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Behold, the Great Beast has Fallen…

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It appears that the Republican Party is close to collapse. I have seen this coming on for years and am happy that it is finally getting its inevitable justice. There are four factions in the Republican Party:

1) The establishment: financiers, wealthy, intelligentsia
2) Fundamentalist Christians
3) Libertarians
4) Working class

The establishment faction combined with the fundamentalist Christians several decades ago. Many of the fundamentalists are working class. The libertarians have, from the start, been loosely aligned with the establishment and are chiefly made up of working class as well. The working class makes up the lion’s share of the Republican Party. For many decades the intelligentsia has been able to yank the strings of the working class by making them think that the Republican Party is on the side of Christianity, small government libertarianism and the middle class. All the while the working, middle class has shrunk.

The intelligentsia was successfully able to convince their flock that the Democrats were the reason the middle class was going away. It is analogous to Christians making anything questionable about Christianity as ‘non-Christian’. If Christianity fails it is not ‘true’ Christianity. God can never be guilty so therefore it must always be man. Likewise, the Republican Party can never be guilty of killing the middle class, it must be the Democrats. Republican ideology, as RIGHT, can never be wrong. It would be tantamount to thinking of God as wrong. ‘Conservatism’ always conserves the good and the true. It is unthinkable that the good and the true could be evil. The intelligentsia was amazingly adept at redefining the past as the good and the true (https://www.mixermuse.com/blog/2011/12/30/what-republicans-want%e2%80%a6/).

Even though the good and the true in actuality worked against the working class the well contrived illusory alignment of Republicanism with God, goodness, truth and a made up past went to the emotional kernel of working class devotees. This level of fervent, religious-like zeal has pushed their constitutes to the point where even such things as evolution and climate change is thought of as liberalism, facts and research is a production of liberal universities and big government is the communist goal of the Democrats. In extremism there are no in-betweens. All is black and white. You are either a believer or a scientific atheist, knowers of the good and true or swayed by humanism, a capitalist or a communist. This paradigm that boiled everything down to simples has worked extremely well for the right but alas there was President Bush.

President Bush was president for eight years. The Republicans had the majority of congress for six of those eight years. The economy went down more than any other president in modern history under their watch. Unemployment went up percentage wise more and the national debt increased more than any other time in modern history (https://www.mixermuse.com/blog/2012/01/06/all-you-need-to-know-about-politics-1-6-12-2/). The Republican middle class was the group hit hardest by this. With President Obama we have seen an impressive attempt by the intelligentsia to make him the scape goat for their sins. Dick Armey and company brilliantly master minded the tea party to capture Republican anger towards the Republican Party. They were able to keep these folks in the party by letting them vent and then meekly crawl back into the party of goodness and truth – it was brilliant strategy by the intelligentsia.

However, something is different now for the Republican Party. Through all the consternation a rift was created and is growing in their party. Ever since the fundamentalists were brought into the party there has been tension between the establishment faction and the fundamentalists. The fundamentalists distrust the morality of the establishment and their ambivalence with abortion. They also dislike the libertarians as they are godless and pro-choice. Fundamentalists, as the working class would like less government but they make ever increasing exceptions for religious purposes. The libertarians distrust the fundamentalists for this reason. However, now the fatal blow that is working on all three groups (fundamentalists, libertarians and working class) has been struck against the working class that comprises much of the libertarians and the fundamentalists – the inherent elitism in the establishment of the Republican Party.

The intelligentsia has over played their hand. The flock has been dispersed as the flock is increasingly starting to look at their shepherds as wolves in disguise. The ever increasing disparity of the wealthy and the disappearance of the middle class have left their masses numb from the cold truth of impoverishment. The blame, after Bush, is hard to swallow and to add insult to injury their leading candidate for president is a member of the opulent class that they were supposed to be but are dreadfully not. The Pied Piper has gone out of tune. The emperor has no clothes. The Republican electorate has been dumped into the ditch. There are told it was the Democrats fault but their candidate for president is not one of them. He is what they were supposed to be but are not. When they see Mitt they increasingly see the dream that for them has become a nightmare. They are pressured to believe that only Mitt has the way out for them. However, their pre-existing internal divisions are exasperated by the party’s need for populist appeal.

The working class populist is fundamentally contorted by the need for perceived working class leaders and the reality of entitled elitists. This is the final blow for the party. They have positioned themselves on the side of the working class while the working class has increasingly suffered and the party has spit in their face with trying to make their boss president. You would think the intelligentsia would know that most working class stiffs do not like their boss much less want to vote for him – miscalculation on their part. The fatal blow has been struck – Newt and company have blasphemed the holy rite of capitalism. There is a ‘left’ in their midst where it shouldn’t be. The sacred idol has clay feet and God is not very happy. There is confusion of languages and Babylon has befallen the great Elephant – welcome to the prelude of the Democratic opus.

Language as Power

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Postmodernism would argue that language is power. On the surface this is just as ludicrous as suggesting that money is speech. However, what they mean is that any use of language is a use of power. Language always aims at ends such as influence, persuasion, domination. When a bird tweets it may be to effect some form of power in their own environment (or perhaps not) but for us power is a meaningless concept in the case of a bird tweeting. When postmodernism thinks of language as power they mean that the dynamics of power and powerlessness are always at work in the use of language. Power must preserve itself through powerlessness. Power is symbiotic. If power could destroy everything not deemed powerful, power itself could not exist. Powerlessness must be in order for power to be. Any philosophy of power is just as indebted to its negative content as its positive content. As such, power is essentially indebted to its nemesis. Even more, power is itself produced by what it isn’t. If language is power this does not only refer to its positive content but to what it is not as well. In a similar manner, morality is also inseparable from immorality as Nietzsche points out in “Beyond Good and Evil”. This is the source of neutrality in the thought of power.

Language as power focuses on force. Force cannot be thought about without equal and opposite forces. There is no pure, singular force that can be thought in some hermetically sealed environment – force always occurs with other forces. Other forces can work against or for another force or have no relevance to each other. Likewise, language as force will always contain themes that work against or for the dominant theme or have no relevance to the dominant theme. An obvious example of this for many non-academic philosophers is the Bible. The Bible is full of themes. Religious denominations are all about how these themes can be refashioned, contradictory and complementary. Postmodernists do not see this as a problem with certain people not understanding the Bible correctly or not knowing God but they see this as a problem intrinsic to any use of language. Truth itself as a construct of language necessarily contains all the themes that overturn it.

