Boy, the economy is stupid! Look, whom it rewards. Look whom it punishes. And it’s so damned unjust. A bank coughs and your life is infected with pneumonia.
By Detlef.
Homo sapiens is around for approximately 150.000 years. Money is around for a little more than 2000 years. Perhaps it’s a concept we have to get used to over time. I hope it won’t take us another 150.000 years.
I mean: nice try Marx – but that didn’t work.
This is the end of the tunnel underneath the river Elbe in Hamburg. Above the tunneled freeway container giants are plowing their way through a troubled world economy.
This is my best shot at symbolism for today:
By Detlef
Or is it mythology? Fine with me, as long as you understand what I am trying to say.
Drops in scary waters. By Detlef.Lately I’m pondering the individual and its relation to society. I am reading Ernst Jünger’s “Paris Diary”. Under 02.23.1943 there is a conversation Jünger has with the Russian Doctor Salmanoff.
Salmanoff maintains that if you are living in troubled, unhealthy times it is as impossible for you to remain healthy as it’s impossible for a drop of water in a stormy ocean to be motionless (Ernst Jünger, Sämtliche Werke, Stuttgart 1979).
Ernst Jünger seems to be the living counterexample: he was part of the Nazi occupation-army in Paris (although not a Nazi himself) and lived healthy enough to die 103 years old. Be that as it may: I think Dr. Salmanoff makes a point here. What does it mean for us and the troubled times we live in presently?
This article in Reuters is scaring me. There is an interesting discussion going on in Louis Gray’s FriendFeed, showing how emotionally charged this theme is. If it’s true that we are currently living inside a system that is on life support: How about our individual lives? This is a very black thought for a Sunday, anyway: Are we like cancer cells that die with the organism they attack?
I have the awkward feeling that not even the economists do understand the economic foundations of our societies any more. Nobody is in charge, everybody is patching this or that. I feel so powerless about it and that makes the 160.000 year old Homo Sapiens in me very, very uneasy: I want to fight or to take flight – not alone, but with my horde.
What can be done?
The title refers to former President Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan of 1992: “It’s the economy, stupid”. That slogan is so popular that it even has its own page in Wikipedia.
This is a post about the economy and ecologically produced butter. To get there, let’s talk about firecrackers!
By Detlef.
If you have to cut back on expenses one thing you can easily economize on are the New Year’s Eve fireworks. As we are in a huge global economic crisis I would have expected a considerably less amount of money being spend on firecrackers at the end of 2008.
From what I saw and heard in my hometown that was the case. And all the people I know kept saying: “No play money for that kind of thing. We have to spend wisely”.
Yesterday at the drugstore/ deli I had a chance to talk to the franchisee. From previous talks I know her business depends heavily on the Christmas- and firecracker Euros rolling in at the end of the year to put her solidly into the black.
Being the franchisee she is the one to keep the party going if anyone calls in sick, so I met her at the freezer where she was packing milk containers. After “Hello! How are you doing?” I took my chance, lowered my voice a little and asked:
“How was the firecracker business?”
“That was absolutely fabulous. Much better than in 2007.”
“Wow, I would not have expected that.”
“Nor would I. I really was a little afraid with all that talk about a recession. If the firecrackers are indicating anything 2009 is going to be a very good year.”
And now she lowered her voice even more, talking in a whisper:
“Look at the ecologically produced butter. I sell it at a whopping 100% above the price of the supermarket down the street. Double price. Sold out every day. My current cash cow. People want quality and they are willing to pay a price.”
That’s contrary to what I would have expected and what Richard experienced in the empty shopping malls of Binghamton, USA. Perhaps there is hope. Perhaps the global recession storm we are expecting is not going to be as devastating as we all fear. Perhaps we should stop fearing.
I have to stop now. Going to shop for that butter before it’s sold out.
Here is my song about change. Most people would like a change in their lives. But when that change actually arrives, it might be not a welcome guest.
I wrote these lyrics after taking part in the discussion at the Catskill Cottage Seed about the recent changes in our economies, the hopes and the fears those changes are triggering.
I found myself thinking:
If only we could go on the way we did before.
That’s a thought I thought I never would be thinking.
Here are the lyrics:
I want things to stay the way they are.
I want things to stay the way they are.
Or for that matter:
They might change for better.
But that change I can’t rehearse:
It might be a change for worse.Change is always scary.
There is something new I have to trust.
The unfamiliar is hairy,
I don’t like to readjust.I want things to stay the way they are.
I want things to stay the way they are.
Or for that matter:
They might change for better.
But that change I can’t rehearse:
It might be a change for worse.Nothing ever stays the same
Under the good old sun.
Live is an ever changing game:
No change – no fun.I want things to stay the way they are.
I want things to stay the way they are.
Or for that matter:
They might change for better.
Under the good old sun:
No change – no fun.© Detlef Cordes 2009
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