I know I sound like a broken record, but I urge you to follow the financial industry regulation deliberations. At their core, they're about an industry's ability to act in ways deeply harmful to the public. This is about power. Who has it, and are there ever checks on that power?Importantly, this country's financial woes are in large part a result of people like the guys on the left. Wall Street is populated by too many people who take as a matter of faith that they are free to pursue their own self interest without considering the downside to the wider public or their shareholders. Don't think about tomorrow, don't consider that you could be wrong and don't let anyone ever limit your ability to make more money. They are doing, in this guy's words "God's work."
To understand the stakes, consider the plight of our economy and the cost of the bailouts and stimulus packages caused by this type of reckless myopic mindset. The world's economy nearly collapsed. To prevent it, your children are going to be paying debt we racked up to save our economies.
Now there is news that bonuses on Wall Street are back at record levels. The markets have soared because so much public money has gone to banks who lent to speculators. Meanwhile, small/mid size businesses who do 85% of the hiring in this country creating real products and delivering real services can't get credit to finance operations. And consumers, who are paying for all of this, can't get home loans or car loans.
I keep coming back to the Matt Taibbi article in Rolling Stone. It raises key frightening questions...who does government work for? Do we live in a democracy? Is accountability something that only the little people need to worry about?
And I know that right now, another manufactured bubble is being created somewhere. And when it blows up, our kids will pay for that, too. Unless something changes.
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And yes, I realize as someone who works in this industry, I am a part of all of this even to a small degree. I wish I knew how I could do something about reform and holding this crooks accountable.
Michael Moore in his most recent movie talked about how incentives are out of whack. That when real work became devalued and we stopped investing in our work force, we lost our way.
Maybe encouraging entrepeneurs and the type risk taking that involves bringing a real product to market.
I just read that Jay Reatard was found dead in his home. That's very sad news. I loved his records.
I just read that Jay Reatard was found dead in his home. That's very sad news. I loved his records.
Yes, Ken texted me the news as I was driving down to Santa Barbara. Awful, sad and really shocking. He was 29!
I don't know the Jay Reatard story. I've heard his childhood was extremely rough and his adult life an emotional roller coaster. As a fan, all I know is the artist. He wrote somegreat music and was an energetic performer. My wife and I even got to talk to him for a brief second after a show we saw in New York.
Just really really awful.
I'm no expert but I remember when the Reatards Teenage Hate came out and all the stories about Jay being a teenage bedroom Oblivians fanatic and when that first album came out it was just amazing songwriting and almost unbelievable from someone so young, and when Grown Up Fucked Up came out it was arguably the angriest fuck you to a hometown I'd heard and still filled with hooks galore. He got bored with garage rock and denounced it on message boards in his signature fuck you can't spell style, insulting everyone in his path, and then came the Lost Sounds, which added sythns and a touch of goth but kept most of the hooks. Three part songs gave way to 5, 6, and 7 part songs and the young man seemed to glory in that fact. A bunch of records later there were message board reports he had beaten up his girlfriend (and bandmate) in Europe and that band fell apart. Then came the Angry Angles with his new girlfriend, which was very loosely a more jerky form of new wave punk, a ne-off masterpiece with Eric O and King Louie (Bad Times) and then the solo record (I'm leaving out a tone of singles, probably several othe bands and his drumming for the stellar punk of the Final Solutions, etc.), Blood Visions, which opened the floodgates and helped him leap to Matador and features on Pitchfork. I wasn't crazy about the new direction, especially the newest one, but give him credit for always changing. He was an island, clearly, and several of his records, IMHO, especially the Reatard ones, Bad Times, the Lost Sounds Black Wave, and Blood Visions, will hold up for awhile.
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