On Monkeys, Bonuses, and Vaccines

What do monkeys, bonuses, and vaccines have in common?

Answer, basically: An impulse for a blog today. A lazy day at home, reading the (UK) Sunday Times; getting more disturbed by the minute.

What an experience, just sitting in a comfortable chair; while others nearby were quietly knitting and reading around a fire; the first use of the fireplace in our community Lounge, heralding the changing of seasons...

...which I wrote about, and metaphorically, in my last blog; and follow up on in this one.

To the riddle.

First was the front page story, only glanced at at first, about the Royal Bank of Scotland gearing up to give its investment-bank employees and managers a princely bonus for the year; for doing so well, after the near-collapse of the previous year, when it was bailed out by the taxpayers, after its own folly in jeopardizing its operations in the first place with risky financial investments. In concert with so many other such institutions in the news this week, reporting record profits, and therefore hefty bonuses...

...while banks are still slow to make loans to struggling businesses, and the unemployment rolls continue to grow...

Enough of this sordid story. What else is there in the news today - as reported in the mainstream media, on a slow day for breaking news...What’s this. A story on how some researchers taught some monkeys about ‘money’. Associating the giving to them of a token with the getting of a reward. Whereby they learned such concepts as relative worth, and -

Okay. Point made. And: Are we just monkeys?

We are if we let the banking fraternity get away with their moves back to ‘business as usual’...

I decide to read the article about the RBS in greater detail, to see how it is played.

To its credit, the Sunday Times deplores what is going on in this regard; in the tone of the article and in an accompanying editorial. But the boys are getting away with their monkey business nevertheless. Because governments are loath to intervene. For whatever excuse-ridden reasons may be given. Sigh...

People, people. Do you really want to put the international economy - put civilization itself - in the hands of gamblers? Subject to the machinations of casino players, let loose by a new breed of bankers to play with fire? People who have no compunctions, no concerns about the long-term effects of their actions, just as long as they can take chances to make a lot of money for themselves and their fellow monkey backers in their gambling operations?

This isn’t ‘business as usual’. This is madness.

Come out from under their control, before they cause more damage than they already have.

Humanity is not well served by these our masters, contemptible of ‘the common man’, aka of democracy.

This speculation has nothing to do with the provision of goods and services to each other, in harmony with nature, and everything to do with satisfying instant gratification; aka greed.

Like a monkey, who doesn’t know any better.

Insert a little baring of teeth here...

...they make money from the chaos they caused. Unsettled times create opportunities for speculation. Safer times - ie, times when people just get on with their lives, free from worries, like of marauders, out to manipulate them to achieve their ends - are for mugs. Churning times are for churners. Aka sharks...

‘Well, if it’s their money, they can play with it, right? Gamble with it all they want?’

Of course. As long as it doesn’t affect the rest of us.

And if it does affect the rest of us...

And here comes in the matter of ‘vaccines’ in my day’s equation of subjects. First association: This week there has been a lot of debate on various website Comments threads about those who question the hype over the swine flu purported pandemic and its now-presenting and -preventing vaccines, and those who denigrate those who would not think of others in their concentrating just on themselves and their children.

‘Unvaccinated children give other children diseases. They are like rotten apples. They should be banished to go live on an island, these thoughtless, contemptible parents with their disease-spreading children.’ And so forth.

Fair charge? And fair parallel?

Not quite.

The latter case, about effects of personal behavior on society, is not allowing for the fact that vaccines are not the great unmitigated savior of mankind that they have been cracked up to be. They have a huge downside to them, in the seeding of ilness and disease conditions, like autoimmune and neurological disorders, in the populace (some in the same epidemical amounts of the diseases that they would purport to prevent).

Which brings up another point from the Times of today: from Rod Liddle’s column and a comment therein on allergies; how so many kids have food allergies these days. What the public is never told about is that these allergies come primarily from the food proteins that are put in vaccines. The body mounts an immune reaction to the vaccine - the point of the procedure - and that includes to all the ingredients OF the vaccine.

Why do they put food proteins in vaccines?

That discussion is for another time. For now, I just mention it, as part of my day’s musings on the news.

Which includes the inside-pages feature-story shenanigans of a British equivalent of Bernie Madoff; an investor named Levene. Taking people’s money to make a quick buck for them, and, it has turned out, too many for himself; leaving them shorted, to the tune of millions (200 and counting). And interestingly, also targeting the same, Jewish community. As the stereotype has it: a ‘class’ of people very interested in, enamoured of, even fixated on, money.

Ah yes. Money again...

Credit derivative swaps, or obligations, or whatever the hell these things are called -

WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE REAL WORLD?

This is the world of moneychangers in the temple of life. It’s time to throw the rascals out - whoever all they are; and that includes nominally upstanding WASPS amongst them, and females trying to prove that they can be just as good at being one of the boys as the men - and get to civility, and meeting people’s needs, and feeling at one with each other and our long-suffering natural environment. It’s time, that is to say, for something new under the sun, freed from the often overwhelming control of our lower, animal instincts.

Debt and currency trading, futures markets, derivatives - none of this investment-banking business has anything to do with the exchange and provision of goods and services; what ‘economy’ and ‘currency’ are supposed to be all about. And what they were all about, before some individuals got the idea of turning money into an end in itself. And others piled into the act. Like monkeys learning a new trick.

Something, it needs to be pointed out, that they were taught.

That it didn’t come naturally to them...

So: what to do?

Lord Oakeshott is quoted in the front-page article as saying:

“The masters of the universe in investment banking are taking away lorry loads of loot because they are the last men standing. The government must get a grip.”

Indeed.

And more.

The government must change the terms of engagement. From competition to cooperation. From money making to goods and services producing. From monkey business to the ‘business’ of ascension; of moving beyond the bounds and boundaries of our animal nature, further into the realm of our spiritual nature, as ‘spiritual beings having a human experience’.

We’ve got work to do, folks. Let’s be about it.

If we can draw ourselves away from the magnets of the moment, and those manipulating the magnets...

‘No, sorry, government of the people. Can’t build up our bank’s reserves, for lending purposes; it cuts down on what we can offer in the way of bonuses to retain and attract the best - ‘

Gamblers.

Do you REALLY want your society, and future, in these sorts of hands? These Masters of the Universe, reckless in their all-consuming desire to pull off deals? To experience that surge of power? And of attraction?

It’s an illness; a craving; an addiction. You are putting your lives in the hands of a dysfunctional mob who have lost the plot, and taken you down the rabbit hole of their delusions of grandeur with them. Well, it’s time to cut the ties that bind. Free yourselves from their grasp over your destiny, and power of individual action in your life, and exercise of personal responsibility.

And know that YOU are one of those whom you have been waiting for.