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 world debt |
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World debt |
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as a published expert on markets reverse this because commodities makes the world go round. The most valuable commodity in the world is people for without people there would be no value in anything. Value is only a thing that we attribute to things based on demand. You can make a lot of money trading this stuff while its cool to understand it its not really for me. My least favourite instrument is credit derivatives as I do not agree with the attirbutation of long term debt. In this modern world there is no reason why we could not scrub all debt, I repeat there is no reason we could not scrub all debt, give people credit for what they are owed and continue as we are. Debt is a burden that people and nations are subjected to it stops the world moving forward, money is but a tool to help live life, not the reason for living. |
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World Debt In 1913 the Federal Reserve was created in the United States by some elite bankers whose names were kept anonymous for political reasons. Before the creation of the Federal Reserve there was no inflation (except during the extreme times of the civil war). Gold and silver was the only legal currency allowed by the Constitution (although Congress was allowed to print money backed by gold and silver.) Debt was formed by people who created wealth out of thin air (the Federal Reserve). The same year the Federal Reserve was created the 16 amendment was created allowing the government to create an income tax on citizens directly without going through the states. Later in 1933 during the Great Depression FDR confiscated all gold owned by citizens and replacing it with federal reserve notes making it illegal to own gold lengthening the depression. Also on June 5,1933 the United States declared bankrupt and also created the Social Security system in 1935 pledging the citizens of the United States of America as collateral against the debt that the government owed to the Federal Reserve system. Since then the debt has increased and in 1965 the Federal Reserve stopped making silver coinage and replaced it with copper and nickel coins. In 1971 Nixon passed a bill which effectively ended the gold standard and replaced it with the Federal Reserve notes. Three years later President Ford legalized the private ownership of gold. Also later on in 1982 the Federal Reserve stopped making pennies out of copper but instead used a less valuable metal zinc. In short the presence of private banks in countries and the use of fiat currency has created the world debt which is now sky rocketing to new levels by the unchecked printing of money by privately owned banks. |
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World Debt The Federal Reserve was created by Congress, Congress was advised by a "brain trust" of bankers, yes, but their names are recorded in the Congressional Record as required by the Constitution. Inflation has existed for centuries although it's definition has changed throughout the years. There’s a nice chart on Wikipedia under “inflation” that shows inflation, and deflation, recorded in the US since 1666. The Constitution doesn't mention gold and silver but in Article 1, section 8 it does say: "Congress shall have the power… To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;". The Constitution is dated 9/17/1787. A silver standard, actually a dual standard of silver & gold, was tried in 1785 but was abandoned in 1861. The Gold standard wasn’t adopted in the US until 1873. Debt was created centuries ago by merchants and traders to finance their businesses. Wealth is created from hard work, experience and knowledge, sometimes by inheritance and too frequently by illegal gain. Thin air only creates difficulty breathing but at the top of a mountain, it's worth it! Congress, not the Federal Reserve, has that power to create debt under the Constitution Article 1 Section. 8: “The Congress shall have Power… To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;” Original federal taxation was levied only on States, real property, slaves and as import tariffs. States then levied taxes on citizens to pay it’s debts. In 1913, the first federal income tax was levied on citizens. In 1933, the Great Depression was at rock bottom and people were hoarding gold as it had more value than currency. President Roosevelt issued an executive order in May to confiscate all gold owned by citizens in excess of $100 (2012 buying $2321.36). Since gold backed currency, the money supply could be expanded if the government held more gold. Jewelers, mining companies, coin collections, personal jewelry and such were exempt. It was not illegal to own gold. Federal Reserve Notes, printed by the US Treasury at the Bureau of Engraving & Printing, were issued for the gold turned in. As an aside, the printing of US currency by anyone other than the BEP is counterfeiting and is vigorously punished, so I don’t see private banks trying to print money. Roosevelt’s executive order was unpopular and was revoked by Congress in August 1933. From May to August was not nearly enough time to effect the Depression in any manner. June 5, 1933 was when Roosevelt signed the Resolution that took the United States off the gold standard when Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. There’s no record of the United States declaring Bankruptcy on that date. Social Security was created in 1935 as an insurance plan designed to collect a payroll tax to be held in a trust and then paid back to the payor as an annuity at retirement. It was designed, as it's name implies, as a social retirement program to give security to those of little or no wealth. Left to that definition, it would still be a good plan having collected $9 trillion and paid out $7.5 trillion and according to the 2012 Trustees report, the 2011 balance in the Trust is $2.5 trillion, the difference being interest paid. There’s