Caveat: I’m not an economist. I’m a scientist / engineer. I think that gives me an advantage.
I’m sick of this financial crisis. All of us, each and every one of us, bar the financial Mandarins that are “fixing” the mess they created, are being butt-fucked into the ground. “Austerity measures” are sold as some kind of panacea. Our wages are frozen. Inflation outstrips any miserly “indexed” gains grudgingly granted. Meanwhile, reports of “performance bonuses” to our financial overlords are back to pre-meltdown levels, often lump sums far in excess of what any of us will earn in a lifetime.
The approach to remedy this status quo seems an absurdist black comedy. It’s like watching a sinking ship being bailed out with teaspoons. As one example, the poor long suffering Greeks, where “austerity” measures are biting the hardest and, as always, hitting those already on a subsistence existence the worst.
In what can only be described as an economic Grand Guignol performance piece to rub salt into the wounds, in November Lucas Papademos, a career financier and former vice president of the European Central Bank, was promoted to head the Greek Provisional Government to replace George Papandreou’s failed Panhellenic Socialist Movement. A fox had been placed in charge of the hen house.
But nowhere does logic fail more than with the endless stream of financial bailouts to economies teetering on the brink of collapse. Can somebody please explain exactly how this improves anything?
- A country is in danger of financial default because it is incapable of meeting it’s debt obligations
- That country is given a slab of money to shore up the crisis, thus adding to the debt that has caused the existing problem
- Due to being bailed out, that country’s credit rating is then lowered, thus increasing interest rates on the increased debt level
- Lather, rinse, repeat.
Uhuh. Makes perfect sense doesn’t it? This is not a financial system, or economics. It’s a fucking loan sharking operation. And the only people that seem to understand this are the apes at the top of the financial system that are pulling all the strings. Our politicians are either bought and in their pockets, or too stupid to understand it. And the poor schmucks on the street? Well, we just have to eat our gruel and be grateful for it.
Consider the nature of debt with compound interest. From the cesspit of lies –
These are the most basic formulas:
The above calculates the future value (FV) of an investment’s present value (PV) accruing at a fixed interest rate (i) for n periods.
It’s really junior high school math, at least outside of the US, but for those without sufficient numeracy skills, suffice it to say that for any value of n greater than zero, the repayment is always greater than the loan. What this means is that money gets printed. That which does not exist, *poof*, gets created out of nothing1. This is also called inflation. And what inflation does is devalue what the dollar in your pocket can buy. Just ruminate on that for a bit. There is of course no shortage of economists out there that are ready to pounce on me and tear me to shreds for this observation, but it will have little to do with the validity of my assertions and everything to do with committing the heresy of explaining it in such simple language. I guess economists have more in common with baboons than you would at first assume.
Now look at this cycle of bailouts. There is no realistic end in sight. Teaspoons and the Titanic. The debts of these borderline economies (PV, or “present value”) – and the number of such economies keeps rising – grows with each bailout, and each bailout increases i (or the “fixed interest rate”) due to a lowering of their credit rating. This cycle causes their overall obligations (FV, or “future value”) to grow exponentially, not linearly. Again, ruminate on that. Squeezing blood from a stone.
And the killer, where it affects all of us, is that all of this is imaginary money with no corresponding wealth generation (see note 1 below again) – sooner or later, the dollar in your pocket loses an amount of value relative to the interest that has been incurred. Everyone is a loser – everyone, of course, except those who run this extortion racket and who’s rate of return on private investments far outstrips the rate of inflation they create.
Now if you are not conversant with the issues that arise from infinite growth within finite systems, then please leave this blog and never darken it again. For the rest of you, I tend to liken this cycle of bailouts that propped up the US (and probably will again) and is currently trying to hold Europe together, as akin to driving a dynamite truck full speed down a dead end tunnel with the headlights off and hoping for the best. It is expecting this cycle of debt and imaginary money to be infinitely sustainable in a system that has been shown to be very, very finite.
