Quote / Citação (14)

“So of course we use them,” Scarsdale well into what by now was his customary stem-winder, “we harness and sodomize them, photograph their degradation, send them up onto the high iron and down into mines and sewers and killing floors, we set them beneath inhuman loads, we harvest from them their muscle and eyesight and health, leaving them in our kindness a few miserable years of broken gleanings. Of course we do. Why not? They are good for little else. How likely are they to grow to their full manhood, become educated, engender families, further the culture or the race? We take what we can while we may. Look at them—they carry the mark of their absurd fate in plain sight. Their foolish music is about to stop, and it is they who will be caught out, awkwardly, most of them tone-deaf and never to be fully aware, few if any with the sense to leave the game early and seek refuge before it is too late. Perhaps there will not, even by then, be refuge.

“We will buy it all up,” making the expected arm gesture, “all this country. Money speaks, the land listens, where the Anarchist skulked, where the horse-thief plied his trade, we fishers of Americans will cast our nets of perfect ten-acre mesh, leveled and varmint-proofed, ready to build on. Where alien muckers and jackers went creeping after their miserable communistic dreams, the good lowland townsfolk will come up by the netful into these hills, clean, industrious, Christian, while we, gazing out over their little vacation bungalows, will dwell in top-dollar palazzos befitting our station, which their mortgage money will be paying to build for us. When the scars of these battles have long faded, and the tailings are covered in bunchgrass and wildflowers, and the coming of the snows is no longer the year’s curse but its promise, awaited eagerly for its influx of moneyed seekers after wintertime recreation, when the shining strands of telpherage have subdued every mountainside, and all is festival and wholesome sport and eugenically-chosen stock, who will be left anymore to remember the jabbering Union scum, the frozen corpses whose names, false in any case, have gone forever unrecorded? who will care that once men fought as if an eight-hour day, a few coins more at the end of the week, were everything, were worth the merciless wind beneath the shabby roof, the tears freezing on a woman’s face worn to dark Indian stupor before its time, the whining of children whose maws were never satisfied, whose future, those who survived, was always to toil for us, to fetch and feed and nurse, to ride the far fences of our properties, to stand watch between us and those who would intrude or question?” He might usefully have taken a look at Foley, attentive back in the shadows. But Scarsdale did not seek out the eyes of his old faithful sidekick. He seldom did anymore. “Anarchism will pass, its race will degenerate into silence, but money will beget money, grow like the bluebells in the meadow, spread and brighten and gather force, and bring low all before it. It is simple. It is inevitable. It has begun.”

Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day (2006)

Follow the Money: The Money Trail Through History by Ruben Alvarado

Há muito que queria começar a ler sobre finanças e economia e quando a oportunidade de ler um livro sobre a história do dinheiro através do NetGalley não podia deixa-la escapar.

Ruben Alvarado transporta o leitor ao longo da nossa própria história, desde as primeiras trocas de produtos até ao dinheiro como o conhecemos hoje. Foi muito interessante ver a sua análise de vários momentos importantes da nossa civilização relacionando-os com o que aconteceu na altura com o dinheiro, desde o material de que era feito, a sua escassez ou abundância ou os seus movimentos internacionais até às primeiras experiências com dinheiro de papel e o abandono do gold standard. O livro termina na crise actual, no entanto não há aqui uma tentativa de a analisar mais profundamente do que as restantes situações referidas.

Há alguns momentos em que o autor se deixa levar pelas suas opiniões pessoais e se afasta de certa forma de uma análise isenta, mas em geral isto não se torna um problema. Por outro lado, a situação do dinheiro actual e de como as suas características afectam as sociedades podia ter sido explicada com maior detalhe, dado ser bastante mais complicada de perceber do que as anteriores.

Em geral, uma leitura rápida e informativa, que recomendo a todos os que tenham interesse nesta área, mesmo que completamente leigos em relação ao assunto do dinheiro.

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I've been wanting to start reading about finance and economy for a while so when this came up on NetGalley I couldn't miss the oportunity.

Ruben Alvarado takes the reader on a trip through our history, from the first trades to the creation of money as we know it today. It was really interesting to read his analysis of multiple moments of our civilization intertwining them with what happened with the money at the same time, from the material it was made of, its scarcity or abundance, its international flow to the first experiences with paper money and the abandonment of the gold standard. The book ends at the current financial and economic crisis, though the author doesn't emphasize its analysis over the past history.

