Imagined Property - thoughts from out there

Feminism - remembering

Quebec license plates read "Je m'souviens".   Yes, je me souviens but je n'ai rien appris...

Listening to Judy Erola and Monique Begin on "The House" last Saturday was an act of remembering.  They remember.  But those who remember are often themselves forgotten.  Remembering is so selective.  I remember Begin as MInister of Health.  But I don't remember Erola.  And then I remember the energy and anger of the Charter discussions.  History was on our side.  Women long denied would no longer be ignored... so on and so forth.  

Women today enjoy the 'liberation' we fought to hard for but they also have the burden made worse because they don't remember - if they were ever told.  Young women don't remember that the world is not welcoming.  They don't know that their worldly success is like  - to use that worn expression, like lipstick on a pig - remarkable and not long from bacon.  

Women today have opportunities for work outside the home which did not exist thirty years earlier.  BUT... as Erola (or Begin) pointed out, women today believe, oh yes they know!, that any career success is personal - a testimony to their individual talents, energy and hard work .. and thus they accept any failure as personal.  Sadly, few young women understand that success, like failure, is social.  I doubt many have bothered trying to understand what is meant by the slogan "The Personal is the Political".  

A friend said that we feminists of the 1970's and '80's do not remember the Suffragettes ...  while that may or may not be true, two wrongs would not make it right - or easy.  Women today might by remembering find their successes and failures easier to understand and to accept...

'my blog'... thoughts from out here...

I like writing.  I write a lot.  Nearly every day I write something.  And for the last year I have written 'my blog'.   My aim is to write something, hopefully something worth reading, once a week.

My blog will be simply my thoughts - in a way it will be like a diary. Although there is a difference between blog and a diary.  A blog is 'on line'.  This means that what is written is recorded and the words remain on record for as long as the internet remains 'on line'.   And anyone can read it... but likely given few if anyone will read it...

So why?  Why write a blog that no one reads?  Writing with an audience, even a pretend audience, is good practice.  There are certain standards:  the writing (spelling / grammar) should be good enough to allow anyone who reads English to read easily; the comments should be political in the sense of 'not gossip' - about ideas rather than people; the thoughts should be comfortably public (allowing the reader to task issue with the idea). 

Here I could launch myself into a discussion of standards - what makes a good standard etc.  I could then discuss how standards are best revised etc.  But for me, blogging is a discipline - the structured practice of writing.

Disciplined writing has long been the reserve of the well born - Michel de Montaigne and in a more contemporary form, Alain de Botton come to mind as keen examples of what I have in mind... Still blogging allows the petty bourgeois (members of the great mass of the middle class) to pretend an audience and thus write with intention.  Write well and write often - what more should be expected of an author?  

So ok - readers?  What would readers add to the writing?  Would what was written be better or worse for having been read?   And so I intend to write.  My subjects will be varied - bicycles, feminism, travel, socialism - punditry - but at the heart of all this is creative activity.  To use Hannah Arendts' word, my blog will be about 'action'.

Feminism defined - thinking through the label...

If we return to basics, we return to language.  When we do and if we are careful, we can see the magic in words.  I say or write 'something' - it is but noise or marks on a page but when you hear or see these words, you know what I am thinking?   One word may not suffice - you may need to hear the story or see my face, lived in my house to understand, or know me in order to understand what I mean - and even then you might not know what I am thinking.

The idea that 'words', especially important words reflect more than a thing, that they represent an idea, underlies my sense that some words are concepts. When we attempt to define the word as 'only' a word, ignoring that the concept hidden in the word will not lie still, it is as if we are gardening with cut flowers or farming with stuffed animals.  Once the words is captured by a definition, the concept is dead.  The only life left in the word is that hidden in the words used to define... like feminism as the "advocacy of woman's rights".  Ok - we have killed 'feminism' - lets move on to the next word which needs to be domesticated,  "what is advocacy?"

