Branson's Answers

  High-flying Richard Branson has been on a decades-long quest for answers to the big questions that face us.  His iconic status has put him at the forefront of the Conversation of a Generation.  He has created a forum for discussion that he calls Capitalism 24902 (the measure of the circumference of the earth). 

No anti-capitalist, Branson has been profit-making from the growing unrest over monopolistic free-booting that marks the genre.  He was demonstrating his dissent with single-purpose profiteering long before Occupy Wall Street became a cry for fairness and equity in the streets of America.  As such, he embodies the hope that enterprises can be self-sustaining, profitable and provoke social change.

Branson’s latest gambit is a book called Screw Business as Usual, which backgrounds his version of what The Economist calls his “philanthrocapitalism” in its latest issue.  The spark for this discussion is a fire that recently levelled his house on Necker Island, off the coast of Virgin Gorda and one of the minor British Virgins.  Necker Island is where Branson has huddled with rock stars, innovators and icons of equity and fairness like Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela to talk about ways to change the world.

A Caribbean retreat is a long way from the cold concrete squats of middle America.  So are the third world conditions Branson wants to correct.  But the principle of making more with lemons than mere personal fortunes is central to both trains of thought. 

Branson’s new book can be a primer for anyone who thinks seriously about where the “Occupy” movement could turn its attention next.  

Occupy the Blogosphere

Occupation forces have gone into hibernation in many places as the authorities have moved in to shut down their encampments. But the melody should linger on. Economic disparity certainly will.

In an effort to do our part, Prophets of Boom will feature two kinds of posts over the coming months. The first stream will be drawn from a book manuscript written a decade ago but unpublished because nobody was ready to acknowledge the threat posed to individual and collective sovereignty by mounting debt loads. Entitled "Futurehype", each post in the series will describe how North Americans were lulled into thinking that the honeypot of postwar prosperity was bottomless. 

 There will be stories of naiveté, of greed and of gullibility, to be sure.  American Greed wasn’t just discovered to explain the credit crash of 2008.  More to the point, there will be accounts of how faith in technology and the pipeline of mass communications overheated expectations.  In a real way we allowed ourselves to be brainwashed by our own ingenuity.  In the process, we lost sight of our core values. That, basically, is how we let ourselves get in so deep. 

 The second stream of posts in this blog will be based on our search for answers out of the current economic de-stabilization.  In this search we will be asking whether the Conversation of a Generation is beginning to take shape.  Is there anything happening out there to give us hope that the most innovative and productive society in history can work its way out of this slump?  What are people proposing to do differently?

 This series will not be a simplistic critique of capitalism run amok.  Rather, it will be an exploration of ways to shape our collective experience for the common good.

 Has Occupy Wall Street really signalled the start of something big?  Or are we programmed to sleepwalk into a new Dark Ages? 

 Along the way, readers will be urged to look for solutions themselves and tell the rest of us what they have found out.  We will be … and we will post our findings as they emerge.   

Boulevards of Broken Dreams

The conversation of the generation is far from coherent.  Dismantling of the camp-style occupations across North America is inevitable because civic authorities and police have the clout of municipal public safety ordinances and criminal law behind them.  But it has been kicked off with a messy display of unrest in hundreds of communities. 

By accepting all comers, as recommended in the last post, the gene pool of earnest protesters was certain to become diluted by malingerers and mere malcontents. It may have been glib to exhort people to “Just Show Up.”  Confrontational face-offs in city parks, vacant lots and boulevards of broken dreams were sure to occur when these unruly assemblies squared off with officialdom bent on enforcing public health and safety regulations.  But it was called for all the same.

Make no mistake -- the boulevards will be cleared, if not by official edict, by the relentless cycle of the seasons.  The last chance before the freeze to exhibit outrage at rampant greed and runaway free market dogma through outdoor housekeeping is upon us.  Some demonstrators have been better housekeepers than others and the movement is being defined by the habits of a messy few.

Demonstrators are making the most of the opportunity through resistance to the order to decamp.      

But it’s time to practise indoor housekeeping again.  There will be other opportunities to demonstrate.  Income disparity is as certain as death and, yes, taxes.  That’s because of who holds power – and who doesn’t.  