much to be said about additional social programs added to the original plan but it would take much too long to go through that. Then Congress saw all that money accumulating in the Trust and decided to “borrow” it by having the Trust buy US Treasuries ie US debt. So the Trust finances US debt and that is what you are referring to as “citizen” collateral. As an investor, I consider the purchase of US Treasuries a safe bet since they have the full faith and credit of the US Government behind them, a government that has never declared bankruptcy and has never been late on payments. The US does not owe anything to the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve by law is not funded and earns it’s income from interest it charges the private banks to borrow from it. It is actually required to pay all of it’s net income after expenses to the Treasury, 2011 payments of $76.9 billion according to the January 2012 accounting report. I could go on but this is lengthy enough. US debt was originally acquired in the amount of $5 million to finance the American Revolution and that original amount has been repaid many times over. I rather agree in principal with Chris’ statement that all debt should be forgiven, wiped out, and every person, every country, every company start anew. It would be interesting to see what private banks would do... if they don’t go belly up. I think in this day and age, every person would be careful not to be in debt again, every country would again borrow to finance the social programs it most needs to finance, and every company would borrow like crazy because that’s how merchants and traders finance their business. So, I shake my head and think it would do no good to wipe it all out and along with it the responsibility, and excellent experience, to have to pay it back. So it’s going to be a long road until new jobs are created which is the real crux of the problem and, without a growing base of taxpayers, the real reason debt is increasing. Here’s the link to the US Constitution website which also includes the Charter, Declaration and Bill of Rights: www.archives.gov I highly recommend reading the original handwritten old English copy as it puts you in the same state of mind as the founding fathers who framed this document that has lasted for over 200 years and is the cornerstone of this great nation. I would be interested in your theories of how you would get this wobbly world turned back upright. |
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And there you go |
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"US Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke bails out Europe" Warning that America’s sputtering economic recovery was grinding down, this week the Federal Reserve noted in classic Fed-speak that “strains in global financial markets continue to pose significant downside risks to the economic outlook.” But the Fed and its soft-spoken chairman Ben Bernanke announced nothing new to fix those strains. And they said even less about the steps they were already taking to prop up the staggering banks in Europe. Bernanke’s silence speaks loudly of the strange and controversial role that America’s central bank now plays in global finance. The Federal Reserve’s charter gives it two basic legal mandates. One is to promote price stability, which means to combat both inflation and deflation, as central banks all over the world try to do. The other, to the surprise of many, is to promote full employment, which the Fed has literally never accomplished. Nothing in its charter explicitly empowers the Fed to act as central banker to the world, or anything close. But, in contrast to his predecessors as Fed chairman, Bernanke has increasingly talked up the full-employment mandate to justify increasing global intervention. “The crisis in Europe has affected the U.S. economy by acting as a drag on our exports, weighing on business and consumer confidence, and pressuring U.S. financial markets and institutions,” he testified to Congress earlier this month. “As always, the Federal Reserve remains prepared to take action as needed to protect the U.S. financial system and economy in the event that financial stresses escalate.” The needed action has already started, as Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr., a former vice-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, explained last December in the Wall Street Journal. He called his whistle-blowing exposé “The Federal Reserve’s Covert Bailout of Europe.” O’Driscoll revealed – and Bernanke later confirmed – that the Fed has entered into agreements with the European Central Bank to provide billions of dollars, which the ECB then lends to ailing banks in Europe to increase their liquidity. The Fed also agreed to similar deals with the central banks of England, Switzerland, Japan and Canada. Technically, the dollars are not loans. They are instead “currency swaps.” In return for the dollars, the ECB and other central banks give the Fed equivalent amounts of their own currency, along with an agreement to return the dollars at the same exchange rate. The Fed has offered swaps on and off since 1962, and it first launched the current set of programs in late 2007 in response to global repercussions of America’s subprime mortgage crisis. The new agreements signed just after last Thanksgiving lowered the charge from 1 percent to one-half of 1 percent. The swaps differ from the $1.2 trillion in direct loans that the Fed made to American and foreign banks following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008. As documented by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, these direct loans dwarfed the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and greatly embarrassed the Fed, which fought to keep the information from becoming public. The swaps keep the dollars from showing up on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet and let the foreign central banks pick the recipients and make the loans. The sums at risk are not chopped liver. Lending through the swap lines peaked at $586 billion