I have bad news for you. American currency href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hiVtV2zuQIAFn_h-JnQjvVSfPTRgD8SGT3RG0"
target="blank">is not what it used to be. And we are no longer
a beacon of freedom to the oppressed of Earth, no matter what Bush and
Cheney are selling. href="http://www.morphizm.com/observations/klein/klein_greenspan.html" target="blank">Disaster
capitalism. Hostile takeovers. Terminology hiding the same
authoritarian impulse. We're now a people under a spell, and there's
nothing that the Federal Reserve can do about it.
In what may be the most poetic of timings, href="http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/26/news/economy/fed_ratespreview/index.htm"
target="blank">the Fed is set to publicize their secretive
assessment of the state of the American economy on Halloween. Think
the living dead meets the dying dollar, and you're there. It should
make for compelling cinema.
align="right">In short, the stock market rises and falls on the Fed's
mere words, proving that it is indeed language not liquidity that is
the currency fueling our capitalist engine. And while the focus is on
the cash and bling of hedge funders and hip-hoppers, the truth is that
money is a lie. It's simply information, exchanged in symbols. Paper,
gold, silver, whatever. We used to trade in href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency#Early_currency"
target="blank">ochre and livestock. What matters is the matter
at hand: How our consensually established value enhances the
world-at-large. If it doesn't, it ceases to be currency. It becomes
oppression.
I
wrote about this href="http://www.alternet.org/story/65037" target="blank">fucked up
condition for AlterNet recently, calling it the hyperreal
economy. But those are just buzzwords, built in hopes of attracting
attention to what is becoming a very serious problem. From the
dominance of electronic stock transactions and worthless IOUs called
naked shorts to craps, misinformation and the impending loss of
American nationhood, the new millennium's globalized economy might as
well be The Matrix. A loosely managed game theory, coming
apart at the seams.
Having researched the game above our heads and talked with economists
and CEOs on either side of the political divide for the last year or
so, I have come to realize that economics is just another game of
chance, which like all games need language to breathe them into being.
And so when the Fed comes out this Halloween offering dull wonk talk
and a quarter-point rate cut, it's almost a certainty that stocks will
rise as more and more rich people cash out of the faltering American
empire. Like I wrote for AlterNet, all of them know that a recession
like few we've experienced is coming. The only question now is whether
or not it will occur during a Bush administration or a Clinton
administration. The chess pieces have all been placed. The battle is
on, and we're all just pawns in the cash grab.
Here's the short version: By the time the Iraqmire ends, we'll be
trillions in the hole. The end of oil will throw our once Great
Society into chaos. American dollars, already on a decline more than
slightly resembling the Titanic crashing into an iceberg, will tumble
from respected to reviled. Throw some global warming into that mashup
and you have hell on Earth.
The only question left is what we plan to do about it.
We are on the cusp of both disaster and greatness, defining the
double-edged sword with every step we take. The Bush administration
has broken our mirror of wholeness, illustrating the narcissistic
horror an empire at wane can wreak on the world that once considered
it the pinnacle of social achievement. We can either absorb that
tragedy and evolve, or dig deeper holes in which to hide. Regardless
of what the Fed decides on Halloween or which party wins the White
House in 2008, we are in danger as a people. In the decades to come,
it's not Iran or China or Russia or anyone else who will screw our
futures.
No, our planet is going to become href="http://www.morphizm.com/observations/thill/thill_altered.html"
target="blank">our worst enemy, if we keep treating it like
shit. The science is in. The rest is propaganda or diversion. We need
to pull it together. We need to innovate like our lives depend on it.
Because they do.