Economic Meltdown Links
Resources related to Positive Disintegration and The Dark Side
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our
liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks
to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation,
the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the
people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent
their fathers conquered. — Thomas Jefferson, 1802
Shock
wears off. It is by definition a
temporary phenomenon. The best way
to stay oriented to resist shock is to know what is happening to you and
why. Information is shock
resistance. Arm yourself. — Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine
Short Film
Given current corporate practices, not one wildlife reserve, wilderness, or indigenous culture will survive the global market
economy. We know that every natural system on the planet is disintegrating. The
land, water, air and sea have been functionally transformed from
life-supporting systems into repositories for waste. There is no polite way to
say that business is destroying the world. —Paul Hawkin, The
Ecology Of Commerce, 1994
The worst type of mental delusion is described as the inability to
grasp, cope with, or comprehend concrete reality--hence the construction of a
non-existent, mythical, or totally fictitious reality that exists only in the
delusional mind. — Dr. Hanan Ashrawi (Palestinian scholar and political
activist)
Only
after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been
poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find
that money cannot be eaten. — Cree Indian Prophecy
The
powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to
create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate
the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a
whole... Their secret is that they
have annexed from governments, monarchies, and republics the power to create
the world's money... — Prof. Carroll Quigley (late Georgetown University
macro-historian)
Contents:
The handwriting has been on the wall for decades, as the
links on this page reveal. Perhaps
our soul searching should focus on how and why we colluded in the delusions
that resulted in worldwide crisis. The context for this page is Positive
Disintegration on this website.
These articles connect economy to ecology and energy.
Peoples Agreement: Final Declaration of the World
People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, April 2010 - We confront the terminal crisis of a civilizing model that is
patriarchal and based on the submission and destruction of human beings and
nature that accelerated since the industrial revolution. The capitalist system
has imposed on us a logic of competition, progress and
limitless growth. This regime of production and consumption seeks profit
without limits, separating human beings from nature and imposing a logic of
domination upon nature, transforming everything into commodities: water, earth,
the human genome, ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, the rights
of peoples, and life itself.
No, We Can't Have It All by Derrick Jensen 4/23/10 - We can't have it
all. The belief that we can is one of the things that has driven us to this awful place. If insanity could be defined as having lost
functional connection with physical reality, to believe we can have it all --
to believe we can simultaneously dismantle a world and live on it; to believe
we can perpetually use more energy than arrives from the sun; to believe we can
take more than the world gives willingly; to believe a finite world can support
infinite growth, much less infinite economic growth, where economic growth
consists of converting ever larger numbers of living beings to dead objects --
is grotesquely insane. This insanity manifests partly as a potent disrespect
for limits and for justice. It manifests in the pretension that neither limits
nor justice exist. To pretend that civilization can
exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant
of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation. And it is
to have paid absolutely no attention to the past six thousand years.
Economic Superstitions by John Michael Greer 4/21/10 - An Earth Day special, spiced with acerbic wit, that weaves
observations about human reactions together with volcanic eruptions, ecology,
folklore, divination, and the economic superstitions that prevent a sane
response to the end of an era of cheap, abundant energy.
There Really Is Only One
Kind Of Sustainability by Tim
Murray 4/2/10 - Like the word “green”, “sustainable” or
“sustainability” has become the buzzword of the millennia. Corporations and
governments of the left or right feel compelled to dress up the most
ecologically invasive development proposal or economic activity with assurances
that it is “sustainable”. But there is ultimately only one
“sustainability”. The sustainability of the whole, not
its constituent parts.
Why Markets Fail by John Michael
Greer 10/28/09 - There are promising signs that the grip of
neoclassical theory on modern economics is beginning to weaken. A recent
conference on biophysical economics – a field which embraces the heretical concept that the laws of nature trump the laws of money
– attracted many attendees. What’s needed now is
something even more sweeping: an economics of whole systems, perhaps modeled on
ecology, in which the entire world of noneconomic factors that influence
economic processes is explicitly included in theories and practical analyses.
Until that emerges, the advice governments and businesses receive from their
paid economists may well continue to make matters worse rather than better.
Inverting the
Economic Order by Wendell Berry 9/09 - My economic point of view is from ground level. It
is a point of view sometimes described as “agrarian.” That means that in
ordering the economy of a household or community or nation, I would put nature
first, the economies of land use second, the manufacturing economy third, and
the consumer economy fourth. A
properly ordered economy, putting nature first and consumption last, would
start with the subsistence or household economy and proceed from that to the
economy of markets. It would be the means by which people provide to themselves
and to others the things necessary to support life: goods coming from nature
and human work. It would distinguish between needs and mere wants, and it would
grant a firm precedence to needs.
Seven
Acupuncture Points for Shifting Capitalism to Create a Regenerative Ecosystem
Economy by Otto Scharmer - June 2009 - This paper explores the underlying system of
thought that has led to our current economic, ecological, social, and spiritual
crisis and proposes new ideas and leverage points for a green, inclusive, and
intentional ecosystem economy. The crisis of our time is not about financial or
economic bankruptcy. The real crisis of our time is about an intellectual
bankruptcy: the bankruptcy of mainstream economic thought over the past three
decades and beyond. Just as the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the
end of one fundamentalist approach to society and the economy— socialist
state-centric fundamentalism—the toppling of the Wall Street house of
cards marked the end of another—neoliberal market-centric
fundamentalism. Yet the public
debate and crisis response continue to be framed by the same old categories of
economic thought that got us into the whole mess in the first place.
