by P. Sainath; The Hindu; September 18, 2007
The remarks of Shankersinh Vaghela and Vilasrao Deshmukh on Maharashtra farmers capture the elite mindset. Those doing badly are in trouble because of their own laziness. Killing themselves in large numbers only proves how lazy they are.
In the good old days, a Minister or Governor getting out of something he had said simply denied it. “I was misquoted.” Or it was “a total fabrication.” Television complicates things. Cures for foot-in-the mouth-disease get messy when you’ve goofed up on camera. The ruling etiquette now is: “My words were taken out of context.” Only, we are seldom told what that “context” is.
And so it was in Maharashtra this week. First, Union Textiles Minister Shankersinh Vaghela appeared to be fighting the coming Gujarat elections in Maharashtra. That too, at a meeting of the Cotton Brokers’ Association in Akola district. He extolled the farmers of his home State and batted for Gujarati pride. Which is fine. His own people, both farmers and non-farmers, are very hard-working. But then he added that the problem with farmers in Maharashtra was that they “just sit around and don’t go to their farms.” He wanted them to learn about hard work from his own State. “You must emulate the farmers of Gujarat. Come there and see for yourselves,” he said.
That these homilies were delivered in Vidharbha — a region seeing countless farm suicides — was bad enough. But there was more to follow. The guardian of the destinies of 100 million people in Maharashtra took the mike and rubbed it in. “There is some truth in what he has hinted … we must keep it in mind,” said Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.
And then — in a shot at humour — “Our farmers here, too, are ‘innovative.’ They sprinkle water on cotton, add stones to it, to increase the weight of their yield when they bring it to market.” And still more: “A farmer here is also innovative in increasing his cotton sowing area on paper, to seek government aid. Vidharbha farmers don’t lag behind in innovation.”
The Chief Minister has since said his words were taken out of context. Which sort of obliges him to explain — what was the context? Did he say such things at all, in any context? His response to a channel that carried his speech: “Nothing was said in Akola that was insulting to the farmers. Using specific parts of the speech, the opposition is now making a mountain out of a molehill. The speech has been used in such a way that it appears to be insulting the farmers. Being a farmer myself I know of the hardships faced by them. Implementing programmes for their benefit is primary for me.” Which “specific parts?” Obviously, the Chief Minister said things he would like to distance himself from. But it is very difficult to do that when those “specific parts” are on camera and are repeatedly being telecast. The subsequent exercise seems to result more in damage expansion than damage control.
The fallout has been most damaging. It was barely a month ago that Mr. Deshmukh’s own party in the State gave in a report to its Central leadership, slamming his failures on the farm front. In Vidharbha region, his own party workers see this speech as a blunder that will cost them dearly. And party leaders in Delhi seem quite annoyed.
Meanwhile, a seed industry lobby has just advanced claims of stunning success for the Vidharbha farmer with Bt cotton. Yet this presents the leaders with a dilemma. The timing of the industry’s claims is odd. It comes when the State is struggling to polish its image on the Vidharbha front. The claim is that the farmer in the region actually earned thousands of crores of rupees more last year. For one thing: how did “lazy” farmers end up doing so well? For another, that was the same year in which the State government’s own survey declared that over three fourths of farm households there were in distress. Of course, the State survey studied 17.64 lakh farm households or millions of people. The industry’s ‘sample’ was less than 350 farmers in the region.
More vital, though, is how the whole drama captures the elite mindset. Those doing badly are in trouble because of their own laziness. If they were hard-working, there would be no problem. Killing themselves in large numbers only proves how lazy they are. Most top leaders of the State have not visited a single distressed farm household of their own accord through all this period of crisis. The same leaders always have time for Bollywood functions. Maharashtra’s top bosses met families of suicide victims — most reluctantly — for the first time in 2006. That’s because they had to tag along with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his trip to Vidharbha last year.
It’s curious how Maharashtra, with its “lazy” farmers, led the country for three or more decades in cotton and sugar production before running into trouble. According to this government, the last season saw a gigantic “bumper crop” of almost 350 lakh quintals of cotton. And now industry says the next crop will exceed even that by 100 lakh quintals. Not bad for a bunch of lazy farmers fighting floods, pest, rising input costs, falling prices, chikangunya and their own government.
Well over 90 per cent of the State’s cotton is produced in rain-fed regions. For farmers in Vidharbha to produce the quality they do with no irrigation is a huge achievement. More so when the State itself is plugging inputs like Bt seed that demand more and more water. This hardly squares with their being lazy.
Above all, the farmers of the region the two leaders were mocking have had to contend with a government that came to power on a promise of Rs. 2700 per quintal of cotton — then betrayed that promise at once. So who is the cheat? The mythical little guy wetting his cotton to make it heavier? Or a government whose ruthless gutting of a poll promise destroyed so many lives? Or was the Congress party’s manifesto quoted “out of context?”
Yet all this is like a re-run of a very bad movie. It is what the elite like to believe of the poor. In 2003-04, as reports on the Andhra Pradesh suicides grew in number, many well-read persons in Maharashtra asked in wide-eyed innocence: “what is it with these Andhra Pradesh farmers? What’s wrong with them? How come we don’t have those suicides here in Maharashtra?”
Three years on, we all know better. But Mr. Vaghela, apparently, does not. He also overlooked the “advantage” that Gujarat enjoys in two respects. It has the biggest “parallel” or chor Bt seed industry. Some farmers claim that the ‘desi’ Bt coming out of Gujarat works better than Monsanto’s product. So many cotton growers in Gujarat don’t pay the gigantic royalties per bag that they would to the multinational were they forced to use its brand. In Maharashtra, a government agency is the distributor for the most expensive Bt seed of the MNC. That’s why farmers in Vidharbha in fact try to buy the Gujarati version. Some even respectfully call it “non-royalty Bt.”
Farmers in Gujarat also have up to 40 per cent irrigation, in one estimate. Which dwarfs Vidharbha’s three per cent. There is another “advantage” no less risky. All the States going through the crisis have seen cycles of large-scale, new generation chemical use. Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Vidharbha went into those cycles before Gujarat did. (And they too saw initial gains.) The rest, we know, is history. And Mr. Vaghela, at least, ought to learn from it. There are huge problems ahead.
Whether Mr. Deshmukh will learn is another question altogether. There have been two years in which Vidharbha could have been turned around quite a bit. But the laziness that came in the way was not that of the farmer. The laziness in forgetting what your manifesto promised was also not that of the farmer. Nor is the laziness involved in going to the region many times without visiting the affected households. Something real leaders ought to do.
Mr. Deshmukh’s own government has made one major contribution. It carried out the largest survey ever of its kind on farm households in the region. Its own survey says close to 75 per cent of farm households — or nearly seven million people — there are in distress. In just six districts. It confirms that people were and are working harder and harder to earn less and less. That some two million people are in what the survey calls “maximum distress.”
Brushing aside your own findings and holding forth on the failings of the farmers invites public outrage. And that outrage has come, leading to the “clarifications.” The causes of farm distress have been documented many times over both in Vidharbha and in other regions. To push the kind of reasons Mr. Vaghela and Mr. Deshmukh have advanced is to emulate the French Queen at the time of the 1789 Revolution who wanted to know why, if the hungry masses did not have bread, they could not eat cake instead. Current wisdom is that she never really said this. (Perhaps, like Mr. Deshmukh’s, her words were “taken out of context.”) Either way, Marie Antoinette would have felt at home in Maharashtra. Here we destroy the masses, not royalty.
“Blessed is the nation that doesn’t need heroes" Goethe. “Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.” Herbert Spencer. "My 80% friend isn't my 20% enemy" Ronald Reagan.
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Wednesday 19 September 2007
A Deafening Silence On Report Of One Million Iraqis Killed
By Patrick Martin
17 September, 2007
WSWS.org
When those responsible for the American war in Iraq face a public reckoning for their colossal crimes, the weekend of September 15-16, 2007 will be an important piece of evidence against them. On Friday, September 14 there were brief press reports of a scientific survey by the British polling organization ORB, which resulted in an estimate of 1.2 million violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion.
This staggering figure demonstrates two political facts: 1) the American war in Iraq has produced a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions, with a death total already higher than that in Rwanda in 1994; 2) those arguing against a US withdrawal on the grounds that this would lead to civil war, even genocide, are deliberately concealing the fact that such a bloodbath is already taking place, with the US military in control.
The reaction to the ORB report in the US political and media establishment was virtual silence. After scattered newspaper reports Friday, there was no coverage on the Friday evening television newscasts or on the cable television news stations. There was no comment from the Bush White House, the Pentagon, or the State Department, and not a single Republican or Democratic presidential candidate or congressional leader made an issue of it. On the Sunday morning talk shows on all four broadcast networks the subject was not raised.
