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Tag Archive | "capitalism"

Partial understanding on planet Easter Island

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

117 Comments

The recent S&P downgrade of U.S. debt is yet another example of a circus sideshow in a nation filled with clowns sleepwalking off a cliff. Ben Bernanke, the master of ceremonies in the most ridiculous show on Earth, has come up with a new scheme to print money, hence plunge a financially bankrupt nation further [...]

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Demise of the dollar

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

109 Comments

The U.S. dollar continues its journey from Brobdingnagian to Lilliputian stature, and the latest trade report is a prelude to the dollar as microbe. The Prime Mover in this case is King Ben, who has the helicopter on track for a one-way trip to Zimbabwe with every American along for the ride. Death of the [...]

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Extinction event?

Monday, February 7, 2011

196 Comments

The Arctic is defrosting as warm Atlantic waters rush through the Fram Strait instead of skirting the southern coast of Greenland. This is an important event, regardless of the deafening silence exhibited by the mainstream media. How important? First consider the background, from the perspective of long-time climate scientist James Hansen and colleague Makiko Sato, [...]

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Third time’s a charm?

Saturday, January 22, 2011

111 Comments

Kurt Vonnegut often described World Wars I and II as western civilization’s first and second attempts, respectively, to commit suicide. He hinted at peak oil as our third attempt in his memoir, Man Without a Country, which was published shortly before his death. After burying our collective heads in the sand for two years, peak [...]

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Praying for peace, promoting war

Thursday, December 23, 2010

85 Comments

A Christmas card from one of the in-laws was unintentionally soaked in irony. I’ll skip the rant about celebrating Christ and mass, the two components of Christ’s mass (i.e., Christmas) in which I don’t believe, much less celebrate. And, too, I”ll forgo the equally tempting rant about a religious holiday that promotes conspicuous consumption in [...]

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Grifter nation

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

74 Comments

Throughout the blogosphere, pundits are predicting the foreclosure fiasco will be the tipping point. Instead of death by a thousand cuts, this spurting wound will bring the industrial economy to its overdue close, they say. Those of us who care about the living planet should be so lucky. All twelve of us. Let’s ignore the [...]

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Balloon seeks pin

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

47 Comments

I speak openly about myriad ongoing collapses, regardless how others respond. Among the costs: Rumors of my insanity have spread beyond the institution I departed and throughout the nation’s hallowed halls. Apparently I’ve contracted a rare disease, which explains the insanity. I can only hope (i.e., wish) it’s not fatal. Further evidence I’ve lost my [...]

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A review before the exam

Monday, August 16, 2010

104 Comments

Actually, this review is too late for the many people who have already endured economic collapse. As any of those folks can tell the rest of us, we do not want to receive the lesson after the exam. I’ve written all this before, but I have not recently provided a concise summary. This essay provides [...]

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Teetering

Thursday, June 10, 2010

29 Comments

The industrial economy, that is. On the brink, yet again. The real economy — not the born-again exuberance in the world’s stock markets — is stalling as the effects of easy money wear off. Indeed, investor fund flows haven’t been this bad since Lehmann Brothers collapsed in the autumn of 2008. The IMF says risks [...]

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Surveying the field and charting a course

Friday, April 16, 2010

65 Comments

It’s all the rage to talk about a double-dip in the industrial economy. That would be an economic trend in the shape of a W. I think an M is far more likely. The assumption of never-ending growth underlies all neoclassical economic assessments, but I think that assumption is about to break up on the [...]

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