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.

WTH

Today's blog probably belongs on "WTH" (wherever that may be) rather than on the Daily Wot. At any rate:
* Austerity. It's the present in some parts of Europe. It's a subtle present and less-subtle future in the US. What's it mean? Essentially, that when the rich abuse the system and bleed a country a dry (such as in Greece where a handful of families possess the wealth to solve the entire country's debt crisis), the regular people bring the country back into balance by giving up a myriad of government services that their taxes are supposed to pay for.

Why? Because although most of the money ends up in the hands of the richest rich, it's more difficult to trace that cash flow because it's generally in the form of taxes avoided and income exported from the country. The only cash flow that can be readily traced and is obvious to everyman is money spent on education and families. Money spent on prisons and weapons are sacred cows. What's left to cut? Humanity. Now why would people protest or fight against that?

* Socialism. For our less-politically-savvy friends, COMMUNISM and SOCIALISM are not the same thing. Not even remotely. Not even a little bit. So when people wish to dismiss socialism as evil, pointing to the failure of the Soviet Union (that would be a COMMUNIST state) only reveals your own ignorance; it doesn't help your case. Want to point at socialist states? Finland, Sweden, England, Holland, Australia.... (It's a long list of countries that you probably like.)

Don't ask the Wiki. The first header in the Wiki article on "List of socialist countries" is "Socialist states espousing communism". WTH? Those would be communist states, not socialist states. And their list does not include the states with socialist systems, such as England, Finland, Sweden, Holland, Canada... ETC!!!!!!!! sheesh (In the Wiki's favor, the page has a ton of complaints for inaccuracy.) How much do I love articles titled, "Why Socialism Failed" when countries we love (like those mentioned above) are still socialist and thriving! This is the same tactic used by enemies of the populist Occupy movement in the US: Pretend it has failed and maybe it will just go away.

* Pakistan. WTH is wrong with you? You cannot simultaneously claim that you did not know that bin Laden was in your country and charge the man who gave up his location with treason! You just can't. 'Cuz you know that robot guy, Data? The one from Star Trek who could handle subtlties of illogical humanity without blowing his circuits? Even HIS head would blow up at the logic of those two arguments. Either you supported that #@%^#^@$, in which case the US bombs you back into the Dark Ages, or you didn't, in which case the good doctor did nothing against your country. Your pick.

* Obama. OK I love you 99% of the time. But I have issues with this whole drone killing thing. It's what I would expect of a Republican president, not of you. I get that you're in a tough, complex spot. That was made obvious by the failure of your attempt to close Gitmo. You signed a Presidential Order to close it and... it's not closed. So there are CLEARLY complications in those international policies that have not been shared with the public. But still... I just have trouble swallowing how right-wing you are on some areas of human rights. You're tougher than I can possibly envision Romney being on the Middle East, and how scary is that?

I have more rants, but I'm going to stop now because there are only so many things one can rant about at one time without sounding rabid.

Don't Land Or I'll Shoot

"Alas, poor Yorick Astro! I knew him [not], Horatio Dear Reader, [yet he was] a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me fleas on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it."

Worthy of Shakespeare it is, even bastardized.

You may or may not know that the Dutch currently have an astronaut on the International Space Station, orbiting some 350km above the planet's surface. Apparently this event has proven inspirational to more than the budding scientists in the country.

At the old-new year change festivities, which in Netherlands include the explosion of massive amounts of fireworks, two 20-year-old youngsters tied a mouse to a firework--to send him to space? The youngsters are not forthcoming on their reasons. They were discovered before the unfortunate rodent was sent into the ether, but the mouse died a few days after the incident. No worries, the Dutch take animal cruelty seriously and the hooligans will get their punishment.

At any rate, the mouse, nicknamed Astro, has now been stuffed and is being put on display at the Fries Natuurmuseum in Leeuwarden. Eww. (My gorge rises at it.)

But what actually made this a Daily Wot topic was the casual mention of the company Astro is now keeping at the Fries Natuurmuseum. Among other exhibits, he's joining the Domino Sparrow. Now this is the event you really need to try to get a clear picture of in your head.

Domino Day was an annual event in Holland from 1998 to 2009. Each event combined the efforts of domino-chain experts to try to break the standing record for the number of dominoes falling in a single chain-reaction event. In 2005, this event was set up in Leeuwarden. Yes, the same town as the Natuurmuseum. Four million dominoes stood waiting for their big day, just four days away, as the experts continued working on the setup. Each attempt at the record involved around 4.5 million dominoes (4.8 million in 2009) precisely placed to hopefully be triggered in one huge domino fall.

The Domino Sparrow was curious. Finding a way into the building (birds do that from time to time), the Domino Sparrow appears to have appreciated the pattern on the floor made by all the standing dominoes. So much so that he decided to land on some of the dominoes, triggering a fall that eventually took down 23,000 dominoes. No further damage was done because the dominoes are arranged in sections with gaps that are kept in place until immediately before the event begins, and the shouting and efforts to catch the bird kept him from landing again.

The Frisan Expo Center called in animal experts, who called in a hunter, who spent several hours attempting to catch the sparrow with nets and sticks. Eight hours after the sparrow entered the building, he was shot.

It's probably my own dysfuntion, but the only thing I could think of was, "Damn that guy must have been a really good shot."

As the sparrow in question was a member of an endangered species, the shooter was fined. Animal rights' groups were outraged and a bounty was placed on the dominoes. The domino event went on as planned, the bounty stood uncollected (thanks to heightened security by the Expo Center) and the Domino Sparrow's stuffed body was put on display in the Natuurmuseum in Rotterdam until 2007. It's now housed in the Natuurmuseum in Leeuwarden.

Animal rights debates aside, I really had a time trying to wrap my head around the tension in the room when the people setting up these dominoes have invested thousands of man-hours and they realized there's a bird in the room and then the bird actually lands on the dominoes and they begin to fall. I freak out if dinner doesn't turn out the way I wanted it to. I'd have lost my entire mind.

Today's lessons: Mice cannot get to space on fireworks. And don't touch the Dutch dominoes; they'll shoot you.