I remember reading one time that words were invented as spaces between sounds in order to make reading easier.  The first 'books' were just lines of letters until someone had the idea to put a space between words to reflect the pause people make from time to time as they talk.  Then someone else had the idea of punctuation and paragraphing.  And then, of course, some people studied language and tried to make up 'rules' - for the words (as in spelling and pronunciation) and then for sentences (as in syntax and grammar).  All this took hundreds of years - the result today is a sense that language is the result of words (the building blocks) put together according to grammatical rules (as the structure or system)... I don't know if this is true but it seems too neat.  Words are rarely solid enough to be good building blocks and, as far as grammar goes, does anyone who speaks a language well, know the rules?  I am sure that linguists and other (Chomsky anyone?) know a lot more about this than I do, but my point here is to challenge the sense that words, in particular words like 'feminism' can be defined.  

Some words can only be described as concepts.  Concepts are capable of being definition but the definition may only made sense as part of an ongoing conversation.  The definition may only satisfy for one moment - a given context.  Like Heraclitus' river, the concept has meaning but this meaning is not fixed.  This makes concepts, at least as I am trying to define them, very tricky things.  Of course, most people can understand that the world is in constant flux.   It makes sense to think that things are constantly changing etc but it is not easy to accept that nothing endures... not even the 'self'.   People are constantly seeking refuge, they / we want the solidity of certainty.  We want to know what we know and know that what we know today is what will be known tomorrow.  How then can we accept that the building blocks, the words, with which we build our thoughts are ephemeral?

Well.   Words like 'feminism' can only be defined as concepts and as concepts, they need to be imagined as but as explained.  And here, I introduce my triangle...  my semiotic trilogy, triptych - things (the object), process (the series of events) and the self - which linger around concepts like feminism.  As a thing feminism is very hard to describe.  This difficulty I would suggest relate to the idea of feminism as the property or attribute which immediately turns attention to a search for substance which, in effect, shifts attention to feminism as the process (or method as in the case of feminism) and the self (or the feminist as again in the case of feminism).  Imagining feminism as this triptych reveals the challenge presented by feminism lies as much in the absence of any 'object' as much as in the tendency to conflate the idea of feminism with the person or self who is identified as a feminist.  This tendency might also explain why feminists might want to describe feminism as an approach or strategy or as method - they do not want the definition to be simply about themselves...  

So...  what is needed is strategy.  In order to talk about feminism, there is a need that the word is capable of shared meaning.  But this meaning depends so much on context.  What I am suggesting is that anyone seeking to discuss feminism be aware that the discussion is always going to be a personal discussion - the self cannot leave the concept.  As feminist's have long suggested, he personal is the political.  Secondly, a focus on feminism as a process or methodology needs to be part of but cannot be all of the discussion.  This does not suggest that feminism as process is not key to the debate - the idea of feminism as consensus, as a gentle and  respectful conversation - informs the idea of a feminist as a wise and kind humanist.  The process excludes the possibility of a negative definition of feminists - such as women who hate men.  The concept allows feminism to mean the advocacy of women's rights to be understood as feminists as advocates of human possibilities.  

The great transformation - debt and the degradation of labour...

This month's Harper's Magazine includes yet another article on the economy - "Infinite Debt" by Thomas Geoghegan.  

No surprises that folks keep writing on the subject. What is surprising is that where the analysis is leading. It is leading back to an appreciation of labour.  Geoghegan argues that the 'cause' of the financial collapse is not simply the result of poor regulation and greedy bankers, although both were part of the mix. No, for Geoghegan, a labour lawyer from Chicago, the cause can be found in the degradation of labour typified by outrageous business practices in the 1980's and 1990's and the glorification of capital exemplified by the abolition of ancient laws prohibiting usury.  He writes:

First, we removed the possibility of creating real, binding contracts by allowing employers to bust the unions that had been entering into these agreements for millions of people. Second, we allowed those same employers to cancel existing contracts, virtually at will, by transferring liability from one corporate shell to another, or letting a subsidiary go into Chapter 11 and then moving to “cancel” the contract rights, including lifetime health benefits and pensions. As one company after another “reorganized” in Chapter 11 to shed contract rights, working people learned that it was not rational to count on those rights and guarantees, or even to think in these future-oriented ways. No wonder people in our country began to live for the moment and take out loans and start running up debts. 

And then we dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury, which had existed in some form in every civilization from the time of the Babylonian Empire to the end of Jimmy Carter’s term, and which had been so taken for granted that no one ever even mentioned it to us in law school. That’s when we found out what happens when an advanced industrial economy tries to function with no cap at all on interest rates.

