Jim Rogers - The Fed is the Problem

Great commentary from a very smart man:

Ron Paul Video Compilation / Peter Schiff Video Compilation

I've been following Ron Paul ever since he announced his candidacy for the President. He's the only one that made sense to me: get our troops out of unnecessary wars (which is bankrupting this country), balance the budget by cutting government spending, get rid of the IRS and the Federal Reserve, cut taxes, and leave the government out of most decision making.

I recently came across a financier who has very similar economic views: Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, a broker/dealer outfit. What makes Mr. Schiff special is that he predicted the collapse of the housing and financial bubbles. As you will see in some of the videos I've compiled, he never backed down in his beliefs while other so called "experts" were laughing at him (unsurprisingly some of these fools are still making the rounds of business-related talk shows).

Like Ron Paul and Peter Schiff, I believe that America is headed for an eventual economic collapse unless the government does things differently--mainly stay out of the way of the free market. Unfortunately right now, the opposite is happening.

Here's a compilation of recent videos of both men that pertain to the financial bubble, the government bailouts, and the future of America.


Ron Paul Video Compilation

Ron Paul Explains How The Financial Bubble Was Created
Sample quote: "When a federal reserve system, a central bank creates easy money, easy credit and has interest rates lower than they should be, business people do the wrong things, they make mistakes--it's called mal-investment, and we've been doing it for a long time, it causes financial bubbles and they have to be corrected. Actually recession is therapy for all the mistakes..."

Ron Paul talks about how to balance the budget and takes a snipe at economist Paul Krugman and other Keynesians
Sample quote: "If they're still winning the Nobel Prize we're in serious trouble"; "The culprit really, is the Federal Reserve, the monetary system, and this spendthrift Congress that we have and government."

Ron Paul discusses the financial bubble at a Congressional Financial Services Hearing
Sample quote: "If we got here by spending too much money, borrowing too much money, inflating too much money, the Federal Reserve too involved in central economic planning through manipulation of interest rates, and the Congress passing too many regulations--as long as we think that's benign, has nothing to do with it, then I guess it seems very logical that we come up by spending more money, borrowing more money, printing more money, and writing more regulations and think we're gonna get different results."

Ron Paul schools Bernanke on the bailout plan and the Great Depression
Sample quote: "In the depression we tried to fix prices, which is exactly what we're doing now... The Austrian school of economics... their key point is, don't mess around with prices because if you do you become socialistic... Here we are in price fixing again. You say that part of your mandate is price stability. I hardly think that price stability comes by price fixing... The Federal Reserve is not smart enough, Treasury is not smart enough, Congress is not smart enough to know what prices are. So I think that is the greatest danger what we're doing here is we're price fixing and that is what I'm convinced prolonged the [Great] Depression in the 1930s..."

Ron Paul on the Auto Bailout
Sample quote: "We are on the road to nationalization!!!"

Peter Schiff Video Compilation

Peter Schiff predicting the financial bubble in 2006-2007!

Peter Schiff: U.S. Banks are worthless!
Sample quote: "They might as well flush their money down the toilet!"

Peter Schiff on the Auto Bailout
Sample quote: "Government money isn't going to fix the problem, it's simply going to perpetuate the problem. First of all two wrongs don't make a right. Just because the government illegally and improperly bailout Wall Street doesn't mean they have to make the same mistake with Detroit."

Peter Schiff predicts doomed economy under Obama
Sample quote: "It can get very bad. I've talked about the prospects of hyperinflation in the United States and that's something that we're actually dealing with. The government is really trading inflation for depression right now. They think they can inflate their way out of this problem, but they can't, and the underlying problem is once the rest of the world really senses the direction our currency is going in and once the creditor nations who have been funding our consumption and buying our bonds, once they stop doing that and they will, then the demand for dollars is going to collapse."

