Primate Brow Flash

Snopes has a good piece about the myths surrounding the Bakken formation

http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/bakken.asp

It is the perfect combination of fact, fiction, populist rage and denial that defines our age.

Discussing alternative currencies to bypass taxes and fearful banks.

In his book The Future of Money, Lietaer points out - as the government did yesterday - that in situations like ours everything grinds to a halt for want of money. But he also explains that there is no reason why this money should take the form of sterling or be issued by the banks. Money consists only of “an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange”. The medium of exchange could be anything, as long as everyone who uses it trusts that everyone else will recognise its value. During the Great Depression, businesses in the United States issued rabbit tails, seashells and wooden discs as currency, as well as all manner of papers and metal tokens. In 1971, Jaime Lerner, the mayor of Curitiba in Brazil, kick-started the economy of the city and solved two major social problems by issuing currency in the form of bus tokens. People earned them by picking and sorting litter: thus cleaning the streets and acquiring the means to commute to work. Schemes like this helped Curitiba become one of the most prosperous cities in Brazil.

The examples cited are all constructive. But, if it were adopted on a large scale, this is a disruptive and tantalizing idea. It would really make this country hard to govern. What if we, the people, disgruntled by taxes and under-served by banks, began issuing untaxable, untracable currency to pay for goods and services.
“U.S. law prevents states from issuing their own currency but allows private groups to print paper scrip, though not coins”, said Lewis Solomon, a professor of law at George Washington University, who studies local currencies.

A long history

in 1932. Like most communities in Europe at the time, Wörgl, Austria suffered from mass unemployment and a shortage of money for public works. Instead of spending the town’s meagre funds on new works, the mayor put them on deposit as a guarantee for the stamp scrip he issued. By paying workers in the new currency, he paved the streets, restored the water system and built a bridge, new houses and a ski jump. Because they would soon lose their value, Wörgl’s own schillings circulated much faster than the official money, with the result that each unit of currency generated 12 to 14 times more employment. Scores of other towns sought to copy the scheme, at which point - in 1933 - the central bank stamped it out. Wörgl’s workers were thrown out of work again.

Similar projects took off at the same time in dozens of countries. Almost all of them were closed down (just one, Switzerland’s WIR system, still exists) as the central banks panicked about losing their monopoly over the control of money. Roosevelt prohibited complementary currencies by executive decree, though they might have offered a faster, cheaper and more effective means of pulling the US out of the Depression than his New Deal.

Here is a more detailed history of Wörgl

Recent efforts, large and small:

The comments to the original article document many, many examples of alternative currencies, many created to keep wealth within a certain community.

The underlying point is that the government and the financial world is busy promising our future earnings away and as municipal services decline and taxes creep up, people are going to be looking for a way to renege on the promises made in our name.

as a side note, what a fascinating thing to collect! Some of them are very beautiful. There are people that collect odd currencies and counterfeit notes, but not a whole lot about collecting alternative currencies.

Here are some links about alternative currencies:
As Collectibles
Metafilter discussion
Wikipedia
Big gallery of alternative currencies
neat site about Madison Hours

The Anti-Doomer
“A blog that shits all over doomer thoughts, ideas, and way of life.”

very right-on and very funny.

I see INFLATION. I think it is likely that China and others will be less willing and able to loan us money in the coming year as their economy sours and our fiscal policy worries them.

If this happens, the U.S. will start having a hard time financing our debt load, our bailout and stimulus packages, our military, and whatever else might come up. When governments find themselves in this position, they start printing money. So, during and after 2010, we will start to see some real inflation. Once inflation gets a foothold, it forms a feedback loop that is hard to break without raising interest rates and slowing the economy further.
Inflation will be palatable to the majority, I would guess, because our people, in general, owe. They owe on their college, on their homes, on consumer debt. States will owe money to the Feds and businesses will owe money to their investors. The US will owe money to the rest of the world. Those in debt love inflation. Those with savings will get hurt. Inflation is a big tax on people who have been prudent with their money. Inflation is the meanest, sneakiest and most efficient way to redistribute wealth and I predict 2010 will be the year of inflation. First, though, 2009 will fool everyone by being the year of deflation. The deflation will be enough to make everyone stop worrying about inflation.

