She was sitting at the table and waiting for him to come home. Except he wasn't coming home.

Maybe the phone would ring.

He was in the Mac and maybe the phone would ring.

Out on the rigs while she was at the kitchen table sitting with an airplane bottle of Nassen Royale that she had made the trip especially for.

It had been 3 weeks. She wouldn't have even known it if he hadn't wrote the note. Gone. And now here she was again, sitting at the table next to a glass with a hole in it for 3 more weeks.

But tonight he might call. It was 19 days and today he should have been off. So he might call and that filled her with anticipation and each second with hope.

At least the kids were finally in bed she remembered and then she pulled the phone close and turned down the ringer.

He might call. 8 days on. 3 days off. It had been 19 days. Tonight he should have been off. And it was 19 days.

Not in 19 days.

- posted by Sigurd10/30/2004 11:30:00 PM

 
Containing the Rogue Balometer

Perhaps the biggest difficulty encountered when testing anything in a laboratory environment is containment and appeasement of the rogue Balometer. One must never let their eye off of the balometer, and if possible, always keep downwind of it.
- posted by Sigurd10/28/2004 04:11:00 PM

 
Totality

Not to be mistaken with unity.

It was the Bolsheviks who were the first to be so audacious to say it. And Lenin to attempt it. Unity through totality. Freedom through servitude.

It is best left unsaid. That's what we've learned. That's why we shroud and cloak the notes and papers and documents for 30 years, and then when we release them we turn them into some sort of strange, pragmatic art with carefully placed ink blots and indecipherable sentence fragments.


If you can destroy all differences, do you achieve heaven? If every human being with a different point of view is simply exterminated, then can you call what's left freedom?

Is history the only judge?

It didn't work for the Bolsheviks.

But we've figured out a better way. The problem you see, was that the Bolsheviks went too far in their definitions. See what you have to do, is you have to narrow it down to what matters, and allow for differences in what doesn't. That's the trick. Because then you have totality, but no one knows it. And everyone will call it freedom.

- posted by Sigurd10/27/2004 10:06:00 PM

 
'Sir, surely you must understand that it is only reasonable to accept our terms.'

'I refuse.'

'Well sir, its apparant that you are intent on being unreasonable. But every man has his weakness. Do not think that we won't find yours.' 'I welcome you to try.' 'Sir, I implore you to be pragmatic. This changes very little. Its a simple signature on a single page. That is all. It will not even be known. We will brush it over as though it never existed.' and then the other - 'Think for a moment at the doors that this will open. These are doors you will not have access to otherwise.'

and then the first - 'Every man has his price. Just name yours and we will be happy to consult on it.'

he just laughed. 'You don't get it. I don't give a fuck.'

both appeared quite ruffled at this, as though it was something they had not at all expected. the first finally composed himself and replied - 'Well sir, there is no reason to talk so harshly. You have been most uncooperative. We have tried to be conciliatory with you, but clearly there is no appeasing you. We have offered you the power you covet, and you mock us for our efforts. Really sir, we will have no choice but to attack you, and make no mistake of it, we will attack. We are very good at this. You will likely not see us again, but you will certainly see our work.'

but he seemed to say it without conviction, and i suspect he understood that it no longer mattered.

- posted by Sigurd10/24/2004 11:01:00 PM

 
'I am neither left nor right. I only want to know what's best.'

he paused.

'So let me ask you these questions, so I can accept what you have to say.'

'I understand the good that you see. The improvements in living standards, the greater productivity, the solid economy creating jobs for people, the free speech and right to criticize, the individuality accepted and embraced, the reward for hard work and for merit and for innovation. I see all this and do not discount any of it. These are good things. It is clear to me that there is much good that has been brought about.'

'But I also see bad. Its the bad that gives me pause. But it does not seem to give you pause. And so I wonder why that is?'

'What do you think when you see all the dead people? Because there are a lot of dead people. It can't be denied and the record is clear. In Vietnam, in Cambodia, in Nicaragua, in El Salvador, in Timor, in Israel and Palestine, now in Afghanistan and Iraq. All of the dead indigineous people and all the dead Americans and British and French and Canadians and on and on. What goes through your head when you think of them?'