Peter Schiff makes 2009 predictions Part 1 / Part 2
Sample quote: "What is happening is Americans are broke. We've borrowed all this money to spend and now we can't borrow any more mainly because the creditors have reached their limit, they don't want to lend any more, so the government is borrowing for us, but they're forcing us into debt by taking on additional liabilities, but we need to start paying off our debts, we need to start savings again so that we can have money to lend out to entrepreneurs to start businesses, to make capital investments so we can go back to work producing goods instead of consuming them. But the government is simply pouring gasoline on a fire that it set, and it's gonna do a lot of damage with all these stimulus' and bailouts."

Financial Crisis 2008: Who is to blame? Whose fault was it?

The media, as always, will (and has) blame(d) Wall Street and greedy Republicans. But the facts are quite different. To better understand who is to blame for the crisis, we should listen to those who have a lot to lose in a financial crisis and those who were inside the banking industry. Hedge fund managers, whose financial well-being is directly proportional (or perhaps exponential might be a better word) to their performance, have a lot riding on guessing the performance of companies, commodities, and the financial system as a whole.

I found these two great insights into what happened, first by Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of hedge fund Blackstone Group, and Noel Sheppard, editor of NewsBusters who worked in the banking industry during and after the 1980s S&L crisis.

Schwarzman: "It’s a perfect storm. It started with Congress encouraging lending to lower-income people. You went from subprime loans being 2% of total loans in 2002 to 30% of total loans in 2006. That kind of enormous increase swept into the net people who shouldn’t have been borrowing.... Those loans were packaged into CDOs rated AAA [by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac], which led the investment-banking firms [buying them] to do little to no due diligence, and the securities were distributed throughout the world, where they started defaulting." [Read full article here]

Sheppard: He quotes the Investor's Business Daily, which pinpoints the start of the crisis to Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act, which forced banks to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, mostly in minority areas. Then, "Despite warnings from GOP members of Congress in 1992, Clinton pushed extensive changes to the rules requiring lenders to make questionable loans." [Read full article here]

So it wasn't too much regulation of the private market that caused the problem, it was too little regulation of the quasi-government entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and unsound laws passed in the name of equality for everyone.

McCain's $300 million prize for a new auto battery? (Bullshit)

Dude,

Do you have any idea how much venture capital is devoted into energy? A LOT. This is another of your bullshit gimmicks like the "gas tax holiday". If you want to do something useful, send that money back to taxpayers. And instead of focusing on how to bomb Iran, maybe you should go to college and take an economics class.

Fucking dumb ass...
----------------

McCain to Propose Prize
For New Auto Battery
Associated Press
June 23, 2008 12:51 p.m.

PHOENIX -- John McCain hopes to solve the country's energy crisis with cold hard cash.

The presumed Republican nominee is proposing a $300 million government prize to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. The bounty would equate to $1 for every man, woman and child in the country, "a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency," Mr. McCain said in remarks prepared for delivery Monday at Fresno State University in California.
...

More Great PBS Documentaries

Young & Restless in China

Tortillanomics: Food or Fuel?

Congratulations to Sue Williams and Malia Wollan for producing such informative documentaries.

Google Earth Hour Bullshit

Very good idea, but not buying it. Why are corporations pretending they're "green" and "environmentally conscious", b.s., b.s.? Of course, it's good for their image. True, but it's still bullshit.

Anyway, while Google is promoting "going green", their founders, Larry Page and Sergei Brin, seem not to have caught on--they're flying on their Boeing 767 wide-body corporate jet, a.k.a., the "party plane".


The Register (UK)
Google founders spar over 'party plane'
By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View (ashlee.vance@theregister.co.uk)
Published Friday 7th July 2006 20:44 GMT

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin need more adult supervision than previously thought.

While the two billionaires agree that they both love colored balls, they can't agree on what types of beds should be placed in their Boeing 767 wide body corporate jet. Brin and Page broke out in a dispute over whether or not Brin should have a long California King size bed in their plane, according to documents tied to a lawsuit over the jet. Ultimately, Google CEO Eric Schmidt had to chime in and make the bed decision for the youngsters.