Mention the phrase “printing money” to any politician and they will have a seizure whilst decrying it for the evil that it is and babbling about the Weimar Republic and World War 2. Yet that is precisely what is happening – this endless debt cycle is doing nothing other than print imaginary money for financial speculators around the globe. This is the world’s biggest rigged horserace that only the über-rich can bet on. The winnings are siphoned out of all of our pockets using all manner of sleight of hand, and these “bailouts” play a major role.
This cannot go on forever. It is not eternally sustainable. The collapse of the US mortgage market was just a taste of what happens when infinite usury suddenly bloats and exhausts its finite space2.
And if mentioning printed money doesn’t kill your politicians, try using “global default”. Where permissable, you’ll be locked away for eternity as insane. But what is so wrong about the idea? Really? Look at the alternatives that we are playing with. Can anyone, using simple terms, explain how its death throes will be a lesser evil? Is there an economist anywhere that can speak plain English? Isn’t biting the bullet earlier, rather than later, worth a teeny weeny bit of consideration?
Footnote – No I haven’t forgotten about The Naked Emperor and his baboons. Folks that know me know I go MIA from mid-December to January each year due to the freakshow that this time of year invokes and do little more than check email, look at tits and play poker when opportunity arises. Regular programming will resume shortly. The baboons can consider it a crassmass present – I have given them the impression that they have scared me into a cave a la bin Laden. Sorry, fuck you, but no. It’s just given be a wealth of new idiocy to work with.
1 – In the days of the gold standard, the only way that more money could be created was by digging up more gold. Money was not imaginary, it needed to relate to reality. Minor 2oth century potholes such as World War 1 and the Great Depression saw the gold standard entirely abandoned globally and replaced virtually everywhere by fiat money systems – “Fiat money is money that derives its value from government regulation or law” (via the cesspit). While this system was not as rigid as the gold standard, it was still predominantly governed by real factors such as GDP. This in turn has been abandoned over the last few decades in the western world as, led by the US, our economies transitioned from being “production based” to “debt based” economies. This is where our woes began. Anybody that believes we live in a “capitalist” system is kidding themselves. We are not governed by “capitalists” but by “speculators” – financial houses that create nothing and instead bet on rigged horse races with your money. Yes, it really is as simple as that. Their profits are created via imaginary money without creating any corresponding public wealth to pay for it. It *is* printing money.
2 – All the more inexcusable given the precedent of the ’80s savings and loans crisis. Absolutely nothing had been learned –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
December 30, 2011 at 6:55 pm
You would do well to read Noam Chomsky on this very subject.
He answers your conundra such that you will no longer be left puzzled.
December 30, 2011 at 8:08 pm
Specifics Michael. Chapter and verse if possible. Chomsky doesn’t agree with me generally – I find him grueling and as often as he gives an amazing insight, he will make me want to go outside and punch the first stranger I meet with a tea-cosy on his head. I think my Chomksy aversion is due to meeting one too many of his groupies.
December 31, 2011 at 7:21 pm
Oh dear.
Are you willing to press [PAUSE] for a bit?
A confluence of my eldest sister’s death, and that Chomsky is ‘wordy’ (to say the least), and that I only remember his stuff from his many printed books means that I am going to have to search my library, re-read everything with an appropriate chapter heading, summarise and distill it into a bibliography, and post it as a response.
A lot of effort, and a tedious task up with which I just cannot put, at the moment.
If I locate his best tome on the topic, and I give the name & ISBN would that suffice for a while?
January 1, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Oh dear. I could wave my dick and claim my family insanity is greater than yours but I won’t. Take your time my friend, and I hope this year sucks less.
I find John Ralston Saul quite enlightening myself – and he’s a vicious sarcastic bastard, so while just as wordy, he makes the going easier.
Ever notice that “chomsky” and “cunt” both start with “c”?
January 1, 2012 at 7:07 pm
I am not familiar with the output of “John Ralston Saul”, but intend to become so given the exigencies of time pressures.
Chomsky is also a vicious, sarcastic bastard. It is merely his dry monotonous presentation that prevents his targets (say Henry Kissinger) from recognising that one has been slandered, libelled from here to hell-and-back.
