"If Only" They Had Listened
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… that a lot of different things have to go right for them to abandon the current suicidal austerity regimes and exit the Union in a peaceful and relatively orderly way.
Austerity is not suicidal.
Exit from the Union will not be peaceful and relatively orderly.
Continuing overspending is suicidal.
ALL Gov. should have stopped spending what they did not have, 30 years ago.
Over spending can only be done when you have surplus.
Its too bad and so sad.
There is no more blood to be had. The patient has already been bleed too much.
“Looks like there’s gonna be a gunfight”. I can almost hear the chink of spurs and creak of leather.
Did anyone think this was about helping Greece? It is now painfully obvious it was all about trying to buy time to save the other Euro economies, and Greece was the sacrificial bull. And it still won’t work.“Austerity is not suicidal.”
Spain has an unemployment rate of 25%. Now, you are proposing that they lay off thousands of government workers?
I don’t think that that is a viable option, in Greece or Spain. It would probably be better to exit the Euro Zone, take a 50% currency devaluation, but I have to admit that I’m just guessing.
Perhaps I’m wrong and austerity is the way to go. Seems like Iceland went the default route and they seem to be a lot better off than all the PIIGS that are going the austerity route. I suppose you could argue that Iceland is both small and isolated and therefore doesn’t count as an example.
Maybe there are no good solutions at this point. But in that case, it doesn’t matter what they do, so there is no harm in trying something different.
Talk Talk Talk! Blah Blah Blah! So many smart ass competitive intellectualizing commentators. Posturings! Passive blatherers. Its coming here people! They are making their preparations for us and against us.What are we going to do to stop it? Take another drink, another drag of meth or crack? Lets talk, lets plan! There is no place to hide in some stupid macho way. There has to be fighting back and not as a passive aggressive tongue clacking bystander. Lets have some real ideas about what can be done besides endlessly observing, observing, commentating and commenting. What is upon us is not going to be VIRTUAL! This is not a fucking Hollywood movie! What the Hell is wrong with we apathetic historically illiterate uneducated Americans?
Merkel is right in this: “the turmoil can’t be resolved without cutting debt,” but wrong in thinking that this debt can be cut by imposing austerity.
No, it’s going to have to come from haircuts on the debt itself. Killing the economy only makes things worse.
It really seems like these ideologues are living in an alternate universe. How can it not be obvious that the path the present is counterproductive?
It would be interesting to find out if those European nations approaching 20%-30% unemployment use the same methodology as the USA in determining the unemployment rate.
pipefit post=2528 wrote:
I don’t think that that is a viable option, in Greece or Spain. It would probably be better to exit the Euro Zone, take a 50% currency devaluation, but I have to admit that I’m just guessing.
Just like the Greeks if/when they reissue Drachma, if/when Spain reissues Pesetas they’ll hyperinflate like Zimbabwe on Steroids. 50% devaluation wouldn’t last a month. Besides that, do you think any OPEC countries will take Pesetas for Oil? They are going to need Dollars for that, and where are they going to get them from? I can’t imagine Benny and the Inkjets swapping Dollars for Pesetas, but I guess it’s possible.
No matter how this is played, the Spanish are screwed 6 ways from Sunday. However, on the good side here if/when they hard default they’ll likely take the entire European Banking system down with them and we can get on with the Big Show here already.
Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You also.
Talk Talk Talk! Blah Blah Blah!
HOW?
Easy.
Get the big fishes in the little ponds to lead the movement.🙂
Your local businesses, well-to-do professional middle class that are depending on YOUR cash flow/spending are going to be the biggest losers with the reset.
Have they gotten on board to change the present system in other countries, (Greece, Ireland, Spain etc.)?
If those smart people keep their head buried in the sand then you can see that the task is going to be enormous for ie. Canadians to prevent their fall.
One cannot, for example, overestimate just how psychologically committed we are to the context into which we are born and have lived.
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Nicole Foss: “Fortunately, other strategies exist beyond attempting to preserve the unpreservable. What we must do is to decentralize – to build parallel systems to deliver the most basic goods and services in ways that are simple, cheap and responsive to rapidly changing circumstances.”I have concluded that this economic contraction is not something we can fix, but only something we can survive. The problem is that almost anything you try to do will have unintended consequences. For example if you are worried about deflation in the housing market, devaluing your currency makes a lot of sense (in essence, hiding deflation by trying to off-set it by inflation). While private debt is a big deal, the closest thing you can have to a bailout for the little guy is a low interest rate coupled by high inflation (this makes the debt worth less in real income terms over time). We actually have been seeing a policy aimed at this approach in the US called “weak dollar policy.”
