In the capital of greed so pernicious that it’s wrecking lives around the world, two artists teased $9,000 out of Grants for Arts in Public Spaces and used it to open a Free Store.

"It's a good time to do a project like this, especially near Wall Street,” said co-owner Athena Robles. No one has any money now."

The magnanimous impulse of Robles and her partner, Anna Stein, is being rewarded in kind, by customers who replenish their stock with donated merchandise. Contributions aren’t required, but many patrons prefer the give-and-take of bartering over simply taking. (How’s that for embodying the change we most need today?)

No doubt some would see free stores as rivals to charities and churches that run thrift shops and giveaway programs, but really why should they hold a monopoly on circulating the items we can do without?  Too, there’s no stigma attached to receiving largesse that’s available to everyone (nor any chance of being evangelized, in exchange for a t-shirt).

Sure, some people would take unfair advantage when invited to grab whatever they need, but most of us still possess scruples, no matter what else we’ve lost.

In my view, Robles and Stein’s store is a fabulous model for communities everywhere.  While I’m conflicted about calling it “art”, it’s certainly a beautiful creation.  And it wouldn’t take a grant to start one – just a group of friends with things and time to give and someone who can be wheedled into supplying a storefront.  No shortage of empty retail space, is there?

Read more HERE and see if you also feel inspired.

Cold Fury has been my constant companion for months, as 11th-hour grabs by Shrub and His Thugs have multiplied too fast to keep track of them all.

I've been far too angry to blog lately, or to write anything until the season forced me to produce my annual "holiday card" -- The Harris Pole, always based on an interview with Santa.  Funnily enough, I found he shared my bleak mood.

The 2008 Harris Pole can be viewed online, complete with lots of graphics.  Here's the basic version...

NORTH POLE -- On each year's visit to formerly ice-bound Kringleshire, I find there's less of it.  Lately there's so much less that rescuing animals from the encroaching waters has become part of daily life.  When I arrived by ferry (quite a change from the sled treks of yore), the famously philanthropic Kringle clan chief S. Claus was guiding a group of polar bears to safety.  Some had been swimming for days, he said.

Claus looked as exhausted as the bears, so I helped beach his little rowboat, the HOHO, puzzled that no elves ran to assist.  Equally surprising were the many drilling platforms that had sprung up in the vicinity.  These developments turned out to be connected.

"Must be crazy-busy in the factory now," I remarked while we were walking to the house next door to it.

The comment was meant to be rhetorical, but Claus shook his head grimly.  "Everybody under 500 is in the oil business now.  Or the tourist trade.  Or merchant shipping."

"Not the elves!"

"Evolved from gnomes, elves did.  Show them a pile of gold and they revert."  Opening his front door, Claus added, "Careful.  You'd better hold the hand-rail."

To seize rails lining the hallway ahead, we bounded through the foyer as the house swayed, being buoyed on pontoons installed a few seasons previously.  Obviously the ice was softening fast.

"This'll be a houseboat by summer," Claus predicted.

"Maybe sooner," I ventured from the floor, after tumbling in my lurch from the corridor into his study.

With a half-hearted "ho-ho" (more of a "hah," really), Claus hauled me up and installed me on a chair.

"It takes a while to get your sea-legs, Dear," smiled Mrs. Claus.  Presiding over a trolley cart with bumpers around the top, she poured cocoa, then set one steaming mug into a cup-holder bored into my armrest and another within a sort of corral at the corner of her husband's desk.

A look around showed all their furniture had been bolted down or otherwise adapted to maritime usage and, through the window, I saw thick chains extending from the house to the factory, warehouse and barns, which I knew were also on pontoons.  When everything broke loose, at least it would be tethered.

As if reading my thoughts, Claus indicated a new red phone at his elbow.  "Hotline to the tugboat company."

"Are you ready to say where you're moving?" I asked.  He'd promised me the scoop, once a decision was made.

"We're going tropical," laughed Mrs. Claus from the sofa -- only half-kidding. While Claus rummaged for a map and pointed out a tiny island off the north of Iceland, she explained that the North Atlantic Current brings warm Gulf Stream water into the area.  Its moderating effect on the weather results in summer temperatures approaching 80 degrees.

