Check out this little snippet of song, which I sliced out, reheated, repeated from a legendary tune that brother Don had composed and sung back in the ole boomer days.
His classic ballad of Americana defined the tragic experience of our boomer g-generation. I heated up the libretto a bit, while retaining Don's classic melody. . . to re-compose only one verse,
so as to not allow the danger of this one terrible, attempted insurrection to lapse into forgottenness:
beginning trickle bright slow flow in sand rivulet
Meanwhile, down the coast a ways, view from the airy heights . . .
End Torrent Dark Fast Grow in Soil River
Behold the amazing micro Macro of this earth Earth!
Barefooting along this midday strand
I wonder at this swishing swirl of surf and sand;
In a moment struck with wave recovery
I stoop to capture a muse discovery.
Waves of tidal ocean energy
improvise in waving imagery
as water strikes this sandy strand
improvising wave-like bands.
I behold it all by divine design
as rolling tide carves waves in rhyme;
sculpting water leaves its signature
in universal wave theory made sure.
I recall a Word from ancient view
and surmise its rhyming to be true
as yah moves across a watery face
to begat an ancient yahweh trace.
Selah.
ole lyrics from back in the day, revisited for Juneteeth 2021:
To hear the musical rendition, glide into:
Underground Railroad Rides Again
Ole Uncle Tom had lived
what you would call a quiet life,
always tried to heal the massah’s need.
He heard about the ones who talked and prayed
that one day they’d get away.
Never thought he’d live to see the the freedom
never thought he’d live to see the day
Never thought he’d live to see the freedom
of black man in ole USA.
Underground railroad rides again
Underground railroad rides again
Underground railroad rides again.
Ride me on that freedom train!
Underground railroad rides again.
Ole Jake had spent a life down in the coal mines,
Always tried to be a workin’ man.
He heard about the ones who struck and prayed,
as if their lives. . . they want their right pay.
Never thought he’d live to see the freedom
never thought he’d live to see the day
picked up his bags and struck for freedom,
and he hadn’t seen a coal mine since that day.
Underground railroad rides again
underground railroad rides again
underground railroad rides again.
Ride me on that freedom train!
Underground railroad rides again.
Ole Ed Clok had had spent a life
all busied and hurried.
always caught up in that necktie role.
He heard about the ones who moved away
as if their lives depended only on love.
Never thought he’d live to see the freedom
never thought he’d live to see the day
never thought he’d live to see the freedom.
He’s in North Carolina now he’s
baling hay.
Underground railroad rides again
underground railroad rides again
underground railroad rides again
Ride me on that freedom train!
Underground railroad rides again.
Ole Noah
He led a quiet life
always tried to be
right.
He heard about the ones who
rambled and strayed from the path.
Never thought he’d live to see the sunshine,
never thought he’d live to see the day,
never thought he’d live to see the sunshine,
’til he turned around one day and had to say:
It ain’t gonna rain no mo’!
ain’t gonna rain no more . . .
In this world, money is that precious stuff that poor folks perpetually chase, while rich folks play Monopoly with the real thing.
There’s no doubt that everybody needs some of it: money, that is.
Money is a fancified way of saying: Value.
What has real value?
Through the long course of our human history, value has assumed many different forms.
I suppose the first human currency was the stuff of necessity, food and shelter. Which is to say, neanderthally speaking. . . meat, crops, skins, land, shelter.
But as humans began civilizing their life style, we became more sophisticated, more complicated and even more convoluted in our ways of assigning value to everything that’s out there.
As ancient civilizations developed, a significant percentage of the population worked or connived their way into advantageous positions. Some became rich. Many could not climb out of poverty.
Meanwhile, most people got by, whether they prospered or labored.
Those folks who achieved comfort no longer had to chase the coins of the realm because they had devised ways to make the wealth of nations flow unto their cups that runneth over.
Rich folks having plenty of wealth to work with could spend their abundance on beautiful stuff.
Like gold.
Methinks the original “currency” was gold: gold nuggets, gold vessels. Then the authorities that be in any given domain began stamping their identities onto the coins.
And gold, as, well. . you know . . . long story short . . . gold became the precious metal that backed up all currencies, shekels, drachmas, florins, marks, yen, yuan, pesos, pounds, dollars. You know the drill.
Along the way, folks who became accustomed to transferring money among themselves began using promissory notes, checks, cheques, banknotes of all kinds. You know the drill.
In recent times, we’ve arrived at a monetary crossroads where our deal with devil has produced money that has less and less value as the days tick by.
Inflation dictates that our dollars, euros, pesos, shekels, yen, yuan, etc. are worth less and less. That is, you can buy less stuff with the dollar you have this week than what you would have paid last month for the same goods.
Perhaps you have noticed this. How much do you pay to see a movie in a theater nowadays? How much did you pay, back in the day, to see the Lone Ranger, or Superman? How much do you pay nowadays to watch. . . on the big screen. . . Frodo, Skywalker or that Harry kid or the latest Wonder Woman?
Compare the price then to the price now. What do you call it?
Inflation.
Societies have generallly learned how to deal with this devaluating devil.
But only up to a certain point. Sooner or later, the inflation effect has to be dealt with by the powers that be so that the rich can stay rich and the poor can at least have food to eat and a roof over their head.
The strongest currency in the world, the US dollar, is now approaching an “the emperor has no clothes” moment in which too many folks are noticing “the dollar ain’t near what it used to be.”