Altruistic Economics: The gift culture and end of the culture
of extinction by Jonathan M. Newton, Pacific Ecologist Winter 2009 - With serious global
crises appearing on many fronts it’s clear our current alienated,
resource-wasteful economic activity and antiquated banking and money systems
are inadequate, and the source of our problems. To solve the life-threatening
problems we face we must reconnect with nature and the life of all to create an
inclusive economics for the wider good. Kindness and selflessness in human
economic communication is an ancient part of our history without which we
cannot survive.
The Folly of Growth - Special report: How our economy is killing the Earth 10/16/08 - A growing band of experts is looking at the
figures and arguing that personal carbon virtue and collective environmentalism
are futile as long as our economic system is built on the assumption of growth.
The science tells us that if we are serious about saving Earth, we must reshape
our economy. In this special issue, New
Scientist brings together key thinkers from politics, economics and
philosophy who profoundly disagree with the growth
dogma but agree with the scientists monitoring our fragile biosphere.
This Stock Collapse Is Petty When
Compared to the Nature Crunch by George Monbiot 10/14/08 - The financial crisis at least affords us an
opportunity to rethink our catastrophic ecological trajectory. The financial crisis for
which we must now pay so heavily prefigures the real collapse, when humanity
bumps against its ecological limits.
Finance, politics, climate: three crises in one by John Elkington 10/14/08 - The breakdown of the global financial system
highlights the need for a change in ways of thinking as well as strategic
direction. The dilemmas of environmental
sustainability, as of political democracy, will remain whatever solutions are reached to the current financial breakdown. The way
forward is to seek creative and intelligent ways to ameliorate current
problems; see this crisis in relation to concurrent democratic and
climate-change ones; invest in the future as if every global citizen depended
on it; and formulate a strategy to reshape economic life in the
direction of political and environmental sustainability.
The End of the Economy by Christopher Ketcham 10/12/08 - Recession is all
good news, and not just for our brains and souls, but for the planet and the
real chance for Americans to survive in some kind of non-debased,
non-infantilized, non-crap-inundated form – a race of fully matured and,
dare I say, noble creatures. Every
time I hear the New York Times lamenting that the average American refuses to
open his billfold for bullshit, I envision less metal in the junkyard, less
garbage in the scow, less forest turned into the Times, less pollution in the
skies and water, less stupidity in the shape of owning more.
Money and the Crisis of Civilization by Charles Eisenstein 10/4/08 - No more will it be true that more for me is less for you. It is
becoming abundantly obvious that less for you (in all its dimensions) is also
less for me. The ideology of perpetual gain has brought us to a state of
poverty so destitute that we are gasping for air. That ideology, and the
civilization built upon it, is what is collapsing today. Individually and collectively, anything
we do to resist or postpone the collapse will only make it worse. So stop
resisting the revolution in human beingness. If you
want to survive the multiple crises unfolding today, do not seek to survive
them.
Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis' by Richard Black 10/10/08 - The
global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than
through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study. Whereas
Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial
sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today's rate we are losing
natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year.
The Killing Horizon: Capitalism At The Expense Of All Life by Juan Santos 10/4/08 - There's no $700 billion plan to save the Earth - which sustains us
all. The only thing that has ever
mattered to the rulers of this empire – and of every other empire - is
profit, and profit, we will recall, always comes at someone’s expense –
ours, the indigenous peoples in every corner of the planet whose lands and lives
have been usurped, at the expense of the enslaved, from Babylon to the USA, at
the expense of Polar Bears, Wolves, Buffalo, Dolphins, Bears – and now
even the Chimpanzee faces extinction, along with Whales, and as much as 50% of
all living species before this century – and this system - is finished
with them. Profit. At the expense. Of
all life. The capitalists
can’t look at the meaning of it. They can’t bear to see the meaning and impact
of their lives and how they live them. Blank out. They don’t know and can’t know,
any more than George W. Bush can really afford to know what was happening when
he stuck firecrackers in frog’s mouths and sent them sailing through the air
with the fuse sparkling (that, after all, is why he drinks – not to
know.)
How Wall Street Can Bail Itself Out Without Destroying The Dollar by Thom Hartmann 9/26/08 - There's
an alternative to Secretary of the Treasury Paulson’s bailout plan: Create an
agency to fund the bailout, loan that agency the money from the treasury, and
then have that agency tax Wall Street to pay us (the treasury) back. It's been
done before, and has several benefits.
Rx: Depression by John Michael Greer 9/24/08 - Counterintuitive
though it may seem, a serious depression right now may just be the best thing
that could happen to the United States. A good many of the dysfunctions that
are dragging America to ruin will be immediately unsustainable in a time of
depression, and a certain amount of economic suffering now could spare the
American people a far worse experience later on.
What the latest bailout plan means by
Chris Martenson 9/21/08 - Now that the details are
out, we can safely state that the US political and financial leadership has
completely sold out the taxpayers and has done so in a manner that is
startling, both in its recklessness and its brazenness. The reckless part I will spell out in
the details below. The brazen part is in how this is being spun out, as if the
entire plan were hatched in a hurried rush, at the last minute, after events
forced the issue. This is the spin, but it is completely false. Because many financial commentators,
ranging from Roubini to Roach to Calculated Risk to
myself, foresaw these events, we can be completely confident that these events
were both anticipated and planned for long in advance. The only question
left was how they were going to be 'sold' to the public. What better way
than in the midst of a "massive financial panic" that required urgent
action? And now that the details
are out, the plan is even more insidious than I ever dreamed.
The
Effluent Society by John
Michael Greer 9/17/08 - The
sin of modern economics is the failure to ground economic factors in their
historic
al and ecological contexts. A society guided by economic ideas
treats pollution as an amenity problem, rather than a factor that can reduce
the Earth’s ability to support human societies, and treats resource scarcity as
something that can be solved by investing more money, rather than a hard limit
to growth. Thus, the three-hundred-year boomtime of industrialism looks normal to many people
today.
