(from The Power Of Music by Elena Mannes)
". . . music is so powerful is that sound actually penetrates our bodies: "You know when someone says that a piece of music 'touched me' or 'moved me,' it's very literal. The sound of my voice enters your ear canal and it's moving your eardrum. That's a very intimate act. I am very literally touching you, and when you speak to me, you are literally touching me. . ."
. . . and there really was one, single, powerful, overseer of all that there is, it would, without a doubt, open the drain to relieve the pressure being felt by their storm-ravaged city in the west. If only it were so, and this lone, all-knowing custodian saw the millions of homeless people, in the United States alone, suffering, starving and living like animals, it would surely provide these disadvantaged people the common, basic dignity that comes from having a place to live. If only it were so, and a great controller watching each and every one, personally witnessed the disregard, greed, and self-serving behavior of so many of its charges with regard to their fellow beings, without a doubt, it would rid these awful creatures of this abhorrent conduct through the supernatural means that it undoubtedly possesses. If only it were so. . .
(from wikipedia.com)
"Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! ("Look! Up in the sky!" "It's a bird!" "It's a plane!" "It's Superman!")... Yes, it's Superman ... strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men! Superman ... who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way! And now, another exciting episode, in the Adventures of Superman!"
Unfortunately for we who live in 2013 American, 'truth, justice and the American way' is now an oxymoron.
". . . When it comes to influencing legislators; votes, nothing is more powerful than the threat of cutting off whatever resource an industry supplies to voters. Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trade Commission from 1996 to 1999, a small agency charged with regulating futures markets, saw the danger of the "swaps" market long before the financial collapse of 2008 and warned the CTFC to regulate it before problems snowballed. Michael Greenberger, former CFTC director of trading and markets told the 2009 PBS Frontline program "The Warning" that when Born proposed the new rules, which would have increased visibility and price integrity for the investment banks selling CDO monster bonds, then deputy secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers called to tell her to stop. Summers had thirteen bankers in his office at that minute with a lot to lose if her rules were put into effect. As Greenberger recollected, Summers told Born that all the bankers agreed that regulating "swaps" would "cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II." Those bankers had the leverage to say: stop what you want to do, or the system will go down and the voters won't forgive your party for decades.
Ten years later, after a series of financial crises like those Born had warned about, banksters were still using the same threats to protect their profits. Sheila Bair, chair of the FDIC from 2006 to 2011, to the New York Times Magazine as her term was ending, "They would say, 'You have to do this or the system will go down.' If I heard that once, I heard it a thousand times. 'Citi is systemic, you have to do this.' No analysis, no meaningful discussion. It was very frustrating. . . "
". . . "If you don't give me what I want, I can meaningfully disrupt the flow of something that your constituents can't live without. . . "
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