Common Axiom: "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"

A Short History of Financial Euphoria by John Kenneth Galbraith, 1990

There are those who are persuaded that some new price-enhancing circumstance is in control, and they expect the market to stay up and go up, perhaps indefinitely. It is adjusting to a new situation, a new world of greatly, even infinitely increasing returns and resulting values. Then there are those, superficially more astute and generally fewer in number, who perceive or believe themselves to perceive the speculative mood of the moment. They are in to ride the upward wave; their particular genius, they are convinced, will allow them to get out before the speculation runs it course. They will get the maximum reward from the increase as it continues; they will be out before the eventual fall.

For built into this situation is the eventual and inevitable fall. Built in also is the circumstance that it cannot come gently or gradually. When it comes, it bears the grim face of disaster.

The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith, 1954

In the autumn of 1929, the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings. Like most humans, most of the time, they did some very foolish things. On the whole, the greater the earlier reputation for omniscience, the more serene the previous idiocy, the greater the foolishness now exposed. Things that in other times were concealed by a heavy facade of dignity now stood exposed, for the panic suddenly, almost obscenely, snatched this facade away.

Imperial San Francisco by Gray Brechin, 1999

Machinery sent up from San Francisco attacked the Sierra from the rear. Loggers stripped the trees from Lake Tahoe's steep slopes and skidded them to the lake. Steamboats in turn hauled log rafts to sawmills, where floating mats of sawdust and oil fanned across the surface of the lake. The basin's once-thick pelt of pines and firs grew mangy, then bald.

Those who practiced hydraulic mining could hardly claim ignorance of the results of their activities, for as early as 1855, the Yuba, Feather, and AmericanRiver canyons had begun vomiting torrents of mud and gravel into the SacramentoValley. First the tributaries, then the trunk Sacramento, filled their beds and went rampaging across the flat valley floor. With each subsequent year that the hydraulic operations expanded, the flooding worsened until it resembled the biblical deluge. In the worst years, the Sacramento river widened into a turbid sea fifty miles wide, draining sluggishly to the narrow bottleneck at the CarquinezStrait before exiting to San FranciscoBay. The state capital at times resembled a ramshackle Venice; in the infamous winter of 1862, Governor-elect Leland Stanford had to be rowed from his home to his inauguration.

In wet years, an immense coffee-colored plume fanned from the Golden Gate to stain the Pacific. The cost of the mines came home to San Francisco as its port silted in. Qualms festered as the Sierra's rivers bled copiously from the wounds inflicted by miners and lumberman. In the Sacramento valley, mining was on a collision course with the towns and farmers that its waste was progressively burying and drowning. Salmon had their last healthy run on the Sacramento River in 1852; after that, clouds of mud obscured their routes to the mountains.

The top branches of mature oaks poked out of streams braided across cobbled flood plains. In some narrow mountain canyons, rivers flowed over 150 feet of unstable debris washed down from the mines and poised to descend into the valley. It did not take an old-timer to remember deep, clear streams swarming with fish, or the meadows beside them now buried in mining waste.

Legal Manuevers

The miners had arrived first and claimed prior rights. Their attorneys cited sacred property rights and the multiplier effect of mining on local economies. Farmers, ranchers, and townsfolk insisted with growing vehemence that they, too, had rights - rights that the miners were burying beneath tons of sterile gravel. Floods wrecked their towns with ever greater frequency, while malaria bred in the standing water.

On January 7, 1884, Judge Lorenzo Sawyer of the Ninth Circuit Court issued a permanent injunction against any further dumping by the North Bloomfield company. In the years that followed, the federal courts, case by case, shut down most of the other hydraulic mines in the Sierra foothills, occasionally sending in the military to enforce its will.

The hydraulic interventions subsequently undertaken by the Army Corp of Engineers to make the valley safe for farming and urbanization transformed large stretches of its rivers into sterile ditches, annihilating whatever native plants and animals had managed to survive the initial onslaught of mechanical exploitation. Engineers successfully transformed California's Great Central Valley into one of the most intensively managed and artificial landscapes in the world.

The History of Money by Jack Weatherford, 1997

Money constitutes the focal point of modern world culture. Money defines relationships among people, not just between customer and merchant in the marketplace or employer and laborer in the workplace. Increasingly in modern society, money defines relationships between parent and child, among friends, between politicians and constituents, among neighbors, and between clergy and parishioners. Money forms the central institutions of the modern market and economy, and around it are grouped the ancillary institutions of kinship, religion, and politics. Money is the very language of commerce for the modern world.

They are united by one thing: money. No matter whether they call their money dollars, rubles, yen, marks, francs, pounds, pesos, bahts, they all operate in essentially the same way as smaller parts of an international monetary system that reaches every farm, island, and village on the globe. No matter where and no matter what the local currency, the modern system permits the easy and quick flow of money from one market to another.

