PREPARING FOR CIVILIZATION’S END

The Myth of Self-Reliance: On the pages of most of us Post-Civ bloggers you’ll find exhortations for a return to a community-based society and economy, one based on principles of self-reliance. But Toby Hemenway makes a compelling argument that self-reliance in modern society is impossible and misguided, and our belief that by growing our own food, making our own clothes and tech tools, and learning to fix things, will somehow make us self-reliant when global systems collapse, is a dangerous illusion. Thanks to Tree for the link and the one that follows.

Solastalgia: Defined as “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault”, solastalgia is “a global condition, felt to a greater or lesser degree by different people in different locations but felt increasingly, given the ongoing degradation of the environment. As our environment continues to change around us…  how deeply are our minds suffering in return?” I’m loath to allow psychotherapists and other pseudo-scientists and oversimplifiers to label as pathology what we must, by our nature, all feel, but this is an interesting read, a study of what Dave Smith helped me identify as “our unbearable grief for Gaia”.

“All We Make Now is Garbage”: Dmitry Orlov and John Michael Greer talk about the coming “long descent” civilizational collapse. Thanks to Avi Solomon for the link.

Get Ready For an Era of Deflation: Two interesting Automatic Earth reports this week. First, Ilargi explains why there will be a protracted period of deflation (falling prices and stagnant economic activity) before we can expect hyperinflation to kick in. And then, he explains why, as part of that deflation, housing prices are poised to collapse further as the government (i.e. taxpayer) gets out of the business of trying to boost prices. The argument that the first of the three big dominos of civilizational collapse will be the economy, not the End of Oil or ecological collapse, has never been stronger:

Home prices supported only by taxpayer money are doomed to crumble; the only things achieved by the Fed’s $1.25 trillion purchases are a temporary delay in home price plunges, and another giant transfer of bank and lender losses to the state (re: the population). If only for this reason the Fed would do well [as the British authorities recently did] to warn the American people that hard times are a-coming.

Most people are far too complacent when it comes to the consequences of a shrinking economic system. Many claim that we can easily downsize to smaller homes and smaller lives, since there’s so much we don’t really need anyway, that we will move in together and return to “good” conversations, growing our own tomatoes and all that. But that’s just not going to happen voluntarily, not on a large and wide scale. The human mind has no reverse. It doesn’t even have a steering wheel. We are built for one of two things: go forward or crash. It looks like there’s no forward left before a major crash happens first. It also looks like there’s not a whole lot of people who realize this.

Another $1.6T to US National Debt: A full $1T of the staggering and calamitous US overspending is military. Still, none of this is being paid for by war taxes on the rich, the only ones who could afford such taxes, as the US edges closer and closer to bankruptcy and a catastrophic downgrade of the its credit rating and a commensurate disastrous spike in borrowing costs. Thanks to Raffi Aftandelian for the link.

A Third of a Trillion Dollars to Fix Water Pipes: That’s the latest estimate from the US EPA to rectify decades of neglect and short-termism. Because the US states are starting to go bankrupt, none of this will be spent, and the consequence will be a gradual collapse of the country’s Civil War era water and sewer infrastructure. Get ready to haul your own drinking water, like in the struggling nations, unless you work for Goldman Sachs and can afford to pay someone else to do it for you.

America the Fragile Empire: Niall Ferguson rehashes the nature of complex systems and describes the vulnerability of the current American state. Unfortunately, unlike the collapse of the Soviet Union, a collapse of the US would precipitate the Long Emergency: a global economic collapse, leading to a series of global geopolitical crises and then, exacerbated by oil scarcity and ecological collapses, a slow crash of our equally fragile and overextended civilization.

LIVING BETTER

Just Do One Thing at a Time: PS Pirro reviews Seth Godin’s new book, and sums up the perils of multitasking: “Most of the energy it takes to juggle a bunch of projects goes into the juggling, not into the projects.”

History of Mondragon: A comprehensive summary of the world’s most successful and enduring cooperative. Thanks to Jerry Michalski for the link.