"We'll save a bundle on heat," Claus forecast, "and we can mechanize the plant with cheap geothermal power. Actually it's a pity we aren't there already. We're frantic for help and the Icelanders need work."

"About Iceland, did the speculators really take it down?"

"With a little help from Gordon Brown and the EU."

"A whole country deliberately ruined!" I marveled.

"Not the only one, is it?  With these swindlers, it's another day, another outrage. Don't even get me started," Claus growled.

"Lumps of coal for our financial manipulators, then?"

"I'd planned on it.  Laid in plenty for the traitors running most national capitals, too.  And for that homicidal World Bank / International Monetary Fund crew.  But they'd just spin it.  Off they'd trot to the media, waving their stockings as 'proof' I'm for more coal-mining.  Liars!  Thieves!  Killers!"

He broke off as the room began to heave crazily, then howled, "Tankers!"

"It's like an earthquake, whenever those go by -- or the ice-cutters they've turned into cruise ships," Mrs. Claus said, fastening her seat belt.  "Buckle up," she advised.

I did.  Claus, however, pushed himself to his feet and continued fulminating against transnational banksters, associated tycoons and their paid enablers in government. He shook his fists in a display that reminded me of King Lear raging on the heath, invoking redress of evil from the unnatural tempest.

When the undulation calmed, he started pacing, still muttering under his breath.  Mrs. Claus sighed, leaned close to me and whispered, "Kris has been this way all year."

"Me, too," I admitted, then said more loudly, "There's a lot of cold fury going around."

"Not nearly enough!" Claus barked.

"Please, Darling," his wife appealed. "Remember, you have a rare gift for knowing who's naughty.  That doesn't come as easily to everyone."

"I don't see how it could be any clearer!" he snarled, handing me a sheaf of "wanted" posters.  "It's been a 30-year stickup! Bubbles, busts, bailouts; they've cleaned up all along the way!  Now they're grabbing every crumb that's left.  They've even stolen Christmas!"

"Yeah," I groaned  "That's the bitch of it.  Er, sorry. It's just -- I so wanted this holiday season to be merry  It's been so long!  We expected better this year, so it's especially hard to see the crimes magnified, opportunities lost, nearly a billion people hungry, families forced onto the streets and workers laid off every day by tens of thousands --"

Claus cut in.  "I'll tell you what the real bitch of it is -- that they want the people they robbed to blame themselves!"

"Shameless!" his wife agreed, "and we're not having it.  One of these posters is going out with each delivery, as long as they -- and the toys -- last."

Looking at the first, I felt my stomach clench and then went queasy.  There they were:  Shrub, Darth, Helicopter Ben and Paulson, the latest monster from Golden Fleece.  Further versions featured Brown, Blair, Harper, Berlusconi and other top functionaries of the world's band of jolly marauders. "Why did you put them in elf garb?" I asked.

"Same sensibility," Claus sniffed. "Oh, all right, the elves aren't that bad," he went .. registering his wife's you-know-better look.

"Thank you, Sir, but we are," said an elf ancient enough to look ancient, who toddled in and morosely collected the cocoa things, adding, "If it's any comfort, my great-great-grandsons have been pink-slipped off the Kapitan Khlebnikov. They were pool boys," he explicated for my benefit.

"Comfort!  What nonsense, Mustardseed." Mrs. Claus sat him down and continued.  "I want you to tell the lads they'll always have a home with us."

Mustardseed gulped.  "Would that, er, also apply to those fired from the oil rigs and hotels?"

After a reflective pause, Claus gave his verdict. "We'll take back anyone except financial industry refugees. They will have picked up too many vicious habits."

"Oh, you're too good, Sir!  What about real estate?"

"Case-by-case basis," Claus granted.  He tried to look severe, but wore the hint of a smile, until his house began pitching wildly again.  "Tankers!" he bellowed.

"No, Sir! That would be the Kapitan Khlebnikov in from Murmansk," said Mustardseed, after checking his watch. "Quite a few pink-slipped elves aboard.  Do you think we might -- just possibly -- save Christmas?"

"We can but try," Claus concluded.  Picking up the elf, who squealed happily, he strode to meet the ship, with the first heartfelt "ho-ho" I'd heard out of him all day.

