Failed and Bailed

In 1999, the provisions of 1933 Glass–Steagall Act that separated banks from trading institutions were repealed through the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton. In April 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission (Bush administration) compounded the error by exempting the five largest “too big to fail” Wall Street financial institutions (Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley) from the more limiting ceilings on how much they could borrow (as a ratio of their true equity value). The world then witnessed massive mergers of financial players, banking being blended with trading, astronomical bundling of debt – good, bad and indifferent – in a new derivatives market that sucked, vampire-like, on the blood-drain debt that exploded… from stupid sub-prime mortgages to over-leveraged corporations hell-bent on mergers and acquisition regardless of common sense.

And then, in the fall of 2008, utter collapse. Lehman Bros. failed, Bear Stearns vaporized and Merrill Lynch was absorbed by a reluctant Bank of America. The remaining major financial institutions were then accorded rescue lines of credit and investment by American taxpayers, representing some of the biggest welfare payments in U.S. history. Today, as the economy still has a long road to recovery, there are over $700 trillion in global outstanding derivatives and so-called credit default swaps (effectively investment/debt risk insurance). Is this just a ticking time bomb? We have financial institutions accessing near zero Federal Reserve loans through their banking subsidiaries, only to use that money to invest on their own account. Again, these Wall Streeters are enjoying indirect taxpayer subsidies with cheap interest. But what about risk?

Wall Street’s lobbying millions fended off any real regulation, and a very watered down Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010) was the only meaningful response. No major traders were charged or held responsible for the irresponsible trading and underlying mendacity necessary to foment such a colossal fraud on the global economy.

To this day, House Republicans continue to block any attempt to provide the kind of funding support necessary to allow the Securities and Exchange Commission to implement the meager regulations needed to make even the insipid Dodd-Frank legislation do the job Congress intended when the bill passed. And so the “too big to fail” mistakes continue to trundle along, as JP Morgan Chase just announced a $2 billion loss due to failed checks and balances in their London office, charged with making investments to hedge economic risk. Oh, and that was right after JPMorgan Chase & Co. gave Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon $23 million in pay and bonuses for 2011 (and they knew the losses were coming), about the same as the previous year. Ooooops! The Justice Department is investigating, but don’t hold your breath. The regulators come from a long line of Wall Streeters, and campaign contributions from the financial world are in short supply among the Democrats who chair the relevant cabinet posts and major administrative bodies.

So what kind of magic does Wall Street believe it has that can prevent massive economic failures? What was the “magic” they believed post-2000 that would allow them to borrow without limit and still survive? “It was the holy grail of investors. The Black-Scholes equation, brainchild of economists Fischer Black and Myron Scholes [and actually invented in 1973], provided a rational way to price a financial contract when it still had time to run. It was like buying or selling a bet on a horse, halfway through the race. It opened up a new world of ever more complex investments, blossoming into a gigantic global industry. But when the sub-prime mortgage market turned sour, the darling of the financial markets became the Black Hole equation, sucking money out of the universe in an unending stream.

“The equation itself wasn't the real problem. It was useful, it was precise, and its limitations were clearly stated. It provided an industry-standard method to assess the likely value of a financial derivative. So derivatives could be traded before they matured. The formula was fine if you used it sensibly and abandoned it when market conditions weren't appropriate. The trouble was its potential for abuse. It allowed derivatives to become commodities that could be traded in their own right. The financial sector called it the Midas Formula and saw it as a recipe for making everything turn to gold. But the markets forgot how the story of King Midas ended.

“Black-Scholes underpinned massive economic growth. By 2007, the international financial system was trading derivatives valued at one quadrillion dollars per year. This is 10 times the total worth, adjusted for inflation, of all products made by the world's manufacturing industries over the last century. The downside was the invention of ever-more complex financial instruments whose value and risk were increasingly opaque. So companies hired mathematically talented analysts to develop similar formulas, telling them how much those new instruments were worth and how risky they were. Then, disastrously, they forgot to ask how reliable the answers would be if market conditions changed.” The Guardian, February 11^th.

There is nothing wrong with becoming a billionaire. The American Dream is still alive and well. But when getting rich means playing fast and loose with the truth, allowing debt-rating agencies to be hired by the companies they rate, when Federal Reserve near-zero interest rates aimed at creating more credit liquidity are instead swallowed up by greedy traders who would prefer to use that cheap money for their own account, and where high risk investments threaten bank depositors, shareholders, and American taxpayers – if not the global economy – when is enough “enough” already. At what point do we need to reel in the financial community, separate banking from trading once again, eliminate the conflict of interest from debt-rating entities, and reign in the continuing threat of irresponsible greed and its potential impact on each and every one of us? How about NOW?!

