9 Comments

1. Stan Moore:

   I always appreciate Michael Hudson’s analyses of this sort. He “gets it”.

   Another way I would describe the situation would be in a framework of viewing capitalism in a societal evolutionary framework.

   A couple of hundred years ago the earth had abundant resources and a small human population that wanted to grow. Capitalism offered mechanisms by which humans could harvest natural capital (timber, minerals etc.) and then use industrial scale human knowledge and technology to produce products and services for profit in a perpetually growing scheme. Of course, all along the system was rigged for the disproportionate benefit of various levels of the societal hierarchies. Rich tended to get richer. Poor tended to get richer, especially in America and some western countries, but in a controlled manner that still favored skimming at the top of the financial chain by investors, bankers, business owners, corporations, etc.

   As time went on, more and more of the earth’s capital became depleted and eventually the consumption of resources became unsustainable. That did not stop the process. Manufacturers and merchants and retailers did everything in their power to enhance demand and speed up consumption even as the underlying resource base became depauperized.

   Meanwhile, it became evident that wealth by hard work and innovation and productivity and skill were not adequate for the greed levels of the elite. The obscene profits came through a different route. Financial maneuverings, the use of compound interest, the use of securities and the trading therein became the mainstays of late-stage capitalism. The future of economic growth based on finite resources obviously could not be depended on. Yet the system of production and distribution of gadgets and widgets and even food and survival needs for the now-massive population needed to be maintained until collapse, and every speckle of profit squeezed out of the system prior to collapse.

   We are at the stage now where financial maneuverings utilizing corrupt speculations and mechanisms called derivatives (and the like) have had to be bailed out in the interest of the elite. This can only continue for a limited period of time. The real economy based on real natural wealth of the planet has been plundered. Now approaches the time for liquidation of existing assets into the hands of the same elite. Public infrastructure includes such assets. The elite who will control those assets in the future will purchase them at steep discounts, then use those assets to generate more wealth for themselves at the expense of the public good. Those assets will not be maintained and the final collapse of the society as we have known it will be accompanied by final collapse of the physical infrastructure on which the lives of the members of society depend. We will end up with a world incapable of supporting prosperity at the scale we have known it. The elite will have their accumulated gold and real estate and will be able to pay their mercenaries to defend their lives and property. The rest of the population will be forced to fend for themselves in a planet and even in an America with depleted topsoil, changed climate, increasingly scarce fresh water, decayed transportation systems, depauperized biodiversity, and largely disempowered humanity.

   This has all been engineered from the top as the process has unfolded. Perhaps the greatest “trick” of the elite and powerful has been to keep the populace distracted and controlled by misinformation, by media driven entertainment and sports and advertising/marketing, by false hope through false messiahs like Obama, and all the moreso as the system neared collapse.

   And the time clock towards societal final collapse is ticking…

   It is great that people like Michael Hudson can describe the intricate workings of these manipulations. Unfortunately, no one can stop them or reverse them. Ultimately, and in our lifetime, survival will be a personal issue and best accomplished in a community setting based on arrangements made by those will see the need to make them

   21 May 2009, 10:03 pm

2. Henry:

   Re: “…best accomplished in a community setting based on arrangements made by those will see the need to make them.”

   Assuming you’re left in peace.

   22 May 2009, 11:53 am

3. Stan Moore:

   Henry –

   I think that persons planning for survival have a general consensus that they must be prepared to defend themselves. If you read the recommendations at the end of the lengthy discussion of what lies ahead at http://wakeupamerika.com, you will find mention of arming oneself for self-defense. I can say that I am armed, but I can also say I am not violent. I can make that distinction very clearly in my own mind. I hope I never have to defend myself or others with violence, armed or unarmed. But we are headed towards desperate times, and that is quite clear to me as well.

   There was a very informative interview with Mike Ruppert today on http://www.energybulletin.net. And a nice essay by Dr. Guy McPherson on the same venue. Guy has a blog called “Nature Bats Last” where I communicate with some regularity as I have been recently on this blog. Guy has taken retirement from his position at the University of Arizona and his preparing himself and his chosen community at his “mud hut” somewhere near Tucson, where he and his allies have prepared to live off the grid, harvest their own water, grow their own food, and mutually support themselves. He has talked about being armed for self-defense. I think the day is coming in a relatively short period of time when self-defense will be a real, ongoing issue for all of us as our society implodes around us and people flee death traps in the cities and some will surely have criminal intent as part of their ad hoc survival plan. I’d love to have Stan Goff as my bodyguard, but he is on the other side of the continent and has his own responsibilities and priorities.

   Stan Moore

   23 May 2009, 12:08 am

4. Henry:

   Don’t know where else to put this, so here goes (at least it does involve the economy):

   http://www.energybulletin.net/node/48990

   The sinking Titanic: interview with Michael C. Ruppert
   by Lars Schall

   A Presidential Energy Policy
   Michael C. Ruppert [1]
   New World Digital

   23 May 2009, 1:47 pm

5. Stan Moore:

   Here is another original idea that just hit me; I have not seen a similar concern expressed anywhere —

   Professor Richard Duncan, famous for his “Olduvai Gorge” theory, has predicted that we will experience a total world failure of the international power grid by 2030, based on empirical evaluation of per capita energy usage over time by humanity. He predicts that Americans will start to experience brownouts and blackouts from now (2008 actually, if I remember correctly) on till the final, permanent failure. Largely this will be due to failure to invest adequate resources into maintenance of the hugely complex grid as energy supplies falter and produce fewer profits to reinvest into the grid.

   Now we have Obama coming along and promising to spend billions to address “infrastructure” issues, including modernizing and updating and improving and repairing the power grid. Will Obama invalidate Richard Duncan’s prediction?

   My take is that a far more likely scenario will occur based on a preview of how American contractors and corporations performed in Iraq. Billions of dollars of American taxpayer monies have been spent to rebuild the Iraqi power grid; yet electrical service there is less adequate than it was during the regime of Saddam Hussein. The money was looted via graft and corruption at a massive scale. I predict that similar will occur in the U.S. Billions will be borrowed from abroad through the issuance of Treasury Notes and charged to the taxpayer. Billions will be transferred into corporate coffers and disappear into the ether, with little or no public benefit of significance.

   I think Iraq was and is a training ground for the government/military/industrial/commercial complex will deal the the American people and their evolving problems. Their detention facilities and processes will eventually be repeated in the U.S. Their graft and corruption will be duplicated here. Their lies will flow from the Euphrates River to the Missour River and the Hudson River. Their lack of accountability will be universal. Americans of little means will eventually come to understand how Iraqis have felt for the past few years — occupied, oppressed and shit out of luck.

   Stan Moore

   26 May 2009, 9:42 am

6. Stan:

   The conditions that supported the explosive growth of the last decade no longer exist. The credit markets are in a shambles, the banking system is hanging by a thread, and the consumer is out of gas. Traders are clinging to the slim hope that the worst is over, but they could be mistaken. There’s probably another leg down and it will be more vicious than the last.

   FULL

   28 May 2009, 6:02 am

7. m.c.:

   First Quarter 2009 UK Political Party Fundraising Stats just out:

   Conservative 4.3 Million Pounds
   Labour 2.8 Million Pounds
   Liberal Democrats 800,000 Pounds

   Smaller Parties not listed in newspaper stories I found.

   29 May 2009, 12:19 pm

8. Bruce F:

   The mess created by economists in their area of ‘expertise’ leaves me at a loss for words when I think about how they’re behind the status quo thinking on the Environment/Global Warming.
   

   In a recent essay, “Economics Needs a Scientific Revolution,” in one of the leading scientific journals, Nature, physicist Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, a researcher for an investment management company, asked rhetorically, “What is the flagship achievement of economics?” Bouchaud’s answer: “Only its recurrent inability to predict and avert crises.”1 Although his discussion is focused on the current worldwide financial crisis, his comment applies equally well to mainstream economic approaches to the environment—where, for example, ancient forests are seen as non-performing assets to be liquidated, and clean air and water are luxury goods for the affluent to purchase at their discretion. The field of economics in the United States has long been dominated by thinkers who unquestioningly accept the capitalist status quo and, accordingly, value the natural world only in terms of how much short-term profit can be generated by its exploitation. As a result, the inability of received economics to cope with or even perceive the global ecological crisis is alarming in its scope and implications.

   5 June 2009, 1:22 pm

9. Timothy R. Anderson:

   The Rulers Make The Rulers ( And Change The Rules When The Mood Hits
   Them )

   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33388210/ns/business-consumer_news/

   This I find very, very interesting. Does anyone here know the name
   of the board members at Mastercard ? If a person cannot purchase gasoline with Mastercard tomorrow, as has been done for, what, 20 plus years,
   that indicates to me that the recent drop in the value of a single
   American DOLLAR is permanent.
   This, to my mind at the very least, is a very, very interesting / FRIGHTENING development !

   Timothy R. Anderson

   20 October 2009, 2:13 pm

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