Another Good Article on Causes of the Economic Crisis

– which must be understood in order to fix it – by Michael Collins, who's boiled the history down to its essentials while identifying the key players. A few excerpts:

Our financial system looks ruined beyond repair. The credit default swaps crisis is 40 or so times bigger than the real estate meltdown over subprime derivatives. The top 25 banks in the United States are loaded down with $13 trillion in credit default swaps and the deal is coming unraveled. If we accept the highly dubious assumption that the debt from the financial meltdown needs to be repaid by us [i.e., us working stiffs, rather than just letting the players who made these risky bets absorb the losses], we're looking at $43,000 [per] citizen right now. And we're just starting.

It didn't get that way by accident. There was special legislation that enabled the current crisis.

This was classic Money Party strategy and tactics.

* * * * *

The baseline requirement for the era of greed was satisfied in 1999 when Congress repealed key provisions of the Glass-Steagall act. That law was established during the first Great Depression. It tightly restricted the opportunities for reckless speculation by banks.

* * * * *

Credit default swaps and other derivatives had been illegal for decades. In 1981, specific rules were set up to tighten restrictions against these schemes. But all that changed on Dec. 21, 2000 when the lame duck Congress passed the "Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000'" making these products legal. The legislation also barred the gathering of information that would serve as early warning on the legalized gambling on credit worthiness.

More here.

Nouriel Roubini, an NYU professor who predicted the current crisis, mentioned in a recent talk that throughout history, there's been a more or less regular cycle of economic bubble-and-bust every ten years, with only one exception during which we managed to prevent such crises from arising for a solid fifty years: the fifty years while Glass-Steagall was in effect.

Meanwhile, banks are still buying and selling credit derivatives and swaps.

Geekfarms of Yesteryear

Eric Eberhardt's 5th grade writing assignment (click on the image for a larger, more legible pic), via Dork Yearbook, which mostly contains pretty hilarious photos of child geeks. Eberhardt adds, "[r]ecently I purchased the entire 1994-1997 run of WIRED magazine from a variety of sources on eBay. I know the articles are free online, but without all the ads for 56K modems and The Sierra Network, what’s the point?"

I guess artifical intelligence capability could be handy in 5th grade.

Mars Dunes

It's worth clicking on the image for a close-up; more info here (thanks, Ben!)

Fusebox Festival in Austin, TX

I've begun my usual obsessive analysis to figure how I can see as much of the stuff I think I'm most interested in as possible, and it's a challenge because it looks like there'll be lots (Festival schedule here).

I've already come across at least a couple of participatory works that you might want to take action on more or less now (in addition to procuring Festival tix).

One is GuruGuru, the description of which reads, "Five participants (each receiving different instructions via their earpieces) talk together with a televised character whose role flicks uncannily between spiritual and marketing guru. Revelling in the absurdities of marketing technique and group therapy, [the artists] Hampton, Koyama and Khroustaliov reverse the awkward history of consumer research by allowing their audience to create their own animated therapist – by means of a focus group!" (If you've been reading this blog, you know this would sound interesting to me; see, e.g., this.) The installation will be ongoing for the duration of the Festival, but since only five people can participate at a time, reservations are recommended.

The other is 12:19 Library, which you can participate in remotely at any time (until they close it, as I assume they will at some point?) "The 12:19 Library invites people from all over the world to chronicle a single minute of their lives, 12:19 to 12:20 PM, on any day of their choosing . . . . Make some sort of image . . . a photo, a video, an audio file, a text file, a map, whatever you like." The lead artist is Ron Berry, who I understand to be the driving force behind this Fest.

"Obama and Habeas Corpus -- Then and Now"

Excellent article by Glenn Greenwald at Salon.

Habeas corpus was one of many Constitutional rights shredded by W. It's the right to a summons commanding a governmental authority that's detaining an individual to bring her or him before the court in order for the court to determine whether there is any lawful basis for imprisoning the individual, and if not, to order her or his release.

It is NOT a get-out-of-jail-free card; it just says, you can't kidnap and imprison someone without ever even having to explain, to anyone, why. Habeas corpus has long been considered one of the most fundamental of rights and historically has been crucial in defending individuals against incompetent or tyrannical governmental action (see Wikipedia).

The Obama administration has now fully embraced W's shredding of habeas corpus, notwithstanding that that position has been emphatically rejected by U.S. courts.

Greenwald writes that the ACLU's Jonathan Hafetz explained in a recent interview,

'What happened was, these people were picked up in this global war on terror, were brought to Guantanamo in 2004, and once Guantanamo became subject to habeas corpus review [because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision], . . . the Bush administration stopped bringing people there, and started bringing them to Bagram [a prison in Afghanistan], and Bagram's population has shot up, and it's become in some sense the new Guantanamo. . . . And so what you have is you have a situation where the Bush administration, was free to, and the Obama administration will continue to be free to, create a prison outside the law.'