Jurassic Park of the Free Market: When
giant corporations walked the earth by Rebecca Solnit 9/08 - Corporations are the top predators, and they have
domesticated us—or at least many of us—to serve them.
Idols of the Marketplace by John
Michael Greer 8/13/08 - One of the fundamental axioms of ecology is that
an ecosystem becomes more stable and productive as it becomes more balanced.
Cycles of boom and bust are common in marginal ecosystems, where nothing
controls populations except the crude forces of food supply and starvation; as
ecosystems develop complexity and richness, subtler factors come into play, and
conflict and chaos give way to equilibrium. Economic systems may well be
subject to the same rule.
Compassionate capitalism: Ecocide with a smiley
face by Lorna Salzman 7/19/08 - We all agree that development that pollutes and destroys in
order to enrich the already-rich is morally wrong. But development that
pollutes and destroys in order to help the poor is just fine. We owe it to the
poor. This is Compassionate Capitalism. And it is as ruthless, unforgiving and unjust
as the old kind.
Status
and Curiosity - On the Origins of Oil Addiction by Nate Hagens 7/7/08 - Just as an addict becomes habituated to cocaine,
heroin or alcohol, the 'normal person' possesses neural architecture to become
habituated via a positive feedback loop to the 'chemical sensations' we receive
from shopping, keeping up with the joneses (conspicuous consumption), pursuing
more stock options and profits, and myriad other stimulating activities that a
large social energy surplus provides. In order to overcome addictions, it is
usually not enough to argue about which year the drug supply is going to begin
its decline. It's a better path to understand the addiction, admit it before
one hits rock bottom, and either begin the cold turkey process or become
addicted to something else.
How The Environmental
Movement Might Have Succeeded by Lorna Salzman 7/2/08 - The fundamental reason
for the backlash against environmentalism was that industry and business
recognized early on - as the left and liberals did NOT - that environmentalism,
when carried to its logical conclusion, was antithetical to economic growth and
capitalism. In the end, the public would be awakened to the full impact of
uncontrolled economic growth and development, as it impinged on their
communities as well as on the wilderness and natural resources owned by the
public. This awakening may be starting now; whether it is too late is a
reasonable question.
Pain And Conscience by
Charles Sullivan 5/30/08 (6 p) - We
the people must find the courage to confront reality, and that means that we
must be willing to feel the pain and suffering we have inflicted on others. We
must admit that we are not exceptional or superior, and that we are not more
entitled to our share of the world’s bounty than any other people. But we must
go even deeper than that: we must bring about restitution for our past wrong-doing.
World Renowned Environmentalist Delivers
Impassioned Plea at
Caribbean Sustainable Tourism Conference Kickoff 5/8/08 - Dr. David Suzuki, the Canadian geneticist, best-selling author and
television host, opened the conference as its keynote speaker before a capacity
crowd, which included heads of state from various Caribbean Tourism
Organization (CTO) member countries. Dr. Suzuki challenged these leaders, and
all gathered in the room, to not sacrifice the future for short-term economic
gain.
The Bridge At The Edge Of The World by James Gustave Speth 4/24/08 - My conclusion, after much searching and
considerable reluctance, is that most environmental deterioration is a result
of systemic failures of the capitalism that we have today and that long-term
solutions must seek transformative change in the key features of this
contemporary capitalism.
Towards
A Steady-State Economy by Herman
Daly 4/24/08 - It
is one thing to imagine the possibility of a Steady-State Economy, but
something else to chart a transition thereto from a failed growth economy. Can
one transform an airplane into a helicopter without first landing, or perhaps
crashing? In order even to take such a task seriously one has to realize that
the growth economy is heading for a big crash.
The Economist Has No Clothes by Robert Nadeau 4/08 - Unscientific assumptions in
economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems.
Peak
Oil and Economic Growth: Where Do We Go From Here? by Rob Dietz and Brian Czech 3/28/08 - Oil and the economy are clearly and inextricably linked. Many
analysts call oil the engine of economic growth. The question is whether
economic growth is a desirable goal to begin with. Theory and evidence suggest
that continued growth is actually “uneconomic” or costly to society. Ecological
footprint analysis shows that the global economy is consuming 30 percent more
resources than the Earth can regenerate each year, a deficit that cannot be
maintained for long. The sustainable alternative is the steady state economy,
which is characterized by stabilized (mildly fluctuating, that is) population
and per capita consumption. Changing the economic goal to a gradual transition
toward a steady state economy is the best way to ensure ecological health and
true wealth for this and future generations. Peak oil is the messenger telling
us it’s high time to change the economic goal.
Mainstream Economics and the Environmental Crisis - Brother, Can You Spare Me a Planet? (Extended
version) by Robert Nadeau 3/19/08
Making
the most of a global depression by Richard Heinberg 3/18/08 - The implication is clear: if we hope to survive as a species, and if
there is to be hope for millions of other creatures, we need to shrink the
human enterprise. Economic contraction may be bitter medicine, but it’s part of
the cure for what ails our planetary home. We can manage this contraction either foolishly or
intelligently.
Cassandra's curse: how "The Limits to
Growth" was demonized by Ugo Bardi 3/9/08 - In 1972, the LTG study
arrived in a world that had known more than two decades of unabated growth
after the end of the Second World War. It was a time of optimism and faith in
technological progress that, perhaps, had never been so strong in the history
of humankind. With nuclear power on the rise, with no hint that mineral
resources were scarce, with population growing fast, it seemed that the limits
to growth, if such a thing existed, were so far away in the future that there
was no reason to worry. In any case, even if these limits were closer than
generally believed, didn't we have technology to save us? With nuclear energy
on the rise, a car in every garage, the Moon just conquered in 1968, the world
seemed to be all set for a shiny future. Against that general feeling, the
results of LTG were a shock. There
is a legend lingering around the LTG report that says that it was laughed off
as an obvious quackery immediately after it was published. It is not true.