It’s time for the boulevardiers to stand down before things get any uglier.  Violence should never be the hallmark of this movement and that too is inevitable the longer the standoffs prevail.

The importance of the occupy movement is that it marked the moment when the conversation of the generation began in earnest.  In that alone it has accomplished something momentous. 

Is It Time to Just Show Up?

Woody Allen may have said it best.  Eighty per cent of success is showing up. 

The time may not be right for Occupy Wall Street to forge a common message.  But a unified slogan could be just the thing for the moment when critics are trying to debunk the movement for its formlessness.

"Just Show Up" could serve the purpose.

Six million Americans have been out of work for more than six months.  If that doesn't qualify people to protest against the greed and opportunism that has exploited them, what would?  The thing about the six million -- and all their dependents -- is that most of the time they're invisible.  So it's hard to imagine how much misery and shame that represents.

As long as people who are suffering from the system's excesses remain huddled by the hearth -- as long as the unemployed protest their fate from corner bar stools across America -- they can be dismissed as an inevitable consequence of capitalism.

Right-thinking people know they are not.  Increasingly, they represent the silent majority.  Instead of being shuffled out of sight, isn't it time for the real majority to JUST SHOW UP?

Ex-PM in Synch With Protesters

Anyone who thinks the Occupy Wall Street movement has no relevance for Canadians may be surprised to see former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney offering his sympathetic take on the protests.  Mulroney understands how Canada's economy is driven by what happens in the U.S.

As prime minister, Mulroney saw first-hand how Canadian fiscal policy is defined by the international money markets,  leading him to champion free trade as a means to achieve global competitiveness.
Small wonder that Mulroney has joined Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney in raising a supportive voice on behalf of the protests. 

Marginal living standards are becoming the great leveller in North America as the middle class is hollowed out after putting all its faith in free markets.  Ironically, while its equal opportunity they want, Americans -- and Canadians to a lesser degree so far -- are finding equality at the bottom of the income spread.

Some commentators dismiss the occupations as copycat displays, preferring to credit the prudence of Canada's chartered banks for sparing us from the fate that has befallen our U.S. neighbours. 

But they only need to look at the soaring debt load in this country to understand how Canadian consumers are poised to share the same fate.             

Mapping the Occupation

The previous post was entitled Occupy the Western World as a reflection of what is happening as much as an exhortation.   This embedded link shows how The Guardian has mapped how the Occupy Wall Street ethos has gone viral throughout Europe and the Americas.  

The Guardian has geo-tagged all the locations where "Occupy" demonstrations have occurred in recent days and accompanied the satellite map with a spread sheet recording numbers, links to sources and available photographic records of each event.

It's a fascinating record of how an irresistible idea -- equality of opportunity -- cannot be supressed despite decades of social engineering inspired by a culture that exhalts individual achievement.  It's an archive of collective will.     

Occupy the Western World

Occupy Wall Street is still a burgeoning, largely moderate collection of interests

So far the violence-prone anti-global hoardes haven’t taken over.  The odds are that either they will or at least that there will be a clash between the moderates in the movement, who are openly declaring themselves, and the extremists who like to wear black masks.

Nobody with any sense is arguing that capitalism should be dismantled, only that its excesses must be reduced.  Equality of opportunity is the goal, not chaos.

But the longer the movement continues as a formless mass, the greater the likelihood that it will be hijacked by extreme positions, violent or otherwise. 

Its shambolic state has certain advantages:  as long as it is undefined, it can be inclusive.  Until it adopts a manifesto – and by doing so defines the basis for negotiating a new social contract in America – the worst that can be said about its philosophy is that it is meaningless.  But this lack of precision is the very nourishment that allows the movement to grow.  For now, it appears to have sustainable momentum and the spontaneity that can attract new adherents. 

At this point, calls for the mass demonstrations to coalesce around a common theme would only fragment it.  However there is a limit to how long this street theater can remain formless, due to its vulnerability.     

Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney lent momentum to the movement when he gave his endorsement in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Carney told Peter Mansbridge that the Occupy Wall Street protests and their ilk, that hit Canadian cities on the weekend, are a “democratic expression of views’’ and “entirely constructive.’’ 

“It makes it more tangible, the challenges that that economy is facing, and it makes it more important to demonstrate success on issues such as financial reform,’’ he said.  Carney’s utterances couldn’t have been more apt.  Nor could they have been more potent since he is about to become the head of the Financial Stability Board, tasked with reforming the international banking system using Canada’s model.    

As moral authority goes, Carney’s utterance was as powerful as Warren Buffet’s assertion this summer that people like him aren’t paying their fair share for public services.  And it is more timely, since the replacement of the FSB’s current chairman takes place next month. 

It’s vital for the momentum of Occupy Wall Street to be sustained right now.  That’s because, like Sisyphus, Carney is having to push a very large bolder up a hill.  Europe’s money managers are slow to respond to demands for a trillion-dollar infusion to shore up the continent’s banking system.  Canadian spokesmen have told the Europeans that action is already overdue and further delay will only make it harder to stabilize the system. 

Carney could use the evidence that there is a growing impatience with the status quo throughout the western world.  This virtual constituency, uncontrollably linked by social media, is becoming a new political reality much larger than national boundaries. 

Due to its common cause – angered and frustrated by being disinherited and futureless -- it is becoming the basis for a new global political reality.  To falter now would remove a powerful force for change just when it is most needed.              

Right Brain is Empty

CBC's hired mogul Kevin O'Leary is stumped by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges' coherent description of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Hedges vows not to re-appear with Canada's answer to the Fox News mouthpiece.  O'Leary doesn't seem able to grasp plain speaking.

If there is to be a productive debate over solutions to the hollowing-out of western capitalist-style democracies, this clip shows it will take debaters who can put their case without resorting to cheap TV trash talk.  As a supporter of "Friends of Canadian Broadcasting" we understand the CBC's effort to balance the conversation by giving air time to both sides.  But surely the right can find somebody capable of representing their position without caricaturing their ideology. 

Name-calling and character-bashing. are the redoubt of the empty-headed.  Those are not the people who are going to dig America out of its slough of despair.

O'Leary reflects the most simplistic side of the argument and real life just isn't that simple for most people.  That's why the Wall Street protesters are calling themselves The 99 Per Cent.  Instead of  profiting from sure-fire formulas for capital gain, most people are struggling to feed, clothe and heat themselves.  O'Leary should try that for a while and see if his simple-mided solutions can dig him out.             

Conversation of a Decade

As we said when we launched Prophets of Boom, the crisis brought on by credit default swaps in 2008 and the subsequent collapse of the U.S. housing market would begin a conversation that will likely last a decade or more.  Young Americans who fear they are being disinherited by the excesses of the elites have brought the debate about their future out into the open with their move to occupy Wall Street

The movement is spreading to cities across the U.S. and there has been online chatter from the West Coast about expanding it to include main streets in Canada.   The power of the internet to mobilize like-minded people is being demonstrated to anyone who cares to check. 

In fact, the conditions that move New Yorkers to demonstrate at the altar of capitalism are being felt everywhere that the powerless are being dominated by others.  Increasingly in America thanks to skewed expectations, downloading of public expenditures to communities in crisis and outright greed, the conditions for dissent are being defined by one's distance from the centers of power.  That distance can be measured in miles, money and years of experience.  A very large constituency exists within those parameters - one that is finding its voice and exploring its influence.

The system of goverenance that was devised to harness regal and economic power for the collective good is seen to be failing.  Web-based means are mobilizing an opposition that is far more united and adroit than traditional politics or the ballot box.  How these dynamics play out in the coming decade could change policies or it could change the democratic system itself.   

One thing is clear:  contemporary leaders will need the widsom of the founding fathers to fashion a compromize that will satisfy the parties to this debate.  So far they have mostly been mute. 

Debate Spills Into the Street

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezYoxIYJjSo

Occupy Wall Street has become the rallying cry for young Americans galvanized by news of an impending "double dip" recession.  Incensed at the erosion of their individual and collective sovereignty in the face of mounting debt loads, demonstrators are flooding onto Main Streets across the U.S. to register their dissent. 

