Suppose you give me a million dollars with the instructions, "Invest this profitably, and I'll pay you well." I'm a sharp dresser -- why not? So I go out onto the street and hand out stacks of bills to random passers-by. Ten thousand dollars each. In return, each scribbles out an IOU for $20,000, payable in five years. I come back to you and say, "Look at these IOUs! I have generated a 20% annual return on your investment." You are very pleased, and pay me an enormous commission.
Now I've got a big stack of IOUs, so I use these "assets" as collateral to borrow even more money, which I lend out to even more people, or sell them to others like myself who do the same. I also buy insurance to cover me in case the borrowers default -- and I pay for it with those self-same IOUs! Round and round it goes, each new loan becoming somebody's asset on which to borrow yet more money. We all rake in huge commissions and bonuses, as the total face value of all the assets we've created from that initial million dollars is now fifty times that.
Then one day, the first batch of IOUs comes due. But guess what? The person who scribbled his name on the IOU can't pay me back right now. In fact, lots of the borrowers can't. I try to hush this embarrassing fact up as long as possible, but pretty soon you get suspicious. You want your million dollars back -- in cash. I try to sell the IOUs and their derivatives that I hold, but everyone else is suspicious too, and no one buys them. The insurance company tries to cover my losses, but it can only do so by selling the IOUs I gave it!
So finally, the government steps in and buys the IOUs, bails out the insurance company and everyone else holding the IOUs and the derivatives stacked on them. Their total value is way more than a million dollars now. I and my fellow entrepreneurs retire with our lucre. Everyone else pays for it.
This is the first level of what has happened in the financial industry over the past decade. It is a huge transfer of wealth to the financial elite, to be funded by US taxpayers, foreign corporations and governments, and ultimately the foreign workers who subsidize US debt indirectly via the lower purchasing power of their wages. However, to see the current crisis as merely the result of a big con is to miss its true significance.
I think we all sense that we are nearing the end of an era. On the most superficial level, it is the era of unregulated casino-style financial manipulation that is ending. But the current efforts of the political elites to fix the crisis at this level will only reveal its deeper dimensions. In fact, the crisis goes "all the way to the bottom." It arises from the very nature of money and property in the world today, and it will persist and continue to intensify until money itself is transformed. A process centuries in the making is in its final stages of unfoldment.
Money as we know it today has crisis and collapse built into its basic design. That is because money seeks interest, bears interest, and indeed is born of interest. To see how this works, let's go back to some finance basics. Money is created when somebody takes out a loan from a bank (or more recently, a disguised loan from some other kind of institution). A debt is a promise to pay money in the future in order to buy something today; in other words, borrowing money is a form of delayed trading. I receive something now (bought with the money I borrowed) and agree to give something in the future (a good or service which I will sell for the money to pay back the debt). A bank or any other lender will ordinarily only agree to lend you money if there is a reasonable expectation you will pay it back; in other words, if there is a reasonable expectation you will produce goods or services of equivalent value. This "reasonable expectation" can be guaranteed in the form of collateral, or it can be encoded in one's credit rating.
Any time you use money, you are essentially guaranteeing "I have performed a service or provided a good of equivalent value to the one I am buying." If the money is borrowed money, you are saying that you will provide an equivalent good/service in the future.
Now enter interest. What motivates a bank to lend anyone money in the first place? It is interest. Interest drives the creation of money today. Any time money is created through debt, a need to create even more money in the future is also created. The amount of money must grow over time, which means that the volume of goods and services must grow over time as well.
If the volume of money grows faster than the volume of goods and services, the result is inflation. If it grows more slowly -- for example through a slowdown in lending -- the result is bankruptcies, recession, or deflation. The government can increase or decrease the supply of money in several ways. First, it can create money by borrowing it from the central bank, or in America, from the Federal Reserve. This money ends up as bank deposits, which in turn give banks more margin reserves on which to extend loans. You see, a bank's capacity to create money is limited by margin reserve requirements. Typically, a bank must hold cash (or central bank deposits) equal to about 10% of its total customer deposits. The other 90%, it can loan out, thus creating new money. This money ends up back in a bank as deposits, allowing another 81% of it (90% of 90%) to be lent out again. In this way, each dollar of initial deposits ends up as $9 of new money. Government spending of money borrowed from the central bank acts a seed for new money creation. (Of course, this depends on banks' willingness to lend! In a credit freeze such as happened this week, banks hoard excess reserves and the repeated injections of government money have little effect.)
Another way to increase the money supply is to lower margin reserve requirements. In practice this is rarely done, at least directly. However, in the last decade, various kinds of non-bank lending have skirted the margin reserve requirement, through the alphabet soup of financial instruments you've been hearing about in the news. The result is that each dollar of original equity has been leveraged not to nine times it original value, as in traditional banking, but to 70 times or even more. This has allowed returns on investment far beyond the 5% or so available from traditional banking, along with "compensation" packages beyond the dreams of avarice.
Each new dollar that is created comes with a new dollar of debt -- more than a dollar of debt, because of interest. The debt is eventually redeemed either with goods and services, or with more borrowed money, which in turn can be redeemed with yet more borrowed money... but eventually it will be used to buy goods and services. The interest has to come from somewhere. Borrowing more money to make the interest payments on an existing loan merely postpones the day of reckoning by deferring the need to create new goods and services.
The whole system of interest-bearing money works fine as long as the volume of goods and services exchanged for money keeps growing. The crisis we are seeing today is in part because new money has been created much faster than goods and services have, and much faster than has been historically sustainable. There are only two ways out of such a situation: inflation and bankruptcies. Each involve the destruction of money. The current convulsions of the financial and political elites basically come down to a futile attempt to prevent both. Their first concern is to prevent the evaporation of money through massive bankruptcies, because it is, after all, their money.
There is a much deeper crisis at work as well, a crisis in the creation of goods and services that underlies money to begin with, and it is this crisis that gave birth to the real estate bubble everyone blames for the current situation. To understand it, let's get clear on what constitutes a "good" or a "service." In economics, these terms refer to something that is exchanged for money. If I babysit your children for free, economists don't count it as a service. It cannot be used to pay a financial debt: I cannot go to the supermarket and say, "I watched my neighbor's kids this morning, so please give me food." But if I open a day care center and charge you money, I have created a "service." GDP rises and, according to economists, society has become wealthier.
The same is true if I cut down a forest and sell the timber. While it is still standing and inaccessible, it is not a good. It only becomes "good" when I build a logging road, hire labor, cut it down, and transport it to a buyer. I convert a forest to timber, a commodity, and GDP goes up. Similarly, if I create a new song and share it for free, GDP does not go up and society is not considered wealthier, but if I copyright it and sell it, it becomes a good. Or I can find a traditional society that uses herbs and shamanic techniques for healing, destroy their culture and make them dependent on pharmaceutical medicine which they must purchase, evict them from their land so they cannot be subsistence farmers and must buy food, clear the land and hire them on a banana plantation -- and I have made the world richer. I have brought various functions, relationships, and natural resources into the realm of money. In The Ascent of Humanity I describe this process in depth: the conversion of social capital, natural capital, cultural capital, and spiritual capital into money.
Essentially, for the economy to continue growing and for the (interest-based) money system to remain viable, more and more of nature and human relationship must be monetized. For example, thirty years ago most meals were prepared at home; today some two-thirds are prepared outside, in restaurants or supermarket delis. A once unpaid function, cooking, has become a "service". And we are the richer for it. Right?
Another major engine of economic growth over the last three decades, child care, has also made us richer. We are now relieved of the burden of caring for our own children. We pay experts instead, who can do it much more efficiently.
In ancient times entertainment was also a free, participatory function. Everyone played an instrument, sang, participated in drama. Even 75 years ago in America, every small town had its own marching band and baseball team. Now we pay for those services. The economy has grown. Hooray.
The crisis we are facing today arises from the fact that there is almost no more social, cultural, natural, and spiritual capital left to convert into money. Centuries, millennia of near-continuous money creation has left us so destitute that we have nothing left to sell. Our forests are damaged beyond repair, our soil depleted and washed into the sea, our fisheries fished out, the rejuvenating capacity of the earth to recycle our waste saturated. Our cultural treasury of songs and stories, images and icons, has been looted and copyrighted. Any clever phrase you can think of is already a trademarked slogan. Our very human relationships and abilities have been taken away from us and sold back, so that we are now dependent on strangers, and therefore on money, for things few humans ever paid for until recently: food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, child care, cooking. Life itself has become a consumer item. Today we sell away the last vestiges of our divine bequeathment: our health, the biosphere and genome, even our own minds. This is the process that is culminating in our age. It is almost complete, especially in America and the "developed" world. In the developing world there still remain people who live substantially in gift cultures, where natural and social wealth is not yet the subject of property. Globalization is the process of stripping away these assets, to feed the money machine's insatiable, existential need to grow. Yet this stripmining of other lands is running up against its limits too, both because there is almost nothing left to take, and because of growing pockets of effective resistance.
The result is that the supply of money -- and the corresponding volume of debt -- has for several decades outstripped the production of goods and services that it promises. It is deeply related to the classic problem of oversupply in capitalist economics. The Marxian crisis of capital can be deferred into the future as long as new, high-profit industries and markets can be developed to compensate for the vicious circle of falling profits, falling wages, depressed consumption, and overproduction in mature industries. The continuation of capitalism as we know it depends on an infinite supply of these new industries, which essentially must convert infinite new realms of social, natural, cultural, and spiritual capital into money. The problem is, these resources are finite, and the closer they come to exhaustion, the more painful their extraction becomes. Therefore, contemporaneous with the financial crisis we have an ecological crisis and a health crisis. They are intimately interlinked. We cannot convert much more of the earth into money, or much more of our health into money, before the basis of life itself is threatened.
Faced with the exhaustion of the non-monetized commonwealth that it consumes, financial capital has tried to delay the inevitable by cannibalizing itself. The dot-com bubble of the late 90s showed that the productive economy could not longer keep up with the growth of money. Lots of excess money was running around frantically, searching for a place where the promise of deferred goods and services could be redeemed. So, to postpone the inevitable crash, the Fed slashed interest rates and loosened monetary policy to allow old debts to be repaid with new debts (rather than real goods and services). The new financial goods and services that arose were phony, artifacts of deceptive accounting on a vast, systemic scale.
Obviously, the practice of borrowing new money to pay the principal and interest of old debts cannot last very long, but that is what the economy as a whole has done for ten years now. Unfortunately, simply stopping this practice isn't going to solve the underlying problem. A collapse is coming, unavoidably. The government's bailout plan will at best postpone it for a year or two (who knows, maybe until 2012!), long enough for the big players to move their money to a safe haven. They will discover, though, that there is no safe haven. As the US dollar loses its safe-haven status (which will happen all the more certainly when the government takes over Wall Street's bad debts), you can expect capital to chase various commodities in an inflationary surge before a deflationary depression takes hold. If a credit freeze overpowers the government's inflationary measures, depression will come all the sooner.
The present crisis is actually the final stage of what began in the 1930s. Successive solutions to the fundamental problem of keeping pace with money that expands with the rate of interest have been applied, and exhausted. The first effective solution was war, a state which has been permanent since 1940. Nuclear weapons and a shift in human consciousness have limited the solution of endless military escalation. Other solutions -- globalization, technology-enabled development of new goods and services to replace human functions never before commoditized, and technology-enabled plunder of natural resources once off limits, and finally financial auto-cannibalism -- have similarly run their course. Unless there are realms of wealth I have not considered, and new depths of poverty, misery, and alienation to which we might plunge, the inevitable cannot be delayed much longer.
In the face of the impending crisis, people often ask what they can do to protect themselves. "Buy gold? Stockpile canned goods? Build a fortified compound in a remote area? What should I do?" I would like to suggest a different kind of question: "What is the most beautiful thing I can do?" You see, the gathering crisis presents a tremendous opportunity. Deflation, the destruction of money, is only a categorical evil if the creation of money is a categorical good. However, you can see from the examples I have given that the creation of money has in many ways impoverished us all. Conversely, the destruction of money has the potential to enrich us. It offers the opportunity to reclaim parts of the lost commonwealth from the realm of money and property.
We actually see this happening every time there is an economic recession. People can no longer pay for various goods and services, and so have to rely on friends and neighbors instead. Where there is no money to facilitate transactions, gift economies reemerge and new kinds of money are created. Ordinarily, though, people and institutions fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening. The habitual first response to economic crisis is to make and keep more money -- to accelerate the conversion of anything you can into money. On a systemic level, the debt surge is generating enormous pressure to extend the commodification of the commonwealth. We can see this happening with the calls to drill for oil in Alaska, commence deep-sea drilling, and so on. The time is here, though, for the reverse process to begin in earnest -- to remove things from the realm of goods and services, and return them to the realm of gifts, reciprocity, self-sufficiency, and community sharing. Note well: this is going to happen anyway in the wake of a currency collapse, as people lose their jobs or become too poor to buy things. People will help each other and real communities will reemerge.
In the meantime, anything we do to protect some natural or social resource from conversion into money will both hasten the collapse and mitigate its severity. Any forest you save from development, any road you stop, any cooperative playgroup you establish; anyone you teach to heal themselves, or to build their own house, cook their own food, make their own clothes; any wealth you create or add to the public domain; anything you render off-limits to the world-devouring machine, will help shorten the Machine's lifespan. Think of it this way: if you already do not depend on money for some portion of life's necessities and pleasures, then the collapse of money will pose much less of a harsh transition for you. The same applies to the social level. Any network or community or social institution that is not a vehicle for the conversion of life into money will sustain and enrich life after money.