"Sergey, you can have whatever bed you want in your room; Larry, you can have whatever kind of bed you want in your bedroom. Let's move on," Schmidt told the pair, according to the court documents.

The Wall Street Journal today made the nasty bed dispute public after uncovering a battle between Blue City – Google's holding company for the plane – and Leslie Jennings – a designer contracted to do customer work on the Google craft. Blue City canned Jennings last October, claiming he failed to rework the Boeing as requested. Meanwhile, Jennings is seeking payment for his work and has denied Blue City's claims.

With legal costs rising, Jennings is none too happy about the situation.

"They're intent on seeing whether they can break every bone in my body and drain every cent out of me," he told the paper.

The battle has turned up some wonderful details about the Google boys. According to the court documents, Schmidt has referred to the corporate jet as a "party plane." And, in fact, the Googlers wanted things such as hammocks hanging from the ceiling and a cocktail lounge in their jet.
...
Read the full article.

Obama not too good at Economics

I like Obama and will still probably vote for him because McCain is a warmonger, but this so-called Patriot Employer Act is misguided. From the Wall Street Journal:

...Under Mr. Obama's plan, "patriot employers" qualify for a 1% tax credit on their profits. To finance this tax break, American companies with subsidiaries abroad would have to pay the U.S. corporate tax on profits earned abroad, rather than the corporate tax of the host country where they are earned. Since the U.S. corporate tax rate is 35%, while most of the world has a lower rate, this amounts to a big tax increase on earnings owned abroad.

Put another way, U.S. companies would suddenly have to pay a higher tax rate than their Chinese, Japanese and European competitors. According to research by Peter Merrill, an international tax expert at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, this change would "raise the cost of capital of U.S. multinationals and cause them to lose market share to foreign rivals." Apparently Mr. Obama believes that by making U.S. companies less profitable and less competitive world-wide, they will somehow be able to create more jobs in America.

He has it backwards: The offshore activities of U.S. companies tend to increase rather than reduce domestic business. A 2005 National Bureau of Economic Research study by economists from Harvard and the University of Michigan found that more foreign investment by U.S. companies leads to greater domestic investment, and that U.S. firms' hiring of more offshore workers is positively, not negatively, associated with the number of American workers they hire. That's in part because often what is produced overseas by subsidiaries are component parts to final, higher-value-added products manufactured here....

No Free Energy Episode #4

I'm passionate about this issue because a lot of people think . It's too bad Einstein is now alive; I'd really like to hear his view on this issue. In my opinion, it comes down to this fundamental law: energy can not be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.

Notes from the McLaughlin Group:

AL GORE (former vice president): (From videotape.) Tipper and I will go to Oslo and I will accept this award on behalf of all of those who have been working so long and so hard to try to get the message out about this planetary emergency.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The Nobel Peace Prize this year went to Al Gore. Gore has awakened the world to the reality and the danger of global warming. This alert and the scientific evidence behind it has set off a worldwide scramble to profit from a tectonic shift.

There's big money to be made in the green gold. The gold rush of yesteryear has become the green rush of today. General Electric, General Motors, Archer Daniels Midland, ExxonMobil, are racing to discover how, through their own businesses, they can feed the demand for green -- green fuels, green subsidies, green mandates.

You've heard of blue-collar jobs and white-collar jobs. Well, climbing up the ladder, we now have green-collar jobs. The Credit Suisse Group has introduced a new, quote-unquote, "global warming index." It lists new green investment stocks and other green instruments for major banks. Over the next 25 years, global demand for energy will climb by 40 percent.

This combination of profit motive, market incentives and government regulation has unleashed billions of dollars in new research on two fronts: New energy and efficient energy. Economists predict that this wave of innovation will reshape world markets as radically as the computer boom of the '90s.