As demonstrators turn their wrath against iconic targets like Wall Street, they don't appear to be in a mood for discussion.  Neither do the police and civil authorities, as hundreds of protesters were arrested over the weekend. 

This confrontation has been brewing for decades as the Prophets of Boom have overheated industrial economies until they are ready to burst.  Cooler heads have failed get decision-makers to heed the warning signs in the face of immediate gratification and unlimited growth.  Now the heat is on them, as common folk demand an historic settling of accounts. 

While expectations that took generations to set are being crushed by the economic news and by the authorities' reflex reactions,  it looks like the discussion has spilled out of the usual forums for democractic debate.  All the momentum is with the protesters, acting spontaneously and fuelled by  Web-induced fervour.  Little likelihood, then, that the demonstrations will cool down quickly.

The situation has all the elements of a sustained confrontation.  Not since the Vietnam War has there been such widespread protest in the U.S.  With no visible leadership and limitless energy, the people on the street must take their inspiration from non-violent figures like Ghandi, Mandela and King.  Political and public safety authorities will need to keep control over the police.  Without some self-control, the vision of America will soon be turned from a dream state into a horror show.             

  

       

The Future: A Dog's Life?

Since the Second World War, merchandisers have devised many new ways to exploit consumers’ ingrained fascination with the future.  From Chrysler’s “Forward Look” in the Fifties to the timeless exhortations of life insurance peddlers, the promise of the future has been a consistent advertising hook.

Now a major pet food producer has launched the first TV commercial designed for dogs.

The Nestlé corporation is using a high-frequency pitch in the commercial to grab the animals’ attention in a 23-second spot for its Beneful brand.  According to Reuters, the concept was being tested in Austria this week featuring a high-pitched sound similar to a dog whistle.  The commercial is said also to embody a squeak like pet toys emit.

Imagine how the focus testing must have gone:

Prompt:  Would those members of the pack who heard the squeak please respond?

Response: Woof

Prompt:  Describe the vision that it brings to mind

Response: (Scratch)    

Prompt:  What do you think of when you hear that sound?

Response:  (Yawn)

Prompt:  Could you in the second row find something else to lick while we do this test?

Response: Muffled bark …

Maybe the test result will convince Nestlé’s marketing team that dogs live in the moment -- not where consumers spend most of their time.     

       

Brinkmanship Blues

While North Americans are staring over the precipice, it’s worth reflecting on how we came to the brink.  The credit collapse that began in 2008 occurred when too many Wall Street whiz kids arrived at the same calculation:  that the smart money was on anyone who could arrange to make a few points by betting on defaults and then selling their bets.  Credit default swaps became the rage just long enough to crash the gasbag of false hopes that sustained an economy held aloft by expectations of perpetual growth.

Meanwhile, most economists were caught up in the same assumptions.  They figured on endless upward curves that held an unbreakable allure for anyone whose own fortunes were based on the same assumptions. Throughout the last half of the 20^th Century in America, the economy was held aloft by vested interest as surely as it was by any superior ability to predict human behaviour. 

The whole house of glass, held up by hubris, is about to come down.  Political leaders who depend on mass support seem unprepared to make the selfless and unpopular  decisions required to set things right.  They have no models to fall back on to pattern their responses.  The New Deal-style solutions that propelled America out of the Depression under Roosevelt have proven to be insufficient under Obama.  It looks like we’re heading back into recession – or worse -- despite all the stimulus of the past two years.

With the global scope of the problem now confronting us, America can’t buy the rest of the Western world out of trouble.  China or India can’t be expected to do so either, 

As David Cameron told the House of Commons in Ottawa yesterday, it’s a “DEBT” problem we’re really facing – not a credit crunch, as it was called the last time.  People can blame the tight-fisted banks for their misfortune – and there is plenty of blame to go around among all those who extended easy credit to people who didn’t know how deep a hole they were digging, or seem to care.

But it comes down to the realization that the same individual choices that created such a mess will have to dig us out of this one.  Debt-driven consumerism held the postwar economy aloft because people who were bombarded with marketing hype believed their bubble would never burst. 