However, the subtleties many postmodernists get trapped by seem to be:
1) Identification of power with a metaphysic of individualism or community
2) Identification of power as essence or origin
3) Identification of power as neutrality; in the order of ‘thingness’
4) Identification of power with presence and absence

I am not going to delve into these issues here but many have and I have to some extent. What I would suggest is that postmodernism is not about making positive statements or about answers but about the ‘nots’ of any statement and raising questions to the level of disturbing and strange. If postmodernism stops before any and every possible thematic disturbance, postmodernism falls back into historical metaphysics. This does not suggest that historical metaphysics is the ‘not’ of postmodernism but that if postmodernism sets up or establishes dominant narratives whether intentional or not, it has effectively repelled and attracted disparate themes. This attraction and repulsion is a leveling off of thematic differences. When difference is sorted according to similarity and dissimilarity a simulacra of difference is preserved but difference itself is lost. The simulacrum is sameness. Sameness here is not meant as identity as that would be pure nonsense. Sameness has to do with reversibility as opposed to rupture. Sameness brings with it a predisposition, a working agenda that is not explicitly thought out but guides the agenda nonetheless. While sameness certainly allows comparison it also misses differences that it deems irrelevant. What gets lost is difference itself in the service of thematic preference.

Certainly difference can be thought as reversible where themes are held apart in the tension of valuations (i.e., true or false, relevant of irrelevant, good or bad, etc.). However, this difference is for the sake of leveling off and sameness. This difference holds together variants, moments of dissimilars. Moments of dissimilars already holds fast to the notion of presence. It prefers reduction to kind and necessarily pushes rupture to absence. Derrida uses the misspelled word ‘differance’ to indicate rupture. Rupture is nonsense for difference. Difference totalizes. It makes sense of, takes hold of, finds form and limit (peros). Differance tears apart in its not able to, its absolute passivity in the face of, incommensurate to the point of disturbing, formless and limitless (aperion).

However, differance as postmodernists tend to think it, stills holds together the theme of neutrality, a play of forces, an ‘itness’. If differance is thought in terms of neutrality, its other must be the other, the ‘he’ or ‘she’. This moves into the thought of Levinas. If the he or she is retained as the opposite of neutrality then rupture is once again leveled off as the same. Radical alterity (otherness) is:

“The Other is radical only if the desire for it is not the possibility for anticipating it as the desirable or of thinking it out beforehand but if it comes aimlessly as an absolute alterity, like death.”
John Heaton ‘The Other and Psychotherapy’ in Provocation of Levinas

Radical alterity does not lift up or transform. It is all too easy to reject it as nonsense and actually it is – it evades but not defies sense. It is not nonsense in the typical meaning of the word as it tangentially returns. For Levinas, metaphysics is the tangential return of the radical alterity of the other. It is as waves that wash up on the beach breaking through every notion of a ‘setting’. It reoccurs but not as the same; the river that cannot be stepped into twice. The same, as our notion of death, intensifies the strangeness of the thought of my death. Somehow the two do not link up – they fall apart. This is what radical alterity does. It is incommensurate in a way that resists measure and boundary. It always returns as exceeding itself; as not resting in an ‘it’ as ‘he’ or ‘she’ resists ‘it’. This resistance is not of kind but of radical otherness.

Money is Free Speech? (update 1/19/12)

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The Supreme Court’s decision that makes money speech and therefore protected as free speech under the Constitution is problematic in two areas that I would like to address:

1. How can money be speech?
2. If money is speech how does it differ from speaking?

First, the most obvious observation is that money is not speech. You can place as many dollar bills on the counter that you want and it will never talk to you unless you have a serious mental illness. I assume the Supreme Court members do not have serious mental illnesses so how could they have arrived at this decision? Well, money buys television time and provides a huge megaphone for those that can afford it. However, buying television time is itself not yet speech. Literally, speech occurs in the commercial. Consider this, if a guy talks about robbing a bank he has not broken any law. However, if he actually robs the bank he is guilty of a crime. This is typical of many laws but not all as I will discuss later. Likewise, if Super PACs buy commercial time it is not the same as the speech that occurs in the commercial. It seems that, on the surface, suggesting that money is speech is a huge false equivocation. It would be like saying a tree is a house. Sure, you could cut a lot of trees up into boards and make a house with them but what is meant by ‘tree’ and ‘house’ are two distinct things. If the Supreme Court is using ‘money’ as a metaphor for ‘speech’ they are getting on very slippery legal grounds as metaphors can and do contain similarities between two referents but they also can and do contain dissimilarities between two referents. This tension is actually what makes a metaphor a metaphor otherwise the use of a metaphor would be unwarranted as a tree is a tree. A poet might suggest a tree is like a house providing shelter but a tree is not a house. If legal language opens to door to metaphor it is doomed. So, on the surface, it is very difficult to understand how money could be thought as speech. However, if we can get past that what if money is speech?

If money is free speech as the Supreme Court maintains then what about those without money? Sure, they have free speech – they are free to talk to themselves all they want. However, if speech means communication with others, don’t we have to look at how the speech of money differs from the speech of individuals? Money carries a big stick when it comes to ‘free speech’. It is not the power of dialectic persuasion, the logic of a better argument or the free market of ideas – it is the tried and true manipulative ability of marketing. When speech is rigged for pure manipulation the word we have for that is a ‘con’.

A con man manipulates others for their gain. This type of speech can result in illegal activity but the Supreme Court would support the view that the speech in itself is not illegal but only if the speech results in a crime. In this case, the crime is illegal but not whatever led up to it. While this is perfectly understandable, doesn’t it set up the stage for those with money to get others to do their dirty work while they get off scot free? In law there is a notion of conspiracy. If others conspire to commit a murder they can be held just as responsible as the actual murderer. Yes, the conspirators only committed a speech act but there is precedence for people to be held guilty of criminality for speech acts. However, conspiracy to commit the crime of murder has only relatively recently been deemed a crime. The gangsters of the roaring twenties would not have existed had it been a crime. So, law can and does change over time.

