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Gas cards for your business | BP... Gas and fuel cards for your business Gas cards for your ... As a BP credit card customer, you can pay your bills or transfer your balances online Read full post here. (c) Chase BP Visa? Rewards Card Review - WOW! Credit CardsGas Rebate Cards: Credit Type: Good / Excellent: Positives: ... Access your account free online and manage and monitor your ... every rebates for: BP Gift Card, cash, donation to ... Read full post here. (c) ECONnoiter, the Corporatist Soup BaseIntroduction to Economics Highlights of My Social Infrastructure and War on the Home Front To reconnoiter is to make a reconnaissance or a preliminary inspection of, especially in order to gather military information. Since the U.S. public is officially on alert that the country is now in 'Recession' I thought it fitting to take that big 'R' off reconnoiter to make a new word. To ECONnoiter is to inspect the current economic situation in an attempt to win the war on the home front; what is left behind for each individual to deal with after the corporatists gained a stronghold in Washington D.C. with government contracts and dug foxholes for government protection through the data miners while rounding up the malcontents, otherwise known as sovereign taxpaying citizens through the use of cameras, wire tapping, and personal computer hard drives; in other words a corporatist soup base we are left to swim in while the government continues its growth by privatizing. My interest in what is happening in this country began to surge only a year ago so I began a personal quest to study economics and keep up with current events, not just because of the 2008 election. Rise in fame from Jewish immigrant status to the guru of U.S. economic policy and across the world left an impression on me as I read about Milton Friedman in Two Lucky People. After shying away from economics and political science in college and making it through the 'make love not war' era surviving the past 30 years, I wanted to know more so started a self-study program researching Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, Hayek, Gunter Frank and more. Today it appears history is repeating itself once again in my life and country with the Iraq war, but I am not shying away, I'm on an exploratory mission surveying what I missed. Daily for weeks I read history of economic theory and process on the Internet, but my hunger waned since I had no concrete, practical example of how the ideologies actually worked. This was also compounded by the debt of a $9,000 student loan, my studies taking place in a two-year college studying geography and the college being demographically ill situated for me to continue on to a four-year college. I graduated cum laude, but was laid off, find myself jobless still after six months and turned downed perpetually in my field of study and the field I worked in 36 years. In the Vietnam era I was apathetic and emotionally lonely. Half way across the country away from family I witnessed a blood bath through smoke bombs and tear gas on the Berkeley campus so I left school to go home to recover. Not long after returning I grew bored, wanted to be patriotic, and joined the Navy. I petitioned out after being instructed to lie on the floor of the bus as my platoon paraded the streets of Richmond on our way to the Pentagon because Marines with bayoneted rifles wearing gas masks lined the streets. I bounced from one shock to another and they haven't abated. I was married, had two children, divorced, sat through the death of my ex-husband, was sued by the state for money to support my acting out teen because I was the sole supporter, after they jailed her because she stole my car at the age of 16, 36 years of job loss due to low profit margins, financial restructuring, retirement, death of employers and disqualifications from government unemployment funds for no reason. Since 1969 my head is still spinning and I'm getting old through the years of no health benefits or retirement. I have owned and lived in a house for 20 years in small town retirement oriented America, but driven 100 miles round trip a day to work, not out of choice. I am losing my home and rather glad since the library takes a year to get books I want to read. Naomi Klein's, The Shock Doctrine was one. The Colbert Report interviewed her one night. Their spin on politics and openness to First Amendment rights is night and day compared to the sixties when censorship ruined the Smothers career. After reading this book I had another shock attack. Friedman was painted as the grand Tsar of the unfettered capitalist/corporatist movement and rulebook writer for the global economy. I do regret not studying economics earlier because it might have given me a leg up on understanding earlier that I don't fit in without a four-year degree and the ability to make money for the corporatists. I have been evicted out of the 'American Dream' and thrown into the soup I call ECONnoiter, totally defenseless. I realize I am a woman without a country and that leaves me in shock. Globalization has changed the social context of my country under my nose and before my eyes. My plight to survive is much more complex. First Lesson in Economics Layman's Overview-Woman Without a Country The IMF has been running around with blinders on focusing on one thing, Friedman ideology and a balanced budget. When only seven of the most industrialized countries in the world dictate economic policies to the world I am reminded of the musketeer mentality, 'one for all and all for one' that took place in a period of 200 years from the 1600 to 1800's. This is what the IMF does. It also sounds a bit like racketeering. Markets do not self-regulate and privatization, liberalization, stabilization and growth cannot occur properly without consideration of differences