One of the conclusions that I try to coax, lead, and/or nudge people towards is acceptance of the fact that the economy can't be fixed.
chris martenson
a couple years back when everything really started going to shit and the red and blue teams and their respective cheerleaders were casting hysterical blame back and forth at one another whilst simultaneously assuring us, the scared sheep, they they and they alone knew how to fix it, i looked around for a few voices of reason who could tell me what was really happening.
while i found several--peter schiff and gerald celente among them--chris martenson turned out to be the guy i was looking for. he's not an ideologue; rather, he's a scientist, and taking his "crash course" was not only among the most productive and eye-opening afternoons i've ever spent, it's also one of the reasons i drink [try it--it's free, it's broken down into easy, doable doses, and i promise once you're done, you won't ever look at the world the same way again].
since then, i've come to depend on his analysis--he strips away all the bullshit like no one else. a case in point would be the recent post from which the above quote was taken. read it here--it won't take long, and in a few paragraphs, and after looking at a couple simple charts, you'll understand for yourself what the paul krugmans of the world simply refuse to see, let alone acknowledge.
it really just comes down to math, folks--it's that simple. the world as we know it is about to change forever, and the sooner you accept that fact, the more time you'll have to prepare for what's coming.
cheerfully submitted,
mkf
3 comments:
I noticed that Chris Martenson has a Ph.D. -- in toxicology. He says that he learned that academia did not place an emphasis on teaching only after he was somehow pretty much far along into his academic training. I knew that the first day I was in college and was in a room with 500 other freshman to take an intro course.
He now homeschools his kids and raises chickens in rural Massachusetts. His web site does not say whether he has a gun. I'm betting he has lots of them. And 2 or 3 years worth of dried food and canned goods in the bomb shelter. Sounds like he should move to Montana where all the other survivalists are.
Perhaps if he said that God was going to bring about the rapture and the second coming, his views would fit more with the other folks I know like him.
Mr. Martenson talks a lot about debt. He uses GDP ratios a lot to debt, but he does not ever mention assets. The United Sates has $131 trillion in financial assets. That is a pretty impressive number. It dwarfs the debt that is held -- both public and private.
He is correct about one thing: There is a huge bulge in liabilities for pensions and retirements across the Western world. It is most pronounced in Japan and Italy and a few other countries. By comparison, the United States Social Security's liability problems are modest.
But, these huge liabilities will require a reduction in payments to retirees and raising the retirement age throughout the industrialized world.
But Martenson is predicting the collapse of the world economy. He is saying that we will either have to pay for things in gold or have it ourselves because we are going back to a barter economy.
Why isn't Martenson saying this will lead to a surge in productivity as we used the most skilled and knowledgeable workers for years beyond what we do now?
I could go on and on about how he is just wrong. I doubt that Guttermorality will listen to me (and no one else will either given the readership of the comments section of this blog).
But, here is the easiest way to cut to the chase: On January 1, 2015, if the world economy has not come to an end, are we going to be OK then?
As a "scientist," Martenson should take empirical data seriously and if he is making a prediction and it empirically does not happen, then his theory is wrong.
I should also note that "Dr. Laura" has a Ph.D. too. But hers is in biology or something like that -- not psychology.
Guttermorality has a way of picking people who have pseudo-credentials.
noblesavage: america has changed more radically during the last ten years than during all the previous decades of my life put together.
what i've found most fascinating about the process is the way that, faced with the same set of events, people with different temperaments and biases interpret them so differently.
the majority of the people i know and see around me are like you--they see our current circumstances as a bump in the road that we'll recover from in time, if only the other side (i.e., the ones who caused the mess in the first place) will get out of the way and let their side fix things.
me? my eyes have been opened to a very different reality over the course of this last decade. and, extrapolating two or three moves ahead, i see a very different future than you do--i.e., that of yet one more failed empire whose chickens have finally come home to roost.
to me, chris martenson is an eminently reasonable person; to you, he's a borderline branch davidian.
all i can say is, perhaps you should go out and buy newt gingrich's new book on american exceptionalism--apparently you and he have similar views on the subject.
That hurt.
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