266 comments on DrumBeat: March 24, 2008
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266 comments on DrumBeat: March 24, 2008
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Good article on the front page of today's WSJ:
New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears
It must be snowing in hell today....
The WSJ is rapidly becoming my favorite doomer newspaper. Last week they ran an article about impending financial market meltdown and a situation potentially rivaling the Great Depression.
Well, actually it's snowing here and there's hailstones here. My life is hell....is that close enough?
it's snowing here and there's hailstones here. My life is hell
Most of the readers of this site should be thankful they are not in an active zone of conflict like Iraq. You might actually be in heck - ruled by the bringer of insufficenct light.
"There are two states of human existence. Misery and Horror. Therefore I'm grateful that I'm only miserable."
Woody Allen
Good article on the front page of today's WSJ:
Actually there's a sh@tload of good (i.e. interesting) articles in the WSJ today. Most days I skim thru it in 5 minutes. Today, I spent well over 1/2 hour and am still not done. Biofuels, Cuba, bamboo, idiotic lead editorial, plus much else.
MSNBC has a news story about rising food prices:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23781864/
It's gettin' scary!
The Malthusian component of our economy is our banking system, more specifically 'debt based leveraged banking' misnamed by the Banks as 'fractional reserve banking'.
Without geometric expansion of debt the whole system crashes as new money must be forever increased to pay the interest on the ever larger existing debt. It is leveraged debt on the way up and leveraged money destruction on the way down. A debt spiral up and down.
To monetize this ever increasing debt economies must forever expand using more and more natural resources. This is why growth is considered imperative, because our financial system collapses without ever more growth.
Is there a way out? Yes ... Public Central Banks that create their own money and act as a lender at interest to banks whose loans must be made on a one to one basis with private deposits and borrowed deposits from the Public Bank.This takes the leverage out of the system and empowers private deposits to capture a real rate of return. Frugality is rewarded instead of taxed by inflation. The Public Central Bank garners income from its lendings to Private Banks while shedding interest paid to the Federal Reserve. And really, why shouldn't the public garner income from its money, and indeed, Why the Hell should it pay interest on its' own money?
This simply isn't true. Our financial system undergoes recession without more growth.
Then resumes the debt accumulation through more growth consuming ever more resourses.
Sure, but the financial system doesn't 'collapse' without more growth. We've had years of no or negative growth without collapse.
Think Great Depression ... the most recent deflationary episode in history ...
Recessions are just mild stagnations, not deflations. Government now accounts for over 25 % of economic activity and this will go on. The markets that are now in trouble however are many multiples of the US GDP, even the world GDP ...
The derivatives market is now 500 trillion dollars and is essentially freezing up. The entire world GDP is around 50 trillion. The destruction of this amount of debt will overwhelm the entire world.
Then you will have a crash due to debt destruction.
All because of "debt based leverage banking' misnamed by the banks as 'fractional reserve banking'. Levarage up, leverage down ... Some of these banks used derivatives to leverage out 30 times or more, Citi for example. Now the underlying assets (loans) are bad the destruction of money is at 30 times.
There hasn't been a 'panic' or 'depression' in most Americans lifetimes so you don't have a frame of reference.