Musings on the 2012 US Presidential Election

             
             What's the point of all these words? I don't know. Perhaps, it's therapeutic. Perhaps. So, in that spirit I'll record them.

                In a couple of days the people will be given a choice to vote for their ruler. The choice is between the Democratic candidate of the Democratic Party Barack Obama, and the Republican candidate of the Republican Party Mitt Romney. I don't know, it just feels like there's not much of a choice here. But, of course there's always a choice. I suppose the only thing that comes to mind as to the real thing being decided is that people who own property, and whose incomes are great will feel it in their account balances at the end of the month. So, I suppose if that was me I would vote for the Republican candidate because he has promised not to increase tax rates. Therefore, the real choice of my decision I would savor in the coming months, and years. 

                Of course, I'm Canadian and it's not for me to decide this ruler. But, everybody in the world will be affected by this decision. Will they? Well, that's the thinking. Will it affect me, and my suffering in my daily life? I don't think so. I have an entirely different set of problems that's not really explicitly covered by either of the candidates. In so far as it is I who feels, the complex of emotions are leading me toward supporting the Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Why? Probably because my suffering justifies his election. On the other hand my thinking justifies voting rationally for the Democratic candidate. Why is this?

                I have a rational idea of the direction in which the world has been trending for the past twenty years. Especially for the past twenty years, a trend called globalization has taken hold. In this vein of thinking I know rationally that the Republican candidate’s policies and thinking don't seem to make sense. This is especially the case with regard to the ‘big government’ argument. The Democratic candidate has promised to move in that direction. He has promised to focus on nation building at home. A lot of people even in the economic community and intelligentsia aren't informed as to the precise details of the implications of globalization in our everyday lives.

                I have studied globalization extensively, and I think my research has privileged me to a couple of key insights. One of these insights is that despite the predictions of the of globalization gurus, and their conclusions in the 1990s, globalization itself has had some curious effects which deviate peculiarly from their conclusions. In particular, one of these conclusions was that economies would take over governments, and governments would lose the ability to regulate the economy. There was a need for global institutions of regulation that spanned national borders. The state - it was predicted - was dead.  

                But, look at what happened. After September 11, 2001 the United States embarked upon a radical shift in the organization of its security apparatus. The military-industrial complex was expanded in many ways. Big brother and so-called surveillance increased radically. The Department of Homeland Defense was created. Civil liberties were infringed upon in ways which it would have been thought unthinkable, especially under the Constitution. Federal regulation of the economy especially in the United States increased not decreased.

                Here is a very clear, and instructive example of how the predictions of the globalization gurus have not all come to pass. Admittedly, I have not examined these issues with the surgical precision of an academic or scholar, but I do feel that my argument is a powerful one. My recurring insight and intuition as to this peculiar development mentioned above is that the leading capitalist state namely the United States of America is increasingly being influenced by the culture of the rest of the world namely the Islamic culture, and the culture of China. 

                My intuition leads me to think that the draconian authoritative style of government prevalent in China is rubbing off on the United States. How does one, after all, explain the expansion of the security apparatus despite the globalizing tendencies of a globalizing economy? Despite the ideology of globalization and its utopian visions, the realities of everyday life are themselves shaping globalization in unpredictable ways. Globalization, and the world in dealing with globalization is spawning these interesting peculiarities, and deviations from the ideology, and thinking. 

                This is the most vocal concern with regard to the upcoming Presidential Election, and their consequences to me, and to the rest of the world. As a concern, it is recurring because - personally - I can feel the conflict in my heart. It is between my emotional support for the Republican ideology versus the rational outcome of my training, and intellectual experience. So, it's very much with a view to the conflict in my own heart between these two candidates, and their leadership ideas that I hope to express in this post.

                 Ideologically, and experientially I don't have much confidence in the competency of government to sort out the problems being doled out by globalization. That being said, I confess that it is disconcerting and perhaps irresponsible to not even try to regulate such emergent threats as radical Islam, and international terrorism as represented by the Department of Homeland Defense and the Patriot Act. I confess that I don't have much faith in these new, and vastly powerful institutions, and despite their existence I have little faith in their ability to protect me from these emergent threats.

