Tattoos, Pyramid Schemes and Social Justice
We had planned to write a blog post on systemic fraud in the US financial infrastructure, particularly as it relates to the mortgage industry, mortgage origination and servicing fraud. However, today a very good article was published by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone which includes colorful first-hand accounts that vividly illustrates the problem on both a macro and micro scale.
The plan was to outline these same points regarding the device of “securitization” of mortgage lending through derivatives that allow the formation of a traditional “pyramid” scheme, or what we prefer to call in the US a “Ponzi” scheme – perhaps, within a few years we may just opt to drop the name “Ponzi” altogether in favor of something like “business model for US banks in the early 21st century”. However, rather than reproduce what Rolling Stone has already done, we thought it would be a better to simply promote the existing article, with a few additional and brief thoughts on what we feel is likely the only solution.
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It has been said that there are only two directions in life “the right way and the wrong way”. This is a simple and true statement. However, human nature being what it is, we perfect techniques of taking the simple and making it complicated. If this statement is true, and there are really only two roads, or perhaps it could be said two different directions on the same road, and we discover that we have gone down the wrong one, and that indeed no “fork in the road” lies ahead that will ultimately bring us back to the path we desired, then we come to the realization that we must retrace our steps and begin (seemingly painfully) at the beginning of the journey – it is all the more difficult when we have invited followers.
Much fuss was made this week over 
Amvona Store: August 1999 - April 2010
I had just started writing a blog entry on the state of the union address (which deals mostly with the widespread discomfort, or suffering – if I can use that word, of the American people), when I came across 
I tried not to write about Haiti this week, but doing anything else seemed profane.
Four year olds like to make play houses from just about anything, If it looks like a “hut” or “hideout”, even better.
Current “Clean-Tech” enterprises present few “break-through” technologies. Rather there seems to be an improvement in overall efficiency of existing technologies, many of which (e.g. windmills, solar power) are quite old.
The internet may even pose a more precise analogy to “Clean-Tech” businesses than others insofar as the product is fundamentally important to us, and not merely a “want” which gives rise to consumption. In the case of the internet, the promise of the technology itself has more than been fulfilled, even if the promises of a great number of commercial concerns related to it have not. 
I venture to say that an economic movement which is based on our survival and well being as humans may be fundamentally too important to approach merely as a capitalist endeavor. Historically, novel technologies, even when related to existing demand, are difficult to efficiently monetize. Shifts in behavior however, (as they relate to those technologies) are a better bet. How difficult will it be to create a substantial economic enterprise in an industry which is neither novel, nor benefited by consumption per sae?