We’re bailing out wall street, but who is going to bail you out?

Answer: Denny’s!

Denny’s $4.99 Breakfast Bail Out!

Here is the letter I just mailed to Senator Coleman:

Dear Senator:

I do not trust the “bailout” and I don’t think you should approve any legislation that comes with the warning, “approve this immediately and don’t debate it”. I kind of feel like I’m being called by some boiler-room punks pumping a stock. I also don’t like the language in the bill that takes all power away from congress and the judiciary to prevent abuse.

I’m also perplexed why we are being so gentle with these bankers who insisted on secrecy all these months and then show up with their hats in their hands and explain that they need 700 Billion “right away”. If, IF, we do some deal with them, I would prefer they be tied to chairs with red rubber balls stuck in their mouths while we pick through their assets for the ones we like.

Also, regarding your statements last weekend that we could make 10 to 20 times our money on this deal. Well, define “could” and then explain, if we could make 10 or 20 times our money, why there isn’t a private company interested in snapping up these “bargains” at this time. Then, you could explain why, if these assets are there for the taking today, why they won’t still be there next week, next month and even next year. Why can’t we buy them slowly as we see fit?

Now, If I can poke so many obvious holes in this plan, surely you could get together with economic experts, throw the current draft in the garbage and come up with a better plan.

Health Business Consultant David E. Williams looks at Medicare.

What’s to be done? I don’t have a comprehensive solution, but here are a couple of ideas that are too radical even to be considered right now, never mind put into place:

These “radical” ideas might put you to sleep because they are pretty tame compared to what I’d like to do. In fact, they seem anything but radical:

Means Testing: Make sure the person getting Medicare isn’t sitting on money they should be using to pay for their own health care. (This would be a great job for me… a few more weeks at the Physicians Neck and Back Clinic, and I’ll be able to hold old people upside down by their ankles and shake coins out)

Balance Billing: This means that hospitals charge what they wish with the stipulation that they must charge all patients the same. They are allowed to bill for the balance. That is, they can charge Medicare patients more than what Medicare will reimburse and bill them for it. I didn’t realize this, but THIS IS A HUGE CONTROVERSY…. because what a terrible thing to present someone with a bill for a service provided.
In some states, “balance billing” is synonymous with fraud:

The Medicare Balance Billing Program works to protect Medicare beneficiaries from being billed by health care practitioners for amounts beyond those approved by Medicare. The program investigates complaints and takes action against those practitioners who violate the law.

These three great pieces about oil should be read, even though you probably have oil news fatigue.

• Long Burn invited a guest speaker to his University who made some really interesting points. He doesn’t name the speaker, but he is chief scientist at the world’s second largest oil company. He painted a sobering picture. Two points that woke me up a little bit: Liquid fuels beat the hell out of anything else for energy density. Greater efficiency often leads to more consumption, not less.
• The mayor of Huntington Beach, CA writes about How Will Local Governments Respond to Large Increases in Energy Bills?. She has been trying to tell people about this for 3 years, but no one listens. This is something that worries me as a taxpayer in St. Paul. Consider cops, plowing, heating buildings, maintenance, street cleaning. It will be politically painful if not impossible to ramp down these activities. Add this to paying for retirees and possible loss in revenue due to economic downturn and we have a crisis brewing. The comments on that article are interesting as well.
• Indonesia has quietly left OPEC because they are now a net importer of oil. As cheaply available oil declines and oil producing nations grow, they’ll be using more of their own oil, making us further question why our economy is based on the stuff.

One aspect of higher energy prices and climate change is that this uniquely American requirement of a daily shower has to go out the window. I was reading a tip at Lifehack called how to develop a non-optional mindset and a daily shower was listed along with changing a poopy diaper as a non-optional thing.

Q. Why do you take a shower each and every day? (please tell me you shower every day!)

A. Because programmed into your ‘how-to-live-your-life’ hard-drive is a command that says you must wash every day. For you, it’s not an optional behaviour, it’s part of your normal running pattern. As a result, you have no motivational problems and no discipline issues when it comes to your personal hygiene (I hope). It’s just a thing you do on auto-pilot. The thought of not washing doesn’t occur to you because cleanliness is one of your non-negotiable habits.

