on my head

we're all misfits

That's What I Want

I Feel Love

There Ain't No Sanity Clause

Big Leggy

sweet

2000th post

wow I need more hobbies

we can

la la la la la la la la

Sometimes when feeling a little down in the dumps I resort to the la la songs magic to cheer me up

a sure fire smile gatherer and mood adjuster if ever there was one

*slaps on his happy face and prepares to face the last day of work for the year*

sorted

Beedle's About

yeah right

wot a shocker

i guess u never been lonely

device

should I stay or should I go, now

I really can't decide... christmas party already booked in for tonight and to be honest its that time of year I'd rather do little than a lot

I know it won't be as good as '89 with Gray Clail and Tackhead... how could it be... but he's still one of my heroes

this may just come down to the line

potential for going - 70% depending on beer intake at christmas function and ability of friends to entice me along

mmm with that last line I can see the percentages increasing

best find out the playing times and decide - so not going if its stupid late

Mental Health Issues

its that time

2.67 kgs

Welcome to the world little Ivy Websta

I look forward to meeting you and informing you all about the mentalists you have for parents

and playing with you, maggie and baz

so happy

mega mix

what do we do with the

D, Bm, C, D and F, C, G, F, C, G

nice

DiY Guide

An instructional video for ensuring a happy home during this zombie-infested holiday season

I am animal, I am a teenage girl, I am confused

"I'm a teenage girl and I bumfuck dubstep.

I just never 'like' it because I'm connected to facebook, all my whorish friends wouldn't understand me."

Dubstep is more than wibble wobble basslines and farty noises

Notice the lack of generic in this tune

and mr derivative isn't home either

So would you bumfuck it?

and what the hell does that mean, I got the phrase from a youtub comment and am now deeply disturbed and shall never look a teen in the eye again

I have a feeling this week shall be long... and drunken with few moments for dubstep... its about the Greg Wilson re-edits and disco mixes for me

step into my office

sleepy times

walk me out.... my honey

I want to dance with somebody

I *heart* the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu

Trains!

900 trains, 12,000 wagons...

omg

tonight mathew I shall be that person once again

but who is that?

fenton... fenton... fenton... Fenton... FENTON....

gots to love the internets...

currently doing the rounds, or will be soon and a mainstay in my weeks English current affairs based comedies - the original clip, (TheNow Show, Have I Got News For You),

this makes me laugh props to the creator and dog owners in general

Generally I don't post the same thing to the blog, fassbok and twatter but in this instance I can't help myself

Context (with original clip): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsbvL7Bctjc

she's dead

I'm nervous

gotta love it when you find a new video for a song ya dig... from his recent NYC vist comes this wonderful video for Nervous by Pikachunes

solid

Sounds Of The San Francisco Adult Bookstores

Home with the lurgy... this is my feel better music... really

Nothing is safe from the farty bass

you can't argue with the result

New Zealand has spoke and it's three more National lead years.

Interesting times ahead, and the not easy shall continue for the foreseeable future.

Hold tight

Lovely Day off

Black Science Orchestra - Keep On Keepin' On |Road To Washington|

In a previous life I used to wander to work at some ungodly hour and get on with stuff before anyone else arrived - this suited me as I am easily distracted so better to get things done and then talk and mooch much of the day away than not.

At the time I was very taken with this particular track and so on arrival at work I'd crank this up on my stereo and get into the workday mood... sometimes I'd replay it a few too many times. Was good as they say.

Whilst I'd be doing this the cleaners (poor souls) would be there doing their business and I always thought they hated with a passion my daily fix until I finished at that role and during one of my final days the cleaner told me they'd miss my morning wake up calls - I guess it was better than being there on their own, or perhaps they dug the tune... or maybe just maybe it was my smiley face - nah doubt its that one, I can be quite the grumpy pants first thing - at least until I play the right piece of music or have caffeined myself into oblivion

Whatever the reason the tracks still a cracker and if I was still in that office in Ireland street no doubt I'd still be using it as my morning wakeup call....

These days I rely heavily on the wiggles - which might explain my death wish stare.

Good morning and good day.

A Medley

Walk me out

I condemn violence against women

White Ribbon offers men the opportunity to be part of the solution to end violence against women. Violence is endemic within New Zealand. One in three women are victims of violence from a partner, while on average fourteen women are killed each year by a member of their own family.

White Ribbon is a campaign led by men who condemn violence against women and take action. We are part of a global campaign committed to ending violence against women. You can help effect change by supporting White Ribbon.

Wearing a white ribbon is a personal pledge to never commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women. In 2011 our campaign focus will be on two things: what men can do to change attitudes toward violence; and developing a narrative around positive male role models.

nice place to bring up children

the mighty clean

tonight

whoop whoop

shorts ironed
hair slicked down
play buddy sorted

tick tick tick

think outside the square

A grown up diversion... or calling perhaps

the year i get it right

nunvember

Bats on Saturday night was a real pleasant gig... and yep I mean pleasant in all its very un rock and roll implications

laidback, understated and fun which suited me just fine after a long day drinking and eating in and around the grey lynn festival - first time I've made it to the actual park since moving to, um, right beside the park - good to see all the drop ins and visitors we even had a nice fenceside chat with Mayor Len Brwon as he made his way to the park... on reflection we should have offered him a beer

Now The Bats didn't play this puppy though, my fave from their extensivve catalogue

next up for me The Clean, whoop whoop

perhasp I need a playdate?

I

seems like a junior boys love in - it is

wow

Solid Gold Hell playing SPUD's Breakdowntown last night at Nunvember magic fucking magic

disco house its kinda the same

first gig of my Nunvember

with this lot

*excite*







shame I'm so knackered and have a show to attend beforehand... beer shall get me through

better be

I'm a simple soul

but I think this is real clever and a cracking tune to boot I've searched youtub many times over the past few years waiting for someone to upload this track.... now if someone would just do the davy graham tune I adore I'll only have several thousand more songs to find

...

night of chill blue

Always adored this band and song... and today thanks to She's So Rad I'm in a repeat play loop of happiness

Night of Chill Blue by She's So Rad

do yourself a favour and go listen and download their cover and whilst doing so click play below and enjoy the magic of this stunning song.