This was not because those involved were unaware of the study, which received wide circulation on the Internet and was prominently reported in the British daily press. Nor was there any serious challenge to the validity of the study’s findings.
Opinion Research Business (ORB), founded by the former head of British operations for the Gallup polling organization, is a well-established commercial polling firm. It gave a detailed technical description of the methods used to make a scientific random sample.
Six months ago, by contrast, an ORB survey in Iraq was hailed by the White House because some of its findings could be given a positive spin in administration propaganda. That survey, conducted in February and made public March 18 in the Sunday Times of London, found that only 27 percent of Iraqis believed their country was in a state of civil war and that a majority supported the Maliki government and the US military “surge,” and believed life was getting better in their country.
That survey also reported figures on violence that largely dovetail with those of the survey conducted in August and reported last Friday, including 79 percent of Baghdad residents experiencing either a violent death or kidnapping in their immediate family or workplace. But its findings of Iraqi political opinions—not the figures on deaths—were given headline treatment in the US press, with articles in the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor and other national media outlets.
White House press spokesman Tony Snow cited the ORB poll at a March 23 news briefing, when he used its findings to rebut the results of a poll of Iraqis by ABC News, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the German ARD network and USA Today newspaper. Asked about the ABC poll’s finding that Iraqis were more pessimistic about the future, Snow declared, “there was also a British poll at the same time that had almost diametrically opposed results.” He added that the British poll had “twice the sample” of the ABC poll, and should therefore be considered more authoritative.
The March ORB poll was widely hailed in the far-right media, including Fox News Network. The right-wing magazine National Review declared, “Supporters of Operation Iraqi Freedom will be buoyed by a new poll of Iraqis showing high levels of support for the Baghdad security plan and the elected government implementing it.”
The latest ORB poll, focusing on the enormous death toll produced by the US invasion, has received no such positive reception at the White House. There is, of course, ample reason for such hostility. The figures reported by ORB undermine Bush administration claims that its goal in Iraq is to “liberate” the Iraqi people from tyranny and terrorism, or to defend “freedom and democracy.”
The real motivation for the war was spelled out by former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan in a newly published book of memoirs, in which he wrote, “Whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy. I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Equally significant is the silence from congressional Democrats and the Democratic presidential candidates, all of whom claim to be opposed to the Iraq war. This antiwar posturing, however, has nothing in common with genuine compassion for the plight of the Iraqi people or principled opposition to the predatory interests of American imperialism in the oil-rich country.
The Democrats oppose the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, not because it has been a bloody and criminal operation, but because it has been mismanaged and unsuccessful in accomplishing the goal of plundering Iraq’s oil resources and strengthening the strategic position of US imperialism in the Middle East.
The Democrats do not want to highlight the massive scale of the bloodbath in Iraq, as suggested by the ORB survey, because they share political responsibility for the war, from the vote to authorize the use of force in October 2002, to the repeated congressional passage of bills to fund the war, at a total cost of more than $600 billion. In any war crimes trial over the near-genocide in Iraq, leading Democrats would take their place in the dock, second only to the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld war cabal.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program Sunday, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, denounced suggestions that congressional Democrats would allow the United States to be defeated in Iraq. He criticized the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on the ground that it had weakened US national security interests, particularly in relation to Iran.
“We’re not talking about abandoning Iraq,” Kerry said. “We’re talking about changing the mission and adjusting the mission so that the bulkier combat troops are withdrawn, ultimately, within a year, but that you are continuing to provide the basic backstop support necessary to finish the training, so they stand up on their own, and you are continuing to chase Al Qaeda.”
Kerry made it clear that he advocated a more aggressive, not less aggressive, policy in the Middle East. “We need to get out of Iraq in order to be stronger to deal with Iran,” he said, “in order to deal with Hezbollah and Hamas, to regain our credibility in the region. And I believe, very deeply, they understand power.”
When “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert pressed Kerry on the refusal of the Democrats to force the White House to stop the war by cutting off funding, Kerry evaded the question, claiming—falsely—that such action would require 67 votes in the Senate to override a presidential veto. The supposed 67-vote hurdle is an obstacle deliberately conjured up by the congressional Democrats, in order to play their double game of publicly posturing as opponents of the war while allowing the Bush administration to continue waging it.
Kerry continued: “I will fund the troops to protect the national security interests of America, to accomplish a mission that increases our national security and protects the troops themselves. We are not proposing failure...”
What does the pursuit of “success” mean in the context of the reports of 1.2 million violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion and occupation? It means the devastation of that country will continue until the American and international working class intervenes to put an end to it.
17 September, 2007
WSWS.org
When those responsible for the American war in Iraq face a public reckoning for their colossal crimes, the weekend of September 15-16, 2007 will be an important piece of evidence against them. On Friday, September 14 there were brief press reports of a scientific survey by the British polling organization ORB, which resulted in an estimate of 1.2 million violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion.
This staggering figure demonstrates two political facts: 1) the American war in Iraq has produced a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions, with a death total already higher than that in Rwanda in 1994; 2) those arguing against a US withdrawal on the grounds that this would lead to civil war, even genocide, are deliberately concealing the fact that such a bloodbath is already taking place, with the US military in control.
The reaction to the ORB report in the US political and media establishment was virtual silence. After scattered newspaper reports Friday, there was no coverage on the Friday evening television newscasts or on the cable television news stations. There was no comment from the Bush White House, the Pentagon, or the State Department, and not a single Republican or Democratic presidential candidate or congressional leader made an issue of it. On the Sunday morning talk shows on all four broadcast networks the subject was not raised.
This was not because those involved were unaware of the study, which received wide circulation on the Internet and was prominently reported in the British daily press. Nor was there any serious challenge to the validity of the study’s findings.
Opinion Research Business (ORB), founded by the former head of British operations for the Gallup polling organization, is a well-established commercial polling firm. It gave a detailed technical description of the methods used to make a scientific random sample.
Six months ago, by contrast, an ORB survey in Iraq was hailed by the White House because some of its findings could be given a positive spin in administration propaganda. That survey, conducted in February and made public March 18 in the Sunday Times of London, found that only 27 percent of Iraqis believed their country was in a state of civil war and that a majority supported the Maliki government and the US military “surge,” and believed life was getting better in their country.
That survey also reported figures on violence that largely dovetail with those of the survey conducted in August and reported last Friday, including 79 percent of Baghdad residents experiencing either a violent death or kidnapping in their immediate family or workplace. But its findings of Iraqi political opinions—not the figures on deaths—were given headline treatment in the US press, with articles in the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor and other national media outlets.
White House press spokesman Tony Snow cited the ORB poll at a March 23 news briefing, when he used its findings to rebut the results of a poll of Iraqis by ABC News, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the German ARD network and USA Today newspaper. Asked about the ABC poll’s finding that Iraqis were more pessimistic about the future, Snow declared, “there was also a British poll at the same time that had almost diametrically opposed results.” He added that the British poll had “twice the sample” of the ABC poll, and should therefore be considered more authoritative.
The March ORB poll was widely hailed in the far-right media, including Fox News Network. The right-wing magazine National Review declared, “Supporters of Operation Iraqi Freedom will be buoyed by a new poll of Iraqis showing high levels of support for the Baghdad security plan and the elected government implementing it.”
The latest ORB poll, focusing on the enormous death toll produced by the US invasion, has received no such positive reception at the White House. There is, of course, ample reason for such hostility. The figures reported by ORB undermine Bush administration claims that its goal in Iraq is to “liberate” the Iraqi people from tyranny and terrorism, or to defend “freedom and democracy.”
The real motivation for the war was spelled out by former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan in a newly published book of memoirs, in which he wrote, “Whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy. I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Equally significant is the silence from congressional Democrats and the Democratic presidential candidates, all of whom claim to be opposed to the Iraq war. This antiwar posturing, however, has nothing in common with genuine compassion for the plight of the Iraqi people or principled opposition to the predatory interests of American imperialism in the oil-rich country.
The Democrats oppose the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, not because it has been a bloody and criminal operation, but because it has been mismanaged and unsuccessful in accomplishing the goal of plundering Iraq’s oil resources and strengthening the strategic position of US imperialism in the Middle East.
The Democrats do not want to highlight the massive scale of the bloodbath in Iraq, as suggested by the ORB survey, because they share political responsibility for the war, from the vote to authorize the use of force in October 2002, to the repeated congressional passage of bills to fund the war, at a total cost of more than $600 billion. In any war crimes trial over the near-genocide in Iraq, leading Democrats would take their place in the dock, second only to the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld war cabal.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program Sunday, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, denounced suggestions that congressional Democrats would allow the United States to be defeated in Iraq. He criticized the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on the ground that it had weakened US national security interests, particularly in relation to Iran.
