Forward To The Past

A few years ago a series of science fiction movies called "Back to the Future" was made and the stories were good. Now the World Jewish Congress and the Wall Street Journal have teamed up to give us an article they call "An Arab-Made Misery," but this is a horror story about which I can only say I saw this piece of theatre before and it was ugly as ugliness can get.

On March 18, 2009 the Wall Street Journal in America published a piece reprinted from the European Journal and signed by Nonie Darwish. But make no mistake about it, that piece was written by the propaganda arm of the World Jewish Congress. I know this for a fact because I was once in the shoes of Darwish and I experienced the savage mental torture to which that individual must have been subjected before she relented and lent her name to that piece of filth.

More than 40 years ago the same World Jewish Congress teamed up with the Toronto Globe and Mail to get me to lend my name to pieces they wrote themselves or directed me to write in my own style. Despite the repeated attempts they made which came bundled with carrots and sticks, I told these guys to take a hike.

But they persisted like a swarm of flies that had not eaten for many days. They promised that if I accepted the call, they will see to it that my dreams come true. And to ascertain that all of what they said was sinking into me, they dangled in front of my eyes all sorts of prizes including the Nobel prize to which they promised they will have someone nominate me. And they added they can exert tremendous influence over the decision to award the prize.

More ominously, they promised that if I rejected the call, they will see to it that my dreams turn into nightmares because they will watch me everywhere I went and trip me whenever I came close to scoring a success of any kind. When I did not look scared but insisted that they go on and take the hike, they softened their stand and came up with another idea. Since we were in Montreal, the largest city in the French Canadian province of Quebec, they pointed to the difficulties that the Jews were having with the language law in that Province and asked me to assist them in doing something for which they promised to reward me handsomely.

And this is the plot they wanted me to assist them with: I was to write a book about the merit of being unilingual English for those who do not want to learn French. But since I was multilingual and could not empathize with the notion, they were going to feed me the arguments that should go into a book of this nature. This done, they were going to establish a new prize in the name of a prominent Jewish Montrealer who, I presume, must have been unilingual English. And they were going to make me the first recipient of the prize, promising that such an event will launch my writing career and make me rich and famous. I told them to take a hike, fly a kite and jump in the lake but they disappointed me and did neither.

Still, I had the last word, though perhaps not the last laugh, in that I chose the nightmare of being blacklisted over the nightmare of having to see their faces up close in case they delivered on their promise and allowed me to work in places where I would have to meet them and be close to the evil they represented and I detested with every fiber of my being.

I knew what they wanted in the final analysis and could not bear the thought that they chose me to hand it to them. Believing I was a Muslim, the message they wanted me to deliver to the world was one that mirrored the image of the self-loathing Jew in that they wanted me to demean Islam and demean my Arab race. I felt the request to be so evil that I decided not to reveal I was a Christian because the only consolation I derived from the unfolding drama was to see them wallow in their pool of ignorance.

The sight was so delicious I did not want it to end but end it did when the catharsis came on the day they discovered by accident that I am a Christian. At this point the feeling of self-loathing they were experiencing shot up like a rocket and caused them to modify their attitude toward me. But I must admit that the catharsis I experienced was as sweet as the drama that preceded it.

This brings us to the recent article in the Wall Street Journal. The message attributed to Nonie Darwish is different from what they expected of me long ago because times have changed. The message they now want to disseminate to the world is to the effect that the Arab countries should absorb the Palestinian people thus leave no more Palestinians for Israel to worry about. In fact, this is what Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party of Israel have wanted for some time. And given the result of the election which was conducted in Israel not long ago, Netanyahu may form the next government, the reason for which he is now setting the stage to implement his evil agenda. And the Wall Street Journal has mobilized its own resources both in Europe and in America to give a helping hand thus advance the demonic cause of the Likud Party.

However, there has always been a Palestinian response to that agenda and it is that the Palestinians want their country back not the citizenship of another country. Of course, a few Palestinians have migrated to countries that welcome immigrants and they became good citizens of those countries. But the bulk of the Palestinian people said to the Jews it would make more sense for them to return to the countries from which they came than for the Palestinians to be absorbed in the already overcrowded Arab countries. This makes even more sense at the present time in view of the fact that the countries of the Eurasian Continent, from where the majority of the Jews have come, are experiencing a falling birthrate and are desperate to repopulate themselves.