in December 2008. Current totals are much lower, amounting last week to $24.215 billion. But, given the stakes, the Fed has to be prepared to go at least as far as it did before. O’Driscoll calls the currency swaps “Byzantine, anti-democratic, non-transparent and fully intended to confuse observers.” Though I’m far from sharing his well-known faith in the mythic free market and see a real American interest in helping Europe avoid disaster, I have to admit that he makes a point. The swaps recall Enron’s off-balance-sheet accounting and Goldman Sachs’s use of credit default swaps to help Greece mask its debt to meet the fiscal requirements to enter the Eurozone. Nor is Bernanke playing straight with either Congress or the public. Last December, he assured Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and others that the Fed did not have “the intention or the authority” to bail out European countries or banks. Three months later, he told Congress that the dollar swap lines “seem to have been successful” in helping Europe avoid a “major financial accident.” The Europeans are no straighter. The European Central Bank also wanted a fig leaf to hide what it is doing. The swaps allow the ECB to lend dollars to ailing banks without being seen as bailing them out, which its charter forbids it to do. But the problems go far deeper. European leaders currently face a head-spinning array of overlapping crises. They want to save the Euro, make Europe more competitive, reduce sovereign debts, recapitalize failing banks and rebuild inter-bank lending, which has fallen lower than anyone expected. Less well understood, the European leaders also need to find a way to recycle surpluses from wealthy exporters like Germany so that the poorer countries can continue to buy its products. That’s a macroeconomic lesson from John Maynard Keynes that Angela Merkel has yet to acknowledge. If the economics seem complicated, the politics are worse. So far, the leaders here in Europe have failed to build sufficient popular support for their European project, and the solutions they are currently discussing all would give their people far less democratic control over the decisions that affect their lives. In fact, power would increasingly go to the financial giants on Wall Street and their allies in London, Frankfurt and Zurich. These are roughly the same folks who dominate the supposedly independent Federal Reserve, and Ben Bernanke’s inscrutable currency swaps will only feather their nest.">> -- by BBC investigative journalist Steve Weissman |
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lupusdwb When I have more time I will address some more of your points. theeconomiccollapseblog.com |
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Debt legacy patter of US debt is repeated all over the Western world. The trouble is when you get to such a level of debt then making dent in it is very hard as the interest payments are so high, so the governments need to keep issuing new bonds. There were some very weird regulatory changes in the late 90's and early 2000's around trading securities. Wealth distribution is quite skewed as well so if you type into google and type in American Wealth map there is an interesting image. I do believe in the financial system but I also think that the sovereign debt situation is getting a bit ridiculous. The legacy we will leave for our children and grandchildren will for the majority leave them a slave to the system for most of their natural lives. To get a decent unfunded education these days puts people up to $100k in debt. It also forces the hand some of our greater minds in science and medicine to pursue money over human advancement. Modern society has so many great things but the control that money has is out of balance with its importance its supposed to be a tool not a controller. There is no reason why you could not wipe out world debt and start over with exactly the same system as we have it would give us 10 years of breathing space while we figure out how to refine the system. I am looking forward to my next meeting of the Adam Smith think tank to share my thoughts around this with some of the economists to see if the scrapping of debt is feasible without a collapse in our system. |
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Debt legacy reply The same legacy was left to us and to our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. We will do what those before us tried to do, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. It is never a quick fix. It is never completely done. It will always happen again. The key is to balance necessary social programs against future receipts, note the words "necessary" and "balance", just like a corporation does. Governments are the biggest corporations in the world and we, their citizens, are the shareholders. We have the same rights as a corporate shareholder as we are the recipients of the EPS the government makes. And the way we control them is by contacting the "Board of Directors" we elected - US: Representatives and Senators, UK: House of Commons, House of Lords (you do have some elected Lords now, don't you?). If they don't do what the majority wants, we elect someone else. There is always greed, and also the need to pay school bills, it's called human nature. It is quite expensive to acquire the background knowledge that will land you a job that requires you to make life and death decisions every day. That's why hospitals in the US take on the best graduates, pay those school bills with a sign-on bonus and assign experienced doctors to teach them the right decisions. The greed happens when they are the experienced doctor and the ego kicks in. Should be the same process - experienced scientists working with graduates, don't know they have sign-on bonuses. It also applies in the accounting field at CPA firms, having been there. Besides controlling our legislators, I think breaking up the private mega banks, removing security trading from all bank balance sheets, regulating consumer lending (including credit cards) and actually enforcing the regulations would help tremendously in the US. Scrapping debt wouldn't be feasible because the bank lobby group is huge here. Lending their depositors' money is their business and profit from that is what their shareholders expect. But I'd love to hear what your Adam Smith group comes up with. |