Money forces humans to reduce qualitative differences to quantitative ones. It forces a numbering of things, and this quantification allows things that are very different to be compared. Money, like the calendar and the system of measurements, is a cultural construct that may have arbitrary aspects, but to function properly it needs stability and predictability.

In the global economy that is still emerging, the power of money and the institutions built on it will supersede that of any nation, combination of nations, or international organization now in existence. Propelled and protected by the power of electronic technology, a new global elite is emerging - an elite without loyalty to any particular country.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/11/MNGFMFMNV81.DTL

Like veterans of many of America's wars, they have nightmares, they sometimes feel claustrophobic, and they are apprehensive about innocuous things -- freeway overpasses and traffic jams, for example. They feel alienated from the world they are re-entering and sometimes wonder if they're going a bit batty.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4124558.stm

Combat Stress: As OId as War Itself

Victims often find themselves having nightmares or being unable to sleep. In many cases, they have intrusive flashbacks to the events that caused the trauma. "They burn through their family and the goodwill of everyone they know, because there's no way a normal person can deal with PTSD. We're not trained for it. People have to part ways and it's ugly," he says.

And in the United States, tens of millions of people are affected, he says. "There are about 25 million veterans in America. Multiply 25 million veterans by their spouses, their surviving parents, their aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, brothers - that's 100 million people."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4635075.stm

War veterans suffering the psychological after-effects of combat often try to handle the problem themselves. Many end up abusing alcohol, drugs, or the goodwill of those closest to them.

Air Force National Guardsman returned home in August 2004 from a six-month tour of duty in Iraq - to a hero's welcome. The next day, he shot himself in the head.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4620279.stm

War Takes Toll on Iraqi Mental Health

The invasion of Iraq put an end to decades of repression under Saddam Hussein, but it also took a physical toll on the country, with hundreds of thousands killed or wounded. The war has also caused other wounds that are harder to detect, experts say. Children in particular are showing behavioural problems and depression at a higher rate than one would expect in a population this size - three times as high," Dr Yassiri says.

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1205582.php

Army Wife Fired for Seeing Husband Off to War

CALEDONIA, Mich. — A woman who took an unpaid leave of absence from work to see her husband off to war has been fired after failing to show up for her part-time receptionist job the day following his departure.

“It was a shock,” said Suzette Boler, a 40-year-old mother of three and grandmother of three. “I was hurt. I felt abandoned by people I thought cared for me. I sat down on the floor and cried for probably two hours.”

Officials at her former workplace, Benefit Management Administrators Inc., confirmed that Boler was dismissed when she didn’t report to work the day after she said goodbye to her husband of 22 years.

“We gave her sufficient time to get back to work,” Clark Galloway, vice president of operations for Benefit Management, told The Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press for a story published Wednesday.

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-748651.php

Despite law, families still must battle creditors

A 65-year-old federal law, which Congress expanded last year, provides a range of protections for activated reservists and for Guard members called up by the Pentagon.

Those protections include a 6 percent cap, under certain circumstances, on consumer and mortgage interest rate debt incurred before activation; protection from eviction or foreclosure; payment deferral for federal taxes; and a stay on civil proceedings, including divorce and bankruptcy.

Keira Welter knew the law was supposed to protect a soldier’s property from creditors during active military service. But for months, she said, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Co. did not seem to care about the law, no matter how many times she explained her case.

“We had worked so hard to own our own home, and while my husband was over there serving our country it was going to be taken away,” said Welter, 31, of Osawatomie, Kan.

After Wells Fargo started foreclosure proceedings in February, Keira Welter contacted the state attorney general’s office and members of Congress. It was not until a local television station aired her story and Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., intervened that the company finally backed off.

Unemployment and Prejudice Ruel Riots

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/14340D07-DD79-44B1-BEF5-52FA1EBBB7DC.htm

The anger and frustration of the youths wreaking havoc in France's blighted suburbs is directly linked to chronic unemployment and the discrimination many face in the job market, say racism groups and government agencies.

Joblessness averaged 20.7% in France's poorest urban areas last year, double the national average, according to a survey of 200 cities and towns conducted for the employment and social cohesion ministry. The picture is even bleaker for the young - for those aged 15 to 25, the figure is 36% for males and 40% for females.

Experts say the areas hardest hit by almost two weeks of unrest, which has spread from the capital to cities throughout the country, exhibit similar characteristics - a lack of businesses, large numbers of unemployed with few qualifications or skills, and the issue of skin colour.

France’s Ramadan Uprising - a Ticking Bomb for Europe

http://www2.debka.com/article.php?aid=1107

The violent riots spreading across France took several worrying directions Sunday night, Nov. 6, and Monday. The mostly Muslim gangs of youths began surging out of the immigrant suburbs to invade town centers; they fired their first gunshots at policemen; the number of torched cars peaked to 1,400; and disturbing new slogans were hurled, depicting Paris as "Baghdad-on-the Seine" and their campaign as the start of Europe’s Ramadan Intifada.