Your Money Or Your Life? Stupid
Question, Or...? by Clinton Callahan 3/7/08 - Thinking that it is
reasonable to weigh the well-being of earth against corporate profits reveals
the height of our psychopathic insanity. What value is profit if the planet has
been sterilized of complex life forms by climate change?
Peak everything economics, or,
what do you call this mess? by Richard Heinberg 1/23/08
The False US Economy Versus
Nature’s Expansion-Contraction Cycle by Shepherd Bliss 1/22/08
Economic
Collapse and Global Ecology by Glen Barry 1/12/08
Economic
collapse now means humanity and the Earth ultimately survive to prosper again.
Copernicus,
Darwin and the cure for Autistic Economics By Kurt
Cobb 12/3/07
Living
for the Moment while Devaluing the Future by Nate Hagens 6/1/07 (15 p.) - The
debate on the realities of both climate change and Peak Oil has moved from 'are
they real?' to questions concerning timing, magnitude and impact. At the same
time, expanding research in 'temporal discounting' in economics (called
'impulsivity' in psychology), is shedding light on how steeply we value the
present over the future, a trait that has ancient origins. Knowing this
tendency, how can we expect factual updates on peak oil and climate change to
behaviorally compete with Starbucks, sex, slot machines, and ski trips? (With
charts, graphs, and illustrations.)
Where Agriculture Meets Empire by Robert Jensen 7/1/03 - Agriculture isn't the only system we live with
that is unsustainable -- empire and capitalism also come to mind. How are these
systems connected to each other? How long can such systems continue before they
give way to something new? Can they be replaced before they take the planet down
with them? Who and what will suffer in the meantime? And, what can movements do
to change all this? Wes Jackson has some provocative ideas about -- though he'd
be the first to admit, no definitive answers to -- these questions.
Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse by Sut Jhally - In
this article I wish to make a simple claim: 20th century advertising is the
most powerful and sustained system of propaganda in human history and its
cumulative cultural effects, unless quickly checked, will be responsible for
destroying the world as we know it. As it achieves this it will be responsible
for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of non-western peoples and will prevent
the peoples of the world from achieving true happiness. Simply stated, our survival as a species is dependent upon minimizing the
threat from advertising and the commercial culture that has spawned it.
Buddhist
Economics by E.F.
Schumacher 1966 - A classic essay widely understood as a call for an
economics of peace. In the essay Schumacher imagines a multitude of vibrant,
self-sufficient villages which, from their secure
sense of community and place, work together in peace and cooperation.
The Perils of
Globalization: Interview with Jerry Mander by Scott London
Industrial
Logic by Jerry Mander
How
we've made ourselves into abstractions by Chris Maser
From hunter-gatherers to
Homo Economicus: a quick, sweeping 10,000-year
history of the development of our collective delusion.
Now
we are Human Commodities by Chris Maser - On the pain of corporate rule and how to get out
of the consumer trap we’re ensnared in.
"Re-learning"
what we've forgotten by Chris Maser - How to regain the economy of reciprocity with each other and our
bioregion and biosphere, and thus become appropriately adapted to our planet.
Conventional
Views of Economic Meltdown
 |
Demonstrators protest the proposed 700 billion USD Wall Street bail-out in front of the New York Stock Exchange in
the Financial District in New York on September 25, 2008. In response to the
global financial crisis, protesters, from a variety of activist groups,
denounced the capitalist system, Wall Street and the administration of US
President George W, Bush. NICHOLAS ROBERTS/AFP/Getty Images
|
Corporate
Anarchy: Wall Street and BP Criminals At Large by Danny
Schechter 6/23/10
- The BP oil spill is part of the same problem as the
financial crisis: The BP oil spill and the banking crisis are two examples of
the era we are living in, the era of corporate anarchy. In a nutshell, in
this era of corporate anarchy, corporations do not have to abide by any rules—none
at all. Legal, moral, ethical, even financial rules are irrelevant. They have
all been rescinded in the pursuit of profit—literally nothing else
matters. As a result, corporations currently exist in a state of almost
pure anarchy—but an anarchy directly related to
their size: The larger the corporation, the greater its absolute freedom to do
and act as it pleases. In many
ways, we have been here before in our one nation under the dollar sign.
The Financial Oligarchy Reigns: Democracy’s Death
Spiral From Greece to the United States by David DeGraw 6/9/10 - As the Economic Elite continue their plunder, the people in Greece riot
and the big banks score yet another big blow against the people of the United
States. Democracy throughout the world is under attack. Many people can make
the argument that our democracy here in America is only an illusion, but even
the illusion of democracy is crashing down. Tragedies are currently playing out
across the world on an epic scale. Unprecedented economic and environmental
catastrophes have become the norm. Billions of people, the overwhelming
majority of humanity, have been sentenced to a slow death due to a
concentration of wealth and resources within humanity’s economic top 0.5%.
Ultimately, short-sighted greed has proven to be humanity’s most severe
disease.
The Corporate Stranglehold: How BP Will Make Out Like Bandits From Its
Massive, Still Gushing Oil Disaster by Zach Carter 5/26/10 - The existing $75 million cap on damages
for offshore drilling companies is a bailout every bit as disgusting as those
recently bestowed upon Wall Street. You've got to hand it
to BP. After witnessing the Great Financial Crash of 2008, it seemed like it
would be decades before any corporation could eclipse Wall Street's reckless
rush to place its own short-term profits ahead of the public interest. But the
epic drilling disaster off the Louisiana coast demonstrates that many of the
problems that wrecked Wall Street are deeply embedded in other sectors of the
American economy. Over the past 30 years, corporate titans have so thoroughly
corrupted the notion of "free markets" that many of the world's
riskiest businesses are not only insulated from regulatory supervision, they
have been immunized from even minimum standards of market discipline.