I didn’t take a shower this morning and even though I rode my bike to work (and home last night) I don’t think I’m approaching poopy diaper status. I willingly submit to any sniff tests. I’m quite sure I don’t smell like I took a shower recently, but I’m not offensive. I just smell like a person. Get over it.

One result of the Coming Global Shitstorm it is the end of hygiene as we know it. TEOHAWKI. We are going to have to get used to the way humans smell.

Say it with me

TEOHAWKI
TEOHAWKI
TEOHAWKI

I predict that what is happening in the U.S. economy is akin to shedding weight, the slimming-down process of a lean, mean, fighting machine.
Furthermore, I predict a rapid recovery, next year in 2009. Yes, oil is high–so what? This is an opportunity to make money in oil, so let’s make some money in oil. Energy troubles and the high costs associated with higher oil prices–BUNK! We will adapt–and faster than the egg-heads think. Why? Because this is America, and Americans think big. That’s who we are. It’s what Bernstein forgets: We built-up Europe from rubble and ash–and we’re not finished building-up, because we love freedom.
Don’t separate economics from the realm of absolute moral valuations. Yeah, we tripped and skinned our knees, but we’ll get up and climb higher, because that is who we are. AND WE WILL SUCCEED.
Freedom is on the march in the world.
God bless America, and God bless the civilization of the American peoples–rock of the global age.

link

It would be easy to make fun of this person, assuming he’s serious. It would be more honest to report that I hear this sentiment voiced by everyone from prius-driving progressives to Escalade driving maniacs. Everyone thinks we will just zen this thing at the last minute. If so, we are sure saving the “21st century technology” fix-it card for the very last minute.

on the other hand,

There’s an eerie vibe out there that things are seriously out-of-whack. We’re on the edge of something. We’re at the entrance of a dark passage where some of the ceremonies of daily life meet resistance. You go to the WalMart and five of your six credit cards are refused. Uh oh. It begins to dawn on you that you’re spending a quarter of your take-home pay filling up the gas-tank every week. There’s no dial tone when you pick up the telephone. How could all the supermarkets in town be out of rice? The local hospital just declared bankruptcy. The neighbors down the street auctioned off all their furniture in the driveway last week

link

I like the first guy’s outlook better too.

Cub foods has a deal to encourage you to spend the stimulus checks on grocery gift cards: Spend $300.00, get $30

I used to disregard Michelle Bachmann, but now I see she might secretly be a situationist comedienne:

“They point the finger of blame at you — you drive too much, you drive the wrong kind of car, you use the wrong kind of light bulb,” she said. “What America needs is a $2 gallon of gasoline.”

Children of Men. How well does it predict the Coming Global Shitstorm (CGS)?

Perfectly.
20 years from now, after a series of catastrophic meltdowns, random violence, soldiers and cages full of deportees are the norm. Even though everything has gone to shit and there is no future for mankind, people still cling to their meaningless existences and get by with pills. The main character sleepily strolls past walls of soldiers protecting an artificial environment where legal citizens are still free to stumble around buying coffee. In an even more protected environment, we briefly glimpse the rich cavorting in vast picnic grounds.

Humans have carried a fascination with the end of the world for as long as they’ve had imaginations. We must, for our own survival, use our vivid imaginations to dream up scenarios where water, food and shelter cease to exist, where disease and war and pests come and take away everything. We are made that way and science fiction stories about total collapse of civilization are an outgrowth of that. I’m going to devise a theory that every sci-fi construct (zombies, time travel, alien invasion) is an outgrowth of some fundamental human discomfort.

Though it gets the CGS right, it isn’t much of a movie. There are a few important scenes, some sketches of characters and then a long drawn out action sequence at the end that is barely worth watching. The movie is excellent for its imagination of the shitstorm, though, especially the way things appear to stay the same until the shitstorm happens to you. Until it does, we’ll fastidiously maintain our lawnmower while the guy 20 yards to the east maintains his, so when one of us evaporates in tiny mushroom cloud, the other will be able to soldier on.

