Who’s ahead of or behind the curve? Europe is finding that austerity and severe cutbacks are strangling growth and thus Europe is now trending liberal while we here in the US of A are leaning more conservative and bent on austerity and cutbacks.

The problem is it’s a downward spiral. Fewer people working, less taxes, more cuts, less people working, etc. While the private sector was adding jobs the public sector was laying them off. Other, among many long-term plans going wrong is … for instance, at 70.5 people (by law) have to start taking money out of their IRAs (mostly held in mutual funds) thus a net outflow from stocks and bonds. Money sitting in bank accounts earns 1% (at best) so how can the frugal and responsible elderly make it? Anyone who thinks they can retire on Social Security is delusional. So, net-net, everyone gets poorer and poorer, and that’s without even considering the costs of long-term care which Medicare does not cover. The world model has for a couple of hundred years been based on continuous growth … more, more more, people and things. What’s needed is not austerity or spending but a new model of what prosperity is and how we will live a responsible and ecologoically sustainable future.

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A discussion on the radio a few weeks back noted that, while we are concerned about fossil fuel to power our transportation and energy needs, we will one day awaken to the fact that once petroleum is depleted we may have alternatives to provide the energy we need but won’t be able to make the things that petroleum makes. Plastics, synthetics of all kinds are made from petrochemicals. Natural gas may still be available but can you make plastics and other solids from it? So much of what goes into the things we buy, the places in which we live and the vehicles we ride and drive is thermoplastics. Plastics make things lighter yet durable and do it cheaply enough that we can dispose of  it or, in some cases, recycle it.  The upside of the passing of the age of petroleum is that we may return to more reusable materials and thus reduce the amount of material placed in landfills. Better still, bottled water may truly be in bottles, glass bottles, that can be washed, cleaned, and refilled.  But, of course, this will happen only once the age petroleum passes

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If….
You can’t eat it
If you can’t drink it
If you can’t play with it
To hell with it.

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The question perhaps is not one of “are corporations people?”, but. “Is what a corporation does in line with the majority of the people who own shares in it?” A corporation is an entity empowered to do business for or not for profit and owned by one or more people. Many of the significant corporations in the world today are owned by thousands, if not millions of people. However, only the management of the corporation, those running the business, make decisions regarding income and expenditures. Often times what a corporation donates money to could easily be at counter purposes to the desires, beliefs and best interests of those who own shares. Thus, a corporation may be people, but just as in so many of the world’s institutions these days, it does not necessarily represent the will or best interests of the people who have invested in it personally or monetarily.

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All my life I tried to make things work.
But, now, no more.
Sometimes things just don’t work.
Forget the score.

What of things that were for naught?
Is that here? Is that there?
A glimpse, a passing forgot?
A start and end.  A place.  A spot.
A hundred opportunities, a hundred tries,
Mostly failed, some with surprise.
At the end of it all, only the struggle remains.
You stand alone, as life wanes,
Clinging onto vanishing memories.

(c) 2012 by Roger W. Bodo
All rights reserved

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In life, reticent to enjoy,
Not ever fully taking part,
I drew the veil of shadow as a boy,
Darkening the enchantment of heart,
Inserting guilt into my every move.

Stumbling into adulthood uncharted,
I carried my need for permission.
And, finding none from parents long departed,
The relentless work of obedient self-submission,
I retained, refined, and continued eternal.

Only now, in twilight, do I see the chance to play,
Loosening chains of self repression,
Locked by malignant, fearful days,
Banished in the end, ‘though not by my ways,
But by the wisdom of my children,
Who, in my twilight, held up a candle,
To light the playful path of my salvation.

(c) 1997-2012 by Roger W. Bodo
All rights reserved

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Poetry is like tumbling down the stairs toward an inevitable but unknown landing.

Poetry is the fine art of those who have no eye-hand coordination.

Poetry is a struggle with concepts and a wrestling match with the muses.
No one wins.  No one loses.

Poetry is a futile attempt at painting a picture that only the inner eye sees.

Poetry is the gracefulness of thought, expressed in pleading ways that some will grasp and some will question but, hopefully, all will find lyrical and persistent in some way that leads them to question and think and perhaps solve. Or, if nothing else, be pleased and refreshed.

(c) 2012 by Roger W. Bodo
All rights reserved

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What castles we build on this cloistered ship:
Monuments to ego, grand plans and dreams,
Objects of delusion, of personal gain.
We hold on tightly with determined, stubborn grip,
Refusing to pause, to see,

How incompetent is our vision of reality,
That what is seen is an echo of shockwaved creation,
Impulses of thought bringing deluding vibration,
To outer and inner eye, to belief in the mortal scheme,
That we can hold onto anything that is or has been,
Forgetting to seek that for which we came into being.

© 2011 Roger W. Bodo
All rights reserved

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While no one will officially confirm the #s, supposedly there is as follows:  …. the gold there (at Fort Knox) and at U.S. Mint facilities adds up to one of the world’s largest bullion holdings. Still, it’s a tiny part of the nation’s total assets. In a $13.8 trillion GDP economy, 147.3 million troy ounces of gold barely registers.

I multiplied that by the current $1,600 an ounce and it comes to $229 Billion. I think the government just blew that in its FAA faux pas.

Read more: http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news/article/is-there-gold-in-fort-knox/385523/#ixzz1UCI7KoLO

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