The
Business Roundtable: The Most Powerful Corporate Business Club Most Americans
Have Never Heard Of - by David DeGraw 3/12/10 - It
has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic
parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off
by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of
life. The harsh truth is that 99% of the US population no longer has political
representation. The US economy, government and tax system is now blatantly
rigged against us. Current statistical societal indicators clearly demonstrate
that a strategic attack has been launched and an analysis of current
governmental policies prove that conditions for 99% of Americans will continue
to deteriorate. The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup and have
brought war to our doorstep. . . and make no mistake, they have launched a war
to eliminate the US middle class.
The End of Money and the Future of
Civilization: Review of Thomas Greco's book by Richard C. Cook 10/14/09 - Thomas Greco, in his
new book The End of Money and the Future
of Civilizatio, outlines the increasingly
familiar story of how things got so bad, and he tells it as well as anyone has
ever done. More than that, Greco writes about how to change what has gone
wrong. His book is among the most important written in this decade. It is truly
a book that can alter the world and, if taken seriously, give large numbers of
people a practical way to survive the gathering catastrophe. It’s about what we
should do for ourselves, and could do much better, if we understood what to do
and if big banking and big government just got out of the way. At the root is the monetary system,
whose failure cannot be understood without a history lesson. So Greco writes
about the struggle between banking and democracy that took place in the 1790s
when the ink on our new national constitution was barely dry.
De-Dollarisation: A Financial Revolution In The Making by Robert Fisk 10/8/09 - The plan to de-dollarise the oil market, discussed both in
public and in secret for at least two years and widely denied yesterday by the
usual suspects – Saudi Arabia being, as expected, the first among them
– reflects a growing resentment in the Middle East, Europe and in China
at America's decades-long political as well as economic world dominance.
U.S. has plundered world wealth with dollar - China paper 10/24/08 - A Chinese professor condemned the United States’
use of its dollar hegemony to plunder the world’s wealth and advocated
Asian-European cooperation in creating a “new
equitable and safe international financial order.”
Can
Obama See the Grand Canyon? On Presidential Blindness and Economic
Catastrophe by Mike Davis 10/15/08 - Like the Grand Canyon's first explorers, we are
looking into an unprecedented abyss of economic and social turmoil that
confounds our previous perceptions of historical risk. Our vertigo is
intensified by our ignorance of the depth of the crisis or any sense of how far
we might ultimately fall.
How To Save The U.S. Economy by Richard C. Cook 10/10/08 - The cause of the financial failure is that the
producing and consumer economy is “maxed out” and is unable to repay existing
loans much less new ones. This is because purchasing power in the U.S. has
collapsed. The problem is the oncoming recession/depression caused by the
absence of an economic engine to generate new producing power.
How
Positive Thinking Wrecked the Economy by
Barbara Ehrenreich 9/26/08 - Greed - and its crafty sibling, speculation - are
the designated culprits for the ongoing financial crisis, but another, much
admired, habit of mind should get its share of the blame: the delusional
optimism of mainstream, all-American, positive thinking. The idea is to firmly
believe that you will get what you want, not only because it will make you feel
better to do so, but because thinking things, "visualizing" them --
ardently and with concentration -- actually makes them happen.
The
Pentagon Bailout Fraud by
Chalmers Johnson 9/28/08 - If we cannot cut back
our longstanding, ever increasing military spending in a major way, then the
bankruptcy of the United States is inevitable. As the current Wall Street
meltdown has demonstrated, that is no longer an abstract possibility but a
growing likelihood. We do not have much time left.
“Economic 9/11,” Are We Facing Depression Like 1929? by Linda Moulton Howe 9/17/08 - “This is a classic Titanic
situation in the sense that what we saw with the Fannie
and Freddie
bailouts and the Bear Stearns bailouts and now the AIG request for more
than forty billion more dollars from the federal government – it’s
just like the Titanic
where the rich and affluent were given the
lifeboats and the rest of the people
went under from steerage. The rich
and powerful are too big to fail;
the rest of us are too small to
save.”– Gerald Celente
Dr. Doom by Stephen Mihm 8/15/08 - On Nouriel Roubini: Someone,
somewhere, is going to have to finance the gargantuan federal debt, along with
all the other debt accumulated by consumers and corporations. Our biggest
financiers are China, Russia and the gulf states.
These are rivals, not allies. This might be the beginning of the end of the
American empire.
Financial Meltdown: the root of one of the new
Four Horsemen by Igor Stalew 7/12/08 - The pattern
that repeats itself is growth schemes for unrealistic, unsustainable profits
with little or no legitimate regulation. We have been led astray with false
concepts of wealth and prosperity. The wake up call is here. Igor Stalew's informative analysis calls upon our sense of responsibility and
self-preservation to reject forever the scams of the few that hurt the many.
When the going gets tough, economists go very
quiet by Simon Jenkins 7/9/08 - They're happy to take
the credit in the good times, but the disciples of this false science are hard
to find as recession looms.
Barclay's Bank Warns Of Financial Storm As Fed Loses Credibility 6/28/08 - Barclays
Capital has advised clients to batten down the hatches for a worldwide
financial storm, warning that the US Federal Reserve has allowed the inflation
genie out of the bottle and let its credibility fall "below zero."
Catching
Predators Is Good; Economic Justice Is Better by Danny
Schechter 6/23/08 - Yes, there are criminal practices underway, but
they are far more insidious and invisible than most people realize. Americans
have been fighting for economic justice from before there was an America.
