Comments

• • Michael Cenkner@mcenkner

  

  Michael Cenkner October 5, 2011 - 11:14am

  What may not be apparent is that "zombie"  metaphor is being applied to the banks because, as some commentators (not MSM mainstream media) are arguing is that many banks are already dead, i.e., bankrupt, and that the cash infusions being adminstered via bailouts (quantitative easing), coming from taxes and also debasing the value of the fiat currencies, is the "blood" these zombies are feeding on.

  These same commentators (e.g. maxkieser.com, zany but entertaining and extremely perspicacious) are arguing that the current crisis is not one of liquidity (lack of cashflow) but rather one of solvency (the banks are so overextended into bad debts that there is no way they can escape).

  ZeroHedge also provides ongoing alternative financial analysis. Warning: the prognosis is rather grim.

  Regarding the occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, some are saying the underlying issue is not the fat bankers, but the central bank (i.e. Federal Reserve) and fractional banking system itself. (Good explanation of fractional banking in first part of Zeitgeist movie on YouTube).

  On a final note, I will say I was not very interested in this financial stuff until I realized that these dynamics directly affect such details as the value of the University's endowments, and the value of our pension plan and other things based in cash, not to mention the social upheaval we are likely to see globally in the near future.

  Cheerio,

  Michael Cenkner

• • Mark A. McCutcheon@mccutcheon

  

  Mark A. McCutcheon October 5, 2011 - 1:07pm

  Thanks Michael. Josh Evans has been reading up on the theory of "zombie economics" and sharing about it with this group. I'm with you about reading prognoses about the world financial system. Makes me think we should start offering courses in kinfe-sharpening and water purification.

• • Sandra Law@slaw

  

  Sandra Law October 11, 2011 - 1:49pm

  I think that you see the protests through your own political filter (depending on your biases) When I saw the dollar munching zombies I thought of the original Romero films in which the zombies go to the mall to continue to consume - post life. The food of choice for Wall Street zombies would likely be currency. I was in a Save On foods this Saturday as I was waiting for my car to have some work done on it and muzak was playing loudly - prompting me to leave as soon as possible. I think the goal of much of our social order (not just advertising, just listen to George Bush's injunction in the film the Inside Job to people that even though they are working class they can have large homes like the upper middle class) is to encourage mindless consumerism for plebs but the most likely form of acquisition (vs. consumption, implying day to day subsistence) for wall street types is various forms of portable property such as paper currency. Wasn't a lot of the aspiration in Victorian times in emulation of the upper classes (frequently not to the benefit of those doing the emulating). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_America

  I think that 'zombie politics' is an apt description for a province that is essentially a one party state and whose economy is based on a single industry (O&G exploration and extraction). If you haven't had any new ideas for 30-50 years can you really be alive in the sense of intellectual engagement (require an EKG reading registering something other than brain death). Thanksgiving dinners should consist of brains and entrails (depending on Romero vs. Shaun of the Dead zombie sub type dietary preferences). Maybe that recent fire at a dump in which toxic vapours were released and asthmatics were advised to stay indoors is just the beginning of the capital city's zombie apocalypse.

• • Mark A. McCutcheon@mccutcheon

  

  Mark A. McCutcheon October 11, 2011 - 2:30pm

  Hadn't heard of the dump fire. Ew.

  The more I think of it, the more the zombie economics theory can be extended to apply to lots of different domains of contemporary life in which the dead exert a continuing influence or control over the living. (Which definitely encompasses copyright, then, for example -- as in whatever happens when anybody tries to do anything with or about the otherwise mostly dead J.D. Salinger.)

  As for filter and bias, I certainly won't pretend to see #OWS in any purportedly unfiltered way. In the age of Fox News and Big Pharma, I tend to take any claim to objectivity with a shaker full of salt. (That said, I also really don't want Facebook or Google or whatever algorithm filtering the Internet all the time to coddle my own biases.)

  BTW - this article about #Occupy that I read last night is easily the best thing I've read about it so far, adding all types of angles and layers of interest. (It's not exactly hiding its filter either, sitting there on the Verso Books site.)

  Wark, McKenzie. "How to occupy an abstraction." Verso Books blog. 3 Oct. 2011.
  http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/728-mckenzie-wark-on-occupy-wall-street-how-to-occupy-an-abstraction

  If you read nothing esle about the occupations, read this.