Recently I’ve been reading a lot of articles on the housing market and how it’s been impacted by macro economic policy of the U.S. One article that stands out to clear the air on the roots of inflation and it’s so-called “archenemisis” deflation is Frank Shostak’s Is Deflation Really Bad for the Economy.

I spend a lot of time on mises.org. Not because all my ideas on economics fall in the so-called “Libertarian” camp, although I find many of my own views inline with many Libertarian views, but I can get straight non-partisan, non-baised information on what makes the global economy tick from the likes of mises.org.

It’s not for lack of trying to understand the “conventional” mainstream economic wisdom, but at some point you have to let go and look for greener pastures of understanding. So as we all know, the source of our economic woes was a huge bubble in real estate, prices soared beyond their intrinsic value, investors hedged their bets on those inflated prices and when the cheap credit and cash ran out, prices corrected themselves and we are now experiencing a dramatic price correction in the economy. Unfortunately we are experiencing a huge price correction on all areas of the economy because the real estate industry doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There are many industries that are tethered to real estate, so if real estate gets the “financial flu”, everyone else is going to get “financial pneumonia”.

As stated in the title of Shostaks’ article, “Is Deflation Really Bad for the Economy?”. Well..in the case of the U.S economy yes and no, but overall…No. It’s going to be bad for those individuals who were apart of those jobs in industries that experienced “bubble” prices. Meaning those prices weren’t real and any macroeconomic attempt by the Fed to prop up those inflated prices is a recipe for disaster. The prudent way to go is getting an asset back to it’s “real” price and not the fake “bubble” price. You can’t build off of something that was never supposed to be there in the first place. The “Great Recession” that you are seeing in the U.S. and other economies is a price correction. If there are pockets in the economy that are experiencing a value/price correction, then this is a good thing.

How is any economy going to experience any efficiency or proper recovery if you prop up areas of the economy that are correcting themselves? There are only x-amount of savings and investment resources in the economy and propping up “dead areas” of the economy will create artificial demand (i.e. housing) which is just another bubble. A bubble is just a misuse of resources, not something that is healthy for any economy.

I’ll close with Thomas Wood’s wonderful analogy from his book Meltdown: A Free Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. No better explanation can sum up the danger that lies ahead if we continue to artificially maintain areas of the economy that deserve a value correction:

Consider a circus that comes to town for a few weeks. A restaurant owner may expand his seating capacity in the false expectation that the circus and the related demand for his food that it brings in its wake will last forever. But when the circus leaves town, he’ll find he has “idle resources” on his hands. We should not want to put these idle resources to work. Doing so would only draw labor and other resources away from other sectors of the economy, where they are employed in the satisfaction of real consumer demand. The expansion of the restaurant should not have occurred in the first place. We should want this bubble activity to shrink back down to size, in order that other, non-bubble activities in the economy can be correspondingly strengthened.

In the wake of a previous, unsustainable boom brought about by the central bank’s credit expansion, the market economy and its price system, left to their own devices, will adopt another arrangement of resources that employs available factors in the service of producing goods and services that correspond to real consumer demand. During the bust, free individuals interacting within the market nexus sort out which projects and business ventures are healthy and sustainable, and which are bubble activities that cannot survive without a constant artificial increase in the money supply, and cannot (and should not) survive now that reality has reasserted itself.

• Tooth Fairy Economics by Thomas Woods
• Our Insane System of mortgage finance? by John Papola
• The Fed Can’t Solve Our Economic Woes by Gerald P O’Driscoll Jr.
• Is Deflation Really Bad for the Economy? by Frank Shostak

Table of Contents

1. My Umbrella Story
2. Windproof Umbrella Conspiracy
3. Now tell me what windproof umbrellas and diamonds have in common
4. Conclusion
5. Related Sources

My Umbrella Story

I know these two products seem like quite the odd couple, but when I finish this post, you’ll see the similarities. About 3 or 4 years ago, I bought this great black windproof umbrella from the Walgreens right around the corner from my house. It was raining like cats, dogs, giraffes, elephants, tigers, and dinosaurs at the time so I was ready and willing to put down some good money for an umbrella, and when I say good money..um that’s about $15.00-$20.00 dollars. Normally I get those cheap-o street vendor $5.00 dollar “I’ll last about 10-minutes in the rain then evaporate” black umbrellas, and when it eventually meets it’s short demise I kindly dunk it in the nearest garbage can with the rest of the $5.00 dollar umbrellas that have been imploded or exploded by the wind or rain.

So I walk into Walgreens and I’m looking at the umbrellas. One side (left) has the the $7.00 – $9.00 dollar umbrellas and the other side (right) has the $13.00 – $15.00 dollar umbrellas. The umbrellas on the left side seem enticing because I know these umbrellas are better then the street vendors and that extra $2-3 dollars will be well spent. I then look over to the right side and see a set of windproof umbrellas and instantly forget I was looking the first set.. I give it a couple looks, test it out for a minute or two and I’m sold. I now own my first windproof umbrella. This umbrella was a champ. No matter how windy or rainy, it held up. No more inverted umbrella embarrassment, no more charging forward and jousting with my umbrella in the wind looking to attack the next pedestrian, and no more buying cheap umbrellas. I have officially upgraded.

A year later I mistakenly left that wonderful black windproof umbrella at a spot I used to get my locks re-twisted (at the time) and the young lady who does my hair (who now cornrows my wife’s hair) found it. I decided to part with my first windproof umbrella and let someone else reap the benefits. I’m pretty sure it was her first windproof umbrella and nothing would make me happier than passing down the legacy. So I go back to the same Walgreens to buy a new windproof umbrella and they only have blue and white (think New York Yankees). I really enjoyed my stealthy black windproof umbrella but I decided to go with the NY Yank themed windproof umbrella and I still have it till this day.

I know at this point you are asking..”Can we get the the diamond part already?”. Yeah, we are almost there, the finale is coming. Like most people you accumulate umbrellas at home because:

1. You forgot that it was going to rain today
2. You didn’t think it was going to rain even though the weather man/woman said it was going to rain (usually he or she gives a T-storm or isolated T-storm type of forecast and you say..”I won’t need it”)
3. You forgot your umbrellas somewhere. Normally when you go out you bring your umbrella because it’s raining. You reach your destination but when you are ready to leave it’s no longer raining. You are either going to remember “Oh its not raining let me bring my umbrella” or “Oh its not raining anymore [internal thought: I did not remember that I had an umbrella because it's no longer raining]

Then you get caught in a rain storm and you need something really quick. So you go with the cheap-o street vendor brand to prevent looking like you just jumped into a pool with your clothes on. Then you bring “I needed an umbrella urgently” no 846 home and soon the section where you keep the umbrellas looks like the area where people put their umbrellas at the door of a hotel. To your benefit, when company comes over and you need to go outside while it’s raining you can just pass them the cheap-o umbrellas while your “top notch top shelf” umbrellas remain in the special section that only you and your family know. It’s like a family secret. “shhh..don’t give them the good umbrellas”.