“We’re not talking about abandoning Iraq,” Kerry said. “We’re talking about changing the mission and adjusting the mission so that the bulkier combat troops are withdrawn, ultimately, within a year, but that you are continuing to provide the basic backstop support necessary to finish the training, so they stand up on their own, and you are continuing to chase Al Qaeda.”
Kerry made it clear that he advocated a more aggressive, not less aggressive, policy in the Middle East. “We need to get out of Iraq in order to be stronger to deal with Iran,” he said, “in order to deal with Hezbollah and Hamas, to regain our credibility in the region. And I believe, very deeply, they understand power.”
When “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert pressed Kerry on the refusal of the Democrats to force the White House to stop the war by cutting off funding, Kerry evaded the question, claiming—falsely—that such action would require 67 votes in the Senate to override a presidential veto. The supposed 67-vote hurdle is an obstacle deliberately conjured up by the congressional Democrats, in order to play their double game of publicly posturing as opponents of the war while allowing the Bush administration to continue waging it.
Kerry continued: “I will fund the troops to protect the national security interests of America, to accomplish a mission that increases our national security and protects the troops themselves. We are not proposing failure...”
What does the pursuit of “success” mean in the context of the reports of 1.2 million violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion and occupation? It means the devastation of that country will continue until the American and international working class intervenes to put an end to it.
Monday 17 September 2007
Financial management is the new witchcraft.
The Northern Rock crisis, and the City's excesses, expose the dangers in our remaining ignorant of market complexities
Max Hastings
Monday September 17, 2007
Guardian
It has been an unfamiliar delight to wake up the past few mornings knowing that I am neither a shareholder nor depositor in Northern Rock. In the usual course of events, whenever a company goes pear-shaped my pension fund proves to be involved. Friends often ring me to ask which businesses I have shares in, to be sure to avoid them.
Yet, however pleasing it is to see City folk sweat, it is obvious that schadenfreude would be misplaced. We are all going to feel pain somewhere from the chaos in the financial markets. The feel-good factor, which has proved vastly more important than any government personality or policy in sustaining Labour in power, will be imperilled. Politics could be transformed if hard times hit the high street and housing market.
Present events seem unlikely to signal the collapse of capitalism or even a major recession, but it must surely mean a reality check on the follies of recent years, in which tycoons and ticket collectors alike have splurged far more money than they could sensibly afford on buying companies or, at the humbler end of the scale, plasma TV screens so large that newsreaders' warts show through their makeup.
A wise City editor cherishes the maxim, "Don't invest in things you don't understand". How many of those inside the soaring towers east of Temple Bar have known what they have been betting their ranches on lately, never mind the rest of us out in no man's land? Of course there are some very clever people steering the world's financial institutions. But the evidence suggests that there are also some frighteningly stupid ones.
Incomprehension makes us the City's prisoners. We know what vacuum cleaner manufacturers do, and waiters and lawyers and doctors and even ministers. We are told that the activities of the City of London now account for a frighteningly large proportion of national economic activity.
But as to what those activities are, who can tell? I have met lots of investment bankers, hedge fund managers, currency dealers. But I would struggle to describe on one side of a sheet of paper how they spend their days, beyond peering at screens. I bet you would, too.
Financial management is the new witchcraft, an art that makes many of its practitioners absurdly rich, commands the grudging respect of millions, but relies upon skills and secrets that remain opaque to all outside the Magic Circle.
Few of those who preside over the cauldrons possess social or cultural graces. In the company of City folk, I often recall some lines from Anthony Powell's novel A Buyer's Market, describing the tycoon Sir Magnus Donners at a lunch party: "On the lips of a lesser man his words would have suggested processes of thought of a banality so painful - of such profound and arid depths, in which neither humour, nor imagination, nor, indeed, any form of human understanding could be thought to play the smallest part - that I almost supposed him to be speaking ironically, or teasing his guests by acting the part of a bore in a drawing-room comedy."
Here I must search my soul, pondering how large a part is played by envy in determining the sceptical view we outsiders take of the multimillion bonus league. Of course the worm is there. In the next generation, the only social division likely to matter in Britain will be between those taking huge sums home from the City, and those earning relatively paltry amounts outside it.
A decision at the outset of one's career to become a doctor or journalist or civil servant comes close to ensuring that one can never hope to share an upper-middle class lifestyle that will be the almost exclusive prerogative of entrepreneurs, bankers, management consultants and inheritors of wealth. This has always been true in some degree, but in future there will be a near-apartheid distinction.
Whatever the outcome of current turbulence, moving money will continue to be a vastly more profitable activity than almost anything else in Britain, save playing football. Many of us can live with this state of affairs, containing our resentment, as long as those in charge appear to know what they are doing. When, however, as in the past few weeks, we see idiot lending policies generating frightening turmoil, it is impossible not to feel pretty sore towards those in charge of spell-making.
Mrs Thatcher was an ardent advocate of personal financial empowerment. She sought to enable us all to be responsible for our own affairs, to exercise discretion over our pensions and so on. Yet few people are capable of using such discretion wisely. My own pension fund statements might as well be written in Arabic for all they mean to me, except I can grasp the brute fact that my pot somehow shrank in the early months of this year, long before the summer upheavals. It is now worth only fractionally more than it was in 2001, before the then market collapse. Management fees take a fat bite every year, of course, heedless of whether the investments have prospered or not.
I expect no personal sympathy, because I am in a happy financial position compared with most of the rest of the country. But it seems reasonable to ask: if I, supposedly well able to look after myself, find it hard to make my pension fund work decently, how on earth can millions succeed, who lack my opportunities to raise hell?
The challenge for the City of London is to convince the public that, even if its workers are extravagantly rewarded for their services, what they do benefits the rest of us; that their activities are not exclusively self-serving. This will become much harder if the turmoil of recent weeks, driven by stunning banking incompetence, feeds through into the real world and starts hurting peoples' pockets, as it seems likely to do.
A hubris, a madness, has overtaken the financial world in the past two or three years, causing some of its chief practitioners to delude themselves that the old rules of prudence had gone out of the window. A vast pool of easy money has been pursuing a much smaller supply of sensible investments. Businesses have overpaid for most properties they have bought, because that was the only way to get the deals. Banks have bought a load of stuff now seen to be worthless.
This recklessness has, of course, been matched in City private lives, where Krug, yachts, Porsches and racehorses are at premiums. The big-hitters have been indifferent about how many millions, or indeed tens of millions, they paid for a country house which they wanted.
It seems premature to speculate that all this conspicuous consumption is now at an end. Neither we nor the Bank of England have any idea how bad the housing debt crisis is going to get, or what its knock-on effects will be. Most people outside the City would love to see humbled the high-rollers who have so conspicuously failed in their responsibilities. The trouble is, if this happens it seems likely that the rest of us will catch colds at least as discomforting as those afflicting the fat cats.
Max Hastings
Monday September 17, 2007
Guardian
It has been an unfamiliar delight to wake up the past few mornings knowing that I am neither a shareholder nor depositor in Northern Rock. In the usual course of events, whenever a company goes pear-shaped my pension fund proves to be involved. Friends often ring me to ask which businesses I have shares in, to be sure to avoid them.
Yet, however pleasing it is to see City folk sweat, it is obvious that schadenfreude would be misplaced. We are all going to feel pain somewhere from the chaos in the financial markets. The feel-good factor, which has proved vastly more important than any government personality or policy in sustaining Labour in power, will be imperilled. Politics could be transformed if hard times hit the high street and housing market.
Present events seem unlikely to signal the collapse of capitalism or even a major recession, but it must surely mean a reality check on the follies of recent years, in which tycoons and ticket collectors alike have splurged far more money than they could sensibly afford on buying companies or, at the humbler end of the scale, plasma TV screens so large that newsreaders' warts show through their makeup.
A wise City editor cherishes the maxim, "Don't invest in things you don't understand". How many of those inside the soaring towers east of Temple Bar have known what they have been betting their ranches on lately, never mind the rest of us out in no man's land? Of course there are some very clever people steering the world's financial institutions. But the evidence suggests that there are also some frighteningly stupid ones.
Incomprehension makes us the City's prisoners. We know what vacuum cleaner manufacturers do, and waiters and lawyers and doctors and even ministers. We are told that the activities of the City of London now account for a frighteningly large proportion of national economic activity.
But as to what those activities are, who can tell? I have met lots of investment bankers, hedge fund managers, currency dealers. But I would struggle to describe on one side of a sheet of paper how they spend their days, beyond peering at screens. I bet you would, too.
