theinitiate
Skeptimist-ummm Sorry I'm not sure I get your post.. Got more?

Is maybe dat somebody is boolchitting somebody?
Like ve didn't vas here before?
Ve got dis much boolchit, don't swallow - make compost.
Plant someting ve can eat.

theinitiate
Sorry -I didn't edit. I was in a hurry again. THat's "split" for all those "spit"...-and some other mistakes... I get antsy sometimes because I am not alone- I have to share the computer...

theinitiate
THere is nothing more beautiful than a day walking with nature, in the woods, on a beach. Only one thing comes close, watching your baby's face and all the expressions he/she can make about the wonders of the world-even after they are not babies anymore.
My point is that we have gone so far from appreciating the real of life. I know of people who never really touch the earth, or experiance nature in their everyday life. Their world consist of the manufactured furniture, carpet and machanical-technical non-living "stuff".
I knew this in my twenties but by the time I hit my thirties I let go of some of these values> not completely, but enough to loose touch with what I was really looking for in life.
The life style we have created for our selves is out of sync with our humanity. A transformation to a more natural state of being in tune with nature is part of our solution to this madness.
But I don't think everyone would be on board with this. Partially because there is not enough profit in it and because I think it's very posible that a spit our evolution is a possibility. Some people could continue on this path of artificial life existance. They love the fast lane, instant convenience, almost no physical exertion-oh and they hate dirt- or soil... I could envision this spit in which two types of humans diverge- THose that stay in touch with nature develop means to communicate through mental abilities like ESP, clairvoyance, and other types of mind development. They stay close to the earth and stay connected to the electromagnetic energies. THey learn to use the natural forces fo the earth to live and exist in harmony with each other and the earth as a liveing entity.
Then the other type of human evolves further into the techno life, creating more aartificial supports and eventually leaving earth behind. They spread out across the universe to become-something else.

Don't get me wrong... I actually like the idea of space travel and the starry sky intrigues me so much.But.. I know this is very simplistic, but does anyone get my point... That nothing is more permanent than change.

Evolution continues- all we are experiancing is just that. No, I do not like a lot of what is happening. But the divisions of different types of people are evident.
I do not like the thought that we could become that divided. BUT WHEN I SEE THE WORLD AND ALL THE SUFFERING-I REALIZE THAT THERE ARE SOME WHO SEE AND KNOW-BUT THE BOTTOM LINE IS ALL THEY ACKNOWLEDGE. THE HUMAN COST IS JUST OVERHEAD.

Just an update to my earlier comment:

The whole article of economist Dr. Michael Hudson can be read here:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12265

Also recommended are his recent comments on Democracy Now:

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/13/robert_kuttner_and_michael_hudson_on

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/25/naomi_klein_robert_kuttner_and_michael

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/17/us_seizes_control_of_aig_with

For more information about (the repeal of ) Glass-Steagall go to:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html

"karlof1"
...." CD disabled the comments for its Bank Nationalization item and disappeared all the mostly negative comments."

I think this is outrageous (is the CD editor to be immunized from criticism?)

Here is my earlier comment (since it was deleted, perhaps it was important..?)

As someone else has pointed out earlier here, the phrase “rescue the banking system” is Orwellian Doublespeak, to say the least. It means in reality to save the neo-feudal class of investors and the financial oligarchy created by the frenzy of deregulation in the last 20 years.

Dr. Michael HUDSON recently wrote:

“The first question to ask about any Recovery Program is, “Recovery for WHOM?” The answer given on Tuesday is, “For the people who design the program and their constituency” – the bank lobby. The second question is, “Just WHAT is it they want to ‘recover’?” Answer: the BUBBLE Economy.

For the financial sector it was a golden age. Having enjoyed the Greenspan Bubble that made them so rich, its managers would love to create yet more wealth for themselves by indebting the “real” economy yet further while inflating prices all over again to make new capital gains.

The Clinton administration enabled banks to merge with junk mortgage companies, junk-money managers, fictitious property appraisal companies, and law-evasion firms all designed to package debts to investors who trusted them enough to let them rake off enough commissions and capital gains to make their managers the world’s highest-paid economic planners.