There are people in Israel and there are Jews the world over who quietly participate in similar discussions which are intelligent and constructive. These are Jews who have rejected the notion of a God handing them privileges He denies to everyone else. They know that if given a chance, the dialogue between them and the Palestinians will lead to a compromise whereby each side will come to accept the reality of the other and give up a little to achieve a lot.

But every attempt to reconcile the two sides was torpedoed by the forces of darkness represented by entities such as the Likud Party of Israel, the Globe and Mail of Canada, the Wall Street Journal of America and the World Jewish Congress. Rather than work for a solution to reduce the pain suffered by the Palestinians and the Jews, these institutions produce and publish demonic articles that fan the flames of hate and that blame the Arabs for everything.

When you look closely at the article allegedly written by Nonie Darwish, you’ll find it to be not really an article but a catalogue. It is a catalogue of the Likud propaganda points, of its dreams and its fantasies. It is the fraudulent narrative of a history that never happened. Take this sentence for example: "While Hamas leaders hid in the well-stocked bunkers and tunnels they prepared before they provoked Israel…" But Nonie Darwish has not been to Gaza in more than half a century, and she certainly had no friends there who fed her information they did not feed to the hungry news organizations that were barred by Israel from entering the war zone.

Besides, Hamas gained enormous popularity in Gaza, in the West Bank and elsewhere in the wake of the Israeli aggression. And if those who run the propaganda machine at the World Jewish Congress and the Wall Street Journal had any brains, they would have realized that well-fed cowardly would-be warriors who hide in bunkers do not get no respect, to quote Rodney Dangerfield. The idiots at the Congress and the Journal blew it in that they demonstrated what a bunch of amateurs they are. They put words in the mouth of a woman who could not have made a judgment of this kind independent of them, and they produced a document that will tell future historians they were powered by a mentality so backward that when they tried to move their agenda of hate forward into the future, they moved it deeper into their ignorant past.

Moreover, the title of the piece "An Arab-Made Misery" is meant to blame the victims because what is meant by Arab in this context is Palestinian. Take this passage, for example: "So was the Arab policy of overpopulating Gaza … [which] encourages high birth rates … Yasser Arafat said the Palestinian woman's womb was his best weapon."

The reality remains that no one has documented a single incident whereby an Arab leader, including Yasser Arafat, stood in the bedroom of a Palestinian couple and encouraged them to do you know what. Blaming the leaders for a high birthrate demonstrates a bankruptcy of thought that could only come from the twisted mind of a Benjamin Netanyahu or the collective wisdom of a World Jewish Congress. And only the editors of a publication like the Wall Street Journal would be so intrigued by it as to print the trash and be proud of what they did.

But here it is, folks; we now have a grand idea that the Wall Street Journal will want to take on the road and preach it to the rest of the world. It is this: When someone invades your home and tries to exterminate your race, stop making babies and make life easier for your killers. This way, the genocide will look like self-inflicted, and no genocidal maniac will ever have to account for their action. If only Hitler had thought of this strategy, the world would be a better place in the eyes of the Wall Street Journal. And you call this rag a publication worthy of respect!

The Talmud And The US Constitution

The appointment of Charles Freeman Junior to the post of Chairman of the National Intelligence Council was derailed by Jewish organizations that no longer pretend they are innocent of such activities. On the contrary, the organizations in question now brag about the powers they have - powers they make effective use of to destroy innocent Americans, including former Presidents if they can, who reject their agenda of dominance. And those organizations do what they do at the same time as they call anti-Semitic anyone who dares to discuss these facts without first declaring that it is a good thing the Jews have this much power lest he or she sound that they are criticizing something.

While no one will look at this situation and advocate the launch of a holocaust to put an end to the insanity, people will conclude that the conspiracies alluded to in the Protocol of the Elders of Zion have been surpassed by the unmasking of a reality that can still boggle the mind. But wait a minute, the organizations that appointed themselves to protect the Jews have been saying that it was the Protocol which led to the first holocaust. Are they now suggesting that their behavior is designed to lead to the next holocaust? Are they daring humanity to inflict another holocaust on the Jews they pretend to be protecting?

Let’s go back to the beginning and try to decipher the causes of this never-ending tragedy. Perhaps we may discover something that will help us put an end to a chronic disease whose nature is at once religious, social and political. I shall put the emphasis on the American scene therefore begin with the constitution because when you talk about America you always begin with this document.