Many people find it ludicrous that the Wall Street investors that broke the country not only were rewarded well for doing it but none broke any laws. Yes, as President Bush admitted, we started the Iraq war by mistake and killed hundreds of thousands of people but no laws were broken. In a democracy laws are suppose to be of the people and for the people. When laws lose touch with their fidelity to this purpose we have the kangaroo court and the banana republic. When laws are circumvented by the state of exception (i.e., laws do not apply to such and such an exceptional condition, laws help this class of people but not this class) there is no systemic way to draw the line at what are the exceptional conditions and what are the applicable conditions. The more this occurs the more people lose faith in the system. Our demise as a country is dependent on the breakdown in faith in law. When law is lawless criminals are kings.

The identity of speech and money is covertly an identity of speech and power. Isn’t this the Orwellian dilemma of 1984? While money may be speech it is certainly power over the individual. This implicitly equates power to speech. Is power a crime? Well, perhaps not in an absolute, abstract sense but what about the propaganda of Hitler? Was his propaganda a crime? Well, according the ideal set by the Supreme Court, no. It was what people did with his rhetoric that was a crime. Doesn’t this notion of speech and money (viz. power) let Hitler of the hook scot free? As far as I know he never personally pulled the trigger himself so given a strict interpretation of power and speech, I guess we could not convict him in the United States. The other side of this question is the slippery slope argument. Where do you draw the line if some speech is not legal? Well, we already have drawn the line in the case of conspirators and murder and Hitler would certainly be guilty in this sense. The difference one might contest is that the speech of Hitler resulted in murder, a crime. The speech of political money does not directly result in a criminal act. Well, this is true. There is no crime in rigging the free market to throw folks out of their house (http://mixermuse.com/blog/2012/01/11/the-great-recession-how-the-free-market-got-rigged/). There is no crime letting people without health insurance die in the over-crowded emergency room. There is no crime letting kids go hungry without school lunches. There was no crime in letting older Americans die on the side of the road at the start of the Great Depression. There is no crime in 1 out of 2 Americans living at or near poverty. There is no crime in the haves and the have nots – it is capitalism – even if it results in misery and death. Well, this is actually correct – there is no crime. Laws are not equipped to handle this kind of disparity. This is the realm of morality in our country.

Morality is a type of law that is neither jurisprudence or optional. While we are certainly not obligated to have any concern for other people’s misery and suffering, no one gets put in jail for not caring. However, don’t we lose something that most people value by disregarding everyone else but ourselves? Don’t we set up a system in so doing that could just as easily target the a-moralist as the moralist? Is Darwinian fight for individual survival at everyone else’s expense the way to sustain a country? Isn’t there a least a need for a pretense to morality to hold the fabric of a community together? When the individual is held up over and against the need of an individual for their community isn’t anarchy the order of the day. Machiavelli called this the war of all against all; it is the world of Mad Max. Have we fundamentally misunderstood law if law is only an excuse for injustice? Has morality become the window dressing for oppression when it no longer motivates our laws? When these questions come to the fore it can truly be said that the fabric of our society is threatened. The system cannot be sustained under this duress. If it tears us apart we will be Afghanistan. We will be factions of tribes that cannot help but kill each other. We will have devolved. The insistence that money is speech opens the door for these thoughtful considerations.

Unfortunately, extremism has been pedaled recently that pits the fight for survival with the insistence of morality. Republicans are fond of telling us the sky is falling and national collapse is imminent unless we vote for a Republican. For the electorate, morality will lose in every case if survival is pitted against morality. Additionally, morality itself is more often than not historically speaking not very ‘moral’. The Germans thought of themselves as morally irreproachable while slaughtering millions in concentration camps. Our country allowed and condoned slavery in some cases based on ‘moral’ arguments. It may be that morality itself is a lie we tell ourselves but in any case it has a certain historical force of conviction. Even if it is denied altogether, the question of morality appears every time we face a person suffering and turn away. The fact is that those that pedal survival against moral responsibility have a self-defeating philosophy. Survival is not possible in the war of all against all. Sooner or later the tides turn on the strongest and their elitist bellowing turns to anguish; what goes around comes around. Morality is not optional even if survival is at stake. Even if morality itself is fraught with contradictions and difficulties we only deny its compulsion at our own expense. We have no choice but to find a way to authentically respond to the suffering of the other without losing our way in our efforts – trash talk about our survival may serve certain political goals but will not address the underlying problems.

Update 1-19-12

The case is actually concerning the restrictions previosuly set on corporations for political involvment. The court ruled that corporations are ‘people too’ and therefore entitled to free speech as individuals are…have to think about this some more…

The God of Convenience

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I grew up in Louisiana. I was continually around fundamentalist Christians and Republicans. If anyone tells you that Mitt’s Mormonism is not important to fundamentalists, they are ignorant about fundamentalism. Denominations are famous for slamming other denominations. I can’t tell you how many times I heard sermons at Southern Baptist churches about how the Vatican was the home of the Antichrist Pope. When it comes to Mormonism, fundamentalists are regularly indoctrinated about the evil false prophet, Joseph Smith. Mormonism is considered diabolic heresy. Voting for Mitt Romney would be tantamount to voting for Satan for president.

It is very interesting to hear fundamentalist Christian leaders blasting the Christian, President Obama and supporting the Mormon, Mitt Romney. What this tells me is reminiscent of what Nietzsche thought about Christianity – that it was an ingenious tool religious leaders used to manipulate their followers. When religious arguments work to further the goals of the religious leader they zealously proclaim it. However, they are willing at the drop of a hat to contradict their previous argument and maintain a contrary position when it works for them. Religious fundamentalist leaders are all too willing to take the words of Jesus that were highly concerned with the plight of the poor and the sick and twist them to manipulate their flock into believing in the rigged, free market that favors the rich and impoverishes the poor (https://www.mixermuse.com/blog/2012/01/11/the-great-recession-how-the-free-market-got-rigged/). Jesus said it was harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. They also oppose any attempt to help the sick and violently protest any attempt to do so. Jesus said he did not come for the well but for the sick. Do the words of Jesus sound like the fundamentalist Christian?

Contradiction is no problem when explained ‘correctly’ by the fundamentalist, Christian leader. The flock obediently obeys the voice of God. Isn’t this what folks detest in radical, fundamentalist Islam? We do not need to hate fundamentalist Islam, there is much to despise in our own home bred version of fundamentalist Christianity. I am not suggesting this is what Jesus was all about but that Jesus has been shut out from history by purely human, all too human exploitation. It is hard for radical Christians to understand that what many of us see about them is more Hitler-like than Jesus-like. Their testimony smells like the same trash that Jesus opposed. Of course, they dismiss this by telling themselves that they are suffering for Jesus. They are not suffering for Jesus. They are making the rest of us suffer for Jesus sake.