After the 2008 financial debacle, I had begun noticing, on the Web, that the gold bugs and the sound money guys, the von Mises guys, David Stockman, et al were predicting the demise of the US dollar, or some such earthquake. Some of them, as I remember, mentioned a new kind of world currency in the works that might overtake the almighty dollar.
Well, of course that hasn’t happened.
Yet.
Today, I noticed on Medium a piece by Tim Denning, who keeps up with such things. His mention of SDR’s (Special Drawing Rights) is the first I have noticed lately.
https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/behind-closed-doors-the-u-s-is-quietly-backing-a-replacement-global-currency-77048f2c1eb6
In his analysis, Tim raises the possibility that those SDRs may soon have their entry into world commerce, and they could overtake the dollar as a means of transferring wealth and value around the world.
Back in 1944, as the Second Big War began to wind down, the powers that be convened in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. They devised a new system of money for purposes of rebuilding the nations in the wake of the Big War. In that confab they established the US Dollar as the primary determinant of value in what would hopefully become a post-war recovery to normal international commerce and hopefully prosperous exchange of wealth amongst all the nations.
That arrangement is known as the Bretton Woods Agreement. Look it up on Wikipedia.
Meanwhile, today, I had this remembrance from classic Shakespearen tragedy:
In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the main character--a nobleman of ages past-- is issued a mysterious warning by an old woman when she speaks a cryptic omen to him to the effect that his demise would not come until "Birnam Wood should come against (Macbeth's castle) Dunsinane."
In a later plot twist, a frightened servant reports to Lord Macbeth that, while maintaining his watch of the castle perimeter, he thought he saw the woods of Dunsinane moving. Which was to say. . . enemy soldiers, camouflaged in woods greenery, were approaching the castle, Dunsinane, to attack it.
In our present world drama, we may behold a similar plot unfolding as the earlier agreement of Bretton Woods doth move against the Moneygame.
Since the crash of ’08, I have generally thought of that financial downfall as something like the crash of 1929.
But we do know that the crash of ’29 was actually far worse in its actual effects than the subprime-mind debacle of 2008.
And, being realistic, as a 70-year-old baby boomer I must admit that we have generally had a smooth ride, except for the Vietnam disaster.
Looking back on the history of my parents’ generation . . .what Tom Brokaw called the “greatest generation” because they recovered from the Depression strongly enough to rise up in mighty armor and drive the damned nazis back into their holes. . . I must admit that the victories they accomplished over the Depression and the War were far more dangerous than the slings and arrows of outrageous misconception that we spoiled boomers had to endure.
But we did have to suffer through the crash of 2008. And that seemed like quite a destructive big deal at the time because the Federal Reserve and the US Congress had to bail out wallstreet from their outrageous misfortunes of MBS, CDO and derivative malicious malfunctions.
But as the dust settled in 2009ff, we crawled back into a semblance of economic normalcy, a brave new world of financial wizardry. And in the midst of our creeping back to a stready-stream, negative-interest rates semblance of normalcy, I was reading online mucho contrarian opinionation about how the Fed was devaluing our precious currency in such a way that we would never recover.
And it did seem, come to think of it, that for the last two decade or so it’s just the speculators on wallstreet shooting craps with corporate buybacks and mechanized HFT money machines cranking out their lala land profits, who have made any real dough.
Meanwhile, the advocates for traditional economics were predicting the downfall of the western world or some such disaster while their nemeses the keynesian tinkerers at the Fed and their kissin’ cousins, the Davos crowd and the EEC were whirlygigging up their magic money cloud of electrons swirling ‘round and ‘round to project the dream world of everything’s coming up roses and its all gonna work out and blah blah . . .
And whereas initially I was so skeptical about the value of money, and asking myself what is it—just what is it really—that really has value? Is it gold, or is it Dutch tulips or south-sea island froth or is it Iowa corn or California cabbage or a Cayman Island bank account or a Swiss chard or credit card or a wild card or what? Just what is that has real value? Fort Knox? a doctorate from the School of Hard Knox, a bank account with a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills in somebody else’s name?
But just today I figured it out.
Yes today, in the midst of this most recent wave of federal deficit spending and Fed/Treasury ponzi-pushing wizardry of electrons whirring and purring to reassure us that yes, Virginia, there is free money out there, and a free lunch, which everybody thought was just a fairy tale but it turns out to be true and all we have to do is keep our nose to the grindstone and our pedal to the metal and it’ll all work out.
No worries!
No need to worry our pretty little Keynesian heads about money. Forget about the Moses von Mises Austrian school and the Beatle-blustering fool on the hill with his head in the Cloud and the trumpish man with a thousand voices talking perfectly loud.
It’ll all work out! It’s just electrons flowing around the world, propelled by the swipe of every credit card and every slickery smart-phone scheme. As long as we all keep spending, the perpetual motion machine will keep whirring along and the magical mystery tour will keep us entertained with net-fixed patches and the amazing Amacon con and hooloo voodoo and what’s it to you?
No worries!
Well that’s my Common Man Econ musing for the day. As Uncle Walter used to say, that’s the way it is, June 1, 2021. Wish he were here!
To conclude, let's raise our aspirations for a moment; we'll have a listen at the melodic opus that America’s greatest orchestrician offered orchestrally to sanctify the plight of of us Common Man meanderers who wander through this marvelous modern money wonderland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCpG23aBNMw