Happy are we?

musical interludes whilst sitting at work

eeeeeee

disco week

new week

a little bit different

After making your selection, copy and paste the embed code above.

more than a numbers game

Vier Personen

they're back

The walken dead

Whats going on?

wondering why... memory is mine

I wonder if you're there doing the good work that good work does or someplace else

I doubt you're playing the piano but having typed that it amuses me to think perhaps if bashing the keys this would be in your repertoire

sometimes I just think too much about stuff I shouldn't

like badgers performing in milk wearing lady gaga-esk costumes

and zombies

simply stunning

could be, might be, is it

take stuff seriously

options

we need more of this.. politics + music is good

my facebook friends

well I live with snakes and lizards

All Hallows' Eve

if only

Twilight Stolen

for fans of the Black Knight (not batman ya plonkers)

brain.. melting.. good

BIG BAD WOLF duck sauce from caviar on Vimeo.

Quantum Mechanics with Dr Brian Cox

Me During Dr Who And I'll Kill You

Rude & Deadly

Booyaka ya face

You Don't Know Me'

Keep The Fires Burning

yep

They came in the dark

yep

yep

occupy

tonight

Lets Go Swimming

Babyland - Pink Frost

dooooo

sad

So I watched the news

Switching between TV1 and 3's coverage of the days events.

This was quite novel for me as I've all but given up watching any broadcast TV completely these past few years. The Occassional five minutes here and there (usually fox news as I leave the house in the morning - its funny, ok), so on managing to first navigate the remotes and get the machines to work I was I must admit a tad shell shocked. All those ads and god most of them are badly made, well cheap is possibly more ot the point. Anyways I digress.

I watched the news, for the stranding of the Rena on Astrolabe Reef off the port of Tauranga concerns me greatly, not just because I care about our environment and country... but because for some seven years I lived in Mount Maunganui, back before the amalgamation into Tauranga city and the linking harbour bridge was errected - man it was a weird but wonderful small town (13,000) and community. Quite the sobering introduction to a wider NZ than my years in the South Island, thats for sure. So as an ex-mountie I have a very strong emotional attachment to the area.

It's where I finished high school, learned to and actively surfed for many years and in my lotto dreams return to surf again *insert beach bum with adequate means fantasy*. The Mt Maunganui coastline is pretty much one unbroken beach stretching all the way down to Makatu. Its golden sands, dunes and inconsistant breakers are a paradise for pleasure seekers of all ages and interests. Watching local residents verbalising what the beach meant to them on Cambell Live was heart wrenching - for those who live close the beach is an extension of the home and for those a drive away its their playground.

So I watched the news.... and learnt little I hadn't already found online... but I did get that connection with the people, thanks to Campbells caravan segment (an appreciated bonus). The ads plain bored and freaked me out -I can't and will never go back to a medium that intrudes so on my time in a manner like that. By the end of the one and a half hours I was numb - admitably I hummed to myself and pretended to watch paint dry during the half hour of sports (not including all the sport in the main news).

Having turned the box off and shuffled around the house I've come to one conclusion - by watching the tv news (especially if its your only or primary news source) will inform you only of the gist of whats going on in our country, let alone the wider world.

Since giving up the TV news and focusing on web based reporting, online newspapers (The Herald, Stuff et al - yes I appreciate how bad (tabloid) both are), blogs local and not (both left and right), places like info clearing house, tomdispatch and wikipedia and of course the ever wonderful online search engine (google for now) I know and can access more in depth knowledge and reporting plus get better, more informed, intelligent (and not) and down right amusing opinions than ever before in my life.

And its wonderful.

So in short, gutted bout the oil spill, TV bad, knowledge good

run

lucky cloud

Occupy Wall Street

Confronting the Malefactors
By PAUL KRUGMAN

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people.

When the Occupy Wall Street protests began three weeks ago, most news organizations were derisive if they deigned to mention the events at all. For example, nine days into the protests, National Public Radio had provided no coverage whatsoever.

It is, therefore, a testament to the passion of those involved that the protests not only continued but grew, eventually becoming too big to ignore. With unions and a growing number of Democrats now expressing at least qualified support for the protesters, Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point.

What can we say about the protests? First things first: The protesters’ indictment of Wall Street as a destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right.

A weary cynicism, a belief that justice will never get served, has taken over much of our political debate — and, yes, I myself have sometimes succumbed. In the process, it has been easy to forget just how outrageous the story of our economic woes really is. So, in case you’ve forgotten, it was a play in three acts.

In the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. In the second act, the bubbles burst — but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the bankers’ sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support — and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts — behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis.

  Given this history, how can you not applaud the protesters for finally taking a stand?

Now, it’s true that some of the protesters are oddly dressed or have silly-sounding slogans, which is inevitable given the open character of the events. But so what? I, at least, am a lot more offended by the sight of exquisitely tailored plutocrats, who owe their continued wealth to government guarantees, whining that President Obama has said mean things about them than I am by the sight of ragtag young people denouncing consumerism.

Bear in mind, too, that experience has made it painfully clear that men in suits not only don’t have any monopoly on wisdom, they have very little wisdom to offer. When talking heads on, say, CNBC mock the protesters as unserious, remember how many serious people assured us that there was no housing bubble, that Alan Greenspan was an oracle and that budget deficits would send interest rates soaring.

A better critique of the protests is the absence of specific policy demands. It would probably be helpful if protesters could agree on at least a few main policy changes they would like to see enacted. But we shouldn’t make too much of the lack of specifics. It’s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it’s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details.

Rich Yeselson, a veteran organizer and historian of social movements, has suggested that debt relief for working Americans become a central plank of the protests. I’ll second that, because such relief, in addition to serving economic justice, could do a lot to help the economy recover. I’d suggest that protesters also demand infrastructure investment — not more tax cuts — to help create jobs. Neither proposal is going to become law in the current political climate, but the whole point of the protests is to change that political climate.