The Great Recession: How the Free Market Got Rigged

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What happened after 30 trillion dollars of credit default swap derivatives flooded the worldwide market…

This is my understanding, based on the data cited here:
https://www.mixermuse.com/blog/2012/01/10/the-facts-how-the-republicans-created-our-current-economic-crisis/
http://mixermuse.com/blog/2010/10/14/how-george-bush-and-the-private-mortgage-market-created-the-perfect-storm/

In the latter part of the last decade, real estate pricing had been on the rise for decades and was due for a correction.

Credit default swaps (CDS) are private market derivatives that bundle up packages of mortgages. They were suppose to bundle higher risk mortgages with lower risk mortgages to level off the risk so that they could be sold for higher costs (less overall risk than the higher risk mortgages in the package). These packages are rated by rating agencies. In the Bush administration, regulation and rating agencies were closely aligned with the corporations and Wall Street. This has been thoroughly documented. Rating agencies and their agents were being wined and dined and were rewarding their comrades with lax regulatory enforcement and higher ratings on products like CDS.

CDS have very involved mathematical formulas that attempt to assess the risk of the package being sold. The ratings agencies are suppose to rate or endorse the validity of the risk assessment made by the company producing the derivative. The rating agencies were underfunded and did not really have the expertise to know how to accurately rate the CDS derivatives. Therefore, they were receiving ratings that were much higher than they should have been.

With the rapid increase of CDS, 900 billion to 30 trillion during the Bush years, more mortgages were needed to build the CDS packages. If you remember the last decade you will remember continual commercials on TV for ‘liar loans’. Private mortgages went up dramatically and were leaving the GSEs (Fannie and Freddie) in the dust. Everyone and their brother were jumping into the mortgage provider business. Housing pricing was going off the chart in an already inflated real estate market and house flipping was a favorite past time for many people. All this expansion was being funded by the need for CDS packages that were being sold like wildfire on the private market.

In the ‘free market’ the notion of value is really all about trust. When securities and derivatives are sold the buyer has to believe that the asking price is fair and worth doing the transaction. Even gold does not have an intrinsic value. It is also subject to trust as the recent rapid rise of asking price demonstrates. Capitalism which depends on the ‘free market’ depends on trust. Capitalism periodically has bubbles, runaway market segments where pricing goes up rapidly beyond any justifiable intrinsic value of the commodity being sold. When investors see other investors making money on inflated products they are inclined to jump in and trust that their investment will be rewarded with ever increasing pricing.

In a normal bubble cycle the market corrects itself, the latest investors to the ‘pyramid’ scheme lose and pricing goes down dramatically when the bubble bursts. This does not always happen. Occasionally the market develops ‘super bubbles’. This happened in the Great Depression. This also occurred in the CDS fiasco. In both cases lack of regulation and ratings agencies were key factors. For the CDS super bubble, instead of a ‘run on the banks’ there was a ‘run on the CDS’. The highly overinflated valuations of a super bubble carry with it the seeds of its own destruction. Trust gets strained and investors get more and more nervous as pricing goes up. This engenders more scrupulous requirements for risk assessment on the part of the investor. All the while, the requirement for more and more new mortgages to feed the beast is exasperating the oncoming doom. This is why the private mortgage market was leaving the GSEs in the dust.

Once the trust starts to break down, the market goes into panic sell mode. No investor wants to be left holding the bag. Housing valuations plummet. The housing market is left with very high inventories while pricing is out of whack for new home buyers. Mortgage holders are left holding all the risk consequences of highly inflated housing valuations and variable rate loans that make over-leveraged home owners absolutely incapable of making their payments or selling their house. So how is it that the homeowner takes the blame, all the risk and the consequences?

Anyone that blames the CDS super bubble of the last decade on the government has not understood the facts of what really happened. Wealthy Republicans control the purse strings of the Republican Party. They are the natural ones to benefit from the bubbles and super bubbles in the market. It is in their interest to find a straw man to blame when the bubble bursts and the individual mortgage holders are the last investors on the pyramid scheme. Housing valuations plummeted when the super bubble burst and the mortgage holders were left with the consequences. If Republicans allowed the idea that the ‘free market’ sometimes is rigged, people would demand oversight (regulation and independent ratings agencies) to level off the inequality of the market. Who do you think this would hurt? –wealthy Republicans of course. If the Republican electorate would maintain the same skepticism for the ‘free market’ they have for the government, market inequalities would be tilted more in their favor by electing politicians that exercise regulatory restraint on market excesses. Instead, the Republican electorate is made to believe that regulation kills the market and puts them out of jobs. Sure, a market can be regulated to death but that has never been the issue in this country. Our country has been highly tilted to the other side – no regulation and crony capitalism. How this problem has been made to be the Democrat’s fault is nuts. It is flagrant manipulation of the electorate by the Republican Party that creates this impression. If the electorate buys the Republican agenda and elects more Republican candidates, they will be throwing gasoline on the fire that will burn them alive. The next super bubble will make the Great Depression look like a time of affluence.

The Facts: Deregulation=Republicans=Economic Crisis

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Myths about the Mortgage Meltdown

Myth 1: Clinton caused the mortgage meltdown
Myth 2: Low income lending caused the mortgage meltdown
Myth 3: Bush did not contribute to the mortgage melt down
Myth 4: The private (free market) was not the cause of the mortgage meltdown

The increase of MBS (mortgage backed securities) purchased by the GSEs (Fannie and Freddie) from 2003 through 2006 under pressure from the Bush administration to meet their 56% affordable housing requirement started PRIVATE, market speculation – a 30 trillion dollar bubble worldwide on the PRIVATE, credit default swap derivatives markets – this was the cause of the housing bubble that burst into the subsequent economic crisis. Deregulation of the financial market allowed this bubble to occur. The private (free market) speculative derivative bubble caused the meltdown not the low income housing increase and subsequent loses. The low income housing loses in the Bush years resulted in tens of billions of dollars. The private market speculation for derivatives, 30 trillion dollars, is orders of magnitudes larger than the low income housing loses during the Bush years and is the only amount large enough to bring down the markets worldwide.

