USA TURKEY DAY OBSERVATIONS ON SOME ECONOMIC ISSUES

[Morpheal]

USA TURKEY DAY OBSERVATIONS ON SOME ECONOMIC ISSUES

CREDIT CARD WOES: AN INDUSTRY GONE STUPID

Credit needs new regulation. Without government stepping in the credit industry gone stupid will only become stupider and stupider. Stimulus can be achieved by allowing a 50% reduction on current maximum card rates for all top credit rating customers. That is approx 12% as opposed to 24% or more. Lower rates than 12% could be limited, by legislation, to fully collateral secured borrowing. This would allow borrowing against investments and real appraised assets to a reasonable percentage of the value of those real assets. Increased rates for those who fail to pay what they legitimately owe discourage higher risk borrowers, but there is a need to eliminate chronic risks. We all know that there are many who borrow at maximum rates with the intention of never paying. This is becoming a favorite scam in some sectors. The credit stupidity encourages, in blatent advertising the rebuilding of ruined credit so that they can do it again. The statistics speak clearly on this, but the credit stupidity is growing, not diminishing.

We might add that a nationalized bank with one card for all would eliminate multiple card over spending setting reasonable maximums for every borrower. Right now the system is such that every credit card lender wants their card to be on top, and they seek to facilitate borrowers using their card as opposed to any other. Well, if you have six lenders all willing to offer you quick, unlimited credit, you can soon rack up an unsecured debt amounting to a very significant amount of money that you might never choose to repay. This opens the door to the criminal element, luring them into the game. Set someone up, have them go bankrupt and give them a cut, same as the old overvalued mortgage scam, which was worth billions to organized crime and still is. Now you have organized crime manipulating lenders to facilitate organized national and international crime, even funding of terrorism, cleaning out the banks, the way they have traditionally hit the mortgage lenders with over mortgaged, severely .over valued real estate. How stupid can the lenders get. Well we have to think that some of the lenders have fallen “victim” to the rise of international and national organized crime. What this means is that it might be necessary to nationalize banking to fight organized crime, scams and frauds. Only a national bank has sufficient law enforcement and investigative capability. It is doubtful that government can provide adequate law enforcement, audit and investigative resources to meet the real needs of the entire financial industry. The danger of weak cases from fraud plagued lenders overloads the courts, and failed litigations become more commonplace tying up the courts. This log jam further serves organized crime..

THE PLIGHT OF RETAIL: THE RISE OF SOCIAL DYSFUNCTION

If all other economic factors were positive retail would still be in big trouble. The ethical goal of good quality products at affordable prices is largely perished. Fast paced trends have become faster. They do not even last one season, in some instances. Everything is changing all the time, simply to try to force the consumer to change along with it. The herd mentality of any identifiable socio-economic faction is being desperately encouraged. Meanwhile the retail sector is suffering from the highest volume, cheapest cost, wholesale monopolies. If you are smaller than the biggest fish you are only shark bait. The big fish eat the little fish is a bad way to do business when the retail sea is as dominated by brutally competitive biggest fish in the sea, which clean it out of anything smaller than themselves. This does not foster real lasting quality and destroys a large segment of the retail industry.

Social element of shopping in stores has given way to a dysfunctional society of solipsistic isolation and faceless electronic shopping. High pressure superstores worsen this. So does unscrupulous, currently very poorly regulated and monitored, advertising. For most the pleasant shopping experience of the past has become the nightmare shopping experience of today. Not to mention the agonies currently presented by online internet searching. The percentage of a human life being forced into electronic searching through a growing muck heap, looking for any real value to meet wants and needs, is growing. This too has negative impact but the decline and fall of the personalized shopping experience, in real stores, offers little or no alternative to data quest hell and its measurable physical, social and psychological impacts.

ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS : MISSING THE REAL TARGETS EVERY TIME

1). The first priority is to end the persistent and endless money argument standing in the way of environmental progress. The answer is to remedy the economic system to enable a “do it” and “do it now” attitude. The kind of attitude that radical Jerry Rubin popularized in his writings in the 1960s. Fiscal obstacles have to be effectively removed, not increased. Any fiscal crisis, and chronic repeated fiscal crisis, is highly suspect of being at least partially conspiratory avoidance of doing it and doing it now. This has to include R&D and implementation.

