Those Numbers Concerning Sexting

An Associated Press-MTV poll has found more than a quarter of young people have been involved in some form of sexting — sharing by cell phone or online sexually explicit photos, videos and chat — despite the sometimes grim consequences involving conviction in some states for those who do it, with lifelong registration as a sex offender.

This news story comes this week as I heard Rick Steves do a travel show on public television. He said that the most compelling moment of his piece was when an Iranian woman crossed the street to tell him that she did not want her daughter to grow up to be like Britney Spears. That, Steeves said, was the universal human conflict in the secular world. It was the same conflict which defined American politics.

It was 12 months ago that I wrote this piece. Read it again in light of todays’ Associated Press-MTV poll about sexting.

In the age of abundance, with an abundance of ideas, in the ongoing age of ideology, comes a story about a survey by the Minneapolis-based Search Institute –an organization that foster in “all sectors of society a healthy development and thriving among children and adolescents” –of a group of young people who are “spiritual,” who are not at all religious. A newly released Search Institute survey of 6,853 young people ages 12 to 25 indicates that 55 percent of the respondents are spiritual, not at all religious. Miriam Cameron, a University of Minnesota’s Center for Spirituality & Healing professor, said the results confirm what she has observed in her classes. Nearly one-third of these young people said they don’t trust organized religion.

“Spirituality is bigger than religion,” said co-director of the institute’s Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, Peter Benson. “One of the things we have to focus now is disentangling spiritual development from religious development.” According to the website, Dr. Benson became Search Institute’s president in 1985. Prior to 1978, he was chair of the psychology department and chair of the program in human development and social relations at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. He hold a Masters in the psychology of religion from Yale University. In an age of ideology, I wonder the reason it is, the basis that Yale offers a Master’s program in the psychology of religion, so that years later we can get these survey results. It sounds like Dr. Benson’s focus is funding his own program, and creating a need along the way, with the help of corporate sponsors.

Most students pay tuition to listen, read, and study what the experts have to say. Except those on scholarship. “We’re not paying enough attention to what our kids are saying,” Gene Roehlkepartain, co-director of the institute’s Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence said. “We need to listen more and talk less.” Yeah, Gene Roehlkepartain. Buy you kid another Ipod. You were not supposed to worship your kids, Gene. Why are kids, ages 12 to 25, being asked this nonsense? Your kids might not like taking physics or calculus either. These are the years you are supposed to have passed on a tradition that they had to learn. My 30-month old niece does not like to eat vegetables. Or potatoes. She has to anyway. Yeah Gene! How can we disentangle God and His history, from religious development, from spiritual development? Can we hold class outside?

Nearly one-third of these young people said they don’t trust organized religion. Do they provide locks at their church? What did they lose? Was it another kid or organized religion that stole their cellphone? What else did they not trust? Were any other questions ever asked?

If you ever were looking for an arsonist, you started focusing on 3 factors: Motive. Opportunity. Accelerants. Search Institute mission statement is collaborating with partners (foundations, corporations, schools, communities, faith-based organizations, and other systems) to broaden and deepen commitments, capacity, and effectiveness in fostering healthy development and thriving among children and adolescents.
In this case the Search Institute, Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence who funded the study, hopes to profit from their own survey, based upon their website. This was not exactly the Gallup Poll, where surveyors had disinterest. Search Institute would seem to aim at a secular society, to add to the divison between religions, serving “all sectors of society, including K–12 and higher education, faith communities, youth-serving organizations, social-service organizations, families, businesses, and the public sector.”

According to the news article, “The disconnect between spirituality and religion” was clear in the comments from young people. Drawing a line between spirituality and religion, University of Minnesota senior David Horn said, spirituality ‘doesn’t make distinctions, and religion is all about making distinctions.’” It sounds like the issue once again is relativism. Religion was providing an absolute moral authority. Distinguishing right from wrong. And this did not seem fair.

Or maybe the young, educated in secular schools without any religious training, are ignorant about specific belief, and the history of a belief. Even by the time they get to college and are thought to be the best and the brightest. Serving “all sectors of society,” the survey either shows the need in society for more teaching of theology and philosophy, or the need to encourage ignorance. Most Doctors of Divinity spend time actually studying theology and philosophy before they are allowed to teach and preach.

Speaking as the daughter of a minister, Miriam Cameron said she doesn’t think religions needs to feel threatened by the growth of spirituality. “Not at all. Many of my students equate religion with dogma and spirituality with harmony. Spirituality works well with most religions. The only ones it doesn’t work with are the angry people who say that everyone else’s image of God is wrong. … The spiritual view of God is much more inclusive.” Dr. Cameron’s viewpoint seems to include an American culture bias and fails to see the dimension of spirituality that is fueling the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. From my reading, Islamic dogma was not responsible for the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran, as one example. Dr. Cameron seemingly does not believe there can be anger among those of the New Age “spiritual,” not religious. Dissecting her comment, she mixes apples with people and oranges, when she begins to discuss angry people in the midst of th discussion of spirituality and religions.

Few religious professionals would equate dogma with theology.

One of the things I came away with studying history, was that the human condition remains unchanged. Two hundred years ago there were slaves in this country. Actually in a lot of places. A lot of people never really asked the “why” question. My conclusion is that the basic human condition involves a degree of laziness. There were slaves because landowners were lazy. That laziness, to one degree or another, was still around.

“If that’s the way they really feel,” said the director of youth ministry for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Terry Dittmer, said, “it means that we have some serious questions that we need to ask ourselves.” It is the Missouri synod’s fault? Or maybe Mr. Ditmer is looking for a new response in the growing secular world.

Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill for or die for, and no religion too. Mr. Lennon, I don’t have to imagine much any more.

The Center for Spiritual Development concluded its report with a suggestion that the place to start is with conversations, asking young people open-ended questions such as, “What is most important in your life?” and “What does being spiritual mean to you?” I actually would start with the basics. Like asking about God before asking what spiritual meant. Like asking about the Greatest Commandment. Do you know God? Do you want to know God? Do you want to make an academic commitment to study God? You might have to buy a book and actually spend some time.

In other news, according to Josephson Institute, a Los Angeles-based ethics institute, which surveyed 29,760 students over the past year at 100 random high schools nationwide, 30 percent of U.S. high school students have stolen from a store and 64 percent have cheated on a test. That is a lot of stealing. I wonder if this was by the same nearly one-third of the young people who said they don’t trust organized religion.

These surveys give me pause to quote a high school biology teacher: “If ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

Perhaps those grim consequences involving conviction in some states for those do sexting, with lifelong registration as a sex offender, will call the question as to public policy that keeps some sins subject to public notice to neighbors. Where there is no registration kept on those convicted of homocide.

Bud Selig To Retire

Commissioner Bud Selig told a New York Times columnist. “I’m concerned about the pace of the game.

Hypocrisy is a charge leveled when someone fails to live up to the virtuous standards being expounded.

On spectating. On the theatrics of spectating. I attended sports events to watch. More and more there are these spectating participants. Who stood up and blocked my view. And they looked for others in the crowd to do as they did. As if they were participating in what was gonna happen on the next pitch. Orchestrated. Over-managed ritualized standing, watching the Joe Girardis and the Ron Gardenhires over manage. Baseball 2009. Embracing the language of the age, and ritualistic noisemaking. On Fox Television.

Fox Sports. The prior owner of the Dodgers. Bigger than life Fox Sports that gave me week in and week out on their local affiliated cable station broadcasters that stole enjoyment from the game. It was like that Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life who owned everything in town. When the Mr. Potters controlled the broadcast rights. With an FTC that just allowed the media to drain credibility with sponsors who equally sponsored politicians through lobby groups. When baseball was just a small part of the problem, only reflecting all off society’s ills. Drugs. Steroid use. Sexual harassment, with the Mets, at ESPN. Those Stanford grads managing the Diamondback to a last place finish. Bud Selig’s New Age Baseball.

Bud Selig and dermatology. His thin Wisconsin skin that was bothered if he spent any time in October in New York. About criticism of umpires versus instant replays. Bud Selig making TV more important each October. What now happened each year with all post season baseball. Making the audience at home more important than the ticket buyer. With a disregard of playing conditions once a game began. Like the scheduling of baseball in November. Bud Selig New Age Baseball.

Fox Sports. During the regular season. Making television so important until no one was watching televised baseball during the regular season. Without regard to the clocks. And those 4 hours games. As if this was the NFL. Fox Sports and their good drones who cover the games, and don’t ask any uncomfortable questions.

TBS. And Chip Caray, never mentioning the incident of Miguel Caberra in the playoff game, of the circumstances of his drinking until 6 a.m. Too inconvenient for everyone. Those MLB partners. The Tigers. And Caberra’s wife. Not explaining how there might not have been a playoff in Minnesota.

TBS. And Chip Caray, making more errors than the umpires. Let’s share the performance enhancement drugs with the broadcaster. And Joe Buck. Whatever happened to likable broadcasters? Honest broadcasters who were not some shills of MLB, TBS, or Fox Sports. People who knew something and were worth listening to discuss baseball. Likable guys. Like Skip Caray. Or Jack Buck? Men not born with silver microphones in their mouths. People who reached the national stage not on their pedigree. But based on talent.

Joe Buck. Where there was melodrama everywhere. And “good at-bats.” Melodrama everywhere, created by your broadcasters. And Joe Buck encouraging those spectating participants in the crowd. To stand and block my view. While he sat in his pressbox. Elevated above it all.

I was a spectator. I knew my role. I had paid to watch. As ticket prices escalated. Thanks to collusion. When the commissioner was now colluding with the Major League Players Association. Every 4 or 5 year. In the basic agreement. When Bud Selig gets his $15 million cut each year. He was good at colluding, as an arbiter had once ruled. And so was Donald Fehr who was just given an $11 million severance package with his retirement. Collusion to increase revenue from the working stiffs who bought baseball tickets. While those artificial drones in the broadcast booths, and journalist still cheerleading the expenditures of dollars on free agents. In publicly financed stadiums. Thirty three years later after free agency began. New stadiums were needed to pay for this system.

Free agency. Because players would talked to the Peter Gammons s and the Murray Chase s who fed Marvin Miller’s New Age Music. All this artificial participation. By stand up guys everywhere. In the stands and in the dugouts. Guys like Scott Boras and all the other stand up cheerleaders in L.A. With the Yankees playing the Angels in the American League Championship Series in Anaheim, did Scott Boras, visible in virtually every center-field camera shot conspicuously standing in the home plate suite, ever sit down? And in Chavez Ravine. But not just in L.A. Give Scott Boras a visible location and maybe more of his clients will sign with the Dodgers, the Angels, or the Yankees. All this endorsed artificiality by Boras and all those stand up cheerleaders in Dodger Stadium.

According to Joe Buck, there should not have been a focus in the attention given in an 10-1 game on umpires and the bad calls. Not in the newspapers. Joe Buck who thought about it, and five minutes later, in an intro of “not to beat a dead horse” umpire discussion, talking about the threat of baseball’s credibility, about replays. Instant replay.