'Why is this acceptable? Is it because its all for the good of the system? Is it because there would be more dead if another direction had been taken? Is it because of the future prosperity that it will bring? Is it just that a few individuals are of so little importance to the whole that they can be sacrificed for a greater cause?'

'I'm not accusing you. I'm asking. Maybe there is a way to justify this and I just don't see it. Is there an end that reconciles these means?'

'And what do you see when you see the future? I don't mean the next quarter or the next year or two or even three. The real future.'

'Do you understand how we can grow and grow and grow? Because I don't see that. Do you understand how we can consume and consume, depleting the world? Again, I don't see that. Explain this to me as you see it'

'Maybe I'm blind and there's something I've missed. So please point these things out to me. I want to understand.'
- posted by Sigurd10/23/2004 07:38:00 AM

 
If Johnny Cash went out searching for one good man he'd never find one.

Have you ever read The Money and the Power? Its a terribly depressing book.

Its about Las Vegas, but its really about America. Its about America because in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, much of America was laundered through Las Vegas. Politics, unions, corporations. The ugly side of it was laundered through Las Vegas.

What makes The Money and the Power depressing is not that there is an ugly side to America. There is an ugly side to everything. If we don't admit that, especially with ourselves, it will consume us.

What makes the book depressing is that when you look at the power in America, its all ugly side. There are no good guys. The good guys have been erased and marginalised or forced to compromise themselves to survive. The book explains how Kennedy won the 1960 election because his thugs were better at rigging the vote then Nixon's thugs. How organized crime was entangled with politics and with the unions. How Howard Hughes was controlled and destroyed by his money hungry, supposedly God abiding, bankers. How Edgar J was a real bastard even in a land of bastards. How so many if not all of the politicians were corrupt. How small and power hungry men willing to trample over the public good to satisfy their unquenchable thirst for fame and power will win out over those concerned with doing what's right. There's the drug running and the character assasinations and the real assasinations and the infidelity, and its just all so clear that nobody, just nobody, with power is honest and true and there just doesn't seem to be one good man.

Of course, you can choose not to believe it. You can decide that its all made up muckraking and that the people in power really are good and honest and looking after our best interests. If you go to Amazon and read the reviews, you see the dialectic pretty clearly. Those who believe, and those who refuse.

Unfortunately, I'm inclined to side with the believers.

- posted by Sigurd10/21/2004 11:19:00 PM

 
Always stay hidden

There were mice in the corner. When the lights were on. But they hadn't been on when I was there first. When I was there first the lights were off and all you could make out was the well.

The well. It looked like a well, but I did not know it was a well. It was never told to me what it was. All I know is what he told me.

What he told me was that I must guard the well and then he left. But don't be seen! I mustn't be seen, so I must hide in the dark, and to hide in the dark was to hide in the corner where there was no light away from the well.

So I hid. I crouched down and waited and hid. Until I blacked out. And when I woke up there was light but there was no longer a well and I don't know where I woke up.

I went and told her and we ran back to the well. There in the light I saw the mice that scurried in the corner where I had hid guarding the well. The mice did not scatter as we came to the corner. They refused, scurried from one side to the other, frantically trying to evade these intruders but not willing to give it up.

I tried to put the thought out of my mind. The mice were of no consequence. I went to the well, just to make sure, and I knew at once that it too no longer mattered.

- posted by Sigurd10/20/2004 08:13:00 AM

 
Why Nader has to run

Ralph Nader has to run because there are issues that must be addressed that will not be addressed adequately by either of the traditional parties. Both traditional party candidates will be biased in their approach due to the interests they represent. A candidate is needed that can deal with these issues without the bias that both traditional parties naturally have.

These issues, a few of which I will outline below, are of greater importance then the issues that the current candidates are addressing. If they are not addressed they will make whatever solutions that are reached in the more popular topics of debate trivial. Thus, it is necessary that a candidate run that can address these more critical issues.

I want to outline a few examples.