Financial management is the new witchcraft, an art that makes many of its practitioners absurdly rich, commands the grudging respect of millions, but relies upon skills and secrets that remain opaque to all outside the Magic Circle.
Few of those who preside over the cauldrons possess social or cultural graces. In the company of City folk, I often recall some lines from Anthony Powell's novel A Buyer's Market, describing the tycoon Sir Magnus Donners at a lunch party: "On the lips of a lesser man his words would have suggested processes of thought of a banality so painful - of such profound and arid depths, in which neither humour, nor imagination, nor, indeed, any form of human understanding could be thought to play the smallest part - that I almost supposed him to be speaking ironically, or teasing his guests by acting the part of a bore in a drawing-room comedy."
Here I must search my soul, pondering how large a part is played by envy in determining the sceptical view we outsiders take of the multimillion bonus league. Of course the worm is there. In the next generation, the only social division likely to matter in Britain will be between those taking huge sums home from the City, and those earning relatively paltry amounts outside it.
A decision at the outset of one's career to become a doctor or journalist or civil servant comes close to ensuring that one can never hope to share an upper-middle class lifestyle that will be the almost exclusive prerogative of entrepreneurs, bankers, management consultants and inheritors of wealth. This has always been true in some degree, but in future there will be a near-apartheid distinction.
Whatever the outcome of current turbulence, moving money will continue to be a vastly more profitable activity than almost anything else in Britain, save playing football. Many of us can live with this state of affairs, containing our resentment, as long as those in charge appear to know what they are doing. When, however, as in the past few weeks, we see idiot lending policies generating frightening turmoil, it is impossible not to feel pretty sore towards those in charge of spell-making.
Mrs Thatcher was an ardent advocate of personal financial empowerment. She sought to enable us all to be responsible for our own affairs, to exercise discretion over our pensions and so on. Yet few people are capable of using such discretion wisely. My own pension fund statements might as well be written in Arabic for all they mean to me, except I can grasp the brute fact that my pot somehow shrank in the early months of this year, long before the summer upheavals. It is now worth only fractionally more than it was in 2001, before the then market collapse. Management fees take a fat bite every year, of course, heedless of whether the investments have prospered or not.
I expect no personal sympathy, because I am in a happy financial position compared with most of the rest of the country. But it seems reasonable to ask: if I, supposedly well able to look after myself, find it hard to make my pension fund work decently, how on earth can millions succeed, who lack my opportunities to raise hell?
The challenge for the City of London is to convince the public that, even if its workers are extravagantly rewarded for their services, what they do benefits the rest of us; that their activities are not exclusively self-serving. This will become much harder if the turmoil of recent weeks, driven by stunning banking incompetence, feeds through into the real world and starts hurting peoples' pockets, as it seems likely to do.
A hubris, a madness, has overtaken the financial world in the past two or three years, causing some of its chief practitioners to delude themselves that the old rules of prudence had gone out of the window. A vast pool of easy money has been pursuing a much smaller supply of sensible investments. Businesses have overpaid for most properties they have bought, because that was the only way to get the deals. Banks have bought a load of stuff now seen to be worthless.
This recklessness has, of course, been matched in City private lives, where Krug, yachts, Porsches and racehorses are at premiums. The big-hitters have been indifferent about how many millions, or indeed tens of millions, they paid for a country house which they wanted.
It seems premature to speculate that all this conspicuous consumption is now at an end. Neither we nor the Bank of England have any idea how bad the housing debt crisis is going to get, or what its knock-on effects will be. Most people outside the City would love to see humbled the high-rollers who have so conspicuously failed in their responsibilities. The trouble is, if this happens it seems likely that the rest of us will catch colds at least as discomforting as those afflicting the fat cats.
Friday 14 September 2007
Harry Potter and immigration
by Aviva Chomsky; Providence Journal; September 13, 2007
HARRY POTTER as a parable of immigrants’ rights? Both my kids thought I was crazy when I first suggested this notion, half-way through the book on a recent Saturday afternoon. The more I read, though, the more sense the idea made.
Among the crucial issues separating the bad guys from the good guys in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is their position on the rights of Muggles, half-bloods and Muggle-borns. For the non-initiated, let me clarify: Muggles are ordinary humans without wizarding powers. A half-blood is the offspring of a Muggle and a pure-blood wizard. Muggle-borns are people with wizard powers born into Muggle families, like the heroine Hermione.
The evil Malfoy family sniffs about its ancient lineage and its pure blood; young Draco torments Hermione at school about being a “Mud-blood,” contaminated by her Muggle background. When Voldemort’s followers take over the Ministry of Magic they establish a “Muggle-Born Registration Commission” and distribute a pamphlet entitled “Mudbloods and the Dangers they Pose to a Peaceful Pure-Blood Society.”
Wizards fake their family trees to claim pure-blood status. A wizard accused of having Muggle parentage begs to be spared prison because he’s a half-blood—his father was a wizard, and he has written documentation of his legal status. The Registration Commission interrogates prisoners to determine their correct status, and punishes a woman of non-wizard parents for using a wand, a privilege reserved for wizards.
Some have suggested that Voldemort’s obsession with purity of blood and ancient wizarding families is meant to suggest a reference to Nazi Germany. But the Nazis were not the only historical example of a group claiming the right to dominate others based on ancestry, birth or blood. Spanish Christians relied on the concept to justify the expulsion of Muslims and Jews in 1492, and the domination and enslavement of Africans and indigenous Americans thereafter. U.S. law uses the concept today to justify the exclusion of millions of people in the United States: non-citizens, or even worse, those it defines as “illegal immigrants.”
“But U.S. nationality isn’t based on ideas about blood!” my readers will protest. “We are all immigrants here! Our laws explicitly prohibit discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or national origin!”
And there’s the rub. While our laws do prohibit this kind of discrimination, they also prescribe it. Our immigration, citizenship and naturalization laws are based explicitly on discrimination on the basis of national origin. Where you were born, and what passport you carry, determine whether you have the right to come here, to visit, to work, or to live here.
It wasn’t always that way. Until the Civil War, U.S. citizenship was based on race rather than birthplace, and there were no restrictions on immigration. It wasn’t until after the Civil War that the concept of citizenship-by-birth was inscribed into U.S. law. Before that, whites could be citizens, no matter where they were born, while non-whites, which at the time meant primarily Native Americans and African Americans, could not be citizens, even if their ancestors were here long before any Englishmen arrived. People considered racially unfit for citizenship were welcomed, or even forced to immigrate, in the case of Africans, on condition that they and their descendants would remain a permanent underclass of non-citizens—physically present, but with few legal rights.
But citizenship-by-birth didn’t mean the end of racial discrimination. It meant that lawmakers scrambled to make sure that those they considered racially unfit couldn’t take advantage of the new citizenship law. Almost immediately after the new law was enacted, in 1866, Congress began restricting immigration. Chinese, Japanese and then all Asians were only the first to be told that they couldn’t come any more, because the government didn’t want their children to be able to obtain citizenship by birth.
I’m not claiming to be able to read J. K. Rowling’s mind. But for her readers in the United States, the desperate struggle of Muggle-borns and half-bloods to document their status, the punishments meted out by the Ministry of Magic to those who try to work or attend school without documents proving their lineage, and Voldemort’s obsession with determining just who has true wizard ancestry, and restricting and punishing those who don’t, have some pretty powerful resonances with the last massive legalized form of discrimination in our own society: discrimination against non-citizens.
I suppose it’s possible to make a general statement about tolerance and discrimination in a society characterized by serious legalized inequality, and yet discuss the issue entirely in the abstract, with no reference at all to the discrimination going on around you. But a tome about tolerance written in Nazi Germany, for example, would inevitably be read as a commentary on Nazi policies — either that, or as evidence of just how brainwashed the public was, that it could advocate tolerance while remaining oblivious to the intolerance of its own society.
The main audiences for Rowling’s book are in Britain and the United States. In both countries, tolerance is officially promoted at the same time that one group of people is conspicuously excluded: immigrants. Citizenship-by-birth may be racially blind if a country has open borders, but with walls, border patrols, and a long history of racially restrictive immigration laws, “citizenship” becomes just another means to enforce discrimination and exclusion.
Legalized discrimination in the United States goes way beyond the immigration-quota system that still prescribes different treatment for people from different countries.
What else can it be called, when millions of people are not allowed to work, not allowed to go to school, not allowed to live in certain places, not allowed access to all of the benefits that society offers to the rest of its members? When the police raid workplaces to round them up and deport them? When they live in fear that their very existence will be discovered, and they will be punished?