So a couple weeks ago…yeah you guessed it..I get caught in a rain storm with no umbrella. Damn you weather man. You should by hung, drawn and quartered for your weather prediction blunders. Sorry I digress. I go to my favorite Walgreens spot and I go straight to aisle 7 to pick up a windproof umbrella and to my surprise not one windproof umbrella. I’m shocked. I feel like a 3 year old kid that has been stranded in the airport. Now what? Okay, I’ll just go to your competitor Duane Read which is right around the corner and get it there. So I walk straight to the umbrella section and once again…no windproof umbrellas. I can’t believe this. I’m shocked. So I settle for some umbrella that is worst than the cheap-o street vendor umbrella but I have no choice. At this point, time is short and I don’t have the luxury to shop around.

So where did all the windproof umbrellas go?

Windproof Umbrella Conspiracy

To be honest I’m not sure where they all went. They went from being available like a kit kat in the candy section of any drug store to being scarce like looking for Scarface on VHS in BestBuy. However, I have a couple theories:

1. They fell out of fashion. Like any trend, there was a huge push then for some reason no one wanted them. A simple act of supply and demand. No malicious intent there.
2. Did those stores see a drop-off of their non-windproof umbrellas sales because the windproof umbrellas held up a lot longer? In my case, I usually have to buy several umbrellas a year because they get smashed by strong winds and rain. However, since I bought my windproof umbrella I haven’t had to buy another umbrella. It’s literally been 3-4 years. Let’s do the math:
   1. Hypothetical non-windproof umbrella sales if I didn’t buy my windproof umbrella:
      Roughly 2-3 umbrellas a year at $5-$10 dollars a pop for 3 years = $45-90.00 dollars. Now lets multiply this by several thousand because obviously I’m not the only one buying non-wind proof umbrella. Let’s just say 2,000 people for one store for each year. That’s anywhere between $90K-180K over 3 years.
   2. Hypothetical windproof umbrella sales using my windproof umbrella buying pattern in part a.
      So in 3 years I had to buy 2 wind proof umbrellas because I lost one. For the sake of this exercise, lets say the average person buys 1 wind proof umbrella at the price point I bought my windproof umbrella which was roughly $13 bucks over 3 years:
      1 wind proof umbrella at $13 dollars over 3 years = $13 dollars. Using the same 2,000 people for one store each year that’s 26K over 3 years.

   As you can see the hypothetical gross revenue of the windproof umbrellas is 40% less than the lowest revenue estimates for the non-windproof umbrellas and 85% off the highest revenue estimates for the non-windproof umbrellas.

   I was a lot more careful with my windproof umbrella because of the following reasons:

   1. It was extremely valuable/reliable (product value)
   2. I paid a little bit more so I didn’t want up another $13 bucks where $5 bucks (cheap-o non windproof umbrella) I felt less obligated to be responsible. Not to mention I knew it was going to implode any minute so my care for my non-windproof umbrella was a lot lower and reckless.(behavioral value based on price and quality)
   3. I was also less likely to forget my windproof umbrella at random places because it was a good umbrella.

Now tell me what windproof umbrellas and diamonds have in common

The point of this whole entire hypothetical economic exercise is to demonstrate several key economic and behavioral conditions that impact our buying decisions and patterns. In this scenario (I believe) windproof umbrellas and diamonds are both impacted by artificial or false scarcity.

In this specific case, I believe that windproof umbrellas are experiencing a certain type of “artificial scarcity” because it is less profitable at the low to mid-tier umbrella market to sell windproof umbrellas next to the non-windproof umbrellas. When I say “artificial scarcity” I’m stating that companies are purposely making the availability of windproof umbrellas more scarce because it is less profitable for them in regards to umbrella sales. My wife was just looking for a windproof umbrella and literally had to hunt every single pharmacy (i.e Walgreens, CVS, Duane Reade, etc) in NYC and could not find 1 windproof umbrella. She just happen to be in Home Depot at the time and on a whim looked for a windproof umbrella and found a few. Same price as the one I bought 3-4 years ago, $13 dollars. Even when you go to direct umbrella manufactures and suppliers windproof or wind resistant umbrellas are seldom mentioned. I’m not exactly sure if the distributers and suppliers are in direct “kahoots” with one another, but clearly the availability of windproof umbrellas has been minimized from the manufacturer to the distributer.

So in the case of the diamond industry De Beers buys up tons of diamonds off the market to lower the total amount of available diamonds globally, hence making them “artificially scarce”. Just imagine the natural amount of water that existed in the world was 5 trillion gallons. Then a water corporation, let’s call them De Water, would selectively buy hundreds of millions gallons of water out of the total 5 trillion gallons then put those hundreds of gallons in a water container. Over time the total available gallons would decrease hence making it scarce which means the price per gallon of water would slowly go up. In the case of De Beers just swap out water for diamonds and you’ll get a sense of what we are up against.

Since the late 1800s, De Beers has regulated both the industrial and gemstone diamond markets and effectively maintained an illusion of diamond scarcity. It has developed and nurtured the belief that diamonds are precious, invaluable symbols of romance. Every attitude consumers hold today about diamonds exists–at least in part–because of the persistent efforts of De Beers. Moveover, by monitoring the supply of diamonds throughout the world, De Beers has introduced and maintained an unprecedented degree of price stability for a surprisingly common mineral: compressed carbon. Such unique price stability lies within the cartel’s tight control over the world’s supply of diamonds. De Beers’s operating strategy has been pure and simple: to restrict the number of diamonds released into the market in any given year and perpetuate the myth that they are scarce and should therefore command high prices.

For more details on scarcity and marginality you can go to these great articles from Mises.org on marginality and artificial scarcity.

So simply, prices are impacted (excluding misnomers like government and cartel price controls) by the natural ease or difficulty on the availability, including cost of production, distribution, and manufacturing; of a particular product or resource. In addition there is also “subjective value”, which falls into the area of behavioral economics. (i.e. I prefer the windproof over non-windproff) In the context of diamonds, De Beers, who own roughly 60% of the diamond market have been accused of creating “artificial scarcity”. I don’t disagree with this accusation. They also put together one of the most successful marketing campaigns in history for their diamond business:

Over the last century, De Beers has been highly successful in increasing consumer demand for diamonds. One of the most effective marketing strategies has been the marketing of diamonds as a symbol of love and commitment.
A young copywriter working for N. W. Ayer & Son, Frances Gerety, coined the famous advertising line “A Diamond is Forever” in 1947.[31] In 2000, Advertising Age magazine named “A Diamond Is Forever” the best advertising slogan of the twentieth century.[32]
Other successful campaigns include the “eternity ring” (as a symbol of continuing affection and appreciation), the “trilogy” ring (representing the past, present and future of a relationship) and the “right hand ring” (bought and worn by women as a symbol of independence).