Like the constitution of any country, that of America is a document which sets the legal principles against which all laws, rules and regulations are tested before being validated. This is a secular construct which, in almost every case, finds itself in competition with the religious one. In some countries, religion is honestly recognized as having an influence on the formulation of the secular law while in other countries, religion has a more subtle influence hence the tendency to pretend that the influence does not exist.

For example, the constitutions in some Muslim countries openly state that the laws of the country comply with the Muslim religious law known as Sharia. By contrast, in the countries where the majority of the people adhere to the Christian faith, little or nothing that is glaringly Christian is mentioned in the constitution or in the body of laws.

Still, a great deal of what is legislated in the Christian countries emanates from the set of beliefs that underlay the religion. When a serious deviation from the norm occurs, the legislators responsible for the deviation are called to the red carpet by the bishop, the Pope or another religious authority. Such convocations have taken place with regard to issues like abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, capital punishment et cetera.

Unlike the Christians and the Muslims who have a mature view as to where they stand with regard to the separation of "church and state," the Jews have never formulated a coherent stand with regard to the interplay between religion and the political set-up in which they found themselves throughout the ages everywhere on the planet.

However, the presentations that the Jewish leaders make to the local authorities in every country, especially America, suggest that they want a total separation between the religious construct and the secular one with one glaring exception. They want the separation to apply to everyone except the Jewish minorities for whom the leaders want unlimited freedom to do as they wish.

If this looks like ambivalence on the part of the Jewish leaders it’s because it is. It is also a deliberate act which is something that must not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the teachings of the Talmud. The latter is a book that contains a kind of constitutional law that has guided the Jews wherever they found themselves during the past one thousand and eight hundred years. If there is a word to describe the content of this book, it is ambivalence.

A great deal of what is in the Talmud has to do with the relationship between Jews and non Jews. The book teaches would-be rabbis how never to take a firm stand on anything while appearing to be definitive about everything. They are taught at an early age how to navigate their way using this approach so as to leave the door open to change their position when the social or political wind changes direction. In short, they are taught how to be all over the map without appearing to be flaky.

Ambivalence aside, the view of the Jewish leaders is that the goal of the Talmud is to implement the will of God. It is the will to place the Jews in a position where they can rule the world according to His dictates. And since they are His preferred children, they are also His heirs, and this makes them best suited to make the world safe for Jews by ruling His kingdom as if it were their own kingdom.

There is no ambivalence as to the reality that this is what the Jewish leaders want; they teach it openly to their own and they preach it shamelessly to non-Jews. There is no ambivalence either as to how they go about attaining their goal; they brag about the ingenuity inherent in their approach. Where there is ambivalence, it is in the way that they present reality to the rest of us. Realizing that not everyone will believe in the fantasy of the special relationship they have with God, they use the lessons of the Talmud to construct monuments of deceit which allow them to say opposite things in the same breath, yet sound believable on all counts. To achieve this, the Jewish leaders practice something I call the monodialogue.

The monodialogue is a debate where the Jews speak for themselves and for the people that can debunk their fantasies but are silenced by them. The resulting discussion sounds like a dialogue between a ventriloquist and his dummy. But since all the talk comes from a single source, it is in reality a monologue, hence the name monodialogue. Horrendous examples of this sort of theatre are to be found on the Charlie Rose Show, a show that did more than any other to promote the fantasies of the Jewish leaders. Watch the show when Tom Friedman is the guest and you’ll see a piece of horror theatre where Friedman speaks for Israel and for the Arabs too.

In fact, people connected to the elite in India tell me that an advisory is circulating among potential guests out there to the effect that when they go to America and they are invited to appear on the Charlie Rose show, they must not say something important close to something good they may want to say about the Arabs because both segments will be edited out. They know this will happen because Charlie will allow only Friedman to speak about the Arabs unless you want to say something nasty about them.

Now, dear reader, couple this thought with a scene you will most likely see where Rose asks Friedman point blank: "What do the Arabs want?" without there being an Arab at the table to speak for himself, and you’ll know you are witnessing journalistic raw sewage of Talmudic stink. Only Charlie Rose does this sort of thing this openly, and he does it every time that Friedman is there. Other so-called journalists do it too but they do it with more subtlety.