POLITICS AND ECONOMICS AS USUAL

Monsanto + Fox TV’s Health Danger Cover-Up: From a couple of year’s ago, a Canadian expose of how two Fox TV investigative reporters were threatened and bullied by Monsanto for a never-aired report telling the truth about the dangers of Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone (and the complicity of the FDA in approving it for sale), then intimidated and finally fired by their employer’s (Fox TV’s) lawyers and executives, when they refused to lie or bury the story. A shocking demonstration of the power and ruthlessness of global corporatists. Thanks to Jerry Michalski for the link.

Anthrax Murders Update: Although the FBI has deep-sixed the anthrax murder investigation and convicted “squalene Bruce” Ivins in absentia after his suicide, evidence keeps turning up that Ivins couldn’t have done it, at least not alone. The anthrax sent to the liberal Democrats in 2001 was astonishingly sophisticated stuff. We’ll never know who really was behind it. Thanks to Rayne for the link.

FUN AND INSPIRATION

Cartoon by Tom Cheney in The New Yorker. His artwork is available here.

Training the Consumer to Jump Through Hoops: Those of us who are exceptionally informed and resistant to commercialism may be surprised and disgusted at this vision of how average citizens will be seduced by commercial interests exploiting new RFID technologies and our inherent love of game-playing. Thanks to Jerry Michalski for the link.

Facebook: No Assisted Suicide Allowed: A new site is helping people commit Web 2.0 suicide, by disconnecting from social networks on the Web. Facebook is suing. Thanks to Tree for the link and the one that follows.

Playing Monopoly With People’s Lives: Another great creative activism event in Minneapolis aimed at megabank Wells Fargo.

Fallen on Hard Times: A clever, pertinent and vintage Jethro Tull song. Posted by Keith Farnish on the new post-civ blog we share with co-conspirators Sharon Astyk and Guy McPherson.

THOUGHTS OF THE WEEK

Let Your Dog Out to Pee: Reflections on the unnatural sport of skiing and more wonderfully-crafted wisdom from Melissa Holbrook Pierson.

A short poem from Edwin Markham (thanks to Chris Corrigan for the link and the one that follows):

OUTWITTED

He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.

From Jack Ricciuto, Strategy in Four Easy Steps (beats the hell out of most of the approaches I’ve seen used in 35 years in business). Just answer these four questions:

• Where do we want to be in 20 years?
• Why does that matter to us?
• How do we want to move towards getting there in the next 2 years? and
• What would be wise for us to do in the next 2 quarters (and weeks) to start to move towards getting there?

view from just above my new home; more of my recent photos here

One of the discoveries I’ve made as a result of retiring from paid work, and living alone for the first time in decades, is that I now have the freedom and responsibility to make my own decisions. When much of your life is tied up with work (collaborative or hierarchical) and the schedules and priorities of others, most decisions are made for you, or at least restricted by the constraints of society. It is a bit startling to realize that, suddenly, almost every decision I face is mine alone to make. Each decision may have repercussions for others, which I of course have to think about, but ultimately my decisions are now driven by principles, not by accommodation.

As I’ve made these decisions, I’ve started thinking about What are the principles that are driving them? So far they boil down to just three, which I’m calling First Principles — I wish it hadn’t taken me a lifetime to discover them.

1. Being Generous: This principle is about realizing that we’re a part of all-life-on-Earth and that, contrary to what we have been taught, we are neither ‘alone’ nor ‘individual’. Paying attention to others, listening, giving, caring, sharing, ignoring one’s illusory ‘self’ and focusing on collective — community and planet, now and generations to come — not only makes sense, it is, I think, the essence of being human, of being alive, really here, now.
2. Valuing Time: Much of what we do is a consequence of what we (are taught to) value. Too often we end up valuing money, or what it buys (security, we think, and even love) instead of realizing that our time has far more value than any ‘currency’. That doesn’t mean ‘saving’ time, or hoarding it, or seeing it as a scarcity to meted out selfishly. It means enjoying its passage. It means not giving it up for money (or even love). It means taking every moment as a gift. It means living Now, not in the past (regrets, nostalgia) or the future (dreams, fears).
3. Living Naturally: We’ve lived so much of our lives in artificial environments, distracted, that we’ve forgotten how to see how nature makes decisions, and realize that those decisions, based on a billion years of evolved knowledge, are inevitably more sensible than any we might make ‘independently’. Nature shows us how to live: to adapt rather than trying to control. To love, abundantly. To see and enjoy beauty. To be honest, always, even when it hurts. To imagine and to improvise. To learn by doing and by watching, not by being told or even by reading. To let go of outcome and of what is past or might be in future, and just be.