And there are real political opportunities here. Not, of course, for today’s Republicans, who instinctively side with those Theodore Roosevelt-dubbed “malefactors of great wealth.” Mitt Romney, for example — who, by the way, probably pays less of his income in taxes than many middle-class Americans — was quick to condemn the protests as “class warfare.”

But Democrats are being given what amounts to a second chance. The Obama administration squandered a lot of potential good will early on by adopting banker-friendly policies that failed to deliver economic recovery even as bankers repaid the favor by turning on the president. Now, however, Mr. Obama’s party has a chance for a do-over. All it has to do is take these protests as seriously as they deserve to be taken.

And if the protests goad some politicians into doing what they should have been doing all along, Occupy Wall Street will have been a smashing success.

seen

If I was a rich man...

Life

wot to do

awesome

Talkies are the future of entertainment,

No more messing around

Sun

Get ya here stat

RiP Sylvia Robinson

The Gunner's Lament

A Maori gunner lay dying
In a paddyfield north of Saigon,
And he said to his pakeha cobber,
"I reckon I've had it, man! '

And if I could fly like a bird
To my old granny's whare
A truck and a winch would never drag
Me back to the Army.

'A coat and a cap and a well-paid job
Looked better than shovelling metal,
And they told me that Te Rauparaha
Would have fought in the Vietnam battle.

'On my last leave the town swung round
Like a bucket full of eels.
The girls liked the uniform
And I liked the girls.

'Like a bullock to the abattoirs
In the name of liberty
They flew me with a hangover
Across the Tasman Sea,

'And what I found in Vietnam
Was mud and blood and fire,
With the Yanks and the Reds taking turns
At murdering the poor.

'And I saw the reason for it
In a Viet Cong's blazing eyes -
We fought for the crops of kumara
And they are fighting for the rice.

'So go tell my sweetheart
To get another boy
Who'll cuddle her and marry her
And laugh when the bugles blow,

'And tell my youngest brother
He can have my shotgun
To fire at the ducks on the big lagoon,
But not to aim it at a man,

'And tell my granny to wear black
And carry a willow leaf,
Because the kid she kept from the cold
Has eaten a dead man's loaf.

'And go and tell Keith Holyoake
Sitting in Wellington,
However long he scrubs his hands
He'll never get them clean.'

James K Baxter 1965



Bring our people home Mr Key

yep

buddies dropping musicial bombs

High Calibre II Promo - Souladelic's Birthday Jam by Heyladynz on Mixcloud

who?

Game day

Yeah right

Book
Sun

Wot game?!!!!

Auckland putting on the sun... Nuyorican Soul dropping bombs

summery of my feelings via song

High Dependency Unit vs. Soundproof - Lull: Dark Restart from High Dependency Unit on Vimeo.

Consumerism

maybe not today but what a song

lovely, milky milky

dots that roll right in and ouuuuuuuut of control.

I remember when music mattered more than anything else in the world... to me... I remember when you did to....

John Key talks to a worker

I'd Rather Be Lonely

totes bro

Red Bar tonight

It is with a heavy heart, that I announce the departure of two stalwarts of the prefix evenings, Messrs. Bn1 and Don Buri (thats Mike Wilson's stick it to the man moniker btw) are leaving these shores to escape persecution, and further their studies in the field of ornithology.

To see these brave pillars of society out in style. We have enlisted some Favorites of past and present to assist with tune selection

Bob Daktari
(one of Kerrys various pseudonyms) Bromide proof gain?
Bn1
Neville Bartos
Jonno
Don Buri

Please come and pay your respects by drinking some fine liquor served by Rocky and Alex

Anoraks welcome

can u dig it

what is wrong with the economy

No mother father swearing

Motivational Music For a Monday

sleepwalking through the day

join the army

she's dead

a bit early in the season for it really

Fall from Grace

fun

David Haywood's outrageously funny and profoundly educational lecture on cranial dimensions

OGB 2011 - David Haywood from Public Address on Vimeo.

Tomorrow, tomorrow...

God's Away On Business

Funkahdafi

Trust

Wouldn't it be nice to not have to password protect your life

Looting with the lights on

Naomi Klein
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 August

We keep hearing England's riots weren't political – but looters know that their elites have been committing daylight robbery

I keep hearing comparisons between the London riots and riots in other European cities – window-smashing in Athens or car bonfires in Paris. And there are parallels, to be sure: a spark set by police violence, a generation that feels forgotten.

But those events were marked by mass destruction; the looting was minor. There have, however, been other mass lootings in recent years, and perhaps we should talk about them too. There was Baghdad in the aftermath of the US invasion – a frenzy of arson and looting that emptied libraries and museums. The factories got hit too. In 2004 I visited one that used to make refrigerators. Its workers had stripped it of everything valuable, then torched it so thoroughly that the warehouse was a sculpture of buckled sheet metal.

Back then the people on cable news thought looting was highly political. They said this is what happens when a regime has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people. After watching for so long as Saddam Hussein and his sons helped themselves to whatever and whomever they wanted, many regular Iraqis felt they had earned the right to take a few things for themselves. But London isn't Baghdad, and the British prime minister, David Cameron, is hardly Saddam, so surely there is nothing to learn there.

How about a democratic example then? Argentina, circa 2001. The economy was in freefall and thousands of people living in rough neighbourhoods (which had been thriving manufacturing zones before the neoliberal era) stormed foreign-owned superstores. They came out pushing shopping carts overflowing with the goods they could no longer afford – clothes, electronics, meat. The government called a "state of siege" to restore order; the people didn't like that and overthrew the government.

Argentina's mass looting was called el saqueo – the sacking. That was politically significant because it was the very same word used to describe what that country's elites had done by selling off the country's national assets in flagrantly corrupt privatisation deals, hiding their money offshore, then passing on the bill to the people with a brutal austerity package. Argentines understood that the saqueo of the shopping centres would not have happened without the bigger saqueo of the country, and that the real gangsters were the ones in charge. But England is not Latin America, and its riots are not political, or so we keep hearing. They are just about lawless kids taking advantage of a situation to take what isn't theirs. And British society, Cameron tells us, abhors that kind of behaviour.

