Blog 56
Okay, okay… When the file on little blog-ideas just crying to be published reaches a thousand words…
Your blogster has just returned from travels abroad which hatched some interesting insights. He has also just finished reading an important “intellectual” book., Part of this blog’s purpose from the beginning has been to translate hard-to-read books and other treatises into the language of ordinary human beings. There has been some feedback that (despite the deficiencies of the cartoons) sometimes we have been successful. So, instead of retiring from the blogdom of money, let’s take another shot or two at it.
Let me start with a man I met, a remarkable man. (I’d like to think there are many more like him in his native NewZealand.)
Call him Adam. He was a farmer’s son, brought up with a farmer’s perspective on work. Now, he lives in a city, has a hostel business, a property repair business that tackles everything from plumbing to laying artificial turf, and a sideline as a home-builder. His one slight fault perhaps is that he is a little too hard on people who have, shall we say? a weaker work ethic.
But, lest you see him as a work addict - far from it - he has time for people just because they are people - here’s a snapshot>
He asked if I would like to drive out on an errand with him . First, however, he stopped to pick up an item at a corner store - a brush, actually. We arrived at the store three minutes before it opened. While I sat in the pick-up; he engaged in three minutes of actual pick-up - of trash on the curb around two sides of the store. He didn’t know the, probably young, people who had thrown their empty coffee cups and junk out of a car window the night before. It wasn’t his trash. But he picked it up, put it in plastic bag and gave it to the clerk who opened the store to him.
I could rest my case on that episode. But that evening he invited us out to see if we could catch a sight, just as the darkness was setting in, of a local feature - mother penguins swimming in to nests concealed among the rocks of the breakwater, to feed their chicks. As the darkness fell, there were 50-or so other curious folk spread out along a stretch of road that lay about 2 or 3 metres above the water level. Adam and a fellow volunteer, in yellow jackets, explained to watchers that they must be quiet, shine no lights, and definitely not go down on the rocks near the nests, or the penguin moms would swim out to sea again. The two volunteers also kept a nightly count of sightings for the biologists who study penguins. One deceased penguin chick was discovered later. It's in Adam's freezer waitting for the biologists. Beginning to like Adam?
Now for the personal point. In our conversations over four or five days with him, I came to a bright new idea related to the basic interest of this blog. Oh yes, even I still have things to learn! So tune in for at least one more blog.
Monday, 12 March 2018
Thursday, 2 November 2017
55 On Respect for Customers - Banks vs. Credit Unions.
Blog 55 Customer Respect
A complaint has reached us that your friendly old blogster is prejudiced against corporations and especially against banking corporations.
Yes, but don’t take that personally if you are employed by a bank. Remember that a corporation is not a human being - even though it has a lot of the legal privileges of a human being. A corp is still just a helpless creature which must hire nice human beings, like you, to tend to its needs. Of course,, unlike you, it is legally exempt from being put in jail. (Its owners. too, though human beings like you, in most countries cannot be jailed for anything their corp does either.)
Hmmmnnn. Perhaps that could be changed, but only for the controlling shareholders, I would recommend.
But this blog wants to report two little human scenes which may, or may not, be relevant to this topic.
Story 1. Kitchen table. Wife calls her husband. “Can you explain to me what this means?”
This Period This Year Since Account Opening*
I Opening value 20.897.68 21,394.34 0.00
I
I You added 0.00 0.00 35,568.13
I
I You withdrew 364.78 1,094,32 24,632.04
I
I Amount Invested =-364.78 =-1,094.32 23,632.04
I——————————————————————————— I Change in Value 100.33 331.21 9,697.14
I
I Closing Value 20,633.23 20,633.23 20,633.23
I ________________________________________
* This chart shows the changes in the market value of your account, and also reflects all cash and securities added, withdrawn and transferred into or out of your account for the specified time period.
I pass it on for more accomplished bookkeepers. To them it will be patently clear what, for example, the symbol “=-“ means. We think we finally got that one, but it didn’t clarify anything else.