I’m Peter Dekom, and how many signs of major financial irresponsibility do we need to see – AGAIN – before we act to prevent such occurrences from dragging us all down – AGAIN?

Green on Blue

The notion that the United States and its NATO allies are doing anything at all of lasting value in Afghanistan flies in the face of both history (look at the failed Soviet effort before that nation collapsed) and current events. That we have hobbled the Taliban, rendering them impotent, is a staggering lie. That Americans, particularly policy-makers, adhere to that mantra is particularly disturbing. What we have hobbled is al Qaeda, by cutting off financial flow, killing their leadership and tapping into their communications. Al Qaeda also did itself in by espousing such extreme views – murders and bombings without the slightest concern for collateral damage. But al Qaeda was a glitch in history, and the bigger Islamist fundamentalist movement has only grown – whether through the Arab Spring or because our years of mishandling regional issues (remember the photos of U.S. troops humiliating detainees from Iraq’s Abu Graib prison) creating recruiting posters for extremists seeking to discredit if not destroy the West.

We are now stuck with a policy of training Afghan soldiers to function as post-NATO peace officers when we are gone. Our continuing presence in a land where we are no longer welcome is costing us a precious $2 billion a week, and our very recent legacy of Qur’an burning, urinating-on-corpses Marines, a rogue sergeant breaking into homes and executing innocent civilians on the spot has left us with a pernicious label that only makes the otherwise ruthless Taliban look good. Our attempt at regime change has fostered one of the most corrupt governments on earth, and this greed-driven Karzai administration has not been able to extend its feeble and unwanted control much beyond the capital city of Kabul and its immediate environs. We are occupying foreigners who have lingered a decade, soldiers from an alien and unsympathetic culture who just do not understand local values.

So just how well is our “training” effort going in Afghanistan? They call them “green on blue” attacks – where soldiers in Afghan uniforms turn on their NATO training officers. It’s the second greatest cause of death among NATO allies these days (improvised explosive devices remain number one). These Taliban infiltrators have created a barrier of mistrust between NATO training officers and their Afghan military and police trainees. “Already this year, 22 coalition service members have been killed by men in Afghan uniform, compared with 35 for all of last year, according to coalition officials… The attacks, and the personal animosity that officials believe have driven most of them, are threatening the joint-training model that is one of the remaining imperatives of the Western mission in Afghanistan.” New York Times, May 15^th.

Indeed, trust is in profoundly short supply: “After watching Afghan soldiers kick down doors and clear mud-brick farm compounds, ‘it’s hard not to like some of those guys,’ said First Lt. Nicholas Olivero, 24, of Fairfax, Va. ‘But I’d be lying if I said there was trust across the board.’… Another American soldier added: ‘I don’t always need to have them walking in front of me now. I did for a while.’ … Yet Afghan soldiers still complain of being kept at a distance by the Americans, figuratively and literally. The Americans, for instance, have put up towering concrete barriers to separate their small, plywood command center from the outpost’s Afghan encampment. .. Also still in place is a rule imposed by the Afghan Army after the attack requiring most of its soldiers to lock up their weapons when on base. The Afghan commanding officer keeps the keys.” NY Times.

The messages that the Taliban are sending us are very clear: we’re in control, we will be here when you leave, we will drain you and attack you every minute that you remain and nothing you can do is going to have the slightest impact on Afghanistan’s future. Unfortunately, history teaches us that they are correct, and unless we want a million-man military presence in that nation for the foreseeable future, every day that we remain in Afghanistan, we lose a little more ground. Our efforts in that rugged mountainous nation define futility and waste. As the NATO nations confer on the timetable for withdrawal, there is only one thoroughly obvious conclusion… and it must be implemented with all due and deliberate speed. Now!

I’m Peter Dekom, and for the largest military on earth by far to have failed to achieve a major victory since WWII, it is time to question the notion of fomenting regime change with boots on the ground every time we respond militarily to an ominous enemy.

Sandbagging Sandbags

Every year there are scenes of floods somewhere in the United States… and pictures of volunteers, sometimes thousands of them, shoveling sand out of loads hauled in by dump trucks, filling bags and forming human chains to stack sandbags fast enough to thwart impending doom from rising waters. Spring is the time of the “big thaw,” and water visits folks down the hill with routine force. The Red River rises in Fargo, North Dakota all the time, and the residents are massive consumers of bags and sand: “The city used about 3 million sandbags in 2009, the year of its worst recorded flood. Last year, the fifth worst, the city filled and stacked 1.5 million. But now, even though an army of volunteers began working earlier than usual at Fargo’s ‘Sandbag Central’ and filled nearly 3 million, the city has used only about 500,000 sandbags.” New York Times, April 8^th.

