Conquistadors of Credit

After the physical exploitation of the earth is completed, stripped of its metals and petroleum, the bankers undertake the credit exploitation. This entails the offering of credit to the governments and citizens of the poorer countries — for the consumption of gadgets or creation of businesses or the building of infrastructure — and the long-term interest harvesting of the credit-based GDP growth that follows.

 

The bankers are the new risk-taking explorers of the planet and through securitizations, derivatives, and explicit State backing (tax payer guarantees limiting their downside risk), are able to strip wealth out of even the poorest inhabitants.

 

It all seems good and right in the beginning as the credit bubbles are created in the poorer countries, and the citizens are able to buy goods and services they were historically unable to afford. But the only real winners after the inflationary collapse can be the asset holders. And these assets will eventually be repossessed by the banks after the extension of credit has peaked, overall growth has flagged, deflation has destroyed those who were too leveraged, and the loans have now become unpayable.

 

It will be many generations before the collapse of the banking created credit-based growth model. 80% of the planet awaits the promises of growth offered by the banking credit apparatus. The Western world has been harvested, its economic soil deadened, the people and governments no longer able to accept further credit exploitation. But the impoverished rest of the planet is waiting and willing and the bankers have only just begun to exploit it.

New Reflections on the Working Poor

The addictions now make sense in a broader way. The excessive smoking and drinking, maybe other substances too (you might even include the sugary foods and sodas), is not simply a form of chemical escape from their misery--and by their misery I mean the car payments due on a car they owned a decade ago, the consumer debt for sofas and stereos and outfits and jewelry they no longer possess, the spouse that stalks them, the children they pay child support for, etc. etc. The cigarettes and alcohol and other toxins are in fact a way of shortening their miserable lives, thereby shortening the misery.

A shortened life does not bother them. They may be troubled by the idea of crippling diseases and reduced faculties, but their current misery is too tangible to be overwhelmed by a distant, vague fear of emphysema or liver failure. Instead, the thought that the poisons they put into their bodies could shorten their lives is a welcoming thought. There is nothing at all wrong with checking out a little early. And to feel good while doing it makes it all the more agreeable.

Finally, their laziness and aversion to hard work means they don't even get the exercise the activity of the job offers them. But when your aim is to weaken and die, any form of exercise is anathema.

The Poor

One of them stole my lunch last night.
I didn't get anything to eat at the 2am lunchbreak.
When you take the lunch of someone who rides bicycles aggressively you are stripping him of calories more necessary to his life than those of a regular man.
I'm not much on the machines anymore and without food the heavy lifting I did most of the night was exhausting. A few times I had to catch myself on the high ladder as I brought down the 4 gallon boxes of bleach.
But the poor can't beat me.
I reminded myself of that.
I fought the delirium with that.
The poor are poor because of laziness and carelessness.
The poor are poor because they choose to be.
The poor are getting exactly what they want from life.
The poor steal lunches, mislabel pallets, write wrong SKU numbers, pay exorbitant prices for shitty food from vending machines, and keep the break room filthy. The poor are weak and fat and badly dressed and badly smelling and worse than doing nothing well, they aspire to do nothing well.
I'm getting tired of working around these poor.