So, just skip this story and get on to:
Story 2 This is a personal experience.
I was doing some business in a credit union branch. There was a lady, well-dressed and smiling, who singled out members coming away from the tellers and asked for their response to the recently revised monthly statement format.
When she asked, me I said, “Well, it seems to me that the Credit Union is getting more like a bank.”
She seemed a little taken aback by that. Pressed, I explained that bank statements are designed for the employees to understand. I might have added “not for the customers”. I explained that the “pre-improvement” version of the Credit Union statement identified each of my several accounts with a number and an account name (Savings Checking, Guaranteed Interest, etc) The new one just had seven-digit numbers for each. Easy for the employees to learn..
Skip ahead about three months on this story, when a further redesign of the statements came out. It included the name of each account!
Now, I ask you, would you ever get that response from your own friendly old bank IF you were ever actually ASKED to comment on a re-design? The new statements, of course, would be accompanied with multiple assurances that the new design was “easier,” “clearer,” “more convenient for our customers." ("So there. We, of course, know better than you what’s easy, clear and convenient for you.")
Wednesday, 25 October 2017
New Series Blog 2-54 Man vs Corp
Blog 2-54 Man vs Corp
"The plundering classes don't care where their money comes from, so long as it keeps coming - in larger armored cars.
Prof. Lucius D. Landseer.
The directors' first thought when corporate earnings sag is, "How can we reduce wage costs?"
B. J. Chopinhandra (corporate director)
So "every CEO's dream: a fully automated corporation with no human employees (well, except himself)." (Herself?)
Cogs Blog, Series 2-54
Sunday, 20 August 2017
From an Optimist, or a Pessimist?
Optimistic or Pessimistic Idea?
We were taken by part of a recent TV interview. Haven't been able to identify the interviewee. But here's his idea.
The world is getting to be a better place, "because for the first time inn human history, more people are dying from the effects of obesity than are dying of starvation."
Still on furlough, but couldn't resist that one. It bears thinking on.
We were taken by part of a recent TV interview. Haven't been able to identify the interviewee. But here's his idea.
The world is getting to be a better place, "because for the first time inn human history, more people are dying from the effects of obesity than are dying of starvation."
Still on furlough, but couldn't resist that one. It bears thinking on.
Friday, 21 April 2017
Blog 53 Essentials on Banks.
Blog 53 Essentials on Banks
Point 5 Finally. Glass-Steagall deserves a note. What's Glass-Steagall? A set of regulations governing the banking industry, passed in the Great Depression. Key point: it prevented banks from engaging in investment business, insurance business and stock brokerage business. Thus were the "four pillars" of the financial system kept separate. Good idea still, eight decades later. But bank lobbying has destroyed those regulations So banks can invest their depositors' money and their own debt-created incomes wherever they see the greatest profit . If that comes from bankrupting their brokerage or insurance businesses, they have the freedom to do it Ask what happens if an insurance company goes under, or what happens if, say, a bank's paper assets fail and drag the retail customers' savings down with it. It happened in 1930 and in Cyprus in 2013. (Just Google "bail-in").
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born of sin. The Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits [money], and with a flick of a pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this world would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you wish to remain
Point 5 Finally. Glass-Steagall deserves a note. What's Glass-Steagall? A set of regulations governing the banking industry, passed in the Great Depression. Key point: it prevented banks from engaging in investment business, insurance business and stock brokerage business. Thus were the "four pillars" of the financial system kept separate. Good idea still, eight decades later. But bank lobbying has destroyed those regulations So banks can invest their depositors' money and their own debt-created incomes wherever they see the greatest profit . If that comes from bankrupting their brokerage or insurance businesses, they have the freedom to do it Ask what happens if an insurance company goes under, or what happens if, say, a bank's paper assets fail and drag the retail customers' savings down with it. It happened in 1930 and in Cyprus in 2013. (Just Google "bail-in").
