Cat naps and Vitamin B: Midwinter survival

Everyone has their midwinter survival tips. Some inconveniences you can do nothing about. In my case my skin flakes off and my jaw freezes with my brain - so my midwinter annunciation is crap and a few extra words sneak into my normally good communications skills.

I recently had someone thinking I was asking if they read "The Rank" Magazine, which they'd never heard of - actually called "The Rake."

The photo above is a typical exaggeration: TCF Bank likes to flatter the Twin Cities we're tougher than we are: The actual temperature at 10:30AM, 30 JAN 2008? - 12 Farenheit.

Aside from Almond Oil - the knowledge of which is a gift from an old dear friend back in NYC - here are my two:

Catnaps:
15 minutes around noon or 1PM after lunch is essential to forgetting you were ever working and waking up feeling refreshed and ready to not deal with what you weren't dealing with before.

This kind of personal replenishing is naturally opposite of the mechanization demanded of corporate work. Acknowledging humans work according to their own schedule? Only Best Buy corporate seems on board with the notion that the less you force, the better the results. EU Corporate Culture is actually on the attack these days: The EU wants to skewer the beloved Spanish siesta.

This kind of thinking is so twentieth century, right up there with presumed multinational corporate relevance and monoculture. Thinking about my honey locked up in a cube with no option to snooze just makes me unhappy, and makes our life less quality.

Catnaps are the key to productivity, along with 25 hour, 4 day work weeks.

Vitamin B-complex:
It may make your piss bright yellow and gives your mind a boost at night causing 'b-mares' as they have been called out here, but when it comes to that moment when you need to get up and do something - conjure core strength and find some kind of initiative, get up from that catnap and strategize yourself vis a vis the obtuse world of corporate America - there is nothing quite like Vitamin B. Just get the one that has lots of kinds of Vitamin B's and eat it whenever you think to.

Drinking lots of water is key, too.

The Director of Marketing at the Holmes Agency is selling some serious radiators today - range of motion whilst it never hits -10 outside: Box next to radiator, rug next to radiator, walk to food. Sleep.

Social Finance with Zopa: Invest in your neighbor

1/30/2008 - Minneapolis

The wave of "social finance" is coming like a crushing tsunami. There is simply no stopping it. The most recent comes by way of the credit unions who have partnered with Zopa.com - a website that describes itself as "Social networking meets money borrowing: Think of these companies as where money meets MySpace."

Except the difference is this social networking has what seems to be the equivalent of FDIC insurance on the investment you make in your neighbor.

- - -

This organization Zopa.com, in partnership with the non-profit finance world of credit unions, is now doing for us splintered western individualists what ethnic tribes have been doing in all corners of the world for most of history: Invest in your neighbor.

Many Hasidic Jews in New York were brilliant at this. The principal is to "enrich the tribe" by giving your brother business, in turn your brother gives his brother business. Eventually the money comes right back to you, two-fold.

It's not a complicated principal, but multi-national corporations in their current decentralized - cheap labor, cheap distribution, huge profit mode represent the opposite of this idea. Instead of keeping the money circulating "around the middle-class," the mutli-nationals have done a brilliant job of convincing us with well distributed convenience, the purchased intelligence of our best and brightest and lots'o'advertising to divert funds directly to their dead-end wealth repositories.

In this current economy, not much changed since Regan made it, so much wealth is funneled directly to the top you might call the pools of money 'wealth collections.'

As the middle class shrivels, the US economy is..."stagnating." It's not hard to figure out how that happened, thank you deregulation. So you 'give' the middle class some cash in an emergency congressional bill.

I think investing in the middle class is a better long term solution.

- - -

Zopa is what I describe as a 'circular economy' where wealth is accrued within a community because it is continuously passed in a circle around that community. Now that is strong economic activity - sustainable too as the interest generated (wealth) also stays in the community and with people who choose the path of the ethical economy.

The localization movement, about to get a major boost from the price of oil and the efforts of the entire world to turn the US into far less of a trade player (along with the 'efforts' of a White House incapable of successfully attending a single trade conference - witness the dollar dropping), is going to start breeding these kinds of economies all over the place. And Zopa is already here.