To understand how all this created the perfect storm see:
https://www.mixermuse.com/blog/2012/01/11/the-great-recession-how-the-free-market-got-rigged/

Even Alan Greenspan, a Republican, admitted in his interview with Brian Naylor:

BRIAN NAYLOR: The man once known as the maestro for his direction of the nation’s economy as Fed chairman sat for four long hours yesterday, watching lawmakers who once cheered his performances turn into harsh critics. Testifying before the House Oversight Committee, Greenspan didn’t down play the severity of the crisis in the nation’s markets.
Mr. ALAN GREENSPAN (Former Chairman, Federal Reserve): We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century credit tsunami. Central banks and governments are being required to take unprecedented measures.
NAYLOR: Under questioning from Democrats on the panel, Greenspan conceded he might have been, as he put it, partially wrong in not moving to regulate trading of some derivatives that are among the root causes of the credit crisis. He also admitted his free market ideology may be flawed. This exchange with committee chairman, Democrat Henry Waxman of California, verged on the metaphysical.
Representative HENRY WAXMAN (Committee Chairman, Democrat, 30th District of California): You found a flaw in the reality…
Mr. GREENSPAN: Flaw in the model that I perceived is a critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak.
Rep. WAXMAN: In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right. It was not working.
Mr. GREENSPAN: How it – precisely. That’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I’ve been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96070766

In September 2002, Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey Pitt, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman James Newsome wrote a letter to members of Congress to note their opposition to legislation that would regulate derivatives.

They wrote:

“We believe that the [over-the-counter] derivatives markets in question have been a major contributor to our economy’s ability to respond to the stresses and challenges of the last two years. This proposal would limit this contribution, thereby increasing the vulnerability of our economy to potential future stresses….
We do not believe a public policy case exists to justify this governmental intervention. The OTC (over the counter) markets trade a wide variety of instruments. Many of these are idiosyncratic in nature….
While the derivatives markets may seem far removed from the interests and concerns of consumers, the efficiency gains that these markets have fostered are enormously important to consumers and to our economy.
Greenspan and the others urged Congress “to be aware of the potential unintended consequences” of legislation to regulate derivatives.
They got it exactly wrong. Swaps and derivatives ended up undermining, not bolstering, the economy.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/10/alan-shrugged

Proof:

Certainly, a significant event that started the collapse happened during the last few years of the Clinton administration. The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999, known as financial services deregulation,

“It repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, opening up the market among banking companies, securities companies and insurance companies. The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act

The bill was a compromise between the Clinton Administration and the House Republicans:

“The bill then moved to a joint conference committee to work out the differences between the Senate and House versions. Democrats agreed to support the bill after Republicans agreed to strengthen provisions of the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act and address certain privacy concerns; the conference committee then finished its work by the beginning of November. On November 4, the final bill resolving the differences was passed by the Senate 90-8, and by the House 362-57. This legislation was signed into law by Democratic President William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton on November 12, 1999.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act

“In 2003, the two [GSEs, Fannie and Freddie] bought $81 billion in subprime securities. In 2004, they purchased $175 billion — 44 percent of the market. In 2005, they bought $169 billion, or 33 percent. In 2006, they cut back to $90 billion, or 20 percent. Generally, Freddie purchased more than Fannie and relied more heavily on the securities to meet goals.
In 1997 the GSEs owned about 12% of the total market share of these securities. In 2001 the GSEs owned about 15% of the total market share of these securities. In 2008 this percentage had grown dramatically to 40%.
In intervening years it was much more. President Bush directed his HUD director to pressure the GSEs into buying massive amounts these MBS [Mortgage Backed Securities] on the open market. This created huge market for these securities and encouraged more and more risky private sector mortgages so they could be bought, bundled and sold on the open market largely to Fannie and Freddie.
But by 2004, when HUD next revised the goals, Freddie and Fannie’s purchases of subprime-backed securities had risen tenfold. Foreclosure rates also were rising.
That year, President Bush’s HUD ratcheted up the main affordable-housing goal over the next four years, from 50 percent to 56 percent. John C. Weicher, then an assistant HUD secretary, said the institutions lagged behind even the private market and “must do more.”
For Wall Street, high profits could be made from securities backed by subprime loans. Fannie and Freddie targeted the least-risky loans. Still, their purchases provided more cash for a larger subprime market.
“That was a huge, huge mistake,” said Patricia McCoy, who teaches securities law at the University of Connecticut. “That just pumped more capital into a very unregulated market that has turned out to be a disaster.””
“In 2003, the two bought $81 billion in subprime securities. In 2004, they purchased $175 billion — 44 percent of the market. In 2005, they bought $169 billion, or 33 percent. In 2006, they cut back to $90 billion, or 20 percent. Generally, Freddie purchased more than Fannie and relied more heavily on the securities to meet goals.
“The market knew we needed those loans,” said Sharon McHale, a spokeswoman for Freddie Mac. The higher goals “forced us to go into that market to serve the targeted populations that HUD wanted us to serve,” she said.”
But because Fannie and Freddie were buying mortgage-backed securities rather than the actual subprime loans, their involvement came too late to require stiffer standards from lenders.
Fannie and Freddie “made no progress in civilizing the market,” said Sandra Fostek, a senior regulator at HUD.
William C. Apgar Jr., who was an assistant HUD secretary under Clinton, said he regrets allowing the companies to count subprime securities as affordable.
“It was a mistake,” he said. “In hindsight, I would have done it differently.””
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/09/AR2008060902626.html

Conclusion: Even though Fannie, Freddie and FHA had much less to do with new loans in the Bush administration they bought huge amounts of MBS in those years to meet President Bush’s 56% housing requirement.

Additionally, the President encouraged the GSEs to “focus” their “core housing mission” “with respect to low-income Americans and first-time homebuyers” in the following statement from the White House,

“The Administration strongly believes that the housing GSEs should be focused on their core housing mission, particularly with respect to low-income Americans and first-time homebuyers. Instead, provisions of H.R. 1461 that expand mortgage purchasing authority would lessen the housing GSEs’ commitment to low-income homebuyers.”
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/omb/legislative/sap/109-1/hr1461sap-h.pdf

Conclusion: President Bush had directed HUD to require the GSEs to meet the 56% low income housing requirement. This pressured the GSEs to buy massive MBS. This created a massive market for junk mortgages.

Credit Default Swaps are insurance policies on mortgages, sort of like the futures market for commodities for MBS. Credit Default Swaps are not regulated. The government did not own credit default swaps. This was purely a private market commodity.