If you don't know history, you are doomed to repeat it.
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born of sin. The Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits [money], and with a flick of a pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this world would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you wish to remain
slaves of the Bankers and pay for the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits." Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920's.
How do the banks create money [deposits] in 2017 ?
Blog 15, Part 1 explains it, but be prepared. It is so simple, it is hard to believe.
Addendum: Point 6
I have just read, and must recommend, a piece on the Trump perception of international trade, and the actual numbers. It is on a blog, Reports from the Economic Front written by Professor Emeritus of Economics, Martin Hart-Landsberg. It is quoted in full in Economic Reform (ER), Vol 29, No. 1 Jan-Feb, 2017. Here's a sample.
Re: Apple iPhone4
In a widely cited study researchers found that Apple created most of the product's value through its product-design, software and marketing operations, most of which happen in the United States. Apple ended up keeping 58% of the iPhone's sale price. The gross profits of Korean companies LG and Samsung, which provided the phone's display and memory chips, captured another 5%. Less than 2% went to pay for Chinese labor.
Oh, yes, and the whole $250 for the phone was counted into the figures for US imports from China. So, where's the beef, Mr President?
Just a small sample of this rich article.
Que sera, sera, unless somebody steps up to unmask and divert it.
Hope to be back in about three months.
Yer friendly old CogsBlogster.
MONEY
POWER
The law of money: "Money goes where money is."
See you in the comics.
Wednesday, 19 April 2017
Blog 52 Five Points Looking Back, and Forward -- Make it Six
Blog 52 Five Points Looking Back, and Forward - Make it Six
Point 1 Mr. Putin is not a communist.
If your knee jerked with denial of that, it's time you got with history.
During the "Cold War" (roughly 1947-1987), Western CAPITALISTS felt threatened by MARXIST IDEAS. Best illustration, Cuba. Note we say IDEAS. not a military threat. US bombing squadrons could have pulverized* the whole island in a matter of minutes. What was troubling was that IDEAS, flitting from a successful communist state nearby, could flit into the minds of ordinary American democrats. What ideas? Oh, ideas the ruling folk considered obsolete, like democracy, liberty, equality,- you know - what the World War II soldiers fought for. Those ideas were actually the root ideas of early communism. So the propaganda** was turned up, and a generation of decent common folk were trained at their mothers' knees that "communism" was a fatal disease for all, rich and poor, and particularly the middle class. And therefore Cuba must by boycotted. *pulverized means "reduced to dust. Look up the origin of propaganda in your own dictionary.
But Russia, today, is not a communist country. That went out with Josef Stalin, who was praised/condemned as a dictator, and took communism down with him.
"Communism" - that's another interesting word: the "com" .is Latin for "with" or "together" The "uni" means "one". Flip forward to 1776, when the national slogan of the newly united states claimed to be e pluribus unum, "out of many, one"" (Actually, the many were just 13, but now, with a pluribus of 50, it is struggling to be united again.) Sad?
Point 2 A word to Canadians.check out carefully what your government is covering up with its bafflegab about a Canada Infrastructure Bank. It is NOT about repairing the infrastructure deficit across the country - putting Canadians to work rebuilding bridges, canals, city subways, water treatment and sewage plants, and provincial power plants and electricity grids. And using Canadian materials. Nope, not that. That would be a good policy. The BIG scheme seems to be to persuade the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the big Ontario Teachers Pension Board to invest their PUBLIC SAVINGS in grand, impressive new projects which may or may not be needed and may or may not be profitable, but will be built by the biggest construction companies in the world - WHICH ARE CERTAINLY NOT GOING TO BE CANADIAN. Let's try that again: Canada Pension Plan and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan money will buy into new airports, toll highways, electricity plants, high speed railways, large scale office towers to house government agencies, or, maybe, a large harbour and tourist hotel in Nunavut***These projects may or may not be profitable. But heck, it's only the people's money being spent.