This is said in all seriousness. As if the massive bank bailouts never happened, followed by the defiant record bonuses. Followed by the emergency G8 and G20 meetings, when the leaders decided, collectively, not to do anything to punish the bankers for any of this, nor to do anything serious to prevent a similar crisis from happening again. Instead they would all go home to their respective countries and force sacrifices on the most vulnerable. They would do this by firing public sector workers, scapegoating teachers, closing libraries, upping tuition fees, rolling back union contracts, creating rush privatisations of public assets and decreasing pensions – mix the cocktail for where you live. And who is on television lecturing about the need to give up these "entitlements"? The bankers and hedge-fund managers, of course.

This is the global saqueo, a time of great taking. Fuelled by a pathological sense of entitlement, this looting has all been done with the lights on, as if there was nothing at all to hide. There are some nagging fears, however. In early July, the Wall Street Journal, citing a new poll, reported that 94% of millionaires were afraid of "violence in the streets". This, it turns out, was a reasonable fear.

Of course London's riots weren't a political protest. But the people committing night-time robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been committing daytime robbery. Saqueos are contagious. The Tories are right when they say the rioting is not about the cuts. But it has a great deal to do with what those cuts represent: being cut off. Locked away in a ballooning underclass with the few escape routes previously offered – a union job, a good affordable education – being rapidly sealed off. The cuts are a message. They are saying to whole sectors of society: you are stuck where you are, much like the migrants and refugees we turn away at our increasingly fortressed borders.

Cameron's response to the riots is to make this locking-out literal: evictions from public housing, threats to cut off communication tools and outrageous jail terms (five months to a woman for receiving a stolen pair of shorts). The message is once again being sent: disappear, and do it quietly.

At last year's G20 "austerity summit" in Toronto, the protests turned into riots and multiple cop cars burned. It was nothing by London 2011 standards, but it was still shocking to us Canadians. The big controversy then was that the government had spent $675m on summit "security" (yet they still couldn't seem to put out those fires). At the time, many of us pointed out that the pricey new arsenal that the police had acquired – water cannons, sound cannons, teargas and rubber bullets – wasn't just meant for the protesters in the streets. Its long-term use would be to discipline the poor, who in the new era of austerity would have dangerously little to lose.

This is what Cameron got wrong: you can't cut police budgets at the same time as you cut everything else. Because when you rob people of what little they have, in order to protect the interests of those who have more than anyone deserves, you should expect resistance – whether organised protests or spontaneous looting. And that's not politics. It's physics.

taking the easy way out again

Man Makes Chocolate Records

Rise Up

think about it

Do the Du

so love this song

and its not

The Right To Protest

Wasted Landscape

And here we go

I've a song stuck in my head


Tis not a song for today

Be gone
Song

And there it is, nearly

Waiting for courier

Thinking about last nights hilarious talk by David Haywood. Funniest 'routine' I've had the pleasure of for, well, longer than I care to remember.

NZ comedians Y U Nooo as funny? Witty? Intelligent?

Science is cool

Some Velvet Morning - possibly tomorrow and then again I expect to be hungover

Till We meet again

Time flies

But I'm on foot

*shakes fist*

things I enjoyed as a boy

its all about the music

yeah right buddy

Perfect bliss

Early morning fire
Re-reading World War Z
Able tasmans playing on the stereo
Coffee and a snack
A chilly clear morning

It's the little things

Wow

No wonder people drink

Day has hours

Hours to be filled

Bring down those walls

Let em fall

Let em fall

Let's bring down these walls

Inclusive beats exclusive FACT

great song, cool band + lego = WIN

Lol

I can't believe I missed that

No sell out

all night long - or in my case in the morning over a coffee

House

Music all day long

Or at least until I is dressed and out the door

Marshall Jefferson mix from 1986 #now playing

Love can't turn around....

Day Forty-five

Experimental drive abandoned

Life resumes

How you doing?

I live on an island

Made from the same dust we walk over

Waiting

Day Forty-four

in which I realise I don't count well or perhaps too well for my mouldy brain

its chilly today

and I'm posting from work - something I never normally do

what is this

and what comes after

Angry About Angry Boys

Day Forty-one

Hotness

Day Forty

Day Thirty-nine

Seminar in the am
Meetings in the pm
Mooching afters

a day

Day Thirty-eight

Cold morning

Potentially a lovely day

Stuck in office making hay

just another day

sweet

Day Thirty-seven

And then it starts all over again

Morning world

what's up?

Day Thirty-six

Auuuuuckland

indeed

Day Thirty-five

Hamilllltron

really

Day Thirty-four

Busy weekend ahead... watch out the tron

I be coming

Day Thirty-three

Day Thirty-two

nerves

Day Thirty-one

Prep for tomorrow
By prep I mean grab records and stare blankly at them
Possibly chuck in a bag
Sweet

Day Thirty

We've been here before

It's Monday

Yep

Circle the wagons

Day Twenty-Nine

I wonder what you're doing

I wonder what I'm doing

I wonder what we're doing

How I wonder

Day Twenty-Eight

Technically a month

But whats a few days between friends

Love in a little town

Love in a Little Town from James Muir on Vimeo.

Day Twenty-Seven

A day in which some young fool has asked me to play records badly later tonight...

I awoke with the beat of carl craig in my mind, the vocals of captain sensible and a hatred for CDs

should be a goodie

I'm spinning next week too

#crazybusytimes

Day Twenty-Six

A  day in which plans are put in place

Translated that means I think I need an omlette from 39 to start the day

Then a coffee from the little man

Some hours in the office

A wander home via the shops

A fire and movie to finish things off

big tings

Day Twenty-Five

The 80's was the future.

We had awesome computers in our homes, we dressed like spacemen and had cars that looked like spaceships.

The toys were awesome and the music came from beyond the stars.

And then it all went away.

How did everything become so mundane.

I may be deluded.

the humble black and decker was once a sign of sophistication

Day Twenty-Four

Thinking about those no longer here

or there

but perhaps are over there

I didn't misplace them

honest

Day Twenty-Three - welcome to our land

Day Twenty-Two

If this is winter I'll take it.