I sometimes read the BOB email list. The BOB list concerns itself with bicycling, bike commuting, bike repair, and bike equipment. They like older bikes and leather seats.

It is all things bicycling and if you miss a day, there will be about 100 messages to catch up with.

Someone pointed out a recent thread about the Coming Global Shitstorm. It was the usual predictions about people running around killing each other, but with the twist that bicyclists, especially those with classic steel frames and high spoke counts, would somehow have an advantage in a post-apocalypse situation. The interesting part was that a woman spoke up:

It sounds like there are a LOT of “endgamers” on this list.

I do find it curious that it’s been almost entirely
MEN who’ve been doing all the “endgame” postulating
here, and elsewhere.

Not sure why I’m particularly sensitive to it all just
now. Perhaps it’s that I work in a field that’s SO
male (don’t believe me? See how many bike shops are
run by women, and how many mechanics are women, and
how many women work in an area of bicycle R & D that’s
NOT connected to apparel, and, well, I’ll stop now.
I’m still working in the bike industry and yes, I know
what I signed up for, so it’s all fine by me).

But still, it’s fascinating that these “endgame”
discussion almost NEVER come up in my dealings with
other women, in or out of the bicycle scene.

There may be something to that.

In the meantime, I’ve about approached my limit with
this thread, and I think I’m going to take a break
from the list for awhile.

Is she right? Is the CGS a male idea? What drives the fear/fantasy of collapse? The people that like to discuss it seem to really savor the possibility.
My interest, I think involves
1) fear: What should I do if things came apart?
2) curiousity: What will it be like, what cool headlines will I see? Will there still be an internet?
3) break from the routine: Sous les paves, la plage

I think many men secretly live with one foot in fantasy world where there are no phones and desks and car payments and the world is a series of campfires with rabbits cooking over them. (Hell, I know I do!) Then every news story gets turned around to mean that those rabbit hunting days are right around the corner.

Clive Thompson writes about emotional responses to the coming global shitstorm

In interviews Albrecht conducted over the past few years, scores of Australians described their deep, wrenching sense of loss as they watch the landscape around them change. Familiar plants don’t grow any more. Gardens won’t take. Birds are gone. “They no longer feel like they know the place they’ve lived for decades,” he says.

Albrecht believes that this is a new type of sadness. People are feeling displaced. They’re suffering symptoms eerily similar to those of indigenous populations that are forcibly removed from their traditional homelands. But nobody is being relocated; they haven’t moved anywhere. It’s just that the familiar markers of their area, the physical and sensory signals that define home, are vanishing. Their environment is moving away from them, and they miss it terribly.

I’ve been thinking that the famous 7 stages of grief applies to the threats to our lifestyle and can go a long way to explain the behavior of Americans.

Here are the seven stages and how they relate to the coming global shitstorm:

1. Shock and Disbelief. Most of us visit this stage daily. For instance, I have trouble believing that we are in a decades-long war to secure oil resources, that the comfort all of us enjoy today will soon be attainable only by the super-rich, that the earth’s environment is irrecoverably ruined. The reality in front of our faces can cause frontal lobe lock if taken in large doses. The work-hard, play-hard ethic can be a good antidote to this.
2. Denial. This is a deeply entrenched and powerful response. Most Americans spend most of their time enjoying this stage right now. Everyone is an armchair climate expert who somehow knows more than the scientists who have spent their careers studying the issue. There is a big gap between the information we have in front of us and the way we behave. Denial can cause behavior that seems to be opposite of the most logical response. Taking part in ecstatic displays of resource consumption can be comforting. This explains NASCAR. “The American Way of Life is a blessed One!”
3. Bargaining. We’ll just retool our economy to burn ethanol. Or hydrogen. Or something. I read in a fascinating profile of Sir Richard Branson that he is offering a prize to someone who can come up with a technology that will replace fossil fuels “without significantly reducing our standard of living“. Nice thought. I’m going to be spending the rest of my life watching America in the throes of this stage. Every huckster who pitches a way to get back to the old days will be lifted up and followed fanatically and then torn down in disappointment. The ancients used human sacrifice as a form of bargaining. Maybe we are indirectly doing the same thing today. If we can somehow trade lives for a few more years of air conditioning, it might be worth it. Me, I’ll just skip ahead to #6.
4. Guilt. Most Americans will skip over this one in favor of the more exciting stages that follow.
5. Anger. The root of anger is fear. We will take out our anger on what scares us. Unfortunately, things like the sun, the sea, the soil, and the bacteria can’t react to our anger in a satisfactory way, so we’ll have to use one another as repositories for our anger. This stage will be punctuated by anti-government, anti-corporate, anti-me-being-hungry-and-poor rhetoric and actions, much of it deserved. Evidence that we have reached this stage will be extreme levels of xenophobia.
6. Depression. This is a stage we’ll visit often and then switch back to one of the other stages. You will visit this stage when your grandchildren ask you to explain the concept of dieting to them.
7. Acceptance: This is when we say, “Ok, I guess we have to live like the Dutch. We are ready.” and then, having admitted that, nothing will be able to shock or depress us further. So, we won’t be too upset when told it’s too late to even do that.

NPR : Alan Greenspan interviewed by Terry Gross. It is worth a listen.

He has this to say about entitlements:

The real problem is not now, it is our utter lack of attention or failure to even want to confront the very substantial problems for financing Medicare especially in the years ahead and I must regrettably say that is true both for Republicans and Democrats. I’m listening to the debates amongst those who are seeking the presidency and nobody is recognizing what every technician has been telling all of the politicians that this issue has got to be addressed. If we don’t its going to create very serious fiscal problems for the country. It’s not the current data that is so critical. It is, basically, the failure to address the future.

He goes on to state that there is no way to solve the fiscal problems only by raising taxes and that services will have to be cut and if we are going to do that it is important that we communicate that fact immediately to the retirees making plans based on expected support from Medicare. He predicts that upper income groups will find themselves paying 100% of their medical costs.

I am printing and saving this article so that I can use it to explain our times to future generations. It has everything. Corporate-speak, inability to look past the end of your own nose, class insecurity and subdivisions in the Nevada desert.

Papa Twister: Giant Sequoias.

That is a worrisome post.

I have to brag about this pair of chinos I bought for $2.99. They were in perfect condition and, unlike most second hand clothes, long enough for me. Just like my pal who won’t tell me where he caught the 48 pound muskie this summer, I’m not going to reveal where I bought these. Let’s just say there were a lot of white floor tiles and fluorescent lights. They were nothing like the North Dakota Pirate Pants that Matt found, though.

A long time ago I worked with a Hmong guy who had 7 kids. I asked him if he ever shopped at thrift stores. No way. He didn’t survive the camps in Laos and endure the rendering of his language in phonetic block letters so he could wear someone else’s old clothes.

An even longer time ago, I mentioned to some acquaintances of mine that the basketball sneakers I was wearing were from a lost and found. One of them was just outraged to the point of derision.

Last night, at the airport while waiting for my luggage at the baggage claim (what is the difference between luggage and baggage?) I overheard a guy telling a woman about the light rail that would drop her off right by her hotel for $1.50. Again, No Way. A $20.00 cab ride is much preferable. I actually took the light rail home, and transfered to a bus that let me off two blocks from my house. I had to lie about my plan to do this to several people because they would try to dissuade me from this.

I see both sides of this issue. $20.00 for a cab ride looks a lot like zero for most business travelers. A brand new pair of pants is pretty nice. On the other hand, Americans are crazy for saving money, to the point that we get monstrosities of scale, goods from China, and cheap-ass ugly architecture. As cost conscious as we are, we don’t wish to save money in a way that impacts our status. Taking the bus and shopping in a second hand store violates our sense of entitlement. I feel that sense pulling at me all the time.

Last year, the Como neighborhood of the city of Minneapolis did a pilot project of installing solar hot water heaters on 19 houses. I’d like to swing by there and get some pictures of them.

It sounds like a great deal, especially now that that pilot project has worked out some of the kinks in permitting, installation and usage. The systems cost about $6,000 and it takes 15 years for them to pay for themselves. (could be faster if fuel prices say… double over the next few years)

Here is an article about it in the Minnesota Daily and here is a thread in a newsgroup about the project. I like the quote:

“If we only knew now what we know now, maybe we would we take some action.”