In another burst of startling candor, Sir Alan "the Iraq war is largely about oil" Greenspan admitted who's running the world.  Discussing fiscal meltdown with the Financial Times, he stated: "The danger is that some governments, bedeviled by emerging inflationary forces, will endeavor to reassert their grip on economic affairs. If this becomes widespread, globalization could reverse, at awesome cost."

Sickening viewpoint, isn't it?  Most of us see mass hardship as "the danger" of financial crisis, but the sociopaths in charge fret only about a backlash by sovereign nations against transnational schemes that harm their citizens.  The "awesome cost" of which Greenspan warned is merely damage to the fortunes of global predators, who scorn democracy, crush real competition and prize only money and power, feeling no bonds of patriotic loyalty or human empathy.  Any doubts?  Greenspan has been on record since 1974, calling capitalism "not only efficient and practical, but also moral," because those whom he deems "parasites" must "perish as they should."

Among acolytes sharing the former Fed chairman's disdain for the masses is one who posted the following comment on a Huffington Post blog last October, calling himself "Plutotoo":

Question: What could be worse than Hank Paulson's $700-billion proposal to pay banksters too much for worthless derivative securities?

Answer:  "Helicopter Ben" Bernanke on the loose, dropping more than $1 trillion on the banksters, in loans based on NEARLY FULL FACE VALUE of their garbage securities (hyperinflated by up to 200 percent).

While our eyes and hopes were on the House vote yesterday, Bernanke had ALREADY announced another $630 billion in "emergency lending" -- most of it secured by the very worst of the dog bets.  If these huge Fed loans go bad, as many doubtless will, we get to keep the trash ...

(This has been made a Dandelion Salad Exclusive, so please read on over there.)

If you're hyperventilating about the stock market this morning, please calm down.  What's underway is simple Market Justice.  Artificially inflated prices can't be sustained forever -- not for $700 billion or any amount of cash.

For years and years, the housing bubble fed the stock bubble and vice versa.  Far too much money poured into both asset classes, so this isn't a problem more money will solve...

(Lo chose this to be a Dandelion Salad Exclusive, so please continue reading over there.)

Rallies are being organized today by Democracy for America, so there may be one in your neighborhood. 

Sadly, there's none in Albuquerque, but I just sent a fax begging Democratic leaders in Washington to stop the lunacy. For several days, I've been writing a huge blog on the subject (tying it to all the other obscene 11th Hour Grabs underway); with luck, that should be ready to post here by tomorrow.

In the meantime, please feel free to cannibalize this fax, adding your own Democratic senators and/or representatives to the list of recipients:

FAX TO: 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, 202-224-7327

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 202-225-8259

Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank, 202-225-0182

Senator Barack Obama, 202-228-4260

 

Dear Gentlepersons:

 

If the proposed bailout goes through in ANY form, we'll soon be left with no money for anything else -- and it won't even work to restore lending.

 

The QUADRILLION-DOLLAR derivatives bomb aimed at us has to be dismantled by the players.  Trust can't be restored among them, until they admit where all the pieces are and how big they are (as many experts, including Robert Reich, have pointed out).

 

Too, these are only hyperinflated side bets with no essential relationship to the productive economy.  Most are matched sets in which party A bet one way and party B bet the opposite, so they should simply nullify the contracts and refund whatever sums were paid up-front (a tiny fraction of what they're trying to get out of taxpayers).

 

Paulson's plan isn't just cash for trash, it's cash for HOT AIR.

 

You're all economically sophisticated people, so I'm not telling you anything you don't know. 

 

I'm sure you're also aware that, even if the cost of this bailout is paid through a tax on future stock trades or a temporary surtax on the very wealthy, that money would be better spent on other things than to enrich multinational organizations that already have far too much power over every government in the world and now, on the pretext of "reform," are pushing to consolidate all financial regulatory power in the U.S. under the Fed, demonstrably a handmaiden to the international banking cartel.

 

At its core, this lightning raid on our Treasury (or, rather, its remaining ability to borrow) is the strategic equivalent of what Bush is trying to pull off in Iraq, by binding subsequent administrations to agreements made now.  The Wall Streeters' stickup would be more than sufficient to achieve the Republican dream of cutting off social spending in America -- because no future leaders will be able to afford any!  If it goes ahead, we can not only kiss the prospect of universal healthcare and a "green jobs" initiative goodbye, but we'll also risk losing Social Security and everything else a civilized nation is supposed to collect its tax dollars for, maybe even public education. 