In previous essays I have described alternative money systems, based on mutual credit and demurrage, that do not drive the conversion of all that is good, true, and beautiful into money. These enact a fundamentally different human identity, a fundamentally different sense of self, from what dominates today. No more will it be true that more for me is less for you. On a personal level, the deepest possible revolution we can enact is a revolution in our sense of self, in our identity. The discrete and separate self of Descartes and Adam Smith has run its course and is becoming obsolete. We are realizing our own inseparateness, from each other and from the totality of all life. Interest denies this union, for it seeks growth of the separate self and the expense of something external, something other. Probably everyone reading this essay agrees with the principles of interconnectedness, whether from a Buddhistic or an ecological perspective. The time has come to live it. It is time to enter the spirit of the gift, which embodies the felt understanding of non-separation. It is becoming abundantly obvious that less for you (in all its dimensions) is also less for me. The ideology of perpetual gain has brought us to a state of poverty so destitute that we are gasping for air. That ideology, and the civilization built upon it, is what is collapsing today.
Individually and collectively, anything we do to resist or postpone the collapse will only make it worse. So stop resisting the revolution in human beingness. If you want to survive the multiple crises unfolding today, do not seek to survive them. That is the mindset of separation; that is resistance, a clinging to a dying past. Instead, allow your perspective to shift toward reunion, and think in terms of what you can give. What can you contribute to a more beautiful world? That is your only responsibility and your only security. The gifts you need to survive and enjoy will come to you easily, because what you do to the world, you do to yourself.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Paulson's Bailout Plan Is A Crime
For nearly a year, Americans have been asking themselves why the investors and foreign banks that bought up hundreds of billions of dollars of worthless mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from US investment banks have not taken legal action against these same banks or initiated a boycott of US financial products to prevent more people from getting ripped off?Now we know the answer. It's because, behind the scenes, Henry Paulson and Co. were working out a deal to dump the whole trillion dollar mess on the US taxpayer. That's what this whole $700 billion boondoggle is all about; wiping out the massive debts that were generated in the biggest incident of fraud in history. Rep Brad Sherman explained it like this last night to Larry Kudlow: "It (The bill) provides hundreds of billions of dollars of bailouts to foreign investors. It provides no real control of Paulson's power. There is a critique board but not really a board that can step in and change what he does. It's a $700 billion program run by a part-time temporary employee and there is no limit on million dollar a month salaries....... It's very clear. The Bank of Shanghai can transfer all of its toxic assets to the Bank of Shanghai of Los Angeles which can then sell them the next day to the Treasury. I had a provision to say if it wasn't owned by an American entity even a subsidiary, but at least an entity in the US, the Treasury can't buy it. It was rejected.The bill is very clear. Assets now held in China and London can be sold to US entities on Monday and then sold to the Treasury on Tuesday. Paulson has made it clear he will recommend a veto of any bill that contained a clear provision that said if Americans did not own the asset on September 20th that it can't be sold to the Treasury. Hundreds of billions of dollars are going to bail out foreign investors. They know it, they demanded it and the bill has been carefully written to make sure it can happen." So, why hasn't the Treasury Secretary explained the real purpose of the bailout to the American people? Could it be that he knows that his $700 billion bailout would end up like the Hindenburg, vanishing in sheets of flames? This is a terrible bill, and it confers absolute authority on one of the central players in the scandal, Henry Paulson, who was the Chairman of Goldman Sachs at the time this MBS garbage was being peddled around the planet to credulous investors. Now Paulson will be in a position to buy up any "troubled asset" he that he believes could pose a threat to "financial market stability". That's just great! It is clear that Paulson will use his unchecked powers to wipe the slate clean and remove any possibility that foreign investors will take legal action against the real perpetrators; the giant Wall Street investment banks.So, how do the American people like paying off Paulson and Co. future legal bills? Is that how taxpayer revenue should be spent instead of on education, health care and infrastructure? There's another reason why Paulson is working so hard to pass the Bailout for Tycoons Bill; it's a windfall for the banking giants. Citi did not simply pick up Wachovia by happenstance nor did JP Morgan purchase Washington Mutual because it wanted to perform its civic duty and prevent a full-system meltdown. No way; they were clearly aware of the way the wind was blowing. In fact, neither case manages to pass the smell test.This is from AP's Sara Lepro: "Citigroup agreed Monday to purchase Wachovia's banking operations for $2.1 billion in a deal arranged by federal regulators, making the Charlotte-based bank the latest casualty of the widening global financial crisis. The deal greatly expands Citigroup's retail franchise—giving it a total of more than 4,300 U.S. branches and $600 billion in deposits—and secures its place among the U.S. banking industry's Big Three, along with Bank of America Corp. and JP Morgan Chase & Co. But it comes at a cost: Citigroup Inc. said it will slash its quarterly dividend in half to 16 cents. It also will dilute existing shareholders by selling $10 billion in common stock to shore up its capital position. In addition to assuming $53 billion worth of debt, Citigroup will absorb up to $42 billion of losses from Wachovia's $312 billion loan portfolio, with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. agreeing to cover any remaining losses. Citigroup also will issue $12 billion in preferred stock and warrants to the FDIC.(Ed; Here's the punch line) "The government's proposed $700 billion rescue plan for financial institution, being voted on Monday by the House of Representatives, likely will prove of added benefit to Citi. While the plan broadly aims to prevent banks from profiting on the sale of troubled assets to the government, there is an exception made for assets acquired in a merger or buyout, or from companies that have filed for bankruptcy. This could allow Citigroup to sell toxic mortgages and other assets it gained from Wachovia for a higher price than the bank actually paid for them." ("Citigroup to buy Wachovia banking operations" Huh?!? So Citi not only gets an army of depositors (the cheapest capital available!) but, at the same time, is going to be able to dump it's mortgage-backed junk on the taxpayer? And, guess what? The JP Morgan deal looks nearly identical. Is this "insider baseball" or not? Does anyone want to wager that G-Sax will also get a privileged spot at the public trough sucking up billions of taxpayer dollars to patch together its tattered balance sheet? And what will the net result of Paulson's Bailout for Fraudsters be; more consolidation of the financial industry and the utter annihilation of local and regional banks. That's a sure thing. The mom and pop banks across the country are going to take it in the stern sheets if this bill is passed. Bet on it.The country has no time for this cynical scavenger-hunt. The system is listing badly and we have ONE chance to get this emergency bill right. There is no way an industry rep like Henry Paulson, who has spent his entire career feathering his own nest and handing out plums to his buddies, can operate in the best interests of the American people. Paulson has got to go! According to Bloomberg News , Sept 29: "The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone." (Bloomberg)Get it? The Fed has ALREADY brushed aside Congress's "No" vote and pumped money into the system; and look what happened. Nothing! Libor is still at historic highs, the Ted spread has widened to record levels and interbank lending is grinding to a standstill. There's a run on the money markets that is reducing the ability of businesses to turn over short term debt. The system is shutting down, folks, and Paulson's snake oil won't help. Why throw another $700 billion down a rathole? 400 reputable economists--not the "faith based" industry hacks that work for the Bush administration--are opposed to this bailout. It has to be stopped. This is a "real time" meltdown and it requires real solutions, not bailouts for foreign creditors and Wall Street Goliaths. (Foreign victims of this scam will have to sue the perpetrators not the US taxpayer) As Nouriel Roubini, chairman of Roubini Global Economics, points out, we are on the verge of the "mother of all bank runs", a cross-border savaging of reserves that would crash the entire financial system. Here's Roubini on the next shoe to drop: "The next step of this panic could become the mother of all bank runs, i.e. a run on the trillion dollar plus of the cross border short-term interbank liabilities of the US banking and financial system as foreign banks as starting to worry about the safety of their liquid exposures to US financial institutions; such a silent cross border bank run has already started as foreign banks are worried about the solvency of US banks and are starting to reduce their exposure. And if this run accelerates - as it may now - a total meltdown of the US financial system could occur. We are thus now in a generalized panic mode and back to the risk of a systemic meltdown of the entire financial system. And US and foreign policy authorities seem to be clueless about what needs to be done next. Maybe they should today start with a coordinated 100 bps reduction in policy rates in all the major economies in the world to show that they are starting to seriously recognize and address this rapidly worsening financial crisis." (Nouriel Roubini's EconoMonitor)We have no time for Paulson's self serving shenanigans. This is not how one goes about recapitalizing the banking system or bringing stability to the financial system. It's time to get rid of the lobbyists and banking vermin and bring in the economists and the people with real experience. Paulson's plan is loser. Not one dime should go to this latest Wall Street swindle. No bailout!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
الشعب المغربي بدون هوية
خرج الملك كما يفعل عادة للتجول بسيارته في شوارع المدينة ، وكان معه داخل السيارة ابنه البكر ، الذي هو ولي العهد.
في ملتقى الطرق سيتوقف الملك أمام شرطي المرور الذي ينظم حركة السير ، والتفت إلى ابنه الصغير ذو الخمس سنوات يسأله إن كان
يرغب أن يصبح شرطيا عندما يكبر ، وعوض أن يجيب الصغير أخذ الشرطي المبادرة وأجاب الملك بأنه يتمنى أن يرى ولي العهد الصغير جالسا على عرش أسلافه في أحد الأيام ، وأضاف كلمات يثني فيها على الملك . الملك بطبيعة الحال أعجبه ما سمع من فم الشرطي ، وقبل أن ينصرف كافأه على الفور ب "كريما" ! للإشارة فالملك الذي كان بطلا لهذه الواقعة ليس ملكا آخر غير محمد السادس
إذا صح هذا الخبر الذي أوردته "الجريدة الأولى" في عددها التسعين ، فعلى المغاربة أن يقتنعوا بأن المغرب لن يتغير كما نتمنى حتى في عهد الحسن الثالث