Here’s what happens: the financial sector bloats up. With no law capping interest, the evil is not only that banks prey on the poor (they have always done so) but that capital gushes out of manufacturing and into banking. When banks get 25 percent to 30 percent on credit cards, and 500 or more percent on payday loans, capital flees from honest pursuits, like auto manufacturing.

Why is this surprising that analysis might lead back to an appreciation of labour?  Afterall classical economists from Ricardo on saw labour as a primary source of value.  Well after 20 to 30 years of being ignored or reviled, it is surprising to see labour make a comeback.  And then the introduction of the status of "labour" into the meltdown mix made be think of Polyani (the author of The Great Transformation). Of the many points he made in that book, one I remember was his explanation for the difference in status (or lack there of ) of manual and factory jobs between England and Germany.  The difference, Polyani wrote, could be explained at least in part by the fact that workers in the UK were forced into the factories and suffered a diminution in status about 50 years before the serfs in Germany were sent off the land and turned into workers.  The timing and the fact that for one group their lives as workers were worse than they had been before and for the other life in factory was an improvement has consequences which shape the world of work today.  

Geoghegan argues that talent flooded into the financial sector in the US because that was where the money was to be made...  I wonder, though, how much of the explanation rests with the relative low status of any manual or factory work in the US - as in the UK.  Why would the ruling class in either country worry about keeping factory jobs in the country when, of course, they were best done by the socially (or dare I say racial) inferiors - at home or somewhere else?   The enduring prejudice against those who sold their labour to the man is evidenced everywhere. Why else would so many people, so ill suited to academic life enroll at universities?   And why would skilled tradespeople and their associations (ie unions) be the object of so much public derision.  Yes, part of the problem in the current financial situation is the degradation of labour ...

Enough - already

I began a post the other day and then stopped - I was trying to write about property, the object of this blog and realized that I want to write about the financial crisis.  Today the stock market fell again. And they can still fall further.  My brother pointed out that the crash of '29 took three years to happen - the markets fell and then plateaued and then fell again and stabilized - until 1932 when they had lost 80% of their value.  So the markets can still fall.  

And then my mother asked if this was all happening because so much money was stolen. My answer is yes and then no.  At the time the guys took the money, no one called it theft.  

Who are these guys?  First, they are nearly all men.  Second they range in age from 30 on up but the majority are, I imagine, boomer and later boomers.  Third, while many may not be 'well born', most have a university degree typically in business or economics from an American or Americanized institution. And most importantly, these guys are the well paid captains of industry and finance.  For twenty years they were the winners - the ones with the million dollar homes, the holiday houses, the private jets, flash cars, white teeth, and gold plated retirement packages. 

And how did they get the money?  They were 'paid' for services rendered...

So why on earth, the question becomes were they paid so much money?   This is the tricky question because the various answers usually avoid the question.  Some say that these guys simply paid themselves - they had their fingers in the till... that was part of the story but there were a number of reasons executive pay rose so quickly and so high.  There was the real or imagined competition between corporations for management talent and the willingness of corporate boards to pay through the nose to get it.  This leads to the second reason given for the high salaries - the owners of the corporations, the shareholders, did not care how much management was paid as long as share prices and dividends increased faster than inflation...

Both answers point to the real problem - and not surprisingly the problem was structural.  The story begins with the idea of the company which after WWII became the story of the publicly owned corporation (family and private corporations were still important but not the main vehicle for commercial activity). As the story goes men returned from the war ready to build something, a family, a house, a business. (Women were forced home to new houses in the suburbs and men went to work.)  For many of these guys, they had lived through a time when government was good - good government won wars, created jobs, provided social security and so on.  The world view was one where businesses made things and government solved social problems.  

The 1950's and 60's were periods of unimaginable growth in North America ...  by 1970 the place was rocking and the WWII vets were clearly in charge.   Then there was the problems of the 1970's - the oil shock and incredible inflation.  For the WWII vets this was an unpleasant reminder that the economy could still be scary.  Throughout this period neo liberal ideas about government and the market were gaining ground.  And then WWII vets started moving on - retiring and dying...   in many places veterans of the Korean War took charge.  The world view was increasingly one in which the point of business was to make money and the point of government was, well, to get out of the way...  