***Nunavut is a frosty Canadian territory on the Arctic Ocean.
Incidentally, a NAFTA clause prohibits Canada from making any stipulations that the projects be built by Canadian firms or employ Canadian workers, or use Canadian materials. President Trump will not be permitted to tinker with that clause. So sad, Canada.
But you can get out of NAFTA totally by merely giving six months notice! Really.
(See Nelson, Chapter 3 or The Cogs Blog 51 for more detail.)
Point 3 About money. Remember that most of the world's money is not created by governments anymore (including your money - think credit card, checking, and other electronic transfer methods) You don't use cash much anymore, do you? No, you use credit, created and loaned to you at interest and transferred for your convenience with "modest fees".
Interest rates and fees can be made to fall or rise (Actually, current interest rates have nowhere to fall. So, likely, its UP she goes!) And soon you won't be able to use cash to avoid interest payments. Cash has one foot in the grave if Mr. Modi (India) and the Scandinavian countries' efforts spread as planned.
This suppression of cash is a crock of deceptions. The argument, relentlessly repeated, is that it will enable governments to track and apprehend criminals and tax-evaders. But the big criminals and big tax-evaders no longer use cash to hide their money. They already know how to use banks and digital money to get away with it. It's only peasants who will suffer. But don't worry, unless you are, or may become, a peasant.
Point 4 Cui bono? Who benefits? That's always the first thing to ask when a change to the monetary or political system is being touted. Who benefits?
Well, will this 800 word blog never end? Sure. Will you sign back in tomorrow for Blog 52b, with Points 5 and 6 and a farewell salute --and a thought-provoking cartoon?.
Yep! A cartoon.
Point 1 Mr. Putin is not a communist.
If your knee jerked with denial of that, it's time you got with history.
During the "Cold War" (roughly 1947-1987), Western CAPITALISTS felt threatened by MARXIST IDEAS. Best illustration, Cuba. Note we say IDEAS. not a military threat. US bombing squadrons could have pulverized* the whole island in a matter of minutes. What was troubling was that IDEAS, flitting from a successful communist state nearby, could flit into the minds of ordinary American democrats. What ideas? Oh, ideas the ruling folk considered obsolete, like democracy, liberty, equality,- you know - what the World War II soldiers fought for. Those ideas were actually the root ideas of early communism. So the propaganda** was turned up, and a generation of decent common folk were trained at their mothers' knees that "communism" was a fatal disease for all, rich and poor, and particularly the middle class. And therefore Cuba must by boycotted. *pulverized means "reduced to dust. Look up the origin of propaganda in your own dictionary.
But Russia, today, is not a communist country. That went out with Josef Stalin, who was praised/condemned as a dictator, and took communism down with him.
"Communism" - that's another interesting word: the "com" .is Latin for "with" or "together" The "uni" means "one". Flip forward to 1776, when the national slogan of the newly united states claimed to be e pluribus unum, "out of many, one"" (Actually, the many were just 13, but now, with a pluribus of 50, it is struggling to be united again.) Sad?
Point 2 A word to Canadians.check out carefully what your government is covering up with its bafflegab about a Canada Infrastructure Bank. It is NOT about repairing the infrastructure deficit across the country - putting Canadians to work rebuilding bridges, canals, city subways, water treatment and sewage plants, and provincial power plants and electricity grids. And using Canadian materials. Nope, not that. That would be a good policy. The BIG scheme seems to be to persuade the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the big Ontario Teachers Pension Board to invest their PUBLIC SAVINGS in grand, impressive new projects which may or may not be needed and may or may not be profitable, but will be built by the biggest construction companies in the world - WHICH ARE CERTAINLY NOT GOING TO BE CANADIAN. Let's try that again: Canada Pension Plan and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan money will buy into new airports, toll highways, electricity plants, high speed railways, large scale office towers to house government agencies, or, maybe, a large harbour and tourist hotel in Nunavut***These projects may or may not be profitable. But heck, it's only the people's money being spent.