يجب علينا أن نعترف بأن الذي أهلك بلدنا وأوصله إلى هذه الرتبة المخجلة التي يحتلها على الصعيد العالمي في كل المجالات هو اقتصاد الريع ، الذي ينتفع به المحظوظون دون غيرهم من أبناء وبنات الشعب ، وطبعا فلسنا بحاجة إلى استعمال المصطلحات الكبيرة التي يستعملها السياسيون كي نفهم ما هو "الريع" ، فمعناه بكل بساطة هو أن تأخذ حق الآخرين بدون وجه حق ! ورخص النقل أو "الكريمات" التي يوزعها الملك على المواطنين الذين يمدون إليه رسائل الاستعطاف التي يكتبونها بنفس العبارات التي ينطق بها المتسولون عندما يمدون أيديهم إلى الناس على أرصفة الشوارع تدخل بدورها في إطار الريع . فالدول التي تحترم مواطنيها لا تجعل منهم شحاذين يتسولون الأعتاب الشريفة ، بل تصنع لهم المعامل والمصانع كي يشتغلوا ويكسبوا لقمة عيشهم بعزة وكرامة ، وحتى لو افترضنا أن هذه الكريمات لا يتم إعطاؤها إلا لمن يستحقها من ذوي الاحتياجات الخاصة والفقراء والمعوزين ، وهذا أمر مستبعد بطبيعة الحال ، فهذا لا يشرف المواطن المغربي على الاطلاق ، فالشغل والتطبيب والتعليم حق يمنحه لنا الدستور ، لذلك يجب على الدولة أن توفر لمواطنيها سبل العيش الكريم عوض إهانتهم بهذه الطريقة المذلة
ثم إن هذه "الكريمات" لا يجوز للملك أن يتصرف فيها كيفما شاء بدون حسيب ولا رقيب ، ويمنحها لكل من يلقي عبارة مدح في أذنه ، لأن ذلك أولا يساهم في خلق جيوش من المتملقين الذين عوض أن يسعوا إلى كسب معيشتهم بعرق جبينهم يكسبونها بكلمات المدح والإطراء التي تكون في الغالب بلا مصداقية ! ويكون الملك بذلك يشجع شعبه على الاتكال
ولأن ذلك أيضا يجعل منا نحن المغاربة شعبا بلا كرامة ، ما دمنا نعيش على الهبات والاكراميات ، والحال أننا لا نحتاج إلى من يشفق علينا ، بل إلى من يوزع بيننا ثروات الوطن بالتساوي . ألا يكفيكم ما قاله الرئيس الجزائري في حقنا عندما صرح بأن الجزائر لا توزع على مواطنيها الحريرة ، بل تمنح لهم مفاتيح الشقق السكنية المفروشة . ورغم أننا نعرف أننا والجزائريون في الهم سواء ، إلا أن ما قاله بوتفليقة يجدر بالمسؤولين المغاربة أن يضعوه نصب أعينهم ، ويكفوا عن التعامل معنا كمتسولين حقيرين ، يضحك علينا الأصدقاء والأعداء على حد سواء
في نهاية كأس العرش لكرة القدم بين المغرب الفاسي والجيش الملكي ، تسلح المدرب رشيد الطاوسي بصنطيحة من حديد ، وقدم للأمير رشيد الذي ترأس المباراة "هدية" عبارة عن قميص رياضي . القميص تم لفه بعناية داخل كيس بلاستيكي ، وبين ثناياه تم وضع رسائل استعطاف تقدم بها لاعبو الفريق الفاسي إلى سمو الأمير
ومع ذلك يتساءلون عن سبب كل هذه النكسات المتلاحقة التي تحصدها الرياضة المغربية في كل أنواعها . فحتى الرياضيون الذين يعرفون أن رزقهم رهين بكمية العرق التي تتصبب من جباههم يرون ألا جدوى من تعذيب أنفسهم في كسب كسرة الخبز بطريقة شريفة ، ما دام أن استعطاف أحد أفراد الأسرة الملكية يمكن أن يأتي برزق يدوم طيلة الحياة . وبلا عذاب ولا تمارة
وعلى ذكر الرياضيين لابد من الإشارة إلى أن عددا من اللاعبين القدامى المحظوظين يملكون رخصا للنقل يكترونها بالملاين ، رغم أن أغلبهم لا يستحقونها ، وهناك من حصل على هكتارات من الأراضي الفلاحية هدية له على "تشريف" المغرب في الملتقيات الرياضية ، كهشام الكروج الذي حصل على مساحات من الأراضي الفلاحية الخصبة بمدينته بركان
هذه السياسة التي تتعامل بها الدولة مع أبنائها مريضة للغاية وتحتاج إلى علاج مستعجل ، فأي رياضي عندما يدخل إلى ميدان المنافسة يكون هدفه الأول والأخير هو الربح الشخصي قبل أن يفكر في تشريف الوطن ، والدليل هو أن ما يقارب 300 رياضي مغربي تجنسوا بجنسيات بلدان أخرى ، وأصبحوا يخوضون المنافسات الرياضية تحت راياتها ، ليس لأنهم أقل وطنية منا ، بل لأنهم اكتشفوا ذات لحظة أن مستقبلهم سيكون مبنيا للمجهول إذا قرروا التنافس تحت ظل العلم المغربي الأحمر
لذلك فالأراضي التي منحتها الدولة لهشام الكروج مثلا لا يستحقها ، فالرجل جمع مئات الملايين من كل الميداليات التي فاز بها ، ويحصل على راتب شهري من الجامعة حيث يشتغل ، ومن فوق هادشي كامل يبقى ما قام به في حق المغرب واجبا ، ما دام أن المغرب هو الذي وفر له ملاعب التداريب والأكل والمأوى وأشياء أخرى ، ودفع ثمن تذاكر السفر والفندق ... فخدمة الوطن كما قلنا مرارا تبقى واجبا على الجميع ، واللي ما عجبوش الحال يمشي يقلب على شي جنسية أخرى عوض الاستيلاء على أراضي الدولة بدون وجه حق
بالمناسبة ، هل تعرفون مثلا أن سويسرا التي تعتبر واحدة من أغنى دول العالم عندما كافأت بطلها الكبير روجي فيديرير الذي رفع العلم السويسري عشرات المرات في المحافل الدولية الكبرى لم تقدم له هكتارات من الأراضي ، أو رخصة نقل أو حتى بقعة أرضية ، بل اكتفت بمنحه هدية رمزية عبارة عن بقرة من النوع الكروازي ! والعلف ديالها طبعا على حسابو
فالبلدان المتقدمة وصلت إلى ما هي عليه لأنها لا تجامل أبناءها ، بل تتعامل معهم في إطار القانون الذي يجعل الجميع سواسية ، ولأنها لا توزع ثرواتها على المحظوظين كما يحدث عندنا ، بل يستفيد منها الجميع على قدم المساواة ، وهذا ما ينقصنا في المغرب حتى يتخلص بلدنا من هذا الاعوجاج المزمن الذي تعاني منه سياسته العرجاء
وعندما يرى ولي العهد الصغير الذي سيتولى الحكم في يوم من الأيام كيف أن والده يوزع الهبات والاكراميات والكريمات على الناس بمجرد سماع كلمة إطراء أو مدح ، فلا شك أنه سيتصرف بنفس "المنطق" عندما يحكم ، لذلك فما علينا سوى أن نؤجل أحلامنا بمغرب المساواة وتكافؤ الفرص لغاية حكم الملك محمد السابع الذي سيأتي بعد الحسن الثالث اللي هو ولي العهد حاليا
إذا صح هذا الخبر الذي أوردته "الجريدة الأولى" في عددها التسعين ، فعلى المغاربة أن يقتنعوا بأن المغرب لن يتغير كما نتمنى حتى في عهد الحسن الثالث
يجب علينا أن نعترف بأن الذي أهلك بلدنا وأوصله إلى هذه الرتبة المخجلة التي يحتلها على الصعيد العالمي في كل المجالات هو اقتصاد الريع ، الذي ينتفع به المحظوظون دون غيرهم من أبناء وبنات الشعب ، وطبعا فلسنا بحاجة إلى استعمال المصطلحات الكبيرة التي يستعملها السياسيون كي نفهم ما هو "الريع" ، فمعناه بكل بساطة هو أن تأخذ حق الآخرين بدون وجه حق ! ورخص النقل أو "الكريمات" التي يوزعها الملك على المواطنين الذين يمدون إليه رسائل الاستعطاف التي يكتبونها بنفس العبارات التي ينطق بها المتسولون عندما يمدون أيديهم إلى الناس على أرصفة الشوارع تدخل بدورها في إطار الريع . فالدول التي تحترم مواطنيها لا تجعل منهم شحاذين يتسولون الأعتاب الشريفة ، بل تصنع لهم المعامل والمصانع كي يشتغلوا ويكسبوا لقمة عيشهم بعزة وكرامة ، وحتى لو افترضنا أن هذه الكريمات لا يتم إعطاؤها إلا لمن يستحقها من ذوي الاحتياجات الخاصة والفقراء والمعوزين ، وهذا أمر مستبعد بطبيعة الحال ، فهذا لا يشرف المواطن المغربي على الاطلاق ، فالشغل والتطبيب والتعليم حق يمنحه لنا الدستور ، لذلك يجب على الدولة أن توفر لمواطنيها سبل العيش الكريم عوض إهانتهم بهذه الطريقة المذلة
ثم إن هذه "الكريمات" لا يجوز للملك أن يتصرف فيها كيفما شاء بدون حسيب ولا رقيب ، ويمنحها لكل من يلقي عبارة مدح في أذنه ، لأن ذلك أولا يساهم في خلق جيوش من المتملقين الذين عوض أن يسعوا إلى كسب معيشتهم بعرق جبينهم يكسبونها بكلمات المدح والإطراء التي تكون في الغالب بلا مصداقية ! ويكون الملك بذلك يشجع شعبه على الاتكال
ولأن ذلك أيضا يجعل منا نحن المغاربة شعبا بلا كرامة ، ما دمنا نعيش على الهبات والاكراميات ، والحال أننا لا نحتاج إلى من يشفق علينا ، بل إلى من يوزع بيننا ثروات الوطن بالتساوي . ألا يكفيكم ما قاله الرئيس الجزائري في حقنا عندما صرح بأن الجزائر لا توزع على مواطنيها الحريرة ، بل تمنح لهم مفاتيح الشقق السكنية المفروشة . ورغم أننا نعرف أننا والجزائريون في الهم سواء ، إلا أن ما قاله بوتفليقة يجدر بالمسؤولين المغاربة أن يضعوه نصب أعينهم ، ويكفوا عن التعامل معنا كمتسولين حقيرين ، يضحك علينا الأصدقاء والأعداء على حد سواء
في نهاية كأس العرش لكرة القدم بين المغرب الفاسي والجيش الملكي ، تسلح المدرب رشيد الطاوسي بصنطيحة من حديد ، وقدم للأمير رشيد الذي ترأس المباراة "هدية" عبارة عن قميص رياضي . القميص تم لفه بعناية داخل كيس بلاستيكي ، وبين ثناياه تم وضع رسائل استعطاف تقدم بها لاعبو الفريق الفاسي إلى سمو الأمير
ومع ذلك يتساءلون عن سبب كل هذه النكسات المتلاحقة التي تحصدها الرياضة المغربية في كل أنواعها . فحتى الرياضيون الذين يعرفون أن رزقهم رهين بكمية العرق التي تتصبب من جباههم يرون ألا جدوى من تعذيب أنفسهم في كسب كسرة الخبز بطريقة شريفة ، ما دام أن استعطاف أحد أفراد الأسرة الملكية يمكن أن يأتي برزق يدوم طيلة الحياة . وبلا عذاب ولا تمارة
وعلى ذكر الرياضيين لابد من الإشارة إلى أن عددا من اللاعبين القدامى المحظوظين يملكون رخصا للنقل يكترونها بالملاين ، رغم أن أغلبهم لا يستحقونها ، وهناك من حصل على هكتارات من الأراضي الفلاحية هدية له على "تشريف" المغرب في الملتقيات الرياضية ، كهشام الكروج الذي حصل على مساحات من الأراضي الفلاحية الخصبة بمدينته بركان
هذه السياسة التي تتعامل بها الدولة مع أبنائها مريضة للغاية وتحتاج إلى علاج مستعجل ، فأي رياضي عندما يدخل إلى ميدان المنافسة يكون هدفه الأول والأخير هو الربح الشخصي قبل أن يفكر في تشريف الوطن ، والدليل هو أن ما يقارب 300 رياضي مغربي تجنسوا بجنسيات بلدان أخرى ، وأصبحوا يخوضون المنافسات الرياضية تحت راياتها ، ليس لأنهم أقل وطنية منا ، بل لأنهم اكتشفوا ذات لحظة أن مستقبلهم سيكون مبنيا للمجهول إذا قرروا التنافس تحت ظل العلم المغربي الأحمر
لذلك فالأراضي التي منحتها الدولة لهشام الكروج مثلا لا يستحقها ، فالرجل جمع مئات الملايين من كل الميداليات التي فاز بها ، ويحصل على راتب شهري من الجامعة حيث يشتغل ، ومن فوق هادشي كامل يبقى ما قام به في حق المغرب واجبا ، ما دام أن المغرب هو الذي وفر له ملاعب التداريب والأكل والمأوى وأشياء أخرى ، ودفع ثمن تذاكر السفر والفندق ... فخدمة الوطن كما قلنا مرارا تبقى واجبا على الجميع ، واللي ما عجبوش الحال يمشي يقلب على شي جنسية أخرى عوض الاستيلاء على أراضي الدولة بدون وجه حق
بالمناسبة ، هل تعرفون مثلا أن سويسرا التي تعتبر واحدة من أغنى دول العالم عندما كافأت بطلها الكبير روجي فيديرير الذي رفع العلم السويسري عشرات المرات في المحافل الدولية الكبرى لم تقدم له هكتارات من الأراضي ، أو رخصة نقل أو حتى بقعة أرضية ، بل اكتفت بمنحه هدية رمزية عبارة عن بقرة من النوع الكروازي ! والعلف ديالها طبعا على حسابو
فالبلدان المتقدمة وصلت إلى ما هي عليه لأنها لا تجامل أبناءها ، بل تتعامل معهم في إطار القانون الذي يجعل الجميع سواسية ، ولأنها لا توزع ثرواتها على المحظوظين كما يحدث عندنا ، بل يستفيد منها الجميع على قدم المساواة ، وهذا ما ينقصنا في المغرب حتى يتخلص بلدنا من هذا الاعوجاج المزمن الذي تعاني منه سياسته العرجاء
وعندما يرى ولي العهد الصغير الذي سيتولى الحكم في يوم من الأيام كيف أن والده يوزع الهبات والاكراميات والكريمات على الناس بمجرد سماع كلمة إطراء أو مدح ، فلا شك أنه سيتصرف بنفس "المنطق" عندما يحكم ، لذلك فما علينا سوى أن نؤجل أحلامنا بمغرب المساواة وتكافؤ الفرص لغاية حكم الملك محمد السابع الذي سيأتي بعد الحسن الثالث اللي هو ولي العهد حاليا
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Grand Theft : American Style
Taxpayers take on trillions in risk. You can call it a bailout, you can call it a safety net or you can call it a rescue package,but the bottom line is the American taxpayer is left footing the bill.
This is the biggest nationalization in U.S. history. Freddie and Fannie finance 3 out of 4 new mortgages. And now, the mortgage industry depends neither on willing buyers and sellers...nor on willing lenders and borrowers...but on the U.S. government. The Land of the Free has put its housing under the control of the state! Yes, there is still plenty of room for private initiative and private decision-making. But, ultimately, millions of Americans now depend on the U.S. government for the roofs over their heads.
I checked the U.S. Constitution for clarification. I am looking for a provision stating that the ‘U.S. Federal Government shall enter the mortgage finance business and use taxpayers’ money to rescue irresponsible lenders and dimwit homeowners from their own mistakes.’ It wasn’t there. But so what? If there is anything the government can’t do, I have yet to find it.
Of course, the idea of taxpayers bailing out the mortgage finance industry is ridiculous; taxpayers can’t even finance existing federal obligations. Not even close. This year for example, they’ll be a half trillion short. If you figured it properly, the deficit would be trillions more.
The government is in the business of stacking one monumental fraud on top of another...trying to give everyone the idea that he can live at someone else’s expense. Sooner or later, the whole mountain of flimflam falls down.
But don’t interpret a new bailout plan for mortgage investors as a sign that the financial stock bear market is over.It’s not – at least for banks holding the worst credit exposures. Over time, these institutions will have to confess losses; take write-downs; and raise new, dilutive capital. Many will be taken over by the FDIC, which wipes out shareholders.’ Investors were encouraged by the bailout anyway.
‘World markets soar after Freddie, Fannie bailouts,’ the AP reported.
The Dow rose 289 points yesterday. The dollar rose – to $1.41 per euro. And gold rose a little too – to $807.
Meanwhile, the Federal Highway Trust Fund went broke. Most likely, there will be many more where that came from.
