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This Crisis Was Foreseeable … Thousands of Years Ago
We’ve known for 5,000 years that mass spying on one’s own people is always aimed at grabbing power and crushing dissent, not protecting us from bad guys.
We’ve known for 4,000 years that debts need to be periodically written down, or the entire economy will collapse. And see this.
We’ve known for 2,500 years that prolonged war bankrupts an economy.
We’ve known for 2,000 years that wars are based on lies.
We’ve known for 1,900 years that runaway inequality destroys societies.
We’ve known for thousands of years that debasing currencies leads to economic collapse.
We’ve known for millennia that torture is a form of terrorism.
We’ve known for thousands of years that – when criminals are not punished – crime spreads.
We’ve known for hundreds of years that the failure to punish financial fraud destroys economies, as it destroys all trust in the financial system.
We’ve known for centuries that monopolies and the political influence which accompanies too much power in too few hands are dangerous for free markets.
We’ve known for hundreds of years that companies will try to pawn their debts off on governments, and that it is a huge mistake for governments to allow corporate debt to be backstopped by government.
We’ve known for centuries that powerful people – unless held to account – will get together and steal from everyone else.
We’ve known for hundreds of years that standing armies and warmongering harm Western civilization.
We’ve known for 200 years that allowing private banks to control credit creation eventually destroys the nation’s prosperity.
We’ve known for two centuries that a fiat money system – where the money supply is not pegged to anything real – is harmful in the long-run.
We’ve known for 200 years that a two-party system quickly becomes corrupted.
We’ve known for over a century that torture produces false and useless information.
We’ve known since the 1930s Great Depression that separating depository banking from speculative investment banking is key to economic stability. See this, this, this and this.
We’ve known for 80 years that inflation is a hidden tax.
We’ve known for 79 years that war is a racket that benefits the elites but harms everyone else.
We’ve known since 1988 that quantitative easing doesn’t work to rescue an ailing economy.
We’ve known since 1993 that derivatives such as credit default swaps – if not reined in – could take down the economy. And see this.
We’ve known since 1998 that crony capitalism destroys even the strongest economies, and that economies that are capitalist in name only need major reforms to create accountability and competitive markets.
We’ve known since 2007 or earlier that lax oversight of hedge funds could blow up the economy.
And we knew before the 2008 financial crash and subsequent bailouts that:
- The easy credit policy of the Fed and other central banks, the failure to regulate the shadow banking system, and “the use of gimmicks and palliatives” by central banks hurt the economy
- Anything other than (1) letting asset prices fall to their true market value, (2) increasing savings rates, and (3) forcing companies to write off bad debts “will only make things worse”
- Bailouts of big banks harm the economy
- The Fed and other central banks were simply transferring risk from private banks to governments, which could lead to a sovereign debt crisis
Postscript: Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it … and we’ve known that for a long time.
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Keep contributing RM.
War on an enormous scale with devastating circumstances is more likely than any change in the systems that we have today.
Notwithstanding this, the more peoples minds you free, the more likely they might survive the coming tragedies ahead.
The trend is our friend, more people seek the alternative media for truth, whilst mainstream viewing declines. The end of this trend will be the regulation of the internet, this in my eyes would be the final stand or we become totally brainwashed.
Radical Marijuana,
one man's answer to why persevere against the lies backed by violence,
“For many years I've been ashamed, mortally ashamed, of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my turn. As time went on I merely learned that even those who were better than the rest could not keep themselves nowadays from killing or letting others kill, because such is the logic by which they live; and that we can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody.
Yes, I've been ashamed ever since; I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace.”
“Many fledgling moralists in those days were going about our town proclaiming there was nothing to be done about it and we should bow to the inevitable. And Tarrou, Rieux, and their friends might give one answer or another, but its conclusion was always the same, their certitude that a fight must be put up, in this way or that, and there must be no bowing down... There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was merely logical.”
The Plague - Camus
Concerning violence...
"It is only when you see a mosquito landing on your testicles that you come to realize that there can be value in solving problems without using violence.” Lao-Tzu
the mosquito will die regardless, but only an idiot would allow one of those little bloodsuckers on his sack in the first place.