We are on a likely road to disaster with the environment. It cannot be denied that the course that humanity has taken over the past few hundred years has disrupted the natural balance of the world ecosystem. Anyone with an understanding of systems (it could be a swamp or a stock market, they are all the same) knows that when a system becomes unstable, the results are unpredictable and in the vast majority of cases, there is a destructive result on that system.

We have created an unstable system. We cannot predict the results.

The traditional candidates will not address this adequately as they have too many interests that benefit from the status quo and are opposed to meaningful change. A candidate is needed that is not tied to these interests.

Another example. We have created a world economic system that is dependent upon credit as its engine of growth. The US in particular has consumed off of borrowed money for most of the decade. The fruits of this are about to bear.

Again, we cannot be certain of the outcome. Our world economy is a system in disequilibrium. There can be no certainty of where it will end up as it returns to equilbrium. However, we must be aware of the potential outcomes, some of which could be devastating. The traditional candidates will not recognize the instability of our system. Again, they are too closely tied to interests that benefit from the status quo. Additionally, they are advised by individuals who have too much vested in the success of our current system to recognize its flaws.

Third. The economic system that we have put in place has removed barriers to trade. This has had good and bad effects. What cannot be argued is that it has allowed companies to locate facilities where labour is most cost-effective. This is a simple truism. There is a huge discrepancy in wages between countries. Without the traditional barriers to trade, this cannot last. A new equilibrium must be found. The adjustment of wages to find this new equilibrium will likely be painful to US citizens.

Both of the traditional candidates are unlikely to address this adequately for two reasons. First, they are too closely tied to interests that have benefited from this disequilibrium. Second, both candidates are influenced by current free market philosophy, which will discourage intervention.

So these are a few issues. There are others. But these serve the purpose of highlighting the fundamental difference between Nader and the other candidates. Nader is not tied to interests that will influence his decisions on these key issues.

We have reached a point on each of these where creative solutions are required. We need solutions that go beyond the traditional framework, and for this a candidate is required that is not bound by this framework. And as I have already said, if they are not addressed adequately, the issues that currently are being discussed and debated by the traditional candidates will become trivial.

- posted by Sigurd10/19/2004 01:58:00 AM

 
He was young and so he wrote, 'If she is as I am, if she is as I suspect, if we are meant to be, if... then she will understand. She will understand that this is all that matters in this world. Only this one thing. All else is out of reach or but a passing fancy. She will understand that this chance of love is something so rare and sacred that it must be be pursued. Because nothing else can be certain. When the fires blare and the concrete crumbles and all around is rubble, this will be that which carries on. Love! It must be risked; its means are worth any end.'

He is old and looks at this and cries. And still he doesn't know.

- posted by Sigurd10/18/2004 04:36:00 AM

 
Yeah, ok. So that lasted till about the 5th inning. Go World. Go Sox.
- posted by Sigurd10/17/2004 10:26:00 PM

 
Those Cold October Nights

Its the middle of Ocotober. Its cold. And its snowing.

It will get much colder. By December, or at the latest January, we will have had at least a day or two below -30. But it never seems to hurt as much then as it does now, these first few days in October, when the cold comes for new.

By December you will have given up and accepted the inevitable winter. But now, in October, you still cling to summer, and that makes it all the more painful. You try to go out in the morning and grab your coffee in your light fleece jacket, but you find yourself shivering within minutes, and then running back to the house to put on another layer. You wake up every morning an icesicle in your bed until you succumb to flannel sheets and another blanket. Finally, you scrounge through your closet to find that pair of mitts and touque that you tossed away a few months ago, not bothering to pay attention to where you threw it, somehow believing that this summer would be different and you would never need it again.

I have my space heater out again. Its beside me right now while I write this, humming away and warming up my toes. I wish I had a fireplace. That would be ideal. The space heater is the poor man's fireplace, maybe the renters fireplace, but it has its advantages and you can take it with you wherever you go.

And this morning, for the first time, I put my clothes in the dryer before I put them on. just to warm them up. Pretty soon this will become a ritual and it will cause me to show up at work a few minutes later every day then I did during the summer.

