Move Your Money!

Got an email from a friend this morning promoting this idea  and I think it's great and want to spread the word!  And do watch the video....funny...I've quoted some of these lines before.  Arise for Social Justice just switched its account to a community bank earlier this month.  Move Your Money!

JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS, a few friends were having dinner wondering what personal actions they could take to help limit the power of the big banks and create a more sane, stable financial system. How, they wondered, could they help end the era of Too Big To Fail? The financier at the table recommended that everyone could move their money out of the Wall Street banks and into community banks. Community banks are typically more conservative about how they manage their money, they’re more closely connected to the people and businesses who live near them, and they’re more inclined to make loans they know will get paid back. In other words, they have the values that more people would want banks to have.

The filmmaker at the table reminded the others of the story told in the classic film It’s A Wonderful Life — a tale about a small banker, played by Jimmy Stewart, who almost gets crushed by a big banker. In the end, though, the community rallies around the small bank and helps save it.

Three days later, the filmmaker made a short video, displayed on this site. The editor wrote a commentary about the idea. And others started pulling various resources together.

This site was set up as a modest home for the effort. A seed. But the idea will only have an impact if others take it from here.

How? For starters, you could move your money to a small bank. To do so, click on the button that says Find A Bank. But there are dozens of other possibilities: You can get your friends or organizations to do the same. You can use your online social networks to help broadcast the idea. You can look into where your town government keeps its money and, if it uses a big bank, you could try to get it to use a smaller bank. Start your own website (to improve upon or replace this one), dive into the research about smaller banks, and help give rise to a bigger, broader effort.

There is no official organization here. It’s a volunteer project. If you have ideas about how this idea can grow, send us a note and we’ll display the best ideas in the Updates section of the site.
We hope this idea will spread in a thousand different ways.
Thanks for whatever you can do.

Our economy set to music

Melodies derived from Stock Charts, arranged with Songsmith, the Microsoft Composition Tool. The most expensive Music of the World. By Johannes Kreidler. www.kreidler-net.de

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism also known as Economic Imperialism is when the USA takes advantage of cheap labour in third world dictatorships helps poorer countries develop their economies. The United States, along with the IMF and the World Bank gives generous loans to dictators poor people with the only condition of giving America all of their resources access to their economy. Many dictators countries have benefited from American style neoliberalism. These wealthy nations such as Haiti and Colombia have benefited immensly from neoliberalism. In communist nations on the other hand, people have had to endure a free burocratic and state managed healthcare system, free socialist brainwashing propaganda education, and public transit because in communist countries none can afford a car . Neoliberals such as George Bush hope that one day, the entire world will be free from government and all their social programs using your own money for you . George Bush intends to liberate socialist countries that oppose brutal and oppressive democratic principles such as economic subservience to the United States Neoliberalism. George Bush has placed many socialist countries on the axis of evil because their policies interfere with his profit margin they violate fundamental human rights. Any individual or group who disagrees with America attempts to sabotage the American economy will be brutally massacred dealt with accordingly. The United States of America will oppose all forms of marxist reforms tyranny and will unilaterally invade and personally bitch slap all the socialists liberate any country that does not implement neoliberalism respect the rights of its people. The United States believes it has the God-given right duty to steal resources from developing nations oppose human rights abuses all over the world.

See more at Uncyclopedia

The Bailout

Thanks, Jon!

Can we relocalize Springfield's economy?

I went to the Thursday forum on the Springfield Economic Growth Initiative held by MassINC and the Urban Issues Institute, the first of a number which will be held this year in Springfield, and it was quite interesting.

After a brief introduction to the initiative, we who attended were invited to address the planners about our vision for Springfield in twenty years and how we might get there. We were asked to keep our remarks to three to five minutes.

People are so funny. Some people had come clearly prepared to give a speech, and they barely looked at the planners-- they turned to address the audience! Most of those people ignored the time limit and a couple didn't even address long-range issues but talked about problems now. But most people had something interesting to say; poor people took a lot of the blame for Springfield's problems, but I expected no less.

Whether they knew there was a name for it or not, a lot of people focused on directions that would relocalizing our economy. What is Relocalization? This is from the Relocalization Network:
Relocalization is a strategy to build societies based on the local production of food, energy and goods, and the local development of currency, governance and culture. The main goals of Relocalization are to increase community energy security, to strengthen local economies, and to dramatically improve environmental conditions and social equity.

Think about this: we're surrounded by farmland yet import most of our food. We have natural sources of energy but are dependent on the grid and imported oil. Most of our clothing comes from China. Most of our restaurants are national chains. Why is this so, given our incredible natural resources and a city full of people desperate for training and a new start?

Even more than revitalizing our local economy, we become a part of the solution to save our planet.

Willits, CA may have one of the best Relocalization effort in the country, check out their website. Also worth checking out, if you want to find out about what Relocalization is: EcoLocalizer and Boulder Valley Relocalization,

A number of local groups are working on aspects of Relocalization. I'll get a list together and post it.

Photo from Corquey's photostream at Flickr

Don't forget Iraq and Afghanistan

As word comes this morning that seven U.S. soldiers have been killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq, time to check in on the loss of life so far in our war on enduring freedom.

