The recent posts on prisons and drugs, combined with the housing meltdown and accompanying credit crunch (PDF), got me thinking of Catherine Austin Fitts, who’s the only thinker I know who’s integrating all of these seemingly disparate trends. On the tapeworm economy:
In a tapeworm economy a small group of insiders centralize political and economic power at the expense of people, living things and the environment, in a manner that destroys real wealth. A tapeworm economy is one in which it is considered acceptable to make money from our popsicle index going down. In investment terms, it is an economy with a negative return on investment. It is parasitic in nature.
The way an actual tapeworm operates is to inject its host with a chemical that makes the host crave what is good for the tapeworm and bad for the host. So the Tapeworm Economy is adept at using media and education and numerous financial incentives to get us acting against our own strategic interests and instead supporting and depending on the Tapeworm.
Sound familiar?
The symptoms of the Tapeworm are many - narcotics trafficking that targets our children, runaway exploitive and predatory corporate practices such as the patenting of life, terminator seed and the destruction of our topsoil and food supply, fraudulent inducement of debt to homeowners, students and consumers, suppression of knowledge and renewable energy technology, criminal mismanagement of government credit and resources, black budget operations and the manipulation of currency, financial and precious metal prices and markets. These practices introduce organized crime throughout all aspects of our lives… these transactions drain our families and neighborhoods on a daily basis – much like a tapeworm drains its host.
As we understand the history of these drains in our lives – who is doing them and how we are complicit – we begin to understand the power of the opportunity to transform them in a manner that is safe and profitable for ourselves and those we love.
As we begin to pull our resources out of the Tapeworm, and learn to invest our time and assets in building the world we want, by building real wealth and financial liquidity outside the Tapeworm, and by raising our popsicle index without putting others’ at risk, the Tapeworm stronghold will weaken and the excellence of local living economies and diversified enterprises will prosper worldwide – one neighborhood, one enterprise and one investment at a time.
Hopefully.
Lots of the work we do here—destroying structures of deference (Fuck
!), learning to take control of our bodies and taste for ourselves again, making wine, animal rescue, sharing recipes, gardening, writing songs—has to do with “pulling our resources” out of the tapeworm.
One thing we don’t write about—maybe because none of us seem to have much of it—is money. Catherine Austin Fitts, interestingly, seems to understand money.
Only connect….
NOTE From case study on Dillon, Read:
With this in mind, I decided to write “Dillon Read & Co Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits” as a case study designed to help illuminate the deeper system. It details the story of two teams with two competing visions for America. The first was a vision shared by my old firm on Wall Street — Dillon Read — and the Clinton Administration with the full support of a bipartisan Congress. In this vision, America’s aristocracy makes money by ensnaring our youth in a pincer movement of drugs and prisons and wins middle class support for these policies through a steady and growing stream of government funding and contracts for War on Drugs activities at federal, state and local levels. This consensus is made all the more powerful by the gush of growing debt and derivatives used to bubble the housing and mortgage markets, manipulate the stock and precious metals markets and finance trillions missing from the US government in the largest pump and dump in history — the pump and dump of the entire American economy. This is more than a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide — a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts.
Sound familiar?
Front page
Terrorism Isn't Just
Worked to the limit about keeping his war going. The cretin in chief is also about making the ignorant fear those illeguls, gays and the ’hooligans’ - and anyone else that they will believe he’s keeping out of their home and homeland. It takes a 20% I.Q. to believe a line I saw yesterday; “Alert: How the ACLU is using public schools to force children to accept homosexual behavior.” But it’s raising money for the wingers, and making new supporters for their pretended threats.
Ruth
"Tapeworm economy" is bigger than electoral politics or even...
… kulturkamp.
It’s about returning money and power to productive uses.
If we’re going to “take the body” I think this is how…
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
"Tapeworm economy"
Why not just say Ponzi or Pyramid scheme.
A ponzi scheme is a purely
A ponzi scheme is a purely financial scheme.
The tapeworm economy has financial aspects, but political and ethical implications well. You might think of a Ponzi scheme as one of the ways that the host is “injected” with “a chemical that makes the host crave what is good for the tapeworm.”
The metaphor is just so much richer.
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
purely financial
Lambert.
Purely financial, you mean markets and money right? That means laws and habits right? I understand tapeworm is sexy and more accessible but richer?
Naww.
Our money system, social security, Enron, World Com, The carry trade, The Derivatives market, the mortgage crisis are all simply Pyramid schemes. That term covers the politics, legislation, manipulation and support needed to support hte market arrangement. It even covers the coercion of the participants.
