In March, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) – the chair of the trade subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee – became one of the first members of Congress to call the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to account for its inclusion of financial services deregulation-promoting provisions in WTO agreements and various U.S. trade deals. These terms were included at the behest of lobbying of big Wall Street banks, and sharply limit the kinds of financial regulations countries can enact without facing WTO challenges and other claims for compensation.

via Eyes on Trade: Ongoing WTO-Wall Street Snow Job Continues.

This is why they need to be regulated. Their precious derivative trading needs some sunlight.

Remember those bailouts? Uh yeah..

When the financial industry tumbled, Greenwich’s fortunes fell with it. Now, as the federal bailout has helped lift investment banks to surprisingly robust profits, the news that major financial firms will dole out billions of dollars in salaries and bonuses this year came as welcome relief here, even though the rest of the country is still grappling with 10 percent unemployment.

I was reading The Center for Media and Democracy’s Weekly Spin email when I saw this post on smoking and Avatar.

James Cameron’s new blockbuster movie Avatar won a “black lung” rating for gratuitous smoking from the Web site Scenesmoking.org, which rates motion pictures according to the amount of smoking they show

It is a valid observation. It is a black mark on an otherwise extraordinarily good film.

I’m reading Chris Hedges’ latest book Empire of Illusion. It reminds me of Susan Jacoby’s book The Age of American Unreason in some regards. I must admit that I am rather shocked at how pervasive celebrity worship is in our culture. It has gotten to the point that even the wealthy along with the poor view themselves through the rose colored lens of celebrity status. The wealthy need their Town and Country magazine to show off and the poor need their reality TV to aspire to for the same reasons.

I found this excerpt below interesting. It pertains to a reality TV show called The Swan. Where the “regular” woman, part of the bottom 90 percent, is depressed to the point of ending her marriage because she is unhappy with who she is.

Troubled marriages, abusive relationships, unemployment, crusihng self-esteem problems-all will vanish along with the excess fat off their thighs. They will be new. They will be flawless. They will be celebrities.

We worship the elite and the beautiful to our own detriment. I truly beleive that there should be more role models that are not of the one percent featured in the media.

Another excerpt along those lines:

The working classes, comprising tens of millions of struggling Americans, are shut out of televisions’s gated community. The have become largley invisible. They ar mocked, even as they are tantazliezed, by the lives of excess they watch on the screen in their living rooms. Almost none of us will ever attain these lives of wealth and power. Yet we are told that if we want it badly enough, if we believe sufficently in ourselves, we too can have everything. We are left, when we cannot adopt these impossible lifestyles as our own, with feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. We have failed where others have succeded.

One more except which I think sums it all up:

Celebrity culture encourages everyone to think of themselves as potential celebrities, as if possesing unique if unacknowledged gifts.

It is a “culture of me,” a culture of narcissism.

In this era of The Great Recession I’m actually happy to have read this article in the NY Times today about how Americans have cut back on consumption.

Quietly but noticeably over the past year, Americans have rejiggered their lives to elevate experiences over things. Because of the Great Recession, a recent New York Times/CBS News poll has found, nearly half of Americans said they were spending less time buying nonessentials, and more than half are spending less money in stores and online.

But Americans are not just getting by with less. They are also doing more.

I really hope this is a trend that can stay with us. You don’t need to have every new thing that comes out or have the latest fashion and &c. I’m not saying you can’t but things that are nice and would be useful. For example I bought a Kindle 2 from Amazon because I read a lot and I love it. I saved up for a couple of weeks and bought one. A year ago I got an IBM Thinkpad which I absolutely love and I plan on keeping for as long as possible. I won’t go out and get the latest PC simply because it’s new. Also interestingly enough over the holiday I ran into a lady with the first generation Kindle and she’s still happy with it. She’ll use it until it stops working, she’s not thinking about the Kindle 2.

In a way I also feel I must mention what is known as planned obsolescence. That idea has been around for decades. Even if products don’t completely fail the marketing surrounding newer models and &c. put immense pressure on the individual to upgrade.

It’s time to go back to the article however. I think the article aims to focus on more of the discretionary spending that Americans do like this example:

Rosario and Igor Montoya used to buy, buy, buy for themselves and their two children without a second thought. Expensive sneakers, a new laptop, Legos — they all got what they wanted. But with the recession slashing the Montoyas’ workload and income by more than half, their priorities have shifted from products to activities.

This is really a good trend. It means that people have broken away, just a little, from marketers and Madison Avenue. As far as spending goes the one thing I aim to do is live within my means. I have my spreadsheet and know what I spend on. Personally I spend a lot of money on food because I don’t cook and I budget for that. I’ve also began to start saving from each paycheck. What I don’t spend on are expensive clothes, and getting every new gadget out there. For example I don’t even have an iPhone or Blackberry. I have a prepaid Tracfone which cost me $20 back in 2006. I just ad $10 every now and then to it since I don’t use the phone much. Three weeks ago the shoes that I were wearing began to fail on me so I was able to get sneakers for fifteen dollars to replace them! Take that Nike, Reebok, New Balance et al.

