Where we are and where we must ultimately go

I was explaining to a close friend why there’s been no real economic recovery and I showed him how far we have yet to fall. And we have a long ways to fall yet, folks. The graph I am going to paste below here illustrates the problem really well.

So the Great Slide has begun

The DJIA is off its 2010 highs by about 1000 points at the moment, having been about 1600 down at its worst a few weeks ago. Right now we seem to be in a minor covering rally. I expect the rally to continue initially, based especially on earnings from more salary cuts, more wage cuts, and more layoffs that have happened. But under the hood we see a far darker picture.

The “Final” Health Care Bill

Ignoring for a moment whether I personally oppose or support such a thing, and ignoring the diatribes originating from both sides of the aisle, I am left rather curious. Given that Canada managed to describe their entire health care system in 19 pages of legislation, and that reportedly both Germany and Japan were able to describe their entire revised health care systems in a few dozen pages each, why does our health care bill have to run to thousands of pages?

Bayh decides not to run. Good riddance!

A friend on Facebook was lamenting the decision of Birch Bayh not to run for Senate for a third term. This was my reply.

The Downturn Appears Undeway

As I noted at the end of December, 2009, there is a rather large iceberg out there waiting for the entire global economy. Great efforts were made by various players to prop up the market to and through the New Year. Those efforts succeeded, allowing Wall Street to claim credit (and bonuses) for a “good” year, despite being still down almost 30% from its 2007 peak. And yet the market is now down about 260 points for this week and about 700 points since its most recent peak.

Iceberg Dead Ahead!

Eric Sprott and David Franklin recently asked Is It All Just a Ponzi Scheme? And the answer is increasingly looking exactly like it is. Zero Hedge just followed up on Sprott’s thesis by asking Are Hedge Funds Responsible For The Missing Half A Trillion In Treasury Purchases? As they analyze the publicly available data, which is admittedly incomplete, the answer appears to be that indeed, the Federal Reserve is engaged in the greatest scam in the history of the entire world.

Wither Economics?

Economics fascinates me. It’s the one pseudo-science that seems to grip the political sphere as deeply as astrology once did. And yes, it’s a pseudo-science, not a science. Economists do not submit to peer review. They do not use the scientific method. Mostly economists are philosophers who think they are scientists just because they say they are. But claiming to be Julius Caesar does not make one Julius Caesar.

Where are we going?

I’ve written on various economic and socio-political forums in the past under a variety of pseudonyms but I wanted to just start writing as myself. And it seems prudent to those reading me for the first time to get a sense of what I want to cover and perhaps why I wish to cover these things.

First and foremost to me is the question of where is our nation going? The more I learn about political systems, anthropology, economics, and world affairs, the more concerned I become. I believe that the world is facing a serious crisis in the economic sense but beyond that I believe that we face another crisis beyond economics that raises issues about how we are governed and how are lives are ordered.

Of particular concern to me is the rising tide of socialism that is sweeping the globe. This is not Leninist Communism but rather the “Social Democrats” of Europe, an extension of the Fabians of the early 2oth century. What concerns me immensely is that the entirety of the current economic crisis appears to have been wrought deliberately to (a) extract maximum wealth from the world’s middle class, and (b) to impoverish that middle class so that they will accept the “guiding hand” of socialism.

One book that I highly recommend everyone read is The Creature from Jekyll Island : A Second Look at the Federal Reserve by G. Edward Griffin. It reads like a political thriller but the quotes therein are taken directly from the men who planned and created the Federal Reserve, as well as having an impact upon the creation and organization of the United Nations, the World Bank, and the IMF.

Other books I highly recommend are Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, and The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology) by Joseph Tainter. These are excellent works that can help you get a handle on how societies have responded to crises in the past and why they responded in the manner in which they did.

Reading the above books and then studying where we are right now, both politically and economically, gives me great pause and causes me considerable worry, especially for my children and grandchildren. And when I see the constant assaults against our constitutional republic, I wonder at just what sort of world we are leaving for them. Right now I believe that we are going somewhere that none of us really wants to go. And I say this with the understanding that the Republicans under George Bush are just as much at fault as the Democrats under Barrack Obama. Neither party any longer appears to represent the interests of the common man, but instead focuses on the interests of the large corporations above all else. All that differs between the parties are which corporations they favor.

I hope to be able to write more often here and to put into words my thoughts and concerns about our world today.