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Reply to Shamash I'm afraid we are all intertwined in the global "debt crisis". There are many European companies that operate in the States, many US companies that operate in Europe. What happens to Europe affects the US and vice versa. It is in our best interest to work together toward a solution that allows us both to survive. Currency swaps have been happening for years and is a lively trade in personal accounts in the US. I'm not familiar with currency swaps but couldn't be too different from stock options, same concept just a different benchmark. I think the European term for stock options is credit derivatives, which in it's very simplest terms is a form of betting on the future price of a stock. So, if the US is benefiting from it now, it could just as easily go the other way. You've got to admit none of the countries are telling the whole truth. To do so would obviously create a panic, wouldn't it? It's our job to cull through the enormous amount of information and find tidbits of fact. Thank goodness for the media who also never tell the whole truth because many of them cut and paste others' news on their websites due to cutbacks in their industry. They don't get paid to research their claims, so in my estimation they are bloggers, not journalists. So we see a retraction or apology pretty frequently. And then there's the definition of "truth" which seems to be subjective nowadays. I won't go there. And lastly, this statement puzzles me: .... "power would increasingly go to the financial giants on Wall Street and their allies in London, Frankfurt and Zurich. These are roughly the same folks who dominate the supposedly independent Federal Reserve, and Ben Bernanke’s inscrutable currency swaps will only feather their nest." The Federal Reserve is an agency of the Federal Government, reports to Congress and has the responsibility to regulate private banks as well as numerous other tasks. I went back and looked at the FOMC Board's seven members and the twelve presidents of the Fed district banks and couldn't find but two who weren't former professors, lawyers, government workers and for the most part started at the Fed in their research department. Two of the Presidents had ties to banks, Dudley at the NY branch worked for Goldman Sachs and Lockhart at the Atlanta branch worked for Citibank. So, I haven't found anything about private banks dominating the government regulator that oversees them nor have I found anything about "feathering nests". Does the European Central Bank feather nests? ;>) |
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Credit Derivatives terminology to confuse people. Credit derivatives are bundles of packaged debt, these can be everything from retail debt, to housing market debt to government debt. Each derivative can be packaged up to a few billion dollars then people can buy sell long or short them. Long and short is when you do not own the instrument but you bet on the performance. These are options. Sometimes they bundle several credit derivatives together and they are known as CDO squared or hurricane CDOs. Its very hard to value these most of the models are using assumptions that are not marked to market, hence the latest large JPMorgan loss which currently stands at $2bn. In 2007 a lot of these CDO's were valued at 100% of priced value but when the market collapsed they value dropped to 5%, these were supposedly AAA rated and that is why the market collapsed overnight and trillions were wiped off global markets. You had large banks that well leveraged to over 40 times their capital. That's like me borrowing $4m with only $100,000 capital. When lots of the big banks like Lehman, Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch, RBS etc were caught in the short squeeze (ie pay back this amount or we withdraw your credit line) they went bust or got bailed by the government. Its not just the banks that carry this legacy debt a lot of it was taken on by central banks and the governments and then this gets passed back to us in taxes. The EU went to bail out the EU banks and governments with one Trillion Euros but most economist think this is not enough if Italy which is leveraged to 120% of its GDP goes the same way as Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Spain. Italy is the 3rd largest EU economy. Anyhow my main point is most of the money is just paper bonds so they can be torn up and start over. There is far too much fear around these instruments and world debt but when you study it, you may come round to my way of thinking that it is possible to tear this stuff up and take the fear out of a world global economic collapse. |
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The Fed is not a Federal Agency, lupus www.save-a-patriot.org <<"Because "Federal Reserve" sounds like a federal name, and the Fed's chairman frequently testifies before Congress and appears on news shows, most Americans reasonably assume that the Federal Reserve and its member banks are all federal. On the other hand, some people claim that the federal reserve system is not federal at all, and is entirely owned by the member banks which it regulates. For example, Congressman Dennis Kucinich said recently "the Federal Reserve is no more federal than Federal Express". The Fed itself maintains that: While the Fed’s Washington-based Board of Governors is a federal agency subject to the Freedom of Information Act and other government rules, the New York Fed and other regional banks maintain they are separate institutions, owned by their member banks, and not subject to federal restrictions.">> www.examiner.com |
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lupusdwb 25-Jun-12, 17:59 |
Deleted by lupusdwb on 25-Jun-12, 18:00.