"However, I am not able to believe that is anything more than my irrational hope for some series of political miracles."
I'm still hanging on to the irrational hope that there might be a series of cognative miracles that allow us to realise our own personal authority and responsibility.
"they feel afraid to stop being ignorant."
Yes, that is a slight setback to my utopian daydreams.
Good stuff as per usual RM. Keep ringing that "lies backed by violence" bell - to my mind there has never been a more succinct description of the mechanism of state.
EVERY damn 'crisis' is forseeable - but TPTB always claim otherwise.... keeps the sheep complacent.
actually it avoids legal prosecution, intent is necessary to prove a crime. However not needed to wrest funds away in a civil suit. The SEC is a great enabler of wall street crimes with this little trick.
The perps walk away with their loot, and the fine is paid by the shareholders and the game goes on and on and on.
The government is their partner in fleecing the shareholders and the public and they get their cut of the booty.
strange days indeed.
So... What's your point exactly...?
Look at all of the down flags... no one gets irony here anymore?
*whoops* slight miscue on emphasis. (lets throw an irony blanket over it and call it good)
Whocouldanode??
Whenever there is a disaster, those responsible claim it was “unforeseeable” so as to escape blame. For example:
Katrina Dyke Failures was predicted when I was in College, 1987 or so... at least was known to me as a guy in the Airport.
- They knew, the Army Corps of Engineers Reported it
- City, County, State refused to fund solution hoping for federal action
- Conditions Ripe for Corrupt deal for City land after Flood
Yes, they know. US military, US Government is smart but not as smart as Industry, Banking, Financial managers who... obviously plan for the failures... info is passed done from banks who are the real spies and real intelligence Agencies.
Word.
I didn't double tap.
where's the twinkies?
The Army Corps of Engineers were in the process of doing an upgrade to the dyke. That is why it failed where they had not done the upgrade yet.
http://www.tmsaugusta.com/depression-damages-intuition/
Yes.....but this time it really truly honest-to-god pinky swear is different because Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen all told me so.
/sarc (just in case it wasn't glaringly obvious)
Oh darn, I thought for a second Cognitive Dissonance is with the herd and I was Cured.
(normalcy bias ususally comes before Cognitive Dissonance sets in. I do always appreciate your posts CD, hi Mrs CD! thanks for keeping me in check)
Actually, as of late Greenspan as done a 180.
'When it gets serious, you have to lie.'
What, so you're telling me that we're in a bubble? Impossibubble!
DavidC
And they have advanced college degrees and appear on television, for God's sake.
Why even discuss it?
There is a difference between getting a degree and getting an education. All the things that used to be taught in schools are claimed to be evil and politically incorrect. At this point I have met people with college degrees who can barely read and are incapabble of comprehension and cannot understand why things keep getting worse when their political sheepherders tell them otherwise. I'd love to be an optimist but I keep getting run over by reality.
"ive never let my schooling get in the way of my education" -dead guy
Mark Twain.
Even last night in the 1974 movie Thunderbolt & Lightfoot, where Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges get ready to hoist an old guy and his wife out of their car to abscond with it, the crazy gas station owner begins a rant that sounds as though he were living in 2014....talking about all the things that are wrong and how it's going to run him out of business....hmmmm. I listened to that and thought, 'What year was this movie?" Then clicked on the old Dish-a-roo and saw '74. Guy was right on. This shit's been going on for a long damn time.
.."crazy gas station owner begins a rant"..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu0sqL0c3K4
~sounds like my uncle Bill.
That'd be the one. Thanks!
KD, you are correct in your assumption of most college educated people today. The purpose of the current "Liberal Arts" is to indoctrinate, not educate. It is a disgrace to our society that tax payers shell out money for this garbage.
mal-education is meant to program not to educate, it is only fully succesful and finished when your curiousity is destroyed and you are a compliant consumer bot qued up in line for your black friday special sale.
Most people don't even realize there is a problem, let alone solutions. Programmed to desire, not to think.
John Taylor Gatto is all over this subject and all over the net, besides the books that he's written.
JTG is on of those who helped my eyes open. Underground History of American Education. read it and weep.
Fucking Bush
/sarc for the more challenged readers