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POT LUCK
Who's winning now?
The present meltdown
in the heart of Capitalism has me wishing I could draw better
cartoons. I'd have Russian leaders Putin and Medvedev slapping
a "high five" and hooting, "We won," while
the late U.S. President Ronald Reagan peeks around the corner
of St. Peter's gate, chagrin all over his face.
August 12, long before the worst of the current crisis was even
being whispered, columnist David Crane had a piece in the Halifax
Chronicle Herald titled "World needs better rules,"
in which he wrote, "What's most disturbing is that this
financial crisis could have been avoided."
And the Titanic needn't have struck an iceberg.
But like the Titanic, "free market" tycoons the world
over were going too fast and confidently through the night.
"Decade after decade," Crane wrote, "lax regulation
and the U.S. Congress under the sway of influential and deep-pocketed
lobbyists representing powerful financial interests have thwarted
efforts to improve regulatory oversight of the financial system."
It looks as if the captains of Capitalism needed Communism to
keep them straight, or straighter. Without the pressure of a
competing financial system all caution was swept aside.
The Soviet Union and its brand of Communism collapsed in 1985.
Reagan cried, "We won!" But like "W" Bush
declaring prematurely "Mission accomplished," after
Saddam Hussein's regime fell apart, it wasn't long before financial
disasters began to plague free market economies. Crane notes
the savings and loan crisis that "exploded" in the
U.S. in the late 1980s, costing U.S. taxpayers "about $125
billion to fix."
In 1997 there was an Asian financial crises, "in part a
consequence of U.S. pressure on countries to deregulate their
financial systems before they were ready."
There was the collapse of Enron in 2001, and now the humungous
sub-prime mortgage fiasco that some are predicting will cost
the U.S. a trillion dollars to fix if Congress goes along
with a bail-out proposal just now floated by the Bush administration.
It truly is amazing how we continue to extol the virtues of
Capitalism over Communism or even Socialism as it becomes increasingly
impossible to tell them all apart.
Under Bush's bailout scheme, the government would be empowered
"to designate financial institutions as 'financial agents
of the government' and require them to carry out any 'reasonable
duties,'" (Chronicle Herald, Sept. 23).
Never one to let ignorance hold me back from voicing an opinion,
I'm wondering if there isn't too much excess cash circling the
world chasing speculative opportunities to grow? Like Japanese
kudzu, the vine that's taken off in more southern climes, it
knows no bounds and its zeal smothers everything in its path.
Remember some years back when the Hunt brothers Texans
I think, the same womb that birthed Bush and Enron tried
to monopolize the market in silver and in the process jacked
the value skyward? How different is that from today's speculators
in flour, rice, or oil?
Market analysts who study these things testify before government
commissions that speculation is driving the price of oil. Their
stories barely make it into newspapers, let alone get mention
on prime-time radio or TV newscasts. It is remarkable the way
news anchors can keep a straight face while telling us that the
threat of a hurricane bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico is behind
an overnight 13-cent-a-liter price at the pumps.
Sheep you have to drive to slaughter. We drive ourselves to
the gas pumps, go "baaaaa," and cut our own throats
with our credit cards.
Faced with soaring gas prices some of us are driving more slowly.
A couple of issues ago I predicted in "Pot Luck" that
cops were going to be nailing us for all sorts of minor infractions
to make up for revenue lost through speeding tickets.
I was half joking. Not so the RCMP officer who pulled Anne over
last week for driving too slowly. It was around 9 am. She was
on her way to the office, doing 80 to 90 and keeping to the right
edge of the highway so's not to hold up anyone anxious to get
to work. That looked suspicious to the constabulary that keeps
Liverpool on the narrow and the lights came on. Fortunately,
this time Anne did not get a summons for reckless behavior.
The cows are at last off to
camp, this time to Bill and Shirley Murphy's E-I-E-I-O Farm in
Blockhouse. For breeding it's Angus times Maine-Anjou this time
around, which is not too common a cross around here, the Murphys
being one of the few-and-(very) far-between Maine owners.
Handling cattle has at last become less of a chore around here,
what with our having found a used head gate and two sections
of steel fence to crowd the animals into it. Anne's big steer
nuzzled a porcupine the other morning. The head gate made plucking
quills almost easy.
And the Meat Kings have gone to slaughter at Kevin Hamilton's
new provincially-inspected abattoir in South Ohio, just outside
of Yarmouth. Also shipped our small handful of played-out layers,
most of which never made it past the inspector.
Kevin and his brother built a compact shop that they equipped
with a large plucker, work benches, and a deep cooling bath,
all fashioned from recycled stainless steel milk parlor bulk
tanks. Had it come from a store they'd be killing birds 'til
hell freezes to pay it off.
The ability to make-do, to fabricate from pieces scrounged,
is never celebrated enough. Probably because it hurts manufacturers
in the pocket book. It's an ability so in-grained in rural communities
I heard a retailer of farm equipment say he avoided trade shows:
"They (native geniuses) take a walk around the show, see
something they like, and go home and build it."
What with an aging and shrinking farm community and our haste
to move commercial fabrication off shore, will our great grandchildren
know how to carve a toothpick?
Time to put this magazine to bed. Best to all. Have a great
Thanksgiving weekend. DvL
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