Walkies

Day Twenty-One

Lazy day

It's saturday after all

Day Twenty: Thou Shalt always Kill

Day Nineteen

Getting a cold was not part of the plan

Home

Day Eighteen

Day Seventeen

Day Sixteen

life goes on and on and on

Day fifteen

Rinse and repeat

Day fourteen

Get up have fun

The weekend

Day Thirteen

Unlucky for some

Christchurch earthquake package

Govts Christch Response Today

Thoughts:

Press conference was terrible - come on chaps lead, inspire and show some compassion

Seems like a good deal with some flaws which I'm sure if theres a will (debatable) will be addressed

I assume those from Western Pacific are included, in which case I'm sur there are some very relieved people right now.

Something needs be done about the un-inured, we must look after our own - even if some are idiots (not suggesting all the uninsured are idiots, some though are).

However, I am concerned the most of the response to the earthquake is centred about possessions and money - where is the response to the people?

Is there nothing not being done that couldn't directly benefit the people of the city by the government or lead by?

Damn the costs, whatever they are we can afford it

Day Twelve

Admission

I read too much

but not nearly enough of my reading comes from books

must try harder

Day Eleven

Despair

The feeling I get every time I hear of more earthquakes in Christchurch

I was about to post a list of things I was looking forward to but the news of more shakes just makes that notion seem crass.

Its no longer appropriate to ask those in Christchurch to be strong... hang on and hope seems the only message one can send

Sometimes one wishes faith was a fallback and resort

Despair

Day Ten

Clap your hands and count

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

now wtf does it all mean?

Day Nine

The best part of getting older is memories from when you were younger...

Back when I was young I thought the Chills one of the ebst bands in the world ever... as a mature gent I still love them.

Sometimes I wonder if I spend too much time listening to music from my youth... and then I think, fuck it, who said I'd grown up and I listen to something new

Day Eight

Gigs... gigs are fun



even on Sunday

Day Seven

Day Six

Friday Friday... what you going to do on Friday

Work, drink and be merry I guess

might listen to some calming music

dead kennedys or sumpthink

Day Five

Say nothing

The Financial Road to Serfdom

How Bankers are using the Debt Crisis to Roll Back the Progressive Era

By Michael Hudson

Financial strategists do not intend to let today’s debt crisis go to waste. Foreclosure time has arrived. That means revolution – or more accurately, a counter-revolution to roll back the 20th century’s gains made by social democracy: pensions and social security, public health care and other infrastructure providing essential services at subsidized prices or for free. The basic model follows the former Soviet Union’s post-1991 neoliberal reforms: privatization of public enterprises, a high flat tax on labor but only nominal taxes on real estate and finance, and deregulation of the economy’s prices, working conditions and credit terms.

What is to be reversed is the “modern” agenda. The aim a century ago was to mobilize the Industrial Revolution’s soaring productivity and technology to raise living standards and use progressive taxation, public regulation, central banking and financial reform to distribute wealth fairly and make societies more equal. Today’s financial aim is the opposite: to concentrate wealth at the top of the economic pyramid and lower labor’s returns. High finance loves low wages.

The political lever to achieve this program is financial. The European Union (EU) constitution prevents central banks from financing government deficits, leaving this role to commercial banks, paying interest to them for creating credit that central banks readily monetize for themselves in Britain and the United States. Governments are to go into debt to bail out banks for loans gone bad – as do more and more loans as finance impoverishes the economy, stifling its ability to pay. Yet as long as we live in democracies, voters must agree to pay. Governments are sovereign and debt is ultimately a creature of the law and courts.

But first they need to understand what is happening. From the bankers’ perspective, the economic surplus is what they themselves end up with. Rising consumption standards and even public investment in infrastructure are seen as deadweight. Bankers and bondholders aim to increase the surplus not so much by tangible capital investment increasing the overall surplus, but by more predatory means, headed by rolling back labor’s gains and stiffening working conditions while gaining public subsidy. Banks “create wealth” by providing more credit (that is, debt leverage) to bid up asset prices for real estate and enterprises already in place – assets that either are being foreclosed on or sold off under debt pressure by private owners or governments. One commentator recently characterized the latter strategy of privatization as “tantamount to selling the family silver only to have to rent it back in order to eat dinner.”1

Fought in the name of free markets, this counter-revolution rejects the classical ideal of markets free of unearned income paid to special interests. The financial objective is to squeeze out a surplus by maximizing the margin of prices over costs. Opposing government enterprise and infrastructure as the road to serfdom, high finance is seeking to turn public infrastructure into rent-extracting tollbooths to extract economic rent (the “free lunch economy”), while replacing labor unions with non-union labor so as to work it more intensively.

This new road to neoserfdom is an asset grab. But to achieve it, the financial sector needs a political grab to replace democracy with financial technocrats. Their job is to pretend that there is no revolution at all, merely an increase in “efficiency,” “creating wealth” by debt-leveraging the economy to the point where the entire surplus is paid out as interest to the financial managers who are emerging as Western civilization’s new central planners.

Frederick Hayek’s Road to Serfdom portrayed a dystopia of public officials seeking to regulate the economy. In attacking government so one-sidedly, his ideological extremism sought to replace the checks and balances of mixed economies with a private sector “free” of regulation and consumer protection. His vision was of a post-modern economy “free” of the classical reforms to bring market prices into line with cost value. Instead of purifying industrial capitalism from the special rent extraction privileges bequeathed from the feudal epoch, Hayek’s ideology opened the way for unchecked financial power to make a travesty of “free markets.”

The European Union’s financial planners claim that Greece and other debtor countries have a problem that is easy to cure by imposing austerity. Pension savings, Social Security and medical insurance are to be downsized so as to “free” more debt service to be paid to creditors. Insisting that Greece only has a “liquidity problem,” European Central Bank (ECB) extremists deem an economy “solvent” as long as it has assets to privatize. ECB executive board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi explained the plan in a Financial Times interview:

FT: Otmar Issing, your former colleague, says Greece is insolvent and it “will not be physically possible” for it to repay its debts. Is he right?