Ever think how completely inefficient these efforts are? Kind of like capping soda bottles by hand instead of using a capping machine? Might there be a better way or are our scientists dumbfounded when it comes to barricading water? Good news, disaster fans! There are better ways! Like the Aqua Dam (pictured above left) or the Aqua Levee (pictured above right) … where water – in big fat tubes that can be deployed quickly – is used to barricade… er… water!

New products abound as Fargo faces spring floods again: “Fargo seems braced to repel an invading army. Once again there are plenty of the usual sandbag piles and earthen levies. But this year, for the first time, less of the city will be protected by sandbags than by alternative barriers, like the braced L-shaped walls of the AquaFence, industrial-size sacks of sand known as TrapBags and the earth-filled wire cages of the Hesco bastions.” NY Times.

The underlying message is that we are able to make our world better if we just think about how to solve problems and then implement our vision with appropriate structures and technological products. Stronger plastic tubes that can withstand the ravages of storms; after all, a leaking barrier only exacerbates the flood risk. Panels built to withstand the tons of pressure of water raging against fairly lightweight levees and temporary dams. The technologies seem simple enough – like why didn’t we think of these before – but when you really drill down, the required skills demanded chemical engineers designing the materials collude with structural and civil engineers to create the structural requirements coupled with geologists and climatologists to set the parameters and expectations.

Think about the education that resulted in such simple and cost-effective solutions to problems that might otherwise impose billions of dollars of damage. We can deploy these short term solutions, averting massive potential natural disasters, pending better long term solutions. And just think what it would have been like if those chemical, civil and structural engineers or those climatologists and geologists had been unable to attend the universities that prepared them for these seemingly simple but elegant solutions. What if they had been born 17 to 20 years ago and were facing the budget-mandated shuttering of educational programs, denied access to the curriculum they needed to be trained in their chosen field because of underfunding and crowded bulging classrooms, didn’t get enough of a background in public high school to get into a decent engineering or science program or were simply unable to afford to go to college? Welcome to 2012!

I’m Peter Dekom, and the utter failure of legislators to connect the dots as they cut educational budgets with no regard to our future is nothing short of appalling.

Buying Time

Some say the warmer winter months pulled some of the growth that is normally reserved for spring/summer forward in the year, that therefore lower growth is now expected for the warmer months. Everyone agrees that Europe’s debt crisis and the possibility of continued or even rising oil prices (especially if there is an Iranian confrontation) loom horribly ahead. The prospect of accelerating austerity, led in Europe with Teutonic discipline by Germany (which believes that they are single-handedly funding the rescue packages and therefore are entitled to call the shots), does not augur well for the regional job market. American politicians are also falling over each other with proposals for new budget cuts at every level of government, from school districts to the federal government.

“There is a ‘light recovery blowing in a spring wind’ with ‘dark clouds on the horizon,’ Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said [April 19^th], at the start of meetings here that will focus on Europe’s troubles and global growth. Ms. Lagarde implored world leaders not to become complacent… ‘An uneasy calm remains,’ said Olivier Blanchard, the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist. ‘One has the feeling that any moment, things could well get very bad again.’” New York Times, April 20^th. One third of the global economy flows through the U.S./European connection, so failure on either side of the Atlantic augurs badly for the recovery of the other.

With inexorably snail-paced job growth, and a miniscule projected 2.5% projected GDP increase (which does little but reflect population growth), describing the U.S. economy as sluggish is an understatement. China shocked the world by announcing it projected economic growth by a full percentage point, down now to 8.1%, but note the disparity in the U.S. and PRC numbers. Economists are even saying that our job growth numbers reflect nothing more than a removal of even more people from a job search; they’ve just given up.

Austerity is not popular when it is imposed. It throws lots of people out of work, generally results in a degradation in the quality of life, and often fails to distinguish between the necessary and the discretionary. Hard to picture real austerity with economic growth, almost impossible. Conservative French President Nickolas Sarkozy (pictured above) lost the support of the majority of his citizens in his lock-step march with Germany down the austerity highway and became the first one-term President in France since 1981, losing to the Socialist candidate François Hollande in the recent election.

We’ve been more circumspect in our cutbacks on this side of the Atlantic, but we have equally prioritized military spending and tax cuts for the wealthy over skill-creating educational and training programs, productivity-enhancing infrastructure repair and construction and industry-building research. It seems that we are living for the moment with little concern about investing in our own future, suggesting that such a future pits an economically and educationally unprepared America against Asian tigers with economic domination in their sights.

