Nov 29, 2011 | Economic Meltdown
In this GEAB N°59 we will analyze in detail this new phase of the crisis as well as the deepening US debt crisis. Moreover, we will begin to present, as indicated in previous GEABs, our forecasts about the future of the United States between 2012 and 2016 (5) starting with a fundamental aspect of Euro-US relations (and more generally the global system that has been in place since 1945), namely the strategic and military relations between the US and Europe. We have estimated that by 2017 the last US soldier will have left European continental soil. Finally, LEAP/E2020 will present its recommendations, dealing this month with currency, gold, capital-based pensions, the financial sector, and commodities.
Nov 25, 2011 | Society In Decline
In fact, as we face individual and national bankruptcy, the malls have become for many Americans more a place to merely wander and lust than to actually buy. Large segments of the population have lost their jobs, health insurance and homes, and are so deeply in debt that when they surrender to the advertising-bred consumerist urge, they can only window shop, their credit cards rejected if they attempt to buy much of the stuff on display.
Nov 25, 2011 | Options/ New Paradigm
The recognition that these two transformations, the outer and the inner, work in parallel and have to be carried out together is the missing piece that the sustainability movements of the Seventies never quite caught.
Nov 23, 2011 | Trauma
“Home” is a word for the feeling of being whole, of being at peace with oneself, and with the world. Home was a reason for going off to war, yet it is becoming more difficult for the warriors to find a way home again. Modern wars are not simply more lethal, they are also more confusing and soul-battering. The enemy can be anywhere, can be anyone. IED’s can erupt at any time and reverberate in the brain for years making it impossible to simply drive in traffic or enter a shopping mall. A city street or parking lot can become a “war zone” simply because of an unexpected noise or a sudden peripheral movement. The war fragments the soul and makes the peace-time fragile at best.
Nov 22, 2011 | Occupy Movement
This is a crisis of human industrial civilization. Everything is on the table and everything is collapsing, including our faith and beliefs in many venerable sacred cows. Addressing the issues of finance, politics or energy alone or separately will not solve the fundamental problem, which is that we live in a global civilization and culture predicated first and foremost on infinite growth, which is obviously no longer possible.
Nov 17, 2011 | Occupy Movement
We can certainly perceive this story as yet another in a long line of indicators of how decadent industrial civilization has become. We can rightly compare it to the scourge of child sexual abuse that has marked the Roman Catholic Church for centuries. And just as we can become obsessed with the story or turn white hot with anger, we can also choose to ignore it or simply chalk it up to the sports industrial complex. However we choose to respond, I believe it is important not to miss this debacle as a prototype of empire itself and to construct a vision of how this not-so-happy valley could be deconstructed and revolutionized in a post-industrial world.
Nov 17, 2011 | Economic Meltdown
In this GEAB N°59 we will analyze in detail this new phase of the crisis as well as the deepening US debt crisis. Moreover, we will begin to present, as indicated in previous GEABs, our forecasts about the future of the United States between 2012 and 2016 (5) starting with a fundamental aspect of Euro-US relations (and more generally the global system that has been in place since 1945), namely the strategic and military relations between the US and Europe. We have estimated that by 2017 the last US soldier will have left European continental soil. Finally, LEAP/E2020 will present its recommendations, dealing this month with currency, gold, capital-based pensions, the financial sector, and commodities.
Nov 14, 2011 | Economic Meltdown
Most will ask for solutions, and there are in fact many, far beyond the scope of this article. But the first and most important is that of dedication, and determination. This time, the time we have from the moment we wake up to the existence of the danger to the moment the danger strikes, is not a time to passively wait, a time to apathetically reflect, or a time to selfishly waste; it is a time to act. Remove your fears and frustrations from the equation and press forward, starting with the people closest to you. If you will not help them to awake to the fast approaching ground below, then who will?
Nov 10, 2011 | Economic Meltdown
Here is the single biggest question to consider about the economic, energy and environmental unwinding we are facing – what will the economy look as we go? I get more questions about this than about anything else – what should people do for work, what should they do with savings, how should they begin to prepare themselves for a lower energy world. What I find, however, is that among both the prepared and the unprepared, there’s a whole lot of people kidding themselves. There are those who imagine that there is no economy outside the world of the stock market and formal jobs – that a crash in those things is the end of the world, which means to them either that it can’t happen or they should buy a bunker and some ammo. Others have imagined themselves “free’ of all economic structures larger than the neighborhood, cheerfully providing most of their needs or bartering and never again touching cash. Both ideas fall into the realm of fantasy.
Nov 6, 2011 | Economic Meltdown
We are being throttled by the Big Lie: we’re told that if the predatory financial system implodes, we’ll all be ruined. The opposite is true: the only way to save our economy is to let the corrupt, pathological and flawed financial system implode.