By the 1990's the children of the WWII vets were in charge and for these guys, the only point was to make money.  And while the rhetoric was about making money for shareholders, the real point was to make money for oneself - so much the better if one was also a shareholder.  Government was not the place for any man with ambition to be (and maybe this explains why so many women were able to get good jobs in government).  Politicians were seen as crooks and gangsters, taxes as theft and regulation as completely useless.  By this time most of the guys believed that the market would provide - and for the guys it surely did.  

Given the objective was to make money, then those guys who made money deserved to be paid a king's ransom...  who cared if they destroyed the business, sold the capacity to make or build anything to the Chinese, as long as they seemed to make money.  And who cared how they made money as long as people believed and still bid up the price of the shares...  but with money as both the goal and only measure, the temptation to cook the books grew and, as we all know now, it proved too much for too many of the guys to resist, especially for those in the financial sector.  These guys, these wizards of finance, produced nothing but money - or rather clever financial instruments which inflated the accounts of their employers and justified huge salaries.  In a way they did not so much as 'steal' as swindle - like middle men in a pyramid or ponzi scheme they took a cut of the imagined gains before the gig was up....

And in this version of the story - I think that it is more than coincidental that the great stock market Ponzi scheme began to collapse in 2007 - some 60 years after WWII...  you see the children of the WWII vets, boomers and those just a bit older, were retiring - taking their money retiring to Florida (or other warmer places) buying houses for their children and pretending that the good times would last for the rest of their lives...  

Re-regulation - nice but really...

I was reading Robert Scheer article posted on Truthdig.   And I thought that I would write back...  and so I sent the following email.  

-------

I note that you don't want or need more political commentary so I won't attempt to write anything for submission.  I wanted to offer a comment on Robert Scheer's comments.  I am a fan of his and wanted to point out that he needs to think more about what he means by "regulation".   What I will suggest is that sadly, there cannot be an easy re-regulation of the banking (food, employment or whatever) because the basic structure of the 'rule of law' is missing.   What is needed is political will to fix the legal system - the problem is that no one seems to notice that it is broken. 

Your response may well be that I am just another 'nutter' running around saying that the sky is falling in.   If so, my comment is that your response proves my point.   Following on from HLA Hart and other neo positivist legal scholars and the idea of a rule of law as a system, what is critical in ensuring that the system 'works' is not so much the basic norms or principle (although these are important) but the consensus among the insiders (the lawyers, judges, police, sheriffs and so on) as to these basic principles.   For 20 years legal talent has been told to find the money - not justice, not fairness - just money.    The legal system has come to be understood as an instrument of private (and at time public policy).  The metaphor these days is that the law is a hammer or screw driver rather than the a 'tree' or other living organism, an image which informed the law for many in the 1920's and '30's. 

 

I am a Canadian - but 'even in Canada' there are very few lawyers, judges police etc who believe in the system.   Criminal and administrative legal processes have been so grossly underfunded that the justice produced has become arbitrary and, at times, grotesque.   What happens depends on who the decision maker is - are you lucky today and get a 'good' judge?  If not, well, suck it up.    So for everyone who says 'we need regulation' - I ask and just 'who and what' are going to be able to provide this - of course assuming that the regulation you mean has something to do with fairness, justice and maybe the rule of law?    But if you mean by regulation, throw all of those greedy bankers (you know the ones who took the bonuses and lost the money) into jail, then by all means - go for it. Of course, it will be nice if all the ones who end up in jail are not just there because they are hispanic, jewish or over 6' tall.  

Oh I suppose that the US Justice Department is hiring more investigators and maybe even there will be more lawyers and accountants trained in the fine art of forensic accounting, but is anyone looking at how  one can make the ruling class accountable using the system made by and for this mercantile class?   Surely the case of Bush v. Gore must give those who think that the courts can fix politics pause. 

I will stop here.  

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Now I have to admit that I sent this email in the hopes of being read - in the hope that someone,  would notice me and so on and so forth.  But I wrote it because I am beginning to understand what is happening and from this understanding to develop an analysis and sense of what may happen next.   

