Maxed out is a story of cheap credit and how the banking system has enslaved a middle class who cannot afford to pay it back. The author journeys across the United States speaking to people who have fallen into the debt trap and exposes how the banks do not necessarily make money from interest but rather from the fees (particularly overdraft fees). In fact the banks make more money lending money than by having it paid back simply because they either package up the debt into securities which they then sell to investors, or they sell the debt to debt collection agencies which then use many tricks to get the money back. What this book demonstrates is that the banks want you to be in debt, and want you to be addicted to debt because they make more money from minimum payments than they do by having the debt paid back. Even then, the money that they lend out is not necessarily theirs anyway - it is yours, if you have enough money to save in the first place.

There are a number of issues that should be explored in this particular commentary, and I felt that a simple paragraph really just brushes over the issues in this book (and accompanying documentary, or is it the other way around). To me there are two types of debt, investment debt and consumer debt. In a way investment debt, while risky, is better than consumer debt because the debt is used to leverage one's ability to generate an income stream. This can be an overdraft with a bank that a business can draw upon to pay its outgoings, particularly when one has a slow period, or it can be a margin loan, which is used to purchase securities, whether in the form of shares, bonds, or managed funds. While this form of debt is risky, if used right it can raise one's ability to generate an income. However, this documentary is not about investment debts (or leverage) but consumer debt.

Now, as far as I am concerned, consumer debt is bad, very bad. The idea is to buy now and pay later. In one sense it can create an ability to purchase a house (though in my mind this is more an investment debt) or a car without the need to save up the money. It may be necessary to have a car sooner rather than later, particularly if the car is needed for work. However, people use consumer debt to live a lifestyle that they simply cannot afford. New television, couch, holidays. In a sense it gives one the ability to live like a king for a day, and the consequences can be kicked down the road to deal with another day. However there is a catch: once the money is spent, and the object consumed, there is still a hangover - the debt and the interest payments that accompanies it. Moreso, once one tastes that high life through debt, one wants more, and more, and more. As such it becomes a drug, and a very seductive and addictive drug at that.

Remembering that this book deals with debt in America, in some ways it can be applied to other countries as well. We here in Australia are protected by a consumer credit code that restricts the ability of lenders to ensare people into debt slavery, however it does happen. A friend at work suddenly decided she wanted to take her family on an overseas holiday, but did not want to save, so she and her husband borrowed the money, saying that they will worry about the consequences later. However, from experience (not through debt as I am debt free – with the exception of the student loan, but unlike America, that debt is held by the government and you pay it back in the same way you pay tax, that is it is automatically deducted from your pay once you hit a certain threshold), the thrill and exhilaration of an overseas holiday is so addictive that you simply cannot come back and resume your normal life – you want to go back again, and again, and again. While I may justify my desire by ditching the word holiday and replacing it with 'research excursion' in reality I have become addicted to the thrill and simply want to justify my desire to re-experience that thrill.

I guess one of the most shocking things that I discovered from this book is how the credit card companies prey upon young university students. The first thing they see when they arrive at the campus are the multitude of stalls where companies are flogging off credit cards. Remember, they do not actually want us to pay the debt back, but rather continue to gouge us with interest payments and fees and charges. The banks are not concerned either because they have already packaged the loan up as a security and onsold it so that they get all of their money back, and then these loans are merged and packaged up, with bad loans being tied together with good loans, and onsold as AAA securities. In the end these securities end up forming parts of our superfunds so that these companies are screwing us around both ways. Not only are they diverting our income streams to repaying interest, but they are also taking our savings and replacing them with worthless IOUs. To further protect them, they insure the loans so that if the person does go bankrupt, and they lose their capital, they call on the insurer, who then pays up. The belief was that the insurer would never have to pay up, however this all unravelled in 2008.

This book, though, was written prior to 2008 so the consequences of this debt binge had not come to light. However this corporate debt binge, which almost collapsed the world economy, was dealt with through government bailouts. Yet there was never any bailout for the millions of people reduced to debt slavery. George Bush, at the insistence of the credit card companies, even changed the bankruptcy laws so that the debtees could not even hide behind that either. One might suggest that these people are responsible for their own position, but when we consider that innocent people are caught by the actions of others cannot be ignored. There is no healthcare in America, nor is their any government funded tuition. As such if you get sick you have to borrow money, and if you want to go to college you have to borrow money. I borrowed money from the government for my tuition, and the government has said that I can play it back once I reach a certain income level. This is not the case in the United States. Once you borrow the money for university, interest begins to accrue, and it may be at least four years before you begin your first proper job, and you are already saddled with a huge debt, and this is before the wedding, the house, and the kids.