Austerity means cutbacks, and cutbacks necessarily mean job contraction. Failure to offset those measures with longer-term investment almost certainly insures a longer-term, if not permanent, parallel contraction in quality job growth and at least a stabilized standard of living. France learned the lesson, but perhaps it will swing too far in the other direction under new leadership, if the elections go that way.

Greece is struggling to create a parliamentary coalition after the most recent election, and thus another election in June may be necessary. With little or no ability to repay its debt, Greece now seems all but certain to eschew the Eurozone and return to a single currency. Austerity measures in Greece and Portugal, strong efforts to reduce the ratio of debt to GDP, seem to be failing, since as more austerity is imposed (reducing debt, for sure), the impact on the subsequent falling GDP numbers because of the austerity simply keeps the same (or worse) ratio intact with a lot of pain and suffering along the way. Pain and suffering pulls elected officials down. The next immediate weakness – the capitalization of Spain’s largest banks – has raised new concerns about the overall direction of European Union stability. Massive protests over the weekend underscored the personal suffering that marked Spanish the imposition of severe austerity measures. And if there were an attack on Iran by Israel, the spike in oil prices is very likely to extinguish that slightly flickering recovery flame.

I look at the state of the Western world, thinking it could easily be great again, that the United States could hang on to its foremost position with a slight reordering of its priorities, but for whatever expedient reason, our elected officials just can’t get out of their own way, explaining the issues to the electorate (which neither side has done beyond sloganeering) and then implementing policies that really will grow our economy. It comes down to this simple factor which must balance even the most well-intentioned austerity measures: you do not get a return on your investment… without an investment. Think of the “return on investment” by our government by another term: our future. What is a future with failed roads and bridges, under-educated workers and no new industries to absorb American workers?

I’m Peter Dekom, and today an average American worker’s lifetime efforts are rewarded by unemployment, losing a home (or at least the retirement value of a home) and a severely contracting lifestyle.

Fatulence

Sitting around and chewing the fat is no joke anymore. Americans love to eat, and with fast food and other restaurant choices, we most certainly do indulge. Sittin’ on your butt and playing a non-physically-active video game, or surfing the Web or even watching the boob tube have long term negative ramifications for us all if we don’t add some serious physical activity to the mix. For those at the lower rungs of society, expensive gasoline and pricey costs for healthier foods like fruit, veggies and fish at the store, folks are carbing up in record numbers, creating a healthcare costs for future years that might just break our ability to pay for such care at any level. The trends are just plain lousy.

“The ranks of obese Americans are expected to swell even further in the coming years, rising from 36% of the adult population today to 42% by 2030…. [The] cost of treating those additional obese people for diabetes, heart disease and other medical conditions would add up to nearly $550 billion over the next two decades…. The sobering projections also contained some good news, the researchers said: Obesity's growth has slowed from the record pace of most of the last 30 years. If those trends were to continue, 51% of American adults would qualify as obese in 2030.” Los Angeles Times, May 7^th.

And for all the fads diets and miracle pills, nothing beat eating less and smarter plus sustainable exercising. There is no easy pill, and if the cost of gym membership is out of reach, trying walking or slow jogging. Not only are we getting truly fatter, but those that tip the scale the most are facing some of the most severe health problems of all.

“Most important was the aging of the population, which tends to nudge many overweight adults into the obese category — and to push many of those who are already obese into ‘severely obese’ territory. The number of severely obese Americans is expected to grow from about 5% today to 11% in 2030, the study said.

“The findings are based on data collected from 1990 through 2008 as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a survey by the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] and health departments in the states. Measures of obesity were based on body mass index, which is calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. A BMI of 18 to 24.99 is considered healthy; those in the 25-29.99 range are considered overweight; people above 30 are classified as obese, and those above 40 are severely obese.” LA Times.

In the end, it’s a personal choice. But it’s also an example to our children and a burden to the family that may have to take care of us when obesity disables us or reduces what we can do in our work lives. What’s more, it’s a choice that can begin now. Start with little steps that you know you can sustain… build slowly over time. This has to be a sustainable lifetime commitment.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I have to leave now for a ten mile walk!

Barbarians at the Gate

Natalie Arnanda wrote an article a few years ago – The Growth of Gated Communities and Their Impact on Social Segregation – and provided an explanation for this phenomenon: “Gated communities have always been with us. This dates back to the very earliest civilizations where the very wealthy have favored high walls and closed gates that have turned their communities into very private communities. In addition to providing increased security, the purposes of these communities were to foster segregation, and increase the sense of exclusion. Put bluntly, the rich desired to separate themselves from their less socially advanced neighbors.