Between 2000 and 2008, the market for such swaps ballooned from $900 billion to more than $30 trillion.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/credit_default_swaps/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier

This is what brought AIG down.

Goldman Sachs played both sides MBS and Credit Default Swaps.

When the Fannie and Freddie bought huge amounts of MBS, pressured by the Bush administration, the market for credit default swaps went astronomical. This is ultimately what broke them and resulted in tax payers having to bail them out.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/01/24/8234040/index.htm

If you do not believe me what about Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey Pitt, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman James Newsome (quoted above)?

Here are the numbers that show:
1) the percent of subprime lending to total mortgage originations
2) the percent of Alt-A lending to total mortgage originations – An Alt-A mortgage, short for Alternative A-paper, is a type of U.S. mortgage that, for various reasons, is considered riskier than A-paper, or “prime”, and less risky than “subprime,” the riskiest category. Alt-A interest rates, which are determined by credit risk, therefore tend to be between those of prime and subprime home loans. Typically Alt-A mortgages are characterized by borrowers with less than full documentation, lower credit scores, higher loan-to-values, and more investment properties. A-minus is related to Alt-A, with some lenders categorizing them the same, but A-minus is traditionally defined as mortgage borrowers with a FICO score of below 680 while Alt-A is traditionally defined as loans lacking full documentation. Alt-A mortgages may have excellent credit but may not meet underwriting criteria for other reasons – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-A
3) GSE backed loans

http://www.mortgagebankers.org/files/News/InternalResource/57640_GAOReportInformationonRecentDefaultandForeclosureTrends.pdf

the percent of the total market of GSE and FHA, sub-prime loans (Col 1)
the default percentage of the total market (Col 2)
the amount in billions of the total market defaults (Col 3 )
Note: All currency amounts in billions
Year Col 1 Col 2 Col 3
1997 10% 0.9% $8
1999 13% 0.9% $12
2001 12% 0.7% $17
2003 11% 0.6% $21
2005 11% 1.5% $9
2007 13% 0.5% $28
Detail for Subprime Loans – see endnotes for sources (page 10 pdf)
http://www.aei.org/docLib/Pinto-High-LTV-Subprime-Alt-A.pdf
GSE Investment Portfolio and MBS ($ Billions, Left Axis)
GSE % of Total Outstanding Single Family Mortgages (Right Axis)
http://www.fcic.gov/hearings/pdfs/2010-0227-Jaffee.pdf
GAO report (page 18 for sub-prime data and page 21 for default rates data in pdf):
http://www.mortgagebankers.org/files/News/InternalResource/57640_GAOReportInformationonRecentDefaultandForeclosureTrends.pdf
http://www.aei.org/docLib/Pinto-High-LTV-Subprime-Alt-A.pdf (page 12 pdf)

This data clearly shows that:

The increase of low income, sub-prime loans and the low overall default rate of all loan originations (1.5% in 2005 was the highest tracked in this data, through 2007). This dispels that myth that the crisis was caused by loan defaults of low-income folks.

For more informations see – https://www.mixermuse.com/blog/2010/10/14/how-george-bush-and-the-private-mortgage-market-created-the-perfect-storm/

Something I blogged on the Huffington Post…

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“Class warfare has been going on for decades. Republicans are really good at propaganda. However, they have finally deconstructed themselves. They could only talk generally for so long about cutting the size of the Federal government before their rhetoric caught up to them. Now that their own people are demanding that they walk the talk, the folks that are in the “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” syndrome will find that their leaders have been picking their pocket to sell them their own watch. The Republicans must put up or shut up and this will be their demise. Yes, they would love the Democrats to do the fate fatale for them so they could sophistically blame that on the Democrats as well (as they try to blame their failed economics on the Democrats) but Obama has caught the fox in his own trap – His populism actually works and helps the middle class (Proof: https://www.mixermuse.com/blog/2012/01/06/all-you-need-to-know-about-politics-1-6-12-2/) while their populism, as is typical, does exactly what they condemn the Democrats for – split the American public (religious, crush the middle class, attack immigrants, destroy the government they say the love, change the constitution they say they want to uphold the ‘original’ intent of, etc.) . The ‘populism’ of Obama as understood by the right is finally the courage that brings into the daylight the right’s own secret class warfare against the non-elite. As is typical, the right does the damage and blames it on the Democrats (i.e., lose of AAA rating). As a an ardent socialist in the industrial revolution (corporatism on steroids), Orwell is falsely revered by the right for “Animal Farm” but Orwell would have been much more sympathetic to this, https://www.mixermuse.com/blog/2012/01/06/the-fox-and-the-hen-house/, than the unmitigated proponents of capitalism.”

After a little more thought…

There has been a ‘secret war’ going on for decades on the middle class that every economic study has shown for many years. The latest census data tells us 1 out of every 2 Americans is in poverty. Yet, we get the right’s self-righteous shrill proclamations about the newly formed class warfare project from President Obama. Republicans really merit study for the copulas conjunction of the subject, President Obama and the predicate, class warfare. Republicans have well understood “The Little Prince” and the war of all against all. The best war is the invisible war; the war that takes the moral high ground while simultaneously erasing the enemy all the while producing its dominance. In this case, policies that prefer the rich and impoverish everyone else, are ‘capitalism’, the aspiration that any old fool could be rich too and corporatism would be their self-crafted philosophy, the philosophy that reifies the exception and punishes the accidental. If the old fool was rich he would be a king and the bourgeois jester of the noble would speak with Republican lips. The drama of the fool is more powerful than his poverty. Now, these new leftists come along and tell the fool that he is dreaming; that the jester lies as sirens sing. How dare the leftist disturb the fools slumber, let him dream. The leftist is the true enemy. These nag flies get in the way of baseless dreams, the opium of truth. I must say that it is ingenious along the lines of Nietzsche’s idea of Christianity. The truly powerful is never seen. It never becomes obvious. It hides in un-thought hermeneutics. It is the only proper language. It is the language that establishes and maintains truth and excludes madness (“Madness and Civilization”). Without the proper, the fool will fail but the fool fails anyway. Here resides the aporia, the riddle. When the riddle, the conundrum, the paradox is solved it loses its passion. In this therefore, existence loses. The end of the proper announces the beginning of anarchy, the victory of chaos – but how could anarchy have a beginning – can a circle be a square? When riddles multiply, mystification abounds and canon subverts its undoing. The past is lifted into the future as revised, continually re-established in service to unseen manipulation. The horror is the actual life I live and the sacred is the one I aspire to. The taboo is my inability to buy bread and the totem is the feasts I will have when I am rich. To understand what it means to be human must think the desire for fantasy. The elite Republicans know this well and count their riches on it. Truth in a void that can only endlessly turn on itself, eat itself, to obtain its ends must hide the producer at all costs. Obama is the evil Marxist spokesman of class warfare not because he did it (class warfare) but because he said it. He spoke the profane, the improper and therefore must die in his sin…and we wonder why there was a need for postmodernism?