About the threat of the loss of credibility. Joe. Get a mirror. Or listen to yourself tells us what wonderful baseball we were watching in New York, in spite of the rain and cold temperatures. And all these good at-bats that contributed to the perversions of length of game. The game was supposed to be about hits, not walks. When the purpose of the bat was to swing. And not have to listen to Joe Buck drone on and on. Get out of your heated booth and feel the conspicuous rain for 210 minutes. Then tell us of the wonders of a good at-bat. Umpires used to postpone such games because of rain and cold. Maybe you can tell the writers what to write about in those wonderful games 10-1 games when the games take 210 minutes, however hard it was to be consistent in the spotlight so much on one microphone.

As ticket prices escalated. The threat of baseball’s credibility. When Commissioner Bud Selig told a New York Times columnist. “I’m concerned about the pace of the game.” With instant replays which would add to the length of game. Other than making TV and Fox Sports even more important. Those fans at home more important than anyone in the park. People in the park who paid to conspicuously watch everything except the instant replays. Or what those spectating participants did not obstruct.

Bud Selig’s New Age Baseball. And Selig’s concern about “the pace of the game.” Hey Bud, what about the length of the season?

This Bud is empty. He has just announced his retirement. In 2012.

At the Governmental Massage Parlor

That White House state dinner for the Indian prime minister. With the guest list of Katie Couric, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, and Tareq and Michaele Salahi. Why? Speaking of caste systems, why were tax dollars feeding more than the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? Why were 338 people in addition to Tareq and Michaele Salahi being fed? If charges are brought for theft of services against the uninvited guests, maybe an explanation can be given why taxpayers were paying to feed Katie Couric and Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty? With Washington insiders, Hollywood A-listers, campaign donors, prominent figures from the community of the guest prime minister who live in the US, and Obama friends, why were these state dinners continuing in a country without royalty? Wasn’t the last election a statement about change?

Those rubbing of shoulders with Vice President Joe Biden. The official guest list. The official shoulder rub. Governmental massages. The agency charged with protecting the US President and other high-level officials is conducting a comprehensive review of the security breach on Tuesday at the dinner in honor of the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh. About an unofficial shoulder rub. Received by Tareq and Michaele Salahi of Virginia, who crashed the White House party.

Feeding the system. The American caste system on display at White House state dinners.

The Cost of Fantasy Football & Fantasy Money

Zero sums gains. When I lose, who wins?

Since 2002, my retirement accounts are worth 38% less, being in U.S. dollars, compared to a basket of currency in exchange traded funds. Where did that 38% go? By the end of October 2008, more than half of the U.S. banks were pretend banks.

With fiscal policy, American all had pretend dollars in oh so many pretend banks which were for all practical purposes, insolvent. Pretend banks, a lot like a house of cards propped up by elected officials who have postured, positioned and proffered assurances. Bankers ,who should have been out of business, making those very nice salaries. Incompetent bankers.

In November 2008, Elizabeth Moyer wrote in Forbes that fighting the financial crisis put the U.S. on the hook for some $5 trillion, perone report. The inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Neil Barofsky, reported that since 2007 nearly $24 trillion was exposed in government money to financial institutions, after he examined the programs (50 of them) set up by the Federal Reserve as well as by the Bush and Obama administrations.

In a more recent report Scott Reamer of the Vicis Capital Hedge Fund reports American sources have funded upwards of $20 trillion dollars of the total $30 trillion funded world-wide through markets from “direct lending and indirect backstops” with the litany of bailouts, stimulus, conduits, mortgage freezes, foreclosure programs, working groups and government sponsored investment efforts, all while global central banks and government agencies are creating credit. All at the cost to currency values and the U S Dollar. It was like the invisible cost that the Goldman Sachs, the Fidelitys made each year charging me 1.5% managing my mutual fund IRA. The fees never appeared on any statement. It was all a free ride. Was this all just one big illusion?

There was still a clear and present danger to the total system. The invisible ink would soon become visible.

Systemic symptoms. When the financial system got inflammatory bowel disease. There was wonder here, like a patient with Crone’s Syndrome, accompanied by diarrhea, if things will ever be the same. Last week the Treasury Department said Thursday that the deficit for October totaled $176.4 billion. For one month!

“As growth recovers and strengthens, we’re going to bring our fiscal positions back to a sustainable balance,” was the quote from Timothy Geithner.

Fear. You carry it around on your shoulders. Everywhere. Or in your pants. “Banks bear some responsibility for the extent of the damage caused by the crisis,” Geithner said today at a small- business conference in Washington. “You carry a substantial obligation to help our communities get back on their feet.”

SOME RESPONSIBILITYfor the extent of the damage?

How big a factor is Wall Street’s greed and lack of morals? Is it morally acceptable to pay yourself $14.2 million? In 2007 the chief executive of a Standard & Poor’s 500 company on average made $14.2 million in total compensation. In 2004, the ratio of average CEO pay to the average worker was 431-to-1, compared to 107 times more in 1990. At the height of the tech bubble, the ratio of CEO compensation to the average pay of a production (i.e., non-management) worker in 2001 was 525-to-1, according to “Executive Excess,” report which was released by a liberal research groups United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies.

People who felt they were immortal. Pulling out all the stops in an attempt to flush the system with liquidity. Policymakers. Congressmen and Congresswomen.

There is growing distrust of America. Has the fact war debt was never on the books of the Congressional budget been heard in China? It was not well known in the United States. How could policymakers, your House of Representative who approves the budget, never have seen the cumulative imbalances building? These 435 members of Congress believed in their own illusion of greatness?