Of course the problem is you devalue debt this way, but you also devalue people’s savings, and you increase the problem of imported oil as a drag on the economy. While a weak currency policy may save the banks, it does so at the expense of the economy as a whole, and hte little guy to survive it must be able to or willing to contract his/her spending.
If the spending primarily is restricted on imports but goes back to the local economy it may be enough to save things. So the question to my mind is not what policies come down from on high, but how we react to them on the ground.
To be clear a weak euro policy is not to my mind on the table. However, the EU is fast running out of options to prevent a massive catastrophe here and this may be the final option available.
The first step in solving these debt problems is to pass transparency laws, so every debt can be traced back, through convoluted trusts, bank ownerships, and other devices to named individuals. Then we can see exactly who is responsible for the debts. With only secrecy, these stupid shenanigans might seem the only reasonable thing to do, but with transparency, it will become very clear what can be done.
Here is why I don’t think transparency allows an answer as to what needs to be done.
There are several important aspects to the current crisis. These are intertwined.
The first is fraud on the part of the banks and other institutions. This should be prosecuted but is probably so widespread it won’t be in all honestly. The issue is not a lack of transparency but a lack of political will. However, the fraud was largely limited to sub-prime mortgages, and it was largely limited to securitization of CDS’s.
The second is economic instability. I don’t think the crisis is merely a credit crisis. I think oil prices, which have risen quite a bit (and risen quite a bit faster than inflation), are partly to blame. Oil touches the manufacture and distribution of everything in our economy, so it is a huge brake on everything when prices rise. I think unemployment is best seen as tied to this, rather than the lack of credit.
In the United States, housing prices have been rising slower than inflation, and now home mortgage rates for prime mortgages are a lot lower than inflation. This tells you something is very wrong. Indeed prime mortgage rates keep falling, to the point where the mortgage payment we have on our house has fallen 40% from the original law payment of about $1k/month (now to a bit over 500/month). This has been combined with a weak dollar strategy from the Fed since early 2006, essentially using inflation to hide deflation of large assets.
You can go after the fraud but that’s not going to put people back to work, and if you don’t put them back to work, then they can’t pay their mortgages. If they can’t pay their mortgages, then the banks get in trouble because housing prices drop and more mortgages go underwater.
@ Karpatok
“Lets talk, lets plan! There is no place to hide in some stupid macho way. There has to be fighting back and not as a passive aggressive tongue clacking bystander. Lets have some real ideas about what can be done besides endlessly observing, observing, commentating and commenting. “I don’t have any good ideas. The people I know that think there is a problem still see the problems in terms of electing a new politician.
As far as I can tell what I can do for now is try to connect with others and work on my skills.
What would you like to work on?
Candace and the others,Thank you for replying and attempting to say something constructive. Candace, I have always appreciated your comments and positive psychology. The thing is, I am extremely angry now that I understand the structure of this society . Yes as someone said before, it cannot be fixed. Yes, we need a revolution. We need a complete change just as the French had in 1789. Yes.bloody. Yes violent.It is either that or complete submission to equal terror. Think Afghanistan,think AbuGherib, think of our own prisons, of what the men from the heartland are turning into, of what we are doing to animals in the drug laboratories,of what the CIA has done to innumerable people struggling to free others and to be free,all to profit those who have our throats in their grip, those who worship only money and power over others. These are EVIL MEN, yes, mostly men,with mainly whores for wives, and they must GO! I mean heads on poles, stakes a la Vlad Tepes.Yes, think us or them. Because they have forced it this way. They will never stop. They or their progenitors have been doing this for hundreds of years.It is the same feudalistic system that is now global. It is run by the same money lenders that Jesus whipped from the Temple. Joined of course by the Vatican and other Illuminati.Read the history. Do the homework. They play both sides against the middle. They backed the Bolsheviks as well as Hitler. They have no ethics or principals. They want only money,power, and as many pawns to die in the process as possible.
One thing I have learned from history is that violent revolutions usually only succeed with the help of those who are in de facto power anyway. Getting rid of the old order is more like a snake shedding it’s skin than a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.
This is true even for external invasion.
When the Ostrogoths swept into Itally and essentially took over what was left of Rome, they found themselves unable to address the inability to collect taxes that lead to Rome’s defeat at their hands, and thus doomed themselves as well. See “The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples” by Herwig Wolfram. You can see the same dynamics at work today in Afghanistan, whose government is more centralized than North Korea’s.
What we need is not a violent revolution. We need people to quietly rebel not with force of arms but with our economic choices, to fight a war of attrition against corporations by building alternate structures and denying the corporations our labor and our money. This is a massive revolution and it is a hard one, but it is one that has a chance of doing something other than making us feel good about changing the puppets but leaving the puppetmasters in place.