De Beers is also known for its television advertisements featuring silhouettes of people wearing diamonds, to the music of Palladio by Karl Jenkins. A 2010 commercial for Verizon Wireless parodied the De Beers spots.[33]

Conclusion

There are a multitude of psychological, marginal and environmental factors that go into a point of sale for any product. When products are sold there are a multitude of “micro” decisions and conditions that are related to psycho-science and economics. Or in this case, “neuralnomics”, if you will. Some of these decisions can be driven on a subconscious level. If you read how supermarkets sell their products, it reads like some white paper out of psychological science magazine. In many instances the line between psychology and business has become increasingly blurred.

As you can see I find the topic of behavioral economics and the roots of scarcity quite fascinating. You probably had no idea that something as random as windproof umbrellas have been brewing in my mind like this. Although this is a very simplified example, it’s just one example of how many variables can impact the sale of just one product.

• Thanks to Ads, Kids Won’t Take No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No for an Answer
• Tag Team: Tracking the Patterns of Supermarket Shoppers by KnowledgeWharton
• What Does Marginality Mean? by Robert P. Murphy
• IP and Artificial Scarcity by Stephan Kinsella
• From Louis Vuitton to the local street-corner brand, umbrellas tested. by Aja Mangum
• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

That’s right, I don’t own a flat screen, I still have my old school 27” RCA Remote Monitor ColorTrak (Picture embedded in the post) that came with the Co-op when I bought it almost 4 years ago. It never went bad, so I never replaced it. Until that day comes, I’m rocking the RCA 27” till the tube explodes like a spark from those old school cameras that used flash powder (aluminum and potassium perchlorate) to light up the pictures. Unfortunately this post is not about my electronic frugality, but close to the topic at hand. Last night my wife and I attended Poetic, People and Power 8th annual show Price Check: How We Became a Culture of Consumption. Here’s a bio from the website:

Poetic People Power was founded by writer/performance poet Tara Bracco in 2003 to create an ongoing project that combines poetry and activism. Each year, a diverse group of poets are commissioned to write new works on a political or social issue. The new poems are then brought to a public audience in April to celebrate National Poetry Month. Poetic People Power entertains and informs. It raises awareness on specific topics and engages audiences through the expressive art of poetry.

Right now it’s 6:52am, and I’m postponing my P90x routine this morning to write about this, because I was so moved by the poet(s) poetry. This particular show was about the power of consumerism and how our society has become somewhat enslaved to an ideology of spending and debt. I touched on this topic in a post I wrote in 2006 called Slave to Fashion Dominatrix to Prices. This is not just about people who overspend, it’s also about the cost of living (healthcare, education, etc) skyrocketing and how wages have stagnated (relative to inflation), while pushing many of us further into debt.

In light of the recent financial crisis, this is extremely important. I cannot find the exact words to explain how last night’s topic is connected to the happiness and financial solvency of the average household, but I’ll leave you with this.

In the foreward of Tim Kasser’s book The High Price of Materialism, Richard M. Ryan summarizes Kasser’s research by stating.

Once people are above poverty levels of income, gains in wealth have little to no incremental payoff in terms of happiness and well-being.

Also check out this very eye opening and disturbing documentary on how our kids are becoming indoctrinated by a new culture of consumerism. I have 1 year old so for those parents out there, keep your third eye open.

Get informed, Get Active, and Become a smarter consumer!. There are resources below for those who are interested:

• Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic ~ John de Graaf (Author), David Wann (Author), Thomas H Naylor (Author), David Horsey (Illustrator), Vicki Robin
• The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need ~ Juliet B. Schor
• The Hight Price of Materialism by Tim Kasser
• Credit Card Nation by Robert D. Manning
• The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz
• Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin & Joe Dominquez
• No Logo by Naomi Klein

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: In no way shape or form is this post aligning itself with any particular economic school, political party or ideology like the Austrian School of Economics, Keynesian(s), Saltwater/Freshwater Economist, Democrat, Libertarian, Republican, Left, Right, Socialist etc. The purpose of this post is a conversational starter about the questionable merits of interest. Although this topic is highly controversial and the world at large has accepted interest as the norm, it’s worth having a debate on the distortions that interest brings into the economy.

Shout out to Br. Halit for giving me the title for this post, originally titled The Case for NO Interest. I am no Islamic scholar or fancy economist. I’m a student of Islam and life. Although I don’t have the vast econ-textbook knowledge like many official economist, by the good graces of Allah, I do have common sense and a pragmatic mind. With all the thousands of economist around the world, only a few of them had the insight to foresee the recent 2008 financial crisis, not to mention past crises. Doesn’t mean that we don’t need economists, but I see a lot rear-view/hindsight economists out there. I wrote this post due to my interest, no pun intended, in understanding the Islamic law regarding the prohibition of Riba (interest). Many of the themes of this post are related to Islam. If you have a problem with that and topics that have to do with Allah (God) make you too uncomfortable, then you should go here:

Table of Contents

1. Allah’s (God) ruling on Interest
2. I’m NOT Interested
3. Economic Sophistry
4. A Fair Alternative to Interest
5. Conclusion

Allah’s (God) ruling on Interest

The purpose of this post is a conversational starter on the questionable merits of interest. In addition I’m doing a bit of education here for non-Muslims because they ask me question after question after I tell them that interest is prohibited in Islam. I will address some of their questions in this post. Regardless of your way of life, clearly there is room for discussion on abolishing interest based transactions. From an Islamic perspective, Riba (Interest) is prohibited. Taking interest or charging interest is prohibited. A transaction can be prohibited by adding money on top of money (giving or taking) or by overpricing assets that are sold to the public. In Islam, every financial action should be just. You can profit, but not at the gross expense of others. The whole point of Islamic finance is to create a proper balance between the basic needs of society and the profitability of those business transactions that impact that society. In today’s world of secular based ideology, a person in power can justify any act through legal sophistry, even if the act undermines the person and the surrounding community. In Islam, you don’t “Rob Peter to Pay Paul“, then wrap an act or law in some fancy legalese, while ignoring the financial imbalances and “moral hazard” that is inserted into the economic system.

In my view, this is the root of the problem. As long as their are lawyers, financiers, investors, and government regulators that can justify questionable financial acts with legal and economic sophistry, we could have continued systemic problems. It’s not just Islam that prohibits usury (interest), but every monotheistic religion has prohibited usury. Over time, with re-writing and revisions of theological law, the use of usury has been used as an acceptable mechanism for profit. Allah knows best, but I do believe that interest is 1 head of a 5 headed demon of what is wrong with the economy. In addition to interest, clearly we are suffering from a ethical problem, financial illiteracy problem, debt burden problem, regulatory reform problem and definitely a hubris problem.

I’m NOT interested

When I get into discussions on economics and Islam, while making it clear that Islam does NOT allow interest based transactions, many people ask “Well how do you make any money in Islam?”. That would be like me saying “Hey I don’t drink alcohol”. Then they ask me, “Well how do you quench your thirst”?