The formula that the Jewish leaders use to monopolize a show like Charlie Rose is the same one they use everywhere else. It is a formula that is laid out in the stories of Joseph, Moses and Esther. What works in these folkloric tales is the cultivation of a personal relationship between someone close to the seat of power in a powerful country and a mole such as Joseph, Moses or Ester that God has planted close to that person.

But since no one has seen God or spoken to Him lately, the Jewish leaders do the work themselves and plot to have a mole planted close to the seat of power in powerful countries or a television show they plan to dominate. They get the mole to whisper in the ear of those who would lend them an ear, and they relentlessly work to destroy existing rivals or potential ones. This done, they take over the country, the television show or the world.

This explains how a demonic relationship was forged between the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and the various American circles of power. It is a relationship that could not happen without meticulous plotting made possible by centuries of experience playing up the same plot. But this is what defines conspiracy; and this one has the potential to lead to another holocaust which, according to the Jewish leaders, is imminent.

If another holocaust erupts, it will not be because of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion. To wit, look at the way that the US Congress has been made to treat the Constitution. This is a document that was supposed to be the greatest thing ever written in that it balances the various rights and obligations so well, everything political in America gets caught in a gridlock. Everything, that is, except matters relating to the interests of Israel and the Jewish Establishment where resolutions are passed unanimously or near to that. Like the Talmud, the US Constitution is utilized to help the Jewish leaders take over the superpower that is America, take over the world and rule them both.

There is also this: Nowhere in history has the executive of a country played second fiddle to a foreign power when it came to dealing with his own legislature. It would be like turning up second on the pecking order in matters relating to conjugal relations. It is like seeking permission from the other member of the troika before making love to your wife. This is what the American Presidency looks like when the President listens to a mole that is an agent of Israel and tries to do business with a Congress that pokes his eyes while genuflecting to AIPAC.

It is clear by now to every observer that Rahm Emanuel, who is supposed to be the White House chief of staff, had everything to do with the way that the Freeman horror story unfolded. It will be interesting to see how much further he will stick his nose in the affairs of the White House and its occupants to serve the interests of Israel and the Jewish Establishment before he serves anyone else.

Another thing that would be interesting to see is Charlie Rose invite Charles Freeman Junior to the table so as to talk about his case. I doubt this will happen because the only people in the news that Rose invites are the likes of the inside traders who stole millions of dollars and are about to go to jail.

The Gods Are Easing Up On Mortals

Imagine a modern economy without a central bank. What would the people and the companies do to conduct the business of every day? Try to imagine this while bearing in mind that bartering will not be feasible in an economy where a commercial transaction may involve as much as a shipload of commodities and manufactured goods.

In this kind of economy, even a precious metal such as gold, silver or platinum would be too cumbersome to carry around and pay for a shipment of that size or even a fraction thereof. This leaves paper money as the only practical means to conduct modern business. But what if there was no central bank to print the money, write the cheques or electronically move around the large sums of money?

Fear not, dear friend, because this was the situation in the United States of America before the financial panic of 1907 and for six more years after that. Yes, the world came close to experiencing a disaster as a result but it did not end. Mirroring the set-up that existed in mainland Europe since the Eighteenth Century where the goldsmiths acted as the bankers of the day, there were in America a multitude of private banks. But then came the state banks, followed by the federally chartered banks, all of which operated without the authority or supervision of a central bank. And they held out fairly well until they did no more.

Clearly, the American system could not maintain a financial operation that was as smooth and dependable as it was hoped for but the panic of 1907 to which the system was headed had a bright side. It resulted in the creation of an American Central Bank in 1913, an institution that was modeled after the Central Bank of England. Thus was born the Federal Reserve System in America to survive to this day and be affectionately called the Fed.

Still, the question remains: From where did the early pseudo-banks and the latter day full-fledged banks get the money? Well, they did what the central banks do today, they printed the thing. Each institution was associated with a printing press and had a currency of its own which, in most cases, was convertible into the currencies of the other institutions. And it was possible to do these conversions because all currencies had a face value that was equal to a given amount of gold whose store value was stable, well defined and trusted by everyone.

And so the various banks were for a time the gods that created the money because they controlled the printing presses. But when the Central Bank came to the United States, it emulated its British counterpart in that it took charge of the situation and became the sole issuer of money. And the same happened to the rest of the world. Now there is only one god per economic jurisdiction everywhere on the planet; and none of them need the printing presses except to print the bills that they circulate among the public. Otherwise, the central banks deposit money into the account of the member banks or withdraw it by electronic means.