@Einhverfr:Please speak a little more about Afghanistan. Do you mean Karzai manipulated by the Taliban, or the villages submitting to the Taliban, or all around chaos or what? 2. With seventeen to twenty million out of work here or whatever, how will they eat by not serving the corporations in existence? 3. I meant puppetmasters as well as puppets on the Wall St. and administration level.Nu mai este Patria mea! I no longer have money. They took everything in 2008. But I have my heart and mind from a highly privileged life. I have nothing to lose and I will give my life now to pay back.4.Please talk about these alternate structures when we will soon be dying anyway without the means to produce food for instance.Three days of food in the cities, FEMA camps and bullets waiting, truncheons waiting for the OWS on May Day.Citizens disappearing in the manner of the KGB, our very own Gulags prepared for us. How much time until this as against your alternative?
I think that anyone who realizes that diversity is important in a nation realizes that the Taliban must have a seat at the table of the Afghan government. The problem with the Afghan government is not Taliban participation. In fact I think there should be fewer barriers to Taliban participation in the Afghan government.
Rather Afghanistan is the best example in the world right now as to the problems that exist when one expects all solutions to be top-down. The government is structured to make it hard for regional governments to break away and rebel, but this is done in a very heavy-handed way. For example city and local governments have to have their budgets approved by the central government in Kabul. There is very little room for real grass-roots localism in Afghanistan and this is the way it has been since the current governmental structure was formed.
Afghanistan is a country where the government must be worked around, not where it does anything useful. Indeed the only things I would trust a government like that to do would be to suppress local dissent and help out corporations.
As for alternate structures, I really think urban permaculture is a good place to start. It may not produce all the food we need, but it is a good start and it gets people thinking and hedging their bets. If we can create more intra-community food production, we reduce the power of companies like Monsanto, and mega-farms, and CAFO’s. Buy local. Eat local. Multipurpose everything.
@ Einhverfr How can you speak so calmly about Afghanistan? Didnt we put and hold the Karzai government in place for our own purposes? Doesnt the CIA run thousnds of flights of opium out of there for its own diabolical purposes such as addicting our own population in the same way we did with the opium wars in China? But that is beside the point hereNot beside the point is addicting our population here in order to fill newly privatized prisons for profit? Do you honestly think the US Gov wants a stable administration in Afghanistan for any reason other than maintaining power and influence in the region. When American soldiers are taught that they can behave as inhumanely as possible to ALL Afghans, being prepared to unleash that inhumanity on us, do you really think that anyone here gives a shit if the Afghan government is inclusive or democratic?
@Karpatok: First, regarding prison labor, one of the scariest books that in many ways predicted this was “The Servile State” by Hilaire Belloc, written in 1912. He suggests that capitalism leads to formal slavery, and I think he is right. The book is public domain, so you can find it on the internet. Prison is becoming our social safety net. Subsistence in exchange for labor, and it is the only form of slavery explicitly allowed in the 13th Amendment. Then of course the convicts are released with no means to support themselves, so that they will end back up as slaves, I mean prisoners.
Regarding Afghanistan, I think there are two critical things to keep in mind. First, every society runs on the image of legitimacy. Authoritarian regimes spend a lot of time trying to isolate dissenters by making sure they feel that they are alone in their thoughts. But without social legitimacy, society breaks down. Imagine if next year every American decided to drive 20 miles an hour above the speed limit and refuse to pay fines or taxes. The state and federal governments would cease to effectively exist at that point. Government is like fiat money. It exists because we all agree it does. The Afghan people can and will take responsibility for their government at some point, and we may be accelerating the demise of the current governmental structure by our continued interference. Afghans are having every sense of national pride insulted by us. In the end they will decide what to do about it. I wouldn’t want to be Karzai though.
The second thing is that I don’t see American military power as being sustainable for a lot longer. We are seeing two important trends which cut against long-term military might able to dominate the world. The first is that the price of oil in inflation-adjusted dollars is growing, and of course that has severe implications for every branch of the armed forces in every country. But the second is the growing disparity of wealth. As the Western Roman Empire found, as the concentration of wealth increases, the tax base narrows, and the ability to collect taxes goes down. Our social safety net and our military might are both based on the idea that we are starting off with a broad tax base. As this shrinks, both social and military spending become harder to maintain. Add national debt to this and you have a very toxic mixture. All it takes is one regional war in the Middle East and we may be done for. And this is why we have so much effort going into military domination of that region.