But skeptics say we've heard that song before, notably in the '70s during the energy crisis. Washington then subsidized synthetic fuel. Washington then subsidized solar panels. Nuclear took on a new life. Detroit retooled; built engines that delivered more miles to the gallon and a catalytic converter built around it.

Then, after all this commotion, after all this reaction to the escalation of oil prices, the price plummeted and the big green balloon burst.

Question: So which will it be this time, a green boom or a green bust? Pat Buchanan.

MR. BUCHANAN: It'll be both, John. It's going to start off with a boom because there's an enormous political movement to transfer wealth and power to the federal government and from nation-states to international bureaucrats who can control the planet and the rest of it.

Businesses are going to reach into this thing and make all the money they can on good capitalist principles. The media love an end- of-the-world scenario; nothing better than that for ratings. And it's all going to continue, John, until we're going to wake up and find the ocean did not rise 20 feet at all and the planet is warming very slowly and it's not a crisis.

Then they'll find a new one, like bird flu or nuclear winter. They find these every decade, one or another. And then it will go away and everybody will have made a lot of money, and government everywhere will have more power. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: So global warming is the big lie. Is that what you're saying?

MR. BUCHANAN: It's not a lie. It's occurring. But it's a big con.
...

Pat, you are my hero. I am certain that 30 or 50 years from now when America will be a 2nd or 3rd rate economic power, people will say, "Buchanan was right".

No Free Energy Episode #3 (Ethanol is bull shit)

See this article from the Wall Street Journal:

Ethanol Craze Cools
As Doubts Multiply
Claims for Environment,
Energy Use Draw Fire;
Fighting on the Farm
By LAUREN ETTER
November 28, 2007; Page A1

Little over a year ago, ethanol was winning the hearts and wallets of both Main Street and Wall Street, with promises of greater U.S. energy independence, fewer greenhouse gases and help for the farm economy. Today, the corn-based biofuel is under siege.

In the span of one growing season, ethanol has gone from panacea to pariah in the eyes of some. The critics, which include industries hurt when the price of corn rises, blame ethanol for pushing up food prices, question its environmental bona fides and dispute how much it really helps reduce the need for oil.
[chart]

A recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded that biofuels "offer a cure [for oil dependence] that is worse than the disease." A National Academy of Sciences study said corn-based ethanol could strain water supplies. The American Lung Association expressed concern about a form of air pollution from burning ethanol in gasoline. Political cartoonists have taken to skewering the fuel for raising the price of food to the world's poor.
...
Read the full article.

See my previous posts about energy: #1 and #2.

Finally, the History Channel's Modern Marvels discusses the pros and cons of various types of renewable energy.

Warren Buffett on the Estate Tax

Warren Buffett is a hero of mine, not only because he is the icon of American capitalism, but because I consider him to be a good guy.

So while I disagree with him on the estate tax, a.k.a. "the death tax"--I don't think there should be any because over one or two generations a rich person's fortune will likely be squandered by his/her descendants anyway and the private sector is better at allocating resources than the government--it was sad to see a man of his stature and integrity to be interrupted and questioned unfairly by the honorable members of our government.

Specifically, during the Senate hearings, he was cut off by Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)when he was discussing why the vast majority of charitable organizations only spend the required minimum (5%) of their endowments; Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) who was making the assumption that Buffett was for the estate-tax because his holdings include insurance companies who have been lobbying hard not to have the estate tax repealed; and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), who thanked Buffett for his contributions to the Gates Foundation, but said a few times something along the lines of, "whenever you do make the contribution."

Do your homework people! Buffett is the good guy here!

Private Equity: "I create nothing; I own" ?

I'm an ardent supporter of capitalism, but the way private equity companies structure deals such as the one outlined in the Wall Street Journal article below only benefits the takeover sharks. Obviously there's nothing wrong with restructuring if it helps a company's long-term prospects, but a successful corporation has to share some of its wealth with its workers; if it doesn't the company will usually fail at some point assuming there's free competition. In a case such as this one however, the company that was bought out had no choice but to lay off its workers because the private equity company that bought it saddled it with debt and then immediately took a dividend out for itself.

