Mind the GAAP:
2008 was a non-event compared to what's coming...
The future belongs to those who are brave enough to acknowledge that the insolvent corporate status quo is ending. Today's cowards hiding behind incessant lies will not be the leaders going forward. Faking it is already a full time job, exacting a heavy toll on the Soylent Idiocracy. Anyone who doesn't see the "reset" coming ahead of time, will not be in position to survive much less lead. Leadership for the way forward will only emerge after the collapse...
The root cause of the clusterfuck is that the consumption-oriented lifestyle is neither sustainable nor scalable across 7 billion people. Third grade math proves that truth. Suffice to say, it's hard to solve a problem when the root cause has yet to be widely acknowledged. If one were to design an effective economy, it wouldn't be the one that has the best looking cars and biggest McMansions, it would be the one that was most resilient and longest lasting - able to be improved in longevity and passed down from generation to generation.
Unfortunately what we have here in today's global economy is the exact opposite. It's a lurching, swaying clusterfuck requiring ongoing debt accumulation and constant intervention. A latent catastrophe edging ever closer to total meltdown.
The Best Economy Money Can Borrow
Today's current generation(s) inherited arguably the best economy in world history - speaking for the developed world. Not surprisingly however, the developing nations wanted a seat at the big table and were determined to bootstrap their way up the economic ladder. That of course, led to the basic conundrum at the root of globalization i.e. that there are not enough resources to allow 7 billion people to enjoy a consumption-oriented lifestyle. This situation I am describing is nothing new and it's well documented on this blog and many others; however, the point I would make is that today's global economic thought dealers inherited the best economy in world history and managed to turn it into a total clusterfuck in constant need of intervention. How did that happen? And the answer of course, is that they didn't build the economy such as it was, in the first place. Instead, they inherited the global economy and had no fucking clue as to how to make it better. Quite the contrary, it was evident decades ago, back in the 1970s that the developed world's economies were getting worse; therefore, in absence of any better ideas they leveraged it up 10 fold, by creating what can only be described as today's globalized Ponzi Scheme. In other words, the groupthink dunced economic leaders of our time realized early on that globalization was a zero sum game, hence a wealth-transfer based Ponzi scheme wherein the poorest people on the planet subsidize the wealthiest.
Indentured Servitude
I have no idea what it's like to be a factory wage slave at the bottom of this pyramid. It can only be some sort of indescribable never-ending pointless hell on earth. That said, ironically and pathetically, this "system" has not just turned the people at the bottom of the pyramid into slaves, it has turned the overwhelming number of people throughout the rest of the pyramid into slaves as well. What I mean, is that anyone and everyone who owes significant amounts of money and otherwise is bought in to the consumption-oriented fantasy - bigger house, better car etc., is an indentured servant to the ponzi economic model. They have no choice, no degree of economic freedom, no ability to pause their work life etc. Just an overwhelming need to keep ploughing ahead like some sort of wage slave Clydesdale wearing blinders on the rat race to nowhere. Today's buffoonish thought dealers speak as if the debt crisis was a one-time event. It was not a one time event in the least, it was an ongoing and escalating event. Debt now is the economy. First it was private debt, now it's public debt. Once the outsourcing machine went into high gear, debt accumulation was mandatory to replace lost GDP. When debt accumulation goes away, so will a large chunk of the economy and attendant unsustainable lifestyle.
"Collapse As Usual"
As I have said too many times before, it's the lies necessitated to keep this shit show working, that are almost the most egregious aspect of this pseudo-reality. Every piece of news or information is contaminated with the phony belief that this global ponzi scheme is indefinitely sustainable. That lie alone - i.e. the biggest one in world history - is enough to render almost all current debate and dialog down to nothing more than a fucking circus side show. And yet, it's the very lie that everything rests upon, therefore (almost) everyone at large just goes along with the program. Everyone is scared to death to face the reality that none of this is actually real or sustainable.
The Most Effective Economy: Sustainable and Resilient
In a nutshell the criteria for what constitutes a "good" economy will be the one that lasts the longest. It won't benefit the few at the expense of the many, resulting in inevitable revolution. It won't stifle personal freedoms until the day that it explodes in rage. It won't turn its citizens into indentured servants such that they become mindless denatured robots the likes of which were envisioned by Huxley and Orwell. It will be resilient and fault tolerant and able to be improved in longevity before it's passed on to the next generation. And suffice to say, it won't attempt to be perfect. Perfect being the enemy of the good. Therefore, it won't solve every problem or attempt to rectify every social dilemma. In other words, it's the exact opposite of what we think we have now. How we get there, from here, will be the interesting part, but the journey won't start until all of the debt gets liquidated.
