Month: November 2010

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Reference: Wall Street Does NOT Produce Value

Blog Wisdom
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

Attached is a first rate essay that should be studied carefully.  Chuck

ANNALS OF ECONOMICS

WHAT GOOD IS WALL STREET?

Much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless.

by John Cassidy, New Yorker

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

For years, the most profitable industry in America has been one that doesn’t design, build, or sell a single tangible thing.

. . . . . .

Most people on Wall Street, not surprisingly, believe that they earn their keep, but at least one influential financier vehemently disagrees: Paul Woolley, a seventy-one-year-old Englishman who has set up an institute at the London School of Economics called the Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality. “Why on earth should finance be the biggest and most highly paid industry when it’s just a utility, like sewage or gas?” Woolley said to me when I met with him in London. “It is like a cancer that is growing to infinite size, until it takes over the entire body.”
. . . . . .
Full Source Online

Perhaps the most shocking thing about recent events was not how rapidly the big Wall Street firms got into trouble but how quickly they returned to profitability and lavished big rewards on themselves. Last year, Goldman Sachs paid more than sixteen billion dollars in compensation, and Morgan Stanley paid out more than fourteen billion dollars. Neither came up with any spectacular new investments or produced anything of tangible value, which leads to the question: When it comes to pay, is there something unique about the financial industry?  [Answer: no, they are overpaid but not held accountable.]

. . . . . .

In 1940, a former Wall Street trader named Fred Schwed, Jr., wrote a charming little book titled “Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?,” in which he noted that many members of the public believed that Wall Street was inhabited primarily by “crooks and scoundrels, and very clever ones at that; that they sell for millions what they know is worthless; in short, that they are villains.” It was an extreme view, but public antagonism toward bankers and other financiers kept them in check for forty years. Economic historians refer to a period of “financial repression,” during which regulators and policymakers, reflecting public suspicion of Wall Street, restrained the growth of the banking sector. They placed limits on interest rates, prohibited deposit-taking institutions from issuing securities, and, by preventing financial institutions from merging with one another, kept most of them relatively small. During this period, major financial crises were conspicuously absent, while capital investment, productivity, and wages grew at rates that lifted tens of millions of working Americans into the middle class.

Since the early nineteen-eighties, by contrast, financial blowups have proliferated and living standards have stagnated. Is this coincidence? For a long time, economists and policymakers have accepted the financial industry’s appraisal of its own worth, ignoring the market failures and other pathologies that plague it. Even after all that has happened, there is a tendency in Congress and the White House to defer to Wall Street because what happens there, befuddling as it may be to outsiders, is essential to the country’s prosperity. Finally, dissidents like Paul Woolley are questioning this narrative. “There was a presumption that financial innovation is socially valuable,” Woolley said to me. “The first thing I discovered was that it wasn’t backed by any empirical evidence. There’s almost none.” ♦

Phi Beta Iota: The Republic has lost the art of seeing the Big Picture.  The failure of the US infected all other countries.  Failed states have risen from 25 or so to over 175, and the USA is now on the verge of becoming a failed state itself.

See Also:

Journal: Reflections on Integrity

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Bankruptcy of US Economy, Federal Reserve Malfeasance

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Blue Collar

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Class War (Global)

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Corporate & Transnational Crime

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Corporate Lack of Integrity or Intelligence or Both

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Elite Rule

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Middle Class

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Poisons, Toxicity, Trash, & True Cost

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Poverty

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on War Complex—War as a Racket

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Reference: The Modern Big Picture–Two Minds

Analysis, Articles & Chapters, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Geospatial, History, InfoOps (IO), IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Open Government, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Real Time, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Extract from Conclusion in the Above:  I have observed the World Game as a student-participant, and wish it well. I have also observed Bob Pickus's work, as a student-participant in Turn Toward Peace, and wish him well. There are still other alternatives, but whichever road leads us faster into a world without war, what I gain most from Pickus and Fuller is their sense of the Big Picture. No one else can match their indefatigable and comprehensive efforts to see the problem whole, and to steer the world's energy into a grand design of peace.