As a side note, the interplay of oil and WWII is fascinating. Japan was essentially defeated by isolating them from the Indonesian oil fields, and this was undeniably a larger factor than the atomic bombs. Indeed the whole kamikaze tactics only became formalized when Japan was unable to obtain enough oil to sustain a war effort for much longer, and before they were formalized they were only informally used in the battle that lost them that access. I think our military learned the lesson that nobody can fight today without oil.
RE said, “No matter how this is played, the Spanish are screwed 6 ways from Sunday. However, on the good side here if/when they hard default they’ll likely take the entire European Banking system down with them and we can get on with the Big Show here already.”
Yeah. If you’re stuck in quicksand, and are gonna die soon, you probably aren’t going to jab a sharp stick in your eye 4 or 5 times. You might blow your brains out, but there is no point in torturing yourself, and no will to do so.
For some odd reason there is this irrational fear of leaving the Euro zone. Like there is a hope that someone is walking to our quicksand pit with the intention of pulling us out. As long as the Greeks and Spaniards have this delusion of Godot arriving to save them, they will grasp the prickly Euro vine with a death grip.
Obviously, it is mathematically impossible for the Germans, Chinese, or Americans to bail out the PIIGS (plus Belgium and France, etc.).
The main problem is one of demographics. All these old farts (and I’m getting sort of close myself), in EU and USA, have been promised so much that is not there. So the politically expedient path is to pretend the problem is small until it is apparent to all that it is unsolvable, and then and only then throw all the monopoly money back in the box and start over.
Have you ever dealt with a teenager on anything? They deny a problem exists right up to the point of discovery. Why is Bernanke, Obama, Romney, Pelosi, etc. acting the same way, lol?
I too think the demographic element is being overlooked. The fact that this issue of excessive debt, low growth rates and fiscal deficits exists in every big OECD nation indicates that the problem goes deeper than any recent policy development.
The geezers are coming home to roost, if you will. 2011 was not just a bad year economically for Europe. It was the year its labor force hit its maximum. Every year from now on there will be fewer and fewer working age people throughout the EU. There will also be more and more retirees. An extraordinarily bad situation if you are trying to boost economic growth rates. Ask Japan which has been in this situation for some time now.
The English speaking nations are in a similiar bind but it is less dire because of higher birthrates ( but the higher birthrates are concentrated in the lowest socio-economic class so it may not be of much if any benefit economically). Spain, which imported more people percentage wise of any advanced economy over the past dozen years (half the children in are born to foreign parents and 15% of the total population is officially foreign born but some say it could be as high as 25%) shows that mass immigration is no solution either if your immigrants are just low skilled labor imported to support the tourist and construction industries.
Welcome to the “Reality Community.” Yes, it is a bizarre existence where reality is much, much stranger than fiction – and almost nobody seems to care as they are led down the path to slaughter.
The root cause of excessive debt is nothing less than the DEFINITION of money.
Bank credit and federal reserve notes, euphemistically known as “money,” are DEFINED as debt.
That’s what it is. if society wants more money to trade goods and services, it must, BY DEFINITION, go into debt.
The mechanics have been flow charted here:
https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/3325954/debt-dollar-tyranny-2-54k?tr=77
The charts is both simplified and necessarily complicated and based on the typical lack of response, most folks don’t actually comprehend what it it imparts.
The magnitude is of the information is staggering.
The monetary system has been weaponized and engineered to bankrupt society to the benefit of the very few.
This isn’t conspiracy theory, it is mathematical fact.
While the naive go on about a broken system, the system is working EXACTLY as it was designed to do.
The Federal Reserve is a factual criminal Trojan Horse organization… there is no debate – they’ve broken their mandate for 25 years and that led to the world’s largest credit bubble in human history.
The bubbles are the root causes of the depressions – the magnitude of the depression being about inversely proportional to the size of the proceeding bubble.
https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/3324744/wmdebt-graph-3-79k?tr=77
Again, 100% fact – and the lack of penalty associated with Section 2A of the Federal Reserve Act indicates malice aforethought.
Karl Denninger has claimed to have read the entirety of FinReg and says their is not one “or else” penalty contained therein.
If true, and you must verify for yourself, that means it isn’t a law, but a clever marketed means of deception.
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
— William Casey, Director of Central Intelligence. An observation by the late Director at his first staff meeting in 1981.The best “solution,” which still involved pain, is to end debt based money (end it for good – no solution can come until this is done), prosecute the criminals that did this to society as traitors, claw back their wealth, set up controls on the quantity of money and properly education the populace so they understand what is truly important instead of the slave making facades they focus on now.
@Board,
It is true that our ballot box vote doesn’t count. The only vote that really counts is when spend money.
