The Big One Is Nigh!
“The global economy is like the St. Andreas Fault: You know that a terminal disaster is inevitable, but you keep your fingers crossed and try not to think about it,” I wrote in the print issue of Chronicles seven months ago (“Waiting for the Big One,” March 2008). “When a tremor occurs, you often fear it could be the Big One and sometimes panic,” I went on, “but then, when the dust settles, you sigh with relief to find yourself alive and the Golden State still above the ocean.” Well, the Big One is nigh; and here’s the rest of that old column in which I argue that, in the end, the meltdown may be all for the best…
The fiscal imbalances caused by President Bush’s addiction to deficit spending, by over-indebtedness, by ordinary Americans’ negligible savings, by the huge and growing foreign debt, and by the falling dollar are all still there.
For the time being, the United States is able to issue and sell large quantities of low-cost debt, denominated in dollars, through Treasury bonds. Right now, they yield less than the inflation rate, but as long as much of the world’s oil continues to be traded mainly in dollars, central banks around the world have to keep holding substantial dollar reserves. Furthermore, to the extent that the OPEC cartel raises oil prices to capture the dollar’s constantly falling purchasing power vis-à-vis the euro—rather than simply because of chronic excess demand for oil as it peaks—it imposes on Europe the burden of sharing that part of the oil price hike that follows the falling dollar. This, paradoxically, creates additional built-in support for the dollar, without which its current sickness could have been well nigh terminal. Other countries’ dollar reserves are still invested in American assets, creating an artificial capital-accounts boost for the U.S. economy.
When the “petro-euro” becomes reality, the global demand for dollars will collapse […] World trade will cease being a scheme in which Washington prints dollars and the rest of the world produces things that dollars can buy. The U.S. economy will no longer enjoy the benefits of a gigantic subsidy provided by the goods and services of countries holding their reserves in dollars—notably, by Japan, who imports four fifths of her oil from the Middle East. The fewer dollars circulating outside the United States will then translate into fewer goods and services that this country can obtain from abroad on what amounts to interest-free credit. The current-account deficit—at present, $800 billion—will no longer be financed by foreign capital, because its influx would simply cease. Global demand for shares of U.S. companies and Treasury bonds will collapse. Without foreign investors, interest rates will zoom into double digits, and the Fed will find inflationary pressures simply irresistible. […]
For too long, Americans have assumed that they could maintain effortless prosperity by investing in assets that produce no profits—dot-coms in the late 1990’s, followed by housing—and then using them to generate spending cash. Instead of helping America sober up, the Federal Reserve merely postponed the Big One by cutting rates […] More affordable liquidity, as it happens, is no cure for a credit crisis prompted by years of excess liquidity. The underlying financial malaise is still there. The Fed has saved the market, albeit temporarily, at the expense of the economy. [...]
Keeping the markets safe from jihadist mischief is necessary. It will not save them in the long term, however, because the malaise is moral and spiritual. Just like under San Andreas, the plates move past each other, producing cumulative strain. The Fault that will produce the global meltdown is the gap between the postmodern heart and mind, the impossibility of ever consuming enough goods and services to feel sated, and the unwillingness to settle the bill for those goods and services in cash. When mere servicing of the ever-growing tab leaves nothing for further consumption, however, the end will be nigh:
The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore—cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and perils; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and bodies and souls of men (Revelation 18:11–13).
If reasonable men agree that our civilization is spiritually diseased, morally rotten, and demographically moribund, then a colossal, rapidly spreading global economic crisis should be neither feared nor wished away. It may yet be our last best hope for survival.
The meltdown has to be rapid and brutal, however. Only the collapse of hoi polloi confidence in the ability of the all-pervasive State to manage relief would force blighted billions to reexamine their lives and their assumptions. By getting no relief from the collapsing State (including the European Union, the World Bank, the IMF, and Oxfam), they would rediscover self-reliance—or die. Being disillusioned by progress, they would rediscover the value and force of tradition. The ensuing struggle for diminishing resources may make them drop the neurotic becoming in favor of just being—that is, surviving. The Hobbesian mayhem in New Orleans after Katrina offered a glimpse of what is to come.