I find it strange that the same people who say “Hey, let the free and fair market take it’s due course”, are the same people that aren’t as excited to deal with the burden of all that “free market” activity when the economy collapses. I like to call these people “Fair Weather Market/Economy Capitalists”. All the interest in the world couldn’t even save two major investment firms in 2008, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. What about AIG? Those are just the more recent victims and had other firms not been bailed out, many more would have gone under. Remember Long Term Capital Management in the 1990s? I thought interest was supposed to account for risk over time? Uh, what happened?

What is so interesting is if you talk to the so-called “interest specialists” about interest they will give you some economic sophistry on how interest is needed for true capitalism or interest is not responsible for our economic missteps. Being that interest is so tightly coupled to our economy how could anyone believe that interest isn’t part of the problem when many of the 140 financial crises we’ve had since 1978 had to do with debt or interest rates. Many times they will quote me some “classical theory of interest-esque or time preference theory” response or something similar to the Wiki definition below:

Definition

Compound interest is very similar to simple interest; however, with time, the difference becomes considerably larger. This difference is because unpaid interest is added to the balance due. Put another way, the borrower is charged interest on previous interest.

Did you folks just get what I just typed? Lets also keep in mind that these are “THEORIES“, not laws. Charging interest on previous interest. And this is what we call an equitable transaction? Says who? The gatekeepers of the economy? Or I should earn a return on money that I have not earned? I guess the supermarket should charge me double the “regular” price of milk because they built the supermarket, bought the trucks to deliver the milk, hired people to put the milk on the shelves, etc.

The typical response:

You see that’s how it works. It’s absurd to think that someone shouldn’t pay for money over time. Look, the consensus is clear, we smart people say so, and we have the theories (not laws) and dusty economic books to prove that interest is needed for capital markets, so get over it. Don’t let me quote Jeremy Bentham.

Absurd huh? I guess as long as we are using text book definitions, here is the text book definition of alcohol (Ethanol):

Any of a series of hydroxyl compounds, the simplest of which are derived from saturated hydrocarbons, have the general formula CnH2n+1OH, and include ethanol and methanol.

“Of course, there is nothing in that definition that seems harmful, right?” Just a bunch of hydroxyls and hydrocarbon atoms doing the bounding “two step”.

Lets just ignore the amount of murders, car accidents,alcoholism, addiction, rapes, drug abuse, broken families, bankruptcies, domestic violence, financial cost to the health care system, human cost to livelihood, brain damage, etc that this psychoactive drug contributes to and all is well. Nothing but a lipstick on a pig. As long as we dress it up with sophisticated language and words that only phds and so called “economists” can understand, we should be happy to deal with interest in the economy.

Economic Sophistry

What is even more perplexing, is you’ll have pro-interest individuals stating, “Hey, without interest we wouldn’t have the proper growth in the global economy” Really? Do these individuals realize how many times governments and monarchies around the world since the French Revolution have literally printed themselves out of an economic crisis (yes printing money out of thin air) while debasing the currency and sending inflation through the roof? [See A Free Nation Deep in Debt by James McDonald] Is this what free and fair market is? Whenever I get into deep trouble just print more money to fix the problem and still call the system a free and fair market? Fractional Reserve banking? We arbitrarily choose who the winners and losers (bailouts) are in the economy and then call it a “free and fair” market? Is this not hubris?

I’m curious what the economies around the world would look like if money wasn’t printed out of thin air to “fix” the economy? Oh, no problem, well just have deficits that we will never ever pay back. Can you imagine an American citizen telling the IRS, “Oh hey don’t worry about my debt, that is just a deficit and I’ll just carry it over for the remainder of my life while printing up money from my house to pay for new bills. See, I fixed the problem”. And this is what they call a “free and fair” market? With that being said I am not for the printing of money because this is just another form of interest, not to mention it is a economically flawed approach to monetary policy. With all the interest that is being charged, none of it was enough to account for risk over time. The current crisis is yet another indicator that the same Wall Street titans that profit off of interest based financial instruments are nothing but “welfare” corporations who got done in by the same interest they charged. In fancy econ-world talk they call this “over-leveraged”. This is just another word for “Hey I can’t pay this loan back with interest”. Every major bank/investment firm was almost insolvent, if not insolvent in 2008. You name it, Citibank, Lehman, UBS etc, and some banks like Washington Mutual have been banished to bankruptcy land, never to be seen again.

As Nassim Taleb states in Black Swan regarding the Savings and Loan Crisis:

The same happened in 1983 with money center banks losing cumulatively every penny ever made, and in 1991-1992 when the Savings and Loans industry became history.

Take a look at the “free and fair” market looks like with bailout after bailout since the 1970s:
http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts

So what happened banks and investment firms? Wasn’t interest and your high returning investments supposed to dig you out of the hole when financial disruptions strike? Apparently not. So if interest is not even a mechanism that can properly account for risk over time, then why are we doing it in the first place? Don’t be fooled by the fancy language, “Re-capitalize” is just another fancy word for “Corporate Wic Check”. Instead of food, the tax payers are buying toxic assets. I would use the term “buying” lightly. “Off-Balance Sheet” has now become another word for “hiding risky assets that I know would completely deteriorate my companies net worth and possibly make my company insolvent”.

Fictitious Banker Convo:

Banker: Uh Mr. Oxford I noticed that you had 40K in credit card debt. I think this is going to be a problem with getting you that loan.
Me: Oh no problem, you see you actually weren’t supposed to see that. I have this thing called “off balanced sheet” which hides that 40K debt so my balance sheet looks better than it is.
Banker: Hmm, okay that makes sense, why would I want to get an accurate representation of the risk. That just preposterous. Ha ha ha (laughs nervously)
Me: Exactly, I kind of felt the same way, so can I get a “do over”?
Banker: Sure. You are approved.

The stalwart supporters of this farce economy are like the following story:
Let’s say a bunch of engineers (Bankers and Investment Firms) create a recycling water cleansing system (RWCS). They say that as long as you have 800,000 liters of water (cash) in the system, the system can maintain itself. Whatever run off (bad investments) and natural evaporation (risk) that happens will be replenished by natural rain fall (interest and fractional reserve banking) and the efficiency of the system extracting more water out of the system (profitable investments). Then over time, instead of 800,000 plus liters of water in the system, the amount decreases by 50,000 liters every 3 months. By year 3 the water system is struggling with only 200,000 liters. Even with natural rain fall subsidizing the system, they still can’t cut it. Now instead of admitting that the recycling water cleansing system is not working, the engineers siphon water from the Atlantic Ocean (Bailouts and printed money) into the RWCS to artificially bring back the system up to 800,000 liters of water while patting themselves on the back and stating “Hey look, our system works. All we need is the occasional water subsidy and we are in business”.

What a sad state of affairs. Are we so blind?