Here are some tips to make a dent in The Borg:
1. Use cash. Main Street doesn’t have enough bank credit and federal reserve notes to pay back its debt. Giving the financial oligarch front corporation (Visa / MC / mega banks) 3% of everything of you spend on a credit card only makes the matter worse. ~10% of transactions are cash now. 90% of what we spend spins off 3% to the financial system that is literally waging war against us and the world.
2. End your relationship with the mega banks. I think they have 55% of the total deposits. 100 – 55% = the IQ of America. Right now it is at 45. We are dumber than a door knob. Door knobs are smart enough not to bank with mega banks. We can wise up. But until we do, we will look up to door knobs with intellectual envy.
3. Buy local and buy small. If everyone did this, mega corporations would go away and small, local development and businesses would flourish.
4. Grow your own food as much as possible. Start small. I know I will.
5. Boycott Monsanto’s hell demon GMO food. Actively support the Label GMO effort in CA. If CA forces labels, the nation might get labels.
https://responsibletechnology.org/resources/state-of-the-science
Their facsimile “food” changes the cell structure and color of mammal male “organs,” if you know what I mean. Open the PDF – you get pictures. There is more than one way for them to deal with their #1 concern for THEIR planet… over population.
6. Cut your cable TV, cut your expensive phone bills. Overall, identify the enemy (big, multination demon spawn corporations with cute commercials) and avoid them like the plague. If you have to shop there, punch yourself in the nose first – just to make sure you *really* need to shop there. That was figurative, but you get the idea.6, Support efforts to end debt based money. Youtube “The Secret of Oz,” “Debunking Money” and “Renaissance 2.0.”
7. Educate people. There are like minded, informed people out there, but you have to wade through a few Matrix Zombies first. Try and develop a local community of like minded people. Database skill sets Work within this group to keep you efforts local. Get a master gardener will accept some labor in return for teaching time.
8. Share ideas and experiences with others so we all can learn.
“On the other hand, it is still uplifting to see the European protesters in action, fighting for their rights until the bitter end, whatever end that may be.”
Hi Ashvin,
It isn’t that simple. It isn’t “good people fighting for their rights” vs “bad government taking good people’s rights.”
The average person is in a dishonest Matrix delusion and can’t be bothered to exit. In fact, the vast majority of people will fight to in their dishonest illusion.
Take Americans for example. They are saturating future generations with debt. Do “good” people care to take action and actively resist this evil? Absolutely. Can the average American get off their fat *ss in front of the TV screen to do anything? Not a chance.
The evidence is clear – we have two groups of greedy people. One group has large numbers and lower expectations, they want what they think is “theirs” and couldn’t care less about the consequences to others.
The other side is small in number with a level of greed so large it would sink the Titanic so fast it would knock the Earth out of orbit. They are well educated and very adept at using their knowledge to manipulate the greedy masses.
I know of two people that want to have a real debate – what can we afford and how how can we divvy that up so that society is the most healthy.
Myself and Karl Denninger. Nobody wants their goodies limited.
Even though Denninger “gets” debt based money, he doesn’t seem to understand that it is actually a financial weapon engineered to damage society and enrich the crooks who set it up, as well as their progeny and inner party. Therefore, he doesn’t focus on the need to end it as much as he should. He supported Bill Still who gets it, but somehow that doesn’t translate into urgency for Denninger.
Maybe one day.
Nicole is right – we need to look at our greedy selves in the mirror and make that change.
Just like a windowless van predator may use candy to appeal to a kid’s greed for sweet candy to get them in the van, the financial predators only get away with their evil so long as we consent to their program.
Why do we consent?
GREED. Qualitatively it is the same, but the financial oligarchs definitely have a quantitative advantage on greed – so I’m not saying society is as greedy as the financial oligarchs.
But society is greedy enough to get in their windowless van – and that’s all they wanted.
Posted: 12 hours, 16 minutes ago by TheTrivium4TW
1. Use cash. Main Street doesn’t have enough bank credit and federal reserve notes to pay back its debt. Giving the financial oligarch front corporation (Visa / MC / mega banks) 3% of everything of you spend on a credit card only makes the matter worse. ~10% of transactions are cash now. 90% of what we spend spins off 3% to the financial system that is literally waging war against us and the world.
