The thing that banks fear

Here is one of the best articles I have seen in  very long time: it provides some insights into why the banks have become so powerful in the modern world and why they might not be so in future.
Go here on the ABC site for Alan Kohler's excellent article.
I am definitely not directly involved in big finance or the stock market - but I am always interested in the gigs on there since ultimately it will affect us all since we almost cannot avoid using banks.
I considerd buying bitcoin as a reserve but it relaly looks like a bubble at the mooment and besides, even if you bought it when it was cheap and it has now risen in value many times,  you stil need to convert it back into your local currency to use it again  . . . . and hang on, isn't that exactly the type of behaviour which led us all into this mess in the first place?

For a more entertaining take on the money madness mess, yo ucan always go to YouTube and search for Max Keiser's The Keiser Report.
 

Ghosts with s**t jobs

Here's the link to an indie movie I just enjoyed ($7 rental on iTunes) -  It's in 2040 and only China is wealthy, the US is poor and Americans in the story live on half a shoestring and hope to emigrate to China some day. Funny and ironic, I enjoyed it greatly. Check out the "human spam" and a guy whose job is the go into a virtual world and blur out the advertising to cover copyright restrictions.  
Pointed out by the always interesting Boing Boing

Also on the subject of those living at the bottom end of America, check out this blog posting. It clearly shows a number of the attitude factors of poverty and how it is very hard to get out of it.

For me the main factor is how the woman points out that her family live from week to week,  month to month: without resources to plan for the future, there IS no future.
Although I now count myself free of the grinding poverty of earlier years, I still have no great future expectations since that level of reserves is just not available to me.  Own a house? don't make me scream. Young people here can't afford a first home, never mind someone like me.
Retirement? I will be happier to have a job since our government system has decided to punish the poor even more than before... but being an oldie in a world where jobs are disappearing quickly, that may not be easy . . .
When they push up the retirement age I may be longer on "unemployment benefits" which are so low that you probably cannot live decently on them unless you move to the country (which has it's own probems e.g. lack of medical services, which as a "senior" you may well need) - ah, but what IS government for?  Anyone out there really know what government is really supposed to be doing for it's taxpayers and citizens?  . .. or is that another one of those slippery subjects?

Your Iron is Listening . . .

Check out this bit of weirdness:A botnet of irons and kettles
Not sure wether such things really happen: it seems a lot of expense and work to glean measly amounts of information, bu that's just my view.  Perhaps if the appliances were targeted to "people of interest" by sneakret agencies it would make sense for them. . . .
Imagine the headlines:
"Man's infidelity exposed by his coffee maker"  . . . You can probably make up some great ones here.

What, Me Worry?

First, a small matter : I have just spent ten minutes being unable to find where to post to my own bloody Blogger page. Google, please fix this, I was about to quit in disgust and go back to my old, old site (that is still in existence) because Google Plus has made it so hard for me to find anything.  I don't care about all that other "social media" stuff, why did you remove the link to my already existing Blogger pages so tht I can't even post to my own blogs? Do you secretly want to get rid of Blogger? Why not just come out and say it?
But enough of that.

These two pages are from Der Speigel, translated from german. Read here critique of the way "economics" has gone insane and will lead us all into catastrophe if you haven't already figured that out.  When money is disconnected from earning and fair trade,  nothing can stop the nosedive of economies into the hard concrete of reality. 
It doesn't matter how much money you print, it's still worth nothing . . . . . .

Page 1 here . . . . Page 2 here.

But then it looks like the whole darn system will have to come to bits before people actually are forced to fix the mess. 

An Open Letter

Greetings,
As I am now in a condition that allows me to do so,  I, Gregory Zambo welcome anyone who might have a question, greivance or complaint about me or my past actions to contact me and we can discuss the matter and compensation if the matter deserves such.  

This offer is open to anyone past, present or future and I will keep all messages private so there is no chance of any matters related becoming public.

Contact me here please.

The truth about addiction and poverty

Digging through Boing Boing today I found this: The first time I have seen anyone state what always seemed bleeding obvious to me. The real problem is that some in our societies don't care about the poor or even worse attack them as if they were criminals just for not being born into a rich family.
 The real horror of this is that I still see this kind of Nazi attitude in people, typically the same people who have never gone without a meal or a home in their lives.   I have been on the recieving end of this kind of crap myself more than once. Now that I am out of the "hole" of poverty it is still amazing to see people who really should know better mouthing off at "the lazy dole bludgers" etc. etc. 
No, there is no easy way out of poverty, and as pointed out in this article, the dope just softens the misery a little.  Crime is something else again : but obviously (almost*) no-one is going to be robbing people if they have money and a worthwhile job.
Better that you read it yourself though, especially the conclusions.
Thanks, Carl Hart and NY Times.
(*Does not include persons such as Bernie Madoff {He "madoff" with a lot!})

Survivorship Bias

Coming courtesy of the You Are Not So Smart blog (which I have just discovered thanks to Boing Boing) : today's clever and funny article about success and failure . . . . .
Here's a meaty exerpt:

"If you spend your life only learning from survivors, buying books about successful people and poring over the history of companies that shook the planet, your knowledge of the world will be strongly biased and enormously incomplete.

As best I can tell, here is the trick: When looking for advice, you should look for what not to do, for what is missing as Phil Plait suggested, but don’t expect to find it among the quotes and biographical records of people whose signals rose above the noise. They may have no idea how or if they lucked up.
What you can’t see, and what they can’t see, is that the successful tend to make it more probable that unlikely events will happen to them while trying to steer themselves into the positive side of randomness. They stick with it, remaining open to better opportunities that may require abandoning their current paths, and that’s something you can start doing right now without reading a single self-help proverb, maxim, or aphorism.
Also, keep in mind that those who fail rarely get paid for advice on how not to fail, which is too bad because despite how it may seem, success boils down to serially avoiding catastrophic failure while routinely absorbing manageable damage."