Denmark Vesey: Nothing From Nothing Leaves Nothing - The Wall Street Temple To The God of Money Collapses

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Nothing From Nothing Leaves Nothing - The Wall Street Temple To The God of Money Collapses

The Dow Jones industrial average plunged below 7,000 Monday for the first time in more than 11 years as investors grew pessimistic about the health of banks, and in turn the economy.

The Dow hadn’t traded below 7,000 since Oct. 28, 1997, and last closed below that mark on May 1 of that year. The credit crisis and recession have now slashed half the average’s value since it hit a record high over 14,000 in October 2007.

Investors are again fleeing stocks in response to bad news about financial companies. The government said it would give American International Group Inc. another $30 billion in loans, in addition to the $150 billion it has already given the insurer. AIG also said it lost a record $61.7 billion in the fourth quarter.

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"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

The founders of the American state understood that the proper functioning of a democracy required an educated electorate. It is this understanding that justifies a system of public education and that led slaveholders to resist the spread of literacy among their chattels. But the meaning of "educated" has changed beyond recognition in two hundred years. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer sufficient to decide on public policy. Now we need quantum mechanics and molecular biology. The knowledge required for political rationality, once available to the masses, is now in the possession of a specially educated elite, a situation that creates a series of tensions and contradictions in the operation of representative democracy.

Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. P

Lord Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science On Society (Routledge Press: New York, 1951).

"At present the population of the world is increasing at about 58,000 per diem. War, so far, has had no very great effect on this increase, which continued throughout each of the world wars.. War has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove effective. If a Black Death could spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. The state of affairs might be unpleasant, but what of it?"