Perhaps we can all learn something from Rowling’s characters: from the Weasley family, ardent defenders of the rights of the non-wizard-born, on to Hermione, the “mud-blood” who out-wizards them all, and finally Harry, whose quest to defeat the evil Voldemort is inextricably bound up with the defense of the rights of those whom Voldemort seeks to expel, exploit and destroy. If we cannot see reflections of our own national discourse on immigrants in their struggle, perhaps we are closing our eyes to Rowling’s most important lesson.
Aviva Chomsky is a professor of history at Salem State College. Her new book, They Take Our Jobs! And 20 Other Myths About Immigration, was just published by Beacon Press.
HARRY POTTER as a parable of immigrants’ rights? Both my kids thought I was crazy when I first suggested this notion, half-way through the book on a recent Saturday afternoon. The more I read, though, the more sense the idea made.
Among the crucial issues separating the bad guys from the good guys in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is their position on the rights of Muggles, half-bloods and Muggle-borns. For the non-initiated, let me clarify: Muggles are ordinary humans without wizarding powers. A half-blood is the offspring of a Muggle and a pure-blood wizard. Muggle-borns are people with wizard powers born into Muggle families, like the heroine Hermione.
The evil Malfoy family sniffs about its ancient lineage and its pure blood; young Draco torments Hermione at school about being a “Mud-blood,” contaminated by her Muggle background. When Voldemort’s followers take over the Ministry of Magic they establish a “Muggle-Born Registration Commission” and distribute a pamphlet entitled “Mudbloods and the Dangers they Pose to a Peaceful Pure-Blood Society.”
Wizards fake their family trees to claim pure-blood status. A wizard accused of having Muggle parentage begs to be spared prison because he’s a half-blood—his father was a wizard, and he has written documentation of his legal status. The Registration Commission interrogates prisoners to determine their correct status, and punishes a woman of non-wizard parents for using a wand, a privilege reserved for wizards.
Some have suggested that Voldemort’s obsession with purity of blood and ancient wizarding families is meant to suggest a reference to Nazi Germany. But the Nazis were not the only historical example of a group claiming the right to dominate others based on ancestry, birth or blood. Spanish Christians relied on the concept to justify the expulsion of Muslims and Jews in 1492, and the domination and enslavement of Africans and indigenous Americans thereafter. U.S. law uses the concept today to justify the exclusion of millions of people in the United States: non-citizens, or even worse, those it defines as “illegal immigrants.”
“But U.S. nationality isn’t based on ideas about blood!” my readers will protest. “We are all immigrants here! Our laws explicitly prohibit discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or national origin!”
And there’s the rub. While our laws do prohibit this kind of discrimination, they also prescribe it. Our immigration, citizenship and naturalization laws are based explicitly on discrimination on the basis of national origin. Where you were born, and what passport you carry, determine whether you have the right to come here, to visit, to work, or to live here.
It wasn’t always that way. Until the Civil War, U.S. citizenship was based on race rather than birthplace, and there were no restrictions on immigration. It wasn’t until after the Civil War that the concept of citizenship-by-birth was inscribed into U.S. law. Before that, whites could be citizens, no matter where they were born, while non-whites, which at the time meant primarily Native Americans and African Americans, could not be citizens, even if their ancestors were here long before any Englishmen arrived. People considered racially unfit for citizenship were welcomed, or even forced to immigrate, in the case of Africans, on condition that they and their descendants would remain a permanent underclass of non-citizens—physically present, but with few legal rights.
But citizenship-by-birth didn’t mean the end of racial discrimination. It meant that lawmakers scrambled to make sure that those they considered racially unfit couldn’t take advantage of the new citizenship law. Almost immediately after the new law was enacted, in 1866, Congress began restricting immigration. Chinese, Japanese and then all Asians were only the first to be told that they couldn’t come any more, because the government didn’t want their children to be able to obtain citizenship by birth.
I’m not claiming to be able to read J. K. Rowling’s mind. But for her readers in the United States, the desperate struggle of Muggle-borns and half-bloods to document their status, the punishments meted out by the Ministry of Magic to those who try to work or attend school without documents proving their lineage, and Voldemort’s obsession with determining just who has true wizard ancestry, and restricting and punishing those who don’t, have some pretty powerful resonances with the last massive legalized form of discrimination in our own society: discrimination against non-citizens.
I suppose it’s possible to make a general statement about tolerance and discrimination in a society characterized by serious legalized inequality, and yet discuss the issue entirely in the abstract, with no reference at all to the discrimination going on around you. But a tome about tolerance written in Nazi Germany, for example, would inevitably be read as a commentary on Nazi policies — either that, or as evidence of just how brainwashed the public was, that it could advocate tolerance while remaining oblivious to the intolerance of its own society.
The main audiences for Rowling’s book are in Britain and the United States. In both countries, tolerance is officially promoted at the same time that one group of people is conspicuously excluded: immigrants. Citizenship-by-birth may be racially blind if a country has open borders, but with walls, border patrols, and a long history of racially restrictive immigration laws, “citizenship” becomes just another means to enforce discrimination and exclusion.
Legalized discrimination in the United States goes way beyond the immigration-quota system that still prescribes different treatment for people from different countries.
What else can it be called, when millions of people are not allowed to work, not allowed to go to school, not allowed to live in certain places, not allowed access to all of the benefits that society offers to the rest of its members? When the police raid workplaces to round them up and deport them? When they live in fear that their very existence will be discovered, and they will be punished?
Perhaps we can all learn something from Rowling’s characters: from the Weasley family, ardent defenders of the rights of the non-wizard-born, on to Hermione, the “mud-blood” who out-wizards them all, and finally Harry, whose quest to defeat the evil Voldemort is inextricably bound up with the defense of the rights of those whom Voldemort seeks to expel, exploit and destroy. If we cannot see reflections of our own national discourse on immigrants in their struggle, perhaps we are closing our eyes to Rowling’s most important lesson.
Aviva Chomsky is a professor of history at Salem State College. Her new book, They Take Our Jobs! And 20 Other Myths About Immigration, was just published by Beacon Press.
Thursday 13 September 2007
Getting Rich - Paul Mckenna
Final Day: The success strategy
The millionaires I have interviewed while devising this system have all shared the same fundamental route to success. Today I reveal the six stepping stones to wealth
Paul McKenna
One of the most amazing discoveries I had when studying the high achievers for this book was that, while they all have their individual styles in business, they all share the same fundamental strategy for creating wealth. Broadly speaking, that strategy involves thinking about a product, service or business in an entrepreneurial way.
Today I will show you how you can use this same wealth-creating template to create your own successful projects. I used to find the idea of “entrepreneurship” a bit daunting, but then I spoke with Peter Jones, widely acknowledged as one of Britain’s most successful young entrepreneurs.
Despite his modest beginnings, his businesses have an annual turnover of £200 million. He pointed out to me that the word “entrepreneur” simply means “someone who gets paid for adding value”. When you are willing to think of yourself as a value creator, your “job” becomes quite simple: identify a field where you would like to add value, then identify the value you would like to add.
Now I will outline the six steps to wealth that emerged again and again as I studied the business geniuses for this book. Do not worry if you are already in business or are determined to remain an employee – these same six steps will be of great use to you to find the hidden wealth in your current working situation, whatever it may be.
Let’s get things started . . .
Step 1: Choose something you have a passion for or genuine interest in
Sir Richard Branson began in magazines and then rock music; Peter Jones took his fascination with tennis and computers and used them first to set up a tennis academy and then a business selling computer accessories. In his words, “Having a passion for what you do is very important, especially when you are going to be working all hours to try and make the business work. In addition, your passion and belief will motivate others around you.”
Of course, your passion and interest can come from what you hate as much as what you love. When Dame Anita Roddick started the Body Shop, she was as determined to provide a safe and animal-friendly alternative to the standard operating practices of the cosmetics industry as she was to create a vehicle for putting her beliefs into action about what truly mattered in the world.
Step 2: Figure out where you can add value
Once you have identified something you have a genuine interest in and passion for, you then need to look for what you can bring to that field that isn’t already there.
Here are some of the questions the rich-thinking entrepreneurs ask themselves in examining the potential to add value to any business, product or service:
–– Who is already making money in this area?
–– What sets apart the most successful people in this field from the rest?
–– What’s missing? What isn’t being done?
–– What do the people who are already using this product or service really want?
–– What can I offer that’s different to everyone else?
Step 3: Vividly imagine every detail of how the business will work
One of the surprising differences between the most successful entrepreneurs I interviewed and the rest was their willingness to take the time to vividly imagine the details of every new enterprise before leaping into action. For example, Sol Kerzner designs a hotel in his mind long before he builds it in the real world. He imagines every detail – how it will look, how each surface will feel, how the whole environment will be. Sir Richard Branson makes pages and pages of detailed notes, describing every aspect of the business in great detail.
