Energy Efficiency

Back in the last 80’s I was made aware of a statistic that for every house lost through fire, forty-eight houses were lost – to the banks – due illness or injury (the actual number lost though eviction is not one readily available; however, as an indicator, HLIC (Home Loan Insurance Corporation – a home loan mortgage insurer) owned by the federal government ‘went broke’ in the early 90’s.

In a recent article, I wrote of the UCCC (Uniform Consumer Credit Code) that was implemented by the then Labor government to assist home-buyers and prevent the banks from arbitrarily taking possession of the family home and associated trauma of uprooting a family.

With the world economy going in an irreversible slide (it’s no good deluding ourselves), and the Great Depression (which is coming and in comparison make the one in the 30’s just a minor hiccup), we will see these statistics pale into insignificance; its small wonder that the banks are lending less – even after having their funds government guaranteed – as mortgage insurers see the writing on the wall. Would you – as a mortgage insurer knowing that property values were falling – guarantee the profitability of any bank in preference to your survival and profitability ?

[Mortgage Insurer – one who charges a premium / fee to underwrite the borrower to protect the bank from suffering a loss]

It’s well known that New Zealanders lean towards the British and we Aussies lean towards the Americans in most of our dealings in the world; they sold their workers jobs off-shore to Asian nations, so did we; they encouraged immigration (under direction of their corporate masters),  so did we, so most of the pain that the Septics are and will soon suffer, we will also.

The following article is a condensed version from [ http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22009.htm ] by Chris Hedges and separated by a line is a condensed article by Fernanda Santos [ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/nyregion/18foreclose.html?hp] titled ‘Resisting Home Evictions Becomes a Group Effort’  for a full and unabridged version, please view the full articles at the above addresses.

February 16, 2009 “Truthdig” – We – Americans – have a remarkable ability to create our own monsters from decades of meddling in the Middle East and ‘growing’ the Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaida, the Iraqi resistance movement and a resurgent Taliban and now we have trashed the world economy and destroyed the ecosystem. Washington’s new director of national intelligence, retired Admiral Dennis Blair, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee and warned that the ‘deepening economic crisis posed perhaps our gravest threat to stability and national security and could trigger a return to the violent extremism of the 1920s and 1930s.  It turns out that Wall Street, rather than Islamic jihad, has produced our most dangerous terrorists.

The Obama administration seems hell-bent on draining the blood out of the body politic and transfusing it into the corpse of our financial system; but by the time Barack Obama is done all we will be left with is a corpse and no blood and then what ? Accelerated plant and retail closures, inflation, an epidemic of bankruptcies, new rounds of foreclosures, bread lines, unemployment surpassing the levels of the Great Depression and, as Admiral Blair fears, social upheaval.

The United Nations’ International Labor Organization estimates that some 50 million workers will lose their jobs worldwide this year; the collapse has already seen 3.6 million lost jobs in the United States. The International Monetary Fund’s prediction for global economic growth in 2009 is 0.5 percent (which is more wishful thinking than anything else), the worst since World War II.  2.3 million properties in the United States received a default notice or were repossessed last year (2008) and the number is set to rise in 2009, especially as vacant commercial real estate begins to be foreclosed. About 20,000 major global banks collapsed, were sold or were nationalized in 2008 and an estimated 62,000 U.S. companies expected to shut down this year and unemployment (when you add people no longer looking for jobs and part-time workers who cannot find full-time employment) is close to 14% not 7% as quoted by government figures.

Trying to spend one’s way out of debts just won’t work; the manufacturing sector in the United States has been destroyed by globalization; consumers, thanks to credit card companies and easy lines of credit, are $14 trillion in debt in the USA and some Aus$8 billion in Australia. Both the American and Australian governments are pledging trillion$ toward the crisis, most of it borrowed or printed in the form of new money in ‘stimulus packages’ and the big bucket with a gigantic hole that bankrupted the USSR. And no one states the obvious; we will never be able to pay these loans back; let our kids worry about it. There is no coherent and realistic plan, one built around our severe limitations, to stanch the bleeding or ameliorate the mounting deprivations we will suffer as citizens.

Then contrast this with the ‘national security’ strategies to crush potential civil unrest and you get a glimpse of the future; it doesn’t look good.  Retired Admiral Blair said ‘the primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications; the crisis has been ongoing for over a year, and economists are divided over whether and when we could hit bottom; some even fear that the recession could further deepen and reach the level of the Great Depression and of course, all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism and ensuing wars’.

The spectre of social unrest was raised at the U.S. Army War College in November in a report titled The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by unforeseen economic collapse, purposeful domestic resistance, pervasive public health emergencies or loss of functioning political and legal order; and widespread civil violence, would force the defence establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security’. Translated; the government will use its troops (some battle hardened) to contain the civilian population.

Adm. Blair went on to warn the Senate that ‘roughly a quarter of the countries in the world have already experienced low-level instability such as government changes because of the current slowdown; of “bulk of anti-state demonstrations” internationally in Europe and even the former Soviet Union, but this did not mean they could not spread to the United States; much of Latin America, the former Soviet Union states and sub-Saharan African nations lacked sufficient cash reserves, access to international aid or credit, or other coping mechanisms’. He went on to say that as the economic unravelling accelerates, we will be told it is not the bearded Islamic extremists (although those in power will drag them out of the Halloween closet when they need to give us an exotic shock), but instead the domestic riffraff, environmentalists, anarchists, unions and enraged members of our dispossessed working class who threaten us. Crime, as it always does in times of turmoil, will grow. Those who oppose the iron fist of the state security apparatus will be lumped together in slick, corporate news reports with the growing criminal underclass.

A joke is what is the definition of gross ignorance (gross being an imperial measurement) answer 144 Americans and to prove this ignorance, the committee’s Republican vice chairman, Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri (not quite knowing what to make of Blair’s testimony), said he was concerned that Blair was making the ‘conditions in the country and the global economic crisis the primary focus of the intelligence community’.

The economic collapse has exposed the stupidity of our collective faith in a free market and the absurdity of an economy based on the goals of endless growth, consumption, borrowing and expansion. The ideology of unlimited growth failed to take into account the massive depletion of the world’s resources, from fossil fuels to clean water to fish stocks to erosion, as well as overpopulation, global warming and climate change. The huge international flows of unregulated capital have wrecked the global financial system. An overvalued dollar (which will soon deflate), wild tech, stock and housing financial bubbles, unchecked greed, the decimation of our manufacturing sector, the empowerment of an oligarchic class, the corruption of our political elite, the impoverishment of workers, a bloated military and defence budget and unrestrained credit binges have conspired to bring us down. The financial crisis will soon become a currency crisis. This second shock will threaten our financial viability. We let the market rule. Now we are paying for it.  The corporate thieves, those who insisted they be paid tens of millions of dollars because they were the best and the brightest, have been exposed as con artists. Our elected officials, along with the press, have been exposed as corrupt and spineless corporate lackeys. Our business schools and intellectual elite have been exposed as frauds. The age of the West has ended. Look to China. Laissez-faire capitalism has destroyed itself. It is time to dust off your copies of Marx.

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Resisting Home Evictions Becomes a Group Effort

We Australians have donated some $80 million to the fire victims (with the Red Cross promising ‘every $ will go to the victims’ after their appalling record of misappropriating funds donated for various causes); the Salvation Army wants cash as well, however, people receiving clothing and furniture and food are far more happy, as media stories show; also – at the risk of offending sensibilities – its difficult for the administration of these various businesses err … charities … to walk out the door with clothes, boots and foodstuffs tucked under their arms and stuffed in pockets or bonuses paid, so if they refuse clothing, food and furniture etc, it must mean something.

And in spite of the stimulus package – which the poor do not receive and dropping interest rates will not assist if you lose your job – home loan arrears are growing; and as forced sales in ‘second had’ luxury items, cars and plasma TV’s etc grow – competing with retailers – the economy is slowing down.  Gerry Harvey (Harvey Norman) said he ‘lost’ about $1.9 billion buying his own shares as their value continued to plunge; its really interesting to see these ‘business people and economic guru’s’ struggle to comprehend what we (the masses) already know …you cant spend money you don’t have !

We will not be able to depend on any political parties to support us, we will need to rally similar support to home owners losing their homes as they are starting to in the USA …

As resistance to foreclosure evictions grows among homeowners, community leaders and some law enforcement officials, a broad civil disobedience campaign is starting in New York and other cities to support families who refuse orders to vacate their homes.  The community organizing group Acorn unveiled the campaign with a spirited rally on Friday at a Brooklyn church and will roll it out in at least 22 other cities in the coming weeks. Through phone trees, Web pages and text-messaging networks, the effort will connect families facing eviction with volunteers who will stand at their side as
officers arrive, even if it means risking arrest.

“You want to haul us out to jail? Fine. Let the world see how government has been ineffective,” Bertha Lewis, Acorn’s chief organizer, said in an interview. “Politicians have helped banks, but they haven’t helped families in the way that it’s needed, and these families are now saying, enough is enough.”  At the onset of the foreclosure crisis, the problem was regarded by some as one of a homeowner’s own making, the result of irresponsible
decisions made by families who chose to live beyond their means. But as foreclosures spread across the country, devastating even solidly middle-class communities, the blame has slowly shifted to the financial companies that made questionable loans and have received billions of dollars in federal aid to stave off collapse.

In recent months, a budding resistance movement has grown among Americans who believe they have been left to face their predicament on their own and the Acorn campaign is an organized expression of that frustration, Ms. Lewis said ‘Instead of quietly packing up and turning their homes over to banks, homeowners are now fighting back’.