Food, Water And Fuel. Three Fundamental Necessities Of Life
In Jeopardy by
Michel Chossudovsky 6/6/08 - We are dealing with a complex and centralized
constellation of economic power in which the instruments of market manipulation
have a direct bearing on the lives of millions of people. The prices of food, water, fuel are determined at the global level, beyond the reach of
national government policy. The price hikes of these three essential
commodities constitute an instrument of "economic warfare", carried
out through the "free market" on the futures and options exchanges. These hikes in the
prices of food, water and fuel are contributing in a very real sense to
"eliminating the poor" through "starvation deaths". With charts/graphs.
“Bad
Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the
Global Crisis of American Capitalism” 5/6/08 - Renowned
political analyst Kevin Phillips argues successive administrations have
imperiled the US economy by a combination of shortsighted policies and a trend
against regulation. These include unparalleled credit card debts, the expansion
of financial industries such as hedge funds, ballooning national debts, and
deliberately altering statistics like inflation and unemployment to mask the
accurate picture.
Bubble and Bail by Kevin Phillips 5/5/08 - For
most of the 20th century, America manufactured things. For the past 30 years,
though, it has chiefly manufactured debt. Here's how Wall Street, with the aid
of both political parties, gravely damaged the economy.
Global
Famine by Michel Chossudovsky 5/2/08 - Humanity is undergoing in the post-Cold War era an economic and
social crisis of unprecedented scale leading to the rapid impoverishment of
large sectors of the world population. National economies are
collapsing, unemployment is rampant. Local
level famines have erupted in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and parts of Latin
America. This "globalization of poverty" was initiated in the Third
World coinciding with the debt crisis of the early 1980s and the imposition of
the IMF's deadly economic reforms.
Hyperinflationary Depression 2010 – Interview
with John Williams, Executive Editor, Shadow Government Statistics, on
Financial Sense Newshour with Jim Paplova 4/12/08 – This is the real bad news, delivered
with impeccable logic!
The Collapse Of American Power by Paul
Craig Roberts 3/21/08 When America’s creditors consider our behavior they see total fiscal
irresponsibility. They see a deluded country that acts as if it is a privilege
for foreigners to lend to it, and a deluded country that believes that
foreigners will continue to accumulate US debt until the end of time. The
fact of the matter is that the US is bankrupt.
A Milestone In The Dust by John
Michael Greer 3/19/08 - Behind the wild swings
of speculative excess and the tidal forces set in motion by a collapsing US
dollar lies another factor – from a peak oil perspective, the signal
half-hidden by a great deal of economic noise. This is the failure of world
petroleum production to break out of the plateau it has occupied since 2004.
America Was Conned, Who Will Pay? by Larry Elliott 3/17/08
The
South Sea Bubble ended in riots as trust was lost.
Wall Street also duped the public. Indeed, it is somewhat surprising that
there is not already rioting in the streets, given the gigantic fraud
perpetrated by the financial elite at the expense of ordinary Americans.
Political News Trumps
Deeper [Economic] Crisis, By Danny Schechter 3/6/08 Will it go away if we don't know? The American people are being, and will continue
to be, eaten alive by financial Great White sharks, while the mainstream media
focus on clueless political candidates provides irrelevant distraction from the
carnage. This is the 21st-century equivalent of "Bread and
Circuses" to appease the masses while the Empire collapses into
the dustbin of history.
A 12 Step Scenario For
Global Financial Meltdown by Nouriel Roubini 2/26/08
Capitalism in an
apocalyptic mood by Walden
Bello 2/20/08 -
The
Fall of the Dollar Empire An interview with Hamid Varzi by Monavar Khalaj, Press
TV, Tehran 2/15/08 - Hamid Varzi,
an economist and banker based in Tehran, speaks about the US economic crisis.
Financial
Times: The next crisis will be over food by Gillian Tett 2/14/08
Burning Down The House by James Howard Kunstler 2/12/08
The
USA is a way poorer nation than we imagined ourselves to be six months ago. The
American economy has been running on the fumes of "creatively
engineered" finance (i.e. new-and-improved swindling) for years, and now
these swindles are unraveling.
Financial
Crisis: Asset Securitization-- The Last Tango - Endgame: Unregulated Private Money
Creation - The
Financial Tsunami, Part IV, by F. William Engdahl 2/8/08
Oil Crisis Will Lead to 10-Year
Financial and Political Crisis Energy
Tech Stocks 2/7/08
The Consequences of
Globalization: Alternatives? by Professor Claudia Von Werlhog 2/2/08
Banana Republic--Without
The Bananas--Or The Republic, by Bill Bonner 2/2/08
The Next Bubble: Priming the markets for
tomorrow's big crash by Eric Janszen 2/08 - A financial bubble is a market aberration manufactured by government,
finance, and industry, a shared speculative hallucination and then a crash,
followed by depression. Bubbles were once very rare. .
. . Nowadays we barely pause between such bouts of insanity.
Barreling
into Recession by Michael Klare 1/31/08
Farewell To Old
Economic Nostrums by Paul
Craig Roberts 1/23/08
The
worst market crisis in 60 years by George Soros 1/22/08
Going Bankrupt: Why the Debt Crisis Is Now the Greatest
Threat to the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson 1/22/08 - The
military adventurers of the Bush administration have much in common with the
corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron.... The neoconservatives in the White House
and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem
of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.... This utter fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many
manipulative financial schemes (such as causing poorer countries to lend us
unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.