In recognition of the fact that paper money was nothing but a note promising to pay the bearer in gold the value indicated on the note, the banks of yesterday were required to carry in their vaults an amount of gold equal to a given percentage of the paper money they had in circulation. This amount was called the reserve and its level was mandated by law so as to avoid the collapse of the bank in case there was a genuine run on it. The same applies today except that the mandated level of reserve and its quality have been greatly relaxed.

And since most of the money in circulation was brought back and re-deposited at the banks for safekeeping and for earning interest, the banks turned around and lent the money to those who wanted to borrow and were willing to pay a higher interest than the depositors were willing to receive. Thus, the banks of yesterday profited as do the banks of today from the difference, known as the spread, between the two levels of interest.

But what is different between the old days and the modern days is that the banks do not have to carry gold in their vaults anymore to back the level of business they carry on their balance sheets. Now they can show foreign currencies on their books which they deposit in foreign institutions and earn interest. The banks may also buy government securities and corporate papers for which they earn interest as well. Thus, while carrying these new forms of liquid assets in reserve as mandated by law, the banks are no longer burdened by an asset that earns no interest but sits in the vault and glitter.

In time, the Fed has come to play a bigger role than print money and circulate it among the commercial and chartered banks. It now formulates and implements a monetary policy that allows it to set the level of the money supply thus control the rate of inflation and maintain the stability of the currency. And learning from the deflationary period that hit Japan in the Nineteen Nineties, the Fed and the central banks everywhere are now practicing something they call Quantitative Easing. The banks started doing this to respond to the financial crisis that hit the world near the end of the year 2008.

What the bankers do in essence is that they, who are supposed to be independent, are now playing a role comparable to that of the treasurers in the executive branch of government. More than that, they play the role in concert with the treasurers. The role of the treasurers has always been to set and to implement the fiscal policy of the nation, a function they used to fulfill alone by deciding how much money they will collect through taxation, by borrowing and by other means; how much of it they will spend and how they will spend it.

Now, having brought the interest rates close to zero in their effort to get the economies moving again only to see the latter remain frozen in the wake of the 2008 crisis, the central banks had no choice but to emulate the fiscal policies of the treasurers and flood the marketplace with liquidity to save the chartered and commercial banks from certain death. This is what Quantitative Easing is all about. It is as if the gods of money had decided to hand to the banks enough cash to pay off the angry mortals who would come at them asking for their deposits back. Of course, there was a secret wish in there too, the expectation that when the depositors get the money, they will spend some of it and thus help revive the economy.

There is no doubt that sooner or later the economies of the world will come to life again and, to quote Desiderata, the Universe will unfold as it should once more. This will happen because there will always be commerce among human beings given that people must eat, wear clothes, have a roof over the head, move around, go to school, receive medical care, communicate with each other and be entertained. You can slow down these activities for a while, you can stop them for a short while but you cannot stop them altogether for a long while. Thus, we may feel uncomfortable at the sight of many of us being unemployed but life will not end here or end now. Activities will one day resume again and they will go on to build more strength and more vigor.

As long as no physical plant such as a factory or a hospital is destroyed during the economic downturn -- as would be the case in a war -- the economy can get back to normal at a rapid pace. Activities will pick up when the people organize, which they will do when they begin to trust the competence of the leadership that is organizing them. Of course, questions will still remain as to the set-up that brought the system to the current state. In addition to understanding the why and the how of the thing, the public will want to know what is being done to see to it that the experience will never repeat itself.

Yes, the public will want to see those who were responsible for the current troubles punished so as to deter future operators from slipping into the same sort of incompetence, neglect or wrongdoing. And the public will also want to see a new system replace the old one. Such system will be so transparent, it will again earn the confidence of the public. And given that confidence is the most important ingredient that is needed now to get the economy going, those who are in a position of leadership should work tirelessly to capture it.

And maybe what will come out of this ordeal is a new era where the close cooperation between the Fed and the Treasury will be institutionalized and made into a permanent feature of the system. The existing arm’s length approach between those two was put in place in 1951 to allay fears that the government will be tempted to use its considerable power and politicize the operations of the Fed. But things have changed so dramatically in the past half century that the arm’s length Accord should now be revised.

