Friday, July 27, 2012

Snapshot

Nearing the end of its epic journey through every corner of the UK, the Olympic Flame began its 70th and last day of travel at the Hampton Court Palace. 

It's been a bad week for Mitt. Always slightly out of step with the public at large, Romney chose to address the NAACP on Wednesday, drawing jeers from the audience for his remarks. In an interview following the speech, Mitt said he had expected to be booed. 

Matthew Pinsent, the UK's gold-medal rowing champion, bore the Flame onto Her Majesty's rowbarge, which the Queen christened Gloriana during her Diamond Jubilee. 

American sources have expressed concern that Assad's government motives for surrounding the city of Aleppo is to deliberately and systematically wipe out the population in that town. This concern has not driven the US government to act unilaterally, perhaps demonstrating some wisdom gained following the disastrous impact of the American decisions in beginning the Iraq war on international relations. 

Deliberately provocative speech? Ah the good old days of the Republican debates when the candidates were tripping over themselves to woo various groups of Americans. Perhaps Mitt's utter rejection by the Jewish community he brown-nosed so basely during the debates hurt his feelings, and he didn't want to risk it again. 

This stately vessel carried the Flame down the Thames, rowed by 16 proud Britons on the long oars. Seven torchbearers carried the flame while on the Queen's barge. Ending today's journey at the Tower Bridge, the Flame will next be seen when it appears at the Opening Ceremony.

The alternative is even more distasteful on Mitt's part, so we'll leave it at that. Mitt was up for another rejection anyway, as Condoleezaa Rice flatly responded to "leaks" to the Drudge Report that Mitt was eyeing her as a running mate by stating, again, that she has no interest in the VP spot.

The UN chief of human rights, Navi Pillay, has issued a plea to all parties to keep the civilian population out of the conflict. William Hague, the British foreign secretary, is said to be "deeply concerned" over the troop movements of the government forces in Syria, describing the situation in Aleppo as an "utterly unacceptable escalation of the conflict."

Your Money is My Money

This brilliant piece is a translation of a Dagblad article that appeared 20 July 2012, written by Frits Bloemendaal [http://byhans.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/jouw-geld-is-mijn-geld/]:

How is it possible that one broker can bring down a bank? That one money trader can bring entire countries to the edge of disaster? And that one director with a penchant for gambling can reduce a corporation with many tens of thousands of homes to beggary?

It happens because it can.

At the tops of businesses, and at the moment in public and semi-public institutions, a culture change has arisen in which self-interest, narcissism and unscrupulousness have become the most normal things in the world. That began around 30 years ago in countries such as the US and England, and spread thereafter to our own regions.

One of the worst examples is the American energy company Enron, where managers set up an enormous fraudulent network and filled their own pockets, with the eventual result of the demise of the billion-dollar company. Many thousands of employees and investors were left destitute. In the Netherlands it began with Aegon, where executives like Kees Storm enriched themselves with options worth billions, while their clients were squeezed dry with extortionate policies.

Since then the examples have piled up. The real estate fraud of the Bouwfunds and the Philips pension funds, laid out in the book De Vastgoedfraude [The Real Estate Fraud] by journalists Vasco van der Boon and Gerben van der Marel, mercilessly exposed the mentality of anyone managing the savings of others. Your money is my money, it comes down to that.

It is so much that I can only skim the surface. But no one takes note.

Theft, or gambling with other people's money, has long since ceased to be taboo in financial institutions. Unscrupulousness and shamelessness are virtues rather than sins. In the play "De Prooi" ["The Prey"], about the collapse of ABN AMRO (also such an example), one of the lead characters says, "At Goldman Sachs they choose people who were teased as children." These people want revenge against the world and show no pity.

Journalist Joris Luyendijk, who writes a column about London's financial world for the British newspaper The Guardian, recently quoted a psychologist who coaches banking sector executives. The owners of the banks, he says, are looking for "a psycopath" to transform the organization into "a merciless, money-making and soul-stealing organization." That is the secret of their wealth.

That exploitation has become the norm has everything to do with the nearly boundless freedom of the financial sector.

For years, no one dared to place obstacles in the way of the money machine. Precisely in a sector where so much money literally is up for grabs, there is very strong control needed: checks and balances. Only in the last few years has that realization begun to dawn, but that took a banking crisis that cost the Dutch people alone some 200 billion euro in stalled economic growth.

Whether politicians have the ability to turn the management culture the right way is the question, because for the time being the countries are still dancing to the pipes of the financial sector, and not the other way around.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

A Scold for Holland, Too (Among Other Things)

As part of a few international communities on the "interwebs," I routinely have the opportunity to hear people talking smack about my first country, the US. The US in the international community is like the kid with crutches, braces, and red hair who is loved by the teachers and has nothing to say to other children: an easy target. As Anthony Bourdain recently mentioned on No Reservations, "I get tired of my country being the bad example."

Having left said country for one more suited to my own nature (yayy Holland), I'm often one of the bashers and as anyone who's read my blogs knows, I'm a big fan of the Netherlands. (I'm looking for the +1 button on the Dam.)

So it was with astonishment that I listened to a self-professed intelligent Spanish woman explain how all the problems in Spain, Italy and Greece are the result of retirees from the north. [In case you're American and haven't been informed, Greece, Spain and Italy are having financial problems which have been brought to light by the EU's refusal to allow its member countries to rack up and continue to sustain huge national debts.]

Since my conversation with the Spanish woman left me completely baffled, it was up to my Dutch friend to explain to me that the southern countries (read: warm), as a favorite retirement location for English, Dutch, German, etc. old people, have taken to blaming their multi-billion euro debts on the fact that people from the north retire there. Apparently, these retirees are rumored in those countries to show up penniless and without means of support on their doorsteps and then of course the poor southern countries have to spend all their money on feeding and housing the poor old people.

When it was mentioned to the Spanish woman that all of the northern countries (Holland, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, etc. all have a history of similar social programs) continue to pay retirement to and to insure their retirees no matter where they wander off to live, she simply said with complete confidence, "No they don't." She defended this statement as being her opinion. But enough about her and her lack of logic; she's not the point.

The point is that it cuts both ways. Yes this is me taking Holland to task. As ridiculous as you know such assertions by the populace of the south to be, the assertions by a handful of idiots (with their accompanying nods from the TV-watchers in the bars) that every ill in Holland is caused by the "massive" influx of population from the east is equally ignorant and lacking any basis in fact. (In fact the hiccups of all the European economies can largely be traced back to those wonderful worthless loans that the American banks bundled and sold as ordinary securities, ensuring that when they went down and started an economic crisis it will cost no less than a decade to fully recover from, they would take the rest of the world down with them. And their ability to do that can be traced back to trickle-down economics and the policies of deregulation. Why would we need to keep an eye on people who hold the country's welfare in their greedy little hands? How quickly we forget.)

But back to my story! The US came to a point in its history where there were irreconcilable disagreements over the policies and practices of the north and the south. They settled it at gunpoint. Europe won't do that, as membership in the European Union is a privilege, but it does cause concern about the new Chinese neighbors that northern Europe's going to have if it plays out without resolution and China eventually forecloses on its loans.

Don't laugh, Americans: The Chinese own $1 trillion of the US too.