 

Please, please explain to the public what's really going on and stand up for the American people against global predators who scorn democracy, crush real competition and prize only money and power, feeling no bonds of patriotic loyalty or human empathy. 

Besides stopping this insane bailout, please also stop the further sale of exotic derivatives and predatory mortgages, as well as speculation in commodities by those who aren't in the commodities business.  And how about using anti-trust powers to break up anything that's "too big to fail"?

 

Thank you for your time.

An intended corporate buyout in the billions has been announced with utterly no reference to where either firm is based.  For all we're told, both parties to the deal are extra-cartological -- off in Terra Incognita or "Here Be Dragons" land.

Simple case of sloppy journalism, one might think -- except that the source was The New York Times, citing Reuters.  The story HERE informs us that a giant pharmaceutical company called Teva is to purchase one of its rivals, Barr, for $7.46 billion in cash and stock -- representing $66.50 a share, a generous 42 percent premium over Barr's closing price at mid-week.  The author also bothers mentioning "a wave of consolidation in the generic-drug sector that some analysts suspect will result in only a handful of major global players" and says that Teva – already world leader in generics -- will now command a staff of 37,000 and operate in more than 60 countries, gaining the foothold in Eastern Europe that Barr acquired in 2006 with the Croatian firm Pliva.  (Presumably, the location of a company was still regarded as newsworthy two years ago.)

Now, however, we have to click the right links for investment information to learn that Teva's home base is in Israel and Barr's in the USA.  Thus we can determine that the most likely immediate cuts to that staff of 37,000 will be in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.

With a little further sleuthing, we can determine who's to blame for this extraordinary omission.  It wasn't Reuters. THEIR STORY is greatly detailed and raises the possibility of other suitors vying for Barr, as well as the issue of anti-trust risk (although unnamed "analysts" deemed both chances remote).

Interestingly, Reuters points out that Teva has bought three other US drug companies in the past two years: Ivax (for $7.4 billion), CoGenesys (for $400 million) and Bentley (for $360 million).

Had The Times put forward more complete information, perhaps the idea of anti-trust action wouldn't be such a non-starter.  Could this be why they don't even state in passing that yet another American company is slated to bite the dust?

Beyond the fact that it's high time for the leaders of governments to climb out of the pockets of transnational grillionaires and protect their citizens' livelihoods, imagine what will happen to generic drug pricing, if only a few firms soon control them all.

Given the impact of speculative greed on gasoline and food prices, it's hard to enjoy a picnic this summer, let alone a vacation trip -- but these will seem like the good old days, come fall and winter.  We'll be not only hungry and house-bound then, but also freezing our fannies off, because the cost of natural gas is rising at nearly twice the rate of oil!

So far this year, natural gas is up by a whopping 76 percent.  That makes the oil price hike look puny at 42 percent and even outdoes corn's riot-inducing 58 percent increase.

Don't think you're off the hook, if you heat with electricity.  Many power plants are running on natural gas these days, including virtually all built since the turn of the century.  This is one reason why it's a can't-miss bet for futures traders -- the additional causes being an explosion of McMansions across the landscape and the biofuels boondoggle.  (Few realize how much natural gas it takes to grow and distill agrofuels, but the hedge funders and other predators definitely get it.)

BTW, for those who heat with oil and think maybe they'll catch a break for a change, don't bank on it.  The outfit now holding the largest supply of heating oil in New England is Morgan Stanley, as came out in a recent Congressional hearing on commodities market manipulation.  Their actually taking delivery of the stuff is no doubt a ploy to keep themselves in the game, if purely financial investment is finally restricted -- but those capable of such a dramatic move can be assumed capable of profiting richly from it in every way.

So, in "gather ye rosebuds while ye may" spirit, it would behoove us to prepare during warm weather for the heating season.  It's obviously a lot more comfortable to replace inefficient windows, improve insulation, futz with weather-stripping and so forth, before cold winds start to blow, and such efforts will be rewarded also by savings on air conditioning.  I intend to install seriously thermal window-coverings, having read that they produce remarkable bang for the buck, and look into adding some skylights and south-facing windows for solar gain.  Even projects that might have seemed unaffordable previously deserve to be reconsidered in the light of natural gas rates poised to double -- or worse -- by the time you turn your furnace on again.