I stopped where I did because I am trying to write shorter pieces.  Of course, in order to defend my comments, I need more words.   Many people would challenge my description of the legal system but I stand by my opinion that very few people who work 'in the system', believe that it is 'good'.   Administrative law is in a particularly bad place. The thing is that if the law is seen as a legal system, then it always is in a 'bad place' - the issue has always been how to make the system better.  The only problem now is that the only guiding light is money - better has been for a long time 'more efficient'.    But efficiency is not a goal - money for the sake of money is silly...

Obsessing about the financial meltdown...

First things first.  Last week I wondered about what to call the present social / economic event.  And wouldn't ya know it...  there has already been a contest on a name.  The Nation launched a competition last June to find a name for these times - or the period from the late seventies to the present. There was an impressive panel of "progressives" as judges, including the Barabara Ehrenreich, Howard Zinn and Walter Mosley.  See "Name our epoch".    

The winner was announced this week.  And the winner is...   The Borrowed Times

So read all about it.  It is a good name but I doubt that it well catch on.  I think that the name people will use will hang the disaster around the necks, rightly or wrongly, of several US presidents.  It may be called Reagan Bush period or age.  These guys will leave their name on the door much as Metternich left his and Victoria left hers.  But we won't know the name for some time yet.  It won't be 'us' who will be naming. Those who are left will do that.

And getting back to my naming game - I think that the crisis is best described as the "Financial Meltdown" as in all that is solid melts into air - the quote from Marx and the title of Marshall Berman's book.

I was fleeced by Madoff

"I was fleeced by Madoff"
The financial guru's Ponzi scheme cost me 30 years of retirement savings. How could he do this to me -- and why did I let him?
By Geneen Roth

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/01/07/madoff/index.html

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Your friend's message:

This sure shows how vulnerable people are: we do look to government to identify and stop people like Madoff.  I wonder if this person would support strict regulation of financial markets- now?

-------------------  my reply

Hi - the sad thing is that this woman likely thought that the markets were regulated...  in my classes the kids often react to any perceived injustice by saying "that is illegal".   There is a sense amongst the unwashed that the powerful are right - that government is too involved in our lives.   The corollary of this is that the government will protect them from such terrible crimes (as in stealing all their money).   The sense that the market ideology presumed  that people would take responsibility to get 'full information' etc to look after their own interests (which Smith's hidden hand etc of self interest requires) was not widely held.  What many people like you understood was that the ideology obliged people (or again simply assumed) to do what they were not in a position to do - ie to understand the markets; to get information and so on...   how could the ordinary investor hope to understand when the financial culture was one of over paid superstars (read Wizards behind curtains) working in a culture of friendly handshakes and insider trading?   

The whole market was a pyramid scheme set up as a multiples of ponzi schemes.  I have been telling people for years that the housing market was an international pyramid scheme.  I didnt think of expanding my analysis to the banks because despite 14 years of university study and 25 years as a lawyer I didn't feel I understood the mortgage business.  You may recall I have asked you to explain derivatives to me a couple of times.  I took the stock brokers course (and did quite well) but I still don't understand hedge funds...  so it seems obvious to me that folks like this poor woman had no hope of understanding - and this ignorance extended to an understanding of what was and what was not being regulated. 

Even now the media here (in NZ) whines on about the "nanny state" - even now the government is in the business of getting out of business.  And so I don't expect any move to responsible government anywhere will be easy - there will need to be a shift in the whole tenor of the political discussion for a return to 'governance' for the people and of the people etc as was the case following the 1930's.    I simply don't think that the media would let the message to get through - talk about circuses - that is all that we will have on the media (whether the 'circus' is a foreign war or the Olympics). 

My sadness and some suggest, my unhealthy obsession is that there will be rules - but that these rules will protect the rich.  The wealth accumulated by  the winners in this world wide ponzi scheme will not be returned to help pay for the costs of the 'bail out".  The public will pay for the mess with increased poverty, decreased social services and so on.   The response of the government will be like that (in terms of rough analogy) of the victors in 1919 as compared to the response of 1946.  As you know, in 1919 the victors wanted peace but more than that  they wanted a return of the old regime and decided the best way to get there was to have Germany pay for it.   