When it comes right down to it, sovereign debt is a collectivity of personal choices.  National sovereignty is little more than the aggregation of individual rights, bounded by historic geographic hopes. 

In the end, the same stiffened resolve that carved new nations out of wilderness homesteads will be the only salvation.  It’s going to be painful but pure and simple to behold. 

Spending Us Over the Brink

Canadians have been lulled into the believing that the traditional conservatism of our chartered banks has insulated us from the economic chaos that has infected the U.S. and major parts of Europe.   Fundamentally, overextended national accounts on both continents have clouded the futures of Greece, Italy and Spain.  Their position threatens the global picture.

While it's true that Canada weathered the 2008 collapse in the U.S., our own credit culture is weaker than many imagine.  Now Statistics Canada is reporting that the ratio of household debt to income is nearing an astonishing 150 per cent.  Of course this might come as a surprise to consumers of  Statscan reports.  But it won't shock the thousands of middle-class Canadian families who are struggling to keep up with the payments on their credit accounts.

Much of that credit was accumulated while Canadians were surfing the wake of a healthy U.S. economy, fed in part by exports from America's biggest trading partner.  Now the U.S. is digging in its heels with Obama's new jobs program that could stifle cross-border trade and tip our economy in the direction of our neighbour's.

Until now Canadians have shown little sign that they are ready to enter into a dialogue about how to rebalance our accounts to restore our individual and collective fiscal sovereignty.  As long as we are willing to ride along on America's coat tails, we can expect similar results.  Mimicking their credit-driven consumer culture is going to catch up with us sooner or later.  At the rate it's happening, we're almost there.                    

A Reason to Riot

Tom Friedman has put his finger on a key reason for the underclass revolts occurring in Arabia, Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere this year.  They differ in format, but share some In a few words, here it is:

"There are multiple and different reasons for these explosions, but to the extent they might have a common denominator I think it can be found in one of the slogans of Israel’s middle-class uprising: “We are fighting for an accessible future.” Across the world, a lot of middle- and lower-middle-class people now feel that the “future” is out of their grasp, and they are letting their leaders know it."

 Read the rest of his column in today's New York Times by clicking on the link in the "Like Minds" column on the left of this screen.

Is the U.S. Hearing Voices?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/business/global/china-a-big-creditor-says-us-has-only-itself-to-blame.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25

Already U.S. legislators are arguing that Standard and Poor doesn't have the depth or the right to downgrade the nation's vaunted credit rating.  Washington's high-lifers have proven their inability to listen to each other time and again since President Obama put the medicare issue on the table.  Now they want to deny the obvious consequence of their inability to agree on anything important except another declaration of war.  Nobody is ready to invest the same level of trust in America that has driven its economic juggernaut since the Second World War.  At least they didn't start that one, so maybe they were entitled to benefit from some of the socio-industrial fallout that it generated. Now even -- and maybe especially -- their own voters are fed up.

China, the U.S.'s largest creditor, has weighed in with some harsh words about America's addiction to debt.  The Chinese should know, since they hold more than a trillion dollars of it.  Undiplomatic as their message may have been, the Chinese seem to be learning that the only way to be heard in America's bellicose political culture is to shout.  If so, this is going in the wrong direction, for the escalation of rhetoric between superpowers can have only one likely outcome.           

Waking Up is Hard To Do

Jeffrey Simpson has entered a dialogue that will occupy a generation. The dream being what it is, it is a background debate that will go on while low interest rates and short memories continue to obscure the reality. The dreamers have been content to live on the backs of others for more than a century. But now it is all beginning to break down, with the latest rupture occurring throughout the Middle East. Check out his latest column for a perspective on the quandary of our age. The question is, what are each of us doing about it?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/wake-up-americans-your-economic-dream-is-a-nightmare/article1913689/comments/

Passing the Buck

A friend who saw the Irishman's explanation passed this long:.
He thought it was a simple but clever explanation of how a bailout happens:


"It is a slow day in a damp little Irish town. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit. On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the town, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night. The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel. The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the pub. The publican slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit. The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note. The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything. At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town. No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism.