  It’s also pretty awesome to watch jet-engine machinery hurdle over you just a few (seemingly) feet above, and then there’s the experience of the shock-scale 747 lumbering over you:  it’s otherworldly – “priceless”  …for everything else there’s shoes.  Those  I’ll purchase on “cyber-Monday.”  I’m not a saint.

P.S.:  Here’s the Marxist Holiday video list (to watch while everyone else is out shopping):  Maxed Out, In Debt We Trust, Walmart:  The High Price of Low Cost, Power and Terror:  Noam Chomsky, Enron:  The Smartest Guys in the Room, What Would Jesus Buy?, and my extra-fave, Manufacturing Consent:  Noam Chomsky and the Media.

…and Brando lived at Neverland.