See Also:

Who's Who in Collective Intelligence

Who's Who in Peace Intelligence

BigPictureSmallWorld

BigPicture Consulting

Design Science Lab

Global Education Lab

EarthGame

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Journal: US Secret Intelligence Tasking US Diplomats

02 Diplomacy, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Secrets, Methods & Process, Officers Call
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Insofar as I know, the DoD military Services remain under broad and explicit proscription from accessing the Wikileaks site or the Wikileaks releases in any form.  Some of the Service directives are very intimidating, threatening court martials for military members, loss of security clearances, etc., etc.  From the broadcast media, it appears that major lockdowns of information will shortly follow.  And SPC Bradley Manning, currently confined at Quantico, will probably walk as, I suspect, will Hasan at Fort Hood.  MA

Phi Beta Iota: This demonstrates that the National Clandestine Service (NCS) is completely ignorant of what can be known through open sources, and that the Secretary of State is not doing her job of assuring that diplomacy is not micro-tasked into what are clearly clandestine and covert operations support functions absolutely not appropriate to diplomatic status.  These people should not have message release authority.  The US Government needs a total make-over.  First, however, CIA needs a director that is fully capable on day one.

U.S. Expands Role of Diplomats in Spying

By MARK MAZZETTI

November 28, 2010

WASHINGTON — The United States has expanded the role of American diplomats in collecting intelligence overseas and at the United Nations, ordering State Department personnel to gather the credit card and frequent-flier numbers, work schedules and other personal information of foreign dignitaries.

Revealed in classified State Department cables, the directives, going back to 2008, appear to blur the traditional boundaries between statesmen and spies.

The cables give a laundry list of instructions for how State Department employees can fulfill the demands of a “National Humint Collection Directive” in specific countries. (“Humint” is spy-world jargon for human intelligence collection.) One cable asks officers overseas to gather information about “office and organizational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards; numbers of telephones, cellphones, pagers and faxes,” as well as “internet and intranet ‘handles’, internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent-flier account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information.”

Philip J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, on Sunday disputed that American diplomats had assumed a new role overseas.

Read the rest of this sad story….

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Journal: CIA Spastic, Kill It or Fix It (Panetta Goes…)

Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

(1) Not sure there's anything new here; (2) not sure the establishment agrees.  MA

Phi Beta Iota: If President Obama wishes to change the game, he needs to change his core staff including the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OPM), appoint the Coalition Cabinet he has been playing kitchen with, and slam Congress with the Electoral Reform Act (1 page, 9 points) in celebration of President's Day in February 2011.  Anyone voting no in a roll call vote will be scheduled for a recall initiative in their home state or district.   Similarly, if Director Clapper wishes to change the game to something that meets the needs of 100% of his legitimate clients 90% of the time (instead of just meeting the needs of the top tier 4% of the time), he needs to demand the right to appoint a new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), someone who is a kick-ass Big Picture thinker with both service across CIA, across the military intelligence functions (rank is a disqualifier) and with outside the wire experiences ideally including direct exposure to 66 countries interested in learning about Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), with M4IS2 deeply embedded as the next big thing “central” to “intelligence,” and a deep commitment to doing the right thing, not doing the wrong thing righter.  CIA could be the turning point for the Obama presidency.  How CIA goes in the next 180 days could well determine whether there is or is not a second Obama Administration.  The chances of anything good happening are under 30%.

CIA Ground Truth

Essay

C.I.A. Agents, Blowing Their Own Cover

By ALEX BERENSON

November 26, 2010

This summer, a former spy who calls himself ­Ishmael Jones got into trouble with his old bosses at the Central Intelligence Agency.

No, the agency didn’t put out a contract on his life or ship him to Guantánamo. Instead, in July, it sued Jones, the author of “The Human Factor: Inside the C.I.A.’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture,” accusing him of breaking his secrecy agreement and failing to get the required approval to publish. If the C.I.A. intended to make the book disappear, it failed. When the suit was reported last month, the book — a modest seller when first published in 2008 — shot up the Amazon rankings.

. . . . . .

Such cases [child wanna-bees that self-destruct] are common, Charles Faddis, a case officer for 20 years, argues in “Beyond Repair.” Faddis describes the agency as rife with incompetence at every level and compares its leadership training unfavorably with that of the military. “Sixty years after its founding,” he writes, the agency “has never developed any system for the selection, training and cultivation of leaders.” Even the Sept. 11 attacks did not produce meaningful change. Faddis argues that adding a director of national intelligence to oversee the agency simply imposed another layer of bureaucracy. Of the 4,000 new employees in the director’s office, “not a single one of them runs operations. Not a single one of them recruits assets or produces intelligence. What they do produce, however, is process, lots of it.”