No.
Do they now there sonny-jim? Where is your evidence for that bizarre assertion? You are not about to go all authorative on me now, are you?
That the majority of observers agree that they both begin with the same letter is hardly going to sway one of your logical capacity, surely?
I defer to the superior wisdom of Ofeeloya, Chewbecca, a’Paul and Greg, (nee Osama)[1] in their lyrics to their shared spiritual hymnal: “We all agree on everything, or you go down Orwell’s memory-hole”
(Sung to the tune of “We DO need that Education” by Flunk Unemployed, of Harvard Carapark fame.)
January 1, 2012 at 7:32 pm
Voltaire’s Bastards.
Do yourself a favour.
January 1, 2012 at 7:41 pm
I could not find a URL in that link.
January 1, 2012 at 7:46 pm
Gremlins –
http://www.amazon.com/Voltaires-Bastards-Dictatorship-Reason-West/dp/0679748199
January 2, 2012 at 3:33 am
I am fairly certain Chomsky is a well disguised space alien. He can speak English, but just barely. He can speak for minutes, nonstop, and yet no one in the audience will understand him. It is like that “Mars Attacks” movie where the big headed aliens say “Waaaaak, Wak, Waaak, WAAAAAK”. This type of speech requires one of those computerized translators.
You see, the thing about space aliens is that they have a way of fitting all their facts into a preconceived notion. They have no fear of lying or exaggerating the facts as long as it suits their desire… and what is their desire… they want to suck out your brain. This is why I am certain Chomsky is a space alien. He is almost undecipherable and he sucks out your brains!
January 2, 2012 at 9:16 am
John D.
If that is the case then I must understand fluent alien, as Chomsky is as clear as a bell to me.
January 2, 2012 at 9:54 am
WHAT! Two aliens means there must be an invasion coming. Waaaaak, Wak, Waakaaak, WAAAAK.
January 2, 2012 at 6:10 am
I’d like to be around for the dick waving
January 12, 2012 at 12:06 am
I was just watching a documentary on evolution and one of the researchers described how bonobo males hang from the trees and “fence” each other with their erect penises. My wife laughed and suggested this would be a good show and that all men should be encouraged to fence each other.
December 31, 2011 at 7:55 am
You’re taking a holiday, Franc?
No, I ‘m kidding. I saw where you said you’re swamped with real life and would rather use the web for fun.
This just like all the radio shows I listen to. The regular hosts are all living life. We have to settle with some 2nd rate fill in’s. Even the news is reporting fluff. Like some lady finding her wedding ring when she was pulling carrots.
We’re looking forward to those silly 2011 replay of what the media liked covering the most. Which doesn’t really reflect what the population paid the most attention to, or so it seems.
So while Franc’s on hiatus, where do we go to point and laugh at the Baboons? It was a luxury we didn’t have last year. Now I once again feel alone in the echo chamber.
Now they’ll have find something to quarrel about amongst themselves. But reading FFTB w/o your colorful commentary is depressing. Yes, I will weep for humanity all alone.
Enjoy your break from insanity, Franc!
Where do I go in the meantime?
Justicar turned into a gaming forum.
If he still runs a blog, can someone post the link?
If any of the regulars here blog, I’d love to check it out! Please spam your site while Franc’s away!
Thanks!
December 31, 2011 at 11:24 am
Enjoy your break from insanity, Franc!
HA! Break? This is where it goes into overdrive. I used to write about it, but no longer do because –
a) no one will believe me, and
b) it is difficult to do without harming the innocent
My life is a Fellini film this time of year. Sacha knows, I moan to her in private. If you want a teaser, I can email you a crassmass of a few years ago.
January 2, 2012 at 6:13 am
Fellini films are watchable and end in a couple of hours (plus you can always put them on mute), I’d say that is a poor analogy to your world at crassmass.
December 31, 2011 at 3:59 pm
So a non-serious question: If it’s imaginary money, what difference does it make if somebody steals it from you?