Today’s economic collapse is the direct result of their planning philosophy. It actually was taught as “wealth creation” and still is, as supposedly more productive than the public regulation and oversight so detested by Wall Street and its Chicago School aficionados. The financial powerhouses created by this “free market” philosophy span the entire FIRE sector – finance, insurance and real estate, “financializing” housing and commercial property markets in ways “guaranteed” to make money by CREATING AND SELLING DEBT.

Mr. Obama’s advisors are PRECISELY THOSE of the Clinton Administration who supported trustification of the FIRE sector. This is the broad deregulatory medium in which today’s bad-debt disaster has been able to spread so much more rapidly than at any time since the 1920s.

The commercial banks have used their credit-creating power NOT to expand the production of goods and services or RAISE LIVING STANDARDS but simply to inflate prices for real estate (making fortunes for their brokerage, property appraisal and insurance affiliates), stocks and bonds (making more fortunes for their investment bank subsidiaries).....”

Dr.Hudson goes on to say that the financial bubbles were engineered “by the political deregulatory power acquired by banks corrupting Congress through campaign contributions and PR “think tanks” ......to promote the perverse fiction that Wall Street can be and indeed is automatically self-regulating. The myth of “free markets” is now supposed to consist of governments withdrawing from planning and taxing wealth, so as to leave resource allocation and the economic surplus to bankers rather than elected public representatives. This is what classically is called oligarchy, not democracy..... This the road to debt peonage.”

The CD editor wrote: "the bailed out banks didn't use our money to START LENDING MORE...”
We are drowning in debt – “lending more” IS the problem!

http://www.speroforum.com/a/17305/US-debt-approaches-insolvency

Hudson: “No amount of new capital will induce banks to provide credit to real estate already over-mortgaged or to individuals and corporations already over-indebted.”

The banks are insolvent and given the staggering sums of outstanding derivatives (15 trillion in CDS and 165 Trillion in notional derivatives) and the excessive Credit Exposure to Capital Ratio (JP Morgan Chase 400.2, Citi 260, Bank of America 177) the “real” economy simple cannot produce enough real wealth to cover this insanity....

Who wants to “nationalize” a black hole of speculative debt?

When Greenspan and Roubini use the “N”-word they mean socialization of unthinkable losses, not a state-run enterprise. Commercial banking (serving the real economoy) should be a public service, not a private business.

Glass-Steagall must be re-enacted and derivatives must be outlawed.

Hudson: “Moody’s and other professional observers have forecast property prices to keep on plunging for at least the next year, which is as far as the eye can see in today’s unstable conditions. So the smartest money is still waiting like vultures in the wings – waiting for government guarantees that toxic loans will pay off.

They know that the past ten years have been a golden age for the banking system and the rest of Wall Street. Like feudal lords claiming the economic surplus for themselves while administering austerity for the population at large, the wealthiest 1% of the population has raised their appropriation of the nationwide returns to wealth – dividends, interest, rent and capital gains – from 37% of the total ten years ago to 57% five years ago and it seems nearly 70% today. This is the highest proportion since records have been kept. We are approaching Russian kleptocratic levels.”

“Jim Eldon”, has hit the nail on the head with his excellent comments:

“The real question we should be asking, the real cause for petitions and other forms of mass action, should be: Why do we have a PRIVATIZED treasury in the first place? Why should the GOVERNMENT BORROW CURRENCY AT INTEREST from a PRIVATE BANK when it has the power TO ISSUE CURRENCY INTEREST-FREE?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912

1-The crucial issues of currency and monetary policy are not yet on the table.

2-The unspoken and unchallenged premise for the undue focus on financial institutions - that the financial sector is the most important element of our economy - is FALSE.

3-Left out of the discussion is the fact that a truly sustainable economy requires a permanent productive base that provides the workforce with adequate income to generate commerce and drive the economy. We have to end the "free trade" idiocy of exporting our manufacturing base.”

Precisely. I would only like to add that the WHOLE economic system needs to be fundamentally changed... (“Change” is what these financial crooks want to avoid at all cost...)

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/13-6

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php

Obama can't save us from this meltdown. If he did, it would mean abandoning his own true base -- the Wall Street banksters and hucksters that brought the whole house down. All of his core economic advisers come from the Street and they are there only to rescue their own class, and Obama is their man. So that one percent will fare just fine, thank you very much. The rest of us can fend for ourselves, because this administration isn't going to bother.