The Real CIA

See Also:

2010 M4IS2 Briefing for South America

2000 ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World

Journal: Taliban Laughing–the Clowns Dance On…

Reference: Panetta Puts Lipstick on the Pig (Again)

Secrecy New Headlines–Over-Classification, Leaks, CIA Sues Author of The Human Factor

Journal: Chavez versus CIA–No Contest

Reference: Retired CIA officer–Fix the Agency

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Intelligence (Lack Of)

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Review: The Amish Way–Patient Faith in a Perilous World

5 Star, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Religion & Politics of Religion, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

5.0 out of 5 stars Three World-Class Authors on Amish Create Single Distillation

November 28, 2010

I bought this book because two colleagues, Howard Rheingold and Kevin Kelly, are both working on books about the Amish in relation to technology, with the key thought being that when the Amish adopt or accept any technology, they do so with deep reflection on how the technology will impact on them and their community for generations into the future.

One of a several books I went through on a trip to Chile and back, this book is immediately of distinction because it is a distillation of the experience and insights of three world-class authors on the Amish with fourteen books specifically on the Amish among them.

I agree with the first reviewer, this is a really excellent work. As I went through it, I learned, I was inspired, and I was grounded in both the grace and the hardship of being Amish.

The authors have organized the book, and the publishers have presented the book, in a very pleasing, easy-to-read, easy-to-appreciate manner.

In four parts (Spirituality, Community, Everyday Life, and Amish Faith and the Rest of Us), the authors achieve–without a single false note–both a synthesis of their broad and deep understanding of the minutia as well as the “big picture” of Amish reality, *and* a communication of what we who are not Amish can take from this practicum.

Most who strive to be converts do not make it. It is simply too hard a life for those who have not been bred to it from birth. It has many blessings, including family held close for generations, and it demands many sacrifices, some of which would assuredly be good for us, such as the refusal to accept industrialization of agriculture with all of its chemical poisons.

To emphasize the big picture importance of the Amish, I would observe that in other words I have read it is made clear that there are only two sustainable models of agriculture in the world today (beyond subsistence): the Amish and the Cuban. The latter developed because of the US embargo, demonstrating that the greatest gift we can bestow on other nations is to keep our chemical garbage away from them.

Permaculture is the third way.

This was an excellent read, and certainly a book that could fruitfully be read more than once. An excellent gift to anyone.

I am loath to waste the ten links allowed by Amazon, so here are some other books, generally centered on faith, that I consider most interesting.

Surrender to Kindness (One Man's Epic Journey for Love and Peace)
Reflections on Evolutionary Activism: Essays, poems and prayers from an emerging field of sacred social change
Global Shift: How A New Worldview Is Transforming Humanity (New Harbinger/Noetic Books) (co-published with the Institute of Noetic Sciences)
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
Faith- Based Diplomacy Trumping Realpolitik
Nelson's Complete Book of BIble Maps and Charts, 3rd Edition
Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West
God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It
Left Hand of God, The: Healing America's Political and Spiritual Crisis
The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners

See Also: Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Religion, at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.

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Review: Rebooting the American Dream–11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Best Practices in Management, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Democracy, Education (General), Justice (Failure, Reform), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Priorities
Amazon Page

Thom Hartmann

5.0 out of 5 stars Short Smart List, Not a Roadmap or Game Plan

November 28, 2010

I almost did not buy this book because I know all this stuff already, but out of respect for the author, who is one of a number of individuals including Jim Fallows, William Greider, Matt Miller, Margaret Wheatley, and Tom Atlee that I consider deeply ethical and inspired, I went ahead and bought it.

As expected, the book is a straight-forward, easy-to-understand “checklist” of eleven things in eleven short chapters, that will “save America.” This is where the book almost lost a star, because as good as the list is, it lacks both context and detail–there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by restoring the Constitution and demanding Electoral Reform legislation by 4 July 2011–and Thom, brilliant as he is, has not connected to the idea of Collective Intelligence and the urgency of harnessing the distributed intelligence of our Commonwealth.

Here is the “checklist” with very short critical comments.

Continue reading “Review: Rebooting the American Dream–11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country”

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Who’s Who in Peace Intelligence: Eduardo ALDUNATE Herman

Alpha A-D, Peace Intelligence

Eduardo ALDUNATE Herman

Major General Eduardo Aldunate has served as a Chilean Army officer since 1973. He has been an instructor and commander in mountain infantry units and special forces units and was the Deputy Force Commander of MINUSTAH between September 2005 and September 2006. He heserved as commander of Military Schools for the Chilean Army. He has written books and academic articles on military leadership and strategic and civilian-military relations for civilian and military publications.

Reference (2): United Nations Intelligence in Haiti

Worth a Look: Backpacks Full of Hope–The UN Mission in Haiti