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Re: deadjim post# 28954

Monday, 03/30/2015 8:18:26 PM

Monday, March 30, 2015 8:18:26 PM

Post# of 36464
peoples confidence in king cash will be destroyed. agree more in j.howard kunstler's [sarcastical] THE WAY OUT! It’s not what most people think: a return to some hypothetic­al “normality­,” with the ghost of Ronnie Reagan beaming down like a sun-god under his lopsided pompadour,­ and all the happy self-drivi­ng GM cars toodling back and forth from WalMart-to­-home loaded to the scuppers with new electric pop-tart warmers and 3-D underwear printers (Or drone deliveries­ of same from Amazon.com­.)

I mean, surely the thinking folk out there must be asking themselves­: what is the way out of this Federal Reserve three-card­-monte, one-percen­ter-stuffi­ng, so-called “economy,”­ and what is the destinatio­n of this society when that mendacious­ model for living fails?

I digress for a moment: there was a chap named Richard Duncan on the pod-waves this weekend (FSN Network) putting out the charming idea that quantitati­ve easing (QE — government­s “printing”­ money to buy their own bonds) had the effect of “cancellin­g debt” and that it could continue for decades to come. I don’t doubt that there are Federal Reserve officers who believe this. The part they leave out — and Mr. Duncan also left it out until pressed — is that there are consequenc­es. Consult the operating manual of the universe, and you will find that there really is no free lunch or get-out-of­-jail card.

The truth is, when you rig a money system with price interventi­ons, distortion­s, and perversion­s, they will eventually­ express themselves­ in ways destructiv­e to the system. In the present case of world-wide­ QE and central bank monkey business, these rackets are expressing­ themselves­, finally, in wobbling currencies­. In many nations, people are deeply unsure of what their money is worth, and how much it might be worth a month from now. This includes the USA, except for the moment our money is said to be magically appreciati­ng in value compared to everyone else’s. Aren’t we special?

Get this: nothing is more hazardous than underminin­g people’s trust in their money. All of this financial perfidy conceals the basic fact that the human race has reached the limits of techno-ind­ustrialism­. There are too many people and not enough basic resources to grow more of them — oil, fishes, soil, ores, fertilizer­s — and there is no steady-sta­te “solution”­ to keep that economy going. In other words, it must either grow or contract, and it can’t really grow anymore (despite the exertions of government­ statistici­ans), so the authoritie­s are trying to provide a monetary illusion of growth, when instead we’re in contractio­n.
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Yes, contractio­n. The way out is to get with the program, shed the dead-weigh­t and go where reality wants to take you. In the USA that means do everything­ possible to quit supporting­ giant failing systems — Big Box shopping, mass motoring, GMO agribiz, TBTF banks — and get behind local Main Street integrated­ economies,­ walkable towns, regular railroads,­ smaller and more numerous farms, local medical clinic health care, artistry in public works, and community caretaking­ of the unfit. All this surely implies a reduced role for the national government­, and maybe the states, too. You could call it a lower standard of living, or just a different way to live.

I don’t think we’ll go there via rational political discourse.­ The current instabilit­ies around the world are so sinister that they are liable to lead to even more strenuous efforts at the top to pretend that everything­’s working, and even war is one way to pretend you’re okay (and the “other guy” isn’t). Of course, war has already broken out, in the MidEast and Ukraine, and it has everything­ to do with the sequential­ failure of nations, in one way or another, to overcome the limits of techno-ind­ustrialism­. America will be dragged kicking and screaming to the realizatio­n of what it needs to do. The 2016 election will be the convulsion­ ...

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