"The Obama DOJ is now squarely to the right of an extremely conservative, pro-executive-power, Bush '43-appointed judge on issues of executive power and due-process-less detentions. Leave aside for the moment the issue of whether you believe that the U.S. Government should have the right to abduct people anywhere in the world, ship them to faraway prisons and hold them there indefinitely without charges or any rights at all. The Bush DOJ -- and now the Obama DOJ -- maintain the President does and should have that right . . . ."

Much more at Salon, including anaylsis of the absurdity of those who now claim, as W supporters claimed before, that we should trust the Prez with unlimited power.

More from NYC

Again, these pics and vidis could use tweaking or editing but didn't get it. Even so, I thought they came out pretty well considering they were shot with a new camera; all credit due to it, a Panasonic LX3, and my dear, sweet sig. other who gave it to me.

This is for the Jacksons (from Coney Island).

I love the seal + reflections footage from the Aquarium in the vidi here – I'm thinking about calling it art even without doing anything more to it.

Also happy with the vidis starting here (trains manipulating light).

This was at the "Sayonara Serenissima" party at Market Hotel (someone remarked, "What's the word for this place!"; as usual, I blurted the obvious: "Condemned."), organized as a send-off for SWOON and her art-boats. It was a great party for everything except dancing; this guy tried desperately nonetheless (kudos from moi). (After I got home, I discovered Texas's Tony Bones is on Swoon's team.)

Visuals starting here are from an event at Galapagos Art Space. (As you'll see, there's an abundance of aerialists in NYC.)

Visuals starting here are from a charming, semi-pro production by The Sky Box at House of Yes featuring 25 aerialists, a space ship, and a giant octopus in a lesbian Romeo + Juliet involving feuding aliens and robots. Probably the best aerialist performance I saw in NY was here; I also really liked the music (by SK5); and also the costumes and props, all made by the performers.

Another evening I enjoyed took place at HiChristina, self-described as "your home for avant garde art, performance, and uncommon expression"; I'd add, and total, sweet-natured wackiness. The event I attended was called "Shake (Hands)(Booty)(Milk)," and the main things that title leaves out are, it was highly participatory and I got to make some cool new friends. I got no visuals, but Fritz was shooting as if our very existence depended on it, so maybe visuals will come, so (tree in the forest) to speak (sorry, couldn't resist).

(UPDATE: The Village Voice is featuring HiChristina as one of their picks for "Best Wacky Gatherings of 2010.")

The Kippenberger exhibition at MoMA was fabulous; another fave exhibition was Horowitz at P.S. 1 (pics unfortunately not allowed at either).

The City Reliquary (visuals start here) is purportedly the museum of the City of New York, a small, all-volunteer place in Brooklyn that happened to have a fascinating and only-too-timely exhibit on milk cooperatives (along with a charming, general collection of artifacts). During the last Great Depression, a handful of milk distribution companies, abetted by the governmental representatives whose campaigns they financed, were underpaying farmers for milk and overcharging consumers. Farmers were literally losing their farms to mortgage banks, while mothers couldn't afford milk for their children. Finally farmers and consumers in New York State formed a cooperative to by-pass the distributors. After just one year, the coop was already successful enough to distribute profits to coop members. Such coops also introduced innovations such as the milk carton, much more efficient than the old glass bottles. I learned all that there, and more.

Visuals start here of the Boiler, a cool new space opened by Pierogi to accommodate works too large for their existing gallery.

Someone asked last nite whether I went to any shows, and I mentioned Big Art Group's production, SOS, which was probably my fave show; but I did also see two other laudable productions: one, M4M, a timely and intelligent re-working of Shakespeare's "problematic" Measure for Measure as a commercial transaction; and the other a highly entertaining comedic/musical re-working of Beowulf (I bought the CD).

Ok there's one more thing I have to mention before proceeding to the tap-dancing finale. I went to a reading by two humorists at the powerHouse Arena, with Benjamin Nugent, who writes for The New Yorker, and Simon Rich, who writes for Sat. Nite Live; and someone asked why they don't blog, and they both said it was because they have to revise everything they write a million times. So I took that as supportive of one of the policies/caveats stated in my sidebar at left.

You thought I was kidding; but no: here's some pretty kick-a**, subway tap-dancing (tho' the automated subway audio now loudly announces it's illegal to solicit money in the subway, the main effect of which seems to have been to reduce the number of competitors thereby reducing the overall quality -- there's "capitalism" for ya').

My posts on the March art fairs are here: Armory (more pics and vidis starting here), Pulse (more pics and vidis starting here), Scope (more pics and vidis starting here), Volta (more pics and vidis starting here); plus my succinct take on the trends here.

Firetagging

While still wet, the graffiti paint's lit, adding "burned accents" to the tag.

I understand some people are tagging with lighter fluid, with less permanent results, making graffiti more of a performance.

Don't try this at home, or at my home.

Via Gizmodo.

Calling Channel 10

Too good not to reblog:



Via boingboing (thanks, Ben!).