There are some moments when the author gets somewhat carried away with his own opinions undermining his impartial analysis but in general this doesn't become a problem. On the other hand, current money and how its characteristics affect societies could have been explained in more detail because it is quite more difficult to understand than past situations.

All in all, a quick and informative read that I recommend to all interested in this area, even if completely new to the subject.

Killing Them Softly by Andrew Dominik

Baseado no livro de George V. Higgins, Killing Them Softly (Matando-os Suavemente - sim, a tradução é mesmo esta) faz uma alegoria da crise através da observação do colapso de uma economia de poker ilegal. Inicialmente segue as duas personagens ingénuas, diria mesmo burras, a quem é proposto o roubo que dá o mote ao filme. Scoot McNairy e Ben Mendelsohn estiveram muito bem, sempre estranhos e engraçados. A sua conversa enquanto um deles está sob efeito de heroína arrancou-me gargalhadas. O ponto de vista muda entretanto para Jackie, contratado para investigar o roubo e lidar com os culpados. Brad Pitt esteve bem como é costume, muito embora a sua personagem esteja frequentemente na linha entre o misterioso e o simplesmente absurdo. Ainda quando aos actores, de destacar James Gandolfini cujo Mickey, um assassino a soldo peculiar, serviu bem de comic relief.

As cenas de pancada e homicídio são para mim das melhores do filme: brutais, mas tanto e não mais que a realidade.

Ao longo do desenvolvimento da história são ouvidos ou mostrados vários discursos de George W. Bush ou Barack Obama, colocando-se contemporâneo à primeira eleição deste último e com isso clarificando (por vezes até demasiado) o paralelismo que se pretende fazer entre os EUA e a situação ilustrada no filme. No final há uma cena em que Jackie acaba mesmo por discursar, revelando o propósito do filme, fazendo ele próprio a comparação entre o país e um negócio, tendo-se tornado a meu ver no pior momento do filme. Killing Them Softly foi tão óbvio que bombardear a audiência com a conclusão que deveria simplesmente estar implícita, ou à qual poderiam chegar pensando um pouco sobre o filme, é absurdo e estraga o fim da história.
Outra questão a apontar é o ritmo do filme, demasiado lento e com mais que muitos momentos de silêncio no meio das conversas, desnecessários e por vezes irritantes.
Em jeito de conclusão, dizer apenas que Killing Them Softly é um filme engraçado, com um bom enredo e baseado numa metáfora inteligente, que contradiz a velha ideia da terra da oportunidade e liberdade e mostra as consequências da destruição de uma economia - como de resto ocorre hoje em dia com a nossa - mas que, por causa de alguns erros de realização e argumento, ficou aquém da excelência que poderia alcançar.

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Based on the novel by George V. Higgins, Killing Them Softly is an allegory of the american and global economic crisis, here explored through the disruption of a gambling community. It initially follows a couple of naive run of the mill dumb ex-cons who are given the "opportunity" of making money stealing from the poker gamers and letting another take the fall for it. Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn make for two really funny characters and their conversation while one of them is heroin-high had me laughing throughout. The point of view then changes mostly for Jackie, the "enforcer" hired to investigate the heist and deal with the culprits. Brad Pitt is as good as usual, though his character sometimes walks the line between being mysterious and just outright nonsensical. Speaking of performances, I must also give thumbs up for James Gandolfini as Mickey, a good comic relief halfway through the film.

The predictable beatings and deaths are very well depicted, realistic even, nor too much nor too little bloody or gory and for me became some of the best visual scenes. All along the film we are shown, in parallel to the plot, multiple speeches both from GW Bush and Obama, making clear (sometimes even too much) the point of the film. By the end there is a scene where Jackie is far too straightforward and, first while critiquing one of Obama's speeches and after while talking with his contractor, says word by word what the plot was supposed to make you think about. This was for me the worst moment of the film, absurd, unnecessary and spoiling the end.

The other down point of Killing Them Softly is the pace. It is too slow, had a dozen too many silent moments in the middle of otherwise normal conversations and had me eye-rolling once in a while.

All in all a fun film with a good plot and an intelligent if far too literal metaphor, that rejects that fake awe-inspiring idea of land of freedom and opportunity, shows what can happen when the economy is as broken as ours is right now, but sadly fails to excel.