mega merger of meager merger?

I am not an economist but I am interested in the Economy. I am interested in Economy because it is everywhere and it defines everything, it touches everyone. In other words, I am interested in it because we are surrounded by economies of all kind: large, small, growing, struggling, abusive, miraculous, reckless, inventive, greedy; ever expanding like a big bang of its own origin. It is at the root of human experience: glorious and tragic; our relation to the world is often understood on an economic level. We are reacting to the Economy or to the absence of Economy. According to Jacques Adda, in La mondialisation de l'économie, we have arrived at the ultimate finality of an economic system invented 1000 years ago, by the mercantile cities of the Mediterranean. 1

News of the economic world has invaded our lives. We are saturated, over inundated by it. We are mesmerized by the growth of the economy, by the expansion of economy; we have become obsessed by the power of industries. There was a time when there was no mention of economic indices on television news. It was considered uninteresting to the public. Today, the Dow Jones, TSE, CBOT, NSDAQ, and NEKEI are all necessary, are all important, and unavoidable. We need them. They mean something. Somehow investment has become fun and sexy. RSSP=SEXY. GROWTH OF FUNDS=GROWTH OF FUN. And sometimes it is possible to have the impression that 'it is working' for everyone. In fact, it is working very well, but for a small percentage of the population; 86% of bull market gains in the past four years have benefited the richest 10% of the population. Are they the ones that driving the new cars? Now it is possible to go into a parking lot and have a Jeep Cherokee in front of you, a Jeep Cherokee in back of you, a Jeep Cherokee on your left, and a Jeep Cherokee on your right; and if you really look around, you will notice that you are trapped. We have become sophisticated consumers with surprisingly few tastes. Actually consuming goods has become a spiritual activity and heaven is a wasteland ready for condo development.

According to a Warvick University research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of Britain, the price for happiness is at least $2 million. This amount can, according to the study, give "a significant boost to well being." 2 In 1999 Monopoly was adding its first new piece in 47 years. A sack of money joined 10 others playing pieces that come with the classic board game: a battleship, cannon, dog, horse and rider, iron, shoe, thimble, top hat, wheelbarrow, and race car. Monopoly held an election asking fans to choose between the sack of money, a biplane, and a piggy bank. About 1.5 million people voted at toys stores, by telephone and on the internet. Monopoly was invented during the great depression in 1935. 3 As of 1999-2000 there were seven million millionaires in the world. Since World War II we have had 9 recessions. There are a lot more millionaires than recessions.

Falling Through the Cracks
Study after study reveals that the economic Gap between individuals in society is being defined more clearly. The official position seems to be a desire to close the Gap, but behind the closed doors of power, its function is recognized, maintained, expanded, praised and enjoyed. The existence of the Gap must be a proof in itself that it is a wanted situation. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote that the first person that fenced off a field and said: "This is mine", and found people to believe him, was the true founder of the civil society. He went on to say that the world would have been spared crimes, wars and murders if only one person would have taken the stake out of the ground and filled the hole, while shouting to everyone, "Beware of this impostor, you are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to everyone and that the earth is owned by no one! " 4

Here we are now, like a tribe that lives on a land being ripped apart by a giant earthquake while all of the members can only look at the crevass getting deeper and wider every day. From time to time one can hear: "Watch out! Look out! Step back from the GAP! Become self-sufficient: Sell a kidney!" But most of the time it is too late. The ones on the edge are diving headfirst, sliding into the man-made Grand Canyon. We have taken the custom of saying, "They fell through the cracks." The only hope, for the ones that are falling, is that the hole will have no bottom. This absence would make the fall eternal, it would be like a gentle slide through the cracks with no one ever being hurt.

The Gap in the Head
Four kids, well dressed, riding BMX bikes, jump from the train station onto the street. The backdrop is a row of taverns and social services agencies blend together in a kind of neo post geo gothic architecture that means nothing to the people who inhabit it. The kids yell to some customers "You can't even walk on your own legs, bunch of dirt, fucking scum bags! " The Gap is in their heads as well as in their hearts. It has allowed them to distance themselves from others, and at the end of the day, from themselves. It is easy to see who is holding the shitty end of the memory stickä. The Fabulous Four left the scene, filling the sunset with all the dust they could make with their tires. The Gap is a serious phenomenon that invites exclusion. This is why we have television shows, which reflect the popular psyche, shows such as Survivor, The Mole or The Weakest Link. They are teasing our Roman excitement for the kill. The basic bottom line is that in order for wealth to exist there has to be a lot more sad faces than happy ones. In 1970 the French President Georges Pompidou was asking what was to be done with the high unemployment level that was crippling the French State at the time. One of his advisors told him that is was not a problem but a solution.