*** Hmmm...even with the Fannie and Freddie bailout (briefly) propping up Wall Street, today it looks like there is no joy in Mudville, after all. Following the bailout news yesterday, stocks surged...but today is a different story. One the U.S. is more accustomed to.
This morning, the National Association of REALTORS released data from the Pending Home Sales Index, which projects home sales based on contracts signed during a given month (sounds like a fun job). The index for July fell to 86.5 down from the previous month’s reading, and down 6.7% from the same month in 2007.
Also affecting Wall Street this morning are lower oil prices. Even in peak hurricane season, prices for crude are staying in the $105 zone – much lower that the highs the United States faced in July.
All signs point to a sluggish economy, but here is the icing on the cake: the Congressional Budget Office says that the government will run a record $407 billion budget deficit this year...and there’s a very real possibility of it going even higher once you figure in Fannie and Freddie.
‘The economy is likely to experience at least several more months of very slow growth,’ the new report said. ‘Whether this period will ultimately be designated a recession or not is still uncertain, but the increase in the unemployment rate and the pace of economic growth are similar to conditions during previous periods of mild recession.’
But will these high numbers have any effect on Obama’s or McCain’s economic plans? Well, if this is any indication, both parties claim that they will extend Bush’s tax cuts if elected.
However, as the CBO points out, and we point out in I.O.U.S.A. – even if the Bush tax cuts were to expire in 2010, that would only solve about 10% of the United States’ financial hole. As David Walker says in the film:
‘When many Americans think of debt and deficits, their knee-jerk reaction is to blame the war in Iraq, or defense spending. Some people think that we can solve the country’s financial problems by stopping fraud, waste and abuse, or by canceling the Bush tax cuts. The truth is, the United States could do all three of these things and still wouldn’t come close to solving the nation’s fiscal challenges.
‘The U.S. already has $11 trillion in fiscal liabilities, including public debt. To this amount, add the current unfunded obligations for Social Security benefits of about $7 trillion. Then add Medicare’s unfunded promise: $34 trillion, of which about $26 trillion relates to Medicare (parts A&B) and about $8 trillion relates to Medicare D, the new prescription drug benefit which some claimed would save money in overall Medicare costs. Add another trillion in miscellaneous items and you get $53 trillion. The United States would need $53 trillion invested today, which is about $175,000 per person, to deliver on the government’s obligations and promises. How much of this $53 trillion do we have? Nada.’
Does this really promise big change in the course of U.S. financial markets?
After all, both companies trade on the New York Stock Exchange. The basic idea is that these companies supposedly belong to shareholders. These shareholders are owners just like the guy who owns the gas station on the corner or the husband and wife team that runs the French bistro on Main Street.
But Fannie and Freddie were never really private companies like these others. Entrepreneurs usually start businesses. Congress created the mortgage giants by charter (hence, they are called government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs). And the two giants enjoyed many advantages from that parentage. Fannie and Freddie have long operated in a sort of limbo as a result, neither fish nor fowl. Both carry the implicit guarantee that if something went truly wrong, the government would come along and make it right.
And so it has. Bondholders are happy today. Stockholders are not. As I write, Fannie Mae is down 80% today. Freddie Mac is down 75%. I have no flag in either camp, but I certainly have no sympathy for the stockholders. Anyone who gave them a fair look could see that both GSEs were ticking time bombs.
This is the biggest nationalization in U.S. history. Freddie and Fannie finance 3 out of 4 new mortgages. And now, the mortgage industry depends neither on willing buyers and sellers...nor on willing lenders and borrowers...but on the U.S. government. The Land of the Free has put its housing under the control of the state! Yes, there is still plenty of room for private initiative and private decision-making. But, ultimately, millions of Americans now depend on the U.S. government for the roofs over their heads.
I checked the U.S. Constitution for clarification. I am looking for a provision stating that the ‘U.S. Federal Government shall enter the mortgage finance business and use taxpayers’ money to rescue irresponsible lenders and dimwit homeowners from their own mistakes.’ It wasn’t there. But so what? If there is anything the government can’t do, I have yet to find it.
Of course, the idea of taxpayers bailing out the mortgage finance industry is ridiculous; taxpayers can’t even finance existing federal obligations. Not even close. This year for example, they’ll be a half trillion short. If you figured it properly, the deficit would be trillions more.
The government is in the business of stacking one monumental fraud on top of another...trying to give everyone the idea that he can live at someone else’s expense. Sooner or later, the whole mountain of flimflam falls down.
But don’t interpret a new bailout plan for mortgage investors as a sign that the financial stock bear market is over.It’s not – at least for banks holding the worst credit exposures. Over time, these institutions will have to confess losses; take write-downs; and raise new, dilutive capital. Many will be taken over by the FDIC, which wipes out shareholders.’ Investors were encouraged by the bailout anyway.
‘World markets soar after Freddie, Fannie bailouts,’ the AP reported.
The Dow rose 289 points yesterday. The dollar rose – to $1.41 per euro. And gold rose a little too – to $807.
Meanwhile, the Federal Highway Trust Fund went broke. Most likely, there will be many more where that came from.
*** Hmmm...even with the Fannie and Freddie bailout (briefly) propping up Wall Street, today it looks like there is no joy in Mudville, after all. Following the bailout news yesterday, stocks surged...but today is a different story. One the U.S. is more accustomed to.
This morning, the National Association of REALTORS released data from the Pending Home Sales Index, which projects home sales based on contracts signed during a given month (sounds like a fun job). The index for July fell to 86.5 down from the previous month’s reading, and down 6.7% from the same month in 2007.
Also affecting Wall Street this morning are lower oil prices. Even in peak hurricane season, prices for crude are staying in the $105 zone – much lower that the highs the United States faced in July.
All signs point to a sluggish economy, but here is the icing on the cake: the Congressional Budget Office says that the government will run a record $407 billion budget deficit this year...and there’s a very real possibility of it going even higher once you figure in Fannie and Freddie.
‘The economy is likely to experience at least several more months of very slow growth,’ the new report said. ‘Whether this period will ultimately be designated a recession or not is still uncertain, but the increase in the unemployment rate and the pace of economic growth are similar to conditions during previous periods of mild recession.’
But will these high numbers have any effect on Obama’s or McCain’s economic plans? Well, if this is any indication, both parties claim that they will extend Bush’s tax cuts if elected.
However, as the CBO points out, and we point out in I.O.U.S.A. – even if the Bush tax cuts were to expire in 2010, that would only solve about 10% of the United States’ financial hole. As David Walker says in the film:
‘When many Americans think of debt and deficits, their knee-jerk reaction is to blame the war in Iraq, or defense spending. Some people think that we can solve the country’s financial problems by stopping fraud, waste and abuse, or by canceling the Bush tax cuts. The truth is, the United States could do all three of these things and still wouldn’t come close to solving the nation’s fiscal challenges.
‘The U.S. already has $11 trillion in fiscal liabilities, including public debt. To this amount, add the current unfunded obligations for Social Security benefits of about $7 trillion. Then add Medicare’s unfunded promise: $34 trillion, of which about $26 trillion relates to Medicare (parts A&B) and about $8 trillion relates to Medicare D, the new prescription drug benefit which some claimed would save money in overall Medicare costs. Add another trillion in miscellaneous items and you get $53 trillion. The United States would need $53 trillion invested today, which is about $175,000 per person, to deliver on the government’s obligations and promises. How much of this $53 trillion do we have? Nada.’
Does this really promise big change in the course of U.S. financial markets?
After all, both companies trade on the New York Stock Exchange. The basic idea is that these companies supposedly belong to shareholders. These shareholders are owners just like the guy who owns the gas station on the corner or the husband and wife team that runs the French bistro on Main Street.
But Fannie and Freddie were never really private companies like these others. Entrepreneurs usually start businesses. Congress created the mortgage giants by charter (hence, they are called government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs). And the two giants enjoyed many advantages from that parentage. Fannie and Freddie have long operated in a sort of limbo as a result, neither fish nor fowl. Both carry the implicit guarantee that if something went truly wrong, the government would come along and make it right.
And so it has. Bondholders are happy today. Stockholders are not. As I write, Fannie Mae is down 80% today. Freddie Mac is down 75%. I have no flag in either camp, but I certainly have no sympathy for the stockholders. Anyone who gave them a fair look could see that both GSEs were ticking time bombs.