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press is an independent, non-partisan public opinion research organization. On November 11, 2009, The Pew Research Center issued a survey indicating a glum mood of Americans, where two-thirds of the public is dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country, with fully nine-in-ten saying national economic conditions are only fair or poor, and nearly two-thirds describe their own finances that way – the most since the summer of 1992.

It seemed time for the working man and woman to take back the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party from the lobbyists and elected officials like my representative in the House of Representative who voted to support this. Betty McCollum seemed to think all of this was all just some kind of a pursuit like fantasy football.

Todd Harrison writes at his most recent pieces on MarketWatch the current course of fiscal and monetary policy is absolutely insane. Through the lens of Albert Einstein who once said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The same thing in this case being monetary policy with interest rates below one percent.

Hyman Minsky was an economist who wrote about bubbles that occur in an economy. He theorized that a bubble begins with displacement caused by a significant invention, like the internet. A displacement creates profitable opportunities in any given affected sector but, rather than invention alone, financial innovation is necessary for access to cheap credit before a kick-off to an over-trading phase. THE ACCESS to cheap credit is still there. For some.

Some facts from 2008:

World GDP $47 trillion
World stock valuation $121 trillion
Bond market $85 trillion
Credit derivatives$473 trillion

Whatever happened to those credit derivatives? The last number I read put the credit derivatives market was $560 trillion. Are companies yet required to place reserves on credit derivatives, like the state regulated insurance industry?

On May 2009, Paul McCulley of PIMCO wrote, “The longer people make money by taking risk, the more imprudent they become in risk-taking. While they’re doing that, it’s self-fulfilling on the way up. If everybody is simultaneously becoming more risk-seeking, that brings in risk premiums, drives up the value of collateral, increases the ability to lever and the game keeps going. Human nature is inherently pro-cyclical, and that’s essentially what the Minsky thesis is all about.”

Because the rest of the world is unable to extricate themselves from the interwoven financial machination. In a nation where the average credit card debt is $8,300. Masking by the spending habits of a slimming margin of society, as well as by the federal government, with the populace unaware that they have been skewed, here comes the affects of a lower dollar. Down 12 percent in one year. Down 38 per cent in five years, in part to finance the war in Iraq. And now in Afghanistan. As I understand it, war debt never was on the books of the Congressional budget. While Goldman Sachs keeps manipulating markets with access to cheap money, and rewarding money managers way beyond measure. When no one questions the morality of a paycheck, Of over indulgence.

Fear. In the free world. “Credit is the air that financial markets breathe, and when the air is poisoned, there’s no place to hide.” – Charles R. Morris

Charles R. Morris, a former banker, is the author of he Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash before the 2008 market collapse.

Hyman Minsky said euphoria ensues as people pile into a sector, with a driving demand to affect higher prices, often with borrowed money. In this case, continued cheap money. With an arrogance. With no sense of morality. Ponzi’ investors join in speculation that someone will buy their assets at higher prices. But markets eventually, whether due to lenders tightening lending criteria or insiders selling out, hit a peak. Panic then sets in. With a stampede out of the market, bankruptcies ensue.

The social engineering in September 2008 was all about government trying to keep capitalism going. Is it one big Ponzi scheme? With lobbyists playing a central role? Those derivatives, not backed up by reserves. When the laws of survival of the fittest in the market place had been always about letting systems collapse. Until there was Henry Paulson. And Congress. Democrats and Republicans. Without a clue. Or they believed in their individual greatness? In the big illusion.

Slowly China is tweaking the financial system. The one based upon the dollar. The system in which the OPEC nations along with China have seen their loss of valuation of 38 percent too. The higher the market pressure to devalue a particular currency, the more dollar reserves its central bank must hold which used to create a built-in support for a strong dollar that in turn forced the world’s central banks to acquire and hold more dollar reserves. Making the dollar stronger. In the world before September 2008.

In July 2009, Zeng Peiyan, the head of China Center for International Economic Exchanges and the former Chinese Vice-Premier, in a speech in Beijing called for a new system to ensure the stability of the major reserve currencies, according to the China Daily. In China, Obama met with Chinese government officials who say one thing, while central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan believed in the development of a new super-sovereign currency largely taking the place of the dollar. He actually had accountabilities for banking in China.

On the heels of discussion at the G20 meeting of a new world currency, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in April 2009 called for more surveillance of countries like the United States that issue major reserve currencies.

If you missed it, Timothy Geithner has insisted that the US Treasury has a strong dollar policy. Top story in November 2009. He said the Obama administration was committed to a strong dollar and to actions aimed at bolstering its value, giving reassurances to Asian nations last week. He comes from the world of central banks where expressions in bankspeak are neither normal or clear in normal everyday discourse. It is not clear if the strategy between the Fed and the European Central Bank is coordinated or not, or to what extent. It has been written that lectures were given President Obama and Timothy Geithner by top Chinese officials earlier in the week about the risks posed to the global economy by America’s ultra-low interest rates and soaring government deficit. The New York Times reported that Mr. Obama had NOT extracted a fresh commitment from Beijing to revise its policy of keeping the renminbi pegged at an artificially low value against the dollar soon. On Tuesday Obama “could only cite China’s ‘past statements’ in support of shifting toward market-oriented exchange rates.” Was this all an illusion? Some kind of fantasy football? Who would we start this week?

The Wall Street Journal reported on the clumsy fashion at a media “availability” where President Obama and Chinese leader Hu Jintao issued ambitious statement on cooperation but took no questions, while exhibiting body language that seemed to say they had been frustrated by the entire exercise, and they did not address each other. “Mr. Obama expressed pleasure at China’s longstanding pledge to move toward a more market-based exchange rate over time, something Mr. Hu didn’t mention.”