Engulfing Gap
An ad on television reminds me of the kids on the BMX bikes. The high end / low-end spot features the famous Formula One driver: Jacques Villeneuves. Jacques (high end) drives a yellow Honda Civic to a streetlight. He is soon surrounded by group of squeegie kids (low-end). They start to work on Jacques' windows with ardor in role-playing that is reminiscent of the pit workers at a car race. A clock calculates their performance like at Macdonald's or at Burger King. Jacques looks at them furtively, with distance, like a Russian Tsar floating above the little people. He is protected by the armour of his car; his own little gated community on wheels. He is absorbed by the glory of his class and enveloped by a grand solitude. The kids are done, the time is up. It seems like a good performance. One of the kids opens one of his hand toward Jacques. He his asking for his due, pay for the work he has done. Jacques does not look at him, nor does he pay him, he simply drives away. And then from a distance he looks briefly to his rear view mirror. If you superimpose the gap between people and the gap within one individual does it create a moiré? Will it give you a headache and split your head in two parts like a ripe fruit?

According to an article recently published in The Globe and Mail, the rich are enjoying their wealth more than ever and are not shy about displaying it. The Politically Correct era in which being rich was a burden is finally over! The shareholders are standing firmly on their ground. Example: a recent poll on the Netscape homepage asked people if the pharmaceutical company should offer AIDS drugs at a lower cost to poor countries in Africa stricken with AIDS. The response to the poll by those surveyed was no. (64%)

Such repulsion for humanity is ultimately contributing to the creation of radical organizations such as the Earth Liberation Front who are setting the symbols of suburban success ablaze, "We can no longer allow the rich to parade around in their armoured existence, leaving a wasteland behind in their tire tracks". 5

The Gap has just gotten a lot bigger, a lot more spectacular. We recently witnessed a US millionaire businessman, Dennis Tito, becoming the first space tourist. 6 Tito paid $20-million US for the trip and fulfilled, we all hope, his wildest childhood fantasy. The chosen few can now float anywhere they want, even around the cracks. From a distance they are free to do a little anthropological study of how falling people wrestle with gravity. One man's holiday (20 million US) is the collective amount that 100,000 people can expect to earn in one year in Madagascar. 7 It is telling of how wealth is being distributed. Mr. Tito might be a nice person, the fact that he can afford to mingle in the International Space Station (ISS) has no real bearing on his individual qualities. No offence toward Mr. Tito, but with space there is always a symbolic value. We were told that a stroll on the moon was a giant leap for mankind. For the poor, Tito's vacation in the ISS will stand as a monument to the Gap. In order not to see the poverty, and the misery, and the dirty streets of this world, it might become easier to go into space. It might also be harder for groups such as ELF to blow up space stations.

Notes Towards New Economic Symbols
When I started to write these notes, I wanted to create something positive. This feeling was confirmed and reinforce by another Globe and Mail article, this one by Alan Freeman : Activists' intimidation a threat to democracy itself. 8 Freeman's article was written in the wake of the Summit of the America's. The article talks about an Animal Activist group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty. According to Freeman the group is conducting a campaign aimed to shut down the Huntingdon Life Sciences Group PLC, a laboratory that performs tests on animals. Alan Freeman talks about the Animal Activists' violence and destructive mindset. He also mentions their chilling web site, but forgets to give an address. What is chilling, is the vigor with which opposition is met.

The timing of the article is not a mistake, Freeman and others are trying hard to depict all activists in the same light. Small groups of resistance or protest are a threat to democracy itself. Democracy must crush them as soon as they appear. Will Democracy need to silence every voice of opposition in order to survive? As Capitalism expand and test the limits of tolerance, the demand on nature will increase. There will be people to take the stakes of the fences out of the ground and to fill the holes saying that the earth belongs to no one person.