Being so often sold to the highest bidder, governmental legislation has been a product for a long time, but lately it's deliberately spinning off other products, too.

Mind you, these aren't products in any rational sense.  Nothing tangible will be produced – not a road, not a sofa, not even a sandwich. Just money and other paper for elites who'll trade so-called "new assets" created out of whole cloth (or, rather, dirty air) will result if supporters of the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill have their way. Its cap-and-trade provisions will commodify pollution in America into the basis of an "industry" so immense that $150 billion will supposedly spring into being during its first year (and $3 trillion between now and 2050).

These figures in fact represent fictitious value that will have to be sucked out of the productive economy somehow. That's how trading derivatives always works.  The principle was elegantly encapsulated by a gentleman who commented last month on one of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's columns in the London Telegraph.  He was specifically addressing derivatives associated with commodities like oil and food, but the same trick lies behind the mortage securitization scam and any other bubble. Walt O'Brien wrote (emphasis mine):

... Derivatives are a means of introducing superfluous layers of financing to otherwise pretty tame trades in commodities. On a straight commodity exchange for a tanker owner or freightforwarder who ... wants to move a couple of million gallons ... oftentimes a factor is used (something now called "accounts receivables financing"). The tanker owner ... (makes) a deal with the factor and the buyer where ... the tanker owner takes receipt of the full value of the cargo less the factor's discount -- usually 3 to 7 percent simple interest – and ... the tanker owner and/or freightforwarder know they are paid for the cargo and aren't held up in demurrage at the dock while the greedy buyer tries to starve them out for a lower rate per gallon. If a derivatives trader is involved, the deal is between the fuel supplier and the trader. The trader fronts the cargo in transit with bank money ... chats up the value of the cargo in transit and adds as much as 30-40% of non-value-added cost to the cargo in the process, which the trader then pockets, and the banker pockets ... associated fees and interest. How many layers of useless and unnecessary derivatives trading can you plotz onto a commodity trade? Answer: in theory, an infinite amount; in practice, the highest number of ... re-re-re-financings I've seen is 15 layers of needless trades on one consignment. This ... trade boosted the cargo cost -- not value, as the cargo price for the carrier and cargo owner in transit did not ... change at all, though the cargo owner, to cover the derivatives had to stick the customer with his price plus the derivatives trades -- by a factor of 12 times true cost. The bourses of the world are starving ... the black and Asian world through extortion of unnecessary money while ruining the value of your currency... Annual payouts to derivatives traders looks to be at US$62 trillion, according to this Economist article ("Taming the Beast" in the April 19 -25 edition). That $62 trillion, if expressed as food, energy and metals commodities, could be the vehicle for the New Millenium to move forward in hope and in earnest, but instead is going to golf turf fees, amusing clarets and...eco-tourism by really fat and greedy people who constitute about .005 percent of the population.

Sadly, what's due to be bruited about soon in Washington is NOT whether we should launch ourselves into this lunacy at all, but merely who's to be handed how much of the first $150 billion in fairy money: chits representing the "right" to pollute at a certain level.  Of course the polluters want them free, claiming their charges to consumers will rise horribly otherwise.  Other proponents – including environmental groups and both Democratic presidential contenders – want the chits auctioned off to generate some form of public benefit.  Conciliators favor splitting the difference.  See Marc Gunther's recent analysis for a wealth of detail.

The fundamental problem is that almost nobody's saying hey, let's stop and think before creating another Mad Max market to rob everyone else blind for the sake of the players; couldn't we just pass a law that simply says you WILL reduce pollution by x amount within y timespan, or be subject to penalties?

Exactly the same aversion to laws with no payola for the bankers, traders and mega-corporations is apparent in our government's apprroach to alternate energy -- setting things up in such a way that big business controls it and has already spun off a myriad of derivatives  in solar and wind power (a subject for another day) – and equally apparent in how our legislators are dealing with the housing meltdown.