                Simultaneously, I do not agree with the ‘big government’ argument especially with regard to the economy. I have a recurring intuition that it's going to harm our economy rather than help it. Moreover, I have a strong intuition, and I do believe that it's going to result in a lot of waste. So? What's to be done? If I cannot resolve this profound conflict in my own heart how can I expect the nation and the citizenry to reconcile this conflict themselves? Moreover, given all of this information what is the best thing to do, and what would be best for all of us or for the most of us at least? It comes down to the choice between the Republican candidate and the Democratic. Applying some kind of calculations to the words I have just written in order to come to a choice would perhaps be easier. Much easier. What do the words say about how I should vote or about how the country should vote?

                 I suppose a summary would be that I have a huge concern - as does the rest of nation - as to the future of our security in these turbulent globalizing times. Our best thinking, it seems, is out of date, and out of touch. That being said, the lessons we have learned from the violent trials with reality and humanity especially of the 20th century remain valid, and we should not forget these lessons.

                Broadly speaking, this is a conflict of civilizations. Is this behemoth entity of global civilization we have created worth protecting? That's what’s being done, or at least attempted to be done with this massive security apparatus. We've become obsessed with protecting the institutions of global economy such as financial institutions, the law of private property, and the means with which we carry them out such as our transportation infrastructure namely the automotive sector, and our airports. Ideally, implementing a bigger federal government, and security apparatus would be sufficient for preserving this emergent entity, and the emergent threats to it. The minority suspicion, and fear in our hearts which we are ashamed to admit even to ourselves, is the doubt as to whether it's worth protecting at all?

Experiments With The Occult

According to the account of Mrs. Rosalinda Lane the demons which infested her sister Esmeralda were in the service of Esmeralda’s first cousin Archie. This mysterious loner had been commissioned to undertake the magik at the behest of a local bus driver who had been smitten by Esmeralda. When he impertinently tried to court her in the bus, she had devastatingly humiliated him in front of the other passengers. Heart-broken, and humiliated he sought the help of the black magik practitioner Archie Wade.

                Alexander sat and wondered, "How could a thing that has no mass interact with the physical body, and mind?" "How could it possibly take over the biology of a human body like a virus?" he asked himself. He scorned the uselessness of orthodox scientists. “How convenient for them” he quipped bitingly “if it has no mass, then it cannot exist!” He looked down on their intellectual, and psychological indolence. Alexander, however, had carefully isolated, and distilled the remaining causes of what happened in those dark years into two remaining possibilities.

                The possibility he feared most was the one he was coming to believe more, and more. His intellectual efforts had increasingly eliminated the likelihood of a naturalistic cause. It simultaneously, however, increased the probability of a supernatural cause. But, he was human, and he couldn’t deny that this possibility frightened him. He felt himself in dangerous territory – about to toy with things he knew nothing about.

How could a man possibly control these forces? And that’s when it struck him. The man must be able to communicate with these forces. He must be able to converse with demons. From Mrs. Rosalinda Lane's account it would appear that each demon lingers in the body only until it has accomplished its specific task. In the case of Esmeralda Lane the Priest had identified, and addressed three separate demons. The first demon when commanded in the name of Jesus Christ to leave said, “I have made her elope with that man. I have finished my work. I am leaving!” The second demon said that it would crack her skull like a coconut, and the third said that it would cause her to get leprosy. It is in the sake of this account noteworthy to mention that subsequent to the less than tragic episode in 1968 Ms. Esmeralda Lane developed chronic musculo-skeletal issues, along with a persistent dermatological facial issue.

The truth is simple enough, but as we get older it gets clouded, and hard to see. We have the power to destroy ourselves, but we also have the power to build ourselves.

Alexander commanded the demon, “You know where you have to go, so go." But he was completely unprepared by the response that appeared in his mind from he knew not where. "Why? Why should I?" a voice asked him. He lay there for a moment trying to comprehend what had just happened. This kind is the kind of thing which so characterizes anything involving the occult, and the supernatural. Everything has a personal psychological dimension. It’s difficult to assimilate these phenomena, and trance-like instances because they don’t fit through any of the rational senses with which humans perceive the world around them.

                Later, he would realize that a demon isn’t at all anything like a human, or even any living thing. It’s psychology is perhaps the only thing it can be said to share with the human race. That is to say, it has a mind so to speak, but its motives don’t make any sense. One may try to find a method in its madness, but this usually results in the madness of the person.

