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Friday 26 September 2008

Market Farces

I read somewhere that money is an agreed upon lie. This rings true to me, though I think that for many, money - like theater - is an attempt to get at the truth.

You know, you wanna feel like handing a dollar to a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly is supporting some semblance of symbiotic sincerity by paying everyone from the grower and harvester of the fruit - who feels so under appreciated that he's always voted Republican; to the ship, train, and truck driver - the latter of whom makes the final stretch drive to get the goods to the supermarket by way of crack & crack prostitutes to help him remain "alert"; to the produce department lackey - who wipes boogers off on his apron; all the way to that union-busted cashier - who wonders if the father of her next baby will get drunk and beat her up less often before leaving her to raise her children alone.

But the only real truth in that transaction is that you gave a piece of paper to a black-eyed woman with a swollen belly, and she gave you little discs of metal in return. You can eat your piece of produce in peace, though, knowing that society considers the exchange legit. Just make sure you wash that apple!
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Several House Democrats expressed concern yesterday when they heard that the Senator from Illinois and current Democratic nominee for the Office of the President of the United States of America opposed including bankruptcy reform in the bailout-plan bill currently being dramatized. Politics are hilarious!

In Clearwater, Florida on Wednesday, the senator actually said the following:
"What we should be doing is following the clear principles, that taxpayers are protected, that we have oversight, that taxpayers are going to get their money back, and that the housing crisis is going to be dealt with as well."

Now, imagine, if you will, that a staged play is an agreed upon lie, an indirect method used to illuminate some greater truth. Well the above statement could have been penned by Eugene Ionesco himself. For the unacquainted, Ionesco was a practitioner of the Theater of the Absurd. In his own special way, he was able to shine the light of truth upon the most absurd lies of our times. Unfortunately, he's not for the simple-minded, so that'd be a pretty dim bulb for most.

More unfortunate, however, is that the best and brightest of our times can't understand the absurdity of the idea that taxpayers are going to get money back that they never really knew about or understood in the first place. Viewed from the most rudimentary level, how could they "get their money back" in a scenario where the national debt grew by $2 trillion during the Clinton administration alone, a period which saw consecutive balanced budgets?

I know, I know, "It's not the same money." Talk about a game of Hot Potato! Did you ever lend somebody a five, only to have them later tell you that you have to get it from somebody else who they, in turn, lent five bucks to?

Well, the $700 billion - or whatever the hell it turns out to be - is your five bucks on the way to that other guy. The only difference is, that instead of being told that you gotta go to that other guy to get your money back, the best that'll happen is you'll be informed that you already have it in your pocket. "Didn't you know? It's been there for weeks. I hope you didn't wash those pants!"

But I'm getting sidetracked, which is easy to do when you try to make sense of religion or economics.

The best way to understand the free market concept is to know the meaning of the word "conceptual". Here is a concept: Every penny on the face of the planet is all fantasy money which ennobles those who "own" 99 percent of the Earth (and a lot of outer space as well) to crank up the farce a few notches whenever it suits the charade.

A lot has been made in the press about the Senator from Arizona and current GOP nominee for the Office of the President of the United States of America sitting silent in a meeting in the White House - a rendezvous which reportedly had been specifically designed to make him look like a leader. Well maybe - just maybe - he knew the absurdity of the situation, and was the only one afraid he'd look silly trying to make sense out of something so illogical.

Somewhere I read that money is an agreed upon lie. Well, "the free market" refers to what would be a lied upon agreement.