“In recent years there has been an increase in the construction of gated communities in the United States. At the same time, these communities are becoming less the exclusive haven of the very rich, and have become more and more the choice of the upper middle class and even middle class homeowner. The major reason cited for this increase is the desire for more personal safety. Fueled by a media that almost constantly bombards us with images of violence and crime, people have become more fearful. The idea of the walls and the controlled access gates promises an escape from this fear. Inside the walls, surrounded by neighbors who share their values, people feel safer. They are not as fearful to approach old age, or raise their children there.”

The numbers behind this growth suggest that America is very worried about the threat of “have-nots” living in a job-impaired world versus those with assets to protect, particularly that 1% of the U.S. population that controls 42% of this nation’s wealth: “Across the United States, more than 10 million housing units are in gated communities, where access is ‘secured with walls or fences,’ according to 2009 Census Bureau data. Roughly 10 percent of the occupied homes in this country are in gated communities, though that figure is misleadingly low because it doesn’t include temporarily vacant homes or second homes. Between 2001 and 2009, the United States saw a 53 percent growth in occupied housing units nestled in gated communities.” New York Times, March 29^th. This doesn’t even include the doorman and security desk in apartment buildings in rich cities like New York, where this form of segregation has been part of the landscape for many years. Additionally, according to American-Business.org, private security in the United States has also grown into a $150 billion industry today.

As half of this nation now falls within the U.S. Census of low income or below the poverty line, as the differentiation between most senior corporate managers (200 to 300 times the pay of the average worker, with raises exploding at the top even in these impaired times), and as the wealthy pay some of the most favorable taxes in the industrialized world, the old maximum that the “rich get richer” appears to have created a new and dangerous polarization within our country, one that history teaches us (“let them eat cake!”) destroys societies though violent factionalization and armed conflict. But that could never happen here; this is America, the bastion of functioning democracy on earth, right? Well, this probably isn’t going to happen in my lifetime, but the forces of explosive social change are everywhere.

You many think of gang-infested inner city neighborhoods as aberrations, and let’s hope that is the explanation, but these enclaves have their own legal systems, economic hierarchies and social strata that literally function completely independently of the great American society that surrounds them. Wall Streeters have lower taxes (if they can qualify under the “carried interest” rule), great political clout (thank you Citizens United) and an entirely different rule system than the rest of us. Regardless of political bent, this country is simply breaking apart. It’s always one faction, seemingly incapable of reaching a working compromise (so painfully clear in our Congress), unbending in dealing with some other faction.

Add to this incredibly inflexible attitude in the minds of so many Americans and the extreme economic polarization that defines contemporary America with the right to bear arms. Wikipedia tells us that the United States has the highest ratio of gun ownership on earth (88.8 guns per 100 people; violent-plagued Yemen, for example, is only 54.8). We already have folks running to gated communities in fear, and within a number of gated communities, as the Trayvon Martin shooting illustrates, private neighborhood patrols add another potential level of violence to the equation.

This confluence of fear, widening polarization, intolerance and profound social change as the United States literally faces an entirely new specter of global competition and power shifts with the ready availability of guns seems to be moving our nation closer to the brink of the kind of revolution that none of us really believes will happen, but one that historians can support with ample proof through the ages of comparable societies that faced comparable fragmentation. Since no government lasts forever, is it time that those of us with the power to preserve and protect our precious nation begin to take steps to level the playing field and diffuse this polarization before it is too late. Or will that segment of the population that wants to preserve the special rules that enable their economic dominance be destroyed by their simultaneous embrace of the right to bear arms? If you love this country, embrace policies that will carry it along into the future, strong and free.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for those of us just trying to make it day-by-day, dealing with preserving our entire nation and way of life just doesn’t show up on our personal radar… until it’s too late.

Ceiling Our Fate

“Unless the debt ceiling is raised and the president signs a continuing resolution allowing government services to go on, the federal government will be forced to furlough 800,000 employees Tuesday morning. Only those deemed essential and others in jobs that are pre-funded will continue being paid.” But while this looks like something out of today’s reports dealing with the current budget impasse between a Republican-majority House of Representatives and a Democratic Present, it is actually taken from a November 11, 1995 CNN report dealing with a…. Republican-majority House of Representatives (led by Speaker Newt Gingrich) and a Democratic Present (Bill Clinton).