2). Remove some of the competitive element in R&D. Facilitate research funding so that multiple brains do not have to reinvent the same wheel, independently of each other. Excessive secrecy, a system of hierarchical privilege, and militarization of much of technology, locks out some of our best minds from achieving their basic science and applied science potential. Add corporate competitive secrecy and suddenly you have most of your best brains locked up and locked out of any real cooperation for urgently and much needed progress. The system as it is is a quagmire, and most of the best mental engines are simply spinning their mental wheels in the muck. A system of national research centers, allowing cooperation for innovation, to replace privately dominated and selfishly manipulated, science, is a must, not an option.

3). Population limits and reduction targets to locally sustainable levels for all areas, with severe international penalty for violation is a must, not an option. Uncontrolled population growth is as dangerous to world peace, national security of any nation, and to human progress, human wellness, and future standards of living as was and is the nuclear bomb. The lack of population control treaties leads to mutually assured destruction of humanity. It is mad(ness).

4). Targets must be set to elminate all oil and coal (particularly brown coal) fired electricity production worldwide. There are still old oil fired plants in the USA. As unthinkable as those dirty, decaying, poorly maintained facilities are in America are, the worst of America is but the tip of the iceberg as to what exists in the rest of the world. This is a major issue worldwide.

5). Efficient smoke stack scrubbers must be implemented for all smokestack industry worldwide with rapid implementation target dates. This is technically practical and possible, but again it is purely the argument of cost. There is not enough money. Profits are lacking. Well, we have been waiting for those profits to fund state of the art scrubbers on every stack for decades, but we still don’t see it happening. Profitability is not the answer. It has to be done. Do it now.

6). Improve forest fire fighting capabilities. The media, inclusive particularly of that in the USA is always reporting another instance of another runaway forest, brush, fire. Acres, upon countless acres every year burn into atmospheric carbon. There is no reported, accurate, measurement of how much carbon is carried up by that carbon laden smoke. We know it is a huge amount. Nevertheless, there is insufficient fire fighting equipment, with rapid deployment capability, in North America to effectively bring fires under control and end the carbon pollution and destruction of natural resources. This is not a minor problem. It is a major problem.

7). Reforestation has largely suffered, worldwide, and needs new attention.

8).The emphasis has to be clan air targets for shipping and trucking industry. The largest engines that burn oil products need to be dealt with first. Not the smallest. You start from the biggest and work your way down to the smallest. Let’s get rational on that one. Every trip on the highway gives you another taste of oil fumes from oil burning engines. The smoke from transport trucks is sometimes enough to choke the lungs and make even healthy normal respiratory systems challenged during a traffic jam when there is little wind. Despite the fact that those truck chimneys are belching their effluent many feet above the roof of any other vehicles. Let’s pay attention to what we see out there and again get rational about it. What you don’t see is the massive amount of shipping, with their big oil fired engines, belching their effluent into the skies above the oceans and seas. That is the one you don’t see that much of, because it is out there, not in your own neighborhood, but shipping is vastly increased, and that leads to vastly increased trucking, over longer distances from ports, in a globalized marketplace. Globalization and shipping statistics, correlated with effluent from typical trucks and shipping tankers and freighters, will frighten you. Remember that there are fewer standards for ships, and almost no or no standards in some countries from which ships originate. Some shipping is deliberately originated under flags where there are no standards whatsoever for any aspect of shipping.

We could go on.........but that is enough for our American Thanksgiving.

My American turkey day article. Please feel free to copy, distribute, and reproduce this article in any way, by any means, in any form. Thank you.

Robert Morpheal

[CrispyQ]

1. Oh my, you mentioned population control.

:hide:

We are consuming our eco-system for the profit of a few. There have been a few articles just this week stating that climate change is happening much faster than expected. I'm very pessimistic that we will do enough soon enough. As we waste our energy & resources on wars over oil, Mother Nature is ramping up.

[Warpy]

2. Be careful with #4

because there is no way you're going to do it by male fiat.

The only sure way to get poor women to limit the number of children they have is to educate them and give them hope that they can be something more in life besides some man's baby machine.

If the world isn't willing to do that, then I suppose you'll have to rely on war, famine and pestilence.