Here, those running the show (ie the government) want to get back to where they were? But where is this?  1970?  1980?  or 1999?   What is the bench mark for success?  5% growth or 2%? And home ownership of 45% or 85%?   The Canadian government is giving $4 billion to the auto industry - what are the guidelines?  what is 'success'?  Oil at $100 a barrel?  Oh the government will pretend that recovery is coming - that things will be as they were.   But ...  how can they ever be as they were?   Sadly I suspect that regulation will simply be rules closing the barn door after the horse has begun to smell (using this analogy more than it should be - I would suggest that the horse needs to be examined, its cause of death determined and then it should be appropriately buried - all with the barn door wide open).    The problems are profound - a democratic solution (as opposed to fascism on display) would involve electoral reform.    But is won't happen.    Why?Because the whole culture is no longer one which sustains the old fashioned notion of good governance.  It is a culture in which everyone feels that they are special, that rules are important but getting caught is the problem, and that the best outcome is money money money...

Y's  experience with the Federal Government taught me a lot about the current attitude to governance in Canada.    Of course everyone pretends that the system is 'fair'...  but there is no fairness in a system in which files go missing - where hiding and delay is the best legal tactic.  Contracts are let and money is made on the basis of who you know not what you can do... All over justice is reduced to a dollar sign - and yet hundreds of millions of dollars in fines are left uncollected.  Who pays?  Who doesn't?  Read Bleak House lately?   

What is justice when the main and often only economic activity in much of the province is the cultivation of an illegal drug?  How does such a large industry get established, keep going in a supposedly law abiding part of the world?  Do only the unlucky or unconnected get caught?  What happens to the community when the richest citizens pay no taxes because their business is illegal.  Here look south - some argue that  Mexico is skating closer and closer to collapse... why?  because of the attempt to enforce drug laws...  or the attempt to determine who profits from this trade?   

And then where is the justice in a financial rescue when the most wealthy in society somehow manage to keep their homes, yachts and medical insurance when the less wealthy are told to eat their losses.   

Ok - I am angry.   Alas...  and I don't know who to blame...

Whooppppssss - its gone?

Ok.  Where did it go?  Where did the five trillion dollars go?

We were talking about the "financial crisis" the other day.  A friend asked "So, where did all the money go?  Where is it?"

How does one answer this question?  The question is almost rhetorical.  The problem is 'money'.   As Karl Marx, Georg Simmel and many others have noted, money is multi faceted.  The word is both a thing and, like property, a concept.  As a word, money is defined as "a medium of exchange, a unit of account (a standard) and a store of value" .   Money can be an object but as in the discussion of property, the objects is property only when it is owned.  The object, and in this case the object as money is not, in and of itself, money.  In order to be 'money' in any sense of the word, there needs to be system or process which ensures that the object understood as money, becomes money.  In other words, money is a medium of exchange, an accounting unit (or measure of worth) and a store of value only as part of a system.   It is the system, the process of exchange, measuring and storing which makes money, money.  

Before going any further - may I suggest that the current financial crisis needs a name.  I suppose that naming takes time - like the stock market crash of 1929 may not have become known as the Crash of 29 until 1930 or even later?  And the Great Depression - when did that moniker take hold?   Financial events seem to be named by the year so maybe we should know this current problem as the Crash of 2008 - or the '08 Meltdown?   I suspect that it may also be referred to as the year the party ended - the End in '08. Michael Lewis and David Eichorn article "The End of the Financial World as We Know It" is an example of many articles on this theme of it's gone and it ain't coming back...  Another example is found in Jim Kunstler's blog...

Back to the question of where the money has gone...   one answer is that the money has not "gone" anywhere because it never was anywhere to begin with.   As a medium of exchange money only exists in the moment of the deal (as in buying groceries).   As a unit or measure, money only exists to the extent that there is something to count or measure - asking where the money is, in this sense of the word, is like asking where the centimeter or temperature 'is'....  As a store of value, what is stored can be referred to as value but the value and thus the money are defined by the system - like the score of a sporting event.  The numbers only have meaning within the context of the rules of the game.  Money takes form, arguably life, as value but this existence depends on the ongoing process.  The value exists only as long as the system which brought it into being continues.  If the process slows or, worse stops, then the value risks being redefined or even lost.  Without the system, there is no value and nothing which can be stored as "money"  Without the system money has no value and without any value it may cease to be money.  

