Good Morning Friends,

Today we're talking about finance (as an organism) likened to an alien, intelligent, slug-like creature that needs to move from host to host, to survive; and, you may remember, it is our intention to do our best to evaluate this in terms of what I would call a left libertarian (in the American sense of the word 'libertarian,' let us be clear) analysis that believes that, what they call the financial oligarchy, wants to create a world government.

We said before that there is much science fiction about an intelligent slug-like creatures inhabiting humanoid bodies. Think about Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Jadzia Dax is a Trill (humanoid species of the planet Trill) who was one of the lucky ones to get her own symbiot called Dax, a species of incredibly long-lived, sentient slug creature. There's the Stargate series featuring the Tokkra and Go'ould.

But there are also stories in which the slug creatures give superhuman strength and speed to the humanoid host. It does this by making the nervous system and metabolism work in a different way, somehow. I believe there was an episode of the original Star Trek (with William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk) with this feature.

In this way, finance can make an economy unusually dynamic and strong, even while it undermines the internal health of the same economy. I suggested that there is a difference between a strong and dynamic economy and a healthy one. An economy can be strong but internally unhealthy. I gave as examples of this ill health but outward strength, in the form of the breaking of the levvies in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit and the bridge collapse in Minnesota. The bones of the state had been weakened at the expense of profit making.

Think about an NFL player, a great mountain of a man who also uses steroids* with all the short-term benefits that come with their use. Indeed, his musculature makes him appear to be the "picture of health," but the steroids are undermining his kidneys, changing his hormones, and so forth.

The thing about these slug creatures is that they are parasites. Yes, they endow their hosts with superhuman capabilities, but they simultaneosly drain the body's resources in order to produce those results. Because of this the slug cannot remain in one body for very long, nothing like a natural life-span. It has to keep moving from host to host to host and so on and so forth.

I also mentioned that there are two novels by Octavia E. Butler, "Wildseed" and "Mind of My Mind" which feature a character called Doro, who is something like this but not precisely but similar.

We also found useful, an article in the Monthly Review by John Bellamy Foster called The Age of Monopoly-Finance Capital. monthlyreview.org/100201/foster.php

It just occurred to me that capitalism can be thought of as a kind of manic-depressive system. Keeping in mind the bubble-making nature of capitalism (the euphoria phase) - for our own edification - Foster wrote:

"Economic stagnation, in this sense, should not be confused with technological or consumer product stagnation. Indeed, the constant development of the technology of production that characterizes capitalism in general (including its monopoly stage) only increases the productive potential of the system, intensifying its overaccumulation tendencies.** The system could conceivably be rescued from its economic doldrums under these circumstances by the appearance of an epoch-making innovation on the scale of the steam engine, the railroad, and the automobile, in terms of total economic-geographical effects - generating a vast demand for new investment, independent of existing income constraints. Yet no such epoch-making innovation, Baran and Sweezy (two writers whose work Foster referred to) argued, was on the horizon."

Where can new dynamism come from? What is there to bubble? If there is nothing, what then? What will American finance do then? Where will they go? I am making a shaky assumption that Foster is talking about American finance capital, which of course, is a part of global finance capital, by his mention of the steam engine, automobile, and railroad.

From this narrow perspective, if we were to evaluate what left libertarians (don't accept this term as gospel; it's rather thrown together) call the New World Order (which is different from what they seem to think that mainstream politicians pretend to mean by it), which is, according to left libertarians, sovereignty killing world government, in terms of a parasitical slug, then the question would be: where can American finance move to?

This is a nonsensical question. There is no other single country which American finance could move to - even if such a thing were possible - that provides any better prospects for dynamic innovation.

For this reason, left libertarians might argue, the financial oligarchy needs to feast on whole blocks of nations. The Alex Jones documentary Fall of the Republic talks about this. The film speaks of plans for a North American Union, the complete political and economic fusion of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, and NAFTA as a first step to this.

Fall of the Republic sees the ultimate goal of the international bankers as complete world fusion, which from the perspective of parasitical slugs, might provide the ultimate body for the organism to be able to live on forever.

One way we might think about this is Brainiac. Brainiac is the arch-nemesis of Superman (next to Lex Luthor). Brainiac was the living computer of the planet Krypton, who deliberately allowed the destruction of the planet. His twisted justification for this: the more rare knowledge is, the more precious it is. One of the things he always does is to make newer, stronger bodies to house his intellect.

Or we might think about the thirties radio play "Donovan's Brain" starring Orson Welles [Donovan's Brain was an episode of a radio mystery anthology series called Suspense that ran from 1930 to 1960], which was based on a novel by a writer called Kurt Siodmak. William H. Donovan was critically injured in an airplane crash. Patrick Curry was a surgeon obsessed with keeping disembodied brains alive for as long as possible.

Donovan comes into his hands, and Curry decides that the mistake he's made before was that his previous subjects had been dead at the time of the removal of the brain. This is a mistake he intends not to make again, and so on and so forth.

Curry's treatments of the brain, both to keep it alive and develop a means of communication with it, awaken its self-consciousness and confer upon the brain extraordinary telepathic powers. The brain now wants a body, a young and strong body in which to house itself, so that the brain that was once William H. Donovan (and which is now much more) can live on, potentially for thousands of years. And then Donovan's Brain might go on to take over and rule the world.

So, the potential designs of the American branch of the global financial oligarchy might be compared to Donvan's Brain. The world would be the ultimate body.

But it seems to me that finance already has the benefits of global access with the way the world is now, with over a trillion dollars a day of financial capital moving all about the world at the speed the Internet.

It is called a virtual parliament or virtual senate (1).

As Marx said that capitalism only exists as a part of many capitalisms, I would say that world governments can only exist within a framework of many world governments - other all-encompassing planetary governments. I'm being serious about this. I think we can thankful that the international bankers are not going for world government, simply because we seem to be alone as sentient life in this solar system, and as far as we know, the galaxy; otherwise I think it credible that the international banker set might well move to cohere the Earth into a unified structure under their outright control, as a base from which to launch an interplanetary venture of financial imperialism; and to the extent to which imperialism abroad depends upon repression at "home" we can be thankful that we, the people of the Earth, are spared this additional dimension of suffering.

wingedcentaur