That’s it. All the decisions I’ve made in the past couple of months, since I’ve been freed from having others make decisions for me, have been driven by these three First Principles: Be generous. Value your time. Live naturally.

My life used to be so complicated.

Now, suddenly, it’s merely complex. So much easier.

One of the delightful cartoons of Natalie Dee. See lots more here.

PREPARING FOR CIVILIZATION’S END

Trying to Cure Reality: A new book Manufacturing Depression, by Gary Greenberg (reviewed by Louis Menand in the New Yorker) debunks the industrial economy myth that depression is a disease that needs chemical and therapeutic “curing”. Our civilization is collapsing, we’ve exhausted the natural resources our planet took a billion years to store up, we live in suffocating, overcrowded, polluted, horrifically stressful conditions, and we have launched the planet into the 6th global extinction. Why shouldn’t we feel bad? Thanks to Raffi Aftandelian for the link:

The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that more than fourteen million Americans suffer from major depression every year, and more than three million suffer from minor depression (whose symptoms are milder but last longer than two years). Greenberg thinks that numbers like these are ridiculous—not because people aren’t depressed but because, in most cases, their depression is not a mental illness. It’s a sane response to a crazy world.

“We Think We Are the Doctors. We Are the Disease”: Chris Hedges explains how our civilization culture is buckling and starting to crumble, and how we must both resist and dismantle this culture and create new sustainable living models. Thanks to Paul Heft for the link. Excerpt:

All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort.

The Path of (Most) Resistance: Along the same lines as Chris Hedges’ article above, Derrick Jensen in his new article in Orion says we need to get past our belief that “resistance is futile” and realize that if we really want to save the planet we have to fight:

We need organized political resistance. Power needs to be named and then dismantled systematically. This requires joint action of whatever sort is deemed necessary. While the frontline actionists are taking apart systems of power and fighting to defend wild nature, the culture of resistance is providing loyalty and cooperation and material support, as well as building up alternate institutions—from means of bringing justice to economic systems to food supply chains to schools to new literary forms—that can take over as the system comes down. The template is not hard to understand. It will take its own culturally appropriate forms.

Right now, a small group of half-starved, poverty-stricken people in Nigeria have brought the oil industry in that country to its knees. They remember what it is to love their land and their communities—perhaps because they are not drowning in privilege, but in the toxic sludge of oil extraction. Is that what it will take to get environmentalists in the U.S. to fight back? [These Nigerians have] said to the oil industry: “It must be clear that the Nigerian government cannot protect your workers or assets. Leave our land while you can or die in it.” There is more courage, integrity, intelligence, and pragmatism in that statement … than in any statement I have ever read by any American environmentalist, including myself. We need to accept the fact that making this type of statement (and being prepared to act on it) might be necessary to preserve a living planet.

(And in a related story:  Several new local initiatives demonstrate that where there’s enough passion and energy focused at the local level, change happens. Thanks to the Bowen Island Phorum (my new daily guilty pleasure) for the link.)

Real Communities are Self-Organizing: Dmitri Orlov questions the feasibility of “building community”, arguing that organization cannot be imposed; it must occur by the collective consensus of members, or it won’t happen at all. Thanks to Jon Husband for the link. Excerpt:

How representative a democracy the US ever was is rather beside the point; the point is, it was once a country where people could successfully and openly self-organize, and now it isn’t. Once there were strong, cohesive communities in the US, which could organize and bring pressure to bear on their elected officials. And now, as described in Robert Putnam’s widely discussed book Bowling Alone (2000), there are no such strong, cohesive communities in the US, and so… they can’t organize, because, I would think, there is nothing for them to organize. Existence of communities allows communities to organize; lack of community prevents communities from organizing. That’s a bit of a tautology, is it not?