As Dean Baker pointed out this week, we needn't create yet more mortgages to be securitized, sold and resold, in order to avert foreclosures.  The simple solution would be a law allowing residents to remain in their homes by paying fair market rent.  This would prevent a further price-depressing glut on the housing market and also prompt banks to renegotiate their customers' mortages, rather than become landlords.  Instead, Congress is tussling with a complex bailout proposal that would have the Federal Housing Authority guarantee new lower interest rate mortgages and put taxpayers on the hook for another $1.7 billion (or, as the ranking Republican on the  Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), prefers, swipe those funds from assistance to low-income renters).

I can see no surer route to utter ruin for most people than keeping the "structured finance" contingent in the catbird seat, sucking the world's real economy dry with more and more derivative schemes.   However, our elected representatives in Washington lack a grain of economic sense or are completely in thrall to Wall Street.  Either way, it's probably far too late to stop carbon trading here, given that it's so entrenched in Europe.  Normally our Pig Men lead the world – off various cliffs, in case you've been dozing since before the dotcom bust – but, in carbon trading, Europe has the jump on us.  Lured by an annual volume that reached $50 billion last year, Morgan and others have already crossed the Pond to play.

And, yes, you're throwing candy to the same beasts if you buy carbon offsets.  We need real laws, not tricky financial mechanisms.

"Crime doesn't pay, but we do," advertise police in Jacksonville, Florida.  This and similar campaigns from coast to coast have created a new cottage industry for the downtrodden: turning in their friends, neighbors and even family members. As Sgt, Zachary Self, who answers Crime Stoppers calls in Macon, Georgia, and recognizes the voices of those who've phoned before, observed, "Two or three arrests per week, you could make $700, $750 ... better than a minimum-wage job."

Actually, the take varies from market to market and can be as little as $50 per arrest, but there's the possibility of a bonus, should a gun be recovered, and these pittances can add up for those who move in certain circles.  The real profit, however, stands to be made by the corporate prison industry. No doubt they're thrilled that tips are up from 25 to 44 percent for the first quarter of 2008, over the same period last year. It's another blessing of recession for those who run our world. "We're kind of banking on that, really," admitted Trish Rouette, Crime Stoppers coordinator in Florida's Lee County, site of our nation's top home foreclosure rate in February and March and the recent loss of a vast number of construction jobs.

This shocking account, which evokes the glory days of Hitler Youth, is in today's New York Times -- an edition that also reported on a new crime museum in Washington, DC.   Among the family attractions of this neocon freak show will be information on how to report crime, as well as opportunities to watch Fox TV's John Walsh host "America's Most Wanted" and to participate in the virtual shooting of a suspect.  Its creator, John Morgan, owns various amusement parks and a Florida law firm and believes, ''We as Americans, we as people, have a deep, deep fascination with crime and punishment.''

Although I personally attribute the semblance of that sad obsession to a tedious superfluity of crime-based TV shows and films and would love to see them all vanish, the Times tells us a "somewhat similar National Law Enforcement Museum is slated to open" in the vicinity of Morgan's venue.

Can anyone seriously doubt that all the crime hype is just another circus to distract us while the Masters of Universe continue to impoverish the public – even to such an extreme that many will spy for the police state to make their rent or keep the lights on?  Mind you, I'm no apologist for those who commit serious offenses, but the bulk of this is bound to concern victimless, drug-oriented rubbish and we already have far too many non-criminals behind bars.

Like others raised before the age of infotainment, I was taught to scorn the voyeuristic impulse.  I wouldn't dream of watching a building burn, slowing traffic to gawk at a smashup or reading beyond unavoidable headlines about celebrity meltdowns, cult busts and diableries du jour.

However, the Austrian dungeon tales have drawn me in.  They're actual news, in an allegorical way.

Really, could there be a more perfect example of microcosmic/macrocosmic similitude?   I was thinking that already, when this line in a business story underscored it: "I have this feeling that there is a wall in front of us."

Axel Marceau, identified by The New York Times as "a 41-year-old schoolteacher living outside of Frankfurt...(whose) father had a teaching job that afforded the family upward mobility, from owning a home to fancy ski vacations," went on to say, "We're just not going to get any further... (W)e've been in a slow process of losing to the people up top."

"A wall."  "The people up top."  See what I mean?  Betrayed by our supposed protectors, we're in the grip of a monstrous evil. Elisabeth Fritzl and her children call it Father; Axel Marceau calls it Fatherland.  In all its forms, the tyranny of powerful sociopaths has crafted hell on earth for its captives.