A Fair Alternative to Interest

Some might read this and think I’m some wacko dogmatic socialist. As if creating a profit mechanism that is an alternative to interest based profit makes you a socialist. Ha! I’m no “Capitalist” which means my motivation in life is not just profit. When I do business, I’m for making a profit but not at the expense of what Allah has intelligently decreed for society at large. In addition, equality and being just is more important than mere profit, and it’s not like that ideology has served ALL of society well, considering the current circumstances. A title I’ll steal from John Kim which is a Capital Anarchy. This is what we are dealing with in the 21st century. Many people outside of Islam might believe that people who believe in following the guidelines of Quran and the Shariah of Allah (SWT) are bunch of mindless drones that don’t actually reflect and ponder on those same rulings with proper intellect. This is far from the truth. When I found out that usury (interest) was prohibited in Islam, I spent a substantial amount of time researching the law and the mathematics behind the prohibition. Not to mention, that are many Islamic scholars who can elaborate even beyond my amateur approach to explains Riba and it’s consequences to the global economy. If you are interested in thinking outside of the box, hit me up on Facebook and I’ll give you the sources. There are some sources below too.

As I said earlier, there are lawful ways to profit that don’t involve interest. I’ll use the example of buying a house, which is a business transaction that most people can relate to. I touched on the Islamic Financing option in my the First Part of Economics Made Simple Renting vs Buying a Home.

As you can see the transaction is a equitable one that balances the risk. Each party owns their fair share of the investment, which brings me to my next point of Profit-Sharing also know as Mudarabah. You can read about more Islamic Financing options from here. There over 8 different options and all of these options cover various financing needs, whether a line of credit is needed, financing of large purchase items like a house, etc.

I don’t see how one of the main approaches from various venture capital firms is something that cannot be utilized in more areas of finance. If profit sharing was so inefficient why do multi-million dollar VC companies exist? Why don’t they charge interest on the money they lent you? It’s simple, what ever you put in is what ever you get out of the investment. If you own 25% of the investment you get 25% of the ROI (Return on Investment). If you own 66.6823% of the investment you get 66.6823% of the ROI. What is also very beneficial with this model is it allows people with smaller amounts of liquidity to get in on the ground floor of a particular investment. Very similar to how a fractional shares work.

Check this out:
Just imagine that a supermarket wanted to move into your neighborhood. Instead of going to a bank with interest, the locals of the community can become investors too. So the total start-up cost for the supermarket, let’s call it GroceryMart, Inc need 20 million dollars. The company has the first 10 million. So they go to an Islamic bank for the 7 million and that Bank now own 35% and the rest of the 3 million is financed by the local community giving them 15% of the business. If anyone wants to offload their shares, you find another buyer or negotiate with GroceryMart.

As income streams into the business, money is equally distributed based on the percentage of ownership or other contractually negotiated payment schedule. In the contract it is stipulated that at any point in time GroceryMart can put in a bid to buy out shares of the other share holders. No different than when a company on the stock market buys back shares. Now what is great about this scenario is the risk is evenly distributed. If the business does well, we all do well and if the business does bad we all do bad. Although I mentioned the stock market example, none of these shares can be traded or bid up in price. The only way the values of the shares go up, is if the company brings in more income.

There are couple things that are accomplished with this one tactic of Islamic Finance:

1. Risk is evenly distributed based on how much you put into the business
2. There is no compounding interest that is exponentially accruing on one side of the business transaction.
3. This will actually allow people who don’t have a lot of disposable income to become investors. No different than buying fractional shares. This will greatly contribute in upping the financial literacy of the community and create a starting point for non-wealthy individuals to invest in simple straight forward businesses.
4. No more winner take all.
5. No distortion of assets from speculation and interest. Because there is no interest we don’t have wild swings in asset valuations running away from the actual value of the asset. (Very similar to what happened to the housing market in 2008)

Now some may argue that this methodology is crude or inflexible and might not maximize the highest potential for profitability. I would ask, in comparison to what? To the current so-called “free and fair” market that gets the luxury of being bailed out with printed money out of thin air whenever an economic financial crisis happens? Since the 1900s we have never had a market that did NOT have the luxury of being bailed out. In just about every instance there was never enough interest earned to properly cover the inherent risk over time. So not only do the banks and investment houses get the luxury of charging interest which is supposed to account for risk over time, but when their risked based models fail miserably the tax-payers have to bail them out. If this is a “free and fair” market, then maybe we should go back to sharecropping because this is no different.

Conclusion

I would like to reiterate that this post is a conversational starter. I would like for pro-interest individuals to watch the movie Life and Debt, or read the history of how IMF and World Bank policies have “benefited” the countries that they have done business with, or read about PayDay loans, or the 1978 Marquette Decision, or The History of the Credit Card by Frontline or any financial crisis that has happened since the 1900s. In every circumstance interest was involved which distorted the true value of assets in the market or the interest rate that banks were charging were incorrectly pegged against the assets that they were holding. In many instances, the wealth was completely wiped out be taking on loans with interest. Also keep in mind if we had let the “free and fair market’ play out, there would be way more companies going under. What we are seeing today is a fraction of bank failures due to this fiat currency/interest/fractional reserve based system artificially propping up the system.

Some might argue about savings and not getting interest. In today’s fiat based economy a dollar today is not a dollar tomorrow. The amazing part is no one every asks the big word..Why? Well, if I’m a government and I keep printing money out of thin air and dumping it all over the economy, that’s is going to lead to inflation and that milk, beans, bread or whatever is going to keep going up in price. Reserve banking (not fractional reserve banking) and stopping the demonic practice of printing money out of thin air would dramatically help in keeping prices tame. There is no reason why prices shouldn’t go down if there is not enough savings and resources in the global economy to buy everything. It’s almost impossible to know what the true price is of anything because of all this tinkering with the money supply.

In addition to this, how on earth can we trust a practice that financially punishes the most vulnerable people on the planet with higher rates of interest? Is that just? To add insult to injury now these “Credit Card Banksters” want to charge annual fees on credit cards users who don’t use their card as revolvers. What type of nonsense is this? Should we just continue this practice because the so-called financial specialist in their ivory towers say so? I would also ask those same individuals that claim to adhere to any one of the monotheistic religions to re-read their religious doctrine and put the use of usury under a microscope.

Here are some links to get you started

Bible: Kings James Bible on Usury
Torah: Judaic Ruling on Usury
Quran: Quranic Ruling on Interest

Profit sharing is class independent. It’s fair, transparent and easy to implement. With true profit-sharing, there is no distortion of the money supply (whether through interest or printing money out of thin air). For the most part, every dollar can be accounted for.

Even Warrent Buffet had to admit the following:

But Mr Buffett argues that such highly complex financial instruments are time bombs and “financial weapons of mass destruction” that could harm not only their buyers and sellers, but the whole economic system.

He gave this warning in 2003.

How much financial carnage do we have to see to understand that interest distorts markets? Are we not tired of being thrown around like a rag doll in the economy by the so-called “financial czars” and “phd interest specialists” who act like they are the gate keepers of this economy? Do you actually feel like this market is fair or you actually feel that you have economic freedom in such a distorted market?