At the beginning we are told of a story of a man who has had to declare bankruptcy, but was it his fault? Not necessarily, namely because his wife had incurred huge debt, dumped it onto him, and then ran off debt free. Stories like this make me glad that I am not married. It also makes me raise the question of debt early on in a relationship, but once again, like many other things in life, relationships bring risk, and it is how we respond to risk and how we tackle it that can determine the course of our life. However, the otherside is that consumer debt is not risk, or if it is, it is much higher than other forms of ris, because the risk is that you will not be able to pay it back, and even if you can, in the end the money you pay in interest, and even in principle, is dead money because your consumable is not generating an income and the interest payments are simply paid so that you can live as a king for a day and then deal with the hangover later. Unfortunately, the hangover will always be there, and in many cases, it will never go away.

The problem that I find with some books, especially these non-fiction books, is that there is so much in them that it can be difficult to remember all of the points that the author has made without having to write copious notes. The other problem is that since I am incredibly time poor I really have little time to craft a brilliant and concise review based upon these notes, so in the end I generally just read through the book and hope for the best when I come to writing the review (usually the day that I have finished it because if I end up leaving it too long I'll end up having a huge backlog of reviews that I'll never get through).

I have to say that it was been quite a while since I have read a good non-fiction book, though I have to say that this particular one did drag on a bit, especially when he was describing in minutae conversations that occurred between editors, journalists, and their leaks. He also went into great detail of the stress and the decisions on whether to publish and when, which once again I found that it cause the book not only to drag on a bit, but to also make it sound like some form of soap opera. However, we must remember that these decisions weren't taken lightly because the media, even the left leaning newspapers such as the Guardian and the Fairfax newspapers, are still very much under the heal of what are becoming quite tyrannical governments. However, there are a few things that I wish to discuss that I got out of this book.

The Conservative Right to Rule

A couple of chapters of this book talks about how the media went to war against a couple of left wing governments in the past (and even in the present). For instance the government of Howard Wilson in England and the government of Gough Whitlam in Australia, found themselves in the wrong side of an angry media. This I suspect is what has caused the labour party to shift dangerously to the right, which has in turn pushed conservative parties further to the right. This is not surprising because the conservative governments have always represented the wealthy elite (well, not always, but generally). The thing with conservative governments is that they like the status quo – which is why they are conservative – and the status quo generally means that the rich can continue to make money, no matter what the consequences. The problem is that if the voting public actually knew what the conservative governments were about then nobody would vote for them, which is why they resort to getting elected through deceit, propaganda, and the use of the media.

The thing with the media is that they are, in all cases, controlled by the wealthy elite. Even the journalists who write for them tend to inhabit the upper crust of society. I have read a number of articles in various newspapers (including the left leaning Fairfax) where the journalists are bragging about how they are in the highest income tax bracket and how they fly business class everywhere while us plebs have to put up being squeezed like sardines into economy class (not that I could actually justify paying the exorbitant fees that business class charges). As such there is generally a bias in favour of governments that support the status quo.

However, it is not the wealthy that also support the status quo – the unions do as well. There was an interesting point Fowler made when he spoke about how Rupert Murdoch was attempting to transform his London newspapers into a more technologically efficient production by creating a sophisticated computer network that would eliminate the need for a typing pool and and printers. This angered the unions because it meant that a lot of their workforce would be made redundant. Now, I'm no big fan of Murdoch, and I do support the unions in some cases, but in this instance what we are seeing is that the working class is actually working against innovation (which I believe is a good thing).

However, that doesn't let the conservatives off the hook because we have other areas where they are acting against innovation because of the effect that it will have on their profits. Take Murdoch once again. In Australia he has a joint monopoly over the pay TV network Foxtel (in Australia you have only one pay TV network). In 2007 the Labor government was elected on a platform of installing superfast internet connections straight to the home, which meant that Murdoch would suddenly find himself in competition with online streaming services such as Netflix (Foxtel also offers an online service as well). Seeing his monopolistic position under threat he then turned against the Labor government, and when the Coalition was re-elected in 2013 they ended up scrapping Labor's internet plan to put in place a much more limited, and in turn much more costly, alternative.

Leaking Taps

It goes without saying that government's don't like leaks – it embarrasses them and exposes their criminal acts. Poor Tony Abbott, in the weeks before he was knifed in the back, didn't just have to deal with leaks, but with a gushing torrent that flowed out of the cabinet room and into the nation's media. However his problem was only embarrassment and provided ever more evidence of his incompetency as a prime minister. The leaks go much deeper when we are talking about illegal acts being committed by a government during wartime. It is interesting that the Nazi's were able to keep their final solution quiet for so long while atrocities such as the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam and the scandal at Abu Graib were released for the world to see (though it may have something to do with them having a much tighter control over the media than does the modern democracy).

Fowler talks about a number of important leaks, beginning with the Pentagon Papers up to the revelations released by Edward Snowden. Elsberg actually got off really lightly, namely because the government's case against him was thrown out due to illegal wire taps. This is not the case these days as Chelsea Manning is now serving a 30 year prison sentence, Julian Assange is holed up in the Equadorian embassy, and Edward Snowden is living on borrowed time in Russia. The government has learned from its mistakes with Elsberg and are getting ever more serious in threatening would be whistle blowers and attempting to make examples of those who have taken the courage to stand up, produce evidence, and say to the world 'this is wrong'.

Fowler refers to protections in the United States and Europe, such as the 4th Amendment and the European Charter of Human Rights, that seeks to protect such whistle blowers, though governments nethertheless resort to Espionage Acts and claim that such revelations work to aid the enemy. Thus it is not surprising that Bush created an endless war on terror since this not only creates an enemy, but also provides an excuse to punish the release of such sensitive information. Further, it also puts pressure on newspapers to be very circumspect in what they print, because if the government deems that a publication is going to hurt it's war efforts then they can have the paper shut down. Fowler even tells a story of how British Intelligence entered the offices of the Guardian and destroyed all of the harddrives that contained the information provided to them by Snowdon.

Australia has gone one step further. The only freedom of speech that we have is the freedom of political speech which is implied in the constitution. This has enabled the government to enact laws that not only punishes whistle blowers, but also punishes journalists for publishing the information that they have released.

The Changing Landscape

The internet has changed the world in an incredible way and has hit many traditional businesses incredibly hard – no more so than the newspapers, and the print media has struggled ever since to attempt to remain relevant in its onslaught. The thing about the internet is that it has made access to information not just easy, but cheap. As such people have turned away from the print media and onto the internet in droves, and many of the traditional newspapers have struggled to make a profit. It is even suggested that some papers in the Murdoch Empire have to be supported by other papers because they are operating at a loss.

A number of newspapers have succeeded in creating paywalls, such as the Wall Street Journal and the Australian Financial Review. However these newspapers generally target a niche market, which means that when it went online their niche market followed them (and having an interest in the stock market, I have to say that the free publications tend to be of pretty poor quality). However, this didn't work with the traditional papers because people simply weren't interested in paying for the content. Sure, paying $1.00 for some saucy tales in the local rag was okay a decade ago, but these days there are so many websites that offer the same sordid offerings for free, nobody sees the need to fork out that $1.00 anymore (let alone pay for access).

These papers used to stay afloat through advertising however the internet changed all that. People don't buy newspapers anymore to peruse the classifieds, they go to the internet. If you want to buy a car, a house, second hand goods, or even look for a job, this is now all on the internet. When we bought our house we found it by perusing the internet. I don't buy the paper to look for jobs anymore because, once again, they are all on the internet. In fact if I want some second hand goods, once again I go to the internet. The newspapers no longer have a monopoly on ads, and this has hurt them substantially. In fact the ads that they gain on the internet does not make them anywhere as much money as they did before. Furthermore, some paywalls are actually very easy to defeat (especially the ones that give you a limited number of free articles) – just clear your cookies every so often.

The Security State

The thing about the War on Terrorism is that the government has actually done a very good job in convincing us that terrorists could strike any place and at any time. The catch is that not all that many people have actually died of a terrorist attack in a western nation. However they have convinced us that not only do we need to be vigilant, but that they need greater powers to fight this threat. The problem is that they have already had those powers, it's just that they weren't used all that well. Take for instance the Sydney siege – the nutter that was responsible had been on the watch list for years, but they then decided to take him off. If they had kept watching him they might have stopped him before he killed two innocent victims.

