The fund manager who described the meeting left after coffee and called his lawyer. The attorney’s quick conclusion: Paulson’s talk was material nonpublic information, and his client should immediately stop trading the shares of Washington- based Fannie and McLean, Virginia-based Freddie. [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-29/how-henry-paulson-gave-hedge-funds-advance-word-of-2008-fannie-mae-rescue.html]

Naturally, how to determine if the other hedge funds shorted [another problem with legacy equity systems that I describe in permanent equity] the GSE stocks once they learned this isn’t possible from current financial tracking systems.

• Adam Curtis A documentary film maker, whose work includes The Power of Nightmares, The Century of the Self, The Mayfair Set, Pandora’s Box, The Trap and The Living Dead.
• Apocadocs A humorous focus on the true, frightening realities facing humankind.
• Defence and the National Interest
• FOFOA Discussions about money and economics.
• Freak Revolution We WIN at Life.
• George Washington’s Blog News and Thoughts from the Anonymous Geo. Washington
• Gonzo Times
• GreenTechMedia a fully integrated online-media company comprised of cutting-edge news, in-depth market research, and focused industry events.
• Occupy Wall Street
• Permaculture TV Creating educational and documentary video that will empower self-help by increasing food security and community resilience in a time of economic and ecological crisis.
• Post-HierⒶrchy Documenting Nomadic Anarcho-Primitivism
• QuestionCopyright
• Ran Prieuer I am not goal-oriented. You could say I’m “process-oriented” or that I “surf the flow”.
• Skilluminati Research
• Slow Food We believe that everyone has a fundamental right to pleasure and consequently the responsibility to protect the heritage of food, tradition and culture that make this pleasure possible.
• Slow Movement The Slow Movement aims to address the issue of ‘time poverty’ through making connections.
• TCN Radio
• TED We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world.
• The Archdruid Report Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society
• The New Significance Exploring revolutionary forces for change & autonomy in the 21st Century…
• TIM BOUCHER, BALTIMORE
• Tom Dispatch
• Transformational Logistics is an umbrella term for Logistics and the Informal Economy The informal or shadow economy describes those business or transactional practices that are not regulated and do not comply with official taxation procedures.
• Transition Towns A community working together to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye.
• World Changing We cover the world’s most innovative solutions to the planet’s problems, and inspire readers around the world with stories of new tools, models and ideas for building a bright green future.
• YES! Magazine Award-winning, solution-oriented journalism covering peace, justice and sustainability innovations in the US and beyond. Independent, nonprofit media.
• Zero Hedge to widen the scope of financial, economic and political information available to the professional investing public. to skeptically examine and, where necessary, attack the flaccid institution that financial journalism has become.

We might advance an “economics” that looks nothing like the way the discipline is currently organized—demolishing the myths of capitalism instead of peddling them as the priests of the dominant market religion. And we might advance a form of social organization that doesn’t resemble an “economy” in the conventional sense of the term, but allows for the conscious creation of our everyday lives instead of the compulsory labor we’re told is necessary for a system that “works,” but obviously doesn’t.
— Deric Shannon

Labor Worries Rise As Planting Season Nears In Ala.   Alabama farmers are facing a labor crisis because of the state’s new immigration law as both legal and undocumented migrant workers have fled the state since the strict new rules went into effect last month.

The farmers probably aren’t paying enough. More than likely, Americans just aren’t up to the job to work in a field picking. In one example in the story, a farm used to have a 25-member sweet potato digging crew before the government played Calvinball with the rules, and increased the risk of farmers and workers to voluntarily transact by successfully violating (again) the one rule from Economics in One Lesson: The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. In attempting to create more jobs for Alabamians they destroyed the existing jobs and put at risk the livelihood of the farmers who employed them. Farmers are being told to “get creative.” Nice. Here’s some help for them:

Pricing Your Sweet Potatoes    So, you’ve got a field full of vittles and 25 people to pick them, how much are you going to charge per pound? We won’t know the true answer until the market finds its equilibrium, but we can start with deciding to pay workers 2× for back-breaking work. So, 25 workers × 8h labor × 2 = ξ400/day. Let’s guess that each worker can dig up 250 pounds of potatoes a day. So we have 6,250 pounds of potatoes to sell. The farm has to pay the workers and the farm has to make a profit for itself, at the minimum to be able to make some savings and room to mark prices down if the potatoes aren’t selling, let’s say, 4×. The minimum price is then ξ400 ÷ 6,250 pounds = ξ0.064/pound (just under 4 minutes/pound). Multiply the farm’s profit and we get the initial price at ξ0.256/pound. Workers get paid, farms get profit, in this case, ξ1600 gross − ξ400 labor = ξ1200 profit, and people pay about ξ15m/pound.

How does that jibe with the current Federal Minimum Wage of $7.25/hour? 0.256 hours (the price per pound of sweet potatoes) × $7.25/hour = $1.86/pound. The price per pound is pretty close to what you would be paying in Fiat Dollars, at least for organic sweet potatoes in Brooklyn, NY prices from the Park Slope Food Co-op, where I would expect prices to be much higher than in Alabama.

Your interest rate on any particular debt is a nameless class in a hierarchy of debts.

Now you might not think you’re one of the 99%ers, maybe you are doing well. Maybe you’re not doing as well as you could be once you see another way to measure your worth against others. I don’t mean how much you earn, but how much your debt costs you in the game I call the “hierarchy of debts.”

Hierarchy of debts? Sure, you’re scored on it constantly. Your credit score is your ranking in the system used to guestimate how well you play their game. Low credit score = higher interest rates.  High credit score = low interest rates.  Every debt you own is a game piece in the hierarchy of debts. Refinance your mortgage from 12% APR to 4% APR? Congratulations, you just converted your pawn into a queen, maybe. Get an auto-loan for 7% APR? Great! You’re doing better than Bob who has to pay 10% APR for his used Hyundai. But you’re still not the owner of the chessboard, where the banks and financial companies get to play with 1%, 0.5%, or even 0% APR interest-money from central banks. The biggest wonder of the game in the hierarchy of debts is the credit score algorithm, the rules of the game, are of course, kept secret from you and changed regularly when you intuitively learn them.

What class are you? The lower your interest rate is, the higher you are in the system of classes. Banks receive the lowest interest rates from central banks when they’re in trouble. In turn, banks lend out money at higher interest rates in order to turn the debts into profits. If you make lots and lots of ridiculous notes to slaves that they can’t pay them back, the government bails you out to protect (you) from them.  How do you become a bank? You have to have money (lots of it, no, really… lots of fucking money) AND political power (enough to convince enough representatives to back you)  to get a charter, naturally. There’s no possible way for any 99%er individual or even a major subset of the 99%er’s to forge their own bank, because it always requires more money&power (mopo) than they have access to. 99%ers are forever barred from entering or influencing what 1%ers have access to.

Take a look at your interest rates, and you’ll know your class in the financial system. If they’re not less than or equal to 1%, you are probably a 99%er, or you’re about to become one when the promotional rates give out.

Occupy Wall Street with ☮ ♥ & ξ