Is bank nationalization good or bad?

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Tom Jefferson

That may or may not be true, but as I uuderstand he also owned several slaves.

Roughly three quarters of all production in the USA serves the elites at the expense of the people and the biosphere. The elites' evil system fails the people by appealing only to their greed/fear while leaving them exposed to theft/exploitation by elites. The more individual responsibility we assume, and the less we exchange/associate with elites, elite enterprises, and concentrated power in general, the less volatility, theft and destruction. The far left is where lives the ideology of individual enlightenment/responsibility for collective benefit. We focus on the question of power concentration and seek power dispersion because we recognize that the people's only real achilles heel is blind support concentrated power.

When the people acquire enlightenment/responsibility the various institutions/organizations can become more effective in serving the people because the people are able to react effectively when the institution is infected by elite pathogens. The people's purging the elite pathogens from the institutions (via CONDITIONAL exchange, association, support) keeps them healthy and in service to the people. While the people are still acquiring enlightenment/responsibility the best individual policy is to "play it safe" and avoid support for and dependence on institutions altogether. Paradoxically as we acquire enlightenment/responsibility we see a natural limit on the usefulness of institutions to the people. But this is ok because our collective control over institutions serves up collective benefits WHILE ALSO reducing elite theft, plunder, destruction.

Just an aside. CD disabled the comments for its Bank Nationalization item and disappeared all the mostly negative comments.

theinitiate
I think ezflyer had it right when he wrote that we will have to go back to the barter system-unless the other thing happens, the nocash all credit monetary system. I've been hearing about this for a long time. THis is a way to really control people. At least with cash you can decide what to buy when. You should only be able to buy what you can afford. Once credit is introduced and you are judged by how much and how good your credit is, then the ball just keeps rolling down hill. I can only imagine how this can be used as a tool to control people.
There is a solution, go off grid-underground -nowhere to be found.
\
I know this seems crazy even at this time-but if this situation gets even a bit worse, then it seems that would be the answer. I don't want to do this, I have two kids who still think the world is going to be the way it was for their parents. They are not even teens yet.
I don't want to believe that things could get worse. I don't want to beleve that this can't be fixed. I read and read,not just here, but some of the books that discuss the history of our financial system. I'm sorry I didn't read this sooner in my life. I have to some extent had an idea of the possible collaspe of life as we know it for many, many years. I brushed it off as doomsday, conspiracy theory, too much imagination-stuff... but now that all the events that were predicted a few years ago are actually happening, does that mean that all the events that are being predicted now will happen? I am listening, wide -eyed and ready...

Will there be private dining rooms for billionaires at the soup kitchens? Questons.....where has all the money gone? And, where is all of the money coming from to keep throwing at the problems? Seems that the public has a better handle on this mess than the people we hired (voted for) to clean it up.

Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be. … the past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about through the "crash" that many fear -- a genuine collapse over a period of one or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population.

The alternative is the "soft landing" that many people hope for - a voluntary change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and less overall consumption. This is a utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of ideology.

-– Joseph A. Tainter

One the wealthest men in the world telling us how bad it is going to be! Now that's a joke.
When all hell brakes lose Georgie boy, I for one hope you live in fear,in your glided cage, with you mercenry army guarding the gates.
The life of those left outsides thoses gates perhaps will be as Bernard Shaw said, "You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and
your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live."

Soros and other "renowned investors" took advantage of the collapse of the Bretton Woods post war agreement and turned the world into a giant casino of currency speculation. The fact that an honorific like "renowned investor" is applied to Soros in itself explains why the wold's monetary system is collapsing.

Soros is little different from Snuffy Smith when he takes the milk & egg money and loses it in a card game, except that Snuffy Soros won the card game. Soros gives investing a bad name. He's a frigging gambler, as most financiers are. They no longer serve the public interest through the productive allocation of capital, if they ever did.

The crisis must stimulate more public awareness of monetary realities or we're all screwed. A new understanding of money as a public utility has got to develop. Currently money is regarded as the prerogative of private capital. But money is as necessary for the general welfare as electricity and water. The nationalization of banks would be a positive move. Government control of the monetary system seems the only alternative. Private financiers do not operate in the public interest.

