Category Archives: Global Economy

Pertinent to global economic issues and events.

Prof. Michael Hudson explains today’s financial parasitism

Posted on October 6, 2010 | 2 comments

This presentation by Prof. Michael Hudson at this year’s conference of the American Monetary Institute is highly informative. Please pay close attention.

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Posted in Global Economy, The Debt Imperative, The Political Money System

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No, Virginia, the economy will not recover.

Posted on September 20, 2010 | Leave a comment

When will the economy recover? When will things get back to normal? When will there be enough jobs to provide full employment? These are the questions that everyone is asking?

What if the answer is “never?” What if the present way of living cannot be sustained? What if we have reached the end of the industrial era? What comes next?

My friend and sustainability associate, Dave Ewoldt, has what I think are some pretty good answers. Dave is entering the political arena by running as an Independent candidate for State Senate in Arizona. He is trying to bring the state political agenda into alignment with realistic strategies for making the transition to a sustainable society through relocalization. Here are some excerpts from his recent message.

A global growth economy based on cheap and abundant fossil fuels to both grow and transport our food thousands of miles, and to supply the raw materials for the cheap plastic throwaway goods we’ve come to rely on, is quickly drawing to a close. We are not going to see an economic recovery, because we are not in a recession. We are at the end of an historic period in human civilization. This period is drawing to a close as the logical consequence of abusing and misusing our planet as both an endless supply of resources and a bottomless pit for waste.

…..

Relocalizing means building community networks of mutual support. It means more family farms (many, many more) and making sure they’re not forced to sell out to developers. It means living wage jobs in clean, zero-waste industries that use renewable energy; that focus on rebuilding our local economic base, recapturing the skills and craftsmanship we’re lost to overseas off-shoring, outsourcing and the model of industrial efficiency that puts quantity above quality. As an added bonus, living wage jobs also directly address the issues of affordable housing and poverty.

Relocalization means making our cities human friendly and less reliant on cars. Less asphalt and more trees means less urban heat island effect and more natural carbon uptake. Plus, rebuilding, renovating, and remodeling for low-impact, energy efficient homes, businesses and infrastructure will keep local construction industries plenty busy for decades to come.

Rather than trying to be competitive in a global economy that’s heading south–in more ways than one–we have the opportunity to become global leaders in sustainable, steady-state local living economies.

If we work together to build a sustainable model here in Southern Arizona and the Sonora Desert, and demonstrate the many ways this improves quality of life, further economic prosperity will come from teaching other communities how to be sustainable.

If we don’t have a vision for where we want to go, we will end up somewhere else. Plus we’re going to discover the truth in the phrase, “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”


The Transition to Relocalization

In addition to supporting the strategy of relocalization, Dave Ewoldt will help the Transition Movement support and inspire community led responses around the relocalization strategy. A Transition Initiative is a community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and increasingly, economic contraction. There are thousands of initiatives around the world including Transition towns, cities, villages, universities, churches and more.

Read the complete article here.

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Posted in Emerging paradigm, Global Economy

Money, Power and Sovereignty: How we’ve all been caught in the “debt trap.”

Posted on September 7, 2010 | 1 comment

This is a brilliant and inspiring presentation by Australian, Jeremy Lee, in which he clearly relates how Australia has gone from being the richest nation in the world to being massively in debt to global banking and corporate interests. It is a story that applies equally to America and virtually every country of the world.If you want to understand how your sovereignty and freedom have been taken away, watch this six part video.

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Posted in Finance and Economics, Global Economy, The Political Money System

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China dumping dollars—but slowly

Posted on August 17, 2010 | 5 comments

An Associated Press story reported in Forbes magazine indicates that China has for the past two months been  reducing its holdings of  U.S. Treasury debt. ” The $24 billion decline in China’s holdings in June followed a $32.5 billion drop in May. China’s holdings had hit a high for this year of $900.2 billion in April.” And this was down from their record high holdings of $939.9 billion reached in July 2009.

This seem to confirm my expectation that China would be diversifying its foreign reserve holdings away from dollar denominated securities.

The slack is being taken up by Japan and Britain so the immediate impact on the dollar in foreign exchange markets may continue to be minimal– for a while.

Central banks collude to advance their common objectives, but given the astronomical budget deficits and continued monetization of U.S. government debt by the banking system, it is unlikely that they will continue to support the dollar in the future as they have in the past. At some point, they will allow the dollar to slide into the void as they roll out their new plan for a global reserve currency. –t.h.g.

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Posted in Finance and Economics, Global Economy

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The financial reforms will fail!

Posted on July 25, 2010 | Leave a comment

It seems that everything the government does to fix the economy only makes matters worse. Why? Because they are trying to sustain a moribund system of money, banking, and finance. The recent passage of a “financial reform” measure by Congress, while hailed as a measure to prevent a recurrence of the abuses of the recent past, will do nothing of the kind. In fact, it will enable them to continue and will further strengthen the huge financial institutions that have been robbing the American people.

Peter Schiff has a better understanding of the situation than most financial pundits. While even he does not seem to get quite to the root of what ails our economy and our society, his insights go deeper than most.  He offers three reasons why the new law will fail do achieve its stated purpose:

1. The bill doesn’t get to the root causes of the crisis.

2. The law fails to end ‘Too Big to Fail.’

3. More regulation means higher costs for smaller financial services firms, reducing competition.

He explains this in this brief video.