***Nunavut is a frosty Canadian territory on the Arctic Ocean.
Incidentally, a NAFTA clause prohibits Canada from making any stipulations that the projects be built by Canadian firms or employ Canadian workers, or use Canadian materials. President Trump will not be permitted to tinker with that clause. So sad, Canada.
But you can get out of NAFTA totally by merely giving six months notice! Really.
(See Nelson, Chapter 3 or The Cogs Blog 51 for more detail.)
Point 3 About money. Remember that most of the world's money is not created by governments anymore (including your money - think credit card, checking, and other electronic transfer methods) You don't use cash much anymore, do you? No, you use credit, created and loaned to you at interest and transferred for your convenience with "modest fees".
Interest rates and fees can be made to fall or rise (Actually, current interest rates have nowhere to fall. So, likely, its UP she goes!) And soon you won't be able to use cash to avoid interest payments. Cash has one foot in the grave if Mr. Modi (India) and the Scandinavian countries' efforts spread as planned.
This suppression of cash is a crock of deceptions. The argument, relentlessly repeated, is that it will enable governments to track and apprehend criminals and tax-evaders. But the big criminals and big tax-evaders no longer use cash to hide their money. They already know how to use banks and digital money to get away with it. It's only peasants who will suffer. But don't worry, unless you are, or may become, a peasant.
Point 4 Cui bono? Who benefits? That's always the first thing to ask when a change to the monetary or political system is being touted. Who benefits?
Well, will this 800 word blog never end? Sure. Will you sign back in tomorrow for Blog 52b, with Points 5 and 6 and a farewell salute --and a thought-provoking cartoon?.
Yep! A cartoon.
Thursday, 30 March 2017
Blog 51 Beyond Banksters. Further Final Notes and Quotes
Blog 51 Beyond Banksters. Further Final Notes and Quotes
From Chapter 3 A 21st Century Trojan Horse**
"CPPIB {Canada Pension Plan Investment Board} director, Michael Goldberg, is also a director of ... Resources Works, which (according to its website) promotes "fact-based dialogue on responsible resource development in British Columbia."
Now that's what we like to hear:
"fact-based" (no lies, no propaganda, no "alternative facts.")
"dialogue" (that is, both sides heard from.)
"responsible" (means "publicly answerable").
But, to quote Nelson again:
"Critics say Resource Works is a collection of PR flaks working especially for the oil and gas industry.
"Resource Works is currently promoting the export of Site-C* dam-generated electricity for tar sands development in Alberta, enabling (as their website puts it) 'The expansion of the oil sands powered by clean energy to avoid climate change.'" (My italics).
Wow! Sounds great! The expansion of the oil sands powered by clean energy to avoid climate change.
"Dam-generated! That's hydro. Next to solar and wind, that's the cleanest.
"Clean energy." Yep, that's what we're all after.
"Avoid climate change." The ultimate grand global goal.
Three cheers for Michael Goldberg and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board!.
But, Michael, isn't the tar/oil sands one of the most polluting carbon sources in the world?
No, no, no, Not if you use clean hydro power to produce it.
Oh? So it's only when the oil is refined from the tar and is actually burnt into the atmosphere that it pollutes! OK, I think I am getting it. Since this oil may be imported into the United States with President Trump's pipeline, and since it is going to be refined and burnt there or be refined there and be sold and burnt somewhere else in the world, it will avoid, (not just diminish), but totally avoid climate change!
Well, what a great global relief that will be!
And Canada totally exonerated! And on your good advice, Mr. Goldberg, they may also invest their people's major pension fund money into some great infrastructure projects. Thanks.
Or is this just the pissiest piece of PR bafflegab you've ever heard?
But we are getting used to that now, after the election, in what is being called "the post-truth age."
But here's hope: John Milton, a great English spokesman for freedom of speech, said:
"Let Truth and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter. (Areopagitica 1664.)