IMHO: That’s exactly what needs to happen; think about it for a moment;;;;; There isn’t enough physical paper in use to make this idea work; so what would the Gov. have to do?? Physically print up enough paper to make it work. There would be a whole bunch of people scream!!!!! ” This would result in HIGH INFLATION”. Not really if done right;;;;; Remember we are not going to use our credit cards anymore, (that is “we” the small people). Yes the BANKS would scream; but let them scream;; The people would simply have to scream, I don’t want your credit paper, I want green backs. They then could use the green backs to pay off the debts they had incurred. this system would only work if over 90% of the population precipitated. Having said that;;;;;; I can also say, IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN people are addicted to the credit card, and its “get it now pay for it later” meme is to well imprinted in our culture;;;;;
edit: Remember,,, the gov. can only print, to meet the demand, NOT JUST INDISCRIMINATELY PRINT & dump it out of helicopters
Austerity is here to stay: it is energy- rather than policy related. Unremarked is there is no way for those countries/peoples who have fallen off the cliff to climb back. When energy use in defaulted countries is reduced to zero it will remain at zero … essentially forever. The next step for Greece is Somalia. A few steps down the road for Germany … is Somalia. Neither of these countries has domestic petroleum resources. Greece cannot re-export some of its consumption in value-added forms. German can (high-priced autos) but the form this consumption takes represents energy competition for Germany.
If Germany ‘wins’ the energy competition it bankrupts its customers bankrupting itself in the process. If Germany loses the energy competition it is Greece … then Somalia.
The foundational problem is unavailable energy. When Egypt or Greece and the EU fail, their consumption is exported to countries with more credit. What is happening in the EU is the same as when Walmart opens a store outside of your town: all the smaller businesses fail. Countries with organic credit such as the US and China are Walmarts. They can import fuel demand from countries without organic credit — such as the EU countries — or from countries with less credit such as Japan. In order for countries to climb back up the energy cliff one or more of the credit kingpins must sacrifice some of their demand and re-export it back to the ‘losers’.
When France fails and its fuel demand is exported to the US, the gas prices at the pump here will decline. Nobody in the US will voluntarily pay higher gas prices so that French can waste ‘our’ gas driving aimlessly in circles.
The credit component to our problem is considerable but if credit issues were to vanish by magic the energy constraints would remain and they would — as the are currently — strangulate economic activity.
Of course, resource depletion is like a leaky bucket: the leak can be stoppered but what has leaked already cannot be retrieved and put back in. Unfortunately, the establishment insists that more holes be punched into the bucket so that it will leak faster, as it did when the bucket was full. Utter nonsense.
There are other ways to defeat the system and accelerate its ongoing demise:
– Get out of debt by any means necessary including walking away from it. Don’t take on new debt, either unless you are prepared to be hounded to the ends of this earth.
– Throw away the TV.
– Get rid of the car. This is the hardest but also the most necessary/inevitable. The worldwide petroleum regime is unraveling. When the shortages appear — shortages are apparent now in various parts of the world — your car will be worthless. Keep in mind that shortages that occur because fuel cannot be afforded will be permanent. (Forever permanent.)
– Eat well and drink in moderation. If you do so you can escape another means of institutionalization. When you are dependent on a system to stay alive and comfortable you surrender the ability to demand changes to the system.
All of these are ‘good enough’. The system depends upon everyone spending wildly, money they don’t have for goods they don’t need. If more acted abstemiously: no unnecessary consumption, no TV, no car, no debt … the current regime would collapse, this is the well known ‘paradox of thrift’.
What many don’t appreciate is that the Great Depression was an all-out class war between the plutocracy of the time — the “malefactors of great wealth” as Roosevelt called them — and the little people. The only tool the little people had was their willingness to hold money and not spend it. Doing so gave money worth at the same time this worth was removed from the grasp of the plutocracy. The citizens did not win outright: the plutocrats were saved by Roosevelt and John Maynard Keynes. But enough of a victory was gained to give notice to the masters of the universe that the lowest orders have the power to destroy them.
steve from virginia post=2581 wrote:
The citizens did not win outright: the plutocrats were saved by Roosevelt and John Maynard Keynes. But enough of a victory was gained to give notice to the masters of the universe that the lowest orders have the power to destroy them.The citizens did not “win” Jack Shit as a result of the Great Depression, and I hardly think the Rothschilds, Rockefellers or Duponts were handed notice that the lowers orders were any threat whatsoever to them at that time.
When energy use in defaulted countries is reduced to zero it will remain at zero … essentially forever.
Energy use can only be reduced to zero when the last human dies. How else will we cook? Burning charcoal is energy use too. Austerity is here to stay because we have lost the energy subsidy. However that doesn’t mean that energy use can ever decline to zero wherever humans are alive. We are all consuming solar energy whether that sunshine hit the earth recently or in geological ages past.
Steve in VA–I agree with much of your post. In particular, I have a huge garden, and I’m looking into one of those high mileage small motors to mount on my bicycle.