Governments everywhere have weakened in the face of forces operating on the global stage that no government can understand, much less control. These are forces that can wreak havoc on people everywhere and they do so now without hesitation. Thus, a little more power being restored to government may not be a bad thing at this time. The pendulum has swung in this direction so let us ride it into an era of Quantitative Easing that will ease up on the commercial banks and ease the pressure on mortals like you and me.

Words And Concepts To Vibrate A Democracy

The burning question is this: Can a set of circumstances be clearly expressed by a single word or a one-liner, or is it that such a set is too complex to be so lightly expressed by one person and yet be understood by another? It is important to have an answer to this question because if we believe that democracy implies choosing between several sets of circumstances, the question becomes this: Can there be a real democracy in a jurisdiction where the people have ceased to act in response to ideas and concepts but are motivated to act by a word or a phrase?

The obvious answer to the first question is that a set of circumstances is too complex to be reduced to a word or a phrase yet be understood by someone. This leads to the following answer with regard to the second question: Because democracy is a complex set of circumstances, it cannot be practiced where the people have ceased to act in response to ideas or to concepts.

A good example to give in that regard is the previous paragraph which expresses a set of complex ideas. I doubt there is a word or a one-liner that could mirror the content of the paragraph in full. If there is such a word or expression, I would like to know about it so that I may use it and save me the trouble of having to do all this writing.

The implication here is that if the paragraph was carrying my set of beliefs and my ideas as to how society ought to be organized in a political sense, no form of democracy could be exercised by disseminating it among a society that reacts with indifference to complex ideas, but is made to respond to a word or to a simple phrase. In a society like this, the paragraph will cause little or no intellectual stirring and will result in no useful action being taken by the people.

However, after I finish writing this essay, the mere invocation of its title will tend to bring forth the ideas expressed in it to the people who will have understood its content and appreciated the extent of its reaches. Here the title is made of seven words but it could just as well have been made of a single word or a one-liner, as the title of many works are made.

In a somewhat analogous manner, a politician who uses a single word or what has come to be known as a "bumper sticker" expression, invokes complex notions that were built-up over time by the culture. These notions would be buried more or less deeply in the sub-conscience of the population such as, for example the expression: "Let them freeze in the dark."

That expression was an actual bumper sticker used by the motorists of oil rich Alberta in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis. They used the sticker to express their displeasure at Central Canada which they said had been exploiting them for decades by "ripping off" their natural resources. To my knowledge no politician used that exact quotation in public but many from Alberta and from the other Western Canadian Provinces displayed considerable sympathy with the notion and came close to expressing the same sentiment on the air.

In a similar way, every culture rests on notions that are fundamental to the core beliefs of the moment. And if you wait long enough, you will see that subsequent generations will erase from their collective memory the history that conceived the notions or they will modify that history to suit the time. Even though the people will learn –- mostly by word of mouth -– and will utter the words, the phrases or the title of publications to invoke some kind of context, they will in general remain unaware of the history and the original context in which the notions were carried.

In the absence of such context, the single word or the expression often takes on the form of a dogma and be followed by some people as if it were a command. For example, no one really knows why, when or where the saying: "Treat others the way you want to be treated" has originated but the expression is now uttered in many different ways in almost every language and every culture. It is viewed as dogma by some people and followed like a command by others.

And so, a name like Nelson Mandela, a date like D-Day, a title like "Alice In Wonderland," or an expression like: "Let them eat cake" may invoke in the hearts and minds of people the set of circumstances for which they once stood or they may invoke notions that the current wisdom says they ought to stand for. In any case, even if most people who are alive today know little or nothing of the circumstances that surrounded those words and those expressions, the people use them so loosely that the utterances play a role in reshaping the culture in a way that cannot be foreseen beforehand.

What this means is that the use of a single word or an expression to communicate is a kind of abbreviated shorthand that is also a double-edged sword because it is most efficient. On the one hand, such use invokes a host of ideas in the people who are endowed with a well developed intellect; on the other hand, it invokes an emotional response in the people who have ceased to think at the level of abstraction. And the responses will range in intensity from the mild to the violent, and in quality from the benevolent to the destructive.

If we now take all the positions of these people and line them side by side, they will form a spectrum. Between the one extreme where the people are intellectually endowed and the other extreme where the people have surrendered to emotional appeals, there is a majority that is motivated by a blend of thought and emotions. And each of these people will respond in a manner that is consistent with what motivates him or her. The intellectual type will welcome a reasoned argument and respond in like manner while the emotional type will be motivated by the emotional content of the argument and respond in like manner. But as always, there will be the exception that will not follow the rule.