Serious question: If it’s OK to rent your house to somebody else for a monthly return, why isn’t it OK to rent your money to somebody else for a monthly return? If you use the rental income on your house to buy more rental properties (compounding), then what’s wrong with doing the same with money? What if the money in question is gold bars?
Second serious question: If gold is real money, then what happens when somebody discovers and harvests an asteroid made out of the stuff? Global inflation, that’s what. It’s hard to see what difference the medium of exchange consists of. Intrinsic value doesn’t seem to have anything to do with a commodity’s price.
The real problem here is that ownership is imaginary. Any system designed to keep track of ownership and allow ownership transactions is going to be subject to the same sorts of problems we are seeing today. At the end of the day, ownership is just an arrangement of agreements between people. And so is money. Any kind of money.
December 31, 2011 at 5:52 pm
You have to be a pain in the ass don’t you Spice? And you fell in my honey pot –
Serious question: If it’s OK to rent your house to somebody else for a monthly return, why isn’t it OK to rent your money to somebody else for a monthly return? If you use the rental income on your house to buy more rental properties (compounding), then what’s wrong with doing the same with money?
Buying more houses is not the same as building more houses. Why? Because it the latter is capitalism. The former is not. When money reflects real world capital, as it does even in fiat systems as they were in theory, a semblance or reality remains.
We left the real world in the ’90’s – when the US abandoned production, began outsourcing, and then gambling on debt derivatives as the backbone of the economy. Seriously, can you claim the US is a production economy? It’s currency has not had a relation to GDP since Reagan (or even Nixon). Its been imaginary money ever since. The piper is calling us to pay him now.
Bite the bullet. Lets all default. Kick Goldman Sacchs in the cunt. In case you haven’t noticed, those assholes have now included the planet’s grain bowls in their rigged horse races, and murdered countless thousands in the process.
December 31, 2011 at 6:05 pm
Well… I’m pretty sure about 6 million car and light trucks were built in the US last year (and about 10 million vehicles overall). NAFTA is even bigger which includes Mexico and Canada for those who don’t know. The US is the second largest producer of aircraft (I think), the largest producer of entertainment, the largest food producer, and a significant player in software. Yeah… we fucking suck don’t we.
December 31, 2011 at 6:59 pm
“Yeah… we fucking suck don’t we.”
Yes.
The pursuit of infinite growth is both a mathematical impossibility, as well as a clear crime against life on this planet.
The USA does suck.
There is another word for limitless growth: CANCER.
That seems to be your frenzied cheerleading goal for the USA, as well as the rest of the globe!
Well, count me out, bud.
The Americas foisted one form of cancer on the globe, (can you guess as to that which I refer?)
I’m not being sucked into their current mode of insane short-term-driven drug-delivery system.
December 31, 2011 at 7:51 pm
“Buying more houses is not the same as building more houses. Why? Because it the latter is capitalism. The former is not.”
Well, that doesn’t exactly address any of my questions, now does it, Franc? But OK, let’s stipulate that the landlord in question uses his rental income to actually build more houses to rent. How is this any different from compounding interest? Isn’t compounding interest merely an abstraction of using money to build things that can be used to make money (or build things)? You’re getting hung up on the artifice of money as a symbol for the things that one can buy with it.
At the end of the day, it’s all just barter. Eliminate fiat/debt currency completely. Go back to gold as a currency. What do you have? An ounce of gold used as an agreed-upon unit of barter instead of paper money used as an agreed-upon unit of barter. But of course, it need not be gold. It could be goats or chickens, or whatever. Or paper money. The point is that money is always (and merely) an abstraction for a convenient unit of barter. And it doesn’t work at all, no matter what monetary unit you use, if people simply don’t agree on a common value.
There’s absolutely nothing special about gold. It only functions as money if both parties in the transaction agree to treat it as such. If we’re living in a post-apocalyptic world and I’ve got a bunch of canned food, I don’t give a crap if you’ve got gold, I’m not trading you my canned food for something nobody can eat, particularly if other opportunities to trade are few and far between. So much for the universality of gold as money. It takes a market for any money to function properly, and that means lots of people who approximately agree on the value of the currency, at least over the short term.