A predictable benefit for the survivors would be the return of fertility to historically normal levels. Even in darkest Tuscany or the Upper East Side, children would no longer be seen as a burden, an obstacle to self-fulfilment, and a financial liability. In the aftermath of the burst bubble, they would regain their traditional value as economic assets and the long-term substitute for collapsed welfare programs, entitlements, and pension systems. The family would reemerge as the essential social unit. Amid collapsing political structures, all ideological “propositions” would be recognized as empty abstractions. Communities linked to their native soil and bonded by kinship, memory, language, faith, and myth would be revived. And in adversity, the eyes of men would be lifted, once again, to Heaven.
We do not know when this will happen, just as we don’t know when San Francisco will turn into rubble; but when it happens—and it will happen—the American interest demands that it takes the form of a short, sharp shock, utterly unmanageable by the ruling political and economic elite that is destroying us.
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Profound article Dr. Trifkovic! Pat Buchanan has an article on his website by Ron Paul that reinforces what you've written here: Buhttp://buchanan.org/blog/2008/09/video-congressman-ron-paul-remarks-on-the-bailout-just-prior-to-the-vote/
Yahoo news says the bailout is very unpopular with the public. That's encouraging.
Thank you, sir, for hitting upon the spiritual dimension of this development. Christianity has always taught charity and frugality. There is nothing remotely Christian in the notion that "credit is the engine of the economy."
Whatever happens it will have to bring about a return to real productivity (as opposed to financial legerdemain). You can't feed children with tradition!
…”Communities linked to their native soil and bonded by kinship, memory, language, faith, and myth would be revived. And in adversity, the eyes of men would be lifted, once again, to Heaven…” well said, Dr. Trifkovic!!!
Yet, the uncertainty of when and how it will happen and the scope of calamity that might occur in the process scare me a lot. Will all go down peacefully or if it there will be civil unrest and eventually civil war?
I empathized with my parents who survived war, famine and Croatian genocide during World War II and I felt helpless and disheartened for not being able to help my family in Zemun who lived through hell during the US imposed economic sanctions and NATO bombing of Serbia. Yet, I never imagined that similar calamity could happen here.
A friend of mine wrote on the occasion of the failed bail-out: …”Its a tragedy to see this great experiment, America fail. Only once America is gone will be appreciated the great and good things that were done by this experiment. The American people would be well advised to look to the Balkan since that is how they will eventually be restructured. Broken up and reorganized by outside powers, those being the creditors of the USA….”
Mr. Van Oosbree,
Your words:
"You can't feed children with tradition!" If you are talking about "tradition" in the abstract, such as is taught or mistaught in our schools and passed through our media, then one could and probably should agree with you.
However, when one lives ones tradition. a tradition passed into one with one's mother's milk and one's father's living example, then tradition, if it is based on the understanding that the family, the household, is to be productive in the physical, fiscal, intelletual and spiritual realms, then there will be productivity in the most initimate of commonwealths, namely the family.
The post-modern family, a study in disfunctionality, is not a source of productivity but of consumption: welfare, social services interventions, credit buying, addiction to compulsions, etc.
As I follow the Christ, He leads me to understand and to fulfill the obligations which I have to my parents - honor they father and they mother - as I care for my aging mother, my father being deceased, which I have to my wife - what God hath joined togehter let not man put asunder, which I have to my children, which I have to my Church and which I have to my local community. In the tiny commonwealth of my familty, we find joy even in the hard times; we carry our weight; and although we are not the five-talent family, we are the two-talent family, making what our Lord has entrusted to us grow. My wife and I have fed our children in every way with that tradition.
Mr. van Oosbree is correct, however, insofar as bread needs to be kept on the table. Let's not lose sight of that. And if it seems like hunger in the U.S. is a ludicrous impossibility, let's not forget that Argentina, once one of the wealthiest nations in the world, was reduced to malnutrition at its lowest social strata after its last financial crisis.
But Dr. Roberts is correct: the ancient tradition gives us a guide to this material survival. But I fear for parts of my own family and their survival in this crisis. I can only pray they have not forgotten the ancient tradition in its entirety.
Chronicles pegged the war in Iraq, The Bush presidency, the immigration invasion, the current collapse of financial markets, the consequences of arrogance in the " global village", as well as the rise of Islam, Jihad and the Neo-cons. Weekly Standard National Review and First Things got all of it ass backwards. According to libertarian market theory the demand market should shift in the direction of Chronicles and away from the madding crowd. Dr. Fleming has predicted this will not happen because there is no end to America's lusts which blinds one to even the most obvious truths --- even the partial truths of clasical liberal theory and ideology. Anyone taking bets on who will be right on this issue as well ?
