May 28, 2010 archive

The Quicksilver Messenger Service (hence referred to as QMS because I type slowly) was one the psychedelic bands from San Fransisco that formed in the 1960s.  The history of them is sort of obscure, because few documented sources are available, but there is some information available.

Like many bands, particularly American ones, at the time, their lineup changed often.  The origin is sort of obscure, but as best as can be pieced together it was the brainchild of the following musicians.

Folks at Docudharma get a preview, since only one post a day is allowed at Kos.  I like you, and wanted to let you see it sooner.

“By allowing persistent declines in the money supply and in the price level, the Federal Reserve of the late 1920s and 1930s greatly destabilized the U.S. economy and the economies of many other nations as well.

 – Federal Reserve Governor, Ben Bernanke, 2004

  Ben Bernanke, Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, and most other economists out there agree that the reason the Great Depression was so deep and destructive was that the Federal Reserve failed to keep the money supply from shrinking. I’m a little more skeptical, but I agree that it would be impossible for an economy to grow without a growing supply of money in a debt-based monetary system.

  That’s why this news article should be extremely distressing.

 The stock of money fell from $14.2 trillion to $13.9 trillion in the three months to April, amounting to an annual rate of contraction of 9.6pc. The assets of insitutional money market funds fell at a 37pc rate, the sharpest drop ever.

  “It’s frightening,” said Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research. “The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly,” he said.

 As our political and financial leaders are using every tool at their disposal to jump-start the economy, there are fewer and fewer dollars in circulation. That’s not a prescription for a growing economy. It’s a prescription for economic disaster.

While I was on a recent radio show, a student called in from a campus “Rally Against 1070,” that challenged Arizona’s draconian immigration law. The rally was a great idea, part of the public outcry that’s needed. But I wish they’d called it something like “Rally Against the Show Us Your Papers Law.” Headlining it with a bill number gave people nothing to respond to emotionally.

Over nearly forty years that I’ve spoken out on various causes and written about citizen movements, I’ve come to believe that people work for justice when their hearts are stirred by specific lives and situations that develop our capacity to feel empathy, to imagine ourselves as someone else. New information–the percentage of people out of work or children in poverty, the numbers behind America’s record health care costs, the annual planetary increases in greenhouse gases–can help us comprehend the magnitude of our shared problems and develop appropriate responses. But information alone can’t provide the organic connection that binds one person to another, or that stirs our hearts to act.  

As a nation, are we sleepwalking? Two large business organizations actually rule America: the Republican and the Democratic “political parties.” And political parties are no more mentioned in the constitution than corporations are; they are both man-made contrivances for power and profit. But at what point does the nation say it cannot trust these parties to rule any longer?

Consider the astounding malfeasance the nation tolerates and dismisses among its rulers: terrorists destroy the WTC and damage the Pentagon, a hurricane destroys a major city and the city is left for lost, the banking system fails so badly that the country is thrown into another major depression, and now an oil spill that is an environmental and human disaster. And in all these cases, the two parties have done nothing to protect the nation against these looming threats.

How can this continue to be tolerated? I hope that every incumbent in Washington today loses his seat in November; that is the only way this almost comatose people can ever hope to regain power: fire these malefactors.