Sometimes you have to pay...

Vitaliy_Kiselev

Goldman Sachs report about PIGS :-)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/53525577/European-Greek-Restructuring

Japan and USA are, in fact, in much worse state.

GOODEMPIRE

true

Voyager03

Currently the banks believe that Japan and the USA have a way of creating wealth that will allow them to repay the debt.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

>Japan and the USA have a way of creating wealth that will allow them to repay the debt.

Today only way to repay the debt for top countries reside with their military power.
And Chinese problem is that they can not spend enough money to their military infrastructure (and they need about 5x-10x more).

stoney

The age old giant, Gold, is waking up to warn us. Hopefully there's no major war broke out in my lifetime.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

Gold is no longer giant, instead it is some element to hold information and guide investors into the right direction.
Btw I forgot other weapon of mass destruction - corporations for mass disinformation via TV and Internet.

Mark_the_Harp

...which is why the individual power we have to share words and images by Internet, gives me hope. Maybe we will come to understand that deep down, we are all the same?

Vitaliy_Kiselev

>Maybe we will come to understand that deep down, we are all the same?

This is not the problem.
Problem, generally is always the same - food and other resources.
Nature concurrency for natural things.
Many people still think that they could live in huge houses and work in spacious, designed rooms.
Basic problem is - they couldn't do it soon.

Tesselator

I think they can. IMO it's the IMF and central banks of the various regions that are truly evil. The debt THEY impose is not legit and not moral. Iceland sees the issue with at least partial clarity. Simply put it's a like a loan sharking scam only in this case for geopolitical control on huge scales. What needs to happen is to put these "powerful" men in prison or impose the death penalty. They are the main cause of all the wars in the past century or two including all of the ones Americans are so familiar with like WWI, WWII, VietNam, Korea, Gulf War one and two, the current conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan and the soon to occur conflicts in Pakistan and Iran - regardless of the excuses that are engineered and handed to the people as a justification. They are also the central cause of the financial woes pretty much all around the world. And the two are directly related too. :)

If you're the type of person who believes what the governments of the world say or who think there actually is such a thing as a two-party system in the USA you're in deep into the mind control they've been playing on us - and it's more than one level deep. Perhaps to glimpse it from within that mindset from the inside out (if you're interested in awakening from the engineered dream at all I mean) a good place to start would be be with a few good books. I can recommend this author: http://www.johnperkins.org/ and to start with his "Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man". He's still a level or two inside the engineered dream-state but it's a few steps up from the base levels most people are in. Another good step in awakening is to look at how the IMF or really any central banking system works. Recently in the past 10 or 15 years there has been a lot of effort spent on explaining the American PRIVATE "Federal" Reserve so that might be a good one to look at.

Another good way to break the chains of mental slavery we're programmed into is to blast yourself with the rhetoric of someone who is fully awake and has committed themselves to alerting others, and then every time you hear or read something that sounds too unreal to believe, go and research the names, documents, and events mentioned - deeply!. See where they're coming from and see how they see things. Two good names that come to mind here are Alex Jones and Alan Watt. Both have podcasts and keep up on current "issues". Here's Watt's page: http://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com/podsinfo.html and here's Jones's info: http://www.infowars.com/listen-on-the-internet/ You can listen selectively to Jones's here feed://xml.nfowars.net/Alex.rss where MP3 are individually listed. For some current and interesting info on the 9th killing of Osama Bin Laden I can highly recommend May 3rd ~ May 6th casts:

http://rss.infowars.com/20110503_Tue_Alex.mp3
http://rss.infowars.com/20110504_Wed_Alex.mp3
http://rss.infowars.com/20110505_Thu_Alex.mp3
http://rss.infowars.com/20110506_Fri_Alex.mp3

johnnym

Alex Jones' rhetoric is flawed time and time again with conspiracy theories that don't hold up. If you want balanced and correct information, read James Robertson.

Now, will the dollar collapse? Maybe, but it will be corrected. Will the USA and Japan repay their debt? Yes, because their economies are strong enough. Will the eurozone keep together? Most probably not due to north-south differences, but it will not collapse immediately.
But most importantly : why is there so much debt in the first place (besides from planning oil wars)? -> Will we ever get rid of a debt-based system of fractional reserve banking, where banks take the profits of society instead of society itself? I hope so, because otherwise we will be forced to unnaturally keep growing our economies in the West when our population declines.
By the way, why would you want banks to take the profits anyway if it means there is less for everyone else?