Yeah, winter is coming. We may get a few more nice days, or a chinook at some point. But its just an illusion. The reality is that now its all downhill.

- posted by Sigurd10/16/2004 06:21:00 PM

 
Baseball as in Life

'How can you cheer for the Yankees?'

'I don't know.'

'But you hate the Yankees!'

'Yeah.'

'I remember you turning completely red and storming off last year, not even watching the rest of the eighth, when Little left Martinez in. When it was so obvious that he was losing his stuff. Even before Jeter doubled.'

'Yeah. I was pissed. It wasn't rocket science. When they start consistently hitting the ball hard, when every ball is hit hard, even if its to the left fielder and you get a couple outs like Martinez did in the 7th, its over. You get him out.' 'But now you're cheering for them? You couldn't even cheer for them against the Marlins last year. And you hated the Marlins. Thought they had no business being there, and you still couldn't cheer for the Yankees.' 'Yeah, I know.'

'I don't understand you. And now you're sitting here in front of the TV rooting for Derek Jeter when he's standing there at the plate with that smug little smile cuz he knows damn well the odds and the dollars are in his favour even if he goes down on 3 pitches. I'd like to see him smugly going down 0-2 on every count while losing with the Diamondbacks.'

'Me too.'

'Then why are you cheering for him? For all of them. You cheer for the underdog. Not the stacked, mercenary, all star team. Its like cheering for the Contras.'

'Yeah, I know.'

'So why then?'

'I think the world right now deserves the Yankees.'

- posted by Sigurd10/15/2004 11:38:00 PM

 
So I opened up my hotmail account today and found out that I now have 250Mb of space. Do you hear what I'm saying? 250Mb!!! i don't know why. I didn't sign up for anything. And to be honest, I'm feeling a little guilty about it. That's more space then I have on my harddrive at home. I'm never going to fill all of it. I only have 4 friends. And two don't have internet access. Think of all the poor kids out there who would do anything for an extra meg or two. And here I am with all this space. Life is so unfair.

I feel like I need to share my hotmail space with others. Do you want to store anything? Old recipes? Zipped up family photos? Send them up. Sigurd's Storage. I think its time I gave something back to the world.
- posted by Sigurd10/14/2004 06:58:00 PM

 
Its perfectly clear to me that there are a number of things in this world that need to be said, and important things, things that need to be said so that they can change lives and maybe even save them. And yet I can't bring myself to anything but this little blog with its miniscule readership existing mostly isolated, off in the nebula of the deep net. And to that and only that do I write. That's cynical in real time.

I suppose that I am no different than anyone else. A feeling of helplessness. Disgust. Apathy brought about by too much information that showed all too plainly just what an awful place this world can be. Is. It is. And thus far I don't discern a solution to let me take this ugly mess around me and see some ounce of beauty in it. Cuz from that, and only from that, will I attain a real will to act.

I need to see Love. But I don't. At least no yet. But I'm not giving up. Hopefully someday I will.

- posted by Sigurd10/13/2004 11:26:00 PM

 
From the old and worn out...

'The first lesson is this. Good does not triumph over evil. Evil wins hands down.'
'The second lesson is this. History is not lived, it is written after the fact.'
'The third lesson is this. History writes what is evil and what is good and they bear little resemblence to the times.'
'The conclusion is this. evil is only what loses.'
'The painful denouement that has brought more than one rope to the hook is that the real evil of the world only lasted a moment. And then it was history, and then it was good.'
'And none of that is a reason to give up.'

- posted by Sigurd10/11/2004 10:12:00 PM

 
'Your problem is that you are far too optimistic.'
'Its always worked before.'
'These are different times.'
'We'll find a way out of this, we always do.'
'Its different. There's nothing to find.'
'There's always a way out.'
'No there isn't. Not always. Remember this: there is no God. That sentence alone tells us so much ,and we accept it implicitly, but somehow we quit believing in Him and at the same time never quite grasped the consequence.'
'What's that?'
'We have no destiny. Nothing is determined. It isn't all going to just turn out. We can go away and the universe won't care.'
'We can still turn it around.'
'Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes you go too far and the only conclusion is that you've gone too far. It's our blindspot.'
'What is?'
'We don't think we can go too far. None of us really believe that its possible to go too far. Even as we fight for this and picket for that and argue the other, we don't really believe that we won't find a way out of it.'
'yeah well..'
'How do you feel?'
'I feel fine.'
'Exactly.'

