Alternative New Year's Message – Quiz – Supplement

The previous weblog ended with mention of the 'purist' heights of both the Swiss Alps and the desperate need for higher consciousness amongst all – with obvious allusion to recent Davos and the need for a reversal of the worst aspects of modern life.

As a shift in global power continues, any such change looks more likely to come from the positive 'old values' influence of the BRICs and beyond with what might be termed 'New Centricism'.

By the end of January and early February any New Year's item is typically long forgotten; however, investment-auto-motives wishes to highlight two very adroit connections that the featured 1954 film 'Sabrina' has serendipitously raised.

For very good reason.

The first concerns the matter of the morality of economic growth – for the good of all - as opposed to any overt no-holds barred greed regards the maximisation of profits at any social or natural/ecological cost.

In effect for the 'Societal Good', expanding the hopes and ambitions of the many.

The second regards the matter of very well constructed and highly complex actions of criminality by cohorts of co-conspirators who target an unknowing and essentially defenceless individual for financial gain. This typically done during economic downturns when the attention of the nastiest people (within families, external to those families and often a combine of the two) are drawn to the plights of those individuals who are created as “easy targets”, or the “dumb patsy” because of their ignorance, innocence and open, good nature.

In effect the 'Detriment to Society', which in some instances, massively damages the ability of the overtly optimistic yet naïve learned people to effect positive change for broader society.

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The Social Good -

Herein once again a return to the script of 'Sabrina', this time the words of the character Linus Larrabee (the responsible workaholic brother) as played by Humphrey Bogart with David Larrabee (the irresponsible spendthrift sibling) as played by William Holden.

The scene takes place in the fictional Larrabee Conglomerate headquarters on the top floor of a New York skyscraper at 30 Broadway  over-looking the Hudson river, with conversation centred on the proposed marriage of David Larrabee to the daughter of a sugar-cane mogul; so as to create a notional new 'wonder plastic'.

[NB pertinent here since the sugar-cane subject and the idea of continued EM development used as a segue to return to the topic of Brazil in future weblogs].

DL: “It's all beginning to make sense. Mr Tyson owns the sugar-cane, you own the formula for the plastics and I'm supposed to be offered up as a human sacrifice on the alter of industrial progress...is that it?”

LL: “You make it sound so vulgar David, as if the son of the hot-dog dynasty were being offered to the daughter of the mustard king. Surely to don't object to Elizabeth simply because her father happens to have $20m...that's very narrow-minded of you David” (with knowing sarcasm).

DL : “There's just one thing you over-looked...I haven't proposed and she hasn't accepted”.

LL : “Don't worry...I proposed and Mr Tyson accepted”

DL : “Did you kiss him?” (to return the sarcasm)

LL : “Now look, Elizabeth is one of the loveliest girls around...sooner or later you're going to propose anyway, I'm just trying to help you make-up your mind”

DL : “Then why don't you marry her?”

LL : “Me!”.

DL : “Well what's so funny...you want to die an Old Maid?!”.

LL : “I was just thinking, if were ever to get married I'd have to take a dicta-phone, two secretaries and four corporation counsels along on the honeymoon. I'd be unfaithful to my wife every night of my married life, with Vice-Presidents, Boards of Directors, slide-rule Accountants. This (his office) is my home. No wife would ever understand it”.

DL : “Well neither can I...you've got all the money in the world”.

LL: “What's money got to do with it? If making money was all there was to business it would hardly be worthwhile going to the office. Money is a by-product”.

DL: “So what's the main objective? Power?”

LL: “Arghh...that's become a dirty word”

DL: “Well then what's the urge? You're going into plastics now...what will that prove?”

LL: “Prove?...Nothing much” A new product has been found, something of use to the world. So when a new industry moves into an undeveloped area...factories go up, machines brought in, a harbour is dug and you're in business. It's purely coincidental of course that people who never saw a Dime before suddenly have a Dollar, and their kids can have shoes and have their teeth fixed and faces washed. What's wrong with the kind of an urge that gives people libraries, hospitals, base-ball diamonds and movies on a Saturday night.

DL: “Ah...you make me feel like a heal...if I don't marry Elizabeth (a marriage of industrial convenience) some poor kid in Puerto Rico is going to barefoot with cavities in his teeth!”.

LL: “Here, look at this stuff” (standing next to a sheet of the 'wonder-plastic'). You'll be able to fly in a plane made of it, wear a suit made and before we're through you'll probably be able to eat it. We're organising Larribee Plastics, Larribee Construction is ready with the blueprints, Larribee Shipping has got nine more freighters to handle the traffic”.

DL : “You mean the wheels are in motion already?”

LL : “That's exactly what I mean”

This excerpt of the film illustrates the might of the industrial conglomerate in the period, so creating much of the post-WW2 US-led globalisation effort, beyond Latin America and into Asia, utilising Japan and S.Korea as industrial, technology transfer and thus important new economic bases.

