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Financial Meltdown


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Money = Debt

 

If all loans were repaid there would be no money in circulation

- the money to pay back all the interest does not exist

 

The stock market buys and sells debt - FOR PROFIT !!

 

We taking part in an infinite growth paradigm

 

Basically the entire global economic system requires an ever increasing number of consumers to borrow and spend more money to consume more resources- It is the ultimate ponzi scheme.

This is not possible on a finite planet.

 

Tunisia and Egypt - probably only the begining.............

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AT not far of the mark here!

 

To attempt to maintain an ever increasing rate of profit, the global economic system will put money and resources into enterprises which return the highest rate of profit. The long term sustainability of that profit is irrelevant to them, it's all about the short term.

 

Anyone with half a brain knew sub-prime loans could never last. That double digit growth in house prices couldn't last. That consumers couldn't maintain retail economy growth on credit alone.

 

Did that stop global financial institutions investing in these sectors? No.

 

When governments supported, underwrote or encouraged these markets - this gave confidence to those involved that everything would be ok in the end. It wasn't, and we are all now paying the price for that.

 

As real profits from real businesses become harder to achieve, high risk potential high return ventures become more attractive - that bubble itself bursts; the survivors moving on to the next growth bubble. The casualties face ruin. Victims of market forces. Small peripheral places fare worst. Iceland anyone?

 

Now, aren't we lucky we don't have any high-risk, potentially high return projects lurking over the horizon. Woa, wait a minute...

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post found in the telegraph

 

What "reckoning" do you suggest is appropriate to a debt consisting of "money" created in a second or two by tapping a digit and some noughts on a computer keyboard and pressing the "send" button?

 

There is no debt - at least, no debt that could not be repaid this afternoon in toto by the same means it was created.

 

We have to stop lying about fiat debt. It is a form of violence against and enslavement of peoples, and appropriation of their assets. Marx was wrong about property being theft. But fiat debt most certainly is.

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"timeo Danaos et dona ferentis"

 

"Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts"

 

And we still cant sink the bloody Euro!

They gave money to the Irish until they changed there minds from no to yes and joined and see where it got them

And now the UK public are paying for it with your taxes

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Another two interesting comments from the telegraph

 

Fundamentally the notion of permanent economic growth in a finite world is a delusion. All assets valued on the assumption of permanent growth are overvalued. E.g. government bonds, valued on the belief that future economic growth will increase tax receipts enough to pay the debt, shares valued on the belief that the economy will always grow, house prices valued on the belief that house prices can only go up.

 

The global economy is reaching the limits to growth and from now on resources will be getting tighter. Look at the price of oil and copper. As economic growth becomes harder to find the weak points in the global economy will be shown up. The first places this shows up is in countries with too much debt.

 

All the political discussions and market panics are just a distraction from the basic fact, the world is finite, permanent economic growth is not possible.

 

Followed by -

 

John, your thoughts, though common, do not fit in with most economic theories (not that that makes them wrong).

 

There isn't a fixed amount of wealth to go round and wealth is limited by human ingenuity, not by physical materials, which are to all intents and purposes infinite.

 

Whatever you dig up from the earth, you can't actually get rid of a single atom unless you blast it into space. All you can do is make it more difficult to reuse but this is just a matter of energy (of which, again, there is a de facto infinite amount, only constrained by politics) and creativity.

 

A BMW has value (in the sense that people are prepared to pay for it - and one needs to be tolerant enough to believe that people can value things in whatever way they choose) not because of the raw materials it uses but because of the extreme cleverness with which those raw materials are combined and presented.

 

At a simpler level, if I carve a stick into a spoon then the total number of spoons in the world has increased. I have created eating-utensil based wealth from nowhere.

 

The idea that wealth is fixed and is shared out more or less unfairly is one of the implicit core ideas of the left, whereas the idea that wealth is a positive-sum game is a founding idea of liberalism.

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