And of course, anything you can do with paper/fiat/debt currency, you can do with gold. All you have to do is write the appropriate contracts and there you are. Remember that ownership is an abstraction. Does an abstraction really need a concrete talisman? Isn’t that just magical thinking? Modern economists realized that gold is just the training wheels of currency. You don’t actually need gold involved anywhere, so they just removed it from the system. It’s kinda like moving your lips while reading. Not actually required.
And John D is correct about the US still being a huge center of manufacturing. Much of the world’s heavy earth-moving equipment is built in the US. Most car companies, whether “foreign” or “domestic”, have auto plants in the US. Boeing builds a lot of stuff in the US. It’s true that if it’s intricate and clever, we don’t build it, but if it’s big and ugly, we still kinda do.
Mind you, I’m no fan of Goldman Sachs or Wall Street in general. In fact, I think the world would be much better off if it seceded from Wall Street. It’s just a casino, as far as I can tell, spending all its time betting on stock prices, rather than providing capital to useful endeavors. Regardless, it’s harder and harder to understand what Wall Street has to do with the real world. Debt financing I understand. Hedge funds don’t seem to serve any purpose. And CDOs are just a fancy kind of fraud.
Speaking of fraud, the solution, if there is one, is to add more watchdogs to the system and then watchdog the watchdogs. The billionaires have been guarding the bank for too long.
January 1, 2012 at 6:55 am
Ok Michael – good for you if you don’t care about owning stuff. There are many ways to pursue happiness, and living light is a fine option. Most people don’t care for this kind of existence. Some religious folks (nuns perhaps) and nature worshipers are expert at this. Your average plumber (or dare I say engineer and accountant) hope to collect some comfort and power by owning shit. I guess we could try joint property ownership… perhaps communism… I think this would be different. Yeah… if it makes you feel better you can say America sucks. Most everyone does it… why not you?
Pursuit of “the good life” is complex. Many people are satisfied by the constant pursuit of hard goods, but there is much more to the good life than this. As things like large houses become more and more expensive people shift their pursuits. Much of life’s richness comes from experiences and more stuff doesn’t guarantee better experiences.
There is a constant drive in people to “improve” but what can you do about this? Perhaps humans are a kind of cancer…. but who the fuck cares? Only the nature spiritualist goes this way. Only the nature spiritualist is so hateful of his own species.
December 31, 2011 at 5:24 pm
“When infinite usury suddenly bloats and exhausts its finite space”. Well said. Infinite usury is the new term for our economic system.
December 31, 2011 at 5:51 pm
Hmmmmmm. I don’t really enjoy talking about this topic, but here goes.
Inflation is really low right now. This is a reasonable indicator of the status of money vs. the productivity of the economy. At least in the US, there is not too much money in the system. Perhaps there is in Europe, but I don’t think so. Inflation is fairly low. Money is cheap right now and interest rates are low.
Please, let us not blame this financial crisis on inflation or printing too much money. This was not the problem.
The best that I can understand is that cash from places like China were input to the European and US economies. The Chinese have a currency that is not traded so they have lots of foreign cash that they cannot invest internally. So, they bought real estate (among other things). Since the US has very loose laws about how banks can invest, all the banks started taking Chinese cash and putting them into inflated real estate “bonds”. These were not really bonds, but they were a kind of shitty uncontrolled pile of supposedly secured mortgages.
This cash fueled a rampage of real estate buying in the US…and… then the bubble burst.
So what? So what is the solution. It is not the gold standard (which helped create the great depression). It is helpful to have financial watchdog functions in our bureaucracies… and I think there are not enough of these types of controls.
I have to chuckle at the plight of the Greeks and Spanish etc. Haha… time to try to pay off all that debt. Good luck and at least you have good cheap wine to drink in the mean time.
January 1, 2012 at 9:34 am
Frank,
As a fellow engineer, let me take a stab at answering this question you posed.
“But nowhere does logic fail more than with the endless stream of financial bailouts to economies teetering on the brink of collapse. Can somebody please explain exactly how this improves anything?”