The food processing world is reeling right now one day after a shocking new series of tests released by Consumer Reports revealed that many leading brands of canned foods contain Bisphenol A (BPA)—a toxic chemical linked to health risks including reproductive abnormalities, neurological effects, heightened risk of breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, heart disease and other serious health problems.

via Tests Reveal Poison in Nearly All Campbell’s Soup | Sustainable Food | Change.org.

Change.org has a petition asking Campbell’s to stop using BPA infused packaging.

Warhol’s cans have seen better days

But I still couldn’t quite believe the level of glam-infused over-the-topness the commercial imparted, making a powerful prescription drug that can cost more than $100 a month sound like just a really, really cool new makeup item (and featuring superstar Brooke Shields, no less). If I didn’t know better (and it wasn’t a Tuesday), I would have thought it was a Saturday Night Live skit, like this hilarious take on extended-cycle birth-control pills.

via Ad for eyelash drug Latisse goes too far: Consumer Reports Health Blog.

While the drug is approved by the FDA it is costly. The drug’s side effects range from vision issues to the cosmetic, one being a permanently darkened eyelid!

We can’t, however, only blame the quantity and quality of Chinese goods for the environmental and other consequences of this transoceanic factory-to-waste stream. For that we can blame the two horsemen of the modern consumer apocalypse: functional obsolescence and fashion obsolescence.

Functional, or planned obsolescence is the purposeful decision by designers and manufacturers to ensure things don’t last, so that consumers must buy new ones. Fashion obsolescence is the related decision to offer new features and aesthetic changes to entice consumers to discard their old items in favor of updated and supposedly better ones.

via Built to Trash — In These Times.

This is a really good article. When you hear about planned obsolescence going back decades it make one shudder. In the past it might have been tolerable when America was a manufacturing colossus. Now it poses great threats to the world. Personally, I hate when clothing I buy does not last but a few months! I want heirloom-design and long lasting products.

“I don’t need anything. I don’t need a bag,” Kwawu said, and sighed. She barely looked at the pricey but practical gray sweater coat she was supposed to be buying, already wrapped in an elaborate origami of tissue at her elbow. She only had eyes for the $695 green-and-black handbag next to it that looked so cute when she slung it over her shoulder and twirled in front of the mirror a few minutes earlier.

Returning hunger for retail therapy thaws out credit cards – washingtonpost.com

This is a major problem within our society and economy. There was nothing wrong with the way this person was acting recently, before she came out of her shell as it were. She was being rather frugal. My thinking is by what you need. Of course we all have some small luxuries that we do not want to give up but they’re not $695 dollar purses. The small things may also be within your means which is the important thing. Lastly, shopping should never be associated with the word therapy.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Mr. Talen pen such a piece recently. He’s usually not writing because he is more active in the streets and after all he is running for NYC Mayor.

The average New Yorker deals with thousands of selling pitches each day, from six story high Kate Mosses down to the logos in the litter. The corporation has overwhelmed whole cultural traditions – the arts and religion and education and journalism. This “soft” side of society is now fully corporation-dependent. Anyone who opposes this take-over is called a “protester,” or “controversial.” We think we are full of energy and change because we believe the ads designed by corporate media reflect our own lives. The truth is that we are suffering a time of passive Consumerism reminiscent of American culture in the 1950’s. Everything we do in public life is thoroughly de-politicized.

And yet we live in a time where we can dream of freedom from Consumerism. As we say in the church, there is “Life After Shopping!” Consumerism, based on its false idea of prosperity – imploded in 2008. We call it “The Shopocalypse.” Here is one form the downturn took in New York: The bulldozers destroying our neighborhoods suddenly ran out of gas. And now families are coming out of their homes and looking around as if a bombardment has paused. We’re talking to each other on the corner. As the gleaming buildings stand over us, half-finished and frozen in space – we look back at the Bloomberg economy standing there and feel our true feelings rise up.

He’s basically equating the mayoralty to the real estate speculation that has been cast down on New York City.

And so we come to “the Rise of the Fabulous 500 Neighborhoods.” Lots of our smaller communities within the bigger Gotham had good economies before Consumerism attacked with its chain stores and luxury condos. Bloomberg runs our city thinking it is his corporation, New York City, Inc. Until last year, he was leading an assault on the neighborhoods like a military operation, creating an epidemic of high-rises, evictions and homelessness. He has turned over all that is best about our city to his market transactions. Mike Bloomberg’s persona is so comically a demonstration of Consumerism, that his illegal grab for another term and his spending $100 million on it – making the Mayorality one big product that he is buying – gives us the chance to demonstrate in unforgettable fashion how our Democracy needs to resist Consumerism.