In short, budgetary brinksmanship, like the one facing the U.S. as the debt ceiling slams shut on March 4^th, is nothing new… what is new is a very large contingent of freshmen Tea Party players, hell bent on drastic downsizing … the austerity kings & queens, who believe that cutting the federal budget will create a plethora of new jobs by keeping taxes lower, a discredited trickle-down theory that refuses to die notwithstanding mounds of evidence to the contrary and no evidence to support it. Even the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner (pictured above), has climbed onto his minority Tea Party conservatives’ bandwagon: “Read my lips,” he stressed, “We are going to cut spending!” Indeed, pork is de-porking, military cuts are slicing, but the battle remains over recent Presidential priorities in spending… it is a fundamental schism between party philosophies, brought home in the recent mid-term elections. And indeed, the House passed their reduced budget with a clear slap in the face to the President’s clearly stated goals, reducing allocations for education, environment, infrastructure and mass transit.

Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Harry Reid, is threatening to extend the deficit ceiling from that side of the legislature, where Democrats still control a majority… but not enough to stop a threatened filibuster from the Republican side. It’s ugly in Washington, and indeed, while not every government service would be shut down instantly when that cap it reached, you can expect massive furloughs of federal personnel and lots of “non-essential services” to shutdown… with numbers increasing as time passes and even the pre-funded programs run out of money. Of course, people expect some of those “pre-funds” to be diverted in the political system, and you can bet that pensions will not be funded during this period.

The Federal Reserve can indeed expand the money supply and service the national debt for a while (to stop a default), but even they have Congressional limits on their overall maximum ability to engage in such activities. What is really likely to happen is that the public will be even more frustrated and distrustful of a government that simply has lost its ability to govern. And remember, Congress’ has pretty consistently maintained a lower approval rating than the President, so “stand-by-the-principles-under-which-you-were-elected” might seem to naïve freshmen Congress-people like strong and positive popular representation, but if they can’t exercise that force without bringing the country to its knees, they will simply be seen as incompetent elected officials who probably shouldn’t be re-elected.

The February 20^th Los Angeles Times reminds us what happened after the last federal budgetary shut-downs in 95/96: “Social Security checks continued to be mailed, although many government payments were delayed as officials struggled to keep enough employees on the job on an emergency basis, as laws allow, to continue service… Many other Social Security services halted, including responses to requests for retirement and disability claims, address changes and Social Security numbers needed for work… During that time, museums and national parks were closed and applications for visas and passports went unprocessed. A downturn in the housing market was blamed on a halt to transactions involving the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration, now called the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“Government economic reports were delayed, and federal employees went without paychecks for as long as the shutdowns lasted. Claims for veterans benefits also faced delays… Some government functions determined to be ‘essential’ — such as national security, law enforcement and emergency assistance — continued. But in the sprawling federal bureaucracy, determining what fit that classification, and even who made the determination, was not clear.” Want some specifics? “[In 1995], the departments of Commerce, Justice and State kept about 63 percent of their workers on the payroll. Just over 50 percent of Interior Department workers stayed on the job, as did 42 percent of employees at the departments of Education, Labor and Health and Human Services, GAO said… [As for Social Security, the] agency made about 4,800 employees work through the 1995 shutdown to ensure beneficiaries obtained their checks, according to a Congressional Research Service report. An additional 61,000 workers had to stay home, but officials later called some in to help process new claims.” Washington Post, February 22^nd. The government has a sequencing plan to lay off additional personnel as any budget impasse de-funds the government.

Indeed, today the bloated federal budget is ripe for big slices coming out of it. Servicing the national debt is a seemingly immutable obligation; how would the world react to our currency if we defaulted on the trillions we owe? But some of the really big ticket items, like military procurement budget (we spend about 46% of the entire earth’s military budget), sit relatively unscathed… Even Robert Gates’ masterful “sacrifice” of some weapons programs, while basically keeping the vast majority of the military budget intact, doesn’t remotely cut what a prudent society would insist upon, especially when funded military conflicts show no likelihood of delivering promised results. The budget battles will be the hallmark of the current Congress (notably the House, where appropriation bills must originate) versus the President. And this is year one, month two.

I’m Peter Dekom, and voters have a way of moving politicians who cannot govern out of office… we just have to wait, and wait and wait.

Will the Real Human Being Please Stand Up?

They’re called “Geminoids” … robots literally built to resemble and mimic real human beings. And in case you are wondering, the gentleman on the right is actor Brent Spiner who played Commander Data on the very successful Star Trek: the Next Generation television series. The “gentleman” on the left is an android: “This new Geminoid comes from Aalborg University in Denmark … , called Geminoid-DK, appears to really breathe and perform involuntary muscular reactions.” CrunchGear.com, March 4^th. He nods, smiles and generally seems to be able to provide facial expressions very much like a human being. Geminoid-DK is also the first realistic Geminoid to be built outside of Japan; roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro constructed his mechanical doppelganger (Geminoid HI-1) in 2005.