If you are a banker, on paper it improves your balance sheet and allows you to fool yourself into believing that your bank is not insolvent.
For everybody else, there is no logic or improvement. What lies at the heart of the problem is that the creation of a country’s monetary system (not just ours) has been turned over to private central banks and the money supply is created through a fractional reserve banking system. From the very beginning the fractional reserve system was a fraud. Special privlages were given to some people (we call them banks today) and they were permitted to expand the money supply by creating new credit out of thin air and placing it on their balance sheet as an asset. As populations and ecomonies expand, more money is needed in the system to keep the economy functioning. But the only way this can be created in a fractional reserve system is through issuing more debt. At some point there is no one left to borrow or the banks just stop lending, at which point the money supply begins to contract and deflation and deleveraging occur. Most of the money supply is not in printed notes (aka dollar bills). They only make up about 3% of the total. Most of it is computer entries on someones balance sheet. When we hear people talking about printing money, they are usually referring to printing more bills. But the printing of additional dollar bills doesn’t really add to the money supply. It is a shift from M3 to M1. Those of us that do the borrowing need to pay back our loans with M1, because we are not given the privledge of creating our own money. So part of M3 has to be monetized because when new credit is extended by the banks, it is only for the principal amount. But they expect us to pay interest as well. This cannot occur unless the total amount of debt is continually expanded and some of the M3 needs to be monetized. I posted “Not Enough Real Money” about this issue on my blog at http://www.politonomicsandtravel.wordpress.com Check it out for more detail on my thoughts on this issue.
Dan
January 1, 2012 at 3:17 pm
Just briefly Daniel, in the few minutes I have to spare from scaring children –
If you are a banker, on paper it improves your balance sheet and allows you to fool yourself into believing that your bank is not insolvent.
What you are skirting around is the sacrosanct concept of “reason” – the holy of holies against which you cannot blaspheme. “Reason”, to say the least, is overrated. What is the ultimate artefact of raw, unadulterated “reason”? The cold war, and near nuclear annihilation. “Reason” is what took us there. “Reason” is what is driving our financial system now too.
Food for your thought. I must return to the mad-room.
January 1, 2012 at 3:24 pm
“Reason” is an economist’s bullshit code-word, with which to disguise their true inner thoughts, no: their true inner infantile sociopathic greed: “selfish short-term gain, bugger the long-term consequences of raping the globe and fucking it over by forcing a cancer upon it, and our poor future generations of humans and other sentient beings. Fuck ’em sideways, as long as I can have my useless hypnotic toxic gadgets.”
January 1, 2012 at 3:52 pm
What is “reason” Michael? You are given parameters within which to work and an outcome that is desired. They are only doing their job.
January 1, 2012 at 4:51 pm
I’m pretty sure it was the pursuit of a government of pure reason that was the cause of the great destruction known as the French Revolution. Yeah… the Reign of Terror we call it now…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
I have heard of this mental disorder that takes away your emotional capacity to feel “certain.” Without this feeling you can’t really do anything. I guess these poor victims stand in front of the cereal isle for an hour thinking about what they may want for breakfast. Pure reason is a joke… and is totally useless without emotions behind it.
January 1, 2012 at 5:17 pm
“I guess these poor victims stand in front of the cereal isle for an hour thinking about what they may want for breakfast”
Let them eat Kayak.
January 10, 2012 at 3:38 pm
No…he just watched the Zeitgeist movie… 🙂
January 10, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Ouch. That hurts more than the combined mass of dung the entire baboon horde has ever hurled at me.
January 1, 2012 at 6:02 pm
I finally kicked Ophelia in the cunt. I feel better now. Happy new year. Doesn’t deserve capitals.
January 2, 2012 at 11:31 am
You can do a lot with low interest money.