- posted by Sigurd10/10/2004 12:01:00 PM

 
If the economy is in trouble then we're all dead

I'm sorry. I know I should be writing from imagination, but the real world right now is so incredibly fascinating that I just can't think of anything else. We have a rising power that is dictating inflation, flooding the market with cheap goods and labour, and at the same time is really the last remnant of the original evil empire. We have our primary source of energy seemingly on a continually upward trajectory while the pundit forecasts still refuse to acknowledge they might be wrong, and following along beside it on the road to valhalla or perdition (i'm not sure it matters) is just about every raw material that we dig out from the earth. And we have a presidential election that seems to have entirely missed the point that there is something fundamental going on right now that is shifting the tectonic plates of our now frighteningly global economy in a way that is going to affect all of our lives for years to come.

It all starts with China.

I know I written this before. But it does. It really does. It used to all start with the US. Or the US and Japan and Germany. Or back in the early 20th, with England. But now it all starts with China.

It starts with China because, for all the wealth of the west, all of our houses and cars and weapons of mass destruction, at the moment China does two of the most important things that make the world go round.

1. China sets the prices for finished goods. In essence, it controls inflation of finished goods. This is because it is the low cost producer. It has the cheapest labour, and the most of it, and it has the infrastructure to build whatever it chooses to build. No American or Japanese or Russian firm can raise the price of anything they manufacture unless China is doing the same.

2. China sets the prices on raw materials. The one thing China needs for it to be able to manufacture the stuff it wants to manufacture is raw materials. It imports these raw materials from the places where they sit in the ground. Oil is not $50 because we are so worried about a terrorist attack. Oil is $50 because we are so worried that China's voracious demand for the black stuff is going to continue to escalate at the current rate and this is going to result in a permanent supply shortage.

But even China is not an island.

It truly is a global economy, and the world is now so terribly interconnected that to take one piece of it and examine it stand alone, without examining the ambilical cord that ties it to the rest of the world is to fundamentally misunderstand the problem. Many US economists seem to have a problem with this, as they still like the simply world where you could look at the US and Japan and maybe Europe and then point your finger in the direction you think things are going.

You can't do that anymore.

For example, China needs the US. Somebody has to buy the goods they manufacture. And in a bizarre way, China keeps the US buying. Here's how.

I talked in my last post about the current account deficit that the US runs with the world, and particularly with China, as it purchases more goods then it sells. An how China ends up with dollars and, in an attempt to keep their currency down, reinvests those dollars back into US debt.

Well this has an important effect on the US that I perhaps didn't explain that well in my last post. China's demand for US debt keeps the interest rates on that debt low. See, let's say you're trying to get a mortgage for your house. And you go around and no bank wants to give you a mortgage. Well what would you do? You would have to keep raising the interest rate you were willing to pay on that mortgage until some bank says, yeah ok, for 10% or 12% or whatever return I'll give you the money you want. But now lets say there's a new bank on the block and it is just awash in money it wants to loan out. It will undercut the other banks to get the loans. So the interest rate you will have to pay will go down.

China is like that bank. They have all these dollars and they want to exchange them for debt. The demand that they create puts downward pressure on interest rates. The net effect of this on the US is that people can get money really cheap. This is why you can get a mortgage at 20 year lows and all the car companies can offer 0% financing and the credit card companies can offer credit to just about anybody. There's such a demand for debt coming from China and the other foreign surplus nations that they are just begging you to take more on. So you take it on and buy more stuff.

Of course, even Americans stop spending at some point. Don't they?

Well I guess that's the wager. Will Americans keep spending, prop up the world's economy, keep the engine of growth going? Or is it going to end. Is there a point where the debt level just gets too high, and its time to retrench and save a little?