Friday, August 29, 2008
تموز أنت ربيعنا
قصيدة للشاعر والاكاديميالفلسطيني الكبير د. أحمد حسن المقدسي( خاص بعرب تايمز)قصيدة مهداة الى المناضل السيدحسن نصرالله ورفاقه في النصر
لله ِ دَرّك قد حَمَيت َ حِـماناوالنصر ُ حَلـَّـَق َ في فـَضاء ِ سمـانايا صانع َ الأمجاد ِ كيف أتيتنا ؟أهديتنا نصرا ً وغيرُ ك خانـاأثبت َّ أن ّ النصر َ محض ُ إرادة ٍ والنصر ُ كان أمامـَنا البُرْهـانـاكنت َ الصَدوق َ وكان وعدُ ك َ صادقا ًلم تَخذِ ل ِ الأنصار َ والخِلانـافَوَثَبْت َ والفرسان ُ حولك َ عُصْبة ٌ أ ُسْـد ٌ إذا داعي الجهاد ِ دعانـاورجالك َ الأبطال ُ حولك َكلهُم ْأنـا التفــت َّ وجدْ تهم عُـقبا نـافإذا علي ٌّ سـاكن ٌ بنفوسِــهم وإذا حسين ٌ يسـكن ُ الأبد انــاأوْلَمْــت َ من جُثث ِ العدو ِ وليمـة ًأشْبَعْـت َ منها الد ُّود َ والغِـربانـافوعدتـَنـا ، وأتيْـت َ بالنصر ِ الكبير ِوعاد َ جيش ُ الخاسـئين َ مُـهـانـا***
ما كنت ُ يوما ً مُنـْشِدا ً في جَوقَـَـة ٍوَفـْق َ العَطاء ِ يُدبِّـج ُ الأوزانـاهي َ سُنة ُ الأحرار ِ في زَمن ِ الرذيلة ِوالخنـا : أن ينصروا الفرسـاناكم كنت ُ أطمح ُ في ارتواء ِ حُشاشتي ورجـعت ُ عن ْ آبارهـم ظمآنـايا أيها الصقـْر ُ المحلـِّـق ُ عاليـا ًوالآخرون تحولوا جـُرذانـانظـِّـف ْ لنا بيروت َ من ْ أوساخِهاوأعـِـد ْ الى عليائـه ِ لبنانـاتلك َ الأفاعي أخرجت ْ أنيابهـا وبـَنـَـت ْ على حـُلـُم ِ الخـَـراب ِ رِهانـاوتبادلوا الأنخاب َ مع ْ أسيادِهم سَـقـْط ُ الرجال ِ يُعاهــد ُ الشيـطانـاأطفَأت َ نا ر َ الطائفية ِ بعدمـا قـَـدَحوا الزناد َ ليُشعلوا النيرانـاأوّاه ُ كم أرْعبْتـَـهم حين َ الحسام ُإلى رقاب ِ الخائنين َ تدانـىفإذا بسَـعْـد يسْتجير ُ بجَـعْجـَـع ٍووليـدُهم يستـَنهِـض ُ الزُّعرانـالا ..لا تـُفاوض ْ زُمْـرة َ الشيطان ِ لا دِيْـن ٌ لمن يتوسَّـل ُ الشيـطانالا تـَلـْمَسَـن َّ يد َ الخيانة ِ والخنوع ِ ولا تـُـشَـرِّف ْ بالعِناق ِ جبانـافأولاء ِ خِـصيـان ٌ لدى أسيادهمدَعْـهُمْ لدى أسيادهم خِصْيانـامِـن ْ بعـد ِ مـا أذللت َ سيدَهمبساحات ِ الوغى ، هل تلتقي الأقنانـا ؟فكبيرُهم شَرَف ٌ لـه لو أنَّ' ليفني ' ترتديــه ِ لِنـَعْـلِها ' جُـربانـــا 'وشريْفـُهم فَخْــر ٌ له لو ' كوندوليزا 'عَـيَّنـَـته ببيتِـها سَـعْدانـادَعْهـم سيحترقون َ في نيرانِـهـمفالنار ُ تأكل ُ بعضـَها أحيانـا***
بيروت ُ يا وَجـَع القصيدة ِ لم أزل رَغـْـم َ المـَشيب ِ بعشقها ولهانـايا أيها الشيب ُ المُـعَـتـَّق ُ في المفارق ِ لـم أزل ْ بـِلـَواعـِجي نشـوانابيروت ُ أعوام تـُفرِّق ُ بيننـا لا هُنـْت ِ أنت ِ ولا ترابُك ِ هانـاهاتي كؤوس َ العشق ِ نشرب ُ خمرَهالا ضـَيْرَ لو خمر ُ الهوى أعمانـافلـَطالما آسَيْـت ِ جرح َ مُناضل ٍولكـل ِّ مُشْـتاق ٍ فـَتـَحْت ِ جَنانـالا تـُرْضِعي قطط َ الطوائف ِ بعدماقتلوا المسيح َ ودنسـوا الفـُرْقـانالافرق َ بين موحـِّـد ٍ ومُـثـَـلـِّـث ٍفـَلِمَسْـلخ ِ الأعداء ِ سِيْــق َ كِلانـالا فـــرْق َ في دين العدو ِ إذاالضحية ُ تعبد ُ الإنجيـل َ أو قرآنـابل ْ مَـن ْ تعَشـَّـى مِــن ْ أهِـلـَّـتِنـاســيجعل ُ – في غد ٍ – إفطارَه صُلباناذبحوك ِ يا بيروت ُ مرات ٍ مضت ْوكما نهضت ِ سَـتـَنهضين َ الآنـا***
يا لابـسا ً وَجَـع َ العروبة ِ حَـرْبَة ً نـَجـْـلاء َ ترقص ُ في صدور ِ عِـدانالولاكَ لــم تُفتـَـح ْ زنازين ٌ ولا حُـرِّية ٌ رفــَّـت ْ علـى أسـرانافـَلـْتـَهنئي أم َ الأسير ِ وزغردي فالشِّــبل ُ عاد َ بمجــدِه ِ مُـزدانـابشراك ِ يا أم الشهيد ِ فهللـي مـا عـاد َ رقـْـمَـا ً في العراء ِ مُهانـاودلال ُ بعد َ اليوم ِ تـَمشـُـط ُ شعرَها وببيـتها .. تتوسَّـط ُ الأحضـانا***
يا راوي َ التاريخ ِ حَـدِّ ث ْ عن فتى ًمَـلأ البلاد َ مَناعـة ً وأمـاناحَـدِّ ث ْ عن الأحرار ِ كيف تـَسَنـَّمواالعليـاء َ وانتـَصبوا بها فرسـاناحـَدِّ ث ْ عن الأمجاد ِ ضيعَها صعاليك ُالفسـاد ِ وضيـَّعوا الإنسـانالو أن َّ موجـات ِ الفسـاد ِ تفجرت ْ فوق َ الهضاب ِ لأحدثت ْ بركـاناتلك َ العـَواهـر ُ قايضت ْ أوطاننـا وتـَرَبـَّعت َ مـِن فوقنـا تيجـانايتحدثون عن الكرامة ِ بعـدمامـَسـَحوا غـُبار َ نِعالهم بـِلِحانافالحاكم ُ العربي ُّ قَـوَّاد ٌ هنـاك َوبيننـا يـَتـَمثــَّـل ُ الرحمـانـاوالحاكم ُ العربي ُّ سمـسـار ٌ يُقد ِّمناإلـى حاخـامهم قـُربانـالـو كان مـِثلـُك َ في العروبـة ِ قادة ٌ ما دنـَّـس َ الأوباش ُ طـُهر َ ذ ُرانـاالكـل ُّ تاجر َ بالقضيـة ِ فاغتنــى والشــعب ُ كان لوحــده ِ الخـَسْـرانـاكي يَـخلـُـدوا في حـُكـْـم ِ هاتيك َ المـزارع ِ أصبحوا لِعـَدونا الأعوانـامَـن ْ باع َ أولى القِـبلتين ِ وخاننــاهـل يـَنـْتـَخي لـِيُحرِّر َ الأوطانـا ؟إني لأسأ ل ُ : أي ُّ جيـش ٍ مِـن جيوش ِ المـُلْهمين َ لأرضـه ِ قد صانـا ؟هـذي جيوش ٌ مـا أتت ْ إلآ لتقمـَـع َ شـعبَها وتـُرَسـِّـخ َ الأدراناونضالـُها قتـْل ُ الشعوب ِ فكلـما ذبَحَــت ْ بريئـا ً ألـْبـِـسَـت ْ نيشـانا***
قــَرْن ٌ مضى من نكبة ٍ لهزيمــة ٍوجيوشــُـهم تـَتـَصَيَّـد ُ الفِئرانـاقـرن ٌ مضى والعاهرات ُ تسوسُــناوتـَسوقـُنا في حَقـْلها قـُطْعانـاحتى إذا عَرَّيْتـَــهم وفضحتـَــهمزادوا علـى طـُغيانِهم طـُغيانـافـَتـَعرَّت ِ الحِمْـلان ُ فـــوق َ عروشِهاوتـَصَنـَّموا بعروشـِـهم حِـملانـاهــم عِـلـَّـة ُ الأوطان عَـز َّ عِلاجها وتـَمـَـددوا في جـِسـْـمنا سَـرَطاناإني أرى ؟ بطـشـا ً وأفواهـا ً مـُكَمـَّمـَـة ً وشعبا ً خانعـا ً ومـُـدانـاها إنهـم ملأوا الجروح َ بِقـَيْحِـهم فأتـَيت َ تـــزرع ُ جرْحـنا ريحـاناإن ْ تـَـرْج ُ من تلك المقابر ِ نـُصْرَ ة ً أوْلـى بأن ْ تـَسْــتـَنـْهِض َ الأكفـانالـو كـان غيـرُك صادقـا ً حَقــَّـا ً لأدَّينـا علـى جـِلبابـه ِ الأركانـالكنـَّه في الحرب ِ أضعف ُ من أتان ٍ فـي الهروب ِ يُسـابِق ُ الغزلانـايـا أمـة ً رَهَــنت ْ مَصائرهـابأيدي المُـفسِـدين َ فأحـْرَزَت ْ خـذلانـاكـم مجرم ٍ سَــــيظل يجثـُـم ُ فوقنــاويَسـومُنا فوق الهوان ِ هوانـا ؟يا أمــة ً بَـلـَغ َ النـِّـفاق ُ بها لأن ْتنسـى الإلـه َ وتعْـبُد الســُّـلطاناما دامت ِ الأوطان ُ تحكمها الفطائس ُسـوف َ نغـدوا كلـُنـا أقـْنـانا***
أللـه ُ أكبر ُ كيف زلزلت َ العُروش َ فكنـت َ تحـت َ عروشـِـهـم بركـانامـا أروع َ النصـر َ الكبير َ لأمـة ٍ كـم عاشـت ِ النكـَسـا ت ِ والخـُسْـراناحـتى غـَـدَ ت ْ أُمْـثـُولة ً وحِكـاية ً أحزانـُهـا تتوالـد ُ الأحزانـانصْـر ٌ يـَهـل ُّ وقد حـَسِبْنا الإنكِسار طـواه ُ مَـع ْ أحلامنـا وطوانـاصِـرت َ الصـُـداع َ لِطـُغـْمة ٍ في غـَفلة ٍ رَكبـت ْ ظُهـور َ الناس ِ والأوطـانالولاك َ لا نصـر ٌ يـُغازل ُ مُقلتـيأو بسـمة تتوسـَّـد ُ الأجفانـاهـذي نواميس ُ الحيـاة ِ فسـوفتـُؤكـل ُ إن ْ تكن ْ مُستضعَفا ً ومُهانـافي الغابة ِ الصـَّمـاء ِ تكمن ُ عِبْرة ٌفالطير ُ فيهـا تأكـل ُ الديدانـاوعلى جبين ِ الدهر ِ تسكن ُ حِكْمــة ٌشـَـرَف ُ الفتى ألا يموت َ جبانـاوفـَـضيلة ُ النصر ِ المـُـظفـَّر أنـهقـد زادنـا بحقوقنـا إيمـانا***تمـّـوز ُ يحملنـا إلى شُـرُفاتِـه ِ ويُـقيـم ُ في صحرائنـا بسـتاناتمـوز ُ بالنصـر ِ العظيم ِ مـُحَـلـِّـق ٌ وقوافـل ُ الأفراح ِ فـوق َ رُبانـاتمـوز ُ بعــد َ اليوم ِ أنــت َ ربيعُنا ولـَـسوف َ نشطب ُ مِـن ْ غـَـد ٍ نـَيْـسانا***
يا سـيد َ النصر ِ الجميل ِ تحيَّـة ًكـل ُّ الشعوب ِ بحبكـم تتفـانىفي الفـِعْل ِ، فعلـُـك َقاطع ٌ، وإذا نطقـْت َنـَطقـْت َ مِنْ سِحر ِ البـَيـان ِ بيـاناأصبحـت َ للتحرير ِ عنوانـا ً وهـُم ْصـاروا لكـل ِّ خيانة ٍ عنوانـا
لله ِ دَرّك قد حَمَيت َ حِـماناوالنصر ُ حَلـَّـَق َ في فـَضاء ِ سمـانايا صانع َ الأمجاد ِ كيف أتيتنا ؟أهديتنا نصرا ً وغيرُ ك خانـاأثبت َّ أن ّ النصر َ محض ُ إرادة ٍ والنصر ُ كان أمامـَنا البُرْهـانـاكنت َ الصَدوق َ وكان وعدُ ك َ صادقا ًلم تَخذِ ل ِ الأنصار َ والخِلانـافَوَثَبْت َ والفرسان ُ حولك َ عُصْبة ٌ أ ُسْـد ٌ إذا داعي الجهاد ِ دعانـاورجالك َ الأبطال ُ حولك َكلهُم ْأنـا التفــت َّ وجدْ تهم عُـقبا نـافإذا علي ٌّ سـاكن ٌ بنفوسِــهم وإذا حسين ٌ يسـكن ُ الأبد انــاأوْلَمْــت َ من جُثث ِ العدو ِ وليمـة ًأشْبَعْـت َ منها الد ُّود َ والغِـربانـافوعدتـَنـا ، وأتيْـت َ بالنصر ِ الكبير ِوعاد َ جيش ُ الخاسـئين َ مُـهـانـا***
ما كنت ُ يوما ً مُنـْشِدا ً في جَوقَـَـة ٍوَفـْق َ العَطاء ِ يُدبِّـج ُ الأوزانـاهي َ سُنة ُ الأحرار ِ في زَمن ِ الرذيلة ِوالخنـا : أن ينصروا الفرسـاناكم كنت ُ أطمح ُ في ارتواء ِ حُشاشتي ورجـعت ُ عن ْ آبارهـم ظمآنـايا أيها الصقـْر ُ المحلـِّـق ُ عاليـا ًوالآخرون تحولوا جـُرذانـانظـِّـف ْ لنا بيروت َ من ْ أوساخِهاوأعـِـد ْ الى عليائـه ِ لبنانـاتلك َ الأفاعي أخرجت ْ أنيابهـا وبـَنـَـت ْ على حـُلـُم ِ الخـَـراب ِ رِهانـاوتبادلوا الأنخاب َ مع ْ أسيادِهم سَـقـْط ُ الرجال ِ يُعاهــد ُ الشيـطانـاأطفَأت َ نا ر َ الطائفية ِ بعدمـا قـَـدَحوا الزناد َ ليُشعلوا النيرانـاأوّاه ُ كم أرْعبْتـَـهم حين َ الحسام ُإلى رقاب ِ الخائنين َ تدانـىفإذا بسَـعْـد يسْتجير ُ بجَـعْجـَـع ٍووليـدُهم يستـَنهِـض ُ الزُّعرانـالا ..لا تـُفاوض ْ زُمْـرة َ الشيطان ِ لا دِيْـن ٌ لمن يتوسَّـل ُ الشيـطانالا تـَلـْمَسَـن َّ يد َ الخيانة ِ والخنوع ِ ولا تـُـشَـرِّف ْ بالعِناق ِ جبانـافأولاء ِ خِـصيـان ٌ لدى أسيادهمدَعْـهُمْ لدى أسيادهم خِصْيانـامِـن ْ بعـد ِ مـا أذللت َ سيدَهمبساحات ِ الوغى ، هل تلتقي الأقنانـا ؟فكبيرُهم شَرَف ٌ لـه لو أنَّ' ليفني ' ترتديــه ِ لِنـَعْـلِها ' جُـربانـــا 'وشريْفـُهم فَخْــر ٌ له لو ' كوندوليزا 'عَـيَّنـَـته ببيتِـها سَـعْدانـادَعْهـم سيحترقون َ في نيرانِـهـمفالنار ُ تأكل ُ بعضـَها أحيانـا***
بيروت ُ يا وَجـَع القصيدة ِ لم أزل رَغـْـم َ المـَشيب ِ بعشقها ولهانـايا أيها الشيب ُ المُـعَـتـَّق ُ في المفارق ِ لـم أزل ْ بـِلـَواعـِجي نشـوانابيروت ُ أعوام تـُفرِّق ُ بيننـا لا هُنـْت ِ أنت ِ ولا ترابُك ِ هانـاهاتي كؤوس َ العشق ِ نشرب ُ خمرَهالا ضـَيْرَ لو خمر ُ الهوى أعمانـافلـَطالما آسَيْـت ِ جرح َ مُناضل ٍولكـل ِّ مُشْـتاق ٍ فـَتـَحْت ِ جَنانـالا تـُرْضِعي قطط َ الطوائف ِ بعدماقتلوا المسيح َ ودنسـوا الفـُرْقـانالافرق َ بين موحـِّـد ٍ ومُـثـَـلـِّـث ٍفـَلِمَسْـلخ ِ الأعداء ِ سِيْــق َ كِلانـالا فـــرْق َ في دين العدو ِ إذاالضحية ُ تعبد ُ الإنجيـل َ أو قرآنـابل ْ مَـن ْ تعَشـَّـى مِــن ْ أهِـلـَّـتِنـاســيجعل ُ – في غد ٍ – إفطارَه صُلباناذبحوك ِ يا بيروت ُ مرات ٍ مضت ْوكما نهضت ِ سَـتـَنهضين َ الآنـا***
يا لابـسا ً وَجَـع َ العروبة ِ حَـرْبَة ً نـَجـْـلاء َ ترقص ُ في صدور ِ عِـدانالولاكَ لــم تُفتـَـح ْ زنازين ٌ ولا حُـرِّية ٌ رفــَّـت ْ علـى أسـرانافـَلـْتـَهنئي أم َ الأسير ِ وزغردي فالشِّــبل ُ عاد َ بمجــدِه ِ مُـزدانـابشراك ِ يا أم الشهيد ِ فهللـي مـا عـاد َ رقـْـمَـا ً في العراء ِ مُهانـاودلال ُ بعد َ اليوم ِ تـَمشـُـط ُ شعرَها وببيـتها .. تتوسَّـط ُ الأحضـانا***
يا راوي َ التاريخ ِ حَـدِّ ث ْ عن فتى ًمَـلأ البلاد َ مَناعـة ً وأمـاناحَـدِّ ث ْ عن الأحرار ِ كيف تـَسَنـَّمواالعليـاء َ وانتـَصبوا بها فرسـاناحـَدِّ ث ْ عن الأمجاد ِ ضيعَها صعاليك ُالفسـاد ِ وضيـَّعوا الإنسـانالو أن َّ موجـات ِ الفسـاد ِ تفجرت ْ فوق َ الهضاب ِ لأحدثت ْ بركـاناتلك َ العـَواهـر ُ قايضت ْ أوطاننـا وتـَرَبـَّعت َ مـِن فوقنـا تيجـانايتحدثون عن الكرامة ِ بعـدمامـَسـَحوا غـُبار َ نِعالهم بـِلِحانافالحاكم ُ العربي ُّ قَـوَّاد ٌ هنـاك َوبيننـا يـَتـَمثــَّـل ُ الرحمـانـاوالحاكم ُ العربي ُّ سمـسـار ٌ يُقد ِّمناإلـى حاخـامهم قـُربانـالـو كان مـِثلـُك َ في العروبـة ِ قادة ٌ ما دنـَّـس َ الأوباش ُ طـُهر َ ذ ُرانـاالكـل ُّ تاجر َ بالقضيـة ِ فاغتنــى والشــعب ُ كان لوحــده ِ الخـَسْـرانـاكي يَـخلـُـدوا في حـُكـْـم ِ هاتيك َ المـزارع ِ أصبحوا لِعـَدونا الأعوانـامَـن ْ باع َ أولى القِـبلتين ِ وخاننــاهـل يـَنـْتـَخي لـِيُحرِّر َ الأوطانـا ؟إني لأسأ ل ُ : أي ُّ جيـش ٍ مِـن جيوش ِ المـُلْهمين َ لأرضـه ِ قد صانـا ؟هـذي جيوش ٌ مـا أتت ْ إلآ لتقمـَـع َ شـعبَها وتـُرَسـِّـخ َ الأدراناونضالـُها قتـْل ُ الشعوب ِ فكلـما ذبَحَــت ْ بريئـا ً ألـْبـِـسَـت ْ نيشـانا***