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Federal Reserve really is an agency of the US government |
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lupusdwb Two points I would like to make are that it uses the phrase "independent government agency" which I though it had already been established that the Federal Reserve was no more Federal than the Federal Express. Secondly it says that it "is ultimately accountable to the public and the Congress". I live in America and it is sad how many people still believe that the Federal Reserve is a government agencies and even more sad how many people could care less. The point I am trying to make is that the Federal Reserve is not accountable to the American people in any way; first off they are not elected officials but "appointed" second they keep nearly everything they did secret. That is why many the American people have woke up to this fact and have pushed for auditing the Federal Reserve to find out what they have been doing and how much money they have been printing unchecked. abcnews.go.com |
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bencox1 I too live in America and for many more years than you have. And I agree with you, you're right... there are many people in America who appear to "care less" and that is heart wrenching, that so many could be so callous. It is an ugly election year, worse than any I have seen and rampant with special interest groups pouring money into ads that incite instead of inform. We need to be thinking about what is best for the entire nation, not what is best for only you or me. What is the basis of democracy but to thoughtfully prepare for voting for the best candidate you have researched and think will do the best job. Our candidates can't get past the inciteful to inform us of their capabilities. As is typical in an election year, many find it opportunistic to shout their own agendas and try with all their might to force their agenda on the entire nation. This year the shouting is not coming from the people, it's coming from special interests. The problem is, there’s too much shouting and not enough discussion about solutions. Because of that, we are at a total standstill. And a lot of people are without jobs, Ben, they are seriously hurting and look to our legislators for solutions. We are a nation of many peoples and there is no one right answer for all. It will have to be a compromise. But I feel for the innocent people who have now been out of a job up to four years and are still waiting for reasonable, caring people to fill the jobs of legislators. We've taken enough of our club mates' time. We are "off the topic" too. So I decline to answer your message. I hope with time you will consider that there are always two sides and choosing one against the other isn’t nearly as interesting as exploring both and coming up with fresh new ideas. |
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Off Topic What I think is you don't like my view of world debt. I believe world debt was created by private banking cartels and the unlimited printing power they to created "money" out of thin air. I was just debating with you about the Federal Reserve because I am not as familar with other national banks. Here is a link of nations past and a few present and their history of using fiat currency. dailyreckoning.com |
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the wisdom of benjamin franklin. . .er..... cox welcome. |
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back to my point |
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O I agree, Chris, and. . . <<"What's breaking into a bank compared with founding a bank?">> |
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momentum cannot say truth then we lie to our soul |
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Scrub World Debt But even so lets say that there were no tensions and no regrets. People would not be willing to move on to find a different monetary system not based on debt because people have been using this system for so long. It isn't easy for people to give up their large pocket book and actually balance the budget. Individually I think scrubbing the world debt is great in the end it would end in chaos. |
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Money US owes China www.npr.org |
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I love this |
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I am going to try and make this right that my friends is a great game of chess |
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Another try at World Debt I would prefer to discuss intelligently and thoughtfully instead of merely placing blame. What's done is done, no changing it. However, looking back at history and seeing what happened can be instructive, as long as the events are taken in the context of the history in which they occurred. They are definitely useful as a starting point for fruitful, open discussion in current times. Back in 2009, I taught a class on the reasons for the debt crisis and how it affected the investment markets. It included a discussion of this article from the New York Times which I think states the American reasons, at the time, quite well. www.nytimes.com This article was written in 2009, two years after the crisis started which is about how long it takes to admit there's a problem, and