HI-1 was built at ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories near Kyoto. “Ishiguro is mainly using the bot to teach his classes for him, and creep out students with lifelike movements such as blinking, ‘breathing’ and fidgeting. The bot can be remotely controlled via a motion capture system that tracks Ishiguro's mouth movements and allows the bot to speak his voice -- or that of an assistant if he's feeling particularly listless. The incredible realism comes from silicone molds cast from Ishiguro's own body, similar to the process behind a certain female resident of the uncanny valley, and is a bit of an experiment in the viability of telepresence.” Engadget.com, July 21, 2006. Motion capture, eh? Not a real, self-contained computer. Whew!

All very interesting and still pretty primitive as far as functionality is concerned, but combine the above “photorealistic” mimicking abilities with accelerating advances in computing power (including the ability continuously shrink CPU and hard drive size) and you get nervously close to a real Commander Data… in this century. The February 21^st edition of Time Magazine presents an eerie chart (pages 44-45) promulgated by Singularity theorist, Ray Kurzweil, suggesting that computing power will surpass human capability by 2023 and be able to aggregate the collective brain power of all humanity by 2045. Singularity theory focuses on the hyper-acceleration of change: while 500 years ago, the sum total of all information and data doubled every 200 years, the rate of change is moving so fast that if you take the year 2000 as one year unit of change, assuming the same rate of acceleration rate, by the year 2100, hum ananity will have experienced 20,000 year-units of change.

Even assuming the physical size of computers necessary to implement the above human capacities may exceed the robotic size variables (and I bet they will be entirely self-contained), the ability to reach into distant file server clouds wirelessly will allow just about any capacity to be controlled by very, very small control units. Yet all of this belies the ethical and definitional issues that define a human being, conjuring up fictional creations from Star Trek to the Terminator series of films.

If such computers are so complex as to be able to absorb all human knowledge with room to spare for “wasted” emotional needs, will they develop neurotic and psychotic behavior patterns through internal malfunctions or the introduction by “evil” forces of malware? Who gets the right to program these Geminoids of the future? What happens if they fall into the wrong hands? I am seeing a lot of studio executives and film/TV directors who just can’t wait to have a string of these “actors” who never get paid on their studio lots. Will one of them look like Charlie Sheen? But then again, all this does bring out some interesting questions regarding the meaning of life.

I’m Peter Dekom, and fortunately I will be dead before I am replaced by a Geminoid… replaced by a Geminoid… replaced by a Geminoid… replaced by a Geminoid.

Two Billion Dollars a Week

That’s what we spend, week in and week out, to main our presence in Afghanistan. It’s a war that history tells us we cannot win, and daily, facts mount to support that negative result. We claim that we have suppressed the HaqqaniTaliban, but so confident are they at a new height in their power and influence that they mounted a stunning set of attacks in the heart of Kabul on April 15^th… and have walked away from the negotiating table with American diplomats. And it wasn’t just Kabul that they struck; there were three attacks in Kabul, two in Jalalabad, one in Paktia Province’s capital, Gardez, and another in Logar Province’s capital, Pul-e-Alam. On April 28^th, “insurgents with small pistols hidden in their shoes managed to force their way through a security checkpoint and make it to the threshold of the governor’s office in Kandahar … before being shot and killed by guards.” New York Times, April 28^th.

The mega-corrupt Hamid Karzi regime, effectively installed by the Americans when they expelled the Taliban in the early stages of the war, controls a small radius around Kabul and not much more. Elections were purportedly rigged to keep Karzai and his cronies in power, and he, like the Americans, appears to very much despised by the people. Back in March, after other incidents depicting American soldier urinating on the corpses of their insurgent victims or where a cache of Qur’ans were inadvertently burned, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, a decorated 38-year-old veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was formally charged with the murder of 17 Afghans , more than half of them children.

Military leaders roll their eyes at the thought of the Afghan troops that are supposed to replace American fighters actually being able to bring peace and stability to the region. But it is official government policy that they can and will… even though just about everybody on earth knows they cannot and won’t. The Obama Administration doesn’t want to appear negative or weak in the face of the upcoming election, an event that is shaping our generally misguided policy in that region.

