June 24, 2013

Contents:

Reader’s Comments
Wade’s Journal – June 23, 2013
Quotes from The Bankers' New Clothes
Camus, Algeria, and Terrorism

Reader’s Comments

NOTE: Unless the author asks to be identified, I post reader’s comments anonymously and edit them to delete content that may be too personal.

Re: Wade's Journal – 5/25/13 

I cannot think of us as failures as we have inspired others to think, feel and respond to the "failings" of the government, institutions and corporations who truly do not care and be positively responsive to our vulnerable populations.

By touching one person to be aware of how we are duped, by touching one person to be kinder, to touch one person to help their community in any small way; we are successful.

We as a whole are stifled in fear, they succeeded by erasing hope. As I watch this City I see the Bike Riders as the organizers of today. And in their self-righteous attitude they forget about the common good without full awareness. They have the Sean Parker attitude.

Trust that you are a success - you have touched plenty of folks and sparked ideas and hopes. We can't do it all.

Enjoy your life - you will always be kind.
With love,

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Good luck inventing the solvent version of yourself.

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Did not reply sooner because we are on a 6 week road trip. Now that you have money, how about a trip east. I know some people who would enjoy meeting you. We won't return home until around July 14, but I should have access to a computer between now and then.

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Re: Transform America: A Declaration for Action (v1.0) 

Outstanding!

I look forward to discussing it with you.

If money is involved, you may want to mention creating, staffing, and running a non-profit.

Unmentioned is that power is the enemy. We face no greater challenge than giving individuals and institutions enough power to be effective, but not enough to be corrupted.

But congrats on a superlative effort. I hope it gets the visibility and response it deserves.

…See you soon, I hope.

Did I mention it's also an idea for a (e)book?

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Re: Holistic Community

Excellent idea. Hope you find the nine you need and that I'll see you soon.

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Hi, Wade~~

Your work is always wonderful, and I'm responding because I have been one of the 'silent ones.'

The reason for my silence: Though I am technically retired from the LAUSD after 36 years, I am still teaching….

I like teaching, so I am doing this. In addition, both of my daughters and two of my grandchildren have lost residences during the bank fiasco. I am refinancing my properties, now that there is an Affordable Loan program, and using my extra income from teaching to help my kids and grandkids. I do not have extra time….

I am active on the computer politically, but I have no money to donate to causes….

I WANT to be in your holistic community, and I am, IN SPIRIT! Just don't know what I can do to get my flesh to participate, since cloning has not been perfected.

I have an idea there are many others like me who just have too much on their plates. Since we are making less money and working less time, we make up for it with more jobs! I'm not even attending a church, preferring to stay off the crowded roads and to spend time meditating, such a grounding and renewing of Spirit.

Please keep me on your list and send me whatever you send out. May you find the holistic individuals you desire! Are you familiar with Barbara Marx Hubbard and THE SHIFT? I have participated in the past. Michael Beckwith was once my Minister. But I don't have time right now. I continue to stay in touch with Dr. Deepak Chopra.

Love,

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I agree with your aspirations yet disagree with your section below.

I'm in Ecuador for June and we can discuss another time.

Peace,

On Jun 16, 2013, at 7:31 PM, Wade Lee Hudson <wade@wadehudson.net> wrote:
> By “political” I mean realistic efforts to improve public policy. If one talks about politics without focusing on achievable goals, one is engaged in cultural work, not political action. That’s fine for those who are so inclined. But my interest also concerns making a positive difference with short-term reforms.

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You are a dedicated, rare one of a kind...and i applaud your efforts to being a part of an active community of which you seek!

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Wade; i've been invited to get involved with this community, which seems somewhere in the ballpark of what you're talking about… i've never been able to look into given my life situation but you might want to have a peek… tom ferguson

http://www.mariposagroup.org

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Good morning, Wade--I was so glad to read what I thought was an expansion of your vision for community......It was enriching to see that you have continued in that important pursuit.  I was then saddened, though, to read towards the end that it seems you will not continuing that search.  If I am understanding correctly, I am very sorry to hear that.

In my own life, I have always found that community grows organically and that like minded people find each other through shared work, faith practice, etc.......If the common shared values exist, and a deep appreciation for one another develops, then we have taken it to the next levels of on-going community...But that approach is only what works for me personally.

I truly hope you continue to share your vision....There are many ways to build community--not just the one I've described which has worked for me.....and your integrity and purpose are important.

Take care...all the best

Wade’s Journal – June 23, 2013

These responses and the others I’ve received recently are very heartening. I very much appreciate all of them. In particular, I found helpful the first comment, which includes: “I cannot think of us as failures…. By touching one person …  we are successful. … Trust that you are a success - you have touched plenty of folks and sparked ideas and hopes. We can't do it all. Enjoy your life - you will always be kind.”

Those words nudged me further along on my current path: learning how to be happier. That was my New Year’s resolution two-and-a-half years ago. I suppose I’ve made progress off and on, but now I may be over a hump, learning how to be more present and responsive.
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Not only is this beneficial for me. Hopefully it will also benefit future community-based projects, for “contagious happiness” is a valuable organizing tactic.