And - a briefer version from my old grandmother's lexicon of proverbs: The truth will out.
Vive Truth!
It just that some days it takes a Joyce Nelson or, here, your faithful blogger to "out" it from corporate BS.
BS? You know what BS means.
Which reminds me: your faithful blogger was going to retire The Cogs Blog for a spell (Other calls), but the deconstruction of one more passage presented by Nelson is too good to leave you without.. So Blog 52 will be farewell for a spell till we all meet again. My, that sounds like a line from a musical I think I 'll write,
*Site C is a dam site for hydro-electric power development on the Yukon River in north-eastern British Columbia.
** You know the Trojan horse. It's huge, it sounds hollow inside. But you wheel it into your town like a great prize, anyway. Overnight the armed soldiers hidden inside sneak out and burn down your town. So sad.
Sometimes it doesn't look like a hollow horse, but like a gigantic infrastructure expenditure - built with borrowed money.
From Chapter 3 A 21st Century Trojan Horse**
"CPPIB {Canada Pension Plan Investment Board} director, Michael Goldberg, is also a director of ... Resources Works, which (according to its website) promotes "fact-based dialogue on responsible resource development in British Columbia."
Now that's what we like to hear:
"fact-based" (no lies, no propaganda, no "alternative facts.")
"dialogue" (that is, both sides heard from.)
"responsible" (means "publicly answerable").
But, to quote Nelson again:
"Critics say Resource Works is a collection of PR flaks working especially for the oil and gas industry.
"Resource Works is currently promoting the export of Site-C* dam-generated electricity for tar sands development in Alberta, enabling (as their website puts it) 'The expansion of the oil sands powered by clean energy to avoid climate change.'" (My italics).
Wow! Sounds great! The expansion of the oil sands powered by clean energy to avoid climate change.
"Dam-generated! That's hydro. Next to solar and wind, that's the cleanest.
"Clean energy." Yep, that's what we're all after.
"Avoid climate change." The ultimate grand global goal.
Three cheers for Michael Goldberg and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board!.
But, Michael, isn't the tar/oil sands one of the most polluting carbon sources in the world?
No, no, no, Not if you use clean hydro power to produce it.
Oh? So it's only when the oil is refined from the tar and is actually burnt into the atmosphere that it pollutes! OK, I think I am getting it. Since this oil may be imported into the United States with President Trump's pipeline, and since it is going to be refined and burnt there or be refined there and be sold and burnt somewhere else in the world, it will avoid, (not just diminish), but totally avoid climate change!
Well, what a great global relief that will be!
And Canada totally exonerated! And on your good advice, Mr. Goldberg, they may also invest their people's major pension fund money into some great infrastructure projects. Thanks.
Or is this just the pissiest piece of PR bafflegab you've ever heard?
But we are getting used to that now, after the election, in what is being called "the post-truth age."
But here's hope: John Milton, a great English spokesman for freedom of speech, said:
"Let Truth and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter. (Areopagitica 1664.)
And - a briefer version from my old grandmother's lexicon of proverbs: The truth will out.
Vive Truth!
It just that some days it takes a Joyce Nelson or, here, your faithful blogger to "out" it from corporate BS.
BS? You know what BS means.
Which reminds me: your faithful blogger was going to retire The Cogs Blog for a spell (Other calls), but the deconstruction of one more passage presented by Nelson is too good to leave you without.. So Blog 52 will be farewell for a spell till we all meet again. My, that sounds like a line from a musical I think I 'll write,
*Site C is a dam site for hydro-electric power development on the Yukon River in north-eastern British Columbia.
** You know the Trojan horse. It's huge, it sounds hollow inside. But you wheel it into your town like a great prize, anyway. Overnight the armed soldiers hidden inside sneak out and burn down your town. So sad.
Sometimes it doesn't look like a hollow horse, but like a gigantic infrastructure expenditure - built with borrowed money.
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