A single slogan made a mockery of president Jacques Chirac’s efforts of the last three years to distance France from President George W. Bush’s Iraq war. Furthermore, the French government’s helplessness in quelling the trouble is encouraging other European communities to follow suit - in Denmark, Belgium, Spain and Sweden, for starters.

More rational to discuss flawed economics rather than argue with fundamentalist dogma.

Imperial Hubris by Anonymous [Michael Scheuer], 2004

Al Qaeda attacks are terrifying, but acts of war are like that. Bin Laden is leading and inspiring a worldwide anti-U.S. insurgency. America is facing a talented, sturdy, charismatic, and determined enemy, one whose example and leadership is producing a growing threat to U.S. security from much of the Muslim world and not just the lunatic fringe. What the West sees as tragic brutality practiced by despairing or deviant individuals is perceived in much of the Muslim world as a heroic act of self-sacrifice, patriotism, and worship, an act to be greeted not with condemnation and revulsion, but with awe, respect, and a determination to emulate.

Al-Qaeda is an insurgent, vice terrorist, organization and has two primary, manpower-intensive missions: to provide quality insurgence training to Muslims from around the world, and to build an ample cadre of veteran fighters who can be sent foreign legion – like to serve as combat leaders, trainers, engineers, logisticians, financial advisors, or administrators wherever militant Islam needs them.

Pre 911, Al-Qaeda’s camps were staffed by veteran fighters who trained insurgents who fought, and trained others to fight, not only against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, but also against Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Tajikistan, Egypt, Bosnia, western China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Macedonia, Kosovo, and the Philippines. Sunni Islamist groups have been running training camps in Yemen, Pakistan, Kashmir, Sudan, and the Philippines. More recently, since 1990, Somalia, Uzbekistan Montenegro, Eritrea, western China, Chechnya, Algeria, Tajikistan, Lebanon, Bosnia, northern Iraq, and Albania can be added to the list.

The main function of the camps was and is to provide quality and uniform religious or paramilitary – or insurgent - training to young Muslims. The trainees learned how to use: AK-47s, Stinger missiles, GPS systems, advanced land navigation RPGs, map reading, demolition techniques, celestial navigation, hand-to-hand combat techniques, trench digging, weapon deployments, escape and evasion techniques, fist aid, scientific calculations to plot artillery fire, first aid, secure communications, et cetera.

It is safe to assume al Qaeda’s leaders began the dispersal process before the 11 September attack; bin Laden knew the attack date six days in advance, and had long wanted exactly the U.S. response the attacks generated. Because he wanted and expected U.S. ground forces to invade Afghanistan, bin Laden naturally would have spread his forces thin, sticking to the first rule of insurgency: never give the enemy a target that lets him defeat you in one campaign.

Al Qaeda has survived the U.S. military onslaught and is thriving militarily. More important, bin Laden has made long strides in focusing general anti-Western sentiments of Muslims specifically on the United States. This marks success for bin Laden’s incitement activities and is most apparent in the attacks by Islamist individuals or groups without known ties to al Qaeda. In an ironic twist, moreover, actions by the United States and its allies have increased the effectiveness and impact of al Qaeda’s efforts, leaving Washington confronted by a lose-lose situation almost every time it needs to make a decision vis-à-vis what it inaccurately describes as “the global war on terrorism.”

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C1C0C9B3-DDA9-42E2-AE9C-B7CDBA08A6E9.htm

[Emilie Rutledge is a British economist who is currently based at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai]. 

Syrian Bigwigs and Capital Flee under Implied Threat of Military Action

http://www2.debka.com/article.php?aid=1104

Influential Syrian VIPs appear to have read the UN resolution carefully last week and are absconding. DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources reveal large cash withdrawals from Syrian banks, currency conversions and transfers to banks outside the country.

The flight of money was accompanied by an exodus of some of the leading families of Damascus – anxious to beat "the ban on travel and assets freeze" mandated by the UN resolution for suspects in the Hariri murder plot.

The largest capital transfer – estimated at $6-7bn – was made by the tycoon Rami Makhlouf who lost no time in removing himself, business and family from Damascus to Dubai.

Makhlouf’s defection is a mortal blow for Assad and his shrinking circle of supporters. He is not only the manager of the Assad clans’ finances, his is also a close kinsman; Bashar’s mother is his aunt, sister of his father General Adnan Makhlouf, who served the late president Hafez Assad in a top position of trust as commander of the presidential guard.

His huge capital transfer and removal of his business center from the Syrian capital are capable of bringing the national economy crashing down about Assad’s ears.