With the Chinese government growing restless, some day soon the federal government won’t be able to keep interest rates artificially low. The dollar’s falling sharply relative to other currencies is an ominous sign. In the marketplace people can move to a new vehicle, since Mr. Bernake has punished all savers. There is growing distrust of America both internally and externally. Mostly about this fantasy money.

The Buck

The New World Order was here. Timothy Geithner met with Japanese Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii this week in advance of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Singapore on Thursday. On Wednesday, the dollar was trading just below 90 yen. Last month, a prominent Japanese currency strategist predicted the dollar could fall as low as 50 yen by next year. Geithner and Fujii paid lip service to the U.S.’ strong dollar policy, knowing full well that a weaker dollar is in the best interests of both countries for the time being, despite its very real and painful side effects.

Marketplace.com’s Lisa Twaronite reports quotes Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ strategist Naomi Fink,
“I have no doubts that Geithner defends a ’strong dollar’ as a large economy would if it wishes to avoid flight from its assets as it increases its balance of debt. Yet like it or not, exports are actually less relevant than they were a year ago.”

“Exports comprised about 12% of the Japanese economy as of the second quarter, compared with about 16% at their peak, Fink said in an email interview. Consumption has risen to nearly 60% from about 54%, due to the reduction in exports and investment. Oil and most other commodities are traded in dollars, meaning a weaker dollar lowers Japan’s imported energy and materials costs. Naomi Fink said, ‘So perhaps the message here is that Japan should focus on domestic consumption and investment as to find a home for a greater volume of U.S. exports, thus narrowing the United States’ trade deficit?’ Fink added that in her view, it was ‘hard to see this happening,’ leaving a stronger Japanese currency as the most likely way to keep Japan from leaning on its old export crutch. ‘Japan might not wish for a weak dollar, but will probably have to bear with it, if it is to face the reality of reduced dependence on exports to the U.S.,’ said Fink. With the combination of fewer exports to the U.S. and lower oil imports and prices, the relevance of the U.S. dollar to Japanese trade has thus been reduced by default.”

“A stronger yen, while it adds to deflationary pressure here, can also help the newly Democratic Party of Japan achieve its goal of shifting the country away from a reliance on exports in favor of domestic-demand-led growth. While a weak dollar could in the long term bring down the U.S. trade deficit significantly by shifting consumption away from imports and by encouraging exports as they become cheaper on world markets, while at the same time discourage overseas investors on U.S. assets.”

The 21-member finance ministers’ meeting was the opening act for President Obama’s first state visit to Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama before he heads to China. And then there was the Chinese yuan. Obama said on Monday that “currency, along with a host of other issues, will come up. I am confident that both the United States and China can arrive at a broad set of policies that encourages trade that benefits both countries, that allows ongoing economic growth.”

Economists say that Beijing artificially holds the value of the yuan down to make Chinese exports cheaper, American goods more expensive for Chinese consumers, with limited access to Chinese markets. Obama plans to raise the issue of their currency with Chinese officials in Beijing next week, a potentially disruptive topic for foreign exchange markets.

At their Pittsburgh summit in September 2009 the Group of 20 leaders aimed policies to ease the massive trade imbalance between China and the U S which has led to imbalances in the world economy by contributing to trade surpluses in China, big trade deficits in the United States, and cheap Chinese exports to the United States.

China’s relatively low-valued currency remains a focus of the financial markets. With their own high unemployment in Guandong in the important export regions from a slump in activity, there are no signs China will allow its currency to strengthen. The trade sector continues to be a drag on growth.

“We expect calls for yuan revaluation to be soundly rebuffed,” said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. In the summer of 2008, before the September 2008 financial crisis blew up, China re-pegged its currency to the dollar. The key question is whether and when China will resume letting its currency strengthen. With the Chinese investment earned from exports put into U.S. government bonds, branding China a currency manipulator could anger a crucial U.S. creditor. There are no signs of any painful adjustments in the United States as to whether Mr. Obama will begin to cut spending or raise taxes to finance his goals.

Mr. Obama said say that the two countries share a common interest in delivering sustainable growth that will help rebalance the global economy. “They have a huge amount of U.S. dollars that they are holding, so our success is important to them. The flip side of that is that if we don’t solve some of these problems, then I think both economically and politically it will put enormous strains on the relationship,” he said.

Remembrance Day

On Remembrance Day, there is still a poignant remembering overseas of the cost to Europe. War had a way to bring home the present day cost of risk appetites.

Social mood. Political campaigns. Financial fate. Markets go up and they go down, even in the age of austerity, as in the age of conspicuous consumption. By understanding history, humanity has the power to change history. War, and the way we live our lives.

We live in a world that has perverted the concept of remembering people. The media had a cheap story to fill the airwaves now on each September 11th and November 11th. In Europe they still called it Remembrance Day, where the people remembered the war dead and not the military. I was in London on this day in 2000. “Flanders Field.” Armistice Day was not a promotion for the armed services or to be used by the National Guard to recruit the mostly local youth, a lot like those pro football players and their fans in town who “root for laundry,” as Jerry Seinfeld reminds his audience. The living athletes of combat. Cannon fodder. The human cannon fodder, used too often in the name of nationalism. The “National Guard” that had been perverted by public policy to become an invading army in Iraq, and maybe one day in Afghanistan? Today was supposed to be a day about the individual people lost to war, not about the uniform worn. At the end of the Great War, in 1919, because of the missing bodies to bury, the November 11th observance was introduced, with a two minute silence. Unbearable mourning continued long after a war was over. Today was supposed to be a day about peace. About real people gone.