If Zopa is anything, it's innovative. Amy Jo Hanson of Affinity CU here in Minnesota calls it "social finance." I call it "the ethical economy." Whatever it is, it fulfills one of the primary goals Creditland has for its readers:

That we all find ways to stop investing against our own interests by finding and buying into economic entities that are not actively working to make our lives worse.

This is why a website about problems is also a website about solutions. Creditland describes the problems, so we can all see how they affect us together - how it's not unique.

And the solutions? Well, they simply evolve. Just like Zopa.

Your publisher,
-Tobin

The Defintion of Hustle

You went and spent $50 two times on some items that are completely unnecessary but you've been waiting to get for months and bring great joy and benefit into your life.

Two checks are in the mail, one for $200 you owe to someone who completed a job for you 4 months ago and another $240 for a website listing that promotes the work you haven't been getting recently.

You did have $440 in the bank before you bought that boombox you know your lady has been dying to get, but she's been buying other stuff and you know it's your job and it's the right moment. Now your close to a hundred under while the checks are en route to Connecticut and Brooklyn respectively.

You gotta get money, son. You gotta get money in that account or you're gonna get nailed with them fees - or some peeps you really care about are gonna bounce a check and it's gonna cause static.

You better hustle, yo. You better hustle - cause the guy you work for who owes you a $1000 is hustling too - and he hasn't gotten paid, so you can't wait on that. You gotta get money in that account.

And then of course, three days later: $825 on two rentals is due. That's hustle.

Matt, of Green Mill, Creditland Needs You

Matt, Barkeep of Note, Creditland wants you to be the first blogger correspondent from you post behind the bar at Green Mill. I have checked Contemporary Inanity and I have read Bangkok 8 as you have recommended: I dub you Creditland ready, from the ground economic conversations overheard from behind that great magnet of humanity, The Green Mill bar in Uptown.

You are invited and here is your reserved location if you like the name: behindthebar.blog.creditland.org

Cheers,
-

"What day is it?" Day, 2008

I can't wait to no longer feel like driving on any side street will tear the rearview off every car I pass. Once everyone stops parking in the middle of the street you know.

Yesterday, 18 January 2008, I am officially naming "What day is it? Day." This will be an annual event. This is when you have no idea if the day is Thursday or Friday, or if the date is the 17th, 19th or 20th. All your pretty sure of is that it is not the 18th. That's what makes January 18th, freezing our brains, into "What day is it? Day."

And of the Dream to Never Drive
90% of all incidents with police in the US happen while you are driving a car. This is not a backed up statistic. This is gathered from personal experience and I think it is fairly accurate for people who drive. Most bad crap that happens, goes down, happens when getting pulled over by the cops in your vehicle.

Anti-Foreclosure ALERT: Banks May Not have Legal Ownership of Properties being Foreclosed On

Deutsche bank failed to prove
ownership of mortgage notes in this Ohio court
and a judge there denied the bank had the legal
authority to reclaim the property...because the bank could not prove ownership.

The nature of the securitization of the mortgages
currently failing, seems to make it almost impossible
for the banks to prove ownership - since the debt has
been rolled into global funds and is virtually untracable -
let alone the property of a single entity who could legally
reclaim the property.

This could be a huge blow to banks, and a major break for property owners currently in default on their securitized loans.

Gretchen Morgenson, "Foreclosures Hit a Snag for Lenders"
New York Times, Nov. 15, 2007

Statement of Purpose

“Choice depends on the ability to choose, and of course when you’re shackled with debt you don’t have the freedom to choose... People in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t vote. There are two ways in which people are controlled: First is to frighten them, and second is to demoralize them.” - Rep. Tom Bean

I. Creditland is you.

Creditland in an online community of debtors. The site aims to provide online space for users to anonymously share their stories and strategies for dealing with the increasingly unmanagable debtload for the United States citizen.