LIVING BETTER

5 Ways to Make Social Media Work: A great article and list by Justin Kownacki. (My comment to Justin on the list: “Much of this is about two important aspects of coping successfully in the 21st century: generosity (including listening and appreciation), and valuing your time — two things most of us are pretty lousy at.” The 5 Ways:

• Have a purpose (if you don’t have anything insightful, clever, novel, or useful to say, then don’t say anything)
• Don’t confuse media with marketing (one is communication; the other is trying to sell you something)
• Let someone else be the expert (focus on what you really are exemplary at)
• Comment selflessly (improve the conversation elsewhere than on your own blog)
• Kill one of your channels (say less, and in fewer places, and say it better)

Brilliant Idea That Needs to Be Free: I’m a huge fan of mind-mapping (graphic that captures visually the organization, ideas, decisions and learnings of a meeting, course curriculum or other intellectual work) and also of collaborative work and tools (wikis etc.) So the new app co-mapping, which allows mind-maps to be collaboratively developed (in real time or not) really appeals to me. Problem is, they’re charging user license fees for it. Can someone develop a free open source alternative, or better, show the developers of this tool a better business model to pay their development and maintenance costs?

Inflatable Sleeping Coat: An award-winning idea for hikers, campers, trekkers, and perhaps for water safety and potentially light water travel as well. Not to mention a possible boon for the homeless, today and, as numbers swell, in the future. Essentially, this is an insulated, water-proof coat with two detachable, inflatable sections that can serve as a bed and pillow, a cushion, or even as a raft. Terrific. Thanks to reader Tatu Siltanen for the link.

Giving Away the Store: A man in Oregon gave his devoted employees a special gift on his 81st birthday: their company. With the distressing trend to “demutualization” it’s refreshing to see the opposite: a corporation converted to a co-operative. Thanks to Tree for the link and the two that follow.

A Business That’s Mushrooming: Now mushrooms are finding use as all-natural building materials, biodegradable packaging and ‘green’ insulation.

Tarot as an Insight Incubator: Rather than a dubious predictive tool, some people are now using Tarot readings to stimulate creativity, insight and self-knowledge. “The cards help us to see ourselves and events symbolically, as archetypes, and therefore more objectively. And that has a way of making our personal dramas feel much less overwhelming.”

Even More Reasons to Move Your Money: Not only do they invest more ethically, small financial institutions like credit unions also charge you lower fees and give you better interest on your deposits.

How Touch Heals, Inspires and Sustains: New research shows the incredible power of human touch. Thanks to Jerry Michalski for the link.

Dreams of Cascadia: The idea of creating a new coastal nation running from Northern California to British Columbia is not new, but the recent Vancouver Olympics fanned the dreams of idealists that it was possible, only to dash them on the rocks of surly xenophobic customs agents on both sides of the border.

POLITICS AND ECONOMICS AS USUAL

The very rich get (much) richer: New government data shows that for the 400 richest US taxpayers, the last year of Bush was yet another windfall year, as despite the recession their average income rose by $81 million while their average tax rate dropped. Simply obscene.

Wall Street’s Pushed Us to a Second Brink: An expose by Matt Taibbi explains how recent actions of big financial institutions not only haven’t contributed to lowering risk of a second economic collapse, they’re actually deliberately precipitating one. Thanks to Raffi Aftandelian for the link.

When Corporations Really Rule the World — Now: John Robb describes the stranglehold that corporate interests now have on political power in the US. Thanks to Paul Heft for the link.

Here Comes Permanent Unemployment: This endless recession (despite the moronic MSM reports touting a recovery) is creating chronic victims: Millions who became unemployed and who may never find work again in a permanently gutted job market.

The Trauma of Industrial Childbirth: A woman’s haunting story of how the ordeal of modern induced childbirth, necessary as it may have been, has left her permanently scarred with PTSD.