Hence, the mid 20^th century saw American conglomerates span much of the then slowly developing world, this replicated by Japan's Kereitsu in the 1970s and 80s, then S.Korean Cheabols of the 1990s, and in the 2000s China's foreign expansion efforts, utilising SOE and affiliated companies to do so.

The initially Dutch, then British, then German, then Anglo-Indian, then American ideology of the conglomerate had become the standard model for growth up the value curve and across new borders for all aspirational globalist countries and native companies.

Today, as regards 'old industries' such as mid-level manufacturing, America appears to be on the opposite side of that ideology with recent announcement of its instigated protectionist stance against the importation of washing machines and solar panels, so as to resurrect what were previously considered yesteryear domestic activities, and the expansion of domestic shale gas now that worldwide light and crude oil barrel prices make it feasible. This assisted by what may be a new era of 'de-conglomeratisation' as the likes of GE undergo divisional divestments to re-focus upon specific activities.

Contrast that possibly expanding closed-door policy by the USA to the aspirations of growth ambitious EM companies and indeed the efforts of the EU members to increase foreign trade.

In what appears the next re-growth phase of what might be termed WTO/TPP-1 enabled 'collaborative globalisation' we may well see the BRICs and industrially affiliated CIVETS and Pioneer nations operating in a well structured symphonic form to maximise mutual gains; from the extraction of oil and aggregates to build new and updated common infrastructures to the expansion of mid and high-value industries and services.

Lead AM nations deploying their largely service related capabilities in all things digital to 'map-out' the Internet of Things around the world. The recent Google-Tencent cross-licensing and innovation patents deal creating probable massive mutual advantage regards tie-in and cross-over possibilities.

Where we simply once had industrial conglomeration, the world at large now looks to gain from inter-national conglomeration; with each nation specifically placed to gain from its own comparative advantage and its own policy-led induced advantage.

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The second item references their chauffeur (Sabrina's father) Thomas Fairchild as played by John Williams.

British born in 1924, he moved to the 'Big Apple' in the mid 1920s and over the next 3 decades he acted on both stage and screen.

The moralistic movies of the 1940s and 50's buoyed both America and indeed a post-war recuperating and resurgent Europe, with legendary films like 'It's a Wonderful Life' helping to re-strengthen the personal belief systems of so many who's lives had previously been devastated by WW2 and previously the problems of the 1930s.

However, typically lesser known are the films which convey a darker tone of real life, all too often set in the bad times of severe economic depressions and recessions.

John Williams was in the 1936 feature 'Mr Deeds Goes to Town', which itself stars Gary Cooper as Longfellow Deeds who as a decent 'middling' member of a small-town neighbourhood (seen in his managing of a tallow-works and artistic pastimes) happens by chance to inherit a large fortune from his late uncle.

Apparent 'professional assistance' is given to by a scheming attorney who, with the collaboration of others, undertakes a deplorable connivance to shatter the self-confidence of Mr Deeds with ploys to try and drive him mad, to then have Longfellow Deeds labelled as mentally unstable/unfit, gain a power of attorney over his client and have him put into a mental asylum.

Longfellow Deeds is a trusting decent “backwater boy”, effectively separated and alone, set amongst a pit of vipers in New York City - an innocent lamb to the slaughter.

But Deeds eventually recognises that his good, trusting nature is being taken advantage of thanks in part to a news reporter who herself has been caught-up in the ploy. But only after he has fallen into deep depression because of the effects of him being an unknowing target of a complex scam.

To have Deeds inturned, the duplicitous attorney seeks to have a Judge declare him “mentally incompetent” using the testimonies of others involved in the scam and of those who have seen Deed's planned mental decline.

The aim was to ensure Longfellow Deeds – though aware - was too depressed to defend himself, so that the enormous sum put into the attorney's hands could be divided amongst the co-conspirators.

But his emergent love-interest saves the day by telling all to the Judge.

The Judge declares Longfellow Deeds to be “the sanest man who ever walked into this court-room”.

The film ends with Deeds retaining his enormous inherited fortune and accordant to his own ethics seeks to help those in dire need of assistance to rebuild their own lives, previously decimated by the 1929 Economic Crash and 1930s Great Depression.

NB. -

In the real world the 2008 Financial Crisis brought about changed fortunes for many who had previously been in the middle-classes; and with it the emergence of an insidious criminal mentality either masquerading as friends/associates of the decent enduring troubling times, or indeed as pernicious strangers.

The enormity of the Anglo-sphere property bubble and rebound meant that in a low growth economic environment criminal attention has been directed to those in very vulnerable positions with outright property holdings or with much gained property-equity. These are typically the mature/elderly/aged but also stretch to those who may have inherited yet of limited physical or mental capability - in effect unable to properly assess the modus operandi of those around them who appear sincere, but are not.

It has been and will continue to be such people who have been and will be deliberately targeted; with sophisticated, subtle yet powerful deceits against them, often over a matter of many years, so as to shatter the target's self-confidence and innate 'self-defense' capabilities.

[NB though it must also be recognised that some 'old folk' are undoubtedly only elderly versions of their own manipulative/evil/criminal younger selves].

