I needed last night. I'll spare explaining the emotional drag-ass state I was in, but leave it at I needed last night.
Dennis, the original fisherman pirate guitar player with a one-in-million voice, wanted to do music for whoever was around. We often do this in the summer on Saturday evenings at the wharf. Sometimes it's a handful and gets snuffed out early by fog and marine grade-mosquitos. Some evenings there's a crowd and rotating players and it goes on at some boisterous length. Garage bands may be enthusiastic and raw, but they've got nothing on a Wharf Band.
May 14 is on the early side of the season, so we figured we'd try it on the early side of the evening. Jerm already had his orange and yellow swirly drums set up when I got there. Friends wandered down. Dennis arrived but almost decided to pack it up before we started. Only the Sirens persuaded him to stay.
After a half dozen or so country, blues and rock tunes, the temperature dropped in a hurry and our fingers soon stopped cooperating, even for rock & roll. A neighbor offered up their space so the evening migrated to warmer habitat.
The scene at their place will never even be hinted at by glossy magazines selling the architected quaintness that a couple million on the coast will get ya. That chardonnay version of Maine has had all the life airbrushed out of it, as well as increasingly turning island and coastal communities into gated theme parks.
Here on Matinicus, on a Saturday night, families, kids, dogs, cats and one duck all piled in to my friends' place for live authentic music. Instrument duties got passed around. Guests took the mic for some great folk songs. There wasn't a Cuisinart or Audi to be found.
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Good morning, everyone. Today's guided session will focus our attention on the 3 chakras of debt.
We experience debt in our economy in three ways. More precisely, most of us experience debt one way, while a few live in the other higher bands of debt consciousness.
Until recently, I only occupied the bottom, red chakra of debt. I didn't know there even was a yellow and then a green chakra above.
The red chakra signifies debt for most of us. It means swimming with ankle weights. It means running with lead shoes. Debt means struggle, fatigue, stress and a sense that we'll never get free, that we're straightjacketed and short of breath.
So maybe I'm keeping up with monthly expenses and a student loan and just breaking even, but an unexpected expense comes up. Here's the trap: if I can't afford it today, I probably can't afford it next month, so if I borrow money, those monthly expenses will still be there, along with principal and interest payments.
We'll shift now to a little visualization work.
Is your account emptied for bills and groceries on the same day you need a new radiator for the car that you need for work, but just put this month's rent into 3 weeks ago? No problem! Just put it on your credit card, and soon, you'll not only have your car fixed, but you'll be earning Palladium Rewards (TM) points and probably paying back twice or more in interest than what you borrowed!!! Credit cards maxed and getting you down? No problem, just call PayDay til you're Dead Loans, LLC and we'll have you some quick cash so you'll be ours forehhhverrr...
Now gently come back to the now, the present.
Shit, that is the now. Okay! Big Breath. Let's just move on.
The yellow chakra is where we discover Leverage. That's when debt goes from being a suffocating chain of bondage to actually amplifying economic power. If I'm of sufficient means to be able to borrow money to buy assets I don't really need, but which are good investments, I can use debt to magnify my investment. All of a sudden, I'm able to buy more assets which produce more gain and round the merry we go. [Disclaimer: Leverage and overly clever math brains are a very bad combination; see Long Term Capital Management, Enron, 2008 generally].
Leveraged purchases utilizing the yellow debt chakra drive up the value of assets, which in turn prices assets like houses out of reach of more and more people, while reinforcing the feedback loop of gain for capitalized classes.
This works fantastically for those in the yellow part of the spectrum. Until it doesn't, at which time the losses are simply passed to taxpayers.
Bottom line is that yellow chakra debt is not a burden, it is actually power to grow more wealth. Holy shit, this is great! Unfortunately, it's a hard club to get sponsored into.
A virtually impossible club to gain entry into requires having invented some tech thing or other and amassing such light bending, gravity stretching amounts of wealth that we enter upon the plane of the green chakra.
The green chakra is where debt isn't even debt any more. At least the yellow chakra debtors are on the hook for their leverage. In the green realm, debt becomes equity. And it's tax free😎. This is because one can borrow against unrecognized gains in huge stock holdings and use the 'loan' proceeds to acquire material wealth- by buying homes, oligarch boats, space rockets, senators, or other sound investments. They have their cake, but don't pay any tax. As long as the musky types do eventually have the decency to die, that gain will never get recognized and taxed.
Namaste, everyone.