LEST WE FORGET, a large part of the current problem is the result of the ruling elite giving hundrds of billions of our money for free to the undeserving, fiscally irresponsible, chronically insolvent "minorities" -- coupled with greed, of course. This is from The New York Times of almost a decade ago: "Fannie Mae... has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9c0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
Note the poetically-correct euphemism, "people with less than stellar credit ratings"...
Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
Tuesday, September 30, 1999
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.
''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''
Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.
Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.
Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.
In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.
Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.
In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.
The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.
Thank you, Dr. Trifkovic, for this timely reminder of the spiritual roots of the current crisis. We certainly have no stake in the current satanic (dis)order and no reason to defend it. But will people, especially Americans as a whole, mend their own ways first or just look for some class or ethnic scapegoat to blame and punish? I can't say I'm optimistic on this point - there is a cult in this country of evasion of personal responsibility and some demagogue may well use this as an opportunity to stir up a revolution which will cause millions of casualties.
You are also right, Dr. Trifkovic, in emphasizing the importance of "the return of fertility to historically normal levels". I've preached and practiced that for a long time, but Malthusianism is deeply ingrained and too frequently defended even within these Chronicles forums. One of the deadliest long range impacts of Communist rule is the suppression of birth rates. I don't think Russia has yet achieved a positive demographic balance despite the efforts of a patriotic leadership under Putin.
My point was that people will not accept a return to traditional mores if they believe that such appeals are really a call for a return to the material misery that afflicted the great mass of people so short a time ago. There must be a true concern for the economic well-being of the common man as well as his social and demographic regeneration(I honestly do not see how you can have one without the other). This requires a productive society in which some degree of prosperity is possible for all rather than the outsourcing/financial hanky-panky monster that offers riches to the unscrupulous and slim prospects for the rest of us.
Well we may get a reprieve if they would go back and read Milton Friedman. A meaningful change can only occur when a severe shock has been allowed to occur.
Nice to see Ayn Rand's predicted result of neither seek nor grant too those that are undeserved.
And we had so called republicans in for the last 8 years.
Fantastic analogy and spot on Mr Trifkovic.
If the US acts and has an economic system like the British empire which the founding fathers never intended it willl fall like they did.
The main problrm is with these international bankers which Jefferson and others warned us about having control of the US banking system plus the fact they control both major political parties through there financing and organisations like CFR and influence in media especially the Rothschild banking dynasty.
Rothschilds are using there Guardian media group empire in the UK to attack Russia because Putin asserted control of his country rather than it being run into the ground by these IMF, WorkBank front men and there affiliated foundations like George Soros Open Society.
There will be no rebirth, or even return to normality. The future will be materially deprived post-modernism.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
Although it sounds naïve but I would insist on responsibility anyway. WHO is responsible for this enormous economic collapse and debt? How will these individuals / companies pay for these abuses of financial system? Will they ever be exposed?
Will they be prevented forever from entering the market system (jailed and their property sold on auctions)?
@9Kirt Higdon
I've noticed this trend of Malthusianism in a number of areas most noticeably in environmentalism with the likes of Al Gore http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GXYodhq7OI4
There is a number of professors promoting the idea that mankind is a virus on the Earth Gia (they consider the planet a living organism) and we have to depopulate the planet by 70%.
Plus it doesn't help the fact that US and Europe has help Muslims over Christians in the Balkans, Russia and Armenia who have a naturally high birth rate.
Even in the Mid East they took out Saddam one of the most secular regimes there and generally friendly to Christians as well as Syria which is there next target.
Plus the fact that western media and academia has promoted Freudian psychology, feminism and immigration which has undermined traditional western culture and the family unit.
The Affirmative Action lending experiment will end with "Wards of The State" returning to public housing, and "Bubba" who lives within his means returning to his Doublewide................But if Bubba is expected to tote the note for "Lakisha", who never had a down payment, had her welfare, and unemployment compensation counted as income, inorder to live in the "Big House"...............it might get ugly?............and it should.