                Speaking of madness, he pointed his reasoning apparatus at the psychological phenomena which had just occurred. First, he addressed the issue of why he had had such a thought, namely, of issuing a command to invisible air. His anger at the misfortunes that had befallen him, and at those who conveyed them was an obsession. The possibility of harnessing demonic forces to carry out his wishes were the means. But, though he willed the question, and forced the command he had to admit that the same was not true of the answer. It seemed to follow so naturally as if someone was really out there attending to his bidding.

Before he knew what he was doing his mouth almost moved on its own. “What do I have that anyone could possibly want?” he asked pitifully. His pained face strained as he spoke, “My life is nothing but suffering with only just enough of the basic pleasures keeping me from ending my suffering.” In all honesty this was his truth. The last five years had been a remorseless uphill climb against what he could only identify as Death. All around him he saw people socializing superficially, dragging their bodies to work and extracting satisfaction from the misery of others. He would painfully observe as they desperately clutched at straws to project a caricature of sanity, and humanity.

                Alexander was at a strange point now in his life. He realized that the only thing he could offer was his life. That is, all he had to give was all that he was, and could do. But, he didn’t want to carry on the conversation any more. He felt as if even entertaining it in his mind passively constituted a medium of conversation with that entity he had heard in his own mind.   

For the first time he understood that he would have to give in order to receive. He would have to pay the demon. But, what could he possibly have that the demon would want? Secretly, he knew the answer to this already, and had a sinking feeling about where this was headed.

Academic Reflections on the State of the Global Economy

                I thought I should take this opportunity to write out something that has been on my mind as of late.  I truly have no excuse not to write other than idyllic sloth. Since and even before the North American Mortgage Crisis of 2008(2008NAMC) I had subscribed to a fringe group of apocalyptic millennials religiously adhering to a belief that a crude oil shortage and crisis was imminent.  I won’t say that I no longer believe in the doctrine but rather that I - like most ppl - push it off into the background of my worries.

                I will confess that even after I returned to my academic community in May of 2007 my direct experience with the mortgage industry and thus my insights into the 2008NAMC was the reference point around which my new studies organized themselves. This remained unchanged for quite some time and in truth I must think very hard if I am to pinpoint exactly when I broke out of its grip.

                As I think on this, the breakthrough will have to be attributed to a combination of two events. The first was my decision to take a sabbatical in Kerala. I had planned the trip for quite some time but things really got going after I booked my ticket. I boarded an Emirates Airlines Boeing 777 bound for Kochin via Abu Dhabi from Pearson on January 27, 2012. I arrived in Kochin and caught a taxi to my apartment in Ernakulam after a twenty-four hour flight. The second event is so miniscule that it would certainly be overlooked by anyone trying to identify the causes of my apparent change of mind.

                When I was packing I was truly disorganized and scatter brained. I wanted to simultaneously take everything and nothing. The exigencies of the moment, however, rectified my human failing and crystalized the necessities at the last minute. At first I had elaborate plans to catch up on my fiction. I had ambitious vacation plans to hunker down by the beach and at last treat myself to Hemingway and Rushdie, and even finish Crime and Punishment. Oddly enough, in the panic of the moment I elected instead to pack John Tomlinson’s Globalization and Culture, Tarak Barkawi’s Globalization and War and even most surprisingly Ellen Wood’s Empire of Capital.

                There is a recurring instinct or need for me to make a claim or a prediction with regard to the 2008 Mortgage Crisis. As I mentioned above the urgency of this need faded into the background as I focused on my health and experienced moderate pain relief. I had adopted the default position that my obsessing on:

1. the international price of crude (WCP), 

2. the 2003 US Invasion of Iraq (USII), and

3. the 2008 Mortgage Crisis (MC)

was caused by my medical issues and were therefore not backed up by the facts.

                However, in my fine health and intellectual serenity I have no excuse to utterly neglect an academic treatment of the phenomena noted above. The question I want to address intellectually and academically is: were they related and if so what are the conclusions that would follow as it relates to the future? In other words: what does the future hold after the 2003 US Invasion of Iraq, the doubling of world crude oil prices, and the 2008 Mortgage Crisis?

                My intuitive conspiracy theory apparatus does its own thing and has joined these phenomena into the following conspiracy. It asserts that the 2003 USII was a pre-emptive move to safeguard the economic interests of the US in its contest and increasing vulnerability to China. It puts forth that the US conspired to artificially inflate the WCP to increase the cost of inputs for Chinese industry. This would therefore be a drain on China’s FX and simultaneously make its industry less competitive. Broadly speaking, the overall objective of this conspiracy is to stunt and hobble China’s meteoric economic rise and thus subject it to US control. Ofcourse, if you are invested in US capital then you have an interest in the above-noted outcome. The fear if you are one such as noted above is that the mission will not succeed and doubts as to the security of one’s investments in the US in the short and long term.

