This Country Defaulted Long Ago, By James Quinn

This Country Defaulted Long Ago, By James Quinn

“There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises

To Touch A Future Sky: Raising Children In Changing Times, By Dianne Monroe

To Touch A Future Sky: Raising Children In Changing Times, By Dianne Monroe

“How can we nurture and raise children so they can grow into adults who are able to survive, thrive and contribute to new ways of being with the Earth and each other? ” This how I pose this question to myself as I look into the hopeful eyes of the children whose lives I have the opportunity to touch through my work. It is perhaps this sense of contributing to new ways of being with the Earth and each other that will make it possible for the youth of today to survive and thrive in a challenging and rapidly changing world.

Book Review: "The End of Growth", By Richard Heinberg, Reviewed By Frank Kaminski

Book Review: "The End of Growth", By Richard Heinberg, Reviewed By Frank Kaminski

While “experts” assure us that the economy is slowly emerging from recession, a growing camp of well-informed dissenters thinks not. The scant evidence of recovery, insists this group, is not an anomaly but the sign of a profound sea change. The End of Growth, one book unequivocally calls it, next to a cover image of a burst balloon and a pin. The book’s author, Richard Heinberg, makes his case by far the most eloquently and comprehensively—and though it may be a decidedly unwelcome one for those now struggling, that doesn’t detract from its validity.

Sacred Economics, Chapter 4, Part 5, By Charles Eisenstein

Sacred Economics, Chapter 4, Part 5, By Charles Eisenstein

We have lived in an Age of Separation. One by one, our bonds to community, nature, and place have dissolved, marooning us in an alien world. The loss of these bonds is more than a reduction of our wealth, it is a reduction of our very being. The impoverishment we feel, cut off from community and cut off from nature, is an impoverishment of our souls. That is because, contrary to the assumptions of economics, biology, political philosophy, psychology, and institutional religion, we are not in essence separate beings having relationships. We are relationship.

You Can't Kill A Planet And Live On It Too: An Interview With Derrick Jensen By Frank Joseph Smecker

You Can't Kill A Planet And Live On It Too: An Interview With Derrick Jensen By Frank Joseph Smecker

Let’s expose the structure of violence that keeps the world economy running. With an entire planet being slaughtered before our eyes, it’s terrifying to watch the very culture responsible for this – the culture of industrial civilization, fueled by a finite source of fossil fuels, primarily a dwindling supply of oil – thrust forward wantonly to fuel its insatiable appetite for “growth.”

Sacred Economics, Chapter 3, By Charles Eisenstein

Sacred Economics, Chapter 3, By Charles Eisenstein

Money is woven into our minds, our perceptions, our identities. That is why, when a crisis of money strikes, it seems that the fabric of reality is unraveling, too—that the very world is falling apart. Yet this is also cause for great optimism, because money is a social construction that we have the power to change. What new kinds of perceptions, and what new kinds of collective actions, would accompany a new kind of money? – The fourth installment from Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition.

The Relationship Between Peak Oil and Peak Debt, Part 2, By Gail Tverberg

The Relationship Between Peak Oil and Peak Debt, Part 2, By Gail Tverberg

With peak oil, what is likely to happen is that the default rate on existing debt will rise, so many people who own bonds (or other debt instruments) will discover that they are worth less than they thought, perhaps nothing. And banks and insurance companies and pension plans will discover that quite a few of their assets aren’t what they thought–they will never be repaid with interest.

The Relationship Between Peak Oil and Peak Debt, Part 1, By Gail Tverberg

The Relationship Between Peak Oil and Peak Debt, Part 1, By Gail Tverberg

Peak oil tends to cause peak debt. Some will argue with me about this, because they believe it is possible to decouple economic growth from energy growth, and in particular oil growth. As far as I am concerned, though, this decoupling is simply an unproven hypothesis–the normal connection is that a flattening or decline in energy supply causes a slowdown or actual decline in economic growth, and this slowdown causes a shift from an increase in the amount of debt, to a decrease in the amount of debt, as it did for US non-governmental loans in 2009 and 2010