Personally I do not want to be a threat to democracy itself. This is why I am contributing a new interpretation of these economic symbols in an unthreatening manner. I hope that they can be used in a meaningful way for the common good of humanity.

The Bear and the Bull

The Bull
We say of people that they have balls; what we mean by that is that they have the reproductive capacity of a bull. That is why those people usually wear loose fit pants to accommodate their huge sexual attributes. They are ready to mate, anytime, anywhere; they can directly invest in stocks on the go using their laptops and cell phones. In brief, their own briefs are full of potential and that confidence is showing all the way. The fight between the Bull and the Matador in the Spanish Corrida is a beautiful expression of the sexual energy and the confidence attributed attached to these animals. To excite the Bull, the Matador waves a red cape. He also wears this glamorous costume with blinding tinsel and sparkles. The Matador starts to dance and the Bull charges, the Matador teases and dodges. In the dusty arena you can see the Matador arching his back and thrusting his sex in the Bull's face. The Bull is mad now but the Matador has that thing called confidence. And you know that he is confident when you realized that his genitals are covered only by a thin silk opaque pantyhose! The fight goes on and if the Matador usually wins. He will plunge his sword into the flesh of the wounded Bull. At that moment when the hard metal penetrates the Bull's insides the crowd chants, "To the Vagina! Vagina! Vagina!"

To understand the dynamic on the floor of the stock market it is useful to remember the Matador's mindset and to never forget that he wears the tight silk pantyhose.

The Bear
The Bear was adopted to symbolize slowdown of Economy, mainly because it hibernates. When consumers hibernate they don't drive to the malls to buy stuff that they think they need. Instead they stay home and they slowly burn the goods they have already accumulated. For fear of waking up, they don't even put the lights on. They don't shovel the snow that is slowly falling outside their houses, burying them and transforming them into coffin-igloos. Everything stops, even the television broadcasts, the only light now illuminating the sarcophagus, are slowing down. Show Hosts can hardly pronounce the names of the guests. The whole fabric of the world is inexorably freezing over. Fear installs itself deep inside the hearts and the mind of consumers. Wild thought patterns starts to emerge: Will I lose my job? Will we lose our house? Will spring ever come back? Will I stay on top of a high speed train when 'hobo times' come back? And then the whole depression era thing, the dust bowl, the soup lines comes haunting us.

Solitary by nature the Bear roams on a huge territory, but unlike the Cow-Bull, he is a wild animal. His freedom is what really fuels our fear for the beast. From time to time we hear stories of people being killed by bears. Tourists, runners, walkers in the woods become slow moving targets. A Bear runs faster than the fastest man on earth, it can climb trees faster than the most fit of monkeys. When it stands on his back legs, it rises as tall as Paul Bunyan himself. It can smell food that is placed inside hermetically sealed bottles immersed into the water of a river. This is probably why there is no Corrida with Bears. The Matadors would have their pretty costumes chewed up in no time. But luckily, they go to sleep every year, it is good news for us but bad news for the Economy.

Hibernation is a funny thing; it is seen as a form of laziness. That does not fit very well into protestant work ethics. At the same time, studies have shown it is a way to live long. How can it be good for the individual but harmful to the collective?

Tales From then and Tales From Now
Throughout History, people have always placed sacred value or character on the killings of animals. The killing was sometime seen as a way to ensure good harvest or a way to obtain the virtue of a specific organ. Courage is in the heart, intelligence in the brain, sexual prowess in testicles or the penis, etc. At the same time, there is the whole tradition of excluding all but man from the realm of divine grace. One thinks, for example, of Pope Pius IX's refusal to permit a particular society to be organized in Rome. The group wanted to protest the slaughter of bulls for sport and amusement. "… an animal," he declared, " has no soul and thus has no claim on man's moral sympathies." 9

June 15, 1637 11:47
"…The Laps consider the Bear the King of beasts and all men who take part in the slaughter are regarded as unclean, and must live by themselves for three days in a hut or tent made specially for them, where they cut up and cook the bear's carcass…" 10

May 22, 2000 3:33 PM
The broker that loses his shirt and his customer's shirt in a bad investment is considered unclean and must live by himself for a few days before he can trade again.