God willing, the root to proper economic prosperity is transparency, financial equality (ethical capitalism), efficient production, fair competition which is underscored by socially responsible driven economy. These 5 principles should underscore our financial decisions and destroy the 5 demons of the economy I mentioned earlier. Not speculation, wild gyration in interest rates, and corrupt laws that protect corporate malfeasance.

If you are going to live and die by the gun of “Russian Roulette” interest, I find it quite hypocritical for the same individuals to expect the bailout ambulances to come running to their rescue.

I refuse to sit as a back seat driver and go for the ride with “financial legalese that justifies interest, which no one can understand” driving and “economic sophistry” riding shot-gun. It’s time to pull over and get out the late model White Ivory Tower EX Edition sedan.

• Why Greece Matters
  http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/02/podcast_yes_greece_could_defau.html
• Warning Against Riba Transactions
  http://abdurrahman.org/economics/ribaIbnBaz.doc
• Foreclosures Are More Profitable Than Loan Modifications, According To New Report
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/21/perverse-incentives-lead_n_328378.html
• How massive student loan debts are sinking American dreams and causing a national economic headache.
  http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/525/index.html
• Nassim Taleb
  http://rs.resalliance.org/2008/09/17/financial-resilience-taleb-and-mandelbrot-reflect-on-crisis/

One of the most painful things to see is how pundits, cable networks, commercials, and hearsay can dominate the headlines, but practical financial advice on how to stabilize the economy fall to the waste-side. So the latest distraction is a Dow 10000 and other personalities selling the idea that only the government can dig us out of this economic mess. If it wasn’t clear before, let me elaborate who the guilty parties are in this current economic mess:

• Federal Reserve Bank aka The Government
• Financial apathy among the citizens of the United State of America
• Poor ethics among various investment houses, housing appraisers, rating agencies, mortgage brokers, commercial banks, especially Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae
• Unintelligent Regulation
• Capitalism (sike)

No matter what anyone says, capitalism is not the problem for the current economic crisis. Unethical individuals taking advantage of the financially naive, coupled with a rogue Federal Reserve Bank that clearly has mixed intentions is the core problem. I’m no psychologist but I’m going to be the first to offer a condition that has plagued Americans since the FED was instituted. It’s called Historic Economic Amnesia (HEA) Syndrome:

It’s the inability to grasp past guidelines of economic history and current financial events to prevent future prediction errors.

As soon as a tiny spark hits the economy, we forget about what sound economic policy really is. We also forget who the villains are who created this problem in the first place. We also forget that our financial decisions are a big part of economic policy. What really boils my blood is to see the same individuals who caused the problem claiming that they have the answer. As I said in a earlier post, we are going to the arsonist who burned our house down for advice on how to put out fires. Of course an arsonist probably understands creating and putting out fires more so than the average person, but clearly there is a ethical problem.

I have seen this author on several news shows (Morning Joe, GPS) in the last couple days; his name is Robert Skidelsky. His new book Keynes: The Return of the Master explains the career of John Maynard Keynes and his influence on today’s economic policy decisions. If you don’t have the patience to read Keynes’s original classic The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, this book will serve as a “Keynes in 24 hours” overview.

I would also suggest folks to watch the documentary Broke: The New American Dream. It serves as a good reminder of what we are dealing with.

• Keynes: The Return of the Master by Robert Skidelsky
• Foundation for Economic Education
  http://fee.org/
• Broke: The New American Dream.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: In no way shape or form is this post endorsing the use of usury (interest) when terms like FED funds rate, credit, mortgage, stock market, investment, savings, loan, borrow, etc are used. This is merely an explanation of my fact finding mission on the different economic theories that have impacted the thinking of different economist across the world, and how this thinking has impacted the economic policy of the United States of America.

WIHTJ fans, sorry it took me so long to write Part II of Economics Made Simple. The series covers the following topics:

1. Part I: Renting vs Buying a home
2. Part II: Why Can’t I Make Ends Meet?
   (How I found the Austrian School of Economics)
3. Part III: Saving Money vs Serfdom
4. Part IV: Casino Capitalism

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Austrians and Mises
3. John Maynard Keynes
4. Conclusion
5. Economic Resources that will increase your Financial Neurons

After completing the first version of this blog post, I decided to send it to my good friend JP, who does the blog But What the Hell do I Know I wanted to get some honest feed back on my Keynesian vs Austrian School post. In so many nice and friendly words he was able to tell me…well..it sucked. Every now and then it’s good to eat some humble pie. So I did (that pie was pretty good), and I went back to the drawing board. Keep in mind that I consider my boy JP quite a seasoned economist, albeit unofficial, when it comes to the Keynesian and Austrian school, so I knew I had to go back to the drawing board.

In the first version, I tried to make a case for which economic school is a better approach (which I failed at) or attempt at framing what each school is (which I failed to do) or not distort what the Austrian or Keynes school is (which I mistakenly did). Unfortunately I lost track of what I really wanted to do. I will forgo the Herculean tasks of comparing each school and explain how I found the Austrian School of Economics. What I really wanted to do was frame the following rhetorical and general questions:

• Hey did you know that there is this economic school of thought that was driven by John Maynard Keynes, and this same school of thought dominates a lot of economic policy in the United States of America?
• In addition, did you know that the Federal Reserve Bank (FED) dominates economic policy in the United States of America? Do you know what the Federal Reserve Bank does?
• Why do we have financial crises and what is the root of how they get started, what caused them, and what fixed them?
• Did you know that there is a school of economic thought called the Austrian School of Economics, that is actually trying to offer a model that explains how the economic world works around us, but at the same time being humble enough to know they can’t understand every single move in the economy because it is a dynamic amoeba-like entity that has way too many variables to track?
• Are you aware that to understand this economic mess that it will take more than reading this short blog, but months and months, if not years of grueling eye-busting reading of books, articles, podcasts, etc.
• Are you aware that you are about to stop reading this blog post, because of what I said in the previous bullet?
• Are you aware that making the sacrifice to acquire this knowledge will make you probably make you more informed about why U.S. policy is the way that it is and when you vote (hopefully), you’ll actually have a clue (better) about why you are voting?
• Do you want to understand what true Healthcare reform means?
• Is it important for you to understand the true pros and cons of government policy decisions in the United Sates of America?

Now that you know the precursor, lets give it another go….

Introduction

I was probably hit by the “financial education” bug when I started cleaning up my debt situation around 2000. I’ve been waving the “Hey Folks, America’s household debt is unsustainable” flag for more than 10 years. I never knew what the source of the problem was, but watching the debt-to-asset ratio skyrocket while concurrently seeing the personal savings rate plummet was not a sign of good times to come. To be honest, I had no idea what was in store for the U.S Economy 8 years later. All I knew was that this is not a good situation. An eye opener for me was two things. The stock market bubble of 2000 and the last years financial collapse in October of 2008.