And while there is no doubt that democracy can flourish at the center of the spectrum, there is question as to whether or not it can survive in the midst of people at either extreme of the spectrum. And the question therefore becomes: Where on that spectrum does the exercise of democracy cease to be genuine and become a show of smoke and mirrors?

Can we honestly say that in a self described democracy such as America, true democracy is practiced despite the fact that the outcome of a presidential election often rests on a single word being delivered correctly or delivered awkwardly? Can there be a democracy where the campaign of a candidate can be derailed by one incident being perceived by the media as inappropriate before the election, yet recognized as trivial immediately after the election?

And given that the exercise of democracy and the ideas of a free market economy have been inextricably linked, can we be certain that the economy we practice is truly of the free market type? Or is it that the economic crisis in which we currently find ourselves is nothing but the symptom of a democracy gone haywire? Have we been given a wake up call to the effect that our belief in a democracy of ringing freedoms is just as inflated as the housing bubble that brought down the economic system we thought was free and market oriented?

I received communication a while ago from someone who lives somewhere on this planet and who took the trouble to write me words that went something like this: You people believe you are free because you measure everything by the yardstick of permissiveness. You practice laissez-faire economics the same way that you practice the mores and the politics of anything goes. More importantly, you judge everyone else by how much they let their citizens display sexuality in public, and you compare that with the way you behave yourselves in public places. I know what I’m talking about because I lived for a while in your corner of the world where I studied a few things, among them psychology. So let me tell you something; you people do not practice the vibrant democracy you think you do because the only thing vibrating in your part of the world are the gadgets they sell in the sex shops. I know all about the anal fixation of infants that can translate into fetishes among twisted adults, but yours is the twisted democracy of the genitalia.

Not a flattering image of us, I would say. But was he or she correct in that assessment? Is this how we really are? Do we live in a bogus democracy of smoke and mirrors, and suffer from anal fixation and genital obsessions?

How To Compensate Financial Executives

First, let us think what a financial institution is before we bother with the executives that run it or how they can be compensated. It has been suggested and often repeated that a financial institution is a utility. As such, it is too important to fail thus, when one falters, it must be bailed out because if not, the failure will trigger the domino effect and cause the other institutions to fail also. This will cause the economy to collapse and will put an end to Civilization as we know it.

Okay, we are persuaded by the argument and shall proceed with the discussion based on the points brought to the fore by it. So then, what are the responsibilities of the executives who run these financial utilities? Well, it is clear from the argument that the first responsibility of the executives is to see to it that the utilities do not court danger which is something they can easily do by not taking unnecessary risks.

And there are two kinds of risk. There is the risk of giving out imprudent loans which, as an act of contrition, the executives have publicly resolved never to do again. And they displayed both the contrition and the resolve as they responded to the near collapse of the financial system, a happening they readily admitted they were instrumental in causing.

And there is the risk of experimenting with new products, a concern that the executives have not yet addressed. We must therefore address the concern ourselves which we can do by giving the financial executives the following instructions: Stay away from experimenting. When you run a utility, whether it is a private one or a public one, you do not experiment. Period.

What flows from this is that we now have a definition for the executive of a financial institution. In simple words, he or she is a technician not an innovator, a boring accountant, albeit a glorified one who never gets bored doing the same thing day in and day out. These executives do the work assigned to them like the disciplined soldiers who never dream of dabbling in something as sexy as derivatives whether the latter look plain and little exciting or they look exotic and very much enticing.

So then, how do you compensate these people? Well, you give them a boring salary that rises from time to time in relation to the rise in both the cost of living and the productivity of the economy as a whole. In fact, this is how things used to be until someone in America decided to follow the European model and combine Commercial Banking with Investment Banking but run the operation in the style of Cowboy Capitalism.

Thus, while the Europeans managed to run their operations for decades without taking the world near to a catastrophic collapse, it took the Americans less than two decades to copy the model and abuse it so badly as to change it from being a useful tool serving the economy to a weapon of financial mass destruction that almost destroyed the world economy and with it any hope of convincing humanity that America is anything but a one nation wrecking crew.