Is there enough food and space for 9 billion people to live on this earth? Yes, there is, but not if everyone wants to live like a Hollywood star, which they all want naturally. But if consumed modestly, there's even enough meat to serve the 6.5 billion we are with now.
But most Americans will have to cut down the consumption drastically. Many Europeans will have to as well.

stoney

Many were awed by Corning's youtube advertisement video titled A Day Made of Glass. A friend told me that's exactly what he envisioned future. When everyone can clearly see something, prolly there's better chance that it would not happen... because not everyone can get it. New World is driven by resource constraint.

Credit requires collateral to borrow the money. If you are not qualified or collateral isn't good enough, no credit approval. Cash needs no such collateral and approval. You hold cash. You can buy anything you want. No holds barred. Fed manages a big balloon filled up w/ credit bubble. As credit market is collapsing, Fed is filling the balloon w/ freshly printed cash. Welcome to the new world full of paper cash. Everyone goes after what they wanna buy. Price hike has just begun. Gas, food, water, all imported goods. All going up "faster". Definitely feeling pain this year. More pain in the coming years.

We heard this many times: "This time is different". They were wrong. But I think this time is really different. Financial crisis, trade war, currency crisis, food crisis, etc. are all side effects of this new multi generational trend. Consolidation & Downsizing. I got into commodity trading at one point and read a bunch of articles and research papers about future commodity prediction. It's closely tied to global climate change. The consensus is that we have passed the point of no return. i.e. we cannot stop the global warming process that will impact the food crops drastically. Less food crop & more population toward 2050. The food price will go up so freaking high that most of us will go through severe diet. One scenario to resolve the issue is radical downsizing which implies WWIII.

For now I'm glad that I can buy what I want. e.g. GH2. My kids... may not be so lucky.

BTW why are we talking about this?

johnnym

Scarcity has become an illusion nowadays. There's more than enough to have the whole world live in abundance.
The whole point of the old economic system is to make things scarce, so that you'd pay more. That doesn't mean there's shortage. You think there's food shortage so there will always be 2 billion living in hunger? In my country millions of tonnes of food are destroyed to keep prices high. There's no shortage, if not induced.
If you want to give this a name, call it insanity, not scarcity.

stoney

"There's more than enough to have the whole world live in abundance." I hope you are right.

The massive agribusiness has been ruining soils. I heard Africa is the final frontier that big agribusiness corporations r going after. It takes only a decade or two to see dropping in cropping.

stoney

"why is there so much debt in the first place (besides from planning oil wars)?"

That's a good question. Why didn't the system collapse with so much debt? What is really supporting the system? "Greed".

The world full of ever increasingly more goods. Why? More wanna produce more. Why? More wanna buy more. Where do they get so much money? Borrow more. From whom? The producers. So the world full of debtors and creditors. I think the system will collapse when the "Greed" trend begins fading. But there's no sign of it. The spending pattern in China... preferring SUVs... haha.

I guess I'm not a doomsayer. The current system may last our lifetime. Possibly my kids generation... unless the global warming triggers bad weather that affects food cropping drastically... putting tremendous constraint in the current system. I believe in Mother Nature :)

stoney

BTW... who cares what Goldman Sachs says. They are the biggest scumbags in the history of mankind.

Fafhrd

"We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us. But what if we are only the afterglow of them?"

J.G. Farrell
"The Siege Of Krishnapur"

Vitaliy_Kiselev

>From whom? The producers. So the world full of debtors and creditors. I think the system will collapse when the "Greed" trend begins fading. But there's no sign of it.

Generally, your credit is not from producers. It is easy to check comparing GDP and credit amounts in last 40 years.
And credit is fading already for quite a time.

Red line is credit :-) Green - deposits.
So, something happened with greed. And this thing is called fear.
System can not repay the debt (previous generations tried to do this in much better situation, as result we have bank system owning most of the resources and firms). So, oens who feels better want to repay it.
They started thinking in reverse to normal trend (more credit gives you competitive advantage).

johnnym

Vitaliy is right. The system is designed to have banks own the world. That's why the system cannot repay the "debt", because most of the "debt" is created by "subsidizing" banks (called fractional reserve lending).
In a debt-free money system this would not have been allowed to happen. Or as you can read in James Robertson's Creating New Money, p26 : "it will mean that governments will no longer borrow and pay interest on money from the banks, which they have allowed the banks to print for the purpose of lending it to them."

Vitaliy_Kiselev

>That's why the system cannot repay the "debt", because most of the "debt" is created by "subsidizing" banks (called fractional reserve lending).