قــَرْن ٌ مضى من نكبة ٍ لهزيمــة ٍوجيوشــُـهم تـَتـَصَيَّـد ُ الفِئرانـاقـرن ٌ مضى والعاهرات ُ تسوسُــناوتـَسوقـُنا في حَقـْلها قـُطْعانـاحتى إذا عَرَّيْتـَــهم وفضحتـَــهمزادوا علـى طـُغيانِهم طـُغيانـافـَتـَعرَّت ِ الحِمْـلان ُ فـــوق َ عروشِهاوتـَصَنـَّموا بعروشـِـهم حِـملانـاهــم عِـلـَّـة ُ الأوطان عَـز َّ عِلاجها وتـَمـَـددوا في جـِسـْـمنا سَـرَطاناإني أرى ؟ بطـشـا ً وأفواهـا ً مـُكَمـَّمـَـة ً وشعبا ً خانعـا ً ومـُـدانـاها إنهـم ملأوا الجروح َ بِقـَيْحِـهم فأتـَيت َ تـــزرع ُ جرْحـنا ريحـاناإن ْ تـَـرْج ُ من تلك المقابر ِ نـُصْرَ ة ً أوْلـى بأن ْ تـَسْــتـَنـْهِض َ الأكفـانالـو كـان غيـرُك صادقـا ً حَقــَّـا ً لأدَّينـا علـى جـِلبابـه ِ الأركانـالكنـَّه في الحرب ِ أضعف ُ من أتان ٍ فـي الهروب ِ يُسـابِق ُ الغزلانـايـا أمـة ً رَهَــنت ْ مَصائرهـابأيدي المُـفسِـدين َ فأحـْرَزَت ْ خـذلانـاكـم مجرم ٍ سَــــيظل يجثـُـم ُ فوقنــاويَسـومُنا فوق الهوان ِ هوانـا ؟يا أمــة ً بَـلـَغ َ النـِّـفاق ُ بها لأن ْتنسـى الإلـه َ وتعْـبُد الســُّـلطاناما دامت ِ الأوطان ُ تحكمها الفطائس ُسـوف َ نغـدوا كلـُنـا أقـْنـانا***
أللـه ُ أكبر ُ كيف زلزلت َ العُروش َ فكنـت َ تحـت َ عروشـِـهـم بركـانامـا أروع َ النصـر َ الكبير َ لأمـة ٍ كـم عاشـت ِ النكـَسـا ت ِ والخـُسْـراناحـتى غـَـدَ ت ْ أُمْـثـُولة ً وحِكـاية ً أحزانـُهـا تتوالـد ُ الأحزانـانصْـر ٌ يـَهـل ُّ وقد حـَسِبْنا الإنكِسار طـواه ُ مَـع ْ أحلامنـا وطوانـاصِـرت َ الصـُـداع َ لِطـُغـْمة ٍ في غـَفلة ٍ رَكبـت ْ ظُهـور َ الناس ِ والأوطـانالولاك َ لا نصـر ٌ يـُغازل ُ مُقلتـيأو بسـمة تتوسـَّـد ُ الأجفانـاهـذي نواميس ُ الحيـاة ِ فسـوفتـُؤكـل ُ إن ْ تكن ْ مُستضعَفا ً ومُهانـافي الغابة ِ الصـَّمـاء ِ تكمن ُ عِبْرة ٌفالطير ُ فيهـا تأكـل ُ الديدانـاوعلى جبين ِ الدهر ِ تسكن ُ حِكْمــة ٌشـَـرَف ُ الفتى ألا يموت َ جبانـاوفـَـضيلة ُ النصر ِ المـُـظفـَّر أنـهقـد زادنـا بحقوقنـا إيمـانا***تمـّـوز ُ يحملنـا إلى شُـرُفاتِـه ِ ويُـقيـم ُ في صحرائنـا بسـتاناتمـوز ُ بالنصـر ِ العظيم ِ مـُحَـلـِّـق ٌ وقوافـل ُ الأفراح ِ فـوق َ رُبانـاتمـوز ُ بعــد َ اليوم ِ أنــت َ ربيعُنا ولـَـسوف َ نشطب ُ مِـن ْ غـَـد ٍ نـَيْـسانا***
يا سـيد َ النصر ِ الجميل ِ تحيَّـة ًكـل ُّ الشعوب ِ بحبكـم تتفـانىفي الفـِعْل ِ، فعلـُـك َقاطع ٌ، وإذا نطقـْت َنـَطقـْت َ مِنْ سِحر ِ البـَيـان ِ بيـاناأصبحـت َ للتحرير ِ عنوانـا ً وهـُم ْصـاروا لكـل ِّ خيانة ٍ عنوانـا
Monday, August 25, 2008
Worthless Economy & Bankrupted Financial Institutions
When I first started in the financial industry in 1981 we were worried, but only about one company -the Chrysler Corporation. Prior to that, Continental Illinois was in the forefront. Later in my career, in 1998, it was Long Term Capital Management, the hedge fund founded by John Meriwether that captured our attention. Then we had Enron/WorldCom, and by early 2008 Bear Stearns became a worry and then a problem that needed fixing.
All of these events were isolated, dealt with, often with either direct assistance from Uncle Sam or an effort coordinated by our benevolent/socialist government financial authorities. Markets would become unnerved, fear would grow, and then the Government would step in to make sure that the systemic risk that had finally come to the surface didn't melt the entire planet.
But this is where it is "different this time". Not only is it different, I think it may be unprecedented in nature. When I look at my Bloomberg monitor each day that contains my 100 most important indices, companies, commodities, bonds, bond spreads, preferred shares, etc, I shudder. The reason I shudder is that my screen doesn't have just one "problem child". It looks like a screen that contains many "institutions that are near bankruptcy".
The Failed Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Experiment
Let us talk about the "Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Experiment. That experiment has now clearly failed and a bailout/privatization/nationalization of Fannie and Freddie is now being planned. While I have been expecting nationalization for quite a while, I am intrigued as to why the bailout is taking so long to accomplish. This is where it gets interesting and dangerous from a systemic point of view. My hunch is that the reason for the delay is that the Treasury Department is "peeling back the onion" on Fannie/Freddie and finding out just how much of a mess the two of them are in.
At last count, Freddie had Level 3 Assets of $151 billion while Fannie had $65 billion, for a not-so-paltry sum of $216 billion. When Freddie announced their results a couple of quarters back, they disclosed that most of their Level 3 Assets were of the "sub-prime" variety (the type of assets that started the whole Credit Crisis in the first place). They are also littered with Alt-A mortgages and are leveraged to the hilt.
Just how bad is the news at Fannie/Freddie? On Friday morning, Moody's downgraded their outstanding preferred stock 5 notches from A1 to Baa3 (a slight gradation above junk) and their Bank Financial Strength Ratings (BSFR) to D+ from B- (one/half notch above D, which is reserved for companies in default). According to Moody's, "the downgrade of the BFSR reflects Moody's view that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's financial flexibility to manage potential volatility in its mortgage risk exposures is constricted.....in particular, given recent market movement, Moody's believe these companies currently have limited access to common and preferred equity capital at economically attractive terms."
Moody stated : "The GSE's more limited financial flexibility also restricts their ability to pursue their public mission of providing liquidity, stability and affordability to the US housing Market. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac currently make up approximately 75% of the mortgage market in the US. A reduction in the capacity of these companies to support the US mortgage market could have significant repercussions for the US economy. In an effort to thwart broader economic effects, Moody's believes the likelihood of direct support from the United States Treasury has increased."
Let me put it this way. "the american people" are about to become owners in Fannie and Freddie, whether we like it or not. The capital markets have shut on them both as their stocks trade in the $2-5 range, down from the $70-80 level just a year ago. And the yield on the outstanding preferred shares hovers in the 18-23% range, quite the bargain if they keep paying, but also it is the market's way of saying "beware the value trap", as the preferred shares may pay another dividend or two, but that is about it.
When the Treasury peels back the onion, I believe they will find a hornet's nest. I think we will see an initial bailout of $100 billion or so, with 2/3-3/4 going to Fannie (as it is a larger organization). The scenario I foresee however, just as happened at Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, is that they came to the financing window expecting to have borrowed enough, but then find they have to keep coming back repeatedly until the buyers go away or until "We The People" have thrown at least $500 billion at Fannie/Freddie to get them back on their feet again. This will also likely take an Act of Congress to raise the Treasury's Debt ceiling quite dramatically.
I will now identify who might be near bankruptcy.
What strikes me the most about impaired companies, whether they are automakers, airline companies, banks, brokers or GSE's, is that they seem to sing the same tune, or have the same pattern of behavior. This is how I have attempted in the past to identify what would be in trouble in the future (whether that was just to avoid their stocks and bonds from the long side or to try to profit from their missteps on the short side). It is a pattern that is not terribly dissimilar from the emo.
The first tip-off or "tell" is when a company releases earnings or some sort of positive announcement and the stock falls. Another important tell is the credit spreads of the debt as the company begins to widen. Then, the company will usually announce that "all is well" and is so great that they will buy back stock and not "cut the common dividend". After this comes the "acceptance" phase and write-offs/write-downs are announced and then some Sovereign Wealth Fund or Private Equity firm will inject capital or that a company within the same group will buy a "strategic stake". After a brief pop in the stock and short covering rally, the stock begins to fall further and credit spreads begin to blow out and preferred shares get hammered. Then, uh-oh, more write-downs and more write-offs and yes, another capital raise and finally a dividend cut to 'preserve capital'.
Sound familiar yet...?
All of this goes on for quite some time, until your stock price is so low that you would have to issue so many shares in a secondary offering that you dilute your shareholder base until it is unrecognizable. With this new share offering your credit, while still rated investment grade, trades like junk, and your preferred shares rise to double digit yields. Further, the former strategic buyers, Sovereign Wealth Funds and Private Equity firms have taken such a beating that there are no further buyers.
Yet the write-downs and write-offs continue unmercifully as the economy slows and credit is all but cut off. Eventually, dividends go to zero.
There are only a few things that can happen to the companies that are near bankruptcy "The Green Mile". Either you make it to the electric chair (in the movie "The Green Mile" it was called "Old Sparky") and cease to exist or you are eventually forced into the arms of a better capitalized institution. Over time, I expect a bit of both but mostly of the latter.
Keep in mind that if too many are allowed into the arms of Big Sparky", it will have a systemic effect as all the institutions are so intertwined because when one group of institutions are forced to mark their bonds to market, others are forced to do the same, ending in an ugly daisy chain. I think the chain has formed and that many are about to "walk the mile".
In the end, perhaps years from now, many banks and brokers will be merged into an international list of "good banks" or "bankrupted banks". Who are the Good Banks? They are likely Bank of America, Bank of New York, JP Morgan Chase, Northern Trust, State Street, US Bancorp, ABN Amro, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Allianz and a few others.