January 10, 2012 at 10:04 am
I skimmed your article but from what I read, yes you are right, piling more debt onto already indebted nations is Keynesian madness, on the other hand it very still very damaging for governments to default, the banks they owe money to, people have their savings in, peoples pensions will be wiped out etc. etc. The best solution is for governments who cannot pay their bills to restructure their debt and for countries that still have time and money to fix it to bring their budgets into line, hence austerity. The problem with Greece is they are cutting too little too late and it is going to get ugly. Greece should default, France should just bloody sort its mess out and stop sitting about all day drinking wine. The UK and the US? We are both on the edge of the abyss and will be Greece if we don’t do something drastic quickly.
January 10, 2012 at 5:01 pm
My apologies Franco…my comment was directed at the person who mentioned the 3% bank note liquidity… still grasping at the reply thread structure. But it’s good to know what points hurt for future reference… off topic I know but
Though having watched the Zeitgeist movie despite many factual flaws it’s a good eye opener for many yet to comprehend the machinations of the cash/banking systems being set up around the world. Apparently the Sydney Zeitgeist “movement” meet at a Newtown pub once a month. To me, meeting at a pub means “lets talk shit over a few beers”. Might be worth a go even if it’s for laughs.
January 10, 2012 at 5:14 pm
No apology necessary. Its a fair comment to make. I differ to the Zeitgeist clowns in that I can see no positive outcome in maintaining this exponential debt curve. Destroy the debt, it is a cancer – I do not want to abolish money itself, which is what their utopian goal is. By all means go to their group, I would be interested in hearing about it. Just wear a tinfoil bandanna. They are a cult to be perfectly blunt, and as with all cults they have just had their first schism – Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph have had a bitter divorce and are squabbling over who gets custody of the acolytes. This is just one thread of many –
https://zeitgeistmovements.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/jacque-fresco-exposes-peter-joseph-and-the-zeitgeist-movement/
Aside from their economic utopianism (how many other utopian experiments have ended with gulags eh?), their religion “deconstruction” is Chariots of the Gods grade derangement. There is a LOT of material out there taking them to task over that, and the rest of the conspiracy folklore they buy into. Go into it the way you would into a meeting with Scientologists – with maximum care.
January 11, 2012 at 5:41 pm
Well obviously that site is funded by the Illuminati…. derrrrr… 🙂
Back on topic:
What if every country defaulted?
It would be crazy to watch, it would be a quigmire I’d be too fat, slow and apathetic to fight during the mess afterwards but I also have nothing to lose.
What would happen when things settle would be interesting too….would that be when the New World Order starts? 🙂
January 11, 2012 at 11:08 am
I am not an economist, and can sometimes be described as living in a bubble (traveler and day dreamer) but what you say makes incredible sense. Borrow more to pay debts, owe more…increase interest…owe more! Spiral down…..basically equalling “bad”! Excessive “austerity” measures – not certain this is the answer either – lay everyone off, no jobs, more unemployment, fewer people paying into the tax pool….maybe I am being too simplistic, but it looks like a negative spiral too!
It’s all a delicate balance – with greed, corruption and back scratching not helping…..wish I had a solution….stop the excess….don’t pay fed employees millions of dollars in “thanks for coming out, good luck on your next endeavour” pay….ahhh…the frustration! I guess for now, while I dream of more travel, I am happy to have a job, continue to contribute to the system and eek out a living (and travel) as much as I can!
January 11, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Perfect analogy hit me the other day. You have a leaky tyre. OK, patch it once. Maybe twice. But after that, you replace it. You cannot keep patching it and still have a functioning wheel.
January 12, 2012 at 10:00 am
I dunno…the Bush mechanics will beg to differ.
Perhaps another anaology would like playing the board game Monopoly.
The player who has a Hotel on Mayfair, bails out another player who’s just gone bankrupt landing on it knwoing full well that if they didn’t there would be no one left to play the game with.
January 12, 2012 at 11:09 am
Better analogy yet. Mr. Creosote.
January 23, 2013 at 2:53 pm
yes to Voltaires Bastards, DEFAULTS in history around page 401 give or take a page or two
Recovering broker tells how to steal a billion dollars, over and over and over……(multiply by ten for USA examples) http://youtu.be/EyAuod1QxhQ
Thanks for the great candour
Canada
May 22, 2013 at 3:24 pm
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