All You Need to Know About Politics 1-6-12

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Here are the latest numbers:
Bush debt increase: 85%
Obama debt increase: 43%
Bush increase in unemployment: 86%
Obama increase in unemployment: 9%

Bottom Line: Anyone that tells you President Obama ran up the debt percentage wise more the President Bush OR that President Obama ran up unemployment percentage wise more than Bush IS A LIAR and here are the numbers and references to absolutely unquestionable sources (Treasury Department and The Bureau of Labor Statistics).*

Please note the the seasonably abjusted unemployment numbers for December was revised downward to 8.5% so don’t let them tell you it was Christmas help.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm

This is a graph of the debt since 1950 (click on the graphs to make them larger)…

This is the rate of increase of the debt since 1950…

Please note the difference from 2001 to 2009 and 2009 to 2011. This is Bush vs Obama

Note: The graph only uses full fiscal year data. The last fiscal year ended was September 30, 2011

Here is the data and links to the Treasury Department to verify the numbers…

The links shown above are:
Historical Debt Outstanding – Annual 2000 – 2010
Historical Debt Outstanding – Annual 1950 – 1999
The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It
Debt Position and Activity Report
The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It (type in Enter Beginning Date: 9/30/11)

Check for yourself…
From January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2009 the national debt increased from $5,727,776,738,304.64 to $10,626,877,048,913.08. For those that still believe in arithmetic this is an 85% increase in the debt over the Bush administration’s term ((10,626,877,048,913.08 / 5,727,776,738,304.64) * 100) = 185% or an 85% increase).

From January 20, 2009 to January 5, 2012 the national debt increased from $10,626,877,048,913.08 to $15,236,541,899,973.10. This is a 43% increase in debt over President Obama’s term ((15,236,541,899,973.10 / 10,626,877,048,913.08) * 100) = 143% or a 43% increase).

Don’t take my word for it, check it out on the US Treasury Department site at:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

When Bush took office on January 20, 2001, the national unemployment rate was 4.2%. When he left office on January 20, 2009 and President Obama took office the national unemployment rate was 7.8%
http://www.bls.gov/cps/prev_yrs.htm

The current unemployment rate as of January 6, 2012 is 8.5%
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Doing the math, the increase during the Bush administration was (7.8 / 4.2) * 100 = 186% or a 86% increase in unemployment. For the Obama administration the math is (8.5 / 7.8) * 100 = 109% or a 9% increase in unemployment.

* Note: I have revised this based the January, 2009 unemployment number of 7.8%. Preseident Obama took office January, 20, 2009. From the graph below you can see that the unemployment rate exploded just as he got into office. I think this explosion arguably was not due to anything President Obama did in his first few months (just 4 months later the rate was 9.4%) as the national unemployment rate does not turn on the dime but I will give the detractors the benefit of the doubt. There is still a huge difference in 86% (Bush) and 9% (Obama). If the numbers from 4 months after President Obama took office are used they work out to:

Bush administration increase in unemployment: 124%

Obama administration decrease in unemployment: 10%

Transition Date: End of May, 2009

Given this, the difference would be a 134% increase in unemployment during the Bush administration over the Obama administration. I would love it of someone could explain to me how this is an indictment of the Democrats? Doesn’t this clearly show that the Democrats are doing something right and the Bush administration did something wrong? Why are we suppose to believe that this is something peculiar to the Bush Presidency and not endemic to the ideology of Republicanism that ALREADY is back to the rhetoric of deregulation?

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/lns14000000

The Fox and the Hen House

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Once upon a time there was a fox. The fox was placed in charge of the hen house. The fox’s job was to regulate all the activity of the hen house. However, the fox was wily and was opposed to regulation. Therefore, he ate all the hens. However, this did not satisfy the fox. So, the fox invited all his friends to a meeting. When all his friends were gathered he said, “We need to guard all the hen houses in the land. If we do this we can happily eat hens forever. I propose that we buy up all the hen houses in the land. I also propose that we borrow the money to buy all the hen houses and the factory that makes money. If we do this we can make more money to borrow to buy more hen houses. We can also buy all authority in the land so we can place ourselves in charge of the hen houses. However, since we are smart we will make sure we do not eat all the hens. We must maintain a healthy population of hens. The hens must think all is well so they will be fat and juicy. We will make the hens pay taxes – their first born, while we will convince the hens that since we are the job creators we will not have to pay any taxes. However, since the hens must eat to live we will put them to work in the fields to grow grains. We will build factories to process the grain into seed. We will pay them very little but don’t worry fellow fox friends we will make them pay for their food. Between the taxes and the food, we will get all our invested money back. We will tell them this is capitalism. If we get too many working hens and we do not have enough work for them and we can’t eat them all, we will just let the excess hens die off thinking that they are lazy and do not deserve the things that working hens get. We will create wars so we can make them think we will protect them. We will make them think that the governing authority is evil and, even though we are the governing authority, we will make them think that we will protect them from the governing authority. If there are any smart chickens among them making problems we will make the majority of the hens believe that these free ranging chickens are secretly foxes in chickens clothes. We will make the hens think that we are on the side of their god, the great rooster in the sky. We will side with all their social issues like their belief that there should not be a chicken in every pot. We will make sure there are many hens for one rooster. We will make sure that we interpret the original intent of the constitution of all chickens to make sure it allows for all our ravenous goals. In the land of the chicken the fox will be king. My fellow foxes we are elite and deserve to eat dumb chickens forever.” All the foxes cheered the wily fox for his cunning and wisdom and proceeded to eat chickens for the rest of their lives and all the foxes lived happily ever after.