Our attempt to repair the bridge with Pakistan – so that we can restart the governmental bribe we call “military aid” (estimated at between $1.18 and $3 billion) to incent the Pakistani leadership to keep their nuclear bomb technology to themselves – has failed. “The latest high-level talks on ending a diplomatic deadlock between the United States and Pakistan ended in failure on [April 27^th] over Pakistani demands for an unconditional apology from the Obama administration for an airstrike. The White House, angered by the recent spectacular Taliban attacks in Afghanistan, refuses to apologize…

“Aside from the apparently intractable issues of drones and the apology, the two countries focused on four specific areas of potential cooperation: counterterrorism, the NATO supply lines, military aid payments and the Taliban peace process… Yet there was an undeniable sense of wariness, driven by the pressures of domestic politics, with Mr. Obama facing re-election this year and Pakistan due for elections in the coming 12 months. Pakistanis’ rage has been rising since a shooting in Lahore in January 2011 that involved a C.I.A. employee and fueled common fantasies about being overrun by rogue spies. The American operation to kill Osama bin Laden a few months later was taken as a stunning breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty.” NY Times, April 27^th.

Because of the April 15^th Taliban attack on multiple Afghan targets, which the United States believes was coordinated by the Haqqanis from Pakistan’s western tribal district, and more than a little pressure on Obama from the upcoming election, the apology for the 24 deaths was a political impossibility for the American president.

And so the wasteful war in Afghanistan continues, American and civilian lives lost daily, with no clear discernible benefit to anyone rising to the surface. And after the US and her NATO allies depart – currently still slated for 2014 – everyone knows that the harsh Afghan environment will quickly erase the signs that we were ever there. Just like the disappearance of the Soviet presence when they lost their war just a couple of decades ago. Two billion dollars a week.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there has to be a better word than “stupid” to describe our current efforts in Afghanistan and the surrounding region… but I cannot think of it.

Energy Addicts Are Shaking

Explosions in one containment structure and melting down in another reactor are the current earthquake-damage elements of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant (above left, a 1975 aerial view) located about 160 miles north of Tokyo. The St. Louis Beacon (March 12^th) reminds us of exactly how vulnerable that plant remains: “As for the aging nuclear power plant itself, [Ken] Bergeron [a physicist who formerly worked on simulating nuclear reactor accidents at Sandia National Laboratories] said the containment structure at the plant is certainly stronger than that of Chernobyl but a lot less strong than at Three Mile Island’ (TMI) – the nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania that suffered a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979, leading to major changes in U.S. nuclear power polic y.’ [Emphasis added] With entire towns wiped out and a death toll likely to top 10,000, the long term ramifications of nuclear power still remain background issues to this horrific devastation. But I suspect it was a background issue in Japan as well… until March 11^th.

The names Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and now, Fukushima Daiichi are part of a lengthening list of failed nuclear power plants, a list that would have been long with a single name. And of America’s 54 nuclear power stations (and 36 research reactors), way too many are located near vulnerable fault lines. At a time where energy costs are soaring, our ability to shut down a number of these mega-billion dollar facilities appears to be limited… and there are even pressures to build and deploy more of these behemoths to avert financial disaster as fossil fuels are rapidly out-pricing the market’s ability to pay, alternative sources of energy are still lagging behind in terms of large-scale practicality.

Nuclear plants aren’t the only high “earthquake risk” generating stations; some forms of energy extract appear to cause quakes. A 2006 3.4 (Richter Scale) quake appears to have been triggered by a geothermal power plant in Basel, Switzerland (what exactly happens when you release all that pent up heat and steam underground?!), leading to a permanent shutdown of the facility. This “failure” resulted in the abandonment of a number of such projects, including one in Northern California.

In California, there are four nuclear power plants (Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, center and right above) plus another vulnerable facility in Washington State. West Coast risks are obvious, but even New York City, the entire state of Utah and the middle of the United States face risks with fault lines that, sooner or later, generate quakes. That latter region bears some greater attention, according to preparednesspro.com: “Few citizens are fully aware of the New Madrid fault line affecting Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee and Mississippi. The New Madrid fault even affects some parts of Iowa and Arkansas. In 1811, a succession of 4 full strength earthquakes occurred, followed by horrific aftershocks. As a result of the earthquake, huge fissures opened in the earth and spewed ‘volcanoes’ of silt and bedrock all over the area as well. Today, this same fault line has the potential to create an 8.0 seismic sized earthquake in the next 5 to 10 years which would seriously affect the heartland of America.” And there are nuclear power plants in this region as well. We make decisions based on current needs and realities, often swallowing hard and ignoring obvious longer-term risks. Perhaps not killing or injuring future generations needs to be a bigger factor in our short-term solutions.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am still having difficulty actually picturing the pain, suffering and massive loss of life in this Japanese natural disaster.