Reusse & Company this morning. How does an interview of Major General Larry Shellito of the Minnesota National Guard relate to November 11th and Armistice Day? A day about peace!. Armistice Day was about turning swords into plowshares. November 11th in Europe was Memorial Day, not for the military industrial complex, as Dwight Eisenhower called it, but about individuals compelled to go to war in the name of government and nationalism who died in service. And the people who went, that the world would one day be a better place.

The“National Guard” that had been perverted by public policy to become an invading army in Iraq and in Afghanistan? How had it happened? The “National Guard” that had replaced the all volunteer army. And why? Since September 11, 2001, the U .S. has deployed troops in 33 countries, according to Major General Larry Shellito. Why? And about the expense of all this? Was the Department of Defense any different than that vote on health care. Which was not at all about health care but health care insurance, and paying for all of this. Without much discussion at all about the real issue of health care. How many MRI machines were needed in a community. Without a discussion of preventative medicine. Why did local kids need to be dispatched to 33 countries in the last 8 years? And where was the discussion on all of this? About the use of “The National Guard?”

No one asked why. Elections have been spun to be one long drone of an argument between two sides. The two sides that had long ago quit communicating, in a world that was unable to find much in the way of meaning. If you thought that television and radio were sounding boards on the issues of the day, then your moderators had become nothing more than game show hosts.

In a current world without conscription, in a world of voluntary service, somehow the message was getting across about the glamor of swords. And now a word from the sponsors.

I am not sure why Major General Larry Shellito of the Minnesota National Guard was invited on Armistice Day of all days to be a guest. On morning radio, on Reusse and Company. I did not listen long to the remainder of the show. I don’t think there was a discussion of what happened when you take the young and place their lives in peril, in places where they are seen as the enemy. In some of the 33 places. Thirty-three places. Invading armies? An invitation to the major general as a guest by the same guy who wrote today on his blog:

“Pro football players were merely mercenaries moving through a city for the purpose of collecting a large paycheck. There would be replaced by a different group of mercenaries in a few years, and the foolish fans would cheer for them for no reason other than the appearance of their jerseys.” So wrote Pat Reusse today.

In the civilian world, leadership has to be re-earned in each generation. By sons who followed fathers and grandfathers. In attempts to try to see the future through the past. My grandfather won a purple heart in World War I. He paid a price for his medal every day for the rest of his life. It was more than what combat had done to his hearing. The life expectancy of those Woodrow Wilsons was always so much shorter than the soldier.

“Be careful when you break horses that you don’t break their spirit too.”

If sons and daughters took the time to try to understand history, humanity had the power to change history. In Minnesota, people spent more time contemplating the NFL than they did the deployment since September 11, 2001 of U .S. troops in 33 countries. We thought more about the people there than we about the dollars it had also cost for them to be there. And not many folks were asking why. Or why this was done under the auspices of “The National Guard.”

There was a cost to all of this. In a world of voluntary and involuntary thrift, with personal savings and public policy focused on taxing. In a world where voluntary service could fast become involuntary, as government officials induced borrowing rather than pay now these out of pocket expense. The single greatest risk as the equilibrium between asset classes remains a seismic shift in currency markets. What was this defense policy doing to the U.S. dollar? When a currency holds a nation together, and “the economy — perhaps society at large — assumes more, not less, risk as a function of the path of our attempted fix,” writes Todd Harrison. A Congressman from Tennessee cited Albert Einstein’s belief, in a joint hearing chaired by Senator Kent Konrad from North Dakota, that the greatest power on earth was not atomic energy but compound interest, in this case as a threat to the future of America.

Counting the cost. On Remembrance Day, there is a perversion to discuss the engines of financing as much as there is to discuss the success of recruitment as Major General Larry Shellito of the Minnesota National Guard was asked. In a nation that just no longer discussed war.

On Remembrance Day, there is still a poignant remembering overseas of the cost of war. It is seen in the streets of London. In America, Armistice Day was politicized, used as a photo opportunity by politicians hoping to remain an elected official for an entire career, and calling it Veterans’ Day. It was not longer remembered to commemorate the War To End All Wars. About the real people gone. Except in a Europe, which continues to manifest the loss of one generation, of its best and brightest. Watching the scenes this week at the Brandenburg Gate, and seeing the difference in the caliber of leaders 4 generations later, wondering if Europe had ever recovered from void of the War to End All War. Counting the cost.

It must have seemed really heroic to fight in The War To End All Wars.

Getting to the Next Party

Somewhere in the world the party was still going on? The Roaring Twenties just moved to a new neighborhood, under the brightness of a new sun?

Somewhere in the world the party was still going on? After the Crash of 2008? People living off the labor of the masses. Like the Lost Generation, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, living in Paris. As the Germans paid the French war reparations. In the Weimar Republic, where the currency was delivered by the wheel barrow.

Like on Wall Street and their salaries? Somewhere the party would keep on going on. Like In China. On September 3, 2009, Chris Oliver wrote a piece about the biggest movement in gold which might have gone little noticed by currency traders. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, which functions as the territory’s unofficial central bank, will transfer its gold reserves stored in other vaults to the depository later this year, and the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange had signed an agreement to use the depository for its physical settlement and storage needs.

Somewhere in the world the party was still going on? In China. What about the transparency of China? China and corrupt local political war lords, living off the backs of the laborer? The Chinese. A government that limited families to one baby each. To all those advocates of abortion and Planned Parenthood ( not to be confused with family planning decisions), how is that in the way of “choice?” How is that in the way of repression? Would I invest in China? In their currency? China and human rights. How would that be in the way of repression, when I bought into their system?

