Lying

ByHeather

What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Like most children, my parents raised me with an unending plea to always tell the truth. In my mom’s eyes, a clean conscience was to be valued above all else. “Besides,” she always said, “if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said.” I have carried this commitment to truth and honesty with me, almost to a fault. It has served me well.

As I have observed the global meltdown of the financial industry I can’t help but believe that it has been forever transformed by a blatant lack of trust. When the banks stopped lending it was clear that they no longer believed one another. The Bernie Madoff case was the icing on the cake. It seems to me that it will take a long time to restore trust and confidence into the financial system. In the process, I am not sure what kind of “financial system” will actually emerge on the other side.

Similar Posts

  • Canada Relations

    ByHeather

    Geography has made us neighbors, history has made us friends, economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies.

    — President Robert F. Kennedy on US / Canada relations.

    The US President’s first foreign trip is highly symbolic. Yesterday President Obama reinforced a long standing tradition and made Canada the destination for his first foreign trip. President Bush’s first foreign trip was to Mexico. US / Canada relations were strained throughout his entire term. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford never visited Canada at all.

    Granted, this trip was more than a pit stop than an extended visit. He arrived in the morning to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, ate through a working lunch, held a joint news conference, met briefly at the airport with the leader of Canada’s opposition party, and was back home in the White House in time for dinner.

    Even though he only had time to pop in for a quick chat, I am glad that my native country is back at the top of the list for our new US President.

  • |

    Celebrate art and culture. It defines who we are.

    ByHeather

    When you live in times of authoritarian rule one of the first things that end up in the cross hairs is culture. We believe firmly that artists and writers and dramatists and actors and musicians play a vital role in defending the integrity of who we are as human beings.

    — Jeremy Scahill, on the Trump’s Cabinet of Killers and Why Orange is the New Anti-Black episode of The Intercepted.

    I have never been more grateful for organizations like the ACLU and the plethora of lawyers we have in this country. Likewise, I am inspired by the power of our marches and protests as we stand up for our values. But, in addition to the direct tangible actions we can take, we also need a 100 million voices writing and singing and laughing and, in general, sounding our barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world.

  • Trees

    ByHeather

    Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed, chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. During a man’s life only saplings can be grown, in the place of old trees – tens of centuries old – that have been destroyed.

    — John Muir

    Like many in my generation, I devoured J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings with great relish. The metaphors, archetypes and stories from the rich world of Middle Earth continue to resonate through my mind many years after my last reading. One of my favorite creations is the sentient, intelligent, and wise race of Ents. These humanoid trees spoke too slowly and at a frequency too low for humans to perceive. They moved through the forest at a pace too slow to be perceptible.

    Some years ago I hiked with a friend to a sacred Native American burial ground in the mountains of Northwest New Mexico…

  • Be the Best of Whatever You Are

    ByHeather

    If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill,
         Be a shrub in the valley – but be
    The best little shrub by the side of the hill;
         Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.

    If you can’t be a bush, be a bit of grass,
         And some highway happier make;
    If you can’t be a muskie then just be a bass,
         But the liveliest bass in the lake!

    We can’t all be captains, some have to be crew,
         There’s something for all of us here;
    There’s work to be done, and we all have to do
         Our part in the way that’s sincere.

    If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail,
         If you can’t be the sun, be a star;
    It isn’t by size that you win or you fail,
         Be the best of whatever you are.

    — Douglas Mallock

  • “The Market” vs “The Economy”

    ByHeather

    With all the volatility in the stock market lately it is a good time to remind ourselves that “the market” is not the same as “the economy.” The best that I can tell — at least as of the last few years — “the market” has contracted to a relatively small group of:

    • professional traders
    • automated computer programs
    • institutional investors
    • hedge fund managers

    This tight-knit circle trades amongst itself with very little relevance to what we think of as “the economy.” In contrast to this closed group, the economy is the vast sum of the creation and delivery of the goods and services we want and need.

    It seems to me that the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 bears little connection to these things these days.

    Don’t be afraid. Now is the time to be bold. If you don’t like the economy, let’s go out and make one of our own.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.