However, I have to wonder about the following:
“They [USA and China]can import fuel demand from countries without organic credit …”
Aren’t petroleum imports falling, and petroleum refined product exports RISING? And of course, adjusted for inflation, natural gas at the wholesale level is basically free.Yes, if you go to the mall in a prosperous city, there is a lot of sales of Chinese/Guatemalan/Bangladeshi clothing. But not much is being created here. This is the logical outcome of globalization.
Since wages tend to be sticky, they must therefore just go sideways until the rest of the world catches up to us. Bernanke is doing his best to speed up the process with his destruction of the currency through dilution and ZIRP.
Reverse Engineer post=2585 wrote: [quote=steve from virginia post=2581]
The citizens did not win outright: the plutocrats were saved by Roosevelt and John Maynard Keynes. But enough of a victory was gained to give notice to the masters of the universe that the lowest orders have the power to destroy them.The citizens did not “win” Jack Shit as a result of the Great Depression, and I hardly think the Rothschilds, Rockefellers or Duponts were handed notice that the lowers orders were any threat whatsoever to them at that time.
RE
https://www.doomsteaddiner.org
Frankly, RE, I’m just stunned at the power of marketing, the ability of humans to rationalize and thr credulity of people to believe the “official” narrative..It just dawned on me today that the Great Depression was, in actuality, an engineered holocaust of the American people engineered by the financiers to asset strip society and transfer real wealth to their interests.
7 million Americans were murdered as a a direct consequence of Debt Dollar Tyranny.
Its as though Hitler’s only crime was in being too direct and not marketing his criminal activity.
The Great Depression was entirely a debt dollar phenomenon.
Labor was cheap, resources were cheap, yet 7 million died because there wasn’t enough debt dollars.
No wonder I’m entirely focused on exposing these people who are worse than Hitler, but adulated by a completely deceived public – I sense a disturbance in the force..
These people are passive aggressive and covert up to a point, but when they unleash their Weapons of Mass Debt, more people will die than in a nuke blast on a medium sized city.
einhverfr post=2589 wrote:
When energy use in defaulted countries is reduced to zero it will remain at zero … essentially forever.
Energy use can only be reduced to zero when the last human dies. How else will we cook? Burning charcoal is energy use too. Austerity is here to stay because we have lost the energy subsidy. However that doesn’t mean that energy use can ever decline to zero wherever humans are alive. We are all consuming solar energy whether that sunshine hit the earth recently or in geological ages past.
steve’s use of zero was in reference to industrial energy.
TheTrivium4TW post=2592 wrote: It just dawned on me today that the Great Depression was, in actuality, an engineered holocaust of the American people engineered by the financiers to asset strip society and transfer real wealth to their interests.
7 million Americans were murdered as a a direct consequence of Debt Dollar Tyranny.
Its as though Hitler’s only crime was in being too direct and not marketing his criminal activity.
The Great Depression was entirely a debt dollar phenomenon.
Labor was cheap, resources were cheap, yet 7 million died because there wasn’t enough debt dollars.
This just dawned on you TODAY?
You must have missed reading “Calculus of Starvation” over on the Diner.
https://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2012/04/06/calculus-of-starvation/
RE
Ben:
What counts as industrial energy? Is a horse eating oats and pulling a plough different from a diesel tractor? Why would one count and the other not?
Does coal-generated electricity count when it heats my stove, but not charcoal when I do a bbq? Why?
Do wind-powered water pumps not count but electrical ones count?
einhverfr post=2603 wrote: Ben:
What counts as industrial energy? Is a horse eating oats and pulling a plough different from a diesel tractor? Why would one count and the other not?
Does coal-generated electricity count when it heats my stove, but not charcoal when I do a bbq? Why?
Do wind-powered water pumps not count but electrical ones count?
hey E. you appear to be asking rhetorical questions. if so, feel free to make your point. if not do say so and i will answer the first two but beyond that it would become redundant.
Ben: I guess what I am getting at is how you define industrial energy. I don’t think it is possible to draw bright lines there. But how do you define industrial energy?
Edit: I could see an argument that the key metric is net energy *imports* but that isn’t what the individual I was replying to said, and coal mines where coal is used nationally wouldn’t be industrial energy by that definition.
ben post=2606 wrote: [quote=einhverfr post=2603]Ben:
What counts as industrial energy? Is a horse eating oats and pulling a plough different from a diesel tractor? Why would one count and the other not?
Does coal-generated electricity count when it heats my stove, but not charcoal when I do a bbq? Why?
Do wind-powered water pumps not count but electrical ones count?
hey E. you appear to be asking rhetorical questions. if so, feel free to make your point. if not do say so and i will answer the first two but beyond that it would become redundant.
okay, E – short answer is pretty much everything, right? when not taken industrially steve’s use of zero also works figuratively.einhverfr post=2610 wrote: Ben: I guess what I am getting at is how you define industrial energy. I don’t think it is possible to draw bright lines there. But how do you define industrial energy?
Edit: I could see an argument that the key metric is net energy *imports* but that isn’t what the individual I was replying to said, and coal mines where coal is used nationally wouldn’t be industrial energy by that definition.
other than some small measure of renewables — the manufacture and operation of which are also dependent on fossil fuels — beyond oil the balance of greece’s current energy consumption comes from domestic lignite production. lignite is the lowest quality coal if i’m not mistaken. perhaps this is a simplification but i’m under the impression that surface coal was almost exhausted by the time the steam engine was invented to facilitate mining. edit: greece returning to steam on an early industrial level seems extremely farfetched. steve says it will look more like somalia. as a full-doomer i’d guess only temporarily.
Reverse Engineer post=2599 wrote: [quote=TheTrivium4TW post=2592]It just dawned on me today that the Great Depression was, in actuality, an engineered holocaust of the American people engineered by the financiers to asset strip society and transfer real wealth to their interests.
7 million Americans were murdered as a a direct consequence of Debt Dollar Tyranny.
Its as though Hitler’s only crime was in being too direct and not marketing his criminal activity.
The Great Depression was entirely a debt dollar phenomenon.
Labor was cheap, resources were cheap, yet 7 million died because there wasn’t enough debt dollars.
This just dawned on you TODAY?
You must have missed reading “Calculus of Starvation” over on the Diner.
https://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2012/04/06/calculus-of-starvation/
RE
Hi RE,Interesting article. I have to agree – we don’t know how many people died as a direct result of the Great Depression – so the 7 million I presented has a HUGE potential variance.
However, your article didn’t go anywhere near the premeditated genocide perpetrated by international financiers wielding weapons of mass debt as though they were “gas chambers.”
We all kind of knew it… but actually zeroing in that REALITY and focusing in on it… WOW! **
It’s like Jewish folks still voting for Hitler’s 2nd in command after he gassed them by the millions – and they have no idea who they are dealing with…. except for a few…
Reality is so much stranger than fiction.
** BTW, this is essentially the model they use to keep Africa and other places in abject poverty, too. The only difference is those places weren’t allowed to develop first (they never won their Revolutionary War to get some breathing room).
TheTrivium4TW post=2614 wrote: [quote=Reverse Engineer post=2599][quote=TheTrivium4TW post=2592]It just dawned on me today that the Great Depression was, in actuality, an engineered holocaust of the American people engineered by the financiers to asset strip society and transfer real wealth to their interests.
7 million Americans were murdered as a a direct consequence of Debt Dollar Tyranny.
Its as though Hitler’s only crime was in being too direct and not marketing his criminal activity.
The Great Depression was entirely a debt dollar phenomenon.
Labor was cheap, resources were cheap, yet 7 million died because there wasn’t enough debt dollars.
This just dawned on you TODAY?
You must have missed reading “Calculus of Starvation” over on the Diner.
https://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2012/04/06/calculus-of-starvation/
RE
Hi RE,Interesting article. I have to agree – we don’t know how many people died as a direct result of the Great Depression – so the 7 million I presented has a HUGE potential variance.
However, your article didn’t go anywhere near the premeditated genocide perpetrated by international financiers wielding weapons of mass debt as though they were “gas chambers.”
We all kind of knew it… but actually zeroing in that REALITY and focusing in on it… WOW! **
That article is the Tip of the Iceberg Triv. Over on Reverse Engineering, I worked up a pretty good theory and justification for the idea that the Native Population of the FSoA was purposefully eradicated by the Illuminati via Disease Vectors PRIOR to the “discovery” of the New World by Columbus in 1492, during the period from around 1000 AD to 1450 AD after the Vikings originally “discovered” the “Skralings” inhabiting the N&S American continents.Various estimates put the Native Population at around 30-50M up to around 1400 or so, but by the time the Brits were colonizing in the 1600s, the total population fo Natives was down to perhaps 3-5M, roughly a 90% knockdown of the population PRIOR to colonization. When migrating colonists hit the Missouri Valley in the late 1600s, it was already like a “Ghost Town”. There was clear evidence of Farms and a population that simply disappeared before they ever got there.
All this occurred LONG before Debt-Dollar Tyranny Triv. This is just the latest manifestation of a very long running game here.
I’ll see if I can dig up the stuff on Reverse Engineering for republication in the Diner.
RE
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