I played around in the stock market for several years. (Buying individual stocks) By following a true value investing/contrarian approach I was able to do pretty well. By adhering to those principles of investing prudence, raking across the 8-K and the 10-K while taking into account the intrinsic value of a companies stock, I was able to avoid a lot of the pitfalls that lured people into the “speculation” stock market bubble of 2000. Yes I made mistakes, but not deal breakers. I never cared whether we were in a bear or bull market. Bear and Bull markets do and don’t matter. (It depends on the situation). Stock market bubbles get headlines, but it’s the diligent investor who spends time understanding what he or she is investing in who wins in the end. This type of effort takes work, which is why most people will invest in whatever is coming from the “water cooler”

After 2000 I didn’t get into anything more than just personal finance. Around 2007 to 2008, the calamity started with Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, the housing market bubble, billion dollar bailouts for banks, investment houses, etc, and thats when it all started. Before these events, I was not aware of how tightly wound the FED was around the U.S. government. Other than the FED moving the fed funds rate up and down to allegedly “cool” or “heat up” the economy, that’s pretty much all I knew. I didn’t know the history of the FED, when the FED was started, not to mention what type of batting average the FED had in stabilizing the economy. I grew some “Rothbardian” legs, if you will, and the rest is history.

Mises and the Austrians

My first entrance into understanding the tip of “Austrian Economic” iceberg was a site called Mises.org. If the Austrian School of Economics was a trunk of a tree, this would be one of many branches off the trunk. For the sake of not making the same mistake twice, I’m going to leave it to you to go to mises.org and assess whether the information is useful or not. They have a wonderful blog called Mises Daily and it’s chock full of morsels of econ delights that will whet your appetite for information.

Lets be honest. Even at the introductory level, this is pretty heavy stuff, but that shouldn’t deter you. I do believe that one of the reasons why Americans are in the fog of economic war when it comes to U.S economic policy is they don’t understand the “whys” of a particular policy decision. Nor do we know where to go to get that information. If you go to the FED website, and click on one of their documents you would need a phd in economics to understand what they are talking about. We often fall back on our ideological partisan heels, without trying to truly understand the merits and consequences of certain policy decision. Should we have a minimum wage tax? What are the impacts of having a central bank that dials the economy up and down at will? What is the true impact of the Cash for Clunkers initiative on the economy? What was the involvement of the FED with past and present financial crises? What are the economic solutions available for bringing countries out of poverty and what examples do we have of countries that have already achieved this?

I could go on and on, but these are just a sample of questions about the things that impact our day-to-day lives. Now check out the latest Google Trends. Do you see any broad searches like “Federal Reserve Bank’, “Keynesian Economics”, “Austrian Business Cycle Theory” etc? These are three very powerful terms that you should familiarize yourself with, yet they never ever enter into our stratosphere of topics. Are we surprised that the FED can swoop in and not have any idea where 9 trillion dollars went and the Americans are more concerned about fictitious “death panels” in healthcare or whether the Obama earned the right to get the Nobel Peace Prize? We have bigger fish to fry, check out this shocker:

John Maynard Keynes

The first time I heard about anything related to Keynes was through mises.org. I had no intentions of investigating the ideologies of Keynesian Economics, but many of the ideologies from Keynes have weaved themselves into the current economic policy of the United States of America. I wanted to get at the heart of what inspires the U.S. government to do what they do. I’ll provide resources at the end of this blog post that will get you up to speed on who Keynes is and how his ideologies have influenced U.S. economic policy. There is a lot of history there, and it will take you a while to churn through all the books, articles, and videos about Keynes. Here is a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics (Keynesians Economics).

Clearly Keynesian economics has made a huge comeback in recent years due to the current collapse of the economy. Are We All Keynesians Now?. I wonder what Keynes would say if he saw this current crisis? I’m sure Paul Krugman would be delighted. Keynes most famous work is the The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. This is what what put Keynes on the map.

Conclusion

This post is about awareness. I have come to realize that not understanding the history of U.S. economic policy has not served me, or anyone else well. Especially those who consider themselves poor, downtrodden or apathetic about the political process. How are we to make educated decisions about government policy if we don’t understand what it is and how it works? How are to support bills that are created in the house and senate if we don’t understand what is being passed into law? I felt that my understanding about presidential candidates, tax policy, U.S economic policy decisions, local state regulations, etc could be compromised by not understanding the context of these economic policies I mentioned above. As a matter of fact, this is more important than what your party affiliation is. This is not a left or right wing post. This is not a pro free-market or pro socialism post. This is a post about making informed decisions and holding our government accountable, including ourselves. Regardless of whether you consider yourself someone on the left, conservative, right, republican, democrat, independent, rich, poor, middle-class, wealthy, religious, atheist, deprived, a victim, a power broker, keynesian, austrian, libertarian, socialist, indifferent, etc, you should consider what I just wrote in this post. Being a blind ideologue is easy, but spending the time to understand things properly is more difficult which is why most people choose the former instead of the latter. Two things to remember, there is no such thing as a free lunch and a government is only as good as the people who support it.

Books

• Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
• The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes
• Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek
• Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
• The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 by Paul Krugman
• America’s Great Depression by Murray N. Rothbard
• Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse by Thomas E. Woods Jr. and Ron Paul

I think the economic verdict on the global economy is in, The Age of Thrift is here. Not the technology age, or the industrial age, not even the age of Aquarius. The Joneses are now officially out of power. The citizens of America and the world are getting a dose of reality that they haven’t seen since the Great Depression. Is this the Great Depression for the vast majority of folks? No, but it depends who you talk to. To be honest, I don’t know, but people are hurting out there, even the well to do are getting hammered too. Should we really have sympathy for someone who has to get a Caramel Macchito once a month instead of everyday? Should we have sympathy for someone who has to forgo buying a Mercedes Benz for a Honda Accord? Probably not.

So what exactly is the Age of Thrift? Simply, less spending more saving. Less dependency on credit, if not none. Unfortunately all the financial analyst, economic think tanks and fancy economists in the world were unable to influence the government on properly managing the economy. Even the czars of Wall Street were intoxicated by greed, wait a minute, did I just say that?. LOL I applaud the Obama administration for trying to rescue the economy from a prolonged economic catastrophe, but I feel the damage has already been done. Let me be clear on this issue, you don’t need a Phd to understand that Cash is King. Typically used as a term to highlight the importance of having the proper cash flow in a business, a household is no different. The American people are getting the message, the personal savings rate is around 3.8%. We shouldn’t be celebrating yet, Americans still have spending and debt problem. Not to mention the personal savings rate should be more around 10%.

Keep in mind that the last time the Dow Jones Industrial Average was around 7900, was in September of 2002. Everyone is asking, “What will it take to get out of this?”. No one knows (not even the $3,000 dollar suit wearing financial professionals), but it’s time to get your “thrift on”. The global economy will have to contract further before it gets back on track. We have too much stuff in the economy, and not enough people with the proper disposable income to buy all the stuff. Hopefully being frugal will become a badge of honor and not a badge of ostracization. If it hasn’t set in how important saving is, check out this video from Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit who watched the value of Citigroup go crashing and burning in 2008. Even the billion dollar entity isn’t immune to thrift (at least on a corporate level). Lets welcome the Age of Thrift.