The thing is, if that happens, if there is a retrenchment, then it could be trouble. The rest of the world is quite dependent on Americans spending. Particularly, China is quite dependent on Americans spending. What if it stops? Or slows? What happens then? What happens then to all that capacity that was built on loans from Chinese banks(given that China has had loan growth of over 10% for more then a decade you know there's lots of capacity and you suspect that some of it is marginable)? What happens to the American dollar when China decides that its not worth it to keep the currency peg because it starts to hinder more then help? And what happens to long term interest rates in the US (and to their related mortgages and car payments and the like) when the foreign demand begins to slow?

Its like there's this giant perpetual motion machine going on right now, being run by low cost producers and insatiable consumers, and as long as it keeps perpetuating, its all good. But if it starts to slow, the interia of the whole affair (which really is the enormous debts that have been piled up) might bring it to a total stop.

But maybe not.

That's the funny thing. Nothing is certain. None of this is determinable. I'm not writing this to present a doomsday scenario that is inevitable. I'm not even drawing any conclusions. I'm only asking questions. Nothing is inevitable. What we are dealing with here, and what I'm trying to outline, is an extremely delicate balance going on in the world today. And to pretend that this type of balance is easily sustainable is just not common sense.

Keep some money under the mattress.

S
- posted by Sigurd10/09/2004 10:53:00 AM

 
The most important thing you won't hear about in the debate

I just can't bring myself to write anything real so I'm going to write about the world instead.

There is something interesting going in the world today. There's a symbiotic relationship happening that threatens to destabilize this whole system that we've built everything on. You won't even hear it mentioned during the presidential debates. Economics is too bland. It doesn't make a good sound bite.

I think its a good rule of thumb that just about anything important you have to say doesn't make a good sound bite.

I haven't watched the debates. I'm Canadian remember. As an aside though, I wonder whether they've mentioned the social security problem that the Americans have bubbling to the surface down there. I suppose not. Do you realise that the budget surpluses of the 90s were strictly a function of a surplus in the social security program at the time, and instead of saving those surpluses to fund the future deficits which were inevitably going to happen as the population aged, your government (and you can't blame this one on Bush, it was a Clinton deal) had the foresight to spend those surpluses, basically saying we'll worry about the future when it comes. Of course, when the future comes I fully expect that the government will say we just don't have the cash to fund social security in its present form which will technically be true but only because they used the surpluses they had back in the 90s and then turned them into deficits in the 00's. No worries though, at least your dividends aren't over-taxed. That's what really matters.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

What I want to talk about is a symbiosis. And not an environmental one. This is the symbiosis between the US and the rest of the world. You may have heard, at least if you watch business TV, about the current account deficit that the US is running. Its one of those things that gets talked about, but nobody really understands what they're talking about. I don't even think some of the experts that talk about it understand it. Its just this big monster (or harmless little dove, depending on your bias) that lurks out there in the shadows.

The funny thing is, its not really that hard to understand. Let me see if I can explain it quickly. And then I'll explain why its important. The current account of a country is the measure of how many dollars for goods and services are exiting the country against how many dollars for goods and services are entering a country. Basically, that's it. So if you buy a foreign made good, your money gets shipped to that foreign supplierand now that foreign supplier holds the dollar in his hands and you hold your electric toothbrush in yours.

Now if you have a current account 'deficit', it just means that if you sum up all the trade coming in and going out of the country, you have more trade coming in. And that means there are more dollars going out.

And that is what the US does.

The offshoot of this is that you end up with a lot of foreign suppliers holding US dollars. But they don't want to just hold dollars. They want to do something with them. Well, they aren't going to buy something from the US, because its too expensive. So they do the natural thing with them. They convert them into their own currency.

I'm simplifying of course. But that's the just of it.

This creates a problem. See, when all you start converting all these dollars into the domestic currency of the surplus country, that causes the domestic currency to rise. Its supply and demand - now there's more demand for the domestic currency so it goes up. But that's not good for the surplus country, because they make their bread and butter by selling cheap goods to the US, and they do that because their currency is worth much less then the US dollar.