In Madrid, Maria Salgado, a TV director and divorced mother of two, is scraping by on little more than she earned 14 years ago as a novice.  "The middle class used to live well.  And if you have lived well, it's hard to live so badly," she said, adding that her daughter asked if they were poor, because they can no longer shop at health food stores or buy fish more than once a week. "I'm surprised we haven't started a revolution," she observed.

"I look at people on the bus and they seem sad and beaten down," said Francesca Di Pietro, who works in Rome but can't afford to live in the city.  She and her partner, both in their 40s, earn middle class wages, yet have to pack lunch, buy secondhand clothes and get beauty school haircuts.  "We should be feeling more combative," she remarked, "but really all we feel is frustrated."

A typical couple of the French middle class reported sinking farther into debt every month, despite selling one of their cars due to gasoline prices, giving their son powdered milk and baking their own bread.  "In France, when you can't afford a baguette anymore, you know you're in trouble," said Anne-Laure Renard, a teacher.  "The French Revolution started with bread riots," she noted.

Across the Channel, London's Daily Mail recently completed an analysis that showed "food costs alone are rising at 15.5 per cent a year - more than six times the official rate.  And there are double-digit increases in other ... essentials such as petrol, gas and electricity. Many families need ... more than £1,200 extra a year just to stand still.  Once higher mortgage costs are added, millions ... (need) at least another £2,000 a year to keep their heads above water."

Despite sharp drops in buying power due to "free trade" policies imposed through our governments by conscienceless oligarchs, the shrinking middle class of Europe are substantially better off than we are.  They have universal healthcare, a stronger currency, a higher wage (both minimum and median), better access to higher education and unions that retain some strength.  Even their poor are more secure than we, thanks to social safety nets that keep everyone who seeks help fed and sheltered.

Thus, within this hell of exploitation in which all but the few – our oppressors – reside, distressed Europeans occupy the top circles.  Americans who work for a living exist on several levels between them and the world's most wretched, descending from those struggling to hold it together to those in extremis: the dispossessed, the sick who have no hope of care, the unemployed, the hungry.

Recognizing that all who lack independent wealth are together in the same dungeon now, we must also admit the only difference between workers surviving in some comfort and the Haitians eating dirt is one of degree.  Given time enough, those who prey on us will reduce our circumstances equally.  They call what they've been doing to us for decades Labor Arbitrage.  If we have a lick of sense, we'll start calling it crime and demanding an end to government complicity.

The most mercantile "Earth Day" yet – one that stretched into an "Earth Week" of consumerist hype – left a foul taste in my mouth this year, amid all the news of famine. However rightfully we fret about polar bears, plastic bags and the Amazon, the real urgency is feeding hungry people.

In true "Shock Doctrine" style, some have taken this crisis as their cue to make matters worse: Robert Zoellick, for one.  An original "vulcan" responsible for the Iraq debacle, as well as a former U.S. Trade Representative, Deputy Secretary of State and Goldman Sachs executive, he's the neocon now running the World Bank.  While hustling governments to make up a $500 million shortfall in the UN's food aid program, caused by suddenly rocketing prices, he's been screaming, "The solution is to break the Doha Development Agenda impasse," claiming, "It's now or never," inveighing against export controls and declaring himself willing to help Africa by doubling its debt for agricultural spending – with, of course, "increased private-sector initiatives."  And why wouldn't he be willing?   His economy-destroying, resource-grabbing bank and its ally in crime, the International Monetary Fund, have almost no customers left, now that South America wised up.  These days, they get to prey only on the poorest of the poor, apart from Turkey.

His is a pitch as brazen as Treasury Secretary, IMF Governor and ex-Goldman CEO Henry Paulson's proposal to give total control of financial markets to the Federal Reserve – after the Fed let them run mad for years, collecting huge fees and bonuses for wrecking the housing and credit markets, plus bailouts at taxpayer risk – but Zoellick has a subtle side, too.  This heartbreaking story about conditions in Mauritania, for instance, is salted with sneaky "free trade" talking points and deceptions.  But the people aren't starving because well-intentioned trade policies failed; they're starving precisely because they got suckered into a scheme designed strictly to benefit transnational corporations – like the European companies that send fishing fleets to deplete Mauritanian waters.