I have pointed out in my books and writings that the very nature of the money creation process is at fault. The creation of money by banks on the basis of interest-bearing debt creates a “debt imperative,” which in turn creates an economic “growth imperative.” Since the physical limits to growth have been reached on planet Earth, this money system cannot be sustained, yet every action by the governments of the developed nations attempts to do just that.

The crisis will continue to deepen until people create parallel decentralized systems of exchange (money) and finance that enhance the vitality of their communities and local economies. –t.h.g.

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Posted in Global Economy, The Debt Imperative, The Political Money System

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This pretty much explains the global debt situation

Posted on July 21, 2010 | 1 comment

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Posted in Global Economy, The Debt Imperative, The Political Money System

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No Time to Be Complacent–Fifty Statistics About the U.S. Economy

Posted on June 16, 2010 | 2 comments

Global Research provides some interesting facts that make it clear that we are at the end of an era in economics, finance, and the industrial economy.

The article, Desperate Financial Situation, Biggest Debt Bubble in World History: Fifty Statistics About The U.S. Economy, begins with the statement

Most Americans know that the U.S. economy is in bad shape, but what most Americans don’t know is how truly desperate the financial situation of the United States really is.  The truth is that what we are experiencing is not simply a “downturn” or a “recession”.  What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end for the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen.  Our greed and our debt are literally eating our economy alive.  Total government, corporate and personal debt has now reached 360 percent of GDP, which is far higher than it ever reached during the Great Depression era.  We have nearly totally dismantled our once colossal manufacturing base, we have shipped millions upon millions of middle class jobs overseas, we have lived far beyond our means for decades and we have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world.  A great day of financial reckoning is fast approaching, and the vast majority of Americans are totally oblivious.

I should add that billionaire financier George Soros has projected that total U.S. debt will soon reach 500% of GDP. Governments are not going to fix the problem. It is time for people to look to their own resources and creativity and begin organizing in their communities to assure their survival and thrival as we make the transition to a steady-state economy and a more equitable, harmonious society.

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Posted in Finance and Economics, Global Economy, The Debt Imperative

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The Time of the Chrysalis?

Posted on February 14, 2010 | 2 comments

As I sit sweltering here in Malaysia (and before this, in Thailand) observing the busyness, the massive amounts of construction, the noisy moving to and fro, the widening extremes of opulence and degradation, the scramble of people to earn or save a few pennies to buy a piece of the good life, I often feel despair about the human condition. But, as I’ve said in my books and presentations, it is clear that civilization is experiencing a multi-dimensional mega-crisis which must lead to a thorough social, economic, and political restructuring. I liken it to the process of metamorphosis from the caterpillar to the butterfly. My soul yearns for peace and quiet, fellowship, and positive engagement in the metamorphic process.

Where to find it? How to proceed? These are the vexing questions of the moment.

Over the past three years my nomadic lifestyle has provided numerous adventures of discovery in many parts of Asia. I think my time in Asia has given me a pretty good sense of the developmental trends and the conditions that ordinary people here must contend with. The apparent lull in the breakdown process over the past few months should not cause us to become complacent but should be taken as an opportunity to prepare ourselves and to intensify our efforts to build a better world.

The global economy, like the caterpillar must at some point stop growing. That point seems now to have been reached. If you have not seen it, the post by Darryl Schoon, Davos: The Bomb Shelter, clearly expresses my own views that the current financial crisis is unprecedented and “the crisis will end in a complete breakdown of the banker’s system of credit and debt…”

The next phase, the chrysalis phase, requires that we take the accumulated resources that are at our disposal and use them to create the new butterfly economy. It is not easy to ascertain how that process will proceed, what the specific challenges will be, or how we might best negotiate what Robert Theobald called, The Rapids of Change. Carolyn Baker’s book, Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilzation’s Collapse, may help us in that regard. Major portions of the book can be read for free at books.google.com.

Each of us now needs to ask, “Where shall I spin my personal cocoon, where is my cohort community, and how can I help the emergence of a new, sustainable, more harmonious world.

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Posted in Global Economy, The Political Money System

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Capitalism-A Love Story

Posted on October 11, 2009 | 8 comments

That’s the title of Michael Moore’s latest film.

If I were intent on finding fault with it, I might say that the film understates the case, or that there are huge gaps in the story it tells. But I prefer to focus on what the film is rather than what it isn’t. This film is, quite simply, a masterpiece; Moore’s best film ever. Every American, indeed, everyone in the world, should see it. It should be translated into every language in the world. It should be the focus of study groups, and stimulate community action across the country. —t.h.g.

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Posted in Banking, Geo-politics, Global Economy

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Paul Craig Roberts: Can the Economy Recover?

Posted on July 25, 2009 | 1 comment

Paul Craig Roberts and I have pretty much the same answer to this question. He says:

There is no economy left to recover. The US manufacturing economy was lost to offshoring and free trade ideology. It was replaced by a mythical “New Economy.”

The “New Economy” was based on services. Its artificial life was fed by the Federal Reserve’s artificially low interest rates, which produced a real estate bubble, and by “free market” financial deregulation, which unleashed financial gangsters to new heights of debt leverage and fraudulent financial products.

The real economy was traded away for a make-believe economy. When the make-believe economy collapsed, Americans’ wealth in their real estate, pensions, and savings collapsed dramatically while their jobs disappeared.

He then goes on to identify Goldman Sachs as “the bankster firm [that] controls the economic policy of the United States.” Read the full article here.

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Posted in Finance and Economics, Global Economy

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