How the
Mega-Rich Treat Our Treasury Like a Buffet (And Stick You With the Bill) by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! 1/21/08
No Jobs For The New
Economy - Or The Old by Paul
Craig Roberts 1/9/08
Recession In The US 'Has
Arrived' by BBC 1/9/08
Lies,
Injustice And The Capitalist Way: We’re On The Highway To Hell— Don’t
Stop Us! by Jason
Miller 12/30/07
The End Of
Boom Psychology ...Or The Great Spending Contraction by Kathy McMahon 12/12/07
What's
About to Hit US Will Be Far Bigger Than the Great Depression Was by Doug Casey
The
Impending Destruction Of The U.S. Economy By Paul
Craig Roberts 11/29/07
Hubris
and arrogance are too ensconced in Washington for policymakers to be aware of
the economic policy trap in which they have placed the US economy.
A Diary Of The Onset Of The Greater Depression by Carolyn Baker 11/29/07 Review
of Danny Schechter's e-book SQUEEZED
Crony-Capitalists Fiddle While Main Street Burns: Crashing Citigroup by Pam
Martens 11/28/07 The saga of how the top
minds in Washington and on Wall
Street have dealt with the deepening financial crisis in the U.S. would make a
great Hollywood screenplay, except for this: it's absurdly unbelievable.
Forecast:
U.S. dollar could plunge 90% - UPI
11/19/07
The Finance
Round-Up: November 16th 2007 11/17/07 - According
to Gregory Peters, head of credit strategy at Morgan Stanley: There's a greater than 50 percent
probability that the financial system will come to a grinding halt.
Another Nail in the Coffin of the Case
Against Peak Oil (PDF) by
Matthew R. Simmons, Simmons International
11/16/07
International
banks get dragged into financial crisis’ “black hole”: Four
triggering factors of a major financial bankruptcy 11/16/07
The
eight major risks to the global economy by Martin Spring 11/14/07 - What are we
to make of the conflicting fundamentals that have brought heightened volatility
to global investment markets? Here are the negatives, as I see them.
Empire
of Debt I: The Great Unraveling Begins by Charles Hugh Smith 11/5/07 with charts and graph
The “Crash Of
2007-8” Is Underway by Richard C. Cook 8/19/07
It's
Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun by Richard C. Cook 6/14/07
Peak Oil - A Turning Point For Mankind by Dr. Colin J. Campbell 7/13/07 - The World is not about to run out of oil, but what
it does face is the end of the First Half of the Age of Oil. That opened 150
years ago, and the cheap, convenient and abundant energy it supplied led to the
growth of industry, transport, trade and agriculture, which in turn allowed the
population to expand six-fold exactly in parallel with oil. It also allowed the
creation of huge amounts of financial capital, as banks lent more than they had
on deposit, confident that Tomorrow's Expansion was collateral for Today's
Debt. This in turn led to the subject of Economics by which to understand and
manage money, investment and finance, and came to control the very fabric of
the modern world, its business and indirectly its politics.
“In
Debt We Trust” Facts Sheet
SQUEEZED:
America As The Bubble Bursts A 182-page e-book by Danny
Schechter
Top
Ten Tips to Stop the Squeeze
Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future From Four Impending
Catastrophes - interview with author Michael Panzner 2007
Paul Krugman Blog NYTimes
John Michael Greer's Blog - Perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society
The Automatic Earth by Nicole Foss - Economics, politics and disintegration of empire
Financial Permaculture: a resource for gathering information and conversations about financial permaculture
Gaian Economics: All other
green campaigns become futile without tackling the economic system and its
ideological defenders.
Carolyn Baker: Speaking
Truth to Power
Financial Sense News Hour: Uncommon News & Views for the Wise Investor
Hooked
on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity Filmmaker's Blog
The
Crash Course by Chris Martenson - An audio-video
presentation that condenses Martenson's "End of
Money" seminar. The Crash Course seeks to provide a baseline understanding
of the economy so that you can better appreciate the risks that we all
face. It connects the ‘3 E’s’:
economy, energy and environment.
The Real News Network – The Future Depends on Knowing
FIAT EMPIRE - Why the Federal Reserve Violates the
U.S Constitution – The Federal Reserve is a private corporation that
was secretly created by the wealthiest men in the United States. This is its history.
Michael Hudson on Bush Finance Meeting on Democracy Now! 10/10/08 – What upsets
the Europeans and the foreigners is that the US plan has done nothing at all
about the debt crisis itself. It's bailed out the creditors, but not a penny of the actual debts, the subprime mortgage debts, are addressed. If you add up all of
the subprime bad loans and defaults, that's altogether $1 trillion. So far, the
government has given away $6 trillion already to Wall Street. That's much more
than any of the subprime debt. And the volume of derivative trade has been
estimated at $450 trillion, an unbelievable amount. So nobody has any idea
about how much money is at stake.
Bud Burrell: What's Wrong with This Picture? 10/11/08 - Bud Burrell has extensive experience
working with major brokerage firms on the trading desk and arbitrage desk with
almost 30 years experience as an industry authority, expert, Wall Street
veteran. Here he talks about the
financial crisis with frank and colorful honesty. Audio
The Matrix – A
video poem
Peter Schiff On The Economy, Gold, and the Coming
Collapse of the Dollar 9/30/08 - A series
of videos from Common Sense Investor - Peter Schiff is
the Permabear who appears on all the financial shows
as a foil to all the optimistic pundits. Every financial call Schiff has made has turned out to be right, and
this time he’s saying the stock market is headed even lower, gold prices are
headed up around $1,500 by the end of the year, and at the minimum, the dollar
will lose another 40 to 50 percent of its value. Schiff thinks we’re headed for
a period worse than the Depression. Schiff said, in a recent US News and World Report article:
“There will be a big increase in crime. People are
going to be hungry. People are going to be cold. There’s a sense of entitlement
in this country, and when a lot of people used to having things suddenly don’t,
everybody looks for someone to blame. We’re going through a very rough period
in our history.”