This is nasty story of 'Mr Deeds Goes to Town', replayed in the modern-day by criminal elements amongst even the nicest locales of cities, suburbs, small towns and villages across the UK, Europe and USA; where the downfall of the middle-class has been greatest. No doubt a similar story across the BRICs given the respective rise in asset prices (especially urban properties) since the mid 1990s.

The criminal group will hardly appear as such, but as supposedly nice people - often behaving far too nicely so as to gain the trust of the target to gain information.

Elsewhere, personal information is collated and gleans by the aggressors from a myriad of what should be illustrious, properly managed and vitally confidential institutions. But unfortunately the observations of Prof JB Peterson regards the infiltration across the public services by left-leaning' clannish' peoples in low and mid level public institutions means that the 'database systems' of such institutions can and is accessed to gain highly private/confidential information- has made the gathering of such information even easier by the criminal element that appears to have eyes and ears everywhere, even deep inside the state machine.

Such details used by others at the local level, within a neighbourhood, against the socio-economically 'trapped' target.

A plethora of disturbing psychological tactics are used. This including their patterns of home-life, local movements (timing/places) such as food shopping, their confidential medical issues and even childhood fears - which illustrates that such nasty people may/will have been family members or past friends (passing on information) to their associates. To disguise any collusive connections to origins, it is complete strangers to the target who then undertake the harrassment. This done in in public surroundings - from in the street, to supermarket, to local pub, etc, so as to get physically close (within ear-shot) and to have seemingly separate conversations amongst themselves - that critically include very pertinent undermining threads - to be deliberately overheard by the target so as to psychologically weaken that person.

This ploy operated time and time again as a 'grinding-down' mechanism.

Specific use of psychological association with TV programmes of that day is used - changing specific facts so as to create self-doubt/confudion, or even directly mimicking aspects so as to merge televisual and real worlds, done before transmission. This done with the knowledge that an isolated personal will inevitably watch TV for 'company' and to distract themselves from the social war set against them. To both inflict serious mental harm and to conversely and paradoxically try to depict the nasty mind games as light-hearted fun; this in itself a tactic to distort the truth of the nasty matter.

The depth of such mind-games played is truly appalling, and could have only originally stemmed many years ago from those well versed in the subject of the human mind. It also suggests that such knowledge emerged from initially amateur schools of psychology  and later the professionalisation of psychology and sociology.

[NB Modern 'Viennese' psychology (Freud et al) was born during the period that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was collapsing. Given the above, it appears very likely the sizable assets of old aristocratic/wealthy families were sought by criminal forces. This done via the targeting of those idealistic 'progressives' from specific families who had been lured into overtly liberal, exciting social circles; often utilising drink, drugs and sexuality to draw-in the target and in such open atmosphere gain deep insights into their private matters]..

NB This tactic obviously also used by cult-leaders from the infamous Alistair Crowley of the period, to David Koresh in Wako, Texas.

Thereafter the isolated individuals, within the grasp of the group's leader, could be either persecuted so as to be driven away from their inheritance or ownership, or deliberately unsettled so as to seek further closeness with the duplicitous actors. At its worst, the individual would seek the new 'professional' help of then emergent psycho-analysts for supposed 'pyschological healing'. But within that process vital personal information would be sought and gained - and given freely in the trusted couch environment. This information passed on to criminal associates for group gain. Much of today's modern social ills appear to derive from the "Viennese influence"].

Such instances no doubt occurring throughout history when major socio-economic shifts have happened, as one power and wealth seeking class seeks to subtly over-power the old monied or asset-owning classes.
In recent years much of the West has itself undergone a repetition of that Austro-Hungarian experience; with the elderly and incapable (by birth or criminal action) the prime targets.

Then as now it appears the actions of the now engrained far-Left - with many people drawn together through either mutual interests or ideology and so operating in unified tandem - that are the voracious culprits. This subtle social-war a sign of the times and further fracturing society.

In a proper world with adequate police resources, criminal prosecution resources and penal systems such criminals ought to be quite literally made to “live in hell”, both mentally and physically. Having made the lives of their naïve targets utterly unbearable; likely over many years on a very frequent basis.

Indeed in a truly balanced 'cause and effect' world, to ensure proper deterrent, there should indeed be not simply a metaphorical “an eye for and eye”, but a proportionately relative “two eyes for an eye” approach. So as to deter such repugnant actions by those who are themselves truly evil, and those easily led through greed, to deliberately and consciously shatter the lives of others.

Those others who then inevitably as a result pull-down their own 'mental shutters' to keep the conniving world at a physical and mental distance and so very rationally beyond the social reach of any further life-damaging harm.

Perhaps we ought to return to the supposedly archaic systems of yesteryear in old civilisations, where-in the victim could choose the punishment of the aggressor(s). The potential perpetrator(s) would then recognise that any officially sanctioned revenge exacted upon themselves would be far beyond their own horrible actions; and so s/he would think twice and thrice and more about their evil intentions and actions.