We are not an 'advice' site. The people who use this site come to their own conclusions. Creditland just lets us all tell the story. In addition to debtors, experts will be trawling around the site giving feedback and forums for them will be set up, while editors will be working in the background to ensure we stay on topic and focused.

Creditland considers consumer debt to be a private subsidy by private industry which frequently finances costs which are covered by governments of other first world countries: Health care, child care, college education, etc. These debts enable corporations and our government to shame the people of the United States into complacency.


II. Humans represent a very expensive risk

The fact of human inefficiency and potential costs in a modern society is a primary reason for the existence of modern governments, to pool liability to benefit the greater good. The pretense that economic management human existence can be profitable is false. The wholesale movement of quality of life activities to the for profit sector has been one of the great falsehoods of modern economic dogma.

The largest, most effective insurance of individual well-being has always been, and will always be, the domain of governments beholden to their people.

III Ecomomic fundamentalism (EF) (ref. Milton Friedman) is an irrational, blind-faith course of action to solving the problems of human existence, while conveniently making the rich richer.

The limits of the environment are not factored into economic models; they are assumed to be infinite. The work of mothers and caregivers are not counted as economic activity. Free trade creates economic balance, rather than a 'race to the bottom.' Not only do these 'facts' of advanced capitalism fly in the face of commonsense, which they do, they also represent a few of the basic, unshakable beliefs of EF which have become outdated and no longer useful.

Creditland seeks to contextualize this blind-faith belief system with stories of people who are actually living within this, and other, economies.

IV. Every human being has an economic experience, and derives some kind of knowledge from that.

For it is a fact of life that each of us, in the advanced western world and in the economically conditioned third worlds, have a very lively and complex economic experience. We deal with economic pressures of all kinds – to consume, to produce, to keep up the appearance of opulence and prosperity and to rack up as much debt and goods as we - and our earth - can handle.

And with that experience and some luck, we won't just commiserate but will create wisdom and strategy against the terms-of-agreement lawyers and consumer-debt investment bankers who seek to raise our never-ending monthly payment, to saddle us with just enough debt to always tread water, and frequently sink into foreclosure, or bankruptcy - if Congress and President Bush hadn’t outlawed it for most of us in 2005.

For corporations, bankruptcy remains as easy to attain as ever.

V. Nobody’s fault, EF is just a faulty system hitting a wall

This nightmare of exorbatant rising costs of living paired with stagnating wages and increasing opportunity in the low pay, low reward service sector is happening, in some form, to almost all of us. It is the American dream, re-written by corporate deregulation. (see movie, The Corporation)

This is no one person's fault - and we blame no individual. Creditland just seeks the wisdom of everyday experience in an open sharing forum. Creditland seeks to turn isolation into strategy; credit card offers into absurdity; and foreclosure into something worth more than the collapse of your dreams.

The economic discussion, for far too long, has been the domain of 'economists' and 'experts.' You don't have to be an expert to know when your personal finances are not working. And you don't have to be an economist to figure out this is happening to a tremendous percentage of...well, everyone in the United States.

Let's get started. We are now looking for people going through economic experiences to submit content - regular installments which simply tell your story. Much like this blog is at publisher.blog.creditland.org, your story (we only ask you to be honest) will be set up at youranonyoumousname.blog.creditland.org and migrate to the Creditland test site in the next month or two.

Keep in mind, bloggers will be "Correspondents" in the final site.

With best wishes for a new language,
Welcome to Creditland.
You are not alone.

Using Tangible Imagery In a Media Society to make your point: Fight the Right

NOTES:
- The following is my response to my mother's question about using the town of Millinocket as an example for economic benefit rather than the town of Greenville, which is closer.
- My mother's original letter follows my reply.
- My published letter to the Kennebec Journal is the previous blog entry.

- - -
Hi Mom,

I chose Millinocket because it seems most economic arguments and concerns stem from the closing of the mill there - I don't know much about Greenville, but I don't think there was ever an economic powerhouse like the mill there. Also, by inference you'd assume Greenville would be benefiting if a neighbor as far as Millinocket would be benefitting - and the state government to boot.