There is a solution to this crisis, but it is not through the continuation of the private monetary system, which is why financiers like Soros are so gloomy. They cannot imagine an alternative to private finance. Here's a hint, George. Can you say "greenback"?

What goes around comes around. Soros thinks things are coming apart at the seams, perhaps even faster than the demise of the Soviet Union. The timing couldn't be more perfect for the US to be escalating the war in Afghanistan. Now, if Russia supplies the Afghan freedom fighter with shoulder held rocket launchers to shoot down American helicopters, the circle will be completed.

“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.” - John Maynard Keynes

So the question is. Why are all these rats with all the money sitting on the sidelines?

Revolution is in the air. Read about the State Sovereignty movement.

http://www.republicbroadcasting.org/index.php?cmd=news.article&articleID=3422

Accumulation of wealth remains the prime motivating force in the industrialized world. Since the wealthy can make money with great ease, which in turn benefits the rest of us with jobs and security, our society will continue to permit, encourage, and assist the wealthy to exploit the poor and middle class for the purpose of accumulating more wealth. The drive for wealth will continue to have the effect of impeding the formation of a social organization of intelligent design that would otherwise achieve the greatest and longest lasting fulfillment and the greatest chance to resolve pending emergencies. Instead, it gives opportunity only to a distinct few, whom by their position and wealth can easily control our direction and manipulate us as well. This direction we have taken for several hundred years was not chosen or conspired, but has just happened or evolved by the unhampered will of the powerful and the aspiring.

In the last fifty years this direction has created a merging and concentration of power which is ever more capable of transferring wealth to this power center. There is now a conscious effort from this energetic center to expedite total control of money, resources, and technology even in this time of crisis, which will protect them against the slow collapse of the capitalistic system brought about by the predictable depletion of the worlds resources and the need to conserve and protect the environment together with their total disregard for the needs of the working class people.

At this point in time, there will be a great opportunity for America to turn this destructive direction around. Since growth has come to a standstill and profit making minimal, we can take this opportunity to turn our intelligence and resources toward building that great society deprived us for so long by our drive for wealth.

If this is to happen, it will not be not by legislation or government leadership, but in the reverse way that it came about.

"Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis."

Billionaire George who made his fortune on debt currencies as have all the other billionaires, doesn't like to entertain the idea of going back to the gold standard.

http://www.professorfekete.com/articles/AEFHowToStopTheDepression.pdf

Soros has been trying to destroy America for years....whats new anbout anything he says?

mistake after mistake after mistake is not a mistake. it is just suppose to look like one. this is a manufactured re-depression. all the talk about lehman bros., then why did they not save it? the powers that be let it fall because they needed that first domino to fall. this is financial control through chaos. they now have justification when they tell us, " drastic times call for drastic measures " when we start hearing this phrase, then it is game time. we ain't seen nothin yet.

Well, Soros warned about these difficulties long ago: the system of financial management that overtook productive sectors beginning in the 70's, as outlined in "The Puritan Gift" by Kenneth and William Hopper: focusing on short-term profits, inflating stock prices, going whole hog into speculative markets ( commodities & housing), maintaining current accounts with commercial paper, low rates of capitalization- i.e. non-sustainable means to jack-up global markets and rake in huge profits without giving proper attention to practical industrial efficiencies and fundamental rather than merely "stylish" excellency of product. Naturally, the government- basically in the hands of those with the most surplus to spend into elections- supported the effort and even went so far as to systematically dismantle the tax system through numerous loopholes, credits, deferments, shelters, unapproachable trusts and inadequate collection services.

Now, there is a certain logic to Soros' doomsdaying. First, the stats. show what he says to be true. But perhaps more importantly, as Paul Krugman has pointed out often enough- its obvious that the current bailouts and stimulus's are insufficient. Another round of both will be needed ,however difficult it has been to get the one's we have now in place.

The problem is that even if another round of spending is approved it is doubtful that it would work- if substantial regulatory and tax reforms are not put into place first.

