From yet another "gruelling" tour comes this once again highly recommended 1 hour podcast from New Zealand's GreenplanetFM radio, in which Nicole, as usual, covers a wide range of topics, with indepth analysis of issues specific to an economy like New Zealand's, a nation so dependent on trade it's dangerous, but also blessed with a ratio of resource base to population that offers possibilities many other countries do not have. For instance, New Zealand suffers from massive soil depletion because it produces huge amounts of dairy products, mainly for export to China, on land that could be used to feed its own people once the soil is restored to health. The same is true for its countless plantations of American pine. Nicole also covers property bubbles in China and Japan, sky-high home prices in Auckland, why banks hand out credit cards to students, the dangers of GMO (aka GM, GE) food and much more.
GreenplanetFM.com New Zealand
"The only things that are likely to come from the top down are problems, not solutions."
Nicole Foss – Financial predicament, vulnerabilities and the end of economic growth
Nicole describes our financial predicament, vulnerabilities, and the end of economic growth.
She speaks of strategies for coping with the financial collapse suggesting that the way to survive will come from the ground up, in community initiatives rather than from the top down.
She describes the functions of money, why it matters that the financial system is about to have an accident, and the cycles of economic expansion and contraction and how at the peak of an expansion phase, it involves credit (giving value to human promises to repay).
Promises only have value if people believe the promises. During an economic contraction phase promises are broken and cease to have value which results in a money supply crash and economic seizure, like in the 1930s, increasing probability of a systemic banking crisis as we see now in Cyprus.
Solutions include a financial strategy of no debt, of holding cash and gaining control over our essentials of existence. Building up businesses with local supply chains and distribution networks is required.
Other basics of robust systems include community building, time banking, local currencies, building social capital and relationships of trust that all build resilience. Nicole says you can’t change the waves but you can learn to surf!
Photo top: Maori family, New Zealand, c. 1880
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