Is Balkanization anything like secession?...........Let's do it!
A Malthusian sort of catastrophe may well be in the works, not because of higher fertility rates but because the human population is so un-adept at surviving within a pre-modern apparatus and may not be able to do so if their artificial goods disappear. If that does happen, however, there will be an even more urgent need for marriages and families to repopulate the globe and get some things working again.
By the way... and I'm sure Dr. Trifkovic noticed this, but this was actually the SECOND bit of good news this week. Google News austria elections!
"then a colossal, rapidly spreading global economic crisis should be neither feared nor wished away. It may yet be our last best hope for survival."
Dr. Trifkovic,
My question is this. What if the collapse is not rapid and colassal? What if its not the big one but only a very,large earthquake? Could the US meltdown then not serve as a transitional phase to a new global takeover of US assets: agricultural, transportation, banking, oil, real estate, etc.? Just as when the the US stock market plummets, there is someone at the bottom with cash ready to scope up the bargains, there could still be global players (Asians, Russians, Arabs) with some form of currency (paper, gold, oil) ready to step in and take over. Not unlike, after the collapse of the Soviet Union or the Confederacy in 1865. It could be a return to a more reality based economy but under a new, more openly brutal, global ownership? Any comments?
Correction to above #18:
it should be" scoop up the bargains" ,
"Communities linked to their native soil and bonded by kinship, memory, language, faith, and myth would be revived."
Aiding this movement would be the elimination of the illegal immigration problem that should occur in the scenario sketched by Dr. Trifkovic, since chronically unemployed Americans bereft of the safety net would be more than happy to do jobs that are performed now only by illegal aliens.
It is amazing to watch this spectacle unfold. The financial elite, along with their government friends, basically says this:
"Sorry for duping you into letting us waste your money. Please give us some more so we can continue."
After reading Liberal Fascism (thanks, Jonah Goldberg!), I can only conclude that this thing, and pardon the expression, is a classical fascist powergrab. I hope it will fail.
Sticking to our guns (that is, our wallets), and letting the elite fall, is the way to go over this. It'll be hugely unpopular with the elite, but democracy, after all, is a place where the voice of the ordinary citizen is supposed to be heard and respected.
On or about September 12, 2001 the top elected official of the Stupid Party announced the we had to "consume" our way out of that catastrophe. At the time I wondered if he would have been smarter to say we should save instead, but I never count on the decidei-in-chief to do the right thing. As the years went on people took on second mortgages so they could enjoy Las Vegas, and the airwaves were awash in advertising telling the listeners to be financially irresponsible. Now in the wake of a collapsing Ponzi scheme, Bush says it's important that banks begin lending again -- which I take to mean that we have to go out and borrow some more so the debt slavery can continue.
This is like watching junkies in denial; both sad and pathetic.
The good news is that the Amish have doubled their population in 23 years. They want no part in our paper economy, take care of each other on a local level, and are familiar with diligence.
The scripture reference is Proverbs 22:7
and I meant Decider-inChief.
"On or about September 12, 2001 the top elected official of the Stupid Party announced the we had to “consume” our way out of that catastrophe. At the time I wondered if he would have been smarter to say we should save instead, but I never count on the decidei-in-chief to do the right thing."
No, George W. Bush may not be intelligent, but he said exactly what he meant that day. We have been cannibalising ourselves for a number of years, and I think it is exactly what they wanted.
That's really hysterical, Dr. Trifkovic. Yeah, boy, that return to the jungle is really going to be a blessed event, eh?
What about the consideration that God is truly gracious and that a return to sanity might come about not catastrophically, but with patience and with time?
Too easy to take verses from the Bible (having to do with 1st century Rome) as if they apply and address America. Why, this is what neoconservative Zionist Christians do to make their case!
I'm not saying that your vision isn't accurate. I am saying that I and most people (who are living moral lives and desperately trying to do the right thing) don't look forward to it with joy, as it appears you do.
Re: # 20
I would say that outsourcing of any kind of job from the USA and Canada to any part of the world should be forbidden and punishable by low!
