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By Mathew Maavak (about the author)
Become a Fan -- Page 2 of 3 page(s)
Welcome to the real world. Like the financial world, "notional" and "fiat" flips into "real."
War becomes peace! Fiction becomes fact. The worrying signs are there. A startling number of Britons actually consider Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi to be fictional characters while they vouch for the authenticity of Baker's Street Sherlock Homes!
The Daily Mail hypothesizes that such ignorance "could well have something to do with the TV insurance adverts inviting viewers to "challenge Churchill' and featuring a lugubrious talking dog."
That's the power to sell. The power of fictional imagery! According to a Wall Street Journal report, an astonishing 61% of sub-prime loans were palmed off to those who actually qualified for a conventional loan. The problem lies not with greed per se, but with Key Performance Indexes (KPIs) governing the Job Descriptions (JDs) of bank executives. To meet such metrics, they have to inveigle large quantities of loans in the shortest possible time to achieve maximum profit.
A computerized database of such performances sifts out the "high achievers" from the "underperformers," the conmen from the common man and, in some instances, the barely literate from the educated. Your worth is spelled out in stats and acronyms. Every trick is employed under the veneer of letters to cheat the uninitiated.
These charlatans set the universal discourse for civilized behaviour, educational standards and career achievements.
The most pressing task for the CEO of America Inc is a financial one. How will he deal with a one quadrillion dollar plus (more than 1,000 trillion) derivatives market that is waiting to explode? It is largely an American creation. The Chinese are threatening to default on a fraction of them and a few trillion in defaults is enough to sink the Western Economy.
Nobel Economics laureates will tell you it is all business as usual, and the bulls are being warmed up for the mother of all matador markets (MOAMM). It is only matter of time...
Time, however, is revealing a disturbing reality.
The Obama Record
Has Obama brought peace to Afghanistan or is he building up troops there? Read the news. The Taliban writ runs throughout half of Afghanistan and slowly, across the western half of Pakistan. Has Muqtada Al-Sadr kissed the cheeks of his Sunni and Kurdish brethren in Iraq with a salam? Isn't Pakistan's Jihad Inc. run with US-supplied weaponry?
Why are the entities known as Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda still free to thread the terror mill? Why hasn't the United States sued for peace and diplomatic ties with neighbouring, little Cuba when it can tolerate every gross human rights violation in China?
If Obama is afraid of Turkish sensitivities over a century-old Armenian genocide, can he be expected to stand up for international justice today?
Has Obama brought universal healthcare to millions of Americans who can't afford it? How are the deteriorating manufacturing and employment sectors measuring up to reality? Do the marginalized need another sound bite or another lying statistic to reassure them that things are shaping up?
Will the deteriorating value of the US dollar prompt Washington to embark on another Persian Gulf adventure? Every major war in history was fuelled by the re-liquidation needs of an empty treasury. Like the psychology of acronyms, the casus belli is buried under jargons, lies and patriotic grunts.
ROI, ERP, KPI, T-Bill ...CIC, Rah, Rah Rah!*, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!
Become a Fan -- Page 2 of 3 page(s)
War becomes peace! Fiction becomes fact. The worrying signs are there. A startling number of Britons actually consider Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi to be fictional characters while they vouch for the authenticity of Baker's Street Sherlock Homes!
The Daily Mail hypothesizes that such ignorance "could well have something to do with the TV insurance adverts inviting viewers to "challenge Churchill' and featuring a lugubrious talking dog."
That's the power to sell. The power of fictional imagery! According to a Wall Street Journal report, an astonishing 61% of sub-prime loans were palmed off to those who actually qualified for a conventional loan. The problem lies not with greed per se, but with Key Performance Indexes (KPIs) governing the Job Descriptions (JDs) of bank executives. To meet such metrics, they have to inveigle large quantities of loans in the shortest possible time to achieve maximum profit.
A computerized database of such performances sifts out the "high achievers" from the "underperformers," the conmen from the common man and, in some instances, the barely literate from the educated. Your worth is spelled out in stats and acronyms. Every trick is employed under the veneer of letters to cheat the uninitiated.
These charlatans set the universal discourse for civilized behaviour, educational standards and career achievements.
The most pressing task for the CEO of America Inc is a financial one. How will he deal with a one quadrillion dollar plus (more than 1,000 trillion) derivatives market that is waiting to explode? It is largely an American creation. The Chinese are threatening to default on a fraction of them and a few trillion in defaults is enough to sink the Western Economy.
Nobel Economics laureates will tell you it is all business as usual, and the bulls are being warmed up for the mother of all matador markets (MOAMM). It is only matter of time...
Time, however, is revealing a disturbing reality.
The Obama Record
Has Obama brought peace to Afghanistan or is he building up troops there? Read the news. The Taliban writ runs throughout half of Afghanistan and slowly, across the western half of Pakistan. Has Muqtada Al-Sadr kissed the cheeks of his Sunni and Kurdish brethren in Iraq with a salam? Isn't Pakistan's Jihad Inc. run with US-supplied weaponry?
Why are the entities known as Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda still free to thread the terror mill? Why hasn't the United States sued for peace and diplomatic ties with neighbouring, little Cuba when it can tolerate every gross human rights violation in China?
If Obama is afraid of Turkish sensitivities over a century-old Armenian genocide, can he be expected to stand up for international justice today?
Has Obama brought universal healthcare to millions of Americans who can't afford it? How are the deteriorating manufacturing and employment sectors measuring up to reality? Do the marginalized need another sound bite or another lying statistic to reassure them that things are shaping up?
Will the deteriorating value of the US dollar prompt Washington to embark on another Persian Gulf adventure? Every major war in history was fuelled by the re-liquidation needs of an empty treasury. Like the psychology of acronyms, the casus belli is buried under jargons, lies and patriotic grunts.
ROI, ERP, KPI, T-Bill ...CIC, Rah, Rah Rah!*, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!
www.maavak.net
Mathew Maavak is a journalist based in Malaysia. Contact him at mathew@maavak.net
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
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