Thom Hartmann reads newspapaer articles from the Great Depression – Same language,
same excuses. Podcast
Bad Money - Bill Moyers
interview with Kevin Phillips 9/19/08 - We've let this
Las Vegas version of what used to be ordinary banks in our ordinary hometowns
go berserk. Our currency is having enormous problems. People are losing their
homes. We've got to face up to what our problems are and talk about how this
happened. Who did it? Why? Who made the money?
US Seizes Control of AIG with $85 Billion Bailout - Democracy Now! 9/17/08 - The US
government has seized control of insurance giant American International Group
in an unprecedented $85 billion bailout. The Federal Reserve made the deal on
Tuesday to save AIG from collapse in what the New York Times describes as “the most radical intervention in
private business in the central bank’s history.” The move comes as a series of
financial crises has altered the landscape of Wall Street. We speak with
investment banker turned journalist, Nomi Prins, and
Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic
Trends.
Debt - Does America's $9 trillion federal debt mean we
are mortgaging our future and jeopardizing individual savings, healthcare, and
retirement for generations to come? Bill Moyers gets a reality check from
Public Agenda's Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson,
co-authors of Where Does The Money Go?: Your Guided Tour To The Federal Budget Crisis. 2/15/08
How the markets really
work: Yes, it really is this bad - An example of humor that is deadly accurate. It was one big casino with the saps in
pensions funds and savings and loans (and us) being used to finance the game
and cover the losses.
Richard Heinberg on The Reality
Report with Jason Bradford, Reality Report
1/8/08 - This program covers many
of the topics in Peak Everything,
which more than others considers the social implications of energy decline.
The program
begins with a review of the connections between energy and society, drawing
from the work of cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris. A discussion of
relationship between climate change and fossil fuel depletion ensues. The
program concludes by offering some perspective on how to cope psychologically
with difficult information. (Audio – 1 hr)
Economist: U.S. Could
Face "A Real Depression" Like in 1929 Democracy Now! 1/23/08 - While President Bush
said he was optimistic about the country's economic future, many economists are making comparisons to the period prior to the Great
Depression. “How the failure of
our politics undermines our prosperity.”
Authors@Google:
Paul Krugman - Today's most widely read economist studies the past eighty years of
American history. How we got
into our current financial mess and some "mysteries" on how we might
get out of it this side (or the other side) of a 'hard landing.' In this hour
with Krugman, he covers the previous Long Term
Capital Management induced mess, the Nasdaq "tech bubble", the housing bubble, the Fed, "financial
innovation", and more.
The
Shock Doctrine Short Film - A film on “disaster capitalism” by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein, directed by Jonás Cuarón. (6:45 min.)
Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future From Four Impending
Catastrophes – audio interview with author Michael Panzner
Money
As Debt 47 min
video – 2/12/07
The
Money Masters - How International Bankers Gained Control of America 3 hr 35 min video–
3/27/07
The Story of Stuff by Annie
Leonard - A wonderful little movie about the insanity of our economic system.
Buy America! by Mark
Fiore 1/23/08
BEARISH - song parody from
versusplus.com about THE ECONOMY
In Debt We Trust: America Before the
Bubble Bursts by Danny Schechter
Hooked
on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity - In production
Maxed Out takes
viewers on a journey deep inside the American style of debt
Walmart: The High
Cost of Low Price, a Robert Greenwald documentary
Mad Money – Comedy about three women
janitors robbing the Federal Reserve Bank - feminist levity as the recession
began in the US.
Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and
the Global Crisis of American Capitalism by Kevin Phillips - The current housing and mortgage debacle is proof
once more of Phillips’s prescience, and only the first harbinger of a national
crisis. In Bad Money, Phillips describes the consequences of our misguided
economic policies, our mounting debt, our collapsing housing market, our
threatened oil, and the end of American domination of world markets. America’s
current challenges (and failures) run striking parallels to the decline of
previous leading world economic powers—especially the Dutch and British.
Global overreach, worn-out politics, excessive debt, and exhausted energy regimes
are all chilling signals that the United States is crumbling as the world
superpower. April 2008
The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High
Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash by Charles R. Morris - We are living in the most reckless financial
environment in recent history. Arcane credit derivative bets are now well into
the tens of trillions. The astronomical leverage at investment banks and their
hedge fund and private equity clients virtually guarantees massive disruption
in global markets. The crash, when it comes, will have no firebreaks. A quarter
century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping, abusive lending,
and hedge fund secrecy will come crashing down with it. The
Trillion Dollar Meltdown explains how we got here, and what is about to
happen. After the crash our priorities will be quite different. But things are
likely to get worse before they better. March 2008
Free
Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense
(and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston - A well documented and detailed account of how less
than 1% of Americans are getting rich off the backs of the other 99%. And it
isn't only individuals who are reaping millions of dollars from
taxpayers...it's also corporations.
Financial
Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes by Michael J. Panzner
WEB
OF DEBT: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System --The Sleight of Hand
That Has Trapped Us in Debt and How We Can Break Free by Ellen Hodgson Brown - This book exposes important, often obscured truths
about our money system and our economic past and future. Our money is not what
we have been led to believe. The creation of money has been privatized -- taken
over by a private money cartel. It is all done by sleight of hand, concealed by
economic double-speak. "Web of Debt" unravels the deception and
presents a crystal clear picture of the financial abyss towards which we are
heading, pointing out all the signposts. Then it explores a workable
alternative, one that was tested in colonial America and is grounded in the
best of American economic thought, including the writings of Benjamin Franklin,
Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. If you care about financial security, your own or the nation's, you should read this book.
©
2010 Suzanne Duarte