This has actually happened before and the ascendancy of FDR was not what I would call a step back to a better,traditional society.This is also emphatically an American crisis,not a global crisis.I strongly doubt anything good for us comes out of this.I am not nostalgic for a return to hookworm and cholera and I expect my fellow increasingly Third World Americans will turn to a new FDR "of color"....Obama.The only good news:the collapse of America liberates indigenous patriots in Europe to rise to power and ally with liberated Russia.TJF and other Chronicle writers can safely emigrate to Europe and keep the fire lit like a post-1453 Byzantine scholar.I plan on digging my own grave here,but it will be comforting to know you guys made it out.
Let me share with you something about Dr. Trifkovic.
Several years ago at a Chronicles conference in New Orleans, he said essentially the same thing as in today's essay.
At the end of his New Orleans presentation Justin Raimondo got up and stated in somewhat semi-shocked tones: "Isn't this a rather drastic remedy?"
Trifkovic's instant response: "Sometimes you have to be cruel to be knd!" What a great rejoinder.
When I related his response to my Moslem colleague he informed me that this was from Shakespeare!
@27Leo
No offence but the average American is pretty sheep like echoing the views they see on TV.
The were more than willing to go to war with Iraq but could not even point out on the map were Iraq is.
Most a willing to go to war with Iran and 99.9% of Americans (although its the same with Europeans) want to go to war against Russia supporting a nuclear first strike holocaust against Russia.
Most unquestionably support the governments story that 9/11 was done by 19 hijackers with box cutters with amateur flight piloting skills.
Financed and orchestrated by a man in a cave with kidney problems although the FBI ten most wanted website does not charge him with 9/11 even though the official indictment for 9/11 charges his brother Carlyle Groups Abdullah Bin Laden financing the terrorist stay in the US through the charity front the Benevolence fund.
Predicting is hard - especially the future.
I have no doubt that a life-altering Depression can be expected to have some positive effects. I do wonder what the net/net will be, though.
In this interview ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1263677258215075609&q=Aaron+Russo+Nick+Rockefeller&hl=en ) of Aaron Russo, he talks about his friend Nick Rockefeller's predictions of a War on Terror (following an unspecified "event"), with Americans searching in caves in Afghanistan for Osama Bin Laden, and also invading Iraq. Rockefeller basically communicated that it's a sham; and if it's not, just how did Rockefeller know about this 11 months beforehand? Did God tell him? Is he psychic? I don't think so.
Rockefeller told him that the woman's liberation movement was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to a) be able to tax a women's labor and 2) "now we get the kids in school at an early age, we can indoctrinate the kids how to think, it breaks up their family, the kids start looking at the state as the family, as the schools, as the officials as their family, not as the parents teaching them." (Most people here probably already know that Gloria Steinem now admits that the CIA funded Ms. Magazine.)
So, what does this have to do with an economic collapse? Well, according to the interview, some elite class of which Rockefeller is a member wants to micro-chip the entire population. I consider that pretty degrading, but severe economic distress causes people to do all sorts of things that they would otherwise not consider. (I remember an old British friend, a WWII vet, telling me that, immediately after the war, "you could get a girl for a bar of chocolate" in Greece.) If you're a puppeteer of society, engineering a financial collapse could be seen as a clever way to both consolidate power and money in your hands, while at the same time making the population amenable to an electronic branding, like a herd of animals that's been herded into a narrow, gated fence.
OK, that sounds a little fantastic, and I hope it's completely wrong. But if Rockefeller et.al. really are of such a mindset....
Note that Rockefeller's Chase bank seems to be doing just fine in these chaotic times. This, in spite of the fact that a caller to a radio show I was listening to last night, and who seemed to be familiar with the industry, said that Chase was known for giving mortgages to individuals who didn't even have jobs! Question: How, then, is Chase doing so well, while other financial companies (who also had their own armies of MBA's) were taken in by AAA rated trash?
I don't know the answer to this, but I'm suspicious. In any event, don't be surprised if you see a complete consolidation of banking in the US and other finance industries, either into a single private bank, like Chase. Or else everything is 'nationalized', but the national uber-bank is really as much a part of the Federal government as the Federal Reserve. I.e., a privately owned bank, which only has the appearance of a national bank.
N.B.: This inteview was also fascinating because is showed that Rockefeller and his clique did not reveal their agenda to other members of the Council on Foreign Relations, who presumed that they are doing something noble. In fact, they're being used.