Then there is the mandatory collection of data (not just metadata, but the data that the NSA has been collecting). Once again it is actually very easy to circumvent it. Fowler speaks of how a couple of journalists (and Manning) were caught through their slack use of the internet, and that is something that we need to be aware of. Okay, I'm not writing this anomalously, and really have no desire to start becoming invisible on the net (particularly since I would prefer people to know that I am the author).

The concerning thing is the suggestion that the NSA actually has the power to activate and hijack our smartphones, even if they are turned off. This is all done through the SIM card. The thing with smartphones is that you need to register to get a SIM card. Once again there are ways around this, even if it involves only using WiFi hotspots (though a number of them require you to pre-register, and pay by credit card, beforehand, which means that they are able to track you, though once again there are ways around this). Mind you, even back in the days of the old clunky phones that could only send texts and make phone calls, I knew that the government could track you, however with modern technology they can be much more precise.

Okay, I may not actually be writing this review (as I had done so a while back) but I am going over it again to try and correct some of the glaring spelling and gramatical errors (as I have been doing for most of my reviews – and I am getting quite close to finishing them off). Anyway, I am currently sitting in a flying coffin at 30,000 above Malaysia, on my way to Phuket where I will be using the time to tidy up a few more of my reviews, as well as visiting Salamanga at James Bond island. However, that is beside the point because I probably should be spending more time relaxing and exploring than writing book reviews – but then again I guess that is one of things things I like doing. Anyway, on with the review.

This book is quite dated since the Bush cronies are now gone and the Democrats, lead by Barak Obama, are now well into a second term in the oval office (though they were recently smashed is the mid-terms). However, just because this ultra-right wing conservative government has been tossed out of the door does not necessarily mean that things have changed, or that change is going to be effected overnight. Many people are now criticising Obama on the fact that when he entered office on the platform of 'change you can believe in' that all of the problems that plague the United States would be solved overnight. As became obvious, the power brokers in this neo-fuedal system were not going to lie down without a fight. Even the Health Care Reform was little more than a cobbled together attempt to move the United States away from the two-tier system that had evolved that simply gives the health insurance industry more money (namely by forcing the insurers to accept applicants – then again, a government funded system would result in huge losses to the private insurers as it would mean that people would no longer see the need to take out private insurance).

However, the legacy of the Bush era is a multi-trillion dollar debt, a sluggish economy, more people under the poverty line, millions unemployed, a two wars in which many have lost loved ones or have had their lives drastically changed due to a roadside bomb. In fact one could point to these two wars as the reason that the United States is struggling with a debt burden that is going to be impossible to pay. However, despite all of this, the elite still live in the multi-million dollar mansions, sip their pina colladas, and watch their broadway plays, while the middle class is slowly being destroyed and the ranks of the poor are ever increasing.

We cannot say that we were not warned. It is interesting that it was well known that Bush was in fact a very bad manager of money. He ran two companies into the ground, ran the state of Texas into the ground, and a year before his term expired, the American economy was pushed to brink of collapse. However the companies that were responsible for this were bailed out, and then the government was further required to cut back on spending on essential services while the directors of these companies simply went on with life as normal. In the end, as in every similar situation, a fall guy was found (Mardoff) and all of the rage and anger was focused on him while the real criminals simply went off scott free.

As for Bush's Christianity, that is something that I am not at liberty to make comment, though it is interesting that his mentors turned out to be the usual suspects when it comes to the Christian right in the United States. This is an anti-abortion, and in fact, anti-fun coalition that is trying to impose a rigid morality on the United States, still believing that it is a country that has been blessed by God because of its Christian heritage. If economic success is a sign of blessing, and blessing only comes because a country remains true to its Christian heritage, then maybe the economic miracle in China is nothing more than a fraud (and people actually seem to think that this is a case). Or how about Ethiopia, or Kenya? These two countries have a very strong Christian heritage, but struggle with endemic poverty. This idea is once again a part of the so called prosperity heresy (as I like to call it), and now I understand why these pastors live such luxurious lifestyles - it is simply to convince the members of their church that the prosperity doctrine does indeed work because God has blessed them with riches (despite the fact that these riches have simply come through tithing and selling merchandise that peddles this false doctrine).