Peter Jones actually “interrogates” the whole concept, searching for both the obvious and hidden areas of potential profits and potential obstacles to its success. If the obstacles can be overcome and he can see the business working, he gets a massive burst of motivation. He vividly imagines the business working and keeps this visualisation regularly in mind.
He says: “I am a great believer that it is always easier to achieve something that you have already done, even though I may have achieved it only in my own mind. This gives me great confidence.” However you choose to do it, taking the time to build your business in your mind and/ or on paper is an essential step in the process. Be sure to look at the downside as well as the up – the more potential obstacles you can foresee and solve in advance, the fewer real obstacles you will face and the easier it will be to overcome them.
Step 4: Evaluate the risks and decide which ones are worth taking
Willingness to take risks after calculating the upside and downside is a common one among successful entrepreneurs. The genius film-maker George Lucas made billions from the merchandising rights to his Star Wars movies. When I spoke to him, he told me that he got the idea when he took a careful look at the potential upside and downside of the very first movie in the series. “Everyone has since thought this was a clever financial strategy,” said Lucas, “but the truth is that I was concerned that the film might not work commercially. I knew it had the potential to achieve cult status, so I figured if I could make money on the merchandising it would help me to fund another film.” Here’s a quick way to calculate the risk/reward ratio of any new enterprise for yourself . . .
Calculating risks
1. Think about a decision you are considering making that feels a bit risky.
2. On a scale from 1 to 10, how much good could come of taking this risk if you are successful?
3. On a scale from 1 to 10, how much of a negative impact would this risk not working have on your business or in your life?
4. If the first number is bigger than the second, the risk/reward ratio is weighted towards action; if the second number is bigger than the first, it’s probably best to find another way to proceed.
Step 5: Take massive action
Another thing I noticed about the rich thinkers and successful entrepreneurs was that there is virtually no gap between their decisions and their actions. Once they decided to go ahead with a project, the first action steps were generally taken within 24 hours.
When Mark Burnett arrived in LA in 1982, he had £300 in his pocket and no return ticket. His first job was selling T-shirts on Venice beach. Today he is the most successful TV producer in the world. He told me his motto is “jump in” – take action even if you are not entirely ready. He firmly believes that a major part of his success has been his willingness to go for what he’s passionate about, even if he isn’t completely convinced he can actually pull it off. For myself, I like to think of action as the great equaliser.
No matter what your level of intelligence, education or capital, a willingness to take massive action instantly puts you on an equal footing with the wealthiest men and women in the world.
Step 6: Expect obstacles, learn from setbacks and keep moving towards your goals
Although only some of the rich thinkers I worked with would describe themselves as optimists, all of them are realists. Nothing in life unfolds exactly as planned, and a road without bumps is almost certainly not headed anywhere worthwhile.
Rather than take obstacles as a reason to give up or a “sign from the universe”, the truly successful entrepreneurs simply use each obstacle as an opportunity for creative problem-solving and creative action. If a business ultimately doesn’t work out, they pick themselves up, dust themselves off and move on. This resilience comes from self-belief and thorough downside planning. Peter Jones shared his version of this process: if obstacles keep occurring, I stop and ask: What can I learn from this obstacle? What do we need to do differently to make it work? I then create a new visualisation of how the business needs to function and keep running this scenario in my mind until I know it will work. If another obstacle or challenge occurs further down the line, I can then return to my vision for guidance and motivation. While things may not always happen totally as I planned, I always get to my goal in the end.
The millionaire mindset
Donald Trump: “You have 50,000 thoughts a day. You might as well make them big ones”
I Can Make You Rich, by Paul McKenna, published on September 11 by Transworld Publishers, £18.99. Available for £17.09 from Times BooksFirst, 0870 1608080
The millionaires I have interviewed while devising this system have all shared the same fundamental route to success. Today I reveal the six stepping stones to wealth
Paul McKenna
One of the most amazing discoveries I had when studying the high achievers for this book was that, while they all have their individual styles in business, they all share the same fundamental strategy for creating wealth. Broadly speaking, that strategy involves thinking about a product, service or business in an entrepreneurial way.
Today I will show you how you can use this same wealth-creating template to create your own successful projects. I used to find the idea of “entrepreneurship” a bit daunting, but then I spoke with Peter Jones, widely acknowledged as one of Britain’s most successful young entrepreneurs.
Despite his modest beginnings, his businesses have an annual turnover of £200 million. He pointed out to me that the word “entrepreneur” simply means “someone who gets paid for adding value”. When you are willing to think of yourself as a value creator, your “job” becomes quite simple: identify a field where you would like to add value, then identify the value you would like to add.
Now I will outline the six steps to wealth that emerged again and again as I studied the business geniuses for this book. Do not worry if you are already in business or are determined to remain an employee – these same six steps will be of great use to you to find the hidden wealth in your current working situation, whatever it may be.
Let’s get things started . . .
Step 1: Choose something you have a passion for or genuine interest in
Sir Richard Branson began in magazines and then rock music; Peter Jones took his fascination with tennis and computers and used them first to set up a tennis academy and then a business selling computer accessories. In his words, “Having a passion for what you do is very important, especially when you are going to be working all hours to try and make the business work. In addition, your passion and belief will motivate others around you.”
Of course, your passion and interest can come from what you hate as much as what you love. When Dame Anita Roddick started the Body Shop, she was as determined to provide a safe and animal-friendly alternative to the standard operating practices of the cosmetics industry as she was to create a vehicle for putting her beliefs into action about what truly mattered in the world.
Step 2: Figure out where you can add value
Once you have identified something you have a genuine interest in and passion for, you then need to look for what you can bring to that field that isn’t already there.
Here are some of the questions the rich-thinking entrepreneurs ask themselves in examining the potential to add value to any business, product or service:
–– Who is already making money in this area?
–– What sets apart the most successful people in this field from the rest?
–– What’s missing? What isn’t being done?
–– What do the people who are already using this product or service really want?
–– What can I offer that’s different to everyone else?
Step 3: Vividly imagine every detail of how the business will work
One of the surprising differences between the most successful entrepreneurs I interviewed and the rest was their willingness to take the time to vividly imagine the details of every new enterprise before leaping into action. For example, Sol Kerzner designs a hotel in his mind long before he builds it in the real world. He imagines every detail – how it will look, how each surface will feel, how the whole environment will be. Sir Richard Branson makes pages and pages of detailed notes, describing every aspect of the business in great detail.
Peter Jones actually “interrogates” the whole concept, searching for both the obvious and hidden areas of potential profits and potential obstacles to its success. If the obstacles can be overcome and he can see the business working, he gets a massive burst of motivation. He vividly imagines the business working and keeps this visualisation regularly in mind.
He says: “I am a great believer that it is always easier to achieve something that you have already done, even though I may have achieved it only in my own mind. This gives me great confidence.” However you choose to do it, taking the time to build your business in your mind and/ or on paper is an essential step in the process. Be sure to look at the downside as well as the up – the more potential obstacles you can foresee and solve in advance, the fewer real obstacles you will face and the easier it will be to overcome them.
Step 4: Evaluate the risks and decide which ones are worth taking
Willingness to take risks after calculating the upside and downside is a common one among successful entrepreneurs. The genius film-maker George Lucas made billions from the merchandising rights to his Star Wars movies. When I spoke to him, he told me that he got the idea when he took a careful look at the potential upside and downside of the very first movie in the series. “Everyone has since thought this was a clever financial strategy,” said Lucas, “but the truth is that I was concerned that the film might not work commercially. I knew it had the potential to achieve cult status, so I figured if I could make money on the merchandising it would help me to fund another film.” Here’s a quick way to calculate the risk/reward ratio of any new enterprise for yourself . . .
Calculating risks
1. Think about a decision you are considering making that feels a bit risky.
2. On a scale from 1 to 10, how much good could come of taking this risk if you are successful?
3. On a scale from 1 to 10, how much of a negative impact would this risk not working have on your business or in your life?
4. If the first number is bigger than the second, the risk/reward ratio is weighted towards action; if the second number is bigger than the first, it’s probably best to find another way to proceed.
Step 5: Take massive action
Another thing I noticed about the rich thinkers and successful entrepreneurs was that there is virtually no gap between their decisions and their actions. Once they decided to go ahead with a project, the first action steps were generally taken within 24 hours.
When Mark Burnett arrived in LA in 1982, he had £300 in his pocket and no return ticket. His first job was selling T-shirts on Venice beach. Today he is the most successful TV producer in the world. He told me his motto is “jump in” – take action even if you are not entirely ready. He firmly believes that a major part of his success has been his willingness to go for what he’s passionate about, even if he isn’t completely convinced he can actually pull it off. For myself, I like to think of action as the great equaliser.