@24 ngpm
Some folks I know were saying over 2 years ago that an economic collapse would bring an end to unlimited immigration -- something the politicians were afraid to touch lest they be branded "racists." Several factors are at play here, which include unbridled immigration, deficit spending, exported jobs because of capital following cheap labor, and flat-out swindling on Wall Street. Think of what's happening as God's terrible swift sword.
We really deserve what's happening, and the Christians among us should rejoice at the cleansing judgement that is taking place. This is in fact a great time to open a business manufacturing in a small town. I don't think I need to repeat the benefits on this page because I've mentioned it on others in this Blog.
@31: I cannot argue with your post except to ask, what nice small town remains in America that has not been thoroughly gentrified and invaded by tourists? Dania Beach and Hollywood, Florida, perhaps, since the Québécois tourists are so ubiquitous as to have become a part of the local culture, but if they can no longer winter down there...
Yes, we deserve it, but I have personal reasons for feeling anxiety about what is happening, related closely to family issues. Right now I'm doing my best to flee the country.
James,no offense taken;I think we're in agreement.I doubt there is an America left not ready for the new multicultural FDR.America's authoritarian regime will be worse for us than the authoritarian but patriotic(perhaps )regimes of Europe and Russia.I find nothing good will come of this crisis for "folks like you and me".Emigration not being an option for me,I'll just scramble with the wisdom of a serpent and pray for a good death.
#21 GLA: The risk is real, indeed. It is the exact opposite of developing resistance to poisons and germs (little-by-little immunizes you, a lot at once kills you). In this case, a lot at once -- a "Big One" -- MAY save you, but a creeping, long-drawn-out crisis is certain to kill you in the manner you describe.
The leading Republican on the Senate Banking Committee systematically shredded the $700-billion financial industry bailout bill in a speech delivered on the Senate floor last night shortly before the bill passed by a 75-24 vote....
..But Richard Shelby( R.-Ala), who has served in Congress since 1978, and who was chairman of the Banking Committee when the Republicans controlled the Senate, delivered a brief history of why he believes Congress itself caused the current financial crisis and why the action Congress took last night is unlikely to solve it.
...“To the extent other options exist, however, I believe we failed the American people by not examining them. And we are doing something in haste,” he said. “Many around here find comfort in the notion that something is better than nothing. I believe that is a false choice. The choice we faced was between pursuing an informed response, or panic. I think we chose panic."
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=36716
This financial crisis is about as accidental as the manufacturing of space ships.
When you find out that the people in the industry, termed these loans as liar loans ( stated income loans ) Ninja loans (Light documentation loans) basically no job, no assets.
If you come to the conclusion that these loans would never be re payed, from the onset. Then this crisis is a calculated consequence .
Why?, I am sure we are going to find out in the not so far future.
A remark from one of our cousins across the pond:
"The real truth is that Wall Street and the City of London are not unfortunate economic accidents in need of bailing out, but giant crime scenes in need of relentless investigation, prosecution and exemplary prison sentences for those whose reckless greed has set in train a financial disaster that will hurt millions of hard-working people and their families."
In comes the UN, IMF and World Bank to bail out the FED......
#13 Michael B, nice Ayn Rand reference! how fitting!
Dr. Trifkovic, how long til we(US) become beggers to join with the EU or whatever conglomeration they invent under the NWO, like Serbia getting bankrupted and on their hands and knees to kiss up to dear EU?
@ 41 M K
I thought Ayn "the Cougar" Rand plagiarized Garet Garrett, especially his book called "The Driver."
FOR THE RECORD
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/03/house.bailout/index.html
Senate bailout bill
The Senate bill passed Wednesday night included measures that:
Allow Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to buy up to $700 billion in bad mortgage-related securities and other bad assets.
Allow the Treasury Department to modify mortgage terms to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.
Permit the government to receive equity in companies it helps so taxpayers get a share of any future profits.
Restrict executive pay for companies aided by the program.
Create an independent oversight board to oversee the Treasury Department program.
Source: Senate Banking Committee
"....Because tax bills must originate in the House, the Senate attached the rescue plan to a bill that deals with renewable energy tax incentives. This allowed the Senate to vote before the House to approve a bailout bill. "
I predict, Sir, that one day, many generations will call you blessed.
Thank you for your many excellent articles and books. You speak the truth and as much as no one wants to hear it, it is the Truth nonetheless. Wishing otherwise will never make it so.