Another round of idiotic borrowing and a mounting deficit without a real plan to start paying off these debts will just keep eroding confidence and disadvantage businesses which are trying to do the right thing: building from the bottom with an eye to long term sustainability. Nobody wants to let the demon of inflation out of the box but, if the correct amount of "bail-out" and stimulus is to be exercised, a much stiffer regime of taxes will be required to keep it under control.

See what the "saving" options are? Big-time government spending and high taxes. Shrinking spending and cutting taxes is a political supertanker- embraced by all parties- that doesn't turn around on a dime, not even in fifty miles. One things for sure: what needs to be done will never get done if we leave it all up to the President. That's not the way real change happens.

Getting rid of money and credits and going back to barter would be a solution, but it might take us back a hundred years in terms of our acquiring high end consumer goods. That may not be altogether a bad thing.

A better solution I think would be to stop the enormous predatory damage that extreme money-power concentration causes by capping the net worth of every adult in a yearly referendum.

Concomitantly, to deter rising world birth rates that deplete resources, pollute and cause resource wars, environmental immigration, crime, disease, famine and global warming, we could make the birth rate inversely proportional to the wealth cap. The more children, the lower our net worth can be. The less children, the higher our net worth would be.

Such an incentive would lower our population numbers humanely to near the carrying capacity of the earth without wars and other bestial interventions.

This may be an utopian solution, but I think if we strive for an Utopia even if we never get there, things can only improve.

I hope and pray no other country launches a pre-emptive attack against the United States (you can do that now unilaterally...it's legal) for the act of world wide terror and aggression staged by the Wall Street Bankers.

I hope no other country grabs one of our bankers and renditions him away (that's legal too, we do it, even Obama agrees) to a far away place.

There's a chance that our brave banker ("banker combatant") may be waterboarded. But according to George Bush's OLC (john Yoo) this isn't torture. Obama verified waterboarding is not a war crime by not prosecuting those who planned and engaged in it.

I know how much our brave bankers love the U.S. and the Constitution and are willing to sacrifice everything they have to defend our system of free-market capitalism.

God Bless America and God Bless our Bankers!

Can we change our flag to a $100 bill...er, I mean Federal Reserve Note?

Water, food, clothing, shelter, and health care. These are the basics that will concern us in the years ahead.

i don't have any doubts that the world economic situation is quite bleak,(indeed, it's been bleak for much of the world for a long time), but i strongly suspect that it's in the interest of people like soros and volcker to make things worse/appear worse. what has collapsed is the value placed on the financial speculations of men like soros, parasites on the economic base. the "economic collapse" is being used to mortgage the industrial/material base, the "real" economy, to people like soros.

the growth model of the last 100 plus years of industrial capitalism is not sustainable anyway. isn't that really the fundamental, indeed only, issue? nobody's gonna give a crap what con-men like soros think when the environment collapses.

Photo (Reuters/Chip East)
Investor George Soros bites nails nervously while delivering grim foreboding.

The bottom is very close to in. 90% of home mortgages in the US are current, unemployment is below 10%. People are saving. Awwwwwww.....tiz a very good day in America.

The fear mongers have turned America into cowards. As America goes, so does the world.

New World Order , is close to completion, they need a New World Financial system, a new world currancy, computer credits. Which is now very easy to to do, thanks to modern computers and the internet.

But first, you have to get rid of the existing financial system and currancys, How do you that?????

Easy, you make all paper money and the global financial system worthless by stealing all the wealth in the world using derivatives and hedge funds.

BornFreeMen

Umn,one might almost think this was part of a mad plan to take over the world -- when, everybody's broke, those with money can buy up everything, including the air that's still fit to breathe.

Actually though, it's just the result of unbridled Arrogance, Greed and Ignorance.
_________
There's a glory in the morning because the earth turns 'round and a promise in the evening when the sun goes down

George will be just fine.

George S., an article by Wayne Madsen

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4391.shtml

Do you know what an ohnosecond is? It's that fraction of a minute when you realize that your T-totally screwed. If there is a bottom it will surely be hell.

Pan

HMM

No one needs more than say 40 Million :)

Ted Turner

Oh Chit, Oh Dear.

Clinton and Bush killed us, and we didn't overthrow either one of them. Now it's too late.

Goodnight America, Sweet Prince

TJ

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson