LifeItself

I am on a short vacation with my wife.  We are staying in my daughter boyfriend's family summer house in Casadero, 9 miles west from Guerneville, CA.  It is a very nice house in the middle of a majestic redwood forest, separated by a long forest driveway from the road. In the house, I find five white document boxes that hold an archive of old LA Times newspapers.  I open the first box and pick up at random the business section for LA Times dated May 21, 1992.  In it, my eyes lock immediately on a report bemoaning President Bush's handling of the Savings and Loans debacle, and how the government loan pools favor big S&Ls relative to ordinary people.  Then I see an article stating that people will never again look the same at investing into houses. (In May 1992, we were in the second year of a major housing slump.)   Does this sound familiar, or what?   Why have we forgotten?  I take it back: Why have most people forgotten? I have no...

Almost a year ago, in The Global Las Vegas , I told you how the runaway betting on imaginary things screwed up real people. Today I was reminded that nothing has changed, and Goldman Sachs continues to do what they've always done, ripping off clients, while disparaging them verbally. Goldman Sachs, an evil twin of Federal Government, remains the dominant player in our crazy megalopolis, the Earth-encircling Las Vegas.  There is no place to hide anymore, unless we wish to escape into the past. In the meantime, the real world economy continues to consume Earth's resources at an ever-increasing rate as more of very desperately poor people are now just poor, and want to have some of the same amenities we take for granted. The results are predictable and the price you and I pay to commute in the U.S. is at an all-time high. To put this price index into perspective, it now costs 10 times more to move from point A to B in the U.S. metropolitan areas than it did 60 years ago. ...