I really did like the Shadowrun Universe - it was new and it was different. While it was not the first game that merged magic with technology most of the other games that did so were either set in a post apocalyptic world (such as Gamma World and Rifts) or were just plain stupid (though the one example that does come to mind I simply cannot remember the name). However Shadowrun is a cyberpunk world, a world of big cities and commerce, a world that had changed but in many cases is still very much the same. With Shadowrun I could turn my favourite Hollywood action movies (Terminator II comes to mind) into adventures in this world without too much difficulty.

This book is set in London, and the England of 2050 is a land pretty much covered with houses (though I have recently been to England and it really does not look like that, though I sometimes wonder if people underestimate the size of the Earth) and is ruled by the Druids. They still have a king, but when I was running Shadowrun games, I had a different England story which that involved the king becoming an orc which gave rise to a lot of political intrigue where the PCs had to uncover a plot to remove him from the throne - a plot involving republicans and people who simply do not like orcs.

In many ways Shadowrun is very much ahead of its time. It is not the idea that magic has entered the world, though over the past 20 years I do notice that us Westerners are developing a more spiritual outlook to our lives (and while I do believe in magic, I believe that it is very subtle, much like sympathetic magic – look it up on Wikipedia). However, it is the idea of the Matrix, cyberware, and the mega-corporations that are strangely prescient of our modern times. I will look at each of these as I review the other books in the series, but in this instance I will explore the nature of the Mega-Corporation.

When the original book indicates that the years 1990 to 2010 resulted in the rise of the mega-corporation as a political entity, it is almost mind boggling how true they are. I remember speaking to a friend in the early 90s who indicated that the only true mega-corporation would be the Rand Corporation. How much as changed (though in many cases it has stayed very much the same). Corporations have always wielded influence, and in reality, the first true mega-corporation would have been the British East India Company (though that operated under charter from the British Government). Now however it is difficult not to look and see a mega-corporation with in spitting distance, though not all of them are easily seen from the shop front.

The power of the corporation today is that they can operate like their own countries. The concept of extra-territoriality exists, which is where the national law does not operate in areas owned by the corporation. We do currently have private property laws which mean that a shopping centre (Westfield) can dictate what the customers see and do when they enter their malls. By stepping into a shopping centre these days you are stepping into a different world were different laws apply. However, we go over to developing countries (such as Indonesia) and we have export processing zones. While they are on Indonesian soil, they do not come under Indonesian law, they do not pay taxes, have no fair work or safety laws, and the authorities are not permitted on the land without an invitation even if a crime has been committed.

In many ways even in some developed countries the influence that corporations have on government is in immense. Australia is indeed a lucky country in that there are strong sets of regulations, and while corporations may object to the introduction of fair work and workplace safety laws, they are forced to accept it if they want to do business in Australia, and while Australia may have a small population, we have things that they want, and we have a population with money, so if they want our money, they have to play by our rules (though this is starting to change, especially with Big Ears stating that Australia is open for business).

However, consider that there are at least two Australian companies (News Ltd and BHP) that have risen to the status of mega-corporation. BHP is Australia's biggest company by market capitalisation, and operates pretty much everywhere in the world. While it may be small compared to Xstrata (Swiss) or Vale (Brazil) they are still a massive company that can wield a tremendous amount of power. News Ltd, probably known better as Fox, was actually born in my hometown (Adelaide), and the owner, Rupert Murdoch, has risen to become one of the most powerful media moguls in the world.

In this way I find Shadowrun to be very good: it was warning us of the dangers that can come about by giving corporations unfettered authority (something which they do not have). While the US government is pretty impotent when it comes to regulating companies (if you put through a law that is needed, they object, and we quickly find it repealed, however it will take huge protests from the population to get a law we like passed). However America is blinded by the principle that we are all responsible for our own destiny though if a bank deceives you into taking out a loan that you cannot afford, it is not the banks fault, they are a mindless, soulless, entity providing a service; rather it is the consumer's fault because they should have been more alert in how that interacted with the company. Once again, Australia has a Trade Practices Act that is rigorously enforced.

... on the blog of a lady who, incidentally, is also a terriffic writer (and, for the sake of full disclosure, a friend – though I was a fan of her writing before we became friends).