What was lost in the financial crisis was money best defined as a store of value.  The loss is expressed in terms of money. Investors often talk about 'losing money" when their stocks go down in value, but most also know that this loss is of a different quality than what might be lost when if one loses their job or their house.   Arguably, the amounts made and then lost were simply an indication of the score in the capitalist game at that point.  But even as the score, the money was not measure of anything, because to know who was winning or losing required an understanding of the game - and only the insiders really knew what was going on.  

Outsiders, meaning most people, have a tendency to attempt to translate the money as stored valued into terms which they understand - that is money as a means of exchange.   This leads to questions such as What is a trillion dollars worth?  or  What can it buy?  The five trillion (or whatever amount is current) represents a loss of money in the sense that the value which folks thought was there, turns out not to be there.  To translate this loss to money as either a medium of exchange requires imagination. For example, you could attempt to describe the amount of money in terms of exchange - like the money lost in 2008 could have bought everyone in the world a new car or health care (or whatever). But what was lost was never intended to be used as in exchange.  

The problem is that while the amount "five trillion" suggests that the money is being used as a unit of accounting or as a measure of some kind, what is there to measure?  Value?  Anyone who watch the housing market accepts that the price was stated in money but meant very little.  With easy credit and low interest rates, demand forced prices up.  Money ceased to be a reliable indicator of a houses value especially when the housing bubble burst.   When the bubble burst, the prices of houses went down and homeowners lost money.  But while everyone lost money, not everyone lost the same thing.  

I suspect that the money that was lost in the '08 Crisis was loss of stored value. The money or estimated worth of financial assets disappeared because the game in which it took shape ended.  There are many reasons, I suppose, why the game ended:  the winners stopped believing and got out, the losers had enough and tried to get out...  it was almost as it for awhile the folks at the top of the financial heap forgot that they actually believed that it was a game and that they made the rules - that they owned the game of making money.  And maybe they did, maybe they did own the game but they needed to keep faith with everyone else in the system who were letting them play.  When they changed the rules and allowed players to steal, the game was over and the score was meaningless.  Value was produced by a system which included more than just the players.   

Not surprisingly, when the game ended the players went home and those remaining became preoccupied with money as a means of exchange or as a measure of economic activity...  the money, like the score in last year's Stanley Cup Finals, is history.  

Springing forward - falling back

The time difference between Vancouver and Auckland was five hours the week before last.  Today it is four hours and soon it will be three hours.  It happens with daylight savings.   New Zealand springs forward with daylight savings and Canada falls back with its end.

The idea of daylight savings is to have longer days...  at least I think that is the idea.  But the hour on the clock is only a measure and beyond that it is meaningless.  When I was in Tahiti for reasons no one thought important enough to explain, the day began at 5 or earlierwhen the sun rose.  The clock said 4:30 but when I got to the bakery there was already a line to buy bread.  The sun was high in the sky but the clock said 10:30: the sun was gone and dinner was served but the clock said 6:00.  And then it was "9:00" when most people retreated to bed.

The clock  helps to coordinate one's activities - but to think that the numbers have meaning beyond that is what some might call 'reification'.  

And this leads me to the current "financial crisis" as everyone calls it.  The numbers, 1.5 trillion dollars here, 700 billion euros there, and so on are in themselves only numbers.  Even the amounts they represent are not real.  The numbers may represent money - but money as a way of keeping score which needs to be seen as different from money as a means of exchange and money as a way to store value.  And this in my simple view is why a "bail out" is unlikely to work - the amounts are simply partial scores, like 3 to ? in a soccer game.  The government can offer another amount but what is needed is for the game to continue and this requires money to change hands - this requires money as a means of exchange.  But who wants to participate in a game where the guys keeping score, as in the Bank for a Monopoly Game, have cheated.  And who can participate when the only value money has is found in the game. 

So the numbers by themselves are meaningless but it is still daylight at 7 and I can phone my mother at 6.