What Does Inflation Mean to You?

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

May 19th, 2008 | By Bill Bonner | Category: Politics & Economics

We are reading a book about an English slave trader on the Gold Coast in the 18th century. The man thought he was doing the Africans a favor by selling them into slavery in North America. First, because their prospects on the Dark Continent were so grim…and second because - as he saw it - the benefits of Christianity and Western civilization were so bright. Captain William Snelgrave provided an illustration to prove his first point. He went to visit a local chief (presumably to buy slaves). There, he saw a small child tied to stake, in miserable condition. When he asked what was going on, he was told that the child was to be sacrificed (and eaten) in order to appease the tribes’ gods. The captain promptly told the chief that his God would not permit such a thing. After some tense negotiation, Captain Snelgrave was able to buy the child and restore him to his mother. (The storyteller is not explicit about what happened to them later; we have to use our imagination. They were probably sold both to a cotton planter in Louisiana. Today, their descendants may be spread all over the United States of America, rigging local elections in Baton Rouge, studying marketing in Boston, and struggling to keep up with sub-prime adjustments in Modesto.)

Today, the U.S.A. is in the number one position. Whatever the cost, Americans have bragging rights to the imperial position…and the right to tell others what to do.

The president of all the Americans - George W. Bush - took full advantage of this privilege yesterday. According to the IHT, while making a speech in Egypt, he “presented Arabs with a lengthy to-do list.” Of course, the list came not from any particularly deep or novel reflection on his part. Instead, he merely urged them to be more like George W. Bush.

Democracy is a key to peace, said the U.S. President, offering no evidence. He added that economies couldn’t flourish unless opportunities were offered to women, perhaps forgetting the first hundred years of the Industrial Revolution.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army apologized for using the Koran for target practice.

*** Uh oh…and what’s this?

“Global food supplies at risk,” says a headline in the IHT. “The brown plant hopper, an insect no bigger than a gnat, is multiplying by the billions and chewing through rice paddies of Southeast Asia.”

*** Jules came back from Los Angeles last week, where he was working as an intern as part of a university film program.

“What do you think…are you going to work in Hollywood?” we asked.

“I don’t think it’s for me… It’s a strange business…and a strange world. And there are so many different things going on that it is hard to generalize. I was reading scripts. But only some scripts. If we got a script in the mail, from someone we didn’t know, we weren’t allowed to read it. We couldn’t open it. Because, the studio is afraid that it will be charged with stealing someone’s idea. So we send them back unopened.

“But when we got one from an agent…or someone they know…then, they’d give it to us to read. If we rejected it, they’d throw it away. But if we weren’t sure, they’d take a look themselves. Almost always they were terrible…just one stupid cliché after another. They all come from struggling screenwriters. All young. All with the same ideas, more or less. And all with the same awful writing.

“But the real trouble - and why I don’t think I’m cut out for a career in Hollywood, at least not as a screenwriter - was that I realized that my own writing was just as bad as theirs. I’m just like they are.”