It's reminiscent of the movie Wall Street and the famous line by Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas): "I create nothing, I own." See my post from last year about private equity--the WSJ article mentioned is eerily similar to this one.


PAGE ONE
DOW JONES REPRINTS
IN THE TRENCHES
How a Blackstone Deal
Shook Up a Work Force
Layoffs at Travelport, Dividend for Investors;
'On Pins and Needles'

By IANTHE JEANNE DUGAN
July 27, 2007; Page A1

CENTENNIAL, Colo. -- Not long after the Blackstone Group bought Travelport Ltd. last August, workers at the company's office campus here began feeling the squeeze.
Two months after the deal closed, scores of employees were lugging boxes of personal belongings to their cars, having lost their jobs. Under Blackstone's ownership, the travel-reservations conglomerate has laid off 841 people, about 10% of its work force. Blackstone, a private-equity firm, has already recouped all of the money it invested in Travelport.

Similar scenes have been unfolding at companies around the nation, a human toll of the corporate-buyout boom. Private-equity firms, which say they bring sorely needed financial discipline to poorly run companies, have been slashing costs and extracting profits at warp speed. As the cycle of buying and selling companies has intensified, life in the trenches can be unstable and traumatic.

By the end of 2007, Travelport expects to slash costs by $150 million. Last week, it brought public its online reservations unit, Orbitz Worldwide Inc., using the proceeds to pay off debt. Its Galileo unit, which feeds airline information to travel agents, is the focus of much of the overhaul. Many of the job cuts have occurred at the company's data-operations center here outside Denver, where some jobs have been outmoded by shifts in technology and in the way people buy airline tickets and rent cars, executives say.

John Kliegel, 41 years old, a computer-systems analyst, and his twin, Russell, a technical writer, were both laid off. They're selling the house they share because they can no longer afford it. Don Kleppinger, a 46-year-old software engineer with five sons, lost his job, leaving him without health insurance for several months. Grace Covyeau, 63, who lost her job as a telecommunications engineer, took a part-time job last month making sandwiches and coffee at King Soopers grocery store.

"It came as a shock," says Michael Berson, 49, who lost his job as a data engineer in October, three years after receiving a "Super Star" award for saving the company $1.2 million on telecommunications costs. Mr. Berson has moved to Tulsa, where he is looking for a new job.

In addition to the 841 layoffs, 1,500 Travelport workers have left voluntarily since the buyout. The company says it has hired 1,582 new workers during that period, and has invested heavily in new technology.

Travelport Chief Executive Jeff Clarke describes the Centennial operation as the "factory" through which thousands of transactions pass every second. "We need to shift into new technologies," he says. "Some require productivity improvements and often will lead to layoffs."

To complete their $4.3 billion Travelport purchase, Blackstone and Technology Crossover Ventures, a Palo Alto, Calif., venture-capital firm that now owns 11%, invested $1 billion and borrowed the rest. That debt landed on Travelport's balance sheet. In March, Travelport borrowed an additional $1.1 billion and paid it out as a dividend to the two firms, returning all their money in just seven months.

"This is likely one of the quickest returns of invested capital for a private-equity deal of its size," Travelport's new chief financial officer, Michael Rescoe, said in a May conference call with analysts.

The buyout boom has been lucrative for Blackstone partners and investors, which include large institutions such as pension funds. Last year, Blackstone managed assets valued at about $88 billion and earned $2.27 billion, according to a prospectus for its own initial public offering in June. Its chief executive, Stephen Schwarzman, who resides in a 35-room Manhattan apartment, made more than $650 million on the offering and retained a 24% stake now worth more than $5 billion.
....
Read more here...