The End

Footnote To – Language: Animism and Illusion

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“…transcendence as the erasure of the other”

I realize this last phrase resists the notion that Levinas has of transcendence. Levinas wants to reconstitute metaphysics. He wants to re-think transcendence along the lines of Descartes’ idea of infinity. It is as if he wants to find the authenticity of metaphysics. For Levinas, metaphysics was always the thinking of the other. “The metaphysical desire tends towards something else entirely, toward the absolute other.” (Totality and Infinity, page 33, paperback) I understand his intentions here but I have always had some reservations concerning Levinas and metaphysics.

Metaphysics comes to post-modernity as historical, a canon. It has certainly taken radical turns from the Greeks, to Neo-Platonism, to Augustine, to Descartes, to Hegel, to Nietzsche and post-modernism. All these and others that have touched Metaphysics have moved it towards post-modernity. We, as historical beings have received this history in many ways that are pre-cognitive in Heidegger’s terms. Worldhood is certainly forged through the furnace of Metaphysics.

Post-modernity has looked upon metaphysics suspiciously as ‘logocentrism’, the canonical reading of power, the evil genius of Nietzsche’s Christianity and the alienation of labor. Levinas, as an anarchist communist understood these difficulties and yet was able to see beyond the barriers of historical narrative. In validating metaphysics as the residue of radical alterity he also takes up the historical burden placed upon metaphysics.

Certainly the reflections of metaphysics as power and the end of metaphysics want us to hear the all too human refrain of transcendence, the lack of anything that Levinas would want to hold to as radical alterity. To some extent this burden of metaphysics has been handed over to us. For some God still stands as the heir of metaphysics. However, the stand is defensive. Any Christian today will take up the cross of mistrust and suspicion. True, this also happened at the beginning of Christianity but starting with Roman Christendom onwards through the 19th century Christians were mainstream for much of the West and heresy or worse was reserved for the few that questioned its supremacy. The metaphysics of Christianity had been thought by a majority as the ‘science’ of the Dark and Middle Ages. Its truth was absolutely certain and informed culture.

The death of God that Nietzsche discussed and the end of metaphysics is not something imputed to it but something observed from it. Its power has been reduced to ‘personal relationship with Jesus’ as opposed to state religion. It no longer divines truth; science has taken its place. This does mean that Christians are not still under the spell of Christianity but it does point to their need to defend God over and against science. The post-modern who would be Christian is on guard, reclusive from the state. Evolution and global warming are denied. ‘Life’ is not taken in a biological sense but in a metaphysical sense as in the anti-abortionists who call themselves ‘pro-life’. This defensive stance would have been foreign to the average peasant in the dark ages. At the end of metaphysics we understand the darkness of God, the horrific violence of God, the human subjugation of God. Even Christians that would defend God from these assaults feel like they must defend the ‘true’ God from the weight of these accusations.

Even with all this Levinas peered deeply into metaphysics and saw the other. He felt the wonder of what metaphysics had always aimed at, the infinity that made metaphysics possible. However, as post-modern don’t we carry the ‘sameness’, the totalizing, the appeal to origin (arche’), the sin of presence, the effacement of radical alterity in our horizons that is said in the essence of metaphysics? The ‘saying’ that is otherwise than being is a still small voice but fraught with historical noise.

For us science has become the surrogate of metaphysics. It has taken careful steps to avoid the pitfalls of metaphysics. However, in so doing it has asked us to lower our horizons, our expectations. We are asked to relegate the questions of metaphysics to the junk pile of history. All the while, science has carried the banner of truth it has also left a gaping hole where metaphysics once stood. We, who live in the aftermath of this clash, even if not Christian, feel the crush of meaning, the cry of existentialism, the gasp of godlessness. The reduction to mere human has replaced the metaphysical drama of the titans, the gods and the eternal stakes that surround us. Here in this smallness we live and move and have our being.

Levinas wants to bring value again to metaphysics as what he gleams to be its kernel, the other. The other here does not mean to ‘set man on the throne’ or some such nonsense. At the same time that Levinas reconstitutes metaphysics as the radical alterity of the face of the other he also want to dethrone ‘man’ as a product of sameness, totality, tyranny. ‘Man’ as taken into metaphysics is understood, devalued and leveled off. Man is ‘enframed’ as standing reserve, thought in the manner of things, reduced to one among many of what is already known. ‘Man’ already marks the loss of human being. Levinas in thinking of the other wants to lose that ‘plastic cast’ of the face of the other. He wants to re-think the other as what can never enter into the light of being but casts off rays as history and language. Instead of a phenomenology of what shows itself he finds an absolute refusal to show, to be taken up in thought – except as retreat, as a darkness not shown in light. Paul Valery along with Hegel might say. “…but in order to render the light, you need a somber moiety of shade.” Levinas would content that as there is a real difference in ‘shade’ and death there is a real difference in ‘closedness’ and the face of the other. This difference is more than one of kind, it is not temporally commensurate, it is dia-chrony, a time not mine – not one kind among other kinds – but an-archical, without origin. This reminds us of the chaos of Hesiod but without the neutrality – the he or she that faces me. In this, Levinas wants to situate the history of metaphysics.

However, from post-modernity can we reconstitute metaphysics radically? Can we purge it of its madness and set it on an ‘other’ setting. Can we find another start from the Greeks? There are many starts in the Greeks. Do we have the choice to lay aside metaphysics? -Probably not. As the snake in Zarathustra don’t we need to bite of the head to grow another tail? The snake is mortally wounded but eternal recurrence has made sublime in-ways as trace, as radical alterity, tangential but not neutral, an-archical but not nothing, dia-chronos but not a-temporal. The eternal God of metaphysics has been dethroned but the spirit doggedly remains. I am not sure we can re-constitute metaphysics but we must. We face a recent turn towards heterogeny. Can we ignore science, the new unconscious, the m-verse, the God-particle? Has science surpassed the ‘mere’ of correctness and mathematical projects? Can we ignore difference, the trace, the spoiling of opposites, the deposition of dualities – the middle way of Greek thought – the kairos the interrupts chrony? Post-modernism thinks difference as before opposition, as before thesis/antithesis/aufhebung. This difference does not ‘lift up’ or sublate. This difference does not transform or transport. This difference cannot reduce to neutrality and the light and darkness that produce it. This anachronism is laid upon us reluctantly by the corpse of metaphysics that we are. Transcendence as the erasure of the other nonetheless preserves the other in its erasure – in this we bear our post-modernity.