An excellent BBC article laying out the complications of a Greek Euro exit…
Could the euro survive a Greek exit?
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How prepared are you for Peak Oil?…… Let’s find out!
A good insight into our debt based money system that is clearly not sustainable
Source: Rick’s Picks http://www.rickackerman.com/
April 18th
Why the Global Banking System Is a Scam
America is a great country. As with any business, its success is based on the balance of its assets against its liabilities. Its assets are a plentiful supply of natural resources; land & minerals, plus 300 million specimens of the most creative creature on planet Earth.
These assets are hindered by one main liability, a ruling class who imported a monetary system of theirs from Europe a while ago. It is a non-free market system which is enough of a hindrance to negate all the positives of any country in time. A simple enough system to understand, yet very seldom understood, even by the most intelligent among us, it would seem. It operates on the simple rule that currency is borrowed into existence with interest bearing on it at a given rate. The critical point to recognise is that the interest owing is not issued by the lender, only the principal, thereby meaning that the interest either has to be paid out of the sum of principal borrowed, or by confiscation of real physical assets, i.e. “real wealth”. The only thing keeping this eventuality from occurring is if a new borrower adds more money, borrowed as yet more debt, into the economy.
This is why such a monetary system requires ever more investing manias to perpetuate itself. After exhausting the supply of manias of things of no real consequence such as tulips, the wizards of this system centered mostly around a company known as Goldman Sachs, moved on to turning very critical wealth into the biggest mania in history, i.e. the buildings we all live in. Once this mania had run its course to the extreme by changing the rules or committing outright financial fraud as we now know, and no new borrowers could be dragged in off the street, the “flaw” in the system became manifest, as the interest payments were not being covered by new money borrowed into the economies of the world.
Boiling of the Frog
Now things got interesting. Since not enough currency is in existence to cover all the debt owed to the lender, then the assets, real things or “real wealth,” are now owed to the lenders. The problem with this is that if the lenders acted upon this fact the populations of the developed world would quickly realise that they are all in fact broke, as all property would get consumed by the Banksters as repayment, leading no doubt to a world-wide revolt against the secret overlords of this system. So, instead of this, things have been manoeuvred to allow a more gradual slow “boiling of the frog,” or austerity programs coupled with placing ex-Goldman Sachs employees into key government positions across the western world.
On an accounting level, huge bail-outs will continue to be necessary to keep the system’s head above water, or rather to keep those within “the club” in the lifestyles they have become accustomed to, perpetually unless or until a new bigger mania is devised that could add enough borrowed debt currency into the system to cover the current interest payments, but bringing more burden in so doing. The carbon credit system is possibly such a new mania?
Greenspan Detected a ‘Flaw’
Alan Greenspan famously said that they found a flaw in their financial model. Yeah, right! The flaw was the very foundation of the model deliberately designed so centuries ago. Understanding of this “flaw” is the last thing the powers that be wish for the masses to acquire. Simply put, due to the fact that only the principal is borrowed into existence, not the interest, the result is never-ending debt allowing that the real wealth of miners, farmers, builders, engineers, fisherman and any other positive endeavour to be taken for free by those in “the club” via theft or fraud.
Some, educated to think just as the Wizards have designed, will argue that this is a simplistic way of seeing things, citing their training in financial models and graphs, yet all deliberately designed to confuse and hide the simplicity of it all. As Ricks Hidden Pivot Method [of technical analysis] no doubt demonstrates, the intelligent see just the complexity, but the wise find the simplicity.
America, as every country exists in a world of unimaginable abundance and we humans are blessed with the minds to realise it. We’re just presently snookered by a self-seeking “liability” that thwarts it.
May we all one day realise that abundance.
Yes! TIME letter posted
Read letter to TIME Magazine.
RE: TIME MAGAZINE
Money, Section 12
March 19, 2012 Edition
No shortage of crude oil?
In an attempt to explain the recent ‘up-tick’ in U.S. gas prices, TIME magazine’s recent article “Stumped at the Pump” meandered around the core tenet of supply and demand, only once stumbling into the key issue of supply in paragraph four stating:
“For starters, there is no shortage of crude oil”.
This definitive statement, lying somewhat innocuously at the heart of article, acted as an open and closed case assessment of the fundamental issue of oil supply. No shortage?
But the phrase “no shortage” has more than one interpretation and it is essential to examine these two words from a variety of vantage points:
No shortage, as we will never be able to pump every barrel out of the earth?
Almost certainly correct.
No shortage, as we now comfortably produce 70+ million barrels a day of conventional oil?
Probably correct to say but this is a very dangerous illusion of security to portray.
No shortage of spare production capacity to supply continued exponential growth in demand?
OUCH! Not so sure about this one.
Most oil producing nations are well past peak production and today only Saudi Arabia has spare capacity. This Sauidi ‘contingency’ for world growth is almost certainly less than 2 million barrels per day and lives in a thirsty global market of 80+ million barrels of liquids every single day.
So, assuming a 2% growth rate in the global consumption, the most optimistic scenario is that global ‘spare capacity’ represents less than 2 years worth of growth.
Not quite as comforting as the original statement implied.
Of the three interpretations of the phrase ‘no shortage’, future production capacity is certainly the most relevant. Why?
- Our current economic paradigm is dependent on growth.
- All economies are always a function of available energy.
Therefore, our economy is fully dependent on an ongoing increase of available energy.
The Roman economy was dependent on the available energy of slaves. Easter Islanders were dependent on the available energy of firewood. Societies have faced the stern laws of thermodynamics before.
If the reader is now a little out of his or her comfort zone it is not that surprising. As a society, let us have an honest and fundamental assessment of our oil-based, growth-based economy.
Surely, an ‘Apollo-style’ push to confront the energy issue should be front and center as the challenge of our generation. Let’s get to work.
POAEC Youtube video
Welcome!!
Twenty years from now, the world we know will be very different.
Not different in the same way we that have witnessed change over the last twenty years, with more growth and more stuff, but FUNDAMENTALLY different. For cheap energy and abundant credit, the life blood and oxygen of our current economy, are no longer the given they once were. Both have arguably already peaked. It is likely that the next twenty years will be a transition period, from head-spinning globalization to a world that is a lot more LOCALLY focused.
Journey through this website and confront the limits to, and realities of, our current economic paradigm. Then move to imagine a new world; a gentler world, a sustainable one that is likely more satisfying, somehow more familiar, and much more connected to this unique and wonderful world, FINITE PLANET EARTH.