Part I: The Politics of Food Production and Consumption

This blog post will be apart of a three part series called “What’s Eating Malik? (a spin off of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape) where I will delve into a set of very important topics that have been troubling me lately. Here are the topics:

• Part I: The Politics of Food Production and Consumption (food and capitalism)
• Part II: What is the true cost of music? (education or entertainment)
• Part III: Why are our relationships so disastrous? (the human cost of ignorance)

So here goes Part I….there are 3 pieces of media/journalism that have truly transformed my awareness of the environment and my food eating habits. Animal slaughter videos from Peta.org, The Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan.

I just recently finished reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma which delves into the history of how fruits, vegetables have been produced, how animals are currently slaughtered and the politics behind food production. While reading this book I took down over 2 dozen interesting “factoids”. I won’t delve into ever single one, but I’ll throw out a couple.

How Super sizing was created, pg 105, 106

Kroc remained skeptical, so Wallerstein went looking for proof. He began staking out McDonald’s outlets in and around Chicago, observing how people ate. He saw customers noisily draining their sodas, and digging infinitesimal bits of salt and burnt spud out of their little bags of French fries. After Wallerstein presented his findings, Kroc released and approved supersized portions, and the dramatic spike in sales confirmed the marketer’s hunch. Deep cultural taboos against gluttony—one of the seven deadly sins, after all—had been holding us back. Wallerstein’s dubious achievement was to devise the dietary equivalent of a papal dispensation: Supersize it! He had discovered the secret to expanding the (supposedly) fixed human stomach

The taboo of “going back for seconds” was transformed into putting the second serving in one purchase. Super-sizing has been around for the last 20 years, and it has clearly shown its contributing impact on the growing waistline of America.

Marketing and shifting food eating patterns, pg 301, 302

The success of food marketers in exploiting shifting eating patterns and nutritional fashions has a steep cost. Getting us to change how we eat over and over again tens to undermine the various social structures that surround and steady our eating, institutions like the family dinner, for example, or taboos on snacking between meals and eating alone. In their relentless pursuit of new markets, food companies (with some crucial help from the microwave oven, which made “cooking” something even small children could do) have broken Mom’s hold over the American menu by marketing to every conceivable demographic—and especially to children.

A vice president of marketing at General Mills once painted for me a picture of the state of the American family dinner, courtesy of video cameras that the company’s consulting anthropologists paid families to let them install in the ceiling above the kitchen and dining room tables. Mom, perhaps feeling sentimental about the dinners of her childhood, still prepares a dish and a salad that she usually winds up eating by herself. Meanwhile, the kids, and Dad, too, if he’s around, each fix something different for themselves, because Dad’s on a low-carb diet, the teenager’s become a vegetarian, and the eight-year old is on a strict ration of pizza that the shrink says it’s best to indulge (lest she develop eating disorders later on in life). So over the course of a half hour or so each family member roams into the kitchen, removes a singe-portion entrée from the freezer, and zaps it in the microwave. (Many of these entrees have been helpfully designed to be safely cooked by an eight year-old.) After the sound of the beep each diner brings his microwaveable dish to the dining room table, where he or she may or may not cross paths with another family member at the table for a few minutes. Families who eat this way are among the 47 percent of Americans who report to pollsters that they still sit down to a family meal every night.

Another world changing figure is Fritz Haber. Donned as the “Father of Chemical Warfare” this man is responsible for food production (fertilizer, Haber-Bosch process) and the creation of the chemical Zyclon-B, the gas used in Hitler’s concentration camp. The Haber-Bosch process was a milestone in industrial chemistry, because it divorced the production of nitrogen products, such as fertilizer, explosives and chemical feedstocks, from natural deposits, especially sodium nitrate (caliche), of which Chile was a major (and almost only) producer. The sudden availability of cheap nitrogenous fertilizer is credited with averting a Malthusian catastrophe, or population crisis. (Wiki)

So what does Fritz Haber’s fixing nitrogen and how super-sizing was created have to do with each other? Well..actually…nothing. There just two pieces of random information but what is more important, is understanding how our food is created and why we eat the way we do. How many of you know the organic “pasture rule” by the USDA basically states that as long as an animal “has access to a pasture”, a farmer has the right to label their product organic. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to give an animal access to a pasture. The USDA has yet to provide the specific minimum grazing standards. Obviously this would give non-organic producing farms a huge loophole in getting the organic label, hence putting pressure on certified organic food producers. That’s like me owning an apartment and stating to my residents that we have “running water” but when you go to the apartment I have a bucket of water outside of your door.

The government gives huge subsidies to non-organic producing farmers which is why organic food tends to be more expensive. The food in the supermarket is riddled with pesticides, our meat pumped with hormones, not to mention the further synthetic nature of how or food is created. As a nation, we eat way too much meat, fried food, sugary foods, very little fruits and vegetables. By just changing our food habits we could change the environment dramatically, our health, and, yes our carbon footprint. If you want to know how, read the book.

1. Seek out reputable organic farmers in your area. The more food you buy from them, the less money your local supermarket will make, hence driving down the price that the small farmer will charge. That will put more pressure on the supermarkets to buy more certified organic fruits and vegetables. You don’t have to start with everything. Just start with one or a couple food items like tomatoes or bananas. Trust me, when the supermarket realizes that no one is buying their fruit and vegetables, they will catch on. Obviously this applies if you can afford it, but it’s not as expensive as you think. Here is a great website: Local Harvest; http://www.localharvest.org/ which allows you to search local farmers by zipcode.
2. Frequent the Organic Gardening website, http://www.organicgardening.com or subscribe to their magazine. They have a lot of information that will show you how to grow your own food garden.
3. >Grow your own food. This is already happening in many major cities. Check out this site: http://www.urbanfarming.org/ and contact them for more information. Or check out this site: http://www.verdant.net/food.htm I’m actually considering creating a hydroponics food and vegetable garden with a couple of friends. I’m researching the costs.

I really hate using this term, but “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, and neither will our dependence on infected food. A little bit here and there, will eventually become a movement and we can send a message to the USDA, supermarkets, and our family that we are serious about our health and organic food can become the norm, instead of the exception. For the record I’m not against capitalism, but I’m against division of labor practices that undermine the health of the public. There must be accountability and responsibility in how our food is produced.

1. The Cultural Contradictions Of Capitalism: 20th Anniversary Edition by Daniel Bell
2. Animal Liberation by Peter Singer
3. Rozin, Paul. “The Selection of Foods by Rats, Humans, and Other Animals.” In Advances in the Study of Behavior, edited by J. S. Rosenblatt, R. A. Hinde, E. Shaw, and C. Beer. Vol. 6. New York: Academic Press, 1976. Description of specific hungers.
4. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan
5. Citizen-Activist’s Anti-Consumerism Website http://www.verdant.net/
6. Locally Grown food delivery service in San Fran http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/dining/22local.html
7. Future of Food: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/380.html