blog.arithm

From last week, but this just hit my radar. Ron Paul advises that we take out the strong arm of the American Corporatocracy.

I’m still trying to get my head around what the hell is going on, but best I can tell is that Colonel Klink, social climber that he is, has somehow lifted himself from an obscure commandant of Stalag-13 to the very highest levels of the  American military industrial complex.

And he appears to be a mere thirty-two words away from unilateral control over the American banking system.

Where’s Hogan when you need him?

Seriously though, I’ve spent a good chunk of the last two days trying to get a better handle on what’s really happening.  As someone who, until just about a week ago, knew virtually nothing of American or international finance, I’m the first to admit that I have no idea what I’m talking about.  That said, here’s my take on it all; oddly enough much of which can best be summarized via this tiff between Naomi Klein and Andrew Sullivan:

I think they both might just be right.  Certainly an administration that relies on shock doctrine to achieve it’s goals could leverage a generation of Americans raised on the concept of credit as money — after all, “Life takes Visa” doesn’t it? — to engineer a self-imposed financial disaster.

C’mon, let’s put on our tinfoil hats and ask a few “what if” questions.

• What if the current administration colluded with the likes of Goldman Sachs to setup mortgage packages that were difficult to trace and, more importantly, doomed to fail.
• What if these mortgages were promoted as part of an ownership society, a get-rich concept sold to an American public that grew up on credit and believing in the words of Gordon Gekko: that somehow greed “will save that malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”
• In other words, what if the current administration set out with the intent of producing a — this — disastrous event as a means of furthering an agenda?

Of course, some would call this financial terrorism:

And if it’s true, they’re damn right.  But terrorism to achieve what end?  What’s the agenda? More profit for Bush cronies as the dollar collapses?

I wonder if the Bank of Klink will offer a good Dollar to Amero exchange rate..

Bank of America is one of a few Bank Borgs (resistance is futile; your wealth will be assimilated) that continues to swallow up local banks across the US. I opened up my current account twenty plus years ago when the local branch was a BayBank. Since the nineties it has merged with Bank of Boston into BankBoston, which was then acquired by Fleet which has since been absorbed by Bank of America. Whew.

I’d always liked the Fleet incarnation best because the logo vaguely resembles an austere-ish-looking eagle spot-checking for underarm odor. So you get an idea of the weighty consideration I apply when electing institutions to steward my financial house. Or my financial motorhome, such as it were.

About a year or so back, BofA announced a new program called “Keep the Change”. Subscribers to Keep the Change automatically have sub-dollar remainders transfered to their savings account every time they use a BofA checking account debit card for purchases. So, for example, if someone buys a sandwich for $4.50, the remaining $0.50 gets transferred into a linked savings account.

I remember asking a bank representative one day why BofA was doing this. “Because we think it’s nice”, he said. Yeah, okay. I’m sure that’s how the board meeting in New York went. Suited executives sitting around talking in low voices about how nice this will be for account holders. “It will make them smile.. and think happy thoughts about unicorns and butterflies and rainbows.” Yes, BofA wants us to be happy.

Anyway, I chalked this up as a clever marketing ploy to get people using their BofA debit cards instead of cash. Makes sense.

Out of curiosity, however, I recently stopped to check the interest rate on the saving account into which I was having money trickled. I figured it would be about two percent or so. Sure enough, there was a two. 0.2%! I did a triple-take. Less than a quarter of a percent!

Hmmm. It would seem to me then that Keep the Change, in addition to encouraging use of digital cash, is potentially even more effective at obscuring how the Bank Borg are paying all of diddly-squat to use my money. I keep the change, they keep the interest. Clever indeed.

I’ve since asked around the net for banking recommendations. Both ING Direct and HSBC Direct (with no extra-bank transfer fees) come highly recommended. Savings interest rates bordering five percent plus. That’s more like it.

Now if one of them would just get a good logo.

Nine years ago, in 1998, the Hamster Dance looked like this.

Today, as the web becomes ever more a part of everyday media, media woven into the very fabric of our lives, Hampton Hampster and his pals have evolved into this.

How far we have come.

Progress, indisputable.