LBS: He is wrong because Greece is solvent if it applies the programme. They have assets that they can sell and reduce their debt and they have the instruments to change their tax and expenditure systems to reduce the debt. This is the assessment of the IMF, it is the assessment of the European Commission.

Poor developing countries have no assets, their income is low, and so they become insolvent easily. If you look at the balance sheet of Greece, it is not insolvent.

The key problem is political will on the part of the government and parliament. Privatisation proceeds of €50bn, which is being talked about – some mention more - would reduce the peak debt to GDP ratio from 160 per cent to about 140 per cent or 135 per cent and this could be reduced further.2

A week later Mr. Bini Smaghi insisted that the public sector “had marketable assets worth 300 billion euros and was not bankrupt. ‘Greece should be considered solvent and should be asked to service its debts,’ … signaling that the bank remained firmly opposed to any plan to allow Greece to stretch out its debt payments or oblige investors to accept less than full repayment, a so-called haircut.”3 Speaking from Berlin, he said that Greece “was not insolvent.” It could pay off its bonds owed to German bankers ($22.7 billion), French bankers ($15 billion) and the ECB (reported to be on the hook for $190 billion) by selling off public land and ports, water and sewer rights, ownership of the telephone system and other basic infrastructure. In addition to getting paid in full and receiving high interest rates reflecting “market” expectations of non-payment, the banks would enjoy a new credit market financing privatization buy-outs.

Warning that failure to pay would create windfall gains for speculators who had bet that Greece would default, Mr. Bini Smaghi refused to acknowledge the corollary: to pay the full amount would create windfalls for those who bet that Greece would be forced to pay. He also claimed that: “Restructuring of Greek debt would … discourage Greece from modernizing its economy.” But the less debt service an economy pays, the more revenue it has to invest productively. And to “solve” the problem by throwing public assets on the market would create windfalls for distress buyers. As the Wall Street Journal put matters bluntly: “Greece is for sale – cheap – and Germany is buying. German companies are hunting for bargains in Greece as the debt-stricken government moves to sell state-owned assets to stabilize the country’s finances.”4

Rather than raising living standards while creating a more egalitarian and fair society, the ECB’s creditor-oriented “reforms” would roll the time clock back to oligarchy. Not the post-feudal oligarchy of landlords owning land conquered militarily, but a financial oligarchy accumulating banking claims and bonds growing inexorably and exponentially, leaving little over for the rest of the economy to invest or consume.

The distinction between illiquidity and insolvency

If a homeowner loses his job and cannot pay his mortgage, he must sell the house or see the bank foreclose. Is he insolvent, or merely “illiquid”? If he merely has a liquidity problem, a loan will help him earn the funds to pay down the debt. But if he falls into the negative equity that now plagues a quarter of U.S. real estate, taking on more loans will only deepen his net deficit. Ending this process by losing his home does not mean that he is merely illiquid. He is in distress, and is suffering from insolvency. But to the ECB this is merely a liquidity problem.

The public balance sheet includes land and infrastructure as if they are surplus assets that can be forfeited without fundamentally changing the owner’s status or social relations. In reality it is part of the means of survival in today’s world, at least survival as part of the middle class.

For starters, renegotiating his loan won’t help an insolvency situation such as the jobless homeowner above. Lending him the money to pay the bank interest (along with late fees and other financial penalties) or stretching out the loan merely will add to the debt balance, giving the foreclosing bank yet a larger claim on whatever property the debtor may have available to grab.
But the homeowner is in danger of being homeless, living on the street. At issue is whether solvency should be defined in the traditional common-sense way, in terms of the ability of income to carry one’s current obligations, or a purely balance-sheet approach taken by creditors seeking to extract payment by stripping assets. This is Greece’s position. Is it merely a liquidity problem if the government is told to sell off $50 billion in prime tourist sites, ports, water systems and other public assets in order to pay foreign creditors?

At issue is language regarding the legal rights of creditors vis-à-vis debtors. The United States has long had a body of law regarding this issue. A few years ago, for instance, the real estate speculator Sam Zell bought the Chicago Tribune in a debt-leveraged buyout. The newspaper soon went broke, wiping out the employees’ stock ownership plan (ESOP). They sued under the fraudulent conveyance law, which says that if a creditor makes a loan without knowing how the debtor can pay in the normal course of business, the loan is assumed to have been made with the intent of foreclosing on property, and is deemed fraudulent.

This law dates from colonial times, when British speculators eyed rich New York farmland. Their ploy was to extend loans to farmers, and then call in the loans when the farmer’s ability to pay was low, before the crop was harvested. This was indeed a liquidity problem – which financial opportunists turned into an asset grab. Some lenders, to be sure, created a genuine insolvency problem by making loans beyond the ability of the farmers to pay, and then would foreclose on their land. The colonies nullified such loans. Fraudulent conveyance laws have been kept on the books since the United States won its independence from Britain.

Creditors today are using debt leverage to force Greece to sell off its public domain – having extended credit beyond its ability to pay. So the question now being raised is whether the nation should be deemed “solvent” if the only way to carry its public debt (that is, roll it over by replacing bad old loans with newer and more inexorable obligations) is to forfeit its land and basic infrastructure. This would fundamentally alter the relationship between public and private sectors, replacing its mixed economy with a centrally planned one – planned by financial predators with little care that the economy is polarizing between rich and poor, creditors and debtors.

The financial road to serfdom

Financial lobbyists are turning the English language – and economic terminology throughout the world – into a battlefield. Creditors are to be permitted to take the assets of insolvent debtors – from homeowners and companies to entire nations – as if this were a normal working of “the market” and foreclosure was simply a way to restore “liquidity.” As for “solvency,” the ECB would strip Greece clean of its public sector’s assets. Bank officials have spoken of throwing potentially 150 billion euros of property onto the market.

Most people would think of this as a solvency problem. Solvency means the ability to maintain the kind of society one has, with existing public/private checks and balances and living standards. It is incompatible with scaling down pensions, Social Security and medical insurance to save bondholders and bankers from taking a loss. The latter policy is nothing less than a political revolution.