The cycle begins with denial, and ultimately ends up in despair. At first, the company denounces that anything is wrong, but Mr. Market has a way of sniffing out who is imitating Pinocchio. Ultimately, the company ends up in despair when they need/want to raise capital to just be able to function normally, but alas, they cannot because the window of opportunity to raise capital has shut.
Let's use Lehman Brothers as the poster child of this sort of behavior.Before the credit crisis started, Lehman, at the time known for its savvy timing, suddenly came to market for $5 billion of long-term bonds when they didn't need capital-or did they know something was awry as I suspect? Last year, with the Credit Crisis in its infancy, Lehman announced a $100,000,000 stock buyback. The shares, as you would expect, popped on the news, but of course no stock was ever re-purchased. As the stock began to sell off, they kept saying that capital was not needed.
Then, on June 9, 2008 they sold 143,000,000 shares at $28 per share. As hedge fund manager David Einhorn said, "They've raised billions of dollars they said they didn't need to replace losses they said they didn't have." In between was an enormous preferred stock deal-75,900,000 shares at $25 per share at a rate of 7.95%. Those shares now change hands at $15 per share for a yield of 13.1%. Its pretty hard to turn a profit when your cost of capital is greater than 10%.
During this time, in January, the company actually raised its common dividend by 15% year-over-year. They have written off north of $8 billion since the Credit Crisis began and when they release earnings (or lack thereof) next month, estimates are for another round of $2-4 billion of write-downs. They have reportedly been trying to shop $40 billion of impaired real estate and they are mired in all sorts of Alt A, sub-prime, CMBS and CDO's and CLO's.
The best part is that they said they "shrank their balance sheet" when in fact they were sold to an "off balance sheet subsidiary" that they own part of. The bonds weren't sold, they were just "relocated". I sure wish I could do that when I make a mistake. And lets not forget that the Federal Reserve opened up the discount window to primary/dealers so that they could off-load a bunch of nuclear waste on to the Fed's balance sheet, which now looks like one big hedge fund in drag. And then the SEC temporarily changed short selling rules for 'the Group of 19' (the GSE's and Primary Dealers) for a few weeks, resulting in a short squeeze, but their shares still hobble along at recent lows.
On Friday, there was a rumor that the Korean Development Bank would buy Lehman, but again that turned out to be hogwash. And if they wanted to raise debt, like they say, "lotsa luck". Their bonds trade around +500 basis points to treasuries but my guess is that even if they could get deal done, they would have to come in the 10% range, again, uneconomic.
So now we have the recipe and an example for "a bankrupted institution":
Common stock too low to issue new shares.
Preferred stock yield too high to issue new shares economically.
Issuing debt is uneconomic.
More write-offs coming in days to come.
Business trends are awful.
Denial.
Now that we have identified the "poster child", let's find a few more... Or sadly, more than a few.
Zions Bancorp
Equity has traded down from $75 to $25.
Tried to issue a $200 million preferred stock offering at 9.5% but only was able to sell $47 million.
Their debt trades in the open market approximately 1,000 basis points above Treasuries, IF you can sell them, or 13 14%.
They are geographically in Utah, but spread out to Florida, Nevada and Arizona at the top of housing to take advantage of great opportunities.
They say they need $200-300 million capital. Good luck.
They maintained their common dividend.
KeyCorp
Common Stock has traded down from $40 to $11.
Preferred Stock trades at 13%.
Debt trades in the market at 10-11% dividend.
Cut dividend in half in July, still yields 6.5% even while they lose money.
Fifth Third Bank
Equity has traded down from $60 to $14.
There are no preferred issues outstanding.
Debt trades in 10-11% range if you can sell it.
Cut dividend by 75%.
Washington Mutual
Equity has traded from $40 to $3.
No preferred outstanding except convertible preferred.
Debt trades in the 20-25% range.
Cut the dividend to $0.01 per share in April.
Has admitted they will lose money for the next several years.
National City
Equity has traded from $40 to $5.
Preferred stock trades at 13-15%.
Sold a huge amount of shares at $5 per share in April.
Cut dividend to $0.01 per share in April.
Regions Financial
Equity down from $40 to $8.
Preferred Stock Trading at 10%.
Debt trades in the 10-11% range, if you can sell it.
Cut dividend by 75% in June.
Needs to raise $2 billion, according to Sanford Bernstein.
General Motor/GMAC
Equity has traded from $80 to $10.
Preferred stock trades in 18% area.
Short-term debt trades in 25-30% range.
Long-term debt trades in 17% range.
Eliminated common dividend in July.
Ford/Ford Motor Credit Co
Equity has traded from $60 to $4.
Preferred stock trades in 16-17% range.
Long term debt trades in the 18-20% range.
Eliminated common dividend in September.
Wachovia
Equity has traded from $60 to $14.
Issued a $3.5 billion "hybrid security" in February that now trades at 11%.
S&P has stated they cannot issue any more hybrids.
Sold 92,000,000 shars of a preferred stock in December at 8% that now trades $18 or 11%.
Cut common dividend twice since February to $.05 a share or 90%.
Debt trades at 9.5-10.5%.
CitiGroup
Equity has traded from 60 to 9.
Preferred Stock trades in 12% range.
Outstanding debt trades in 12-14% range.
Cut common dividend by 66%.
Sold 91,000,000 shares of common at $11 in April 2008.
Who are in the "Limping but Not Dead Man Walking Crowd"?
These companies would include those that may be 'too big to fail', have enough quality assets to sell, a franchise that is worth something to an acquirer or could just be broken up into pieces. They include:
Citi
Merrill Lynch
Morgan Stanley
Suntrust
Legg Mason
Capital One
AIG
MetLife
Prudential
Summary - This is NOT Shaping Up to be a Pretty Couple of Years
I am certain that I have missed a bunch of names on the "Bankruptcy List", but the pattern is rather easy to discern. As I stated early on, when we have one or two firms in trouble, we can deal with it. But when we add rising unemployment, explosive debt growth in recent years and non-performing assets to many hobbled financial institutions with trillions of dollars of exposure, it is hard not to be concerned.
For this reason, I remain cautious towards credit, expect a hard sell-off in stocks into 2010, consolidation in the financial services industry and some pain, like it or not. I am just not sure where the capital will come from to bail everyone out simultaneously. And even if the capital showed up, it would likely come at a cost that is uneconomic and would likely be dilutive for many years to come.
All of these events were isolated, dealt with, often with either direct assistance from Uncle Sam or an effort coordinated by our benevolent/socialist government financial authorities. Markets would become unnerved, fear would grow, and then the Government would step in to make sure that the systemic risk that had finally come to the surface didn't melt the entire planet.
But this is where it is "different this time". Not only is it different, I think it may be unprecedented in nature. When I look at my Bloomberg monitor each day that contains my 100 most important indices, companies, commodities, bonds, bond spreads, preferred shares, etc, I shudder. The reason I shudder is that my screen doesn't have just one "problem child". It looks like a screen that contains many "institutions that are near bankruptcy".
The Failed Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Experiment
Let us talk about the "Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Experiment. That experiment has now clearly failed and a bailout/privatization/nationalization of Fannie and Freddie is now being planned. While I have been expecting nationalization for quite a while, I am intrigued as to why the bailout is taking so long to accomplish. This is where it gets interesting and dangerous from a systemic point of view. My hunch is that the reason for the delay is that the Treasury Department is "peeling back the onion" on Fannie/Freddie and finding out just how much of a mess the two of them are in.
At last count, Freddie had Level 3 Assets of $151 billion while Fannie had $65 billion, for a not-so-paltry sum of $216 billion. When Freddie announced their results a couple of quarters back, they disclosed that most of their Level 3 Assets were of the "sub-prime" variety (the type of assets that started the whole Credit Crisis in the first place). They are also littered with Alt-A mortgages and are leveraged to the hilt.
Just how bad is the news at Fannie/Freddie? On Friday morning, Moody's downgraded their outstanding preferred stock 5 notches from A1 to Baa3 (a slight gradation above junk) and their Bank Financial Strength Ratings (BSFR) to D+ from B- (one/half notch above D, which is reserved for companies in default). According to Moody's, "the downgrade of the BFSR reflects Moody's view that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's financial flexibility to manage potential volatility in its mortgage risk exposures is constricted.....in particular, given recent market movement, Moody's believe these companies currently have limited access to common and preferred equity capital at economically attractive terms."
Moody stated : "The GSE's more limited financial flexibility also restricts their ability to pursue their public mission of providing liquidity, stability and affordability to the US housing Market. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac currently make up approximately 75% of the mortgage market in the US. A reduction in the capacity of these companies to support the US mortgage market could have significant repercussions for the US economy. In an effort to thwart broader economic effects, Moody's believes the likelihood of direct support from the United States Treasury has increased."
Let me put it this way. "the american people" are about to become owners in Fannie and Freddie, whether we like it or not. The capital markets have shut on them both as their stocks trade in the $2-5 range, down from the $70-80 level just a year ago. And the yield on the outstanding preferred shares hovers in the 18-23% range, quite the bargain if they keep paying, but also it is the market's way of saying "beware the value trap", as the preferred shares may pay another dividend or two, but that is about it.
When the Treasury peels back the onion, I believe they will find a hornet's nest. I think we will see an initial bailout of $100 billion or so, with 2/3-3/4 going to Fannie (as it is a larger organization). The scenario I foresee however, just as happened at Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, is that they came to the financing window expecting to have borrowed enough, but then find they have to keep coming back repeatedly until the buyers go away or until "We The People" have thrown at least $500 billion at Fannie/Freddie to get them back on their feet again. This will also likely take an Act of Congress to raise the Treasury's Debt ceiling quite dramatically.
I will now identify who might be near bankruptcy.
What strikes me the most about impaired companies, whether they are automakers, airline companies, banks, brokers or GSE's, is that they seem to sing the same tune, or have the same pattern of behavior. This is how I have attempted in the past to identify what would be in trouble in the future (whether that was just to avoid their stocks and bonds from the long side or to try to profit from their missteps on the short side). It is a pattern that is not terribly dissimilar from the emo.
The first tip-off or "tell" is when a company releases earnings or some sort of positive announcement and the stock falls. Another important tell is the credit spreads of the debt as the company begins to widen. Then, the company will usually announce that "all is well" and is so great that they will buy back stock and not "cut the common dividend". After this comes the "acceptance" phase and write-offs/write-downs are announced and then some Sovereign Wealth Fund or Private Equity firm will inject capital or that a company within the same group will buy a "strategic stake". After a brief pop in the stock and short covering rally, the stock begins to fall further and credit spreads begin to blow out and preferred shares get hammered. Then, uh-oh, more write-downs and more write-offs and yes, another capital raise and finally a dividend cut to 'preserve capital'.
Sound familiar yet...?
All of this goes on for quite some time, until your stock price is so low that you would have to issue so many shares in a secondary offering that you dilute your shareholder base until it is unrecognizable. With this new share offering your credit, while still rated investment grade, trades like junk, and your preferred shares rise to double digit yields. Further, the former strategic buyers, Sovereign Wealth Funds and Private Equity firms have taken such a beating that there are no further buyers.
Yet the write-downs and write-offs continue unmercifully as the economy slows and credit is all but cut off. Eventually, dividends go to zero.
There are only a few things that can happen to the companies that are near bankruptcy "The Green Mile". Either you make it to the electric chair (in the movie "The Green Mile" it was called "Old Sparky") and cease to exist or you are eventually forced into the arms of a better capitalized institution. Over time, I expect a bit of both but mostly of the latter.
Keep in mind that if too many are allowed into the arms of Big Sparky", it will have a systemic effect as all the institutions are so intertwined because when one group of institutions are forced to mark their bonds to market, others are forced to do the same, ending in an ugly daisy chain. I think the chain has formed and that many are about to "walk the mile".
In the end, perhaps years from now, many banks and brokers will be merged into an international list of "good banks" or "bankrupted banks". Who are the Good Banks? They are likely Bank of America, Bank of New York, JP Morgan Chase, Northern Trust, State Street, US Bancorp, ABN Amro, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Allianz and a few others.
The cycle begins with denial, and ultimately ends up in despair. At first, the company denounces that anything is wrong, but Mr. Market has a way of sniffing out who is imitating Pinocchio. Ultimately, the company ends up in despair when they need/want to raise capital to just be able to function normally, but alas, they cannot because the window of opportunity to raise capital has shut.
Let's use Lehman Brothers as the poster child of this sort of behavior.Before the credit crisis started, Lehman, at the time known for its savvy timing, suddenly came to market for $5 billion of long-term bonds when they didn't need capital-or did they know something was awry as I suspect? Last year, with the Credit Crisis in its infancy, Lehman announced a $100,000,000 stock buyback. The shares, as you would expect, popped on the news, but of course no stock was ever re-purchased. As the stock began to sell off, they kept saying that capital was not needed.
Then, on June 9, 2008 they sold 143,000,000 shares at $28 per share. As hedge fund manager David Einhorn said, "They've raised billions of dollars they said they didn't need to replace losses they said they didn't have." In between was an enormous preferred stock deal-75,900,000 shares at $25 per share at a rate of 7.95%. Those shares now change hands at $15 per share for a yield of 13.1%. Its pretty hard to turn a profit when your cost of capital is greater than 10%.
During this time, in January, the company actually raised its common dividend by 15% year-over-year. They have written off north of $8 billion since the Credit Crisis began and when they release earnings (or lack thereof) next month, estimates are for another round of $2-4 billion of write-downs. They have reportedly been trying to shop $40 billion of impaired real estate and they are mired in all sorts of Alt A, sub-prime, CMBS and CDO's and CLO's.