Maternity Leave: U.S. Worst in the World

For being the richest country in the world, this is a disgrace. Isn't the Democratic Party suppose to fix this? Oh wait, it's the Republicans: they're the "family values" party. Wrong--everybody is a pawn to the corporations.

[Graphic is from the most recent issue of National Geographic Magazine]

No Free (Energy) Lunches

Note to Brad Pitt: take the bus back next time.

From AutoblogGreen:
Brad Pitt thinks BMW's Hydrogen 7 is perfect for Ocean's 13 premiere
Posted Jun 6th 2007 1:39PM by Sebastian Blanco

At the premiere of Ocean's 13 at Grauman's Chinese Theatre last night, Brad Pitt arrived in a BMW Hydrogen 7. Our source didn't say if Angelina Jolie arrived in a different vehicle, but if you want oodles more photos from the event (both Brad and Angelina were there), here's IESB's gratuitous photo gallery with all the stars.
BMW is getting a lot of publicity out of the Hydrogen 7s they've got in America.
...

Here's the real scoop on the environmental efficacy of the vehicle from Spiegel:

BMW'S HYDROGEN 7
Not as Green as it Seems
By Christian Wüst
BMW is manufacturing the first series of hydrogen fueled cars. They're not as green as they seem. For a start, they're incredibly thirsty -- and they will put more strain on the environment than a heavy diesel truck.
....
The problem is that hydrogen is in scarce supply and producing it requires vast amounts of energy. Climate-friendly production of liquid hydrogen on a large scale presupposes a virtually unlimited supply of ecologically produced electricity -- not something likely to materialize in the near future. That's why energy experts from the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy believe forcing the transition to a hydrogen-based economy within the next three to four decades is "not an ecologically sound" idea.

Storing the volatile energy source also requires energy and money. The only method that promises a reasonable storage life is liquid storage at temperatures below -253 degrees Celsius (-423 degrees Fahrenheit). The process of cooling the storage facility down to such a low temperature alone uses up to one-third of the energy contained in one fuel tank.
...
And so, in creating the Hydrogen 7, BMW is announcing a future of putatively clean, full-throttle driving. The new car caters to the pleasing fantasy of customers spoiled by high-horsepower engines: That they can conform to ecological standards without making any sacrifices, burning "clean" fuel to their heart's content. Advertizing images display the Hydrogen 7 against a backdrop of wind turbines and solar panels.

But the image is one of deceit. Because the hydrogen dispensed at the new filling station is generated primarily from petroleum and natural gas, the new car puts about as much strain on the environment as a heavy truck with a diesel engine. Add the loss of environmental benefits involved in the production and transportation of the putatively clean fuel to the consumption of the car itself and you get an actual consumption corresponding to considerably more than 20 liters (5.3 gallons) of fossil fuel.

The environment isn't the only loser: Customers will also have to shell out a lot of money for their deceptive display of ecologically responsible driving. The current standard price for liquid hydrogen is 57 euro cents (0.73 US cents) per liter (0.3 gallons). And the price tag on a 100 kilometer (62 mile) drive in the Hydrogen 7, at a comfortable speed, is about €30 ($38).
...

The Downside of Globalization

With the world population still surging, non-replenishable resources becoming more scarce, and the competition to make ever-cheaper good relentless, stories like this one will become more common. But is there anyway to stop it or are these the inevitable casualties of "collateral damage"?

An Ancient Indian Craft Left in TattersSari Weavers Struggle Amid Economic Boom
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 6, 2007; A01

VARANASI, India -- Deep in a labyrinth of stucco buildings, in a dark, cavelike warehouse, Mohamed Javen, 18, switched on a light bulb, sat before his rickety loom and began working on what was once the prize possession of every Indian bride: the hand-woven silk sari.
His feet operated the bamboo pedals, making a rhythmic clopping sound. He carefully positioned hair-thin strands of gold thread into green silk, crafting a glittery lattice of leaves, elephants and birds that unfolded like a painting.