                Again I return to you to address widespread anxieties about the North American and global economy. There is prevalent dissatisfaction and doubt in the vigor of the state of the economy despite the Panglossianism of the media. I am seated here in some discomfort as I could easily divert my interests into more immediate forms of instant gratification. So you see, I am not here to achieve some sort of psychological catharsis by way of literary and logical exercise. The only compulsion driving my current intellectual activity is the dissatisfaction with the dearth of high calibre scholarship on the phenomena mentioned above.

                The most widespread anxiety on the minds of North American investors is simply the question or instinctive panic that the recession will become a permanent depression. In other words, GDP will no longer grow. The allure of the historical precedents such as the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the rise of Totalitarianism in Europe evokes fear that the 2008 Mortgage Crisis is the twenty-first century equivalent of Black Monday. I suppose it is only prudent to speculate that the coming future will be a repeat of history. So, the unarticulated fear is that, “Yes, this is not a recession it is only the beginning of the Second Great Depression which will lead inexorably to a global political and social upheaval, in other words: World War III – The Nuclear Holocaust.”

                 In plain investor speak the prevailing common wisdom is that 2012 is not a good time to buy simply because acquisitions are likely to depreciate and thus lose us money. This is the fear that is retarding investment and an economic rebound. The governments of the world are doing what they can to ‘stimulate’ the economy by printing more money and the fear is that this will lead to hyperinflation and conclude with the loss of confidence in currency notes, and state institutions. As I said, this is the unspoken fear. It is little addressed in the mass media but it is the prevalent fear of the business and intellectual elite. Despite the spending spree of state treasuries the only real way that the economy will truly rebound is if these captains of industry put their fears to rest and retire the intuition that a Second Great Depression is imminent.

                There are reasons why I refer to the financial crisis of 2008 as the Mortgage Crisis and not the Housing Crisis or the Sub-prime Crisis in tune with the mass media. The simple reason is that from my vantage point what went sour were a lot of mortgage deals. I worked for a firm whose job it was to securitize loan disbursements by ensuring that in the event of default legal title would pass to the lender – our clients. Realtors, for similar reasons may refer to the same crisis as the Housing Crisis and mortgage brokers as the Sub-prime Crisis.

                The summer of 2008 is truly a date that simultaneously intersected both my routinely commercial office space, the halls of government, and the news studios. It stands out because the fortunes of my industry and profession rose and fell in tandem with the fortunes of the business and political worlds. My firm prospered from 2002 to 2008 as did most North American firms. My firm has struggled to make ends meets from 2008 to 2012 – the present day. The majority of firms in North America are in the same boat.

                2002 saw an almost compound rate of growth in mortgage lending, refinances, and second mortgages. The economy saw its financial sector grow year on year. Mortgage brokers would confess that it was subprime borrowers signing NINJA loans who kept the growth alive. Realtors would testify that it was the ‘housing boom’ where houses kept selling for higher and higher prices. People like me who had to securitize all the signing saw the details. This is why I believe that we saw the Devil.

                Prior to the current work my previous attempt at making sense of these individual phenomena consisted of religious adherence to the Peak Oil Theory (POT). It seemed to bring the three individual phenomena together that seemed almost intuitively certain. POT had an especially privileged place in the conspiracy theory due to its explanation par excellence of rising crude oil prices. POT also seemed to be the common sense explanation as to why the US Army would invade the dustbowl of Iraq, i.e. “It’s the oil. Duh!”

                The conspiracy that the US is actively adopting a policy to sabotage China’s political position can be broken down and analyzed further. The conspiracy implies coordination between various arms of the US Government as it draws upon the economic phenomena of increasing crude oil prices, the political phenomena of the 2003 USII and the financial phenomena of the 2008 MC. Therefore, one who subscribes to this theory must be implying that the architects of the conspiracy include prominent officials in the regulatory and executive branches of the US Federal Government. Broadly speaking, this refers specifically to the Federal Reserve, US Treasury Department, and the White House.

                Then came the bombshell 2006 report by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that found systematic market speculation was artificially inflating the price of crude oil.