George Soros. Was it ethical to make $1 billion in one day against the British pound. When the UK, with all of its taxpayers, paid a price. Then the quest of Soros for power through funding the Democrat Party. Warren Buffet. Living off the backs of the laborer? With his growing investment income and value of Berkshire Hathaway. Which was not the same as blue collar hourly wage. These investors who were, who had, reshaped the Democratic Party.

The Democrats who chased away the blue collar worker. The Democrats who chased away the Catholic voter. All to get funding from those Warren Buffet and George Soros-types, reshaping party platform in the name of women’s rights? Or really not much different than in China? With all the transparency of China. China and corrupt local political party bosses, living off the backs of labor? The Chinese family, limited to one baby families. All those advocates of rescuing the free markets, when I bought into their system that allowed the pay scales at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, at the cost of the new blue collar worker enslaved by the technology of Bill Gates. Where workers were required to have cell phones and Black Berries and pagers. Even on vacation.

Economic collapse, with a falling currency? With little difference between the 2 political parties on issues of labor and economic policy. The only difference was based on “women Issues.”

Somewhere in the world the party was still going on, having just moved to a new neighborhood, under the brightness of a new sun? With the hyper-inflation still to come, should I buy in? In China?

Elections & Tailgating at TCF Stadium

It can happen in Minneapolis. It will happen here. In October in Madison, Wisconsin Mayor Dave Cieslewicz had proposed city budget cuts that would have closed five of the city’s eight ice skating rinks this winter. It was the system.

The system. As on display with the parking system at the new TCF Stadium. When only parking lots sanctioned by the Minneapolis City Council with their zoning laws, open to tail-gating. Local parking lots were shut down on game day, as part of the system, as designed and enforced by the Minneapolis City Council. When elected politicians lost touch with the real world.

The system. The system, with mayors like in Madison. In Madison, where Mayor Cieslewicz was forced to back off his proposal to close those five city ice skating rinks this winter. Only after the uproar. It can happen in Minneapolis. In Minneapolis, where it actually has been proposed to have the Minneapolis City Council take over the sovereignty of the parks.

Steve BARLAND, dedicated to preserving the independent park board model to protect what has been offered at the parks in the past. Leaving the cornerstone in Minneapolis intact in hard times. As center of neighborhoods, with day care, music for pre-schoolers, youth development, and senior card clubs. The parks.

With green spaces left long ago within a city. These markers to ensure the parks would long endure. For the people. Parks. Those set asides with active use. BARLAND. Of the people, and for parks dedicated to the proposition that all men, all women, are created equal. BARLAND, who was running, who had come to dedicate his time that a portion of those fields would long endure. In the upcoming era which will be all about closings. And budgets.

BARLAND, dedicated to the proposition that the heart of our community is the recreation center as a gathering place to meet and play. Places to take classes or to play.

Steve Barland, championing the form follows function philosophy, after witnessing the power of recreational activities in lives. Life-long learning places about what really counts in a community, and then teaching the next generation. Learning at rec centers the lessons from your neighbors.

It is altogether fitting and proper that you should vote. And vote BARLAND. With his vow to vote to never close a single recreation center. Here was the Park Board Commissioner candidate whose well stated belief was to leave parks open as always, promoting increased participation in youth sports, as well as adult and senior programs. When difficult decisions about budget cuts arrive, Steve Barland as the 5th District Park Board Commissioner means a referee making calls to not only keep rec centers open.

The new world order and that system of the new world order. Politicians and the good old endorsement system, which prevented real people from wanting to get involved in the system. The new world order when regular working stiffs quit seeking public office. In a world with those political endorsements and connections. Until politicians lost touch with the real world. Like in Madison, Wisconsin. With candidates who did not quite understand quality of life came from having parks open. Or in St. Paul where city-run youth centers were expected to be reduced from 41 to a 25 in 2010. It can happen in Minneapolis. If you want a park board to resemble the Minneapolis City Council and their system, as demonstrated by the way the parking situation is handled at the new TCF stadium….well, it all started on election day.

For the next Board Commissioners dealing with budgets, the unfinished work of the parks begins. I want a commissioner with a direct connection with park and recreation leagues, and to the people who participated. I want a commissioner who remembered. Someone who was real. Someone who was of the people, for the people. Steve Barland as the 5th District Park Board Commissioner.
The system. It all started on election day. Now. It all started with simple park board elections.

BARLAND.

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

In January 2009, UnitedHealth based in Minnetonka, Minnesota agreed to shut down their Ingenix database and settled a lawsuit with the New York Attorney General by paying $50 million, it was reported in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal. According to an item in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, the investigation by the New York Attorney’s General office uncovered a fraudulent and conflict-of-interest-ridden reimbursement system, which the state of New York then proceeded to replace with a not-for-profit company, FAIR Health Inc., to be headquartered at Syracuse University.

That $50 million was used to form a new, independent database at Syracuse University. After settlements with other similar companies, the New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday
a new independent database for consumer reimbursement as part of this Upstate research network in what sounds to be a reformed plan for Ingenix’s health care reimbursement database. Only this time allegedly with “transparency, accountability and fairness.” Funded by the litigation of Mr. Cuomo. Offering no defense of the operations at UnitedHealth here, public policy in New York apparently involves using the courts to transfer jobs to their state under the umbrella of the health care debate?

This new research network, reportedly funded with nearly $100 million in settlement money recovered during an investigation by Cuomo’s office into how the health-insurance industry reimburses consumers for out-of-network health care charges, “will develop a new Web site where for the first time consumers can compare prices before they choose their doctors.”

This is an innovative way for state government to create new jobs in their own state.