Fractional reserve leads to making money from nothing. But this works in normal situation only.
In normal situation 1 dollar of new debt must produce more than 1 dollar in GDP.
Problem is that new debt effectiveness becomes less and less, so today you need from 10 to 25 dollars of new debt to make 1 dollar of GDP.
This is why you see so huge numbers in QE and QE2 programs.

johnnym

Expanding the money supply won't solve the debt problem, if the new money you issue is created as debt :) Money is always made from nothing. Except that most countries have accepted that some people (read bank owners) have the right to create it, and ask interest for creating this money ex nihilo. This is of course not fair, and creates huge inequity within society.
The point is that creating money should be debt-free (why would it not be?) Instead of letting banks do it and then pay interest on it, the right to issue money should only be with the people.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

>The point is that creating money should be debt-free (why would it not be?), instead of letting banks do it and then pay interest on it.

Problems is that in capitalism it is impossible.
As you need banks not only as debt creators. But as place saving money obtained by the top. And to lend money to the poor, so top will become even richer.
You can't remove this construction without blood.

johnnym

Yes, you can. Read Robertson. His books are free : http://www.jamesrobertson.com/books.htm#creating

Free-market capitalism itself is not the cause here. The cause is that the current banking system has a monopoly in creating new money (or at least 90% of it). That advantage makes that banks reap giant profits (by charging interest on money they don't have). Take this advantage away, and the market is free again for real competition in the financial sector. :) Then the people can issue their own debt-free money, and create wealth (by growing GDP) that is not taken away by the unjust banking system. That way there is much more room for creating a moral and social society with equal rights. Now the growth in GDP goes directly to banks for paying interest. Then it will not, and the government will finally have funds to support whole of society, including poor people, and society itself will become richer, where now only banks become richer, and we all become poorer (by paying extortionate taxes for paying the national debt's interest and by inflation created by huge numbers in QE and government spending).

Vitaliy_Kiselev

:-)
I think that you need to go to the roots - read Marx.
You are describing some liberal heaven.
I am talking about reality. And in reality every complex system is trying to survive.
And bank system is essential tor about 99% of richest people, owners of medium to large firms.
This is why you can't change it without blood.

johnnym

I think times have changed. People of nations could be motivated to go to war over silly ideals. Not so anymore after Iraq.
Secondly, information has never been so public. Only, people need to understand it. This will take some time. Most people don't understand how the system works yet, but that will come.
I know the current system will try to survive, yes. But that system is based on keeping its ways secret, and this is not possible anymore. The system that benefits few will be outvoted by the democratic system, present in the majority of countries nowadays.

Do yourself a favour if you like Marx : read the books by Robertson from the link above. You will be pleasantly surprised. They are not descriptions of a liberal heaven. They are entirely based on common sense. The very same common sense you find in Marx. Roberton's monetary reform even allows for issuing money by giving people money (just because you exist!), if the government wishes to do so. That's something we haven't seen since the fall of the Berlin wall and it certainly would have appealed to Marx! But unlike communism it doesn't take away the incentive for people to be creative, because you can make money by doing so.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

>Secondly, information has never been so public.

Are you sure about this?
I do not see any trend of opening information.
Information is the power and always will be.

I am talking with many young people each year. And I can clearly say that things you are hoping (understanding) are not happening, in fact, exact opposite is happening.

And yes, you describe liberal heaven. Premise of this is that if you give people some freedom (I do not know that this means in such context), money and ability to do something useful they'll do it. They won't.
Nature is about concurrency, For food, resources and ability to have offsprings. So, liberal heaven you describe will turn to liberal hell in no time.

johnnym

I see this trend yes, in the Arab world, in the USA, to a lesser extent in Europe (we're kind of boring). But maybe you live in another world? The fact that someone points you to a good resource of information, and you baselessly refute it (by naming it a liberal heaven without having read the text), may contribute to some extent to your not getting the right information? :)

Why would concurrency over food and resources create hell, if in essence there's plenty for everyone? Of course, it would have to be rightly distributed. If you create scarcity by manipulating the money supply, so that there is no intermediary to move resources and the whole global economy comes to a halt, then that is another problem. Are there enough houses for everyone in America? Yes, more than enough. But a large percentage of houses is foreclosed. This is inefficient distribution of wealth. Same with food. If we keep destroying food in the western world to artificially raise prices, then of course some parts of the world keep having hunger.

These are all quite simple things. The fact that they have not reversed yet, doesn't mean they will never be. In fact they will be because this system only benefits a small minority, and people have become smarter and more cautious for misinformation since 9/11 and in the end they will understand and vote against this system.
But it will take some more years yes to see more change. Of course.

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