The asset stripping that Europe’s bankers are demanding of Greece looks like a dress rehearsal to prevent the “I won’t pay” movement from spreading to “Indignant Citizens” movements against financial austerity in Spain, Portugal and Italy. Bankers are trying to block governments from writing down debts, stretching out loans and reducing interest rates.

When a nation is directed to replace its mixed economy by transferring ownership of public infrastructure and enterprises to a financial class (mainly foreign), this is not merely “restoring solvency” by using long-term assets to pay short-term debts to maintain its balance-sheet net worth. It is a radical transformation to a centrally planned economy, shifting control out of the hands of elected representatives to those of financial managers whose time frame is short-term and extractive, not long-term and protective of social equity and basic needs.

Creditors are demanding a political transformation to replace democratic lawmakers with technocrats appointed by foreign bankers. When the economic surplus is pledged to bankers rather than invested at home, we are not merely dealing with “insolvency” but with an aggressive attack. Finance becomes a continuation of war, by economic means that are to be politicized. Acting on behalf of the commercial banks (from which most of its directors are drawn, and to which they intend to “descend from heaven” to take their rewards after serving their financial class), the European Central Bank insists on a political revolution to replace democratic government by a technocratic elite – not of industrial engineers, but of “financial engineers,” a polite name for asset stripping financial warriors. If Greece does not comply, they threaten to wreak domestic financial havoc by “pulling the plug” on Greek banks. This “carrot and stick” approach threatens that if Greece does not sign on, the ECB and IMF will withhold loans needed to keep its banking system solvent. The “carrot” was provided on May 31 they agreed to provide $86 billion in euros if Greece “puts off for the time being a restructuring, hard or soft,” of its public debt.5

It is a travesty to present this revolution simply as a financial exercise in solving the “liquidity problem” as if it were compatible with Europe’s past four centuries of political and classical economic reforms. This is why the Syntagma Square protest in front of Parliament has been growing each week, peaking at over 70,000 last Sunday, June 5.

Some protestors drew a parallel with the Wisconsin politicians who left the state to prevent a quorum from voting on the anti-labor program that Governor Walker tried to ram through. The next day, on June 6, thirty backbenchers of Prime Minister George Papandreou’s ruling Panhellenic Socialist party (Pasok) were joined by some of his own cabinet ministers threatening “to resign their parliamentary seats rather than vote through measures to cut thousands of public sector jobs, increase taxes again and dispose of €50bn of state assets, according to party insiders. ‘The biggest issue for the party is stringent cuts in the public sector ... these go to the heart of Pasok’s model of social protection by providing jobs in state entities for its supporters,’ said a senior Socialist official.”6

Seeing the popular reluctance to commit financial suicide, Conservative Opposition leader Antonis Samaras also opposed paying the European bankers, “demanding a renegotiation of the package agreed last week with the ‘troika’ of the EU, IMF and the European Central Bank.” It was obvious that no party could gain popular support for the ECB’s demand that Greece relinquish popular rule and “appoint experienced technocrats to half a dozen essential ministries to implement the EU-IMF programme.”7

ECB President Trichet depicts himself as following Erasmus in bringing Europe beyond its “strict concept of nationhood.” This is to be done by replacing elected officials with a bureaucracy of cosmopolitan banker-friendly planners. The debt problem calls for new “monetary policy measures – we call them ‘non standard’ decisions, strictly separated from the ‘standard’ decisions, and aimed at restoring a better transmission of our monetary policy in these abnormal market conditions.” The task at hand is to make these conditions a new normalcy – and re-defining solvency to reflect a nation’s ability to pay debts by selling the public domain.

The ECB and EU claim that Greece is “solvent” as long as it has assets to sell off. But if populations in today’s mixed economies think of solvency as existing under existing public/private proportions, they will resist the financial sector’s attempt to proceed with buyouts and foreclosures until it possesses all the assets in the world, all the hitherto public and corporate assets and those of individuals and partnerships.

To minimize opposition to this dynamic the financial sector’s pet economists understate the debt burden, pretending that it can be paid without disrupting economic life and, in the Greek case for example, by using “mark to model” junk accounting and derivative swaps to simply conceal its magnitude. Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the IMF claims that the post-2008 debt crisis is merely a short-term “liquidity problem” and one of lack of “confidence,” not insolvency reflecting an underlying inability to pay. Banks promise that everything will be all right when the economy “returns to normal” – as if it can “borrow its way out of debt,” Bernanke-style.

This is what today’s financial warfare is about. At issue is the financial sector’s relationship to the “real” economy. From the latter’s perspective the proper role of credit – that is, debt – is to fund productive capital investment and spending, because it is out of the economic surplus that debts are paid. This requires a financial regulatory system and tax system to maximize growth. But that is precisely the fiscal policy that today’s financial sector is fighting against. It demands preferential tax-deductibility for interest to encourage debt financing rather than equity. It has disabled truth-in-lending laws and regulations to keeping interest rates and fees in line with costs of production. And it blocks governments from having central banks to freely finance their own operations and provide economies with money. And to cap matters it now demands that democratic society yield to centralized authoritarian financial rule.

Finance and democracy: from mutual reinforcement to antagonism

The relationship between banking and democracy has taken many twists over the centuries. Earlier this year, democratic opposition to the ECB and IMF attempt to impose austerity and privatization selloffs succeeded when Iceland’s President Grímsson insisted on a national referendum on the Icesave debt payment that Althing leaders had negotiated with Britain and the Netherlands (if one can characterize abject capitulation as a real negotiation). To their credit, a heavy 3-to-2 majority of Icelanders voted “No,” saving their economy from being driven into the debt peonage.