Obviously, something has to be done about this. And something is. The government steps in. Well, the central bank, but same thing. The central bank can offset this effect by printing money and trading that money for those extra US dollars that keep coming in. See central banks, in today's world, can print as much money as they want. The only thing stopping them is inflation. And luckily for most of these surplus nations there's lots of poor people in these countries so they don't have to worry too much about wages going up and inflation going up (or in Japan's case because nobody in the country buys anything). Its a wonderful world isn't it?

So anyways, the central banks print money, the domestic currency doesn't appreciate, and they can keep selling stuff to the US. China does this big time. Japan does this big time. The other asian nations do it little time. But everybody's doing it.

Of course, now the government of the surplus country has all these dollars. What are they going to do with them? Well, they do about the only thing they can do. They give them back.

Well, they don't just give them back of course. They trade them. They trade them for US debt. Consumer debt, corporate debt, government debt. Anything that will pay interest.

So the dollars make their way back to America.

What do you think that does? Well, there's all these dollars just itching to get put back into something in the US. They want to be traded for something that pays interest. The life blood of banks and credit card companies and mortgage companies is loaning out money. And there's are this money just waiting to be loaned. So of course, it gets loaned out. People and companies and even the government and its agencies take on more debt.

This is why you can get a credit card for your dog with a $50,000 credit limit. Its because there's foreign country's out there with US dollars to burn that need to put those dollars somewhere so they want you to take them if you'll pay interest on it.

Its not quite that direct of course, but you get the point. The bottom line is that the US keeps going deeper and deeper in debt. The the foreign country's keep funding it.

Why do I call it symbiotic? Because it is. All this credit creation spurs on people to buy more foreign made goods and that causes more dollars to go out of the country and that causes more dollars to get recycled back into the US in return for debt and on and on and on. The foreign surplus country's can't afford to stop giving back the dollars because their economies depend on Americans buying and would collapse without them. And US consumers need the foreign country's to satisfy their craving to buy, buy buy!

Its elegant really. In some really strange way. Until it all falls apart of course. When that happens, it'll be chaos.

And you won't hear a peep about it in the presidential debate.
- posted by Sigurd10/07/2004 07:33:00 AM

 
Have you ever suddenly become aware that if you fall asleep it is entirely possible that you will never wake up. Has this thought ever rushed to your brain like it was injected to a vein and left you paralyzed with fear, lying in your bed like a frozen statue, not willing to relinquish yourself to this awful unknown void that is just waiting to overtake your mind and then you forget.

Sleep is terrifying. It is terrifying to me. It takes you over... no, worse, it ends you. When sleep begins, you end. You no longer exist. You have not only reliquished control, but you are no longer even conscience of a control or a lack of control or anything at all, and all that's left is a terrible nothing that isn't even apparent until it ends.

if that is what the real end is like, I don't want to know.

- posted by Sigurd10/02/2004 01:10:00 AM

 
Determined

'Its been done before.'
'What are you talking about?'
'This. Right here. Its been done before.'
'I don't see.'
'No you don't. Of course you don't. But I do. Now. I've seen the future. And its been done before.'
'What do you mean?'
'You don't want to know.'
'I don't? I do. Of course I do.'
'You don't. Its terrible.'
'Tell me.'
'You'll hate me'
'Just tell me.'
'You'll hate me. Because its not unique. We're not unique. None of it is.'
'What is it then?'
'Its recursive.'
'Recursive?'
'Again and again.'
'Recursive?'
'Yes. As I said, its not one. Its many. Its infinite. Its all infinite.'
'But aren't we changing it right now?'
'That's what makes it so awful.'
'Awful? But right now we're changing it. So it hasn't. It can't be. Don't you see. Now we're changing it and it hasn't been before.'
'But that's what's wrong. That's what I'm saying. That's what makes it so awful. We aren't. We can't. It can't be changed.'

And then he got it, and he looked for a moment like he would faint, and he braced himself on the bus stop bench and slowly sat down. When he began to cry a few minutes later, I cried with him. Again.

- posted by Sigurd10/01/2004 11:30:00 PM