September 4, 1783, 9:02 AM
In the baptism (of blood) the devotee, crowned with gold and wreathed with fillets, descended into a pit, the mouth of which was covered with a wooden grating. A bull, adorned with gold leaf, was then driven on the grating and there stabbed to death with a consecrated spear. Its hot reeking blood poured in torrents through the apertures, and was received with devout eagerness by the worshipper on every part of his person and garments, till he emerged from the pit, drenched, dripping, and scarlet from head to foot, to receive the homage, nay the adoration, of his fellows as one who had been born again to eternal life and had washed away his sins in the blood of the bull. 11

February 9, 2000 10:28 AM
In the morning the broker stepped out of the train into the pit of the stock exchange. He donned his colored vest and the number assigned to him. He threw himself into the pit, surrounded by a multitude of screens, sounds and numbers. A deal, which looked good all along became marvellous. In the speed of light the deal was signed and a profit was turned for investors. Papers were falling from the sky. With devout eagerness, the broker received his cut for the transaction. At the end of the day, he emerged, drenched and dripping, almost fluorescent from having been reborn to the eternal life of good times.

New Symbols
Now that the fear of Foot and Mouth disease, and Mad Cow disease is spreading, it seems that the Bull poses more threat than the Bear, which has flat feet. But the Bear, like many wild animals, is known to have worms, which are very difficult to get rid of. Even cooking the meat at high temperature might not kill all of the worms. It seems obvious that diseases and parasites have rendered those folkloric symbols challenged and irrelevant. In the future, biotechnology might offer our economic symbols a new lease on life, but right now it is imperative to revamp the imagery. The Bull symbol could be replaced by a human symbol, perhaps a 'Blonde Woman Driving a Black BMW' or a 'Blonde Woman Driving a Fast BMW in a particularly dusty and poor section of a city'. The Magpie could be another potent animal symbol for an aggressive market. The bird has this obsession of stealing stuff from everybody else. This can only encourage the market toward producing more goods, the basis of the invisible hand proposition referred to by Adam Smith. 12 By searching to fulfill his own personal needs and desire for pleasure, the Magpie, like the rich, is doing society a favor. That would mean that the Director of the Beaverbrook Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, was accurate when he said the Nazi loot of artworks during the Second World War was a blessing in disguise. They protected the works from being destroyed. 13 By satisfying their own greed, and by annihilating the previous owners, the Nazi served the greater good of mankind?

The Bear symbol, with all its worms, has definitely run its time. We need something closer to our human reality. A human symbol to replace the Bear might be the 'Blind Man Falling into a Manhole' or 'The Blind Man Falling into a Manhole, accompanied by a Laugh Track.' The squirrel could certainly be the animal symbol of choice. I realized it was a perfect fit while watching a special about retirement on CBC television. One of the couples interviewed on the documentary was talking about building their nest to achieve retirement at age 55. They were pointing out, with much pride, that they were not relying on the Canadian Pension Plan system to provide for the quality of life they have come to expect. They were a cast above the cream of the crop. They were doing it by themselves, not relying on anybody, a bit like Jacques Villeneuve. They are the financial survivalists of a new era. As I looked at them, I saw the faces of squirrels stuffing their jowls appear on the screen, in a subliminal manner. It struck me how perfect the squirrel is if a new 'animal' symbol is used to replace the bear; squirrels semi - hibernate in the winter, and in bad economics times, they can be eaten. Their flesh is said to taste like chicken.

Falling
oversized teenagers are falling from the billboards
into the GAP that was set for them

the wiser of the group says that he is
a cultural reference impossible to ignore
an opera of Purcell by himself
his khaki soul is a viscous trap made of 10W40

jeep Cherokees
caught in the mud
are gliding slowly downstream
the occupants are calming their terror
by thinking of Fitzcaraldo's boat
and the greatness of the vessel reassured them

a man in his Rodeo
deeply seated in his sense of adventure
levitates in a terrible silence
his one-seater is a mausoleum of crystal
his destiny crumbles like chalk on a sidewalk

in a parking lot
another man disarms his yukon
in the chrome of his bumper
the distorted reflections of his face
are dancing by themselves

his hands are sweaty
he holds a molotov cocktail
the streets are flooded with lights

by himself he has become a genre of vietnam
his truth belongs between the building logo
his heart floats in a liquid that resembles napalm

he likes the lines that are pure and simple
of architectures that are clear and calm
the blue of the sky has become his cerulean azure
and the whiteness of the ground a fragile marble
on which the foundation of his ivory tower rests

he is at the cutting edge of the technology
while being heavy in his own heart
he lives a kind of numeric schizophrenia
in a tight and mediocre choreography
his publicity is a reality of anorexia