MRSA Has a New Virulent Cousin: MRSA, a devastating and antibiotic-resistant bacteria killing thousands in hospitals today, has a new and even more potent and resistant cousin, called “Gram-Negative” Bacteria (The name refers to its undetectability in a certain test, not its mass). Further indication that our foolish strategy of trying to eradicate bacteria (the only life-form with a greater mass on Earth than humans) by soaking everything in antibiotics only serves to accelerate bacteria’s incredible adaptive capacity and create even more deadly diseases. When will we realize we can’t control the Earth and it’s evolution, even if we were wise enough to be able to discharge that power competently?

Undamming the Salmon: After a huge amount of work, all parties have agreed in principle to dismantle dams in Oregon and California that have devastated salmon stocks. But many hurdles remain.

FUN AND INSPIRATION

Blame Canada (2010 Version): Steve Almond’s priceless take on the Vancouver Olympics. “But maybe I’m being too cynical. Maybe the Olympics have always been about vertical integration of ancillary entertainment platforms.”

graphic of why people pirate movies (thanks to Rob Paterson for the link)

The Psychology of Small Urban Spaces: An old but still timely look at how humans behave in public spaces. Thanks to several readers for the link.

The Secret of the Maya: This is interesting, though I confess I find much of it unfathomable. Brilliant or nonsense? Thanks to Andrew Campbell for the link.

The Case for an Older Woman: OK Cupid provides some revealing data on what online daters are looking for, and what they should be looking for instead. We may lie about our biases, but we can’t hide from the numbers. Lots more to make you cringe with recognition or shame on this site — like this post on attractiveness. Thanks to Tree for the link.

Clever Made-Up Words: Results of a Washington Post contest from a few years ago that asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Thanks to Miralee for the link. The winners:
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation a bout yourself for the purpose of getting lucky
7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.
12. Karmageddon: It’s when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, and then the Earth explodes, and it’s a serious bummer.
13. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
14. Glibido: All talk and no action.
15. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

Field Art: Thanks to Tree for the link.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

From Bill Seitz “We don’t have many American product recalls, because we don’t make anything.”

(A joint essay by Guy R. McPherson, Keith Farnish, Dave Pollard, and Sharon Astyk.)

Indebtedness is a form of servitude, sometimes involuntary, and, in extreme cases, can become a form of endless and harrowing imprisonment. Consider, for example, the current usurious rates of interest (compared to what savers earn on their savings in the same banks that charge that interest). Some religions consider the charging of interest as immoral, even criminal. According to all four gospels in the Christian bible, even the normally passive, peaceful prophet of Christianity got so worked up about usury in a temple he started acting like John Ferguson on the sidelines of a hockey game.

Purchases by consumers (this awful word is used here only because that’s what we citizens have become – involuntarily) drive the world’s industrial economy. And purchases by consumers depend on the confidence of those consumers, so that consumer confidence underlies commercial success. If a potential consumer has no confidence in her ability to purchase an item, then she won’t. If enough potential consumers lose confidence in their ability to purchase and pay for any particular item, the sales of that item will plummet, causing the manufacturer and sellers of that item to fail.

Considering the current economy, which will no doubt crash again within the next year or two, we can help create a situation that will both change behaviour for the better and prevent people from getting into financial trouble. Accomplishing this will require getting wide support for such ‘frugal’ activities, and this will pose a huge challenge to the hopelessly optimistic, reality-challenged corporations dependent on the industrial economy.

How do we persuade people that they definitely cannot afford to take out loans to buy more stuff? We can start by targeting luxury purchases such as houses, cars, and appliances. Governments throughout the industrial world recognize the importance of such purchases to the industrial economy, and have therefore provided huge subsidies, tax credits and other financial incentives (with taxpayer dollars) for purchasing houses, cars, and — more recently – appliances.

Most people need loans to purchase these “durable goods” (which are, ironically, no longer either durable or good). Loans traditionally are seen as safety nets, but it has become clear they really represent traps. Never mind the psychological or ecological implications of consumerism — there is no evidence to suggest anybody has minded so far — the focus here is on the trap into which each potential consumer falls by taking out a loan for frivolous purchases. Every loan is a bad deal for the borrower, whether it’s a line of credit, a secured loan, a mortgage or a credit card payment.