4,106 U.S. military personnel have been killed in Iraq; 597 have been killed in Afghanistan. Bush and McCain call this "winning," a term that makes sense only out of context: don't forget that all of our reasons for starting a war in Iraq have been totally discredited: no link to 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction, and no hotbed of Al Qaeda activity (at least until after we invaded.)

Even if some of us think that the war in Afghanistan was justified (funny how Pakistan has gotten off so easily), how much more successful would our policy there be if we had spent more on building hospitals, schools, roads and communications than we have on armed action.

While some but not all of our economic crisis can be blamed on these wars, at the least they've diverted attention from taking care of business at home. When will it be over?

The economy: how bad, really, and for how long?

Very early Saturday morning, before I went to bed, I checked the NYTimes for headlines and saw an article by Peter Goodman titled "Uncomfortable Answers to Questions on the Economy." This is going to hit the 'most emailed list' fast, I thought, and sure enough, before noon it was the most emailed article.

Goodman asked some well-informed economists to do a reality check on the economy-- not the Bush line that the economy is fine, or the doom-and-gloom line that we're headed for a depression. I'm going to summarize his conclusions here, then add a couple of points not covered that I believe will complicate the picture.

• The economy is going through a rough patch and the worst is yet to come.
• Job losses will accelerate and unemployment will reach 6.5 percent by the end of next year., coming on top of eight years of weak job growth.
• Home prices will continue to fall-- have lost 25 percent of their value in inflation-adjusted terms and will lose another 10 to 15 percent before stabilizing.
• Banks will write off $1 trillion in debt, limiting many institution's ability to function for years.
• We are not "officially" in a recession, yet this may be the worst downturn in 25 years.

“The open question is whether we’re in for a bad couple of years, or a bad decade,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, now a professor at Harvard.

Most homeowners have been using their houses as collateral to such a degree that average household debt is now 120 percent of household income! That's double what it was in 1984. But now credit sources are drying up. Given that 70 percent of all economy activity in the country is consumer spending, we're in for the dark side of capitalism: people spend less, factories make less and lay people off, people without jobs don't spend as much, et cetera.

The last part of Goodman's article pins the blame on the Federal Reserve, Wall Street speculators, real estate brokers and suckered-in consumers, most especially, homeowners.
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Now for those other points.

When the economy bounces back, poor people never bounce back as far. An astounding 40 percent of the U.S. population has lived below the poverty level for some period in the last ten years..

I've received public assistance twice in my life and can remember a time when public assistance was almost enough to survive on. The welfare reform act of 1996 came about during the long-ago Clinton boom days; meanwhile, between 1979 and 2005, the top five percent of American families saw their real incomes increase 81 percent. while the income of the lowest-income fifth saw a 1 percent decline. The last time the top-fifth's income was this high, by the way, was in 1928-- just before the Great Depression.

How many more poor people can this country hide? And, when they can't be hidden, be demonized?

The real wild card in the economy's deck, though, will be the environment. On the one hand, energy costs are increasing, floods like those in the Midwest raise food prices, unrelenting drought and fires may cause loss of livelihood and mass migration, tropical diseases will continue to move north.

On the other hand, should we really choose to tackle environmental issues-- which include but are scarcely limited to global warming-- the level of new jobs creation could revitalize our economy.

The next three years should tell us which way we're headed. In the meantime, be thrifty.

10 Million Millionaires equals 2.8 billion in poverty

It's an old joke poor people tell ourselves:
Why are people poor?
Because we don't have money! Do away with sociological and psychological reasons for poverty; stop confusing the symptoms with the causes, and in the end, it all boils down to money, which is about distribution of wealth, which is about control of resources.

Merrill Lynch & Co reported yesterday that the world now has 10 million millionaires, with an average wealth of about $4 million. Their wealth grew 9 percent last year, some $41 trillion dollars. Those 10 million make up one fifth of 1 percent of the world population. Meanwhile, some 2.8 billion people live on less than $2 a day.

The super-rich are doing particularly well. Those with incomes of $30 million or more saw their incomes go up by 15% last year. There are about 103,000 of the super-rich.

Very few people in the U.S. earn less than $2 a day, Yet more than 20% of us earn less than $20,000 a year; another 23% of us earn under $40,000. And in this country, almost nothing is free: we pay for housing, food, utilities, water, clothes, medicine; most of us have no land to cultivate, no community well, no cotton to spin into cloth. And half of the country is cold half of the time.

The value of a house has gone down 15% since last year-- bad time to sell if you're a senior, or want to relocate, or can't handle the burden of homeownership anymore and you want to get out.

Heating oil is projected to be $479 for a hundred gallons this winter. That's my take-home pay for a week! I hear the utility companies are at their wits' end, paying nearly the same high coal and oil prices as we do. But pity the poor consumer-- we'll pay that price at least twice.

It's dangerous for people to go without utilities. Fires get started by candles and space heaters. People get hypothermia. Landlords can evict you, child protection services can take your children. All of that will happen more this year.

I worry that the margin for disaster seems so large for so many. We can be creative, we can be act collectively,
but not everybody is going to make it though this winter.

Gas tax holiday a slick piece of propaganda

Looks like we're getting better at seeing through election-year propaganda. A CBS News/New York Times poll released yesterday said 49% of those polled thought the holiday a bad idea, 45% thought the tax a good idea, with 4% undecided.

Today's Boston Globe reports that SUV sales for April alone fell more than 32%, while sale of small cars increased 16%.

Seems like the high gas prices are forcing us to do what we should do, anyway: drive less, conserve what we have, and use public transportation. Has the tide turned about gas-guzzling cars, or will we go right back to our old ways if-- a very BIG if-- gas prices go down?

Open Pantry's crisis local; global food crisis grows

This morning I turn on the TV and see Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich warning about a depression. I go to the NY Times and read the world is in a food crisis. I open the local paper to see that Open Pantry Community Services may have to cut back on its services in April unless the public can pitch in to help.

Last year more than 27,000 people-- in a city of less than 150,000!-- came to the Open Pantry Food Pantry for help. People ate a meal at the Loaves & Fishes Soup Kitchen more than 100,000 times. More than 1,000 homeless people received assistance from Open Pantry's Open Door case managers. And three shelters put a roof over the heads of teen mothers, women in recovery and homeless families.

Having an impact on the global economy is not impossible, but billions of people are affected and billions will have to be part of the solution. But if you donate money or food to the Open Pantry, you can pretty easily picture that money converted to a meal for a hungry family.

Please-- if you are not hungry right now, others are. You can send a contribution to Open Pantry Community Services, 287 State St., P.O. Box 5127, Springfield, MA 01101.

Local job loss: six Midas franchises close

Jim Kinney of the Springfield Republican reported yesterday that six Midas Muffler shops closed unexpectedly on Monday when corporate headquarters canceled the franchises held by local franchise owner Carden Enterprises Inc. of Ludlow. How many Western mass residents have actually lost their jobs is not clear, but thirty is certainly not too high a number.

Very bad job news on a national level: 80,000 jobs lost last month, most of the losses in the higher-paying fields of manufacturing and construction. Jobs in the health care and service industries-- some of the lowest-paying jobs in the economy-- increased by 46,000, but the total loss put unemployment at 5.1%.

In case anyone hadn't noticed, we're in trouble.

Toys Made in America

I am eight years older than my next youngest sibling, but when I was a kid, I was lucky enough to have a passel of first cousins, ages arrayed in typical catholic stepladder pattern.

On rainy afternoons, we'd take two or three chairs and drape them with my gracious aunt's sheets to create a playhouse. Sunny days, those same sheets hung from the clothesline and otherwise draped around the yard became jails, forts, tee-pees, convents. Add a few random items of clothing and we became gangsters, cops, soldiers, cowboys and Indians. (This doesn't sound very PC, but you had to have two groups that opposed each other to have a good game.)

We played jacks, jump rope, hopscotch and ball-against-the-wall. Some of us became experts in yo-yos, kites and gyroscopes. We played Red Rover, Mother May I and Red Light Green Light and the always popular Hide and Seek. Sometimes we just spun in circles on the grass until we staggered away and fell over.

(I just remembered how we used to pool our change to buy the forbidden Mad magazine.)

Of course there were toys-- especially I remember Mattel and Milton Bradley toys. And lots of wooden blocks-- we could use up every one and still not have enough. And bicycles, scooters and roller skates. Oh, my.

When I became a mom, toys became important to me again for a different reason. First, they had to be safe-- no parts small enough to swallow or sharp enough to put out an eye. Next, they had to spark the imagination in some way-- magic tricks, chemistry sets, ovens that really baked, woodcraft, beadcraft, papercraft. Both my kids liked to read so that helped a lot-- books were not boring gifts. Lastly, they had to be toys my kids wanted and many of the most wanted toys were those advertised on television. I certainly did my fair share of hunting through stores at 8 am. looking for Star Wars Action figures, Cabbage Patch dolls and My Little Ponies.

I'm sure it must be much tougher for parents today. Electronic toys, games and computers have increased kids' horizons and are great options, although I do think they tend to fill way too much of our kids' leisure time at the expense of too many other activities. Advertising intrudes into our kids' lives to a degree I would never have imagined possible. We have to teach our kids to understand just what marketing is, and how to resist, and we'd better not wait until they're ten years old to start.

Then there's the safety issue rearing its head again.

CNN covered the congressional hearings currently taking place on the safety of imported toys, and the situation is not good. While I reject the idea that all imported toys (especially from China) are dangerous, and all toys made in the U.S.A. are safe, let me just say that what's farther away is harder to see.

I looked online for American-made toys and found a number of great sites. They were so easy to find that I won't list them here. Some of them are a real blast from the past.

One suggestion: don't just think made in America, think local. Not only will you get a great toy, you'll be helping to keep the local economy going.

Shop Western Mass is a link to merchandise all of which is made in WMA. About has a listing of WMA clothing and toy manufacturers. Finally, Abbington Village's Shops on Main Street lists handmade products across New England.