Falling More
standing at a distance
in the model garden of sterilized culture
under the glass pyramids of the great capitals
gardeners dressed in pale green outfits
work hard to preserve everything that has moved

the odor of vinegar is proof
of the immortality of all movement
of the impossibility of any advance
the cultural security that they have concocted
is a testament without leg
a plastic tree that collects the dust

in the humid greenhouse
a document of complex research is distributed but the data has no meaning
to divert the attention a one legged dancer is brought forward
a woman with three heads toast her hats up in the air
while underlying the historic moment of the ceremony
a man-bloodsucker puffs himself up and takes off

a live camera broadcast on a giant screen
the picture of a crowd in distress

Falling Ever More
the food banks are now managed by a few cannibals
they seem to invite with success the hungry ones
to come and rest in their ossuary in blossom

their intelligence is a warehouse lighted with cool fluorescents
one can hear Elvis Presley singing full blast
I did it my way

on permanent display in the coloured stands of the vampires
under the polymer palm trees
there is a scale model of a grand project
the oasis is said to resemble a large macramé with the drawing of an owl in the middle

and while the storm is raging
the gardeners extraordinaire
have written in yellow tulips
onto the green lawns of the dominant tribes
y'a de la joie 14

in the frequent mud slides
that are happening in the unprotected zones
hundreds of lost heads
are floating away
their mouths open
singing together in chorus
il était un petit navire 15

1. Jacques Adda, La mondialisation de l'économie, La découverte 1998
2. Calgary Herald, March 2001, page A1
3. The Globe and Mail March 17, 1999 P. A21
4. Du Contrat Social, Discours sur les origines de l'inégalité, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Édition 10/18 (1963) p. 292
5. The Globe and Mail, Fighting suburban sprawl with fire, Doug Saunders, April 24, 2001
6. The Globe and Mail, Astronauts approve of space tourist, Melanie Seal April, 30 2001
7. Website : L'Agence de la Francophonie : http://www.francophonie.org/frm/outils/frm.html
8. The Globe and Mail, Activists' intimidation a threat to democracy itself, Alan Freeman April 25, 2001
9. Nature's Economy, Donald Worster Cambridge University Press 1994 p.27
10 .The Golden Bough Hunters tabooed The Macmillan Company 1943 p 222
11. The Golden Bough The myth and ritual of Attis tabooed The Macmillan Company 1943 P.351
12. Métaphore due à Adam Smith et qui est depuis devenue courante chez les économistes; toutefois, pour ceux-ci, la main invisible est devenue une autre façon de désigner le " mécanisme des prix " (encore une métaphore…), alors que ce n'est pas à cela que Smith pense losqu'il utilise sa métaphore. Les quelques (rares) fois où Smith fait allusion à la main invisible, c'est pour désigner un résultat positif (bon pour la communauté) qui peut découler des actions et des comportements des individus, sans que ceux-ci aient cherché délibérément un tel résultat. Ainsi, dans le Traité des sentiments moraux, Smith écrit : " Une main invisible semble forcer [les riches] à concourir à la même distribution des choses nécessaires à la vie qui aurait eut lieu été donnée en égale portion à chacun de ses habitants ; ainsi, sans en avoir l'intention, sans même le savoir, le riche sert l'intérêt social et la multiplication de l'espèce humaine. (p. 184 de l'édition de Glasgow des œuvres d'Adam Smith). Dictionnaire d'analyse économique, La découverte 1997 Bernard Guerrien p. 302
13. Calgary Herald, Gallery director apologizes, January 5, 2001
14. Y'a de la joie is a song of happiness written by Charles Trenet during World War Two.
15. Il était un petit navire is a folkoric French Song.
* excerpt from : Le couteau suisse ©2001 Daniel Dugas presented in a poetry-performance at the Symposium d'art actuel Moncton, NB 1999

Daniel Dugas was born on October 29, 1959, exactly 30 years after the Stock Market crash of October, 1929. Between the time this exhibition was first presented, and now, DD saw the shadow of bankruptcy looming over his shoulder. But the shadow left with a shifting wind.