The only real benefit I see is that most people don’t understand fiat money, markets, or political economy. I think it abstracts in ways that make the real beahvior and intersection of actors, institutions and motivations inaccessible on a strategic and tactical level of analysis. Why work through all the necessary metaphors between two biological systems that need to map onto a political economic system when it has already been done. Because if you don’t do that (work through the tenor/vehicle relationship of all the levels of the metaphor) your analysis will be off. Besides that it obsucures the historical data on what she calls “tapeworm” which is just a pyramid model - the extraction of abnormal profits through the structuring of the market so that returns are genrated not only from profit but also from the cannibalization of wealth from those at the bottom of the pyramid. The need to construct and control a market will cover the political, psychological, economic (thermodynamic) and coercive dimension of the analysis.
It is a more visceral metaphor, just not new.
Sorry I had the same reaction when they touted the internet as the “new economy” as if networked economies and markets especially for non-rivalrous resources were “new.” This “tapeworm” meme has the same potential for delusion.
Ponzi scheme
I don’t disagree that the financial system includes, or is even a function of, “laws and habits.” However, and with the caveat that have no aptitude for making money, and know little about finance, a Ponzi scheme (which doesn’t necessarily equal pyramind scheme) has connotes fraudulent market manipulation. I just don’t think that’s a rich enough metphor for what we face — unless you really, really want to push “manipulation” beyond where I think can go without breaking (as I would argue that you do, with “cannibalization”).
You argue that:
In any least the WikiPedia entries I look at, I’m not seeing anything that supports what you’re saying, and I’m seeing a lot that doesn’t support it.
You write:
I don’t see where you show that it has been done, though I’m very willing to look at supporting material.
“Visceral” — Haw. Indeed.
UPDATE Of course there’s a biological component to the system we’re caught up in. To play on the Buddhist saying: “The target of marketing is desire.” Where else does desire exist except in the actual living biological components of the system that we call humans?
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
Ponzi
Ponzi schemes are a type of illegal pyramid scheme named for Charles Ponzi, who duped thousands of New England residents into investing in a postage stamp speculation scheme back in the 1920s. Ponzi thought he could take advantage of differences between U.S. and foreign currencies used to buy and sell international mail coupons. Ponzi told investors that he could provide a 40% return in just 90 days compared with 5% for bank savings accounts. Ponzi was deluged with funds from investors, taking in $1 million during one three-hour period—and this was 1921! Though a few early investors were paid off to make the scheme look legitimate, an investigation found that Ponzi had only purchased about $30 worth of the international mail coupons.
Link
Yes, I had an idea what a Ponzi scheme is
My other points remain. Neither metaphor, tapeworm or [Ponzi|pyramid] scheme may have the analytical rigor demanded by our current plight, but I do know that Ponzi scheme doesn’t have the connotations I want and that I think we need. Je repete:
The sense of a parasitical species, instantiating itself inside us, bending our selves and our desires to its needs, just isn’t there with “Ponzi scheme.” The words are just wrong. Sorry.
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
heh, fighting over jargon, how adorable!
and i really mean that, guys. reminds me of the old Ivory Tower days.
i’m coming down on the side of “tapeworm,” but i think using “ponzi” is probably more effective with low-information types. there are merits to both terms and situations in which they may both be appropriate. imho.
Ivory Tower Dwellers Don't Know Tapeworms
Sorry, but as long as we’re discussing jargon, may I point out that the term ’tapeworm’ makes the implication of extremely bad sanitation, and association of lower class. So your Ivory Tower dwellers woul tend not to feel it applies to them - as presently is definitely happening in the environmental sensitivity area. The corporate sector has definitely made it a DFH
issue.
Ruth
You know better than that, CD
Unless your days in the groves of academe taught you that words aren’t important?
Meanwhile, the links at the source quoted are useful and interesting. See commment about at je repete. I’m just trying to do a little conceptual integration here, something new — and I suspect that’s the real source of resistance, here. Eh?
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
lambert, i think i need to come up there and
take you out dancing and to dinner, perhaps provide some other things. you’re too serious these days. you know i’m just funnin with you, and i really do appreciate the discourse-work you do. it’s important and i value these discussions, even as i pimp you guys now and again.
Actually I think of the
Actually I think of the Wall Street wealthy as being more akin to a large mass of nasty flea like maggot parasites. These gambling parasites jump in mass from one host to the next causing mass catastrophe, after catastrophe. They devour labor and justify that it will raise the standard of living for everyone as they feast ravenously upon the financial corpses of average citizens and use the banking system to fund their destructive habit.
They proclaim capitalism and profit as greater than liberty and believe that capitalism leads to democracy. Even though capitalism has no problem through out history in trading slaves or killing people in order to make a profit for Wall Street or the Kings who owned all the land.
Another way to think of what Wall Street has become is a vampire in our current pulp fiction. These vampires are often aristocracy of past ages, immortal and believe they are above the masses they see as cattle. They feed on them when they please and love devouring hapless people who are unable to defend themselves from their predatory ways.
Liberty is the equality of mankind and you won’t see a wealthy aristocrat ever speak of such an absurd concept that has outlived its use in the United States.