just before global investment markets bottomed out in March. The crisis was not just a local event, instead it was global. Not only that, but it is now 3.5 years later and more "errors in judgment" have occurred that have compounded the American problem. But it is not just an American problem, it is global. I would like to learn what, if anything different, happened in countries other than the US. Anyone have any similar articles specifically on what occurred in your countries related to the causes of the crisis? And further, any ideas for right now to put up safeguards and yet continue to allow global financial exchange? For example, I don't think it's feasible to go back to isolationism. I don't think from looking at what's happening in the 17 nation European Union, that a global bank would be possible or advisable, though I'm certainly watching this with a great deal of interest. I don't think going back to a gold standard in every country would work because of the limited supply of gold, it's a finite commodity that would create wars similar to the oil wars now. I'm pondering Chris' stance on eliminating all debt and starting over. Are there other ideas? |
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Housing Bubble It is simple to anybody that you cannot last long without a balanced budget. Or if you were to print "money" in your basement then you would go to jail. The kind of economics that is employed in America (and all around the globe) is unethical and the response to world debt is simple. We should balance the budget and stop policing the world. ( I personally think that a non intervention policy is the most logical). Also I would say that we should have all the printed currency backed by gold and silver and interchangeable at any bank. This is just for starters but overall a limited government that is for the people, and by the people is what is best for all nations across the world. |
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Housing Bubble The answer is that many mortgage companies (these are not banks) sprung up during this time and they made the loans. There were especially unscrupulous companies, many of which are now out of business and lawsuits filed against them. Most of the money came from FHLMC (Freddie Mac) and FNMA (Fannie Mae), not from the Fed. These two bought the mortgages and then bundled them and sold them as credit derivatives. As far as mortgage companies and banks now... the Fed requires more capital be kept limiting how much of the cash on hand can be loaned. The Fed is also strictly enforcing the regulations for documentation that has to be gathered about a borrower, before a loan is made, with monetary penalties if the documentation is not there when the regulators audit the bank. And a larger down payment is now required from the borrower, typically only 80% of the buying price is financed and most lower income people don't have that kind of cash. Some get around this with a second mortgage but that ups the cost of the first mortgage, so not a wise decision. There should not be any relaxation in this supervision ever again. I disagree about a government backing a currency with gold and/or silver. Both are limited commodities and as I pointed out, we've had enough wars over scarce resources. I don't want another. I agree with you about balancing the budget and not policing the world ie a large military budget. The US balanced it's budget before and I'm sure Congress will figure out how to do it again. We are certainly not the only country to aid allies in defending their country but we don't have to be the first ones there. I don't have a problem with a "limited government that is for the people and by the people" as that is what our government is supposed to be. However, it does need to treat all citizens the same, no special privileges granted to the rich. And while we're at it, special consideration given to corporations or industries should not be allowed, no more lobbying allowed. And I would establish term limits for Representatives, Senators and Judges, just like there is for the president. No more making a career out of politics. I'd also change the length of the Representative term to 4 years, elections for a third of the House every two years. That should help cut down the constant campaigning in the House. It's a wonder they get anything done. I think there would be a few governments that would argue with you about every country adopting the same type of government as ours, most notably Russia, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. And there are still a few royal families out there too. Unfortunately, a global crisis has required all governments to step in and stop another Great Depression. Unemployment in the 1930's was 25% in the US and up to 33% in other countries. Because of the actions taken this time, unemployment has not jumped that high. Although in the younger age group it is that high in the US as several of my nieces and nephews can attest. In my opinion there were a lot more banks and corporations that should have collapsed in the recession we are climbing out of. But what's done, is done. And now the mess it created has to be cleaned up and safeguards put in place to stop it from happening again. |
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Cleaning up the mess |
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