Rhett wrote:Civilisations in the past have mostly died through either environmental problems (including disease and climate change) or being conquered by other humans.
You might find Collapse to be a very interesting read. Often ecological problems snuck up on a society. Everything went fine until some tipping point was reached. Sometimes it could have been avoided.
Thats not to say that economic mismanagement and individual phychological factors en masse can't create a depression, but surely people have learnt enough not to mismanage economies that badly?
That's part of the thinking that is responsible for the current crisis. It was thought that safeguards were put into place that would not allow a major meltdown.
However, people are pretty ingenious at getting around safeguards when there is a profit to be made.
Last i heard Obama was spending up big governmentally, and telling americans to individually keep their debt in check. Maybe that will work, i haven't got a strong opinion on that one.
Rhett wrote:Last i heard Obama was spending up big governmentally, and telling americans to individually keep their debt in check.
I haven't heard him telling individuals to keep their debt 'in check'. Quite the opposite, he is trying to get banks to loan people more money. Anyway, the average American is not capable of decreasing his debt much now, not with income going down like it is due to job, hours, and wage cutbacks, not to mention probable inflation looming. Debt will likely increase, if anything.
Rhett wrote:Last i heard Obama was spending up big governmentally, and telling americans to individually keep their debt in check.
I haven't heard him telling individuals to keep their debt 'in check'. Quite the opposite, he is trying to get banks to loan people more money. Anyway, the average American is not capable of decreasing his debt much now, not with income going down like it is due to job, hours, and wage cutbacks, not to mention probable inflation looming. Debt will likely increase, if anything.
I heard Obama's own voice saying the days of maxed-out credit cards and overbig home loans are over. Anyway. Maybe world leaders are starting to flip-flop from the uncertainty, complexity and pressure.
There's not a thing Obama can do about anyone maxing out their credit cards, so I don't know why he would say those days are over. And so far as banks offering stupid loans, well that is up to the banks to stop doing, and not the individual.
Hey, dickweed, I'M "FOREIGNER", not you, dont let me see you do that again, ok? and dont make me repeat myself, either.
F
mansman wrote:The truth of the matter is, no one can do much to change the direction of things, things will continue to go down hill until such time as the correction has run its course, specifically the USA is in transition a sort of puberty its re-creating itself (Nature is, you could say) and it'll be some time yet before things truly stablize and we see what She ends up becoming as a nation. There's very little anyone can do at this point, all this concern when this or when that happens is wasted energy, all these ugly and concerning things are inevitable and nothing to fuss about as compared to the Big Picture. You can expend all sorts of time and energy, money ettcetra for instance over-turning say the Patriot Act, but looking back at it in the New America of the future, if you get that chance, you'll just wished you'ld spent your time more wisely in view of "how-stinkin-little-it-matters-now".
Sort of like the feeling you might get thinking back after a good earthquake as you sit there munching on scraps of dinner off the dining room floor just after you spent half an hour setting a holiday table in great beautiful detail- wasted time, wasted effort, though well-meaning and ego-fortifyin.
Aint no time better than the present to stop lookin out and start lookin in, and prepare yourself FOR change rather than resist it.
Believe me, our world is changing Big Time in this century and it will be quite some time before we know what we got to work with (on a local scale).
THEN will be the time to concern yourself with the many details,
if one is so lucky.....