in societal structure and context, proper corporate governance, competition policies, and political structure. The IMF is in the business of providing funds to countries engaged in policies of cutting deficits, raising taxes and interest rates, focusing on balanced budget and debt collection. I have thought of myself as an underdeveloped country because I am a part of the disappearing middle-class. All of my macros are in place, such as balanced budget, cut deficits, higher taxes and interest rates so why can't I qualify for a bail out from the IMF, Treasury department, IRS or other government branch dealing in money? I have met all of the above criteria. My credit cards are all paid off and I don't use them at 24% interest. My taxes have increased for two reasons; first because they always do federally and second because any debt I may have that I can't pay I will be required to pay interest upon interest. Now if I could export any of my personal natural resources I may be interested in tacking on a high interest fee for the purchase or use of that export, but I am not allowed to export because the only thing I have export is myself and I am not being called for interviews, plus income is capped in my field of expertise and I have no control over that $30,000 ceiling, which locks me out of any kind of competition policy. Under that ceiling and in 30 years I have not been able to set aside any reserves so I have no flexibility there and the only flex expenditure capability available has been revolving credit card debt. I am starting to feel liberalized, but am missing the stability. With the current look of the real estate market, mortgage and foreclosure scandal an auction market has been created. The Friedman ideology claims this type of market strengthens the financial system. From all appearances that suggests a low end and single worker under that $30,000 a year ceiling is not part of the 'financial system'. Since I am one of the foreclosure numbers, yes I will be liberalized further and free of a house mortgage, but in this I am giving up property rights and future land ownership is out of the question. How can I stabilize under that scenario? Stability should not be predicated on land/house ownership alone. It includes health and mental/emotional stability to build a solid, strong infrastructure, along with academic training and other social components. This developing country faces a conundrum. I am losing my house so I am not stable and I am not totally liberalized because I have a $9,000 student loan of which I look at as a government bailout from which I cannot remove government interference. At this point I am unsure that a push for more academics, education and knowledge is the right approach for this developing country. I am still in cyclical debt from which there is no escape and no jobs on the horizon. Developed countries are allowed to export, but the only thing this developing country has to export is myself, but employers out there, small or large don't want anything to do with this export. This country though had to allow an import. The student loan and could take advantage of current credit card account, but both are special interests strip mining my country and using me as a bet and hedge on exchange rate movements that leave me disadvantaged. I don't think education is not a long-term investment. What a person is taught changes with time so what is learned 30 years ago doesn't necessarily apply to the current events of today. For instance, I can't speak Spanish so I am locked out of job with any company needing Spanish speakers. Simple, but true, so this country cannot invest in that foreign investment/emerging market. If I am a student I can be given capital supply from sources like student loans from the supposed standpoint of making myself more marketable to employers, but I have no resources or resource allocation during or upon graduation that would insure I would be employed so I am able to repay that capital supply and the condition placed on it of six months is one condition too many for an underdeveloped and unemployed country/individual. I have a balanced budget, I am insured for two more months by the unemployment system, I have no revolving credit card debt, I have active and critical media at my disposal should I decide to send this writing into the public forum...I seem to fit the model of economic stability as best I am able. But what really took me down in the land ownership arena are two things. Adjustable rate mortgages and refinance dumping fees at a $10,000 pop each time when I was trying to put the kids through school, keep cars functioning and remain healthy, plus paying out the nose to look for work and paying high gas fees to commute 100 miles a day to the only available and offered employment. I know my cynicism shows through and perhaps indicates to others my communication skills are not up to par, but I have passed every class I have ever taken in that area and public speaking as well. I am surrounded by unspoken unfair trade laws. I am overlooked, sold short, not being imported and not allowed to export, even myself. My land was devalued right before my eyes with the adjustable loan and high interest rates, but I had no control over its regulation and I have no control over my insurance, that of unemployment, but I do have more blindsided work to do since that insurance goes into a Chase account causing me to chase one account to take money out and redeposit into 'my' bank that is attached to all my obligations through online accounts. It is a paper chase to meet the timing and sequencing of numerous deadlines and due dates. I don't see where I might have the remotest chance of locating any competitive edge. I am a developing country and yet a woman without one. I have no community and I can't restructure under Chapter 11, because I have no debt that falls