Democratic action historically has been needed to enforce debt collection. Until four centuries ago royal treasuries typically were kept in the royal bedroom, and loans to rulers were in the character of personal debts. Bankers repeatedly found themselves burned, especially by Habsburg and Bourbon despots on the thrones of Spain, Austria and France. Loans to such rulers were liable to expire upon their death, unless their successors remained dependent on these same financiers rather than turning to their rivals. The numerous bankruptcies of Spain’s autocratic Habsburg ruler Charles V exhausted his credit, preventing the nation from raising funds to defeat the rebellious Low Countries to the north.
The problem facing bankers was how to make loans permanent national obligations. Solving this problem gave an advantage to parliamentary democracies. It was a major factor enabling the Low Countries to win their independence from Habsburg Spain in the 16th century. The Dutch Republic committed the entire nation to pay its public debts, binding the people themselves, through their elected representatives who earmarked taxes to their creditors. Bankers saw parliamentary democracy as a precondition for making sound loans to governments. This security for bankers could be achieved only from electorates having at least a nominal voice in government. And raising war loans was a key element in military rivalry in an epoch when the maxim for survival was “Money is the sinews of war.”

As long as governments remained despotic, they found that their ability to incur more debt was limited. At this time “the legal position of the King qua borrower was obscure, and it was still doubtful whether his creditors had any remedy against him in case of default.”8 Earlier Dutch-English financing had not satisfied creditors on this count. When Charles I borrowed 650,000 guilders from the Dutch States-General in 1625, the two countries’ military alliance against Spain helped defer the implicit constitutional struggle over who ultimately was liable for British debts.

The key financial achievement of parliamentary government was thus to establish nations as political bodies whose debts were not merely the personal obligations of rulers, but truly public and binding regardless of who occupied the throne. This is why the first two democratic nations, the Netherlands and Britain after its 1688 dynastic linkage between Holland and Britain in the person of William I, and the emergence of Parliamentary authority over public financing. They developed the most active capital markets and became Europe’s leading military powers. “A funded debt could not be formed so long as the King and Parliament were fighting for the mastery,” concludes the financial historian Richard Ehrenberg. “It was only after the [1688] revolution that the English State became what the Dutch Republic had long been – a real corporation of individuals firmly associated together, a permanent organism.”9

In sum, nations emerged in their modern form by adopting the financial characteristics of democratic city states. The financial imperatives of 17th-century warfare helped make these democracies victorious, for the new national financial systems facilitated military spending on a vastly extended scale. Conversely, the more despotic Spain, Austria and France became, the greater the difficulty they found in financing their military adventures. Austria was left “without credit, and consequently without much debt” by the end of the 18th century, the least credit-worthy and worst armed country in Europe, as Sir James Steuart noted in 1767.10 It became fully dependent on British subsidies and loan guarantees by the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

The modern epoch of war financing therefore went hand in hand with the spread of parliamentary democracy. The situation was similar to that enjoyed by plebeian tribunes in Rome in the early centuries of its Republic. They were able to veto all military funding until the patricians made political concessions. The lesson was not lost on 18th-century Protestant parliaments. For war debts and other national obligations to become binding, the people’s elected representatives had to pledge taxes. This could be achieved only by giving the electorate a voice in government.

It thus was the desire to be repaid that turned the preference of creditors away from autocracies toward democracies. In the end it was only from democracies that they were able to collect. This of course did not necessarily reflect liberal political convictions on the part of creditors. They simply wanted to be paid.

Europe’s sovereign commercial cities developed the best credit ratings, and hence were best able to employ mercenaries. Access to credit was “their most powerful weapon in the struggle for their freedom,” notes Ehrenberg, in an age whose “growth in the use of fire arms had forced them to surround themselves with stronger fortifications.”11 The problem was that “Anyone who gave credit to a prince knew that the repayment of the debt depended only on his debtor's capacity and will to pay. The case was very different for the cities, who had power as overlords, but were also corporations, associations of individuals held in common bond. According to the generally accepted law each individual burgher was liable for the debts of the city both with his person and his property.”

But the tables are now turning, from Icelandic voters to the large crowds gathering in Syntagma Square and elsewhere throughout Greece to oppose the terms on which Prime Minister Papandreou has been negotiating an EU bailout loan for the government – to bail out German and French banks. Now that nations are not raising money for war but to subsidize reckless predatory bankers, Jean-Claude Trichet of the ECB recently suggested taking financial policy out of the hands of democracy.

But if a country is still not delivering, I think all would agree that the second stage has to be different. Would it go too far if we envisaged, at this second stage, giving euro area authorities a much deeper and authoritative say in the formation of the country’s economic policies if these go harmfully astray? A direct influence, well over and above the reinforced surveillance that is presently envisaged? …

At issue is sovereignty itself, when it comes to government responsibility for debts. And in this respect the war being waged against Greece by the European Central Bank (ECB) may best be seen as a dress rehearsal not only for the rest of Europe, but for what financial lobbyists would like to bring about in the United States.




Notes:

1 Yves Smith, “Wisconsin’s Walker Joins Government Asset Giveaway Club (and is Rahm Soon to Follow?)” Naked Capitalism, February 22, 2011.

2 Ralph Atkins, “Transcript: Lorenzo Bini Smaghi,” Financial Times, May 30, 2011.

3 Jack Ewing, “In Asset Sale, Greece to Give Up 10% Stake in Telecom Company,” The New York Times, June 7, 2011.

4 Christopher Lawton and Laura Stevens, “Deutsche Telekom, Others Look to Grab State-Owned Assets at Fire-Sale Prices,” Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2011.

5 Landon Thomas Jr., “New Rescue Package for Greece Takes Shape,” The New York Times, June 1, 2011.

6 Kerin Hope, “Rift widens on Greek reform plan,” Financial Times, June 7, 2011.

7 Ibid. See also Kerin Hope, “Thousands protest against Greek austerity,” Financial Times, June 6, 2011: “‘Thieves, thieves ... Where did our money go?’ the protesters shouted, blowing whistles and waving Greek flags as riot police thickened ranks around the parliament building on Syntagma square in the centre of the capital. … Banners draped nearby read ‘Take back the new measures’ and ‘Greece is not for sale’ – a reference to the government’s plans to include state property and real estate for tourist development in the privatisation scheme.”

8 Charles Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship: 1603-1763 (London: 1965), p. 89.

9 Richard Ehrenberg, Capital and Finance in the Age of the Renaissance (1928), p. 354.

10 James Steuart, Principles of Political Oeconomy (1767), p. 353.

11 Ehrenberg, op. cit., pp. 44f., 33.