Real unemployment, not just the number folks still collecting benefits, hovers around 20% according to Joesph Stiglitz, a past winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics. The Fed is furiously printing money in a last ditch attempt to save us from deflation [see video below]. Obama has spent the last two weeks attempting to get the rest of the industrialised world to not cut the value of their currencies while at home the US is doing everything it can to cut the value of the greenback. Currency wars, austerity programs and trade wars are, as Pierre Trudeau said, "unfolding exactly as they should".The American Dream, based on the myth endless growth, is over. In the short run it'll be replaced by upheaval and dislocation. In the long run, though, it could be our only real hope for our children and grand children's future. Endless growth in a limited resource environment is impossible. But it sure sounds good.
As Josh Holland of AlterNet says,- "If you could create a political party that convinced a large number of people that by electing you they could eat all the ice-cream they want, and then sit on their butts watching TV all day and never put on an ounce, you’d have a pretty good chance at gaining power."
The ice cream truck is outta gas. "The time to dig a well is not when you’re thirsty. The time to plant a garden is not when you’re hungry. The time for securing your water and food is now, before the industrial economy burns itself out. You and I didn’t start the fire of empire. But we’re about to see it extinguished".- Guy McPherson
The Twilight Zone, Or Our Economy Explained - If you have a sense of humor about the economic apocalypse, check out the video below. It is a most cogent, hilarious, depressing analysis of Ben Bernanke, Goldman Sachs, blowing up the global economy, quantitative easing - a.k.a. printing money - and why we are all screwed...bearing in mind that if you can laugh at yourself, and you can laugh at the apocalypse, then you’ll never run out of material.
