Disaster Capitalism

Last month I read this really eye-opening article in Harper's Magazine about Disaster Capitalism. If the culture, economy, and politics that affect your life and those around you is of interest to you, you can read more here: War, Terror, Catastrophe: Profiting From 'Disaster Capitalism'. There's a new book on the subject, The Shock Doctrine- I went online to request a hold at the library and of the dozen copies available, they were all already checked out with another 17 holds waiting!. The author, Naomi Klein also made this very provocative video....

From the website:
War, Terror, Catastrophe: Profiting From 'Disaster Capitalism'
Paul B. Farrell, Dow Jones Business News, October 16, 2007

Hot tip: Invest in "Disaster Capitalism." This new investment sector is the core of the emerging "new economy" that generates profits by feeding off other peoples' misery: Wars, terror attacks, natural catastrophes, poverty, trade sanctions, market crashes and all kinds of economic, financial and political disasters.

In this Orwellian future, everything must be seen with new eyes: "Disasters" are "IPOs," opportunities to buy into a new "company." Corporations like Lockheed-Martin are the real "emerging nations" of the world, not some dinky countries. They generate huge profits, grow earnings. And seen through the new rose-colored glasses of "Disaster Capitalism" they are hot investment opportunities.

To more fully grasp this new economy, you must read what may be the most important book on economics in the 21st century, Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, whose roots trace back the ideas of three 20th century giants:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who warned us against the self-perpetuating and ever-expanding economic power of our "military-industrial complex."

Nobel economist Milton Friedman, who said economic change never occurs without a crisis shocking the system; whether the crisis is natural, induced or merely perceived, as with enflaming public fears of war and terror threats.

Economist Joseph Schumpeter, whose saw "creative destruction" as a healthy process by which new technologies and new products made old ones obsolete.

"Disaster Capitalism" is financing a new world economic order says Klein, not just in "the divide between Baghdad's Green and Red zones" but in other disaster zones, from post-tsunami Sri Lanka to post-Katrina New Orleans.

Disasters come in many forms: Weapons destroying power plants and hospitals, nature weakening bridges, hurricanes wiping out towns, ideological conflicts turning Africa's farmlands into deserts, global banking systems favoring investors over public works, shopping malls over schools, sewage treatment and power plants, and so on.

Yes, this is a hot-button political issue. But for the moment, let's put aside partisan politics, which many will find disturbing for the future of America. Let's look at this strictly as investors and briefly consider what may also be a guide for aggressive investors searching for investment opportunities in "Disaster Capitalism." In a brilliant Harper's excerpt from The Shock Doctrine, Klein makes clear how this new economy is the wave of the future for certain investors:

"Today, global instability does not just benefit a small group of arms dealers; it generates huge profits for the high-tech-homeland-security sector, for heavy construction, for private health-care companies, for the oil and gas sectors -- and, of course, for defense contractors."

Big bucks

This new market is enormous: "Reconstruction is now such a big business that investors greet each new disaster with the excitement of a hot new stock offering: $30 billion for Iraq reconstruction, $13 billion for tsunami reconstruction, $110 billion for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast."

Get it? Disasters are "IPOs!" followed by on-going revenues for "projects" like the Blackwater security contracts and constructing the world's largest embassy in the isolated Baghdad Green Zone.

Think positive: "Disaster Capitalism" played a major role in bringing America's economy out of the 2000-2002 bear-recession: "The scale of the revenues at stake was certainly enough to fuel an economic boom. Lockheed Martin, whose former vice president chaired the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which loudly agitated for the invasion, received $25 billion in U.S. government contracts in 2005 alone."

Putting that in perspective, Klein quotes U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman: That sum "exceeded that gross domestic product of 102 countries, including Iceland, Jordan and Costa Rica [and] was also larger than the combined budgets" of the Departments of Interior and Commerce, the SBA and the entire legislature.

"Lockheed itself deserved to be characterized as an emerging market. Companies like Lockheed (LMT) (whose stock price tripled between 2001 and 2005) are a large part of the reason why the U.S. stock market was saved" after 9/11, helping the recovery more than the housing boom did!

Plus energy: "The oil and gas industry is so intimately entwined with the economy of disaster -- both as a root cause behind many disasters and as a beneficiary from them -- that it deserves to treated as an honorary adjunct of the disaster-capitalism complex."

Citing the "outrageous fortunes of the oil sector -- a $40 billion profit in 2006 for ExxonMobil alone (XOM) ... Like the fortunes of corporations linked to defense, heavy construction and homeland security, those of the oil sector improve with every war, terrorist attack and Category 5 hurricane."

How to invest in the new 'Disaster Capitalism'

It's easy to invest in "Disaster Capitalism" and the new economy. See the Spade Defense Index (DXS) of defense, homeland security and aerospace stocks. Klein says it "went up 76% between 2001 and 2006, while the S&P 500 dropped 5%." You can trade the Spade Index as a PowerShare Aerospace and Defense ETF (PPA) .

In addition, the Fidelity Select Defense & Aerospace Fund (FSDAX) offers another opportunity. According to Morningstar data, there are similar stocks in both, including: General Dynamics (GD) , Raytheon (RTN) , Rockwell Collins (COL) , Boeing (BA) , Harris (HRS) , Northrop Grumman (NOC) and United Technologies (UTX) .

"The Shock Doctrine" is one of the best economic book of the 21st century because it reveals in one place the confluence of cultural forces, the restructuring of a world economy as growing populations fight over depleting natural resources and the drifting away of America from representative democracy to a government controlled by multiple, competing, well-financed and shadowy special interests. Here's an overview of trends from the book and related ideas:

1. Free market competes with government

In the past when major catastrophes resulted in economic disruptions and human losses governments responded with "New Deals" and "Marshall Plans," says Klein. Today, "Disaster Capitalism" companies see government agencies (like FEMA) and nonprofits (Red Cross) as "competition" taking away new business. A military draft, for instance, would lower the need for private mercenaries.

2. Privatization of government for the investor class

These new forces are screaming to privatize our economy and government: After the Minneapolis bridge collapse Klein saw many calls for more private toll roads and bridges across America. Same with calls to privatize New York's subways after rain closed them temporarily. Ditto with airports and their security. And in New Orleans, reconstruction moneys rebuilt private schools in upscale areas and neglected infrastructure in poor areas.

3. War generates profits, peace hurts free markets

"Disaster Capitalism" firms need wars to generate profits. And by sidestepping the draft, Iraq became a privatized war employing over 185,000 (20,000 more than the military), including truck drivers, PX clerks and mercenary soldiers. Blackwater was near bankruptcy before the war. Through secret no-bid contracts the U.S. pays for training centers which the companies now own. Peace does not generate disaster profits.

4. Plutocratic government favoring wealthy over masses

"The vast infrastructure of the disaster industry, built up with taxpayer money, is all privately controlled" through special interests favoring the wealth classes during reconstruction. In New Orleans Klein saw the "so-called FEMA-villes: desolate out-of-the-way trailer camps for low-income evacuees [with guards that] treated survivors like criminals;" while the wealthy gated communities quickly received water and power generators, private school and hospital services.

5. Shadow banking system

Private equity firms and hedge funds are making our Federal Reserve Bank less and less relevant. Today a private banking system is emerging nationally and globally that operates in relative secrecy outside the established system and beyond the oversight of securities and banking regulators and the legislature, out in a parallel universe beyond the comprehension of the vast majority of American taxpayers and Main Street investors.

So folks: Is "Disaster Capitalism" merely a hot short-term investment opportunity for you? Or is it a national "crisis," a warning bell, a "shocking" call to rise above euphemisms like "creative destruction," get into action and rein in the "military-industrial complex" mindset that's pushing America into a disastrous, self-destructive future? Tell us.

Consumerism & Christmas

Ho Ho Ho Friends ......

Not that I'm particularly 'christian' but all of us who are non-jewish around the holidays, i guess
get bagged into the whole christmas schtick (i personally would prefer to celebrate hanukkah... i mean, it does last 6 entire days longer...awesome). I haven't really thought much about what Santa is leaving for me this year. As an adult, Santa no longer spends quite as much time shooting his bounties down your chimney (if you're even lucky enough to have one... mine personally, here in a 3rd floor greenpoint, brooklyn apartment has been cemented and plastered shut for longer than my life span, and i'm pretty sure a family of squeaky mice reside there in the winters). The whole idea of Christmas and what it has spawned in our modern day technologically-advanced-credit card-debt-ed-keep-up-with-the-jones'-even-though-you-dont-need-to kind of world, kind of grosses me out. All this stuff. Stuff with pictures of more stuff inside. Stuff that produces more stuff and requires more stuff to maintain it's function. The perpetual cycle. God Love America & the Free Market. Oh, an Capitalism. So this Christmas, my gift to our wonderful system of capitalism is this here blog. I've tried to think of some ways that this year's (inevitable) christmas spending can be put to good use. Here are a few things I've come up with. If you have ideas, please share!!!!


1. Give your friends & family charitable donations in their name. A few I like in particular:

Invisible Children: www.invisiblechildren.com -
All of our programming is a partnership between those of us at Invisible Children and those in the Ugandan community. We focus on long-term goals that enable children to take responsibility for their future and the future of their country. Our programs are carefully researched and developed initiatives that address the need for quality education, mentorships, the redevelopment of schools, resettlement from the camps, and financial stability.

Kiva: www.kiva.org
Really awesome organization that allows common folks (like you and me), not
necessarily with a lot of dough, but with a lot of heart, to help fuel micro enterprise in
the places that financing is needed the most. They connect you with & let you give loans
to small businesses in the developing world. And you get paid back (in most scenarios), just like any other loan. Help people help themselves!


2. Forget the whole charity thing (because some people might consider this a selfish gift, since it really revolves around YOUR interest in charity and not necessarily theirs)....and buy some stuff!
The catch? Buy from economies that can really benefit from the sales. Have I ever mentioned this great little city that was ravaged from one of the worst national disasters in us history? Great... here are a few really cool places to buy really thoughtful, unique gifts:

I. http://www.missmalaprop.com - Handmade, super unique finds.

II. http://www.frenchquartercandles.com - Amazingly delicious all-soy, all-natural clean burning
candles. Aside from all the hippie soy stuff, these candles simply smell amazing- as wonderfully pungent as those fancy schmancy ones big companies sell for the designer price of $30 and up. French Quarter Candles are just $12 each! Extra bonus, the mason glasses they are in can be easily cleaned and used as a drinking cups once the candle has burned out.

III. Buy art/music from New Orleans artists. I love great folk art, and here are a few different sites where you can find folk art and other styles:
http://www.antonart.com
http://www.drbobart.net
http://www.louisianamusicfactory.com


3. Support independent musicians (and artists). Buy some music direct from an artist (in general, if you buy the actual
record from them direct, rather than downloading through iTunes, etc, the artist makes a much greater profit). Handpicking
albums to give as gifts is an incredibly thoughtful way to turn the people you love on to new artists (creating a new fan,
and helping the artists you love even more by growing the fan base!).

http://www.cdbaby.com - a great resource to buy from indie artists. if possible, try to buy direct from your favorite artists
personal website (where they keep an even greater % of the profits).


So.... here's to a lovely season. Hope yours is filled with friends, family, food and quality time.

much love,
kd

Mighty

Sept. 6 2007 2:50am

I have not written in what feels like an entire lifetime. I might as well not have existed before now- and it's really been that long in my mind's perspective paranoia and absolutely skewed reality.

We have played our songs. Loud & true. My lover sleeps, exhausted in the bed hardly big enough for the two of us. But we are happy. For the most part, most of the time. We are the dream that they speak of when you are young, the wishful thinking you spend your life thinking of, and the true and absolute hallelujah that resonates past the lines of religion or dispositions.

We got it good, as bad as sometimes it may seem- but only when we let our dire circumstances overshadow our real life, the real love that breathes fully in all of our hard-earned hours. The real love that is the last breath fought for, well-earned, before restless minds fall to slumber.

And at 2:55 in the morning, as the city, and my lover, and my dearest friends all sleep, I can think, so clearly, I can hear the joy & jubilation of this life that I've been missing for what seems so long. I could never even start to tell you how low this old heat can go, apathy takes over like the black disease…..the killer (unassuming) mold from the water receding hurricane, the cancer of the heart of a healthy man. It's a treacherous disease, but those who don't entirely succumb, only learn to be true conquerors. So, I've been fighting my quiet battles and feel quite certain I will come out on top. One of these days, I'll be a rehabilitated soul, one day soon, I feel for sure.

And what is sacred anymore? When myths have been relieved of their smoke & mirrors and you have been left a sober and so-much-older soul. What is sacred when you've found the muse in the machine and you've given it all up for a little piece of your own sanctity? All that you know to be true, as seldom or as often as it may relieve itself to you.

We are fighters. We are a mighty breed. We wake to seek and sleep to dream of how to better fulfill the seeking, in the waking hours, halfway such a dream. We are this twenty first century knights and chivalry, for all the joy, for all the precious, that we so often overlook in our daily marching.

At just twenty-four years of this marching, half spent in the dark, I feel almost past prime- that of some industry standard. A blackhole of time consumed by a serious of almosts and close calls. We are all almost the next big things. Don't trust the mouths of others- or yourself really. All that you can know is that feeling in your gut, when you know that you know. And I'm pretty sure, that's the only time in this futile life that you truly have it made. When you get that giddy little girl in your belly shaking around like an evangelist, and you start to believe in faith and things far beyond your former comprehension.

That is when you got it made.

This world is far, far, far from a just and fair place. I have been reading my history and if anything, all I have learned is that we are, and have always been, killers and thieves. But among the blood, treachery and toil, among the absolute most median of us are true saviors, single hearts bigger than the selfish desires of a nation worth of men, single souls stronger than the tide that moves this endless sea. And this is what gives me hope in what otherwise, can sometimes seem appear to be an insurmountable army of precedents and established protocols, for what we are called of, as machines against our far more human lives.

Slavery, in the history book sense, was abolished (technically, though, as we all know, not really at all) in eighteen sixty-five, involuntary servitude. But the rich, still, received the fat end of that jagged stick. For then on they were not only entitled to the poor black population, but the poor, the working class, at large- white, brown, black, red or fucking polka-dotted.

The bread and butter of this country, those who wash the sheets and type the petitions, grow the greens and heard the sheep- left to bare-minimum living from here until the end. Waking before the sun to work, for what? Not a ginourmous flat screen tv or vacation to Bali, but to work from dawn til dusk for the simple right to exist. To eat, find sustenance and keep a roof over their head. To just get by, and barely do that. Without the prospect of an early retirement or a life that they, themselves are entitled to. There are taxes to pay and landlords that are owed. Our modern day slave holding corporations, the bourgeois, the have and have nots, just divided by more 'equal' more 'democratic' terms. We can pretend the fight is fair. But it has never been so. We might as well be shackled in cotton fields. It's no matter of skin; it's economic class in our modern day. And the fight spans far greater than any color scheme.

Remember, those grandiose mansions are all built upon the backs of those who work because they have no other options. Who, for the majority, are not welcome to health care when they fall sick, who, for the majority, cannot afford to be sick, for necessity of a paycheck.

Wealth in modern day American equals importance, equality, reasonable treatment, and reasonable options. And I think the greatest charm of that wealth to me, is the option to change the options for the rest. We are not ALL meant to be millionaires, it's impossible. But we should ALL be able to live and love, to enjoy our lives, freely without being a slave to its modern implications. We are far more technologically advanced than we were 50 years ago, yet our work hours are much longer, and our vacation time far more conservative than ever before. This makes no sense. Someone is profiting far more than reasonable profit…..while the grunts below choke every minute of their free lives away just to be able to keep on choking.

This is not freedom. It is slavery, but worse than slavery, it is presumed 'freedom' and 'equality' only working to perpetuate the cycle of inequality and disenfranchised lives.

We are not children of a dollar or a government. We are children of God (take God to be what you wish, in any sense of the term), qualified and able to be free of our capitalistic burdens.

We are a mighty breed, after all.

And one day, which will certainly be a day far from today, I hope to be able to have the option to help change our current options. To round out the equation, for all the mighty hearts on this earth.

There are so many.

The beauty & wisdom of John Lee Hooker

"I have heartaches, I have blues. No matter what you got, the blues is there.
'Cause that's all I know - the blues. And I can sing the blues so deep until you can
have this room full of money and I can give you the blues."

"In my career, people in the record business have been rockin' in the same ol' boat.
They all crooks - I'll say it clear and loud - especially the big ones."

"It don't take me no three days to record no album."

"Like you and your woman ain't gettin' along and you're in love. You can't sleep
at nights. Your mind is on her - on whatever. You know, that's the blues.
You can't hug that money at night. You can't kiss it."

"I don't play a lot of fancy guitar. I don't want to play it. The kind
of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks."

-John Lee Hooker

Been meaning to...

I've been meaning to write. I know. I know. But the days start so quick and become late visions of themselves almost as soon as the gun is fired. And most of the time, I just sit so still, in contemplation and confusion and perplexity, watching the smoke clear- and the days grow so late, before anyone even has the chance to inform me of this. Hello. Goodbye. Again? And again. Hello.

My absence, silence, distraction is not of ignorance or apathy. Quite the opposite. Everyday no matter how early I wake or late I may sleep, I do rise to hear the sound of every man, every jubilation, every bomb, bastard, terror and every charm, that which has come and that which is far gone, the fortunes gained and the virtue lost by hands very much the same as my own.

I may be quiet, but am far from out the game.

as it is

Above being a musician or songwriter or singer, I've always thought of myself more of as an observer of the world. While words and melody can sometimes be elusive, things as they are can almost always be captured on film. You just have to wait for the moment to arrive.

the dirty south & ms. peachez 'fry that chicken'

Where I come from is often referred to as 'the dirty south' and this video
pretty much sums it up....it's amazing. Kitschy genius. god i miss home.

lyric excerpt:

'everybody wants a piece of my chicken
southern fried chicken,
finger lickin'

now where my hot sauce?
i dont want no ketchup
just one big juicy jalapeno pepper
white meat dark meat, it don't matter
hangin with peaches dont make you fatter

i'm gonna warn you now, baby here's the deal
one piece of my chicken
you gonna call dr. phil