God bless you.
Though I may not always agree with the politics and views of Chronicles, I find myself ever drawn to its articles. Return to elementary roots may indeed be a blessing, which is why though we live in London and I work in finance, quite comfortably, I have an eye on the storm, and a sturdy house in Vojvodina with land to grow our own feast, if need be. If it hits the proverbial fan, Serbia, with its ample agriculture, and a tradition of facing adversity with aplomb and inat, will be the best place to be.
The economic system of special-interest, pork barrel, graft, favoritism and theft, imposed on the nation - in contradiction to the wisdom of the Founders and the constitution - by the force of arms and the dictatorship of Honest Abe, is imploding, collapsing under the very weight of the corruption and greed inherit to it. Good riddance!
@46MAP
It was Abe Lincolns post war economic policy that saw the US rapid industrial growth.
That was a model for Germany’s industrial revolution.
It was Woodrow Wilson who sign the Federal Reserve into law and who approved the treaty of Versailles destroying Germany.
Honest Abe, a follower of Hamilton and the Whigs, imposed their economic agenda on the nation: an all powerful central state that would work to the benefit of the well-connected few. Industrial growth would of course follow, since the citizen and taxpayer were subsidizing this growth. The entire arrangement is in conflict with what was established and agreed to at the constitutional convention. Hamilton’s ideas were rejected at the convention, but lived on through the Federalist, Whig, and Republican parties. The platform could gain no real traction and caused the demise of the Whigs. The system was put in place by the war and the dictatorship of Abe, and not through any mutual consent. Read DiLorenzo’s book, “The Real Lincoln’. Or check out: http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo151.html
$700 Billion is small potatoes, compared to standing liquid assets of over $100 TRILLION. These assets are described in the legally required, but hidden from the public, Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFR's). The CAFR's are, as their discover Walter Burien says, "the biggest game in town".
Excellent intro is here: http://cafr1.com/AZBC42801.html
Find a CAFR for your state here: http://cafr1.com/STATES/
Re: "If reasonable men agree that our civilization is spiritually diseased, morally rotten, and demographically moribund, then a colossal, rapidly spreading global economic crisis should be neither feared nor wished away. It may yet be our last best hope for survival."
I like to think I'm reasonable, and certainly our civilization is as you describe. However, I'm not sure that previous generations were any less spiritually diseased or morally rotten. Just for example, only 50 years ago many Americans treated rape as a joke or blamed the victim, smoked unreservedly [I remember as a child choking in a doctor's waiting room filled with smoke, while my mom pulled her sweater up over her mouth as her eyes were tearing], drunk-drivers were treated as a nuisance, and so on. In the 60s many people not merely excused adultery but even promoted it. Segregation? I feel abortion is our age's greatest sin, but how many abortions were committed then, even though then it was more openly condemned and even criminalized?
Now we have state promotion of sodomy; then people openly boasted of bashing fags [I remember a guy coming into a restaurant saying he needed a drink after him and his buddies "worked up a good sweat beating the crap out of this queer" they saw in the park.]
I just mean that we shuffle our sins around.
I get very nostalgic when I see how men and women interact in old movies, but movies aren't exactly reality. We all have to make the best of the times we live in.
I despair when I hear people denigrate the values of people who are not around to defend themselves anymore, and denigrate them according to "our" contemporary values, without context; but people of our own generations have their own good qualities too.
Besides that, I can't agree with: "a colossal, rapidly spreading global economic crisis should be neither feared nor wished away."
First of all I'd prefer people to convert than be punished.
Secondly, there's no guarantee that such a "purging" would lead to a world any more spiritually or morally healthy than the one we live in now. How about praying things get better, rather than hoping for the worst?
Re my comment: "I remember a guy coming into a restaurant saying he needed a drink after him and his buddies "worked up a good sweat beating the crap out of this queer" they saw in the park."
I should have pointed out that this was in a suburban fast food joint filled with teens and families, not Hell's Kitchen at 3 am. And the manager and some customers slapped the guy on the back for all his "great work".
It may be even more evil to promote sodomy to grade 5-ers as "normal", but let's not pretend that people in the best were any better than we are today.
This echoes what Ron Paul has been stating for 30 years. Hopefully more people will awake from their sleep.