Defaulting banks - where will it stop?

[Peter Presland]

I've found time only to skim this thread so far. It's long and has been running since late last year, well before I joined. However, the thrust of what I have read is impressive. It demonstrates that there is solid awareness of the extent to which Banksters are at the heart of what is on any reasonable analysis, a thoroughly corrupt globalised system. I must make time to search it more thoroughly.

A few points: I too monitor Carl Denninger's site. He's an irrascible sod; bombastic and cock sure of himself, but he's also sharp as a razor and does deliver some impressive insights and analysis. I also find Mish Shedlock useful and the folks over at Leap/Europe 2020. The FT Alphaville site also throws up some good stuff although the sheer volume of posts is difficult to keep up with. Lots of competing views on the Inflation/Deflation dichotomy but that's the stuff of insight production.

I have to say my own view leans heavily towards the thesis that the last 10-20 years has produced such overwhelming evidence of the physical 'Limits to Growth' (to use a very broad brush term) that it has effectively precipitated what we are currently witnessing - which is one of two things:

1) The insights of the individuals, groups and corporation that define and dominate the worlds major power/wealth centres have finally become aware of the above in a visceral manner. It's no longer a clever intellectual exercise (as the European project of the same name in the 70'a arguably was) - but something that has suddenly become immediate and very threatening to their power and wealth. They have therefore begun what is turning into a cascading series of defensive actions, in 'Rats deserting a sinking ship' fashion.

2) The awareness of 1. has developed in a much more systematic fashion - and over a longer period - and what we are witnessing is its culmination, provoked with quite deliberate timing (since it was inevitable anyway) and with well developed plans to deal with its global effects already in place and largely unkown by the masses.

I am beginning to lean towards 2. - although in truth it is far more complex and probably a chaotic amalgam of both.

In any event the problems are indeed epoch-defining -IMHO anyway. A conjunction of unsustainable population growth, resource extraction growth and man-made climate and general environmental change.

The thing that really bemuses me is that - for public consumption - there is no debate or any proposals other than 'how to get the global economy back on track' with the words 'back to economic growth' ALWAYS figuring large. In other words, ALL efforts (that we are privy too) are aimed at fixing the unfixable and debate of the really substantive issues remains verboden. After all how can our present monetary system exist at all without gowth? - answer It can't. It is defined by growth

And as Ken Boulding so eloquently puts it:

"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist"

It seems we are ruled by madmen - but appearances can be deceptive eh?

PS Apologies if I have repeated stuff already covered.