No matter what your level of intelligence, education or capital, a willingness to take massive action instantly puts you on an equal footing with the wealthiest men and women in the world.
Step 6: Expect obstacles, learn from setbacks and keep moving towards your goals
Although only some of the rich thinkers I worked with would describe themselves as optimists, all of them are realists. Nothing in life unfolds exactly as planned, and a road without bumps is almost certainly not headed anywhere worthwhile.
Rather than take obstacles as a reason to give up or a “sign from the universe”, the truly successful entrepreneurs simply use each obstacle as an opportunity for creative problem-solving and creative action. If a business ultimately doesn’t work out, they pick themselves up, dust themselves off and move on. This resilience comes from self-belief and thorough downside planning. Peter Jones shared his version of this process: if obstacles keep occurring, I stop and ask: What can I learn from this obstacle? What do we need to do differently to make it work? I then create a new visualisation of how the business needs to function and keep running this scenario in my mind until I know it will work. If another obstacle or challenge occurs further down the line, I can then return to my vision for guidance and motivation. While things may not always happen totally as I planned, I always get to my goal in the end.
The millionaire mindset
Donald Trump: “You have 50,000 thoughts a day. You might as well make them big ones”
I Can Make You Rich, by Paul McKenna, published on September 11 by Transworld Publishers, £18.99. Available for £17.09 from Times BooksFirst, 0870 1608080
Wednesday 12 September 2007
American Economy: R.I.P.
By Paul Craig Roberts
12 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The US economy continues its slow death before our eyes, but economists, policymakers, and most of the public are blind to the tottering fabled land of opportunity.
In August jobs in goods-producing industries declined by 64,000. The US economy lost 4,000 jobs overall. The private sector created a mere 24,000 jobs, all of which could be attributed to the 24,100 new jobs for waitresses and bartenders. The government sector lost 28,000 jobs.
In the 21st century the US economy has ceased to create jobs in export industries and in industries that compete with imports. US job growth has been confined to domestic services, principally to food services and drinking places (waitresses and bartenders), private education and health services (ambulatory health care and hospital orderlies), and construction (which now has tanked). The lack of job growth in higher productivity, higher paid occupations associated with the American middle and upper middle classes will eventually kill the US consumer market.
The unemployment rate held steady, but that is because 340,000 Americans unable to find jobs dropped out of the labor force in August. The US measures unemployment only among the active work force, which includes those seeking jobs. Those who are discouraged and have given up are not counted as unemployed.
With goods producing industries in long term decline as more and more production of US firms is moved offshore, the engineering professions are in decline. Managerial jobs are primarily confined to retail trade and financial services.
Franchises and chains have curtailed opportunities for independent family businesses, and the US government’s open borders policy denies unskilled jobs to the displaced members of the middle class.
When US companies offshore their production for US markets, the consequences for the US economy are highly detrimental. One consequence is that foreign labor is substituted for US labor, resulting in a shriveling of career opportunities and income growth in the US. Another is that US Gross Domestic Product is turned into imports. By turning US brand names into imports, offshoring has a double whammy on the US trade deficit. Simultaneously, imports rise by the amount of offshored production, and the supply of exportable manufactured goods declines by the same amount.
The US now has a trade deficit with every part of the world. In 2006 (the latest annual data), the US had a trade deficit totaling $838,271,000,000.
The US trade deficit with Europe was $142,538,000,000. With Canada the deficit was $75,085,000,000. With Latin America it was $112,579,000,000 (of which $67,303,000,000 was with Mexico). The deficit with Asia and Pacific was $409,765,000,000 (of which $233,087,000,000 was with China and $90,966,000,000 was with Japan). With the Middle East the deficit was $36,112,000,000, and with Africa the US trade deficit was $62,192,000,000.
Public worry for three decades about the US oil deficit has created a false impression among Americans that a self-sufficient America is impaired only by dependence on Middle East oil. The fact of the matter is that the total US deficit with OPEC, an organization that includes as many countries outside the Middle East as within it, is $106,260,000,000, or about one-eighth of the annual US trade deficit.
Moreover, the US gets most of its oil from outside the Middle East, and the US trade deficit reflects this fact. The US deficit with Nigeria, Mexico, and Venezuela is 3.3 times larger than the US trade deficit with the Middle East despite the fact that the US sells more to Venezuela and 18 times more to Mexico than it does to Saudi Arabia.
What is striking about US dependency on imports is that it is practically across the board. Americans are dependent on imports of foreign foods, feeds, and beverages in the amount of $8,975,000,000.
Americans are dependent on imports of foreign Industrial supplies and materials in the amount of $326,459,000,000--more than three times US dependency on OPEC.
Americans can no longer provide their own transportation. They are dependent on imports of automotive vehicles, parts, and engines in the amount of $149,499,000,000, or 1.5 times greater than the US dependency on OPEC.
In addition to the automobile dependency, Americans are 3.4 times more dependent on imports of manufactured consumer durable and nondurable goods than they are on OPEC. Americans no longer can produce their own clothes, shoes, or household appliances and have a trade deficit in consumer manufactured goods in the amount of $336,118,000,000.
The US “superpower” even has a deficit in capital goods, including machinery, electric generating machinery, machine tools, computers, and telecommunications equipment.
What does it mean that the US has a $800 billion trade deficit?
It means that Americans are consuming $800 billion more than they are producing.
How do Americans pay for it?
They pay for it by giving up ownership of existing assets--stocks, bonds, companies, real estate, commodities. America used to be a creditor nation. Now America is a debtor nation. Foreigners own $2.5 trillion more of American assets than Americans own of foreign assets. When foreigners acquire ownership of US assets, they also acquire ownership of the future income streams that the assets produce. More income shifts away from Americans.
How long can Americans consume more than they can produce?
American over-consumption can continue for as long as Americans can find ways to go deeper in personal debt in order to finance their consumption and for as long as the US dollar can remain the world reserve currency.
The 21st century has brought Americans (with the exception of CEOs, hedge fund managers and investment bankers) no growth in real median household income. Americans have increased their consumption by dropping their saving rate to the depression level of 1933 when there was massive unemployment and by spending their home equity and running up credit card bills. The ability of a population, severely impacted by the loss of good jobs to foreigners as a result of offshoring and H-1B work visas and by the bursting of the housing bubble, to continue to accumulate more personal debt is limited to say the least.
Foreigners accept US dollars in exchange for their real goods and services, because dollars can be used to settle every country’s international accounts. By running a trade deficit, the US insures the financing of its government budget deficit as the surplus dollars in foreign hands are invested in US Treasuries and other dollar-denominated assets.
The ability of the US dollar to retain its reserve currency status is eroding due to the continuous increases in US budget and trade deficits. Today the world is literally flooded with dollars. In attempts to reduce the rate at which they are accumulating dollars, foreign governments and investors are diversifying into other traded currencies. As a result, the dollar prices of the Euro, UK pound, Canadian dollar, Thai baht, and other currencies have been bid up. In the 21st century, the US dollar has declined about 33 percent against other currencies. The US dollar remains the reserve currency primarily due to habit and the lack of a clear alternative.
The data used in this article is freely available. It can be found at two official US government sites: http://www.bea.gov/international/
bp_web/simple.cfm?anon=71&table_id=20&area_id=3 and http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm
The jobs data and the absence of growth in real income for most of the population are inconsistent with reports of US GDP and productivity growth. Economists take for granted that the work force is paid in keeping with its productivity. A rise in productivity thus translates into a rise in real incomes of workers. Yet, we have had years of reported strong productivity growth but stagnant or declining household incomes. And somehow the GDP is rising, but not the incomes of the work force.
Something is wrong here. Either the data indicating productivity and GDP growth are wrong or Karl Marx was right that capitalism works to concentrate income in the hands of the few capitalists. A case can be made for both explanations.
Recently an economist, Susan Houseman, discovered that the reliability of some US economics statistics has been impaired by offshoring. Houseman found that cost reductions achieved by US firms shifting production offshore are being miscounted as GDP growth in the US and that productivity gains achieved by US firms when they move design, research, and development offshore are showing up as increases in US productivity. Obviously, production and productivity that occur abroad are not part of the US domestic economy.
Houseman’s discovery rated a Business Week cover story last June 18, but her important discovery seems already to have gone down the memory hole. The economics profession has over-committed itself to the “benefits” of offshoring, globalism, and the non-existent “New Economy.” Houseman’s discovery is too much of a threat to economists’ human capital, corporate research grants, and free market ideology.
The media have likewise let the story go, because in the 1990s the Clinton administration and Congress permitted a few mega-corporations to concentrate in their hands the ownership of the US media, which reports in keeping with corporate and government interests.