This sari design, which has been in Javen's family for 100 years, can take up to two months to weave. Patterns like these have been a source of Indian pride for more than 2,000 years, with India's version of haute couture adorning wealthy women of the empires of Rome, Egypt and Persia. Until recently, weaving was India's second-most-common occupation, behind farming.

But in this ancient city along the Ganges, Hinduism's holiest river, an estimated 1 million sari weavers are facing almost certain ruin. Cheaper, machine-made saris -- many of which are copied from Varanasi's famous patterns -- are being pumped out of China and from newer factories in India's western Gujarat state. Adding to the weavers' woes, changing fashions and global trade rules have opened the Indian market to foreign competitors, leaving many once-prosperous sari weavers and their families in desperate poverty.
...
Full article here.

Best Documentary of 2007: The Price of Sugar

So far this year at least. We saw it at SIFF last week. It's about the slavery-like conditions the Haitian immigrants live in on the plantations in the Dominican Republic. A Spanish-British Catholic priest named Christopher Hartley is trying to make the workers' lives better by organizing them and fighting for their rights with the Vicinis (a SIFF representative told the audience that their lawyers tried to stop the screening), the most powerful family in the country which owns the sugar plantations within the Father's parish.

The conditions under which the worker's live and work is quite simply terrifying. Many of them (and their children) have malnutrition and have little if any money for anything else (one of them was shown working in the field without shoes; he said he didn't make enough to buy any). The priest and the Church (and not the company) set up food centers just so that the workers are fed better! The owners could easily pay them a little bit more, but they choose not to. Worse of all, the immigrants are undocumented workers who have nothing left in Haiti (which is a poorer country than the Dominican Country) but also have no rights in their adopted country. One of the producers of the film was at the screening in Seattle and before the start of the movie asked the audience to consider the immigration situation in America (incidentally, most of the exported sugar is bought by America!). The similiarities are eerie and one hopes that it will never be as bad here. Nevertheless, after seeing this movie, one becomes aware of how important immigrants are to our economy; how hard they work; and how badly they are treated and perceived. I am now a bigger supporter of immigrant rights than ever before.

China Blue

China Blue is the story of "Jasmine", a young girl who works in a Chinese jeans factory. This factory is a sweatshop of the worse kind--the workers live in horrible company-provided dorms, they work 12+ hours/day (often much longer), are paid very little, and treated inhumanely by the owners and managers.

Many of the viewers on the PBS Web site commented that they now want to buy American-made products. I disagree--I think it's better to buy these products because as the country gets richer, the labor laws and conditions will improve. That's the hope at least.

This is one of the best documentaries I've seen in a while. Once again, PBS strikes gold.

How To Become a Banker and Help People Too

This is a great idea! (Many of my posts are cynical; this one is not)

Two Powerful Documentaries

I saw a couple of interesting documentaries in the past couple of weeks: This Film Is Not Yet Rated and America: Freedom to Fascism.

The former played in select theaters last year and is now out on DVD. It's about the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) film rating system. Ever wondered how movies are rated and by whom? The answer is: almost nobody knows because the MPAA is a secret organization whose membership is not published. The criteria by which movies are judged are vague and the MPAA doesn't publish specific guidelines. And why is that movies with so many violent scenes can get a PG-13 rating, while a sex scene automatically relegates it to an R rating? As discussed in the documentary, in Europe, the rating system is just the opposite (sex is OK, violence is not). And why should someone else decide what I can or cannot see? It takes a lot of digging by director/writer Kirby Dick to find out some of the mystery behind the MPAA. This is definitely a worthwile film to watch.