The system needs you to keep borrowing; if you don’t then who knows what could happen:

So what can we do? Here are some tactics that can be used to unshackle yourself, and help others unshackle themselves, from crushing and unnecessary debts. The risk assessments below are an average that the four of us came up with, but risk varies greatly by jurisdiction and personal risk tolerance, so be careful: Your mileage may vary, and it may be helpful to talk it over with others, even friendly legal advisors, before you try some of these tactics:

No Risk:

Don’t take out a loan for anything. If you need it — and probably you don’t — save your money and buy it, barter for it, or borrow it.

Encourage others to join you. Start by sharing your car (with those you trust), your garden, your tools, even your clothes. Pass stuff on; give stuff away. Buy stuff used. You don’t need that loan and neither do the people you care about.

Pay off your credit card regularly, on time, every month, and consolidate debts into the lowest-interest vehicle possible if you can’t pay them off entirely.

If you already have loans, and most recent students do, then seek deferral under economic hardship. Odds are pretty high you’re actually experiencing economic hardship, so this is not a lie. (But be aware that if you recover from this hardship these debts can come back to haunt you, so think about this if you’re not planning on living a subsistence life).

Before you sign anything that entails debt, read the fine print, pause, and talk with others, and help others do the same.

Low to Medium Risk:

Start a “misinformation” campaign (from the point of view of the loan companies):

Via snail mail, send out carefully crafted false “parody” press releases from loan companies and banks to media outlets such as local radio stations, local press (and even the nationals if you are brave and clever enough). These “press releases” should discourage people from taking out loans (because, after all, people don’t really need all the stuff they buy on credit).

If you make the “press releases” as authentic, virtuous-sounding and complete as possible, and word them so that responses are not required, then there is a good chance they will be run by the media without questions being asked.

Or, do a bit of “subvertising”, parodying corporate websites on the Internet or (at a little higher risk) posting parody billboards: Focus on loan companies and banks, changing the messages to emphasize the immoral aspect of loans. Alternatively, if your risk appetite (and tech savvy) is a bit higher, you can hack existing websites or remove loan advertisements entirely. For more information on techniques for doing this, read this Keith Farnish post. And EFF has a good online white paper about protecting yourself/your message when using the Internet for gripe/parody purposes.

Keep an eye on the legal situation as it unfolds: The tremendous success of groups like the Yes Men is attracting a lot of attention among corporate risk managers – and their lawyers. Risk of these tactics could rise as a result.

Other potential actions along these same lines include:

Medium Risk:

Last month I wrote about ”Walking away from your mortgages”:

Many people are now living in homes with mortgages that are greater than the value of their property. Why would anyone continue to pay a debt that is higher than the asset it secures? After all, big corporations view pulling the plug on unsuccessful ventures and sticking the debtholders and shareholders a key business strategy. The whole idea of “risk capital” is that the interest and other fees you earn for lending to risky borrowers compensates you for the risk, so that if the borrower defaults you accept the loss and chalk it up to experience. Yet for some reason homeowners feel some moral obligation to throw good money endlessly after bad. This of course is exactly what the corporatists, who have no such moral compunction, are counting on, what economists call moral asymmetry. The logical response would be to tell the lender to write off the excess of the mortgage beyond the property value, and refinance the mortgage accordingly. Apparently in some US states (called “recourse” states) this moral asymmetry is institutionalized — that is, lenders can go after a mortgagee’s personal assets if they default. There is, of course, no recourse when the corporatists walk away from debts, offshore their operations, and stiff the taxpayers whose subsidies and bailouts paid for the corporatists’ ventures.

Where is the sense of outrage here? Have the education system and media so dumbed down the citizens that they can’t see this scheme for the cruel and criminal con it is? If everyone with a mortgage greater than the value of their home either walked away from it, or was legally empowered to require the excess to be written off as the “bad debt” it is, then of course there would be many bank failures and plunging profits. That’s how the market system is supposed to work. The lenders, of course, want it both ways, and Obama and the citizens seem blithely willing to let them have it.

High risk: