People ARE going back to the old ways!

A while back, I found myself in traffic behind a car with a sticker in the rear window which read, ‘People are going back to the old ways.’ The sticker was green and adorned with fetching pentagrams.
Those of you who find such sentiments attractive, will be delighted to know that you are going to get your wish. No doubt about that whatsoever, because the current austerity measures imposed by western governments; are just the beginning of the decline in life styles of abundancy, that so many take for granted.
Some current thinking suggests that there is no need for austerity measures, and that a return to true value, and sensible growth policies based on sound collateral investment will ensure economic stability. That could happen. But it won’t!
It won’t because it would mean that house prices would very quickly fall to the kind of levels that they were, before they quadrupled. And that is just unthinkable for so many people whose home is their only real asset. And even more unthinkable for politicians who would be blamed, so they are forced to massage the truth. for a while at least. House prices quadrupled because anyone, even unemployed people, could get 110% mortgages. Even street alcoholics were signed up for credit cards, giving their addresses as the salvation army hostel. Some cards, immediately allowed them to go to a cash machine and max out around two hundred pounds. The pretty girls with the clip boards in the shopping malls, who were pushing them to the cider lads, and anyone else they could, got twenty five quid for every one they signed up.
If you live in Britain, you may remember your bank, and maybe other banks you had probably never heard of before, mailing you almost daily with offers of unsecured personal loans. All of these loans were then treated as capital assets; which since they are never going to be repaid, are the last thing they are. And on the basis of these growing ‘capital assets’ further investments were made in financial service banks and companies which offered by far the best returns on any investments. On paper. So what’s happening now?
Well a week last Tuesday, a guy on Sky News, from the Halifax building society, told us that house prices in the UK, had risen by one and a half percent. Yippee! Good news for home owners, their asset is still rising. Not so rosy if you listened to the money program on radio 4 a few days later. When we were told that house prices in the UK had actually fallen by seventeen per cent. And that thirty five per cent of the people being kept in their homes by the government scheme to help mortgage defaulters, had double defaulted, and were not even meeting the commitments imposed by the scheme that is currently keeping a roof over their heads. In the same program it was predicted that at least a third of the people who are about to get the hoof from the public sector, won’t be able to meet their existing mortgage and debt commitments. The US economy, is being kept afloat by the US treasury busily printing money. Good money too, because the bond issues that are enabling the money to be printed are being bought up. The fact that it is the US federal reserve that is buying up the bonds, however; means that in reality the debt is simply doubling!
Now all that, means that when the shanty towns are bulldozed, and the impoverished are driven into the wilderness; stockaded communities of daub and wattle huts will spring up. Cave space will be at a premium too. But since; as those of you versed in history will know, religion is contingent on community surplus, it could be a while before anyone has enough free time from grubbing, delving, and crop growing, to put up a stone circle, or whatever.
This is really excellent news for those who dreamily long for a simpler way of life. Technology free, nature based, self sustaining societies. People who aren’t really serious about such idyllic scenarios however, had better be careful what they wish and pray for. Because the gracious gods, are about to deliver.
Joy and Blessings

deadagaindave wrote:
A while back, I found myself in traffic behind a car with a sticker in the rear window which read, ‘People are going back to the old ways.’ The sticker was green and adorned with fetching pentagrams.
Those of you who find such sentiments attractive, will be delighted to know that you are going to get your wish. No doubt about that whatsoever, because the current austerity measures imposed by western governments; are just the beginning of the decline in life styles of abundancy, that so many take for granted.
Some current thinking suggests that there is no need for austerity measures, and that a return to true value, and sensible growth policies based on sound collateral investment will ensure economic stability. That could happen. But it won’t!
It won’t because it would mean that house prices would very quickly fall to the kind of levels that they were, before they quadrupled. And that is just unthinkable for so many people whose home is their only real asset. And even more unthinkable for politicians who would be blamed, so they are forced to massage the truth. for a while at least. House prices quadrupled because anyone, even unemployed people, could get 110% mortgages. Even street alcoholics were signed up for credit cards, giving their addresses as the salvation army hostel. Some cards, immediately allowed them to go to a cash machine and max out around two hundred pounds. The pretty girls with the clip boards in the shopping malls, who were pushing them to the cider lads, and anyone else they could, got twenty five quid for every one they signed up.
If you live in Britain, you may remember your bank, and maybe other banks you had probably never heard of before, mailing you almost daily with offers of unsecured personal loans. All of these loans were then treated as capital assets; which since they are never going to be repaid, are the last thing they are. And on the basis of these growing ‘capital assets’ further investments were made in financial service banks and companies which offered by far the best returns on any investments. On paper. So what’s happening now?
Well a week last Tuesday, a guy on Sky News, from the Halifax building society, told us that house prices in the UK, had risen by one and a half percent. Yippee! Good news for home owners, their asset is still rising. Not so rosy if you listened to the money program on radio 4 a few days later. When we were told that house prices in the UK had actually fallen by seventeen per cent. And that thirty five per cent of the people being kept in their homes by the government scheme to help mortgage defaulters, had double defaulted, and were not even meeting the commitments imposed by the scheme that is currently keeping a roof over their heads. In the same program it was predicted that at least a third of the people who are about to get the hoof from the public sector, won’t be able to meet their existing mortgage and debt commitments. The US economy, is being kept afloat by the US treasury busily printing money. Good money too, because the bond issues that are enabling the money to be printed are being bought up. The fact that it is the US federal reserve that is buying up the bonds, however; means that in reality the debt is simply doubling!
Now all that, means that when the shanty towns are bulldozed, and the impoverished are driven into the wilderness; stockaded communities of daub and wattle huts will spring up. Cave space will be at a premium too. But since; as those of you versed in history will know, religion is contingent on community surplus, it could be a while before anyone has enough free time from grubbing, delving, and crop growing, to put up a stone circle, or whatever.
This is really excellent news for those who dreamily long for a simpler way of life. Technology free, nature based, self sustaining societies. People who aren’t really serious about such idyllic scenarios however, had better be careful what they wish and pray for. Because the gracious gods, are about to deliver.
Joy and Blessings

Don't get me started on this Dave!

...And about time too, IMO Dave. Too many woozy-headed halfwits lacking the educational faculty of old-school CSE grades have been overspending thru greed and desire - and the gods of those realms don't take prisoners when they've fed their hosts a shed-load of what they wanted. Whilst Monsanto and greedy oil companies drink their addicts dry of the poisons they've been smiling onto their 'customers' for oh so long, the old ways will return and those who've been gathering herbs, sleeping with hills and old stones in the real world for oh so many years can at least rest in the knowledge that all we have learned has indeed been of value - whether the collapse occurs or not tbh!

The really bad thing that'll emerge due to these socio-economic strictures is the usual one: "who can we blame for it all!?" A number of scapegoats are already being well-groomed it would seem - and warfare and aggression are already the outcome.

As Max Keiser so aptly cited both root cause and solution to our problem, "Hang the bankers!" Well, as they've committed high treason, that should occur.

In the meantime, leave the middle-classes to their dreamworlds of wealth and fame, adding to the debt of the world in their follies...

Interesting times may soon be upon us...

I have just read Clive Finlayson 'The Humans Who Went Extinct', OUP. 2009.

Very enlightening read on as to why & how we are here at this moment.

Pages 214/20 predict our own extinction, as a product of our own voracity, in the very near future.

Worth a read