On Human Growth & Those Hormones

Commissioner Bud Selig told a New York Times columnist. “I’m concerned about the pace of the game.

Hypocrisy is a charge leveled when someone fails to live up to the virtuous standards being expounded.

On spectating. On the theatrics of spectating. I attended sports events to watch. More and more there are these spectating participants. Who stood up and blocked my view. And they looked for others in the crowd to do as they did. As if they were participating in what was gonna happen on the next pitch. Orchestrated. Over-managed ritualized standing, watching the Joe Girardis and the Ron Gardenhires over manage. Baseball 2009. Embracing the language of the age, and ritualistic noisemaking. On Fox Television.

Fox Sports. The prior owner of the Dodgers. Bigger than life Fox Sports that gave me week in and week out on their local affiliated cable station broadcasters that stole enjoyment from the game. It was like that Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life who owned everything in town. When the Mr. Potters controlled the broadcast rights. With an FTC that just allowed the media to drain credibility with sponsors who equally sponsored politicians through lobby groups. When baseball was just a small part of the problem, only reflecting all off society’s ills. Drugs. Steroid use. Sexual harassment, with the Mets, at ESPN. Those Stanford grads managing the Diamondback to a last place finish. Bud Selig’s New Age Baseball.

Bud Selig and dermatology. His thin Wisconsin skin that was bothered if he spent any time in October in New York. About criticism of umpires versus instant replays. Bud Selig making TV more important each October. What now happened each year with all post season baseball. Making the audience at home more important than the ticket buyer. With a disregard of playing conditions once a game began. Like the scheduling of baseball in November. Bud Selig New Age Baseball.

Fox Sports. During the regular season. Making television so important until no one was watching televised baseball during the regular season. Without regard to the clocks. And those 4 hours games. As if this was the NFL. Fox Sports and their good drones who cover the games, and don’t ask any uncomfortable questions.

TBS. And Chip Caray, never mentioning the incident of Miguel Caberra in the playoff game, of the circumstances of his drinking until 6 a.m. Too inconvenient for everyone. Those MLB partners. The Tigers. And Caberra’s wife. Not explaining how there might not have been a playoff in Minnesota.

TBS. And Chip Caray, making more errors than the umpires. Let’s share the performance enhancement drugs with the broadcaster. And Joe Buck. Whatever happened to likable broadcasters? Honest broadcasters who were not some shills of MLB, TBS, or Fox Sports. People who knew something and were worth listening to discuss baseball. Likable guys. Like Skip Caray. Or Jack Buck? Men not born with silver microphones in their mouths. People who reached the national stage not on their pedigree. But based on talent.

Joe Buck. Where there was melodrama everywhere. And “good at-bats.” Melodrama everywhere, created by your broadcasters. And Joe Buck encouraging those spectating participants in the crowd. To stand and block my view. While he sat in his pressbox. Elevated above it all.

I was a spectator. I knew my role. I had paid to watch. As ticket prices escalated. Thanks to collusion. When the commissioner was now colluding with the Major League Players Association. Every 4 or 5 year. In the basic agreement. When Bud Selig gets his $15 million cut each year. He was good at colluding, as an arbiter had once ruled. And so was Donald Fehr who was just given an $11 million severance package with his retirement. Collusion to increase revenue from the working stiffs who bought baseball tickets. While those artificial drones in the broadcast booths, and journalist still cheerleading the expenditures of dollars on free agents. In publicly financed stadiums. Thirty three years later after free agency began. New stadiums were needed to pay for this system.

Free agency. Because players would talked to the Peter Gammons s and the Murray Chase s who fed Marvin Miller’s New Age Music. All this artificial participation. By stand up guys everywhere. In the stands and in the dugouts. Guys like Scott Boras and all the other stand up cheerleaders in L.A. With the Yankees playing the Angels in the American League Championship Series in Anaheim, did Scott Boras, visible in virtually every center-field camera shot conspicuously standing in the home plate suite, ever sit down? And in Chavez Ravine. But not just in L.A. Give Scott Boras a visible location and maybe more of his clients will sign with the Dodgers, the Angels, or the Yankees. All this endorsed artificiality by Boras and all those stand up cheerleaders in Dodger Stadium.

According to Joe Buck, there should not have been a focus in the attention given in an 10-1 game on umpires and the bad calls. Not in the newspapers. Joe Buck who thought about it, and five minutes later, in an intro of “not to beat a dead horse” umpire discussion, talking about the threat of baseball’s credibility, about replays. Instant replay.

About the threat of the loss of credibility. Joe. Get a mirror. Or listen to yourself tells us what wonderful baseball we were watching in New York, in spite of the rain and cold temperatures. And all these good at-bats that contributed to the perversions of length of game. The game was supposed to be about hits, not walks. When the purpose of the bat was to swing. And not have to listen to Joe Buck drone on and on. Get out of your heated booth and feel the conspicuous rain for 210 minutes. Then tell us of the wonders of a good at-bat. Umpires used to postpone such games because of rain and cold. Maybe you can tell the writers what to write about in those wonderful games 10-1 games when the games take 210 minutes, however hard it was to be consistent in the spotlight so much on one microphone.

As ticket prices escalated. The threat of baseball’s credibility. When Commissioner Bud Selig told a New York Times columnist. “I’m concerned about the pace of the game.” With instant replays which would add to the length of game. Other than making TV and Fox Sports even more important. Those fans at home more important than anyone in the park. People in the park who paid to conspicuously watch everything except the instant replays. Or what those spectating participants did not obstruct.

Bud Selig’s New Age Baseball. And Selig’s concern about “the pace of the game.” Hey Bud, what about the length of the season?