The case for Marx is that offshoring has boosted corporate earnings by lowering labor costs, thereby concentrating income growth in the hands of the owners and managers of capital. According to Forbes magazine, the top 20 earners among private equity and hedge fund managers are earning average yearly compensation of $657,500,000, with four actually earning more than $1 billion annually. The otherwise excessive $36,400,000 average annual pay of the 20 top earners among CEOs of publicly-held companies looks paltry by comparison. The careers and financial prospects of many Americans were destroyed to achieve these lofty earnings for the few.
Hubris prevents realization that Americans are losing their economic future along with their civil liberties and are on the verge of enserfment.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good
12 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The US economy continues its slow death before our eyes, but economists, policymakers, and most of the public are blind to the tottering fabled land of opportunity.
In August jobs in goods-producing industries declined by 64,000. The US economy lost 4,000 jobs overall. The private sector created a mere 24,000 jobs, all of which could be attributed to the 24,100 new jobs for waitresses and bartenders. The government sector lost 28,000 jobs.
In the 21st century the US economy has ceased to create jobs in export industries and in industries that compete with imports. US job growth has been confined to domestic services, principally to food services and drinking places (waitresses and bartenders), private education and health services (ambulatory health care and hospital orderlies), and construction (which now has tanked). The lack of job growth in higher productivity, higher paid occupations associated with the American middle and upper middle classes will eventually kill the US consumer market.
The unemployment rate held steady, but that is because 340,000 Americans unable to find jobs dropped out of the labor force in August. The US measures unemployment only among the active work force, which includes those seeking jobs. Those who are discouraged and have given up are not counted as unemployed.
With goods producing industries in long term decline as more and more production of US firms is moved offshore, the engineering professions are in decline. Managerial jobs are primarily confined to retail trade and financial services.
Franchises and chains have curtailed opportunities for independent family businesses, and the US government’s open borders policy denies unskilled jobs to the displaced members of the middle class.
When US companies offshore their production for US markets, the consequences for the US economy are highly detrimental. One consequence is that foreign labor is substituted for US labor, resulting in a shriveling of career opportunities and income growth in the US. Another is that US Gross Domestic Product is turned into imports. By turning US brand names into imports, offshoring has a double whammy on the US trade deficit. Simultaneously, imports rise by the amount of offshored production, and the supply of exportable manufactured goods declines by the same amount.
The US now has a trade deficit with every part of the world. In 2006 (the latest annual data), the US had a trade deficit totaling $838,271,000,000.
The US trade deficit with Europe was $142,538,000,000. With Canada the deficit was $75,085,000,000. With Latin America it was $112,579,000,000 (of which $67,303,000,000 was with Mexico). The deficit with Asia and Pacific was $409,765,000,000 (of which $233,087,000,000 was with China and $90,966,000,000 was with Japan). With the Middle East the deficit was $36,112,000,000, and with Africa the US trade deficit was $62,192,000,000.
Public worry for three decades about the US oil deficit has created a false impression among Americans that a self-sufficient America is impaired only by dependence on Middle East oil. The fact of the matter is that the total US deficit with OPEC, an organization that includes as many countries outside the Middle East as within it, is $106,260,000,000, or about one-eighth of the annual US trade deficit.
Moreover, the US gets most of its oil from outside the Middle East, and the US trade deficit reflects this fact. The US deficit with Nigeria, Mexico, and Venezuela is 3.3 times larger than the US trade deficit with the Middle East despite the fact that the US sells more to Venezuela and 18 times more to Mexico than it does to Saudi Arabia.
What is striking about US dependency on imports is that it is practically across the board. Americans are dependent on imports of foreign foods, feeds, and beverages in the amount of $8,975,000,000.
Americans are dependent on imports of foreign Industrial supplies and materials in the amount of $326,459,000,000--more than three times US dependency on OPEC.
Americans can no longer provide their own transportation. They are dependent on imports of automotive vehicles, parts, and engines in the amount of $149,499,000,000, or 1.5 times greater than the US dependency on OPEC.
In addition to the automobile dependency, Americans are 3.4 times more dependent on imports of manufactured consumer durable and nondurable goods than they are on OPEC. Americans no longer can produce their own clothes, shoes, or household appliances and have a trade deficit in consumer manufactured goods in the amount of $336,118,000,000.
The US “superpower” even has a deficit in capital goods, including machinery, electric generating machinery, machine tools, computers, and telecommunications equipment.
What does it mean that the US has a $800 billion trade deficit?
It means that Americans are consuming $800 billion more than they are producing.
How do Americans pay for it?
They pay for it by giving up ownership of existing assets--stocks, bonds, companies, real estate, commodities. America used to be a creditor nation. Now America is a debtor nation. Foreigners own $2.5 trillion more of American assets than Americans own of foreign assets. When foreigners acquire ownership of US assets, they also acquire ownership of the future income streams that the assets produce. More income shifts away from Americans.
How long can Americans consume more than they can produce?
American over-consumption can continue for as long as Americans can find ways to go deeper in personal debt in order to finance their consumption and for as long as the US dollar can remain the world reserve currency.
The 21st century has brought Americans (with the exception of CEOs, hedge fund managers and investment bankers) no growth in real median household income. Americans have increased their consumption by dropping their saving rate to the depression level of 1933 when there was massive unemployment and by spending their home equity and running up credit card bills. The ability of a population, severely impacted by the loss of good jobs to foreigners as a result of offshoring and H-1B work visas and by the bursting of the housing bubble, to continue to accumulate more personal debt is limited to say the least.
Foreigners accept US dollars in exchange for their real goods and services, because dollars can be used to settle every country’s international accounts. By running a trade deficit, the US insures the financing of its government budget deficit as the surplus dollars in foreign hands are invested in US Treasuries and other dollar-denominated assets.
The ability of the US dollar to retain its reserve currency status is eroding due to the continuous increases in US budget and trade deficits. Today the world is literally flooded with dollars. In attempts to reduce the rate at which they are accumulating dollars, foreign governments and investors are diversifying into other traded currencies. As a result, the dollar prices of the Euro, UK pound, Canadian dollar, Thai baht, and other currencies have been bid up. In the 21st century, the US dollar has declined about 33 percent against other currencies. The US dollar remains the reserve currency primarily due to habit and the lack of a clear alternative.
The data used in this article is freely available. It can be found at two official US government sites: http://www.bea.gov/international/
bp_web/simple.cfm?anon=71&table_id=20&area_id=3 and http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm
The jobs data and the absence of growth in real income for most of the population are inconsistent with reports of US GDP and productivity growth. Economists take for granted that the work force is paid in keeping with its productivity. A rise in productivity thus translates into a rise in real incomes of workers. Yet, we have had years of reported strong productivity growth but stagnant or declining household incomes. And somehow the GDP is rising, but not the incomes of the work force.
Something is wrong here. Either the data indicating productivity and GDP growth are wrong or Karl Marx was right that capitalism works to concentrate income in the hands of the few capitalists. A case can be made for both explanations.
Recently an economist, Susan Houseman, discovered that the reliability of some US economics statistics has been impaired by offshoring. Houseman found that cost reductions achieved by US firms shifting production offshore are being miscounted as GDP growth in the US and that productivity gains achieved by US firms when they move design, research, and development offshore are showing up as increases in US productivity. Obviously, production and productivity that occur abroad are not part of the US domestic economy.
Houseman’s discovery rated a Business Week cover story last June 18, but her important discovery seems already to have gone down the memory hole. The economics profession has over-committed itself to the “benefits” of offshoring, globalism, and the non-existent “New Economy.” Houseman’s discovery is too much of a threat to economists’ human capital, corporate research grants, and free market ideology.
The media have likewise let the story go, because in the 1990s the Clinton administration and Congress permitted a few mega-corporations to concentrate in their hands the ownership of the US media, which reports in keeping with corporate and government interests.
The case for Marx is that offshoring has boosted corporate earnings by lowering labor costs, thereby concentrating income growth in the hands of the owners and managers of capital. According to Forbes magazine, the top 20 earners among private equity and hedge fund managers are earning average yearly compensation of $657,500,000, with four actually earning more than $1 billion annually. The otherwise excessive $36,400,000 average annual pay of the 20 top earners among CEOs of publicly-held companies looks paltry by comparison. The careers and financial prospects of many Americans were destroyed to achieve these lofty earnings for the few.
Hubris prevents realization that Americans are losing their economic future along with their civil liberties and are on the verge of enserfment.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good
Tuesday 11 September 2007
The Conservative morality
God: God is all good and all powerful, at the top of a natural hierarchy in which morality is linked with power. God wants good people to be in charge. Virtue is rewarded with power. God wants a hierarchical society in which there are moral authorities who should be obeyed.
Morality:
Morality:
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