under the confines of it, or under Chapter 7, because I had to do that five years ago. Due to that I was able in the short-run to remain in my house/land/country those five years, but in the long run my societal structure has not changed. I even graduated from college, but it hasn't helped. No transformation of society is known in this developing country and I have no money to leave it. Globalization and economic policy is destroying a lot of developing countries, including the individuals within them. The war on terror has also changed the face of the U.S. making it a non-country so the middle-class and homeless/developing countries now live in a non-country with a contracted government. We need a new infrastructure. Give us back our self-worth and self-respect. We need support from our own government. Want, desire and passion combined with social context of environment and culture spur innovation forward. Money alone and fiscal balance is not the answer. Timing is Everything Sequencing Components Planning, prioritizing, timing, and sequencing of implementation are components to consider when doing anything, but what are ignored most often are mission, objective and transparency. As individuals and developing countries we know our mission and objective but do we know the mission and objective of those who claim to want to help and are we allowed to know or pro-offered the 'open door' to know, much less allowed to see the transaction statements, financial or otherwise, from the IMF, IRS, and government of any kind? Student government loans for instance are sequenced and given at the time the school needs to be paid, but oddly enough usually after tuition is due. Focus is taken off of learning and the 'burden of proof' to pay is laid on the student putting them in a position to re-register and 'chicken with the head cut off' commencement ensues. The student need, current debt load, or aspiration is not the focus. The previous year tax statement predicates the student need, which is not relative to the current need. The student is the one who has to time it just right and somehow know politics and economics (the inner workings of the system) before getting started, but ironically they are going in to learn about those subjects. At the onset they are compromised and contracted, and if they were not in debt before, they sure are now, and they are still jobless. Internships, of course, lie somewhere in the future, but they are limited in their scope, often by 20 hours a week for six months, most with no pay or very little, and competitors in the field of study are overbooked. A student's creativity, innovation and aspiration are controlled by this 'fuzzy' math and for the most part not part of the student's thought process. It is a crapshoot instilling instead the lure of gambling and further frustration. A lot of mistakes have been made by the IMF that may be on the long road to recovery in the ECONnoiter now, but will I see any changes that increase my bottom line or infrastructure before retirement or my last day on earth? I am 57 and very skeptical that I will ever see a second lesson in healthy economics. How it all works just shocks me. No Checks and Balances Auditors and Accountants Have Parameters Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine points to the devastating effects of Friedmanism through shock since 1965, shock in a literal sense with the help of the CIA and shock therapy experiments done in cahoots with Dr. Ewen Cameron in the 50's. To simplify it developing countries were contractually set up through the IMF, U.S. bailout/loans with strict conditions for repayment and immediate infiltration and occupation by U.S. corporations. With loans and debt repayment being the major focus of those loans, sequencing and other factors being ignored economic slumps, high unemployment, civil unrest and internal wars where people mysteriously disappeared became the norm for decades. According to Ms. Klein the economic policies of the Chicago Boys and the Berkeley Mafia underlie all those changes. It seems that same economic policy has created a caste system in the U.S. and the poor pay for everything without the benefit of what they pay for. The IMF began in July 1944 in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire during WWII. John Maynard Keynes was responsible, but the way it has operated is not what he envisioned and he would turn in his grave if he could. The IMF is a public institution and I am certain it has regulations and legal standards to comply with, so why is it different from other public institutions that are required to share their financial statements and other goings on? The IMF reports to finance ministers and central banks of the world but not to the people it affects. The collective will of the G-7, that being the seven most advanced industrial countries of the world and their finance ministers and treasury secretaries make all the decisions handed down by the IMF. Seven advanced countries dictate the money dole and repayment parameters to underdeveloped countries around the world. Is that balanced? The spectrum of weak government to an intrusive government deprives us of choice at both ends and has denuded the middle. The IMF's attention is put to fiscal balance, low inflation and budget balance or surplus, which in the 90's in East Asia exacerbated that crisis. The exchange rates and stock markets collapsed, the real estate bubble burst, investments and consumption fell and in 2008 this sounds like a repeat here in the U.S. Tax revenues will fall leaving a gap in the budget. It looks like the U.S. is in a position of 'beggar-thyself' in December 2008. We are now in recession officially. This 'R' the public is now so afraid of is the 'R' taken from reconnoiter. U.S. citizens cannot reconnoiter with the IMF, IRS or top government officials, much less top corporate