Actually, you bring up a good point about the letter: I am using a rhetorical strategy that is more commonly found in the rhetoric of the established powers and douchebags like Rove and Bush: They name specific targets, like I have by comparing Augusta to China, etc, to allow the reader/listener make their own emotional inference.

While perhpas not being exactly correct, it suggests both a specific event - the transfer of money - and a general phenomenon, economic colonization. People relate to illustration better than lectures about generalized ideals and how things should be, it's human to want tangible images.

I think the left has allowed the propaganda machine of the past 6 years hijack the imagery - and therefore the entire discussion. The left needs to learn how to illustrate general phenomenon with specific examples.

This is why I am creating Creditland as a user oriented site: People will provide their own experiences to create a collective image of the grueling, tearing hair out of the head event that happens at 10 million American kitchen tables every single night. I am actually considering naming the "homepage" of Creditland online "The Kitchen Table"

Thanks for asking, it's an interesting point.

On Jan 7, 2008 9:03 PM, Hope Brogunier wrote:
Hi Tobe,
Had a thought today re:your letter which leads to a question...Did you intend to use Millinockett and Augusta specifically when you were talking about keeping the $$ from going to Seattle and China or were those arbitrary choices? I ask because there is specific significance to Greenville of course being positioned on Moosehead i.e ripe for reviving the ski slopes there which would be a compatible use versus these house lots and roads all over the place...there was a very good op-ed in the wkend paper which I'll send to you or maybe you can see it on-line..Still need to send my comments to LURC as will be away(Uncle Will's service) for the final hearing on 1/19 in Greenville.Really hope your letter will be published.It packs a whallop! You got it in at a good time and I've heard the new editor person is better than previous one.Love, Mom

Letter to Kennebec Journal: Maine should take lead in North Woods

The following letter was written about by Tobin and published in the Kennebec Journal on Wednesday, 09 JAN.

Throughout the United States and the world, Maine is known for how it differs from the rest of the United States. This difference, a ban on billboards and building to scale in Maine towns and landscape, has put the Maine experience in a class of its own, earning more for the state than any single development could. But any single development could spoil our reputation for intelligence and self-sufficiency -- and this one is set to do just that.

Maybe it's time to develop the North Woods, but wouldn't you rather the project be managed by Mainers, using quality products and native intelligence over a period of many years, rather than imported drywall and suburban road maps from Seattle over a period of one year?

Can't Augusta come up with its own plan and its own financing? Why should Maine get financing from Seattle? Obviously, Maine has much to offer -- why give it up for a year of good work and a lifetime of low-paying, meaningless jobs?

You get one chance to do development right.

We have enough Plum Creek-style developments in the lower 48 to know this: It's ugly. It's cheap. And it ain't built to last.

In Maine, this is how we're different: If we're going to build something, we do it once, we do it right and we do it ourselves.

That way the big checks written in 2012 get sent to Millinocket and Augusta, not Seattle and China.

Tobin Brogunier

Minneapolis, Minn.

"The Story of Stuff" & "The Shock Doctrine" - two short movies

Searching for a music player I somehow came upon this online movie, "The Story of Stuff" - which oversimplifies many issues, yet goes further than the conventional model it does a good job of critiquing.

This video is also in following with my obsession about 'the invisible.' It is these invisible forces which are THE most compelling story of our time, a story that is not told again and again. This story, save for a few souls who connect the dots - like John Perkins, Naomi Klein, Barbara Ehrenreich, Mike Ruppert and Sebastian Salgado to name a few - is simply the story of the mechanics of global capitalism.

It's fascinating, frightening and amazingly relevant to see this system at work.

Living deep and voiceless in credit debt is one way Americans help the system go forward unchecked.

Who owns our time? Our time is spent plugging holes with our ten fingers on a (usually) sinking financial vessel. We work absurd hours to pay for absurdly priced vehicles and absurdly priced real estate, so we have no time to rest and consider that the system is both pervasive and completely dysfunctional.

Naomi Klein does a fine job in her latest book, made into a short film, "The Shock Doctrine," explaining how free market capitalism gets a foothold when it's ideas are inherently unpopular.