But we are here now and we recognize that it will not do much good to draw parallels between the old European model, the old American model and the developing Global model that is emerging from the wreckage of the events which jolted the world and still threaten it. What is important is that we debate the situation as we find it and try to think of ways to put together a system that cannot be utilized to push the world close to another catastrophic failure.

To this end, we must be cognizant of the following points:

First, a financial act is not a product that has an intrinsic economic value. Rather it is an act of logistical support designed to facilitate the making of goods and services which are the products that have an actual intrinsic value. As such, finance does not in itself add to the wealth of nations even though it has the effect of swelling the GDP. The people who misuse the system of finance do so by inflating into a bubble the work of someone else whence they take an unusually big cut for themselves, or they swindle the public by transferring wealth from the account of their clients to their own account and to those of their collaborators.

Second, financial workers can be viewed as pilots who navigate known waters most of the time but also uncharted waters some of the time. They go on their daily journeys with tried and proven methods, and follow strict rules using detailed maps and calibrated instruments. They are instructed not to deviate from a preordained route unless they encounter an emergency but if they deviate and fail to explain the emergency, society must become suspicious of their intention and take steps to protect the system by dismissing the offending individuals.

Third, the executive of a financial utility does not necessarily have to follow a given course as if it were a railroad or a subway track. The course can look like a bus route with a certain amount of discretion given to the conductor. But what the latter must remember is that he or she is not on a safari with unlimited discretion to fellow their hunches. A safari is an adventure and you do not take the people’s money or the economy of a nation onto an adventure.

Fourth, in financial matters you do not invent a product and create a need for it; you wait for the need to arise and work out a solution. As you do, you custom-make the solution to exactly fit the needs of a specific client rather than make the solution so universal that you can sell it without modification to other clients.

Fifth, to say that you are creative in financial matters when you practice cowboy capitalism often means that you are prone to putting together a swindle such as a ponzi scheme. It is therefore useful to be constantly reminded that financial services are essential and that they are regulated like a utility. Consequently, steps must be taken by the authorities on a routine basis to audit the financial institutions and to make sure they are not deviating from the course previously set for them. And this should be done even when there is not a whiff of scandal floating in the air.

Given all of that, the people in charge of selecting officers to run a financial institution must remember that you do not appoint a compulsive gambler to head the Lottery and Gaming Commission. You do not appoint a pyromaniac to head the Fire Department. You do not appoint Dracula to head the blood bank. You do not appoint Jack the Ripper to run a house for recovered prostitutes. By the same token, you do not appoint financial innovators to run an institution such as a bank, an insurance company or any weighty financial institution.

And you certainly do not reward a financial innovator for his invention anymore than you would the gambler, the pyromaniac, Dracula or Jack the Ripper for the deeds they commit. Those who want to innovate should stay away from the banks and perhaps get into the hedge fund business where they will deal with their own money and be more careful with it rather than handle the other people’s money and be as careless as a cowboy banker. However, this does not mean that hedge funds can escape regulation; they should be regulated if only because a large fund that goes down can take the economy with it.

You must also keep this in mind: A financial worker who asks to be paid a high salary and who threatens to leave and go work for the competition if not spoiled like a rotten child should be treated with a kick in the rear end and paid to go work for the competition, preferably your worst enemy. Financial workers that are powered by this kind of mentality are phony like a three dollar bill because when they talk like this they admit they want to use your institution to inflate bubbles and to erect ponzi schemes. And these, my friend, are the seeds of a crime in search of a fertile ground on which to sprout. Do not hand your institution over to them.

There was a time when young "geniuses" who could whip up a computer virus were admired for their talent but no more. In a similar sort of way, the time has come to treat the financial "geniuses" who can whip up a shady scheme like the pariahs that they are. And if they don’t like the dough you are offering them in banking, they can go and eat cake somewhere else, maybe a place they should call the Marie Antoinette Hedge Fund for the rich but still hungry suckers. These geniuses do not deserve our admiration; they deserve our contempt.

In any case, talk has now surfaced to the effect that some of these people are looking to set up their "boutique" operations so as to compete with the firms that refuse to pay them outrageous salaries. Well, as the saying goes, the more the merrier. Let them multiply like rabbits and give a grand display of their unique abilities. When all is said and done, those that obey the law will become a cherished asset of the capitalist system because they will have enriched it. And those that violate their fiduciary duties will be dealt with in a manner that will deter them from offending again.