officials when seeking employment. So what is left is simply ECONnoiter. This play on words is fitting considering this writing is full of analogy, simile, irony and cynicism, but please remember I am a product of the U.S. education system. I went to public schools (eight of them secondary), so surely there is some accountability there, or at least there should be. It has come to my attention that since the above economic disasters, where the IMF's hand in all of the failures, that reforms are being looked into, however slow and reluctant they are. They are budging on some issues, but still seem skeptical on democratic processes (p. 231) according to Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor in the economics department of Colombia University. Apparently they are holding fast to a colonial mentality and mind-set of infallibility, along with the free-market ideology of Adam Smith (p. 73). Adam Smith's ideology holds fast to market fundamentalism, one size fits all, and the thought that profits drive the economy of the world by the invisible hand of the IMF. The IMF negotiates its own economic statistics with no checks and balances and has a difficult time learning from its mistakes. Where is its outside auditor and watchdog? Everybody else has them. Another irony is that each individual in the U.S. is held accountable for past mistakes forever more. Even when they have learned from their mistakes they can't shake them. The data miners see to that at the behest of the government who hired the corporations to data mine, or at least contain it and add to it, sharing it without our knowledge, selling it, and not correcting it when it is wrong, then holding the individual responsible for its correction even at the cost of thirteen years or a lifetime. How is this strategy progressive leading to growth? Blame shifting mind-sets push for transparency for everyone else, while decision making behind closed doors continues in the IMF and WTO (World Trade Organization). (p. 112) The IRS does the same. We are required to turn in our financial statements every April, but we get no balance sheet from the IRS. The immutable law of accounting is that the sum of all deficits, add up to all surpluses. Why can't we see the statements and balance sheets of those entities? Where is the reciprocity? Seek and Destroy Continued War on the Home Front The corporations and the rich are the only strong in the U.S. Those who can not pay for their own security supplied by corporations and subcontractors of corporations, which are other poor touting guns and possessing little to no training, will be left to live if they can and dare under bridges or tin-roofed lean-tos lie those in Sri Lanka after the 2005 tsunami. (p. 391-98) The middle-class downsizing and nearly eliminated cross the board, I now rank with the poor after believing in the 'American Dream' while in the workforce forty years. U.S. citizens are conditioned to certain patterns of belief, which that one as illusive as it is, and an ever present carrot in front of the horse's mouth, as we trudge along like drat horses, supplying taxes, and getting no benefits or health care. Mr. Stiglitz said, "The middle class traditionally have been the group that has pushed for the rule of law...universal public education, ...the creation of the social safety net. ...(being the) essential elements of a healthy economy."(p. 84). With the middle-class disappearing erosion of a healthy economy the past 50 years and continued siege on it will wipe it out completely through fiscal and financial policy. Since 2001 the U.S. social make-up has changed to have even less government support since all facets of security and war are palmed off to corporatists, which according to Woodrow Wilson is another word for facist/facism. If a balanced budget is so important to the Friedman model why doesn't the U.S. have one? Now the U.S. is in a position to restructure the nuts and bolts of the corporations it employs. In GM, Ford and Toyota's likely more leverage and power will be given to the corporations and taxpayers will be holding the bag. A recently retired GM official admitted that the workers health care and retirement packages were slashed so GM could invest overseas. The branches overseas were financially disengaged from the U.S. corporation years ago with no taxation incurred. Asset prices continue to fall in the U.S., the dollar diminished. More money is moving out of the country to foreign investments and large corporations and all their assets are too. Market optimism still exists in the U.S. stock market, but speculation money regarding the exchange rate causes money to flow out of the country. A 'beggar-thy-neighbor' effect was set in motion in the 70's. Maybe Vietnam was just a smoke screen to keep us from seeing more money was being moved offshore. Perhaps a statement is being made by the invested middle-class also and they are switching their investments to more overseas areas because they view their votes don't count here due to electronic voting. It does seems to have caused further mistrust of the government and the process itself, along with looming terrorist threats and heightened security measures, not to mention identity theft. History tells us large bailout strategies do not work. It is like offering insurance for no premiums. (Stiglitz. p. 201) Firms who choose not to insure themselves against the devaluation cause the problem of economic disruption by exchange rate devaluation. (Stiglitz, p. 203). The IMF leaves the door open for firms to expect bailouts at no cost to themselves. Their major focus is credit repayment, bill collecting and to maintain exchange rates. These rates reflect perspectives of the financial community, commercial interests and the stock market. (Stiglitz, p. 211) Their focus is not U.S. workers' retirement or health, but high-end financial community