[deMolay]

I agree when everyone has a chapped ass from the low quality asswipe we will see a Sudden Stop Event. At which point they will unleash the Dogs of War. And resource Wars will begin in ernest.

[kpeavey]

...What began as a reversal of the real estate market in the United States has spun out of control
...Nobody saw it coming
...governments bewildered
...Financial analysts are confused and uncertain
...they will seek to rebuild the world's economic system

For years now, YEARS, economic turmoil was projected to result from a peak oil scenario. Projections were made, they are coming to fruition, and will continue to come to fruition, and we know what else is heading our way. Will they listen? No freaking way, too caught up in their own self righteous ways to listen to the likes of a bunch of fringe lunatics.

[Blacksmith]

People have simply lost confidence in the system, and when you think about it that is serious. Governments can pump trillions into the economy but is people lack confidence in the system nothing will suceed.

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Blacksmith', 'P')eople have simply lost confidence in the system, and when you think about it that is serious. Governments can pump trillions into the economy but is people lack confidence in the system nothing will suceed.

[SeaGypsy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', 'T')he interesting tidbit in here is that apparently Al-Quaeda is (sadly) running out of money for bullets Some bankster better loan them some money or we won't have anybody to have a War with here! How can we reboot the economy without a good war?

Oh yea, I forgot, the Chinese still have money so we can have at it with them when Al-Quaeda runs short in their bank account.

Anyhow, I'm not sure we are in a New Era here YET. We are witnessing the Death of the Old Era to be sure, but the New Era hasn't really taken shape yet. We still haven't arrived at complete collapse of all these Nation States yet, and we are still creeping along running the engine on Toilet Paper. Its still not clear exactly how the New Era is going to shape up, other than a lot of death and destruction.

The suits at the G20 are just pathetic these days, they are utterly clueless and nothing at all comes out of these round tables that addresses the problems. They don't have any other idea besides to print more money. The New Era I think has to wait until they run out of ink.

Reverse Engineer

[drgoodword]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'A') bit dramatic. For example, I find this pretty hard to believe:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 's')enior executives now work as janitors

[SeaGypsy]

Typical Job advert South East Asia Anywhere:

Janitor/ Assistant required:

Must Have College Diploma as a minimum qualification.

Must be 18 to 28 years old.

Must have No Criminal record of any kind and all four levels of Police Clearance.

Must have pleasing Personality (?)

NO ONGOING CONTRACT AVAILABLE; MONTH TO MONTH ONLY.

NO EXTRAS.

PAY $5 per DAY (no paid overtime, overtime required)


I am not bullshitting. There are ads like this in every country in Asia.

How close to this will the USA get before it goes berzerk?

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

No but you can make a rope to hang yourself from toilet paper.... This is just more crap from the talking bobble heads.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Eventually, we will see there were enormous benefits for everyone in the world when we had global trade. When you look at it, you see the last 20 years as years of outsourcing and off-shoring in North America, and yet employment stayed high and productivity grew and our standard of living grew.

[virgincrude]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/ehrenreich_fletcher?rel=hp_currently

Rising To The Occasion:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hat is most galling, from a socialist perspective, is the dawning notion that capitalism may be leaving us with less than it found on this planet, about 400 years ago, when the capitalist mode of production began to take off. Marx imagined that industrial capitalism had potentially solved the age-old problem of scarcity and that there was plenty to go around if only it was equitably distributed. But industrial capitalism--with some help from industrial communism--has brought about a level of environmental destruction that threatens our species along with countless others. The climate is warming, the oil supply is peaking, the deserts are advancing and the seas are rising and contain fewer and fewer fish for us to eat. You don't have to be a freaky doomster to see that extinction may be what's next on the agenda.
In this situation, with both long-term biological and day-to-day economic survival in doubt, the only relevant question is: do we have a plan, people? Can we see our way out of this and into a just, democratic, sustainable (add your own favorite adjectives) future?
Let's just put it right out on the table: we don't. At least we don't have some blueprint on how to organize society ready to whip out of our pockets. Lest this sound negligent on our part, we should explain that socialism was an idea about how to rearrange ownership and distribution and, to an extent, governance. It assumed that there was a lot worth owning and distributing; it did not imagine having to come up with an entirely new and environmentally sustainable way of life. Furthermore, the history of socialism has been disfigured by too many cadres who had a perfect plan, if only they could win the next debate, carry out a coup or get enough people to fall into line behind them.

[ReverseEngineer]

I think the answer comes in Reverse Engineering our way back from the BIG "isms" of Capitalism and Communism to the SMALL "isms" of Tribalism, Localism and Humanism.

The Planet Earth always seemed a really BIG place back in the day when few lived on it and there was always some new place to go and exploit. We managed to fill it right up to the brim though, and for the human population we are bursting at the seams. Really for many populations of organisms that is the case since the human population is pushing them out of their habitats, or destroying them.

As top of the Food Chain Predators, Humans are very successful, too successful you could argue. Now we are confronted with the outcome of being so successful in this environment, and the outcome is we ran out of SPACE. The Final Frontier of Space as Star Trek pictured it is out of our reach, its a dream. We only have this planet upon which to live, its our Space Ship. It can only support a fraction of the people who live on it now, top of the food chain animals require a LOT of territory for tat territory to be able to sustain itslef.

Its the return to localism and a smaller total population that is the hard part, as well as having a means and method to keep from over consuming when there is nothing ABOVE us other than the planet's carrying capacity to limit our population growth. We have to have equitable systems to keep the population in check, and that is a hard thing to do. Its not even clear we will ever get the chance to try that, because we might be so far into overshoot that extinction is the final outcome.

On the assumption that is not the ordained final outcome here, we will have to find a way to utilize the resources of the earth in a fashion that can sustain whatever population it is that it will support, and we need beyond that to develop a governance system that is adequate to the population. Its a balancing act we haven;t achieved in this go round, thus we will suffer a massive hit here. It doesn't mean though that we cannot create a sustainable culutre, albeit with fewer warm bodies moving around the surface of the earth at any given time.

Its going to take time to work itself out, and none of us here will be alive to see the final outcome of this changeover. However, ALL of us can be part of the process of moving human civilization to a more symbiotic relationship with the earth, and STOP living as Capitalist Parasites. Perpetual Growth is just not possible here, not until we could get off the earth, and that isn't going to happen anytime too soon, if ever. Meanwhile, we have to return to local resources and tribal values.The big "isms" are finished now.

Reverse Engineer