The best part is that they said they "shrank their balance sheet" when in fact they were sold to an "off balance sheet subsidiary" that they own part of. The bonds weren't sold, they were just "relocated". I sure wish I could do that when I make a mistake. And lets not forget that the Federal Reserve opened up the discount window to primary/dealers so that they could off-load a bunch of nuclear waste on to the Fed's balance sheet, which now looks like one big hedge fund in drag. And then the SEC temporarily changed short selling rules for 'the Group of 19' (the GSE's and Primary Dealers) for a few weeks, resulting in a short squeeze, but their shares still hobble along at recent lows.
On Friday, there was a rumor that the Korean Development Bank would buy Lehman, but again that turned out to be hogwash. And if they wanted to raise debt, like they say, "lotsa luck". Their bonds trade around +500 basis points to treasuries but my guess is that even if they could get deal done, they would have to come in the 10% range, again, uneconomic.
So now we have the recipe and an example for "a bankrupted institution":
Common stock too low to issue new shares.
Preferred stock yield too high to issue new shares economically.
Issuing debt is uneconomic.
More write-offs coming in days to come.
Business trends are awful.
Denial.
Now that we have identified the "poster child", let's find a few more... Or sadly, more than a few.
Zions Bancorp
Equity has traded down from $75 to $25.
Tried to issue a $200 million preferred stock offering at 9.5% but only was able to sell $47 million.
Their debt trades in the open market approximately 1,000 basis points above Treasuries, IF you can sell them, or 13 14%.
They are geographically in Utah, but spread out to Florida, Nevada and Arizona at the top of housing to take advantage of great opportunities.
They say they need $200-300 million capital. Good luck.
They maintained their common dividend.
KeyCorp
Common Stock has traded down from $40 to $11.
Preferred Stock trades at 13%.
Debt trades in the market at 10-11% dividend.
Cut dividend in half in July, still yields 6.5% even while they lose money.
Fifth Third Bank
Equity has traded down from $60 to $14.
There are no preferred issues outstanding.
Debt trades in 10-11% range if you can sell it.
Cut dividend by 75%.
Washington Mutual
Equity has traded from $40 to $3.
No preferred outstanding except convertible preferred.
Debt trades in the 20-25% range.
Cut the dividend to $0.01 per share in April.
Has admitted they will lose money for the next several years.
National City
Equity has traded from $40 to $5.
Preferred stock trades at 13-15%.
Sold a huge amount of shares at $5 per share in April.
Cut dividend to $0.01 per share in April.
Regions Financial
Equity down from $40 to $8.
Preferred Stock Trading at 10%.
Debt trades in the 10-11% range, if you can sell it.
Cut dividend by 75% in June.
Needs to raise $2 billion, according to Sanford Bernstein.
General Motor/GMAC
Equity has traded from $80 to $10.
Preferred stock trades in 18% area.
Short-term debt trades in 25-30% range.
Long-term debt trades in 17% range.
Eliminated common dividend in July.
Ford/Ford Motor Credit Co
Equity has traded from $60 to $4.
Preferred stock trades in 16-17% range.
Long term debt trades in the 18-20% range.
Eliminated common dividend in September.
Wachovia
Equity has traded from $60 to $14.
Issued a $3.5 billion "hybrid security" in February that now trades at 11%.
S&P has stated they cannot issue any more hybrids.
Sold 92,000,000 shars of a preferred stock in December at 8% that now trades $18 or 11%.
Cut common dividend twice since February to $.05 a share or 90%.
Debt trades at 9.5-10.5%.
CitiGroup
Equity has traded from 60 to 9.
Preferred Stock trades in 12% range.
Outstanding debt trades in 12-14% range.
Cut common dividend by 66%.
Sold 91,000,000 shares of common at $11 in April 2008.
Who are in the "Limping but Not Dead Man Walking Crowd"?
These companies would include those that may be 'too big to fail', have enough quality assets to sell, a franchise that is worth something to an acquirer or could just be broken up into pieces. They include:
Citi
Merrill Lynch
Morgan Stanley
Suntrust
Legg Mason
Capital One
AIG
MetLife
Prudential
Summary - This is NOT Shaping Up to be a Pretty Couple of Years
I am certain that I have missed a bunch of names on the "Bankruptcy List", but the pattern is rather easy to discern. As I stated early on, when we have one or two firms in trouble, we can deal with it. But when we add rising unemployment, explosive debt growth in recent years and non-performing assets to many hobbled financial institutions with trillions of dollars of exposure, it is hard not to be concerned.
For this reason, I remain cautious towards credit, expect a hard sell-off in stocks into 2010, consolidation in the financial services industry and some pain, like it or not. I am just not sure where the capital will come from to bail everyone out simultaneously. And even if the capital showed up, it would likely come at a cost that is uneconomic and would likely be dilutive for many years to come.
Deep Recession Ahead
The world economy is slowing down. The global financial system is falling apart.
The whole situation is a mess...a disaster for investors...a catastrophe for homeowners...a Waterloo for the financial industry. But it is God’s gift to us.
First...there is Ben Bernanke on the cover of an american magazine, looking rather serious, as he appeared before the U.S. Congress.The poor man was expected to explain what was going on. What could he say, but that the economy was beset by “numerous difficulties?” He had to play the politician, in other words – the cunning dumbbell...avoiding at all costs saying anything useful or true. Of course, it is true enough to say that the economy faces troubles, but that description of it hides so many absurdities...and so many errors...and so many vanities and hallucinations.
Why didn’t he just come right out and explain that Americans have been living beyond their means...and now they’re being forced to cut back? That’s what retail sales figures showed – that consumer weren’t spending so much. What’s surprising about that? Nothing at all...
But the news struck economists and financial reporters like a UFO sighting – they didn’t know what to make of it.
There’s also a photo of a long line in front of IndyMac’s door – waiting to get their money back. Mr. Bernanke might have also explained what was happening in the financial industry. Wall Street banks...Fannie Mae...Freddie Mac...IndyMac...Bear Stearns and the whole lot...made their money by peddling debt to people who already had too much. What did you think...that they could do that forever?
The headman at the Fed would have done us all a service, in my opinion, if he leveled with the nation.
“Look,” he might have said, “the prosperity we have enjoyed for the last few years has been largely an illusion; it was based on debt, leverage, and speculation. We all know you can’t get rich by spending more than you earn. And you can create real prosperity by borrowing money and spending it on consumer items. We’re now paying the price for those mistakes. Let’s just get it over with.”
Those words may or may not have been on call for him. He might have doodled something like that on the back of an envelope on the way to Capitol Hill. Maybe they came to him in a dream.
But when he got in front of the microphone, he realized that the truth is the last thing anyone wants to hear. He wisely avoided it, sticking with the stock phrases and standard wording of economic obfuscation.
Meanwhile, down the street, the U.S. president shifted from soporific twaddle to breathtaking imbecility.
“To the extent that we find weaknesses [in the financial system] we’ll move,” said the president of all the Americans, George W. Bush.
Mr. Bush has a weakness himself – for movement. He has presided over the most fidgety administration since Franklin Roosevelt. Not content to sit still, he spent more, borrowed more, and stirred up more dust than any previous administration. Now, he proposes a vast new expansion of the war against Free Enterprise.
Bailing out Bear Stearns, providing tax refund checks, and nationalizing Fannie and Freddie “signal a weakening of the administration’s ideological commitment to free-market principles,” says the Financial Times .
This administration has no commitment to any principles, as near as we can see. All it took was a terrorist attack in New York, and it threw over its entire conservative foreign policy in favor of reckless interventionism. And now we have a crisis in the financial industry. Of course, the big lenders, spenders and speculators are only getting what they deserve. Still, the Bush Administration is mounting an invasion.
I predict that it will have roughly the same results. Sweden, of all places, faced a major financial meltdown in 1991. The government hastened to intervene with a bailout. The cost – if translated to an American-scale economy – was more than $1 trillion. Mr. Bush’s intervention will cost that much or more.
When it looked as though inflation had the upper hand, the forces of deflation began a major counter-offensive. The artillery barrage began only a couple of weeks ago. Since then, the battle has shifted dramatically.
The balance of economic forces is contractionary, and inflation is not completely whipped. .
The banks are collapsing. The roof is caving in on housing.
So far, the black goo has confounded economists. The world economy is slowing down. People are cutting back on their use of energy. In the United States, families are taking vacations closer to home, for example.
Also, the Bernanke Fed was hinting strongly that it wouldn’t be lowering rates further – and might even be raising them. Under those conditions, the dollar was widely expected to go up...and the price of oil to go down.
Speculators are wagering that the United States will soften up the dollar still further...they’re betting on more trouble, that is... They’re dumping oil, because it will inevitably and eventually respond to the drop in economic activity. But they’re buying gold, because they also want safety – from the dollar...from defaults...from bankruptcies...and from the claptrap solutions of public officials.
If the ongoing deleveraging of the US economy weakened US consumption,the economy might go into a deep recession. US fiscal deficits would then soar and long-term US interest rates might jump. This could make the debt dynamics of the US government look very unpleasant. A flight from the dollar and dollar bonds might even ensue.
The whole situation is a mess...a disaster for investors...a catastrophe for homeowners...a Waterloo for the financial industry. But it is God’s gift to us.
First...there is Ben Bernanke on the cover of an american magazine, looking rather serious, as he appeared before the U.S. Congress.The poor man was expected to explain what was going on. What could he say, but that the economy was beset by “numerous difficulties?” He had to play the politician, in other words – the cunning dumbbell...avoiding at all costs saying anything useful or true. Of course, it is true enough to say that the economy faces troubles, but that description of it hides so many absurdities...and so many errors...and so many vanities and hallucinations.
Why didn’t he just come right out and explain that Americans have been living beyond their means...and now they’re being forced to cut back? That’s what retail sales figures showed – that consumer weren’t spending so much. What’s surprising about that? Nothing at all...
But the news struck economists and financial reporters like a UFO sighting – they didn’t know what to make of it.
There’s also a photo of a long line in front of IndyMac’s door – waiting to get their money back. Mr. Bernanke might have also explained what was happening in the financial industry. Wall Street banks...Fannie Mae...Freddie Mac...IndyMac...Bear Stearns and the whole lot...made their money by peddling debt to people who already had too much. What did you think...that they could do that forever?
The headman at the Fed would have done us all a service, in my opinion, if he leveled with the nation.
“Look,” he might have said, “the prosperity we have enjoyed for the last few years has been largely an illusion; it was based on debt, leverage, and speculation. We all know you can’t get rich by spending more than you earn. And you can create real prosperity by borrowing money and spending it on consumer items. We’re now paying the price for those mistakes. Let’s just get it over with.”
Those words may or may not have been on call for him. He might have doodled something like that on the back of an envelope on the way to Capitol Hill. Maybe they came to him in a dream.
But when he got in front of the microphone, he realized that the truth is the last thing anyone wants to hear. He wisely avoided it, sticking with the stock phrases and standard wording of economic obfuscation.
Meanwhile, down the street, the U.S. president shifted from soporific twaddle to breathtaking imbecility.
“To the extent that we find weaknesses [in the financial system] we’ll move,” said the president of all the Americans, George W. Bush.
Mr. Bush has a weakness himself – for movement. He has presided over the most fidgety administration since Franklin Roosevelt. Not content to sit still, he spent more, borrowed more, and stirred up more dust than any previous administration. Now, he proposes a vast new expansion of the war against Free Enterprise.
Bailing out Bear Stearns, providing tax refund checks, and nationalizing Fannie and Freddie “signal a weakening of the administration’s ideological commitment to free-market principles,” says the Financial Times .
This administration has no commitment to any principles, as near as we can see. All it took was a terrorist attack in New York, and it threw over its entire conservative foreign policy in favor of reckless interventionism. And now we have a crisis in the financial industry. Of course, the big lenders, spenders and speculators are only getting what they deserve. Still, the Bush Administration is mounting an invasion.
I predict that it will have roughly the same results. Sweden, of all places, faced a major financial meltdown in 1991. The government hastened to intervene with a bailout. The cost – if translated to an American-scale economy – was more than $1 trillion. Mr. Bush’s intervention will cost that much or more.
When it looked as though inflation had the upper hand, the forces of deflation began a major counter-offensive. The artillery barrage began only a couple of weeks ago. Since then, the battle has shifted dramatically.
The balance of economic forces is contractionary, and inflation is not completely whipped. .
The banks are collapsing. The roof is caving in on housing.
So far, the black goo has confounded economists. The world economy is slowing down. People are cutting back on their use of energy. In the United States, families are taking vacations closer to home, for example.
Also, the Bernanke Fed was hinting strongly that it wouldn’t be lowering rates further – and might even be raising them. Under those conditions, the dollar was widely expected to go up...and the price of oil to go down.
Speculators are wagering that the United States will soften up the dollar still further...they’re betting on more trouble, that is... They’re dumping oil, because it will inevitably and eventually respond to the drop in economic activity. But they’re buying gold, because they also want safety – from the dollar...from defaults...from bankruptcies...and from the claptrap solutions of public officials.
If the ongoing deleveraging of the US economy weakened US consumption,the economy might go into a deep recession. US fiscal deficits would then soar and long-term US interest rates might jump. This could make the debt dynamics of the US government look very unpleasant. A flight from the dollar and dollar bonds might even ensue.
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