and commercial interests. Are capitalists driven by Friedmanism ideology and free market cure-alls true believers in altruistic motives of democracy or are they rationalizing their geed by becoming no better than Hitler purifying a culture and molding it to its own perfect ideal where only the 'rich' romp in glorified castles know as high-end resorts savoring the 'good-life'? If self-relation works it appears to only for the rich. Strip mining through Data mining Growth Stunting Like the birth of a nation or a birth of a new god, non-believers are bludgeoned to death to get the rest of the populace to convert to a new belief system. We in the U.S. are being bludgeoned by incarceration, lock-down, and strangulation with no jobs, no placed to live, no privacy, no money, no Social Security and higher taxation without representation. It is not surprising that our identities are easily stolen with so much data being mined by so many people and changing hands so often. The demographics in data mines can easily weed out the poor and manipulate them by offering up temptations of gaming, gambling, and free alcohol during that course, along with the enticement of 'buy me, buy me' in the subliminal commercials every six minutes selling everything under the sun for four minutes and repeating the cycle six minutes later. Some components of war are land mines. We have data mines. The U.S. is strip mined of wood for housing that sits unoccupied and unsold, the land is stripped of nutrients and lack of crop rotation, and people are stripped of their privacy and anonymity through data mining. Where are the watchdogs for companies like Experian, TransUnion, Equifax, Choicepoint, Genysis, Accenture, Seisint, Verint, Acxiom, LexisNexis and other data miners? (O'Harrow) As well as IMF, WTO, Federal Reserve Bank which is a private bank not government? There is no choice of employment now but retail and fast food at minimum wage or less. As if you can even get hired by those entities unless you are a foreigner. Choicepoint told my brother he was an incarcerated inmate in Texas even though he lived in Wyoming. He applied for a job and was turned down. The letter he received from Choicepoint was mailed to his home in Wyoming. How can that happen and who could compose such a letter telling him he was in a Texas prison when he received the letter in Wyoming? There is that corporate ladder if you can ever get on it, but if you have a police or DMV record, you won't be able to. If we have no assets we are easy targets for economic genocide. Installation of more fear is what Homeland Security has offered the U.S. citizens. The public was blindsided and had no say in the implementation of cameras at every street corner. Privacy invasion with wiretapping done under the guise of the 'Patriot Act of 2001 and the 'War on Terror' all but stripped the 'Privacy Act of 1974'. Citizens have less freedom to inquire about their own accounts through the 'Freedom of Information Act'. If we are not on the corporate payroll we are terror suspects and we are locked out of getting on the payroll thanks to the data miners. The 'No Child Left Behind Act' of 1987 was another smoke screen, which reduced the teacher workforce. Schools (Klein, p. 408-22) are being privatized and turned into charter schools. The takeover in Louisiana after Katrina is a prime example. ECONnointer is a soup base where revolution, counterrevolution and anarchy can breed. Welcome to the Soup Kitchen Stand in Line for the Bludgeons Deja vu. The poor are lined up and drugged with Lies, Subterfuge and Deceit, the LSD of the 21st century. After this mortgage scandal, the next ones on the list are the less rich and invested middle-class that hasn't disappeared yet. The government or IRS has a loophole to usurp its citizens' money at death. Even now a person's income is assimilated back into the system, call it government if you want, at 75% or more through taxation, cyclical debt of credit cards, mortgage interest and other loans. If we are lucky up to 20% of what we earn we are able to use for enjoyment of life. Account owners of any retirement funds can't use it without it being doled out and if they need it all penalties come into play. Generally they die before they can use it and then it is taken unless it is in life insurance and under a living beneficiary, but what is over $2 million in an IRA or other savings account you will lose. This is current tax code anyway, but the codes change every year. Where does our tax money really go? According to Ms. Klein's take on our government it is hollow and has contracted its services to corporations. Our taxes are being given to corporate firms. In 2003 the total contracts given out were 3,512 for national security and in 2006, 115,000, all at no contest, no bidding and no competition. (Klein, p. 291-9) Is any of this democratic? Bibliography Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Metropolitan, 2007. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents, W.W. Norton, 2002. Robert O'Harrow, No Place To Hide, Free Press, Simon and Schuster, 2005. In general I see the people of U.S. living in delusion. Politics, economics and history are on the back burner while entertainment, fun, games, and enjoyment of the fruits of our labor are paramount. In part the American Dream is to be safe, get a good education, have a career, own a house and partake of those fruits, but to attain that money has to be involved and to put it simply, monies overuse filters through cyclical debt, whether it is credit cards or a home. We march to the beat of the banker's drum. We are 'dumbed' down by entertainment and 'numbed' down by shocking events. People in my social clime never talk about it. I admit it is easier to live in ignorance with someone than it is to live in knowledge and be alone in it
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