So I’m getting serious about traveling at least four months a year. To do that, I figure I need to drive a bit more taxi than I have been, probably five four-hour nights a week. I’ll still write some in the morning, follow banking news, and post a bit to Reform-Wall-Street.org in the afternoon. And on weekends I’ll play, relax, and commune with Mother Nature. But no community organizing, at least for a while. (Unless someone extends me an offer I can’t refuse!).

My first trip will be to Seattle to visit with Brandon, Kristen, Azure and Theo, go with them to the Vancouver Folk Festival, hang out in the Vancouver area, north to Alaska on the Alaska Marine Highway ferry from Bellingham, WA, and then back to Seattle for several more days.

Partly so I can share images with you guys, I'm looking for a camera that I can use to shoot video with an external mike and take photos. I figure I can spend $1,000. A passenger who's a professional photographer recommended a mirrorless camera (which uses new, more compact technology). Here's the wikipedia overview. If you have any advice, please share it with me.

Since I’ve recently learned I can easily copy and paste highlights from Kindle books (but alas not the magazines I read on Kindle), following are some quotes from the latest Kindle book I read.

Quotes from The Bankers' New Clothes, by Anat Admati, Martin Hellwig

The jargon of bankers and banking experts is deliberately impenetrable. This impenetrability helps them confuse policymakers and the public, and it muddles the debate.

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Banking is not difficult to understand. Most of the issues are quite straightforward. Simply learning the precise meanings of some of the terms that are used, such as the word capital, can help uncover some of the nonsense. You do not need any background in economics, finance, or quantitative fields to read and understand this book.

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Unborrowed money is the money that a bank has obtained from its owners if it is a private bank or from its shareholders if it is a corporation, along with any profits it has retained. Elsewhere in the economy, this type of funding is referred to as equity. In banking, it is called capital. Capital regulation requires that a sufficient fraction of a bank’s investments or assets be funded with unborrowed money.

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In fact, capital regulation does not tell banks what to do with their funds or what they should hold. It tells banks only what portion of the funds they use must be unborrowed.

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...there is a fundamental conflict between what is good for bankers privately and what is good for the broader economy.

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The deeper reason for the breakdowns, however, was that banks were highly indebted. When banks suffered losses, investors, including other financial institutions, lost confidence and cut off funding, fearing that the banks might become unable to repay their debts.

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The debts of the five largest banks in the United States totaled around $8 trillion. These figures would have been even larger under the accounting rules used in Europe.

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Much of the debt of banks is short-term debt, due within months or even days. Some borrowing even takes the form of overnight debt. Many of banks’ assets, however, are loans and other investments that extend over longer....

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Appropriate banking regulation is available that would reduce the potential for harm to the financial system without imposing any costs on banks other than the loss of subsidies from taxpayers.

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The incentives for banks to become large through mergers can be partly attributed to cost advantages from implicit subsidies they obtain by becoming too big to fail.

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...the problem has been one of too many to fail rather than too big to fail,...

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Even if the largest banks become smaller, the interconnectedness of the financial system and the danger of contagion will still be likely to create excessive fragility unless more is done to control this fragility.

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...if the bank is safer, it will be in a better position to make good loans and provide other services.

Camus, Algeria, and Terrorism

Having long believed that Albert Camus’s position on the Algerian struggle for independence has not received the appreciation it deserves, I was intrigued when I saw Algerian Chronicles (Harvard University Press, 2013) prominently displayed at City Lights Bookstore, scanned the book, and bought it.

The front flap reads:

More than fifty years after Algerian independence, Albert Camus’s Algerian Chronicles appears here in English for the first time. Published in France in 1958, the same year the Algerian War brought about the collapse of the Fourth French Republic, it is one of Camus’s most political works – an exploration of his commitment to Algeria. Dismissed or disdained at publication, today Algerian Chronicles, with its prescient analysis of the dead end of terrorism, enjoys a new life in Arthur Goldhammer’s elegant translation.

“Believe me when I tell you that Algeria is where I hurt at this moment, as others feel pain in their lungs,” writes Camus, who was the most visible symbol of France’s troubled relationship with Algeria. Gathered here are Camus’s strongest statement on Algeria from the 1930s through the 1950s, revised and supplemented by the author for publication in book form.

In her introduction, Alice Kaplan illuminates the dilemma faced by Camus: he was committed to the defense of those who suffered colonial injustice, yet was unable to support Algerian national sovereignty apart from France. An appendix of lesser-known texts that did not appear in the French edition complements the picture of a moralist who posed questions about violence and counter-violence, national identity, terrorism, and justice that continue to illuminate our contemporary world.

The back flap reads:

Albert Camus (1913-1960), Algerian-French novelist, essayist, and playwright, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Alice Kaplan is John. M. Mussey Professor of French at Yale University. Arthur Goldhammer received the French-American Translation Prize for his translation of A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution.

The back cover reads:

“Giving speech to anger and helplessness and injustice is the task Camus set for himself in publishing the Algerian Chronicles. His sense of impending loss, his horror of terror, even his vacillations, endow the book with many moments of literary beauty, and with an uncanny relevance.”
--Alice Kaplan, from the Introduction

So I look forward to reading this book.