The latter film is a documentary mostly about the IRS and taxation on individuals' earnings. Writer/Director Aaron Russo discovers that there is no federal law that mandates paying a federal income tax on wages. In a larger context, the film also touches upon diminishing individual rights in America. This was also a great movie and you can see it on Google for free (see the film Web site to purchase the DVD). Here are a few quotes from the film:

"Do you think America is going deeper and deeper into becoming a police state, and if so, in what ways do you see that as a Congressman? --Aaron Russo

"Yeah, I think, we're moving in that direction, because there is not much we can do without permission. The absence of a police state is that people are free and if you don't commit crimes you can do what you want, but today you can't open up a business, you can't develop land, you can hardly do anything, you can't go the bank, you can't go the doctor without hte government knowing what you're doing. And they talk about medical privacy--that's gone. Financial privacy--that's gone. The right to own property--that's eseentially gone. So, you have to get permission from the government for almost everything, and if that is the definition of a police state that you can't do anyting unless the government gives you permission we're well on our way. This is something that eventually I hope people will get sick and tired of and say enough is enough." --Congressman Ron Paul (TX-R)

The Federal Reserve is a privately controlled entity owned by the major banks of this country.
--G. Edward Griffin, author of Creature from Jekyll Island

"The war on terrorism is the war on your freedom"

"There is no constitutional basis for a tax on the wages of Americans living and working in the fifty states of the Union" -- Peter Gibbons, Tax Attorney

"If Americans just learned that the IRS was actually knowingly deceiving them that would be enough for them to rise up and put a stop to it." -- Joe Banister, Former IRS Criminal Investigator

The End of Books

I was sitting in a bar a couple of days after New Year's and I was trying to find some book readings to go to. Both the Seattle Weekly and The Stranger--weekly local newspapers that are mostly guides to events in the city--had no listings. I figured that it must be because of the holidays and I think that turned out to be the case.



Last week's issues left me just as disappointed (both dedicate less than one page out of almost a hundred to books and The Stranger doesn't even post book readings in their paper anymore, so it seems) and I think it's just dawned on me now that books are a form of art that is slowly disappearing. Well, not quite disappearing but let's say definitely on the decline. A large part of that has to do with video game and television I am sure. But those two forms of entertainment are never included in either issue. You could assume that the reader of The Seattle Weekly and The Stranger is more educated than the average Seattlite. Or maybe that's not true and people who don't watch much television or play video games still don't like to read that much, relative to say twenty or thirty years ago. I think that's probably true too. I think the big readers--there are only a few out there (I'd bet 3/4 are women) and the number is getting smaller. As a male, I must really be in the single digits as a percentage of the population, the terms being reading every day or a few times a week, particularly fiction.



As for the numbers, the numbers have gone up nominally, but it's not the sort of business that gets very good returns--it seems that you can get a better rate of return if you put your money in a savings account, speaking for the industry as a whole. I couldn't find any subset numbers for fiction, but I bet they're similar to the highlighted ones, or perhaps a bit higher due to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (whatever you have to say about it, it does create a buzz for books in general).

So to all the other writers out there: goodnight and good luck!

Blood Diamond

My girlfriend and I went to see it tonight. I was pleasantly surprised--it was a very good movie. I think Leonardo DiCaprio is a better than average actor, but not great--not on par with Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson or Robert de Niro for example. In this movie however, he plays his part almost perfectly. The other actors, including Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connely acted just as well. The only exception was Arnold Vosloo who played the South African colonel. I thought his facial expressions, at least in this film, were just a little bit off--he didn't quite come off as the bad guy he was supposed to be.

As to the story, the title is self-explanatory. The background is Sierra Leone in 1999, where a civil war is raging and diamonds have become a currency in the arms trade. This story, while fictitious, is based on historical events and is still pertinent today because a) it's still possible to unknowingly buy "conflict diamonds" b) the diamond industry, much like the oil business or investment banking, is a virtual monopoly controlled by an elite few who limit supply in order to keep prices high, and c) wars have been, are, and will be fought over economic resources. An engaging story with great actors that leaves the viewer contemplating humanity is time well spent.

[Edit 12/10/2006: The protagonist's "smoking dilemma" was a little bit too politically correct and American for a non-American.]