The Economy: "A Warning As Clear As It Gets"

"...This letter is NOT about political beliefs. The purpose of this letter is to act as a starting point to discuss how we, as a community, might survive a systemic economic collapse. A wise person once said, “…hope for the best, prepare for the worst…”. We owe it to our children to heed that call. The years to come are, in the very least, going to be hard. Eleven years of unregulated derivatives trading has left us with a staggering Quadrillion dollars in global debt. The global import-export economy is grinding to a halt. Food production on a mass scale is collapsing. The entire system of Fractional Reserve Banking is disappearing under the weight of hundreds of trillions of dollars of toxic assets. And whether or not you think I exaggerate should be irrelevant. What should matter is that this crisis could very well affect you and me in ways we cannot foresee. And the only way to prepare for that possibility is to prepare for that possibility! We need to come together and begin a dialog as to how we could prepare for the worst. When I worked as a teacher in California, the entire school in which I worked spent weeks preparing for the outside chance that we would be struck by a major earthquake. We practiced first aid, fire containment, water decontamination, even how we would deal with the dead and dying. It was grim and felt remote, but we were prepared. Today we must recognize that there is a possibility that the world as we have come to know it will change.

This is what is coming. There can be little doubt. The numbers simply do not lie. Once the Obama honeymoon has ended, and once it becomes clear that a one trillion dollar stimulus plan is only, in reality, adding another one trillion dollars to our national pool of debt and not in fact stimulating economic growth and development, and once it becomes clear that our current abuse of monetary policy and addiction to Ponzi economics has thrust us into a second Great Depression, than discussions about differentiated learning and critical thinking skills are going to seem rather absurd. We are entering a moment in time in which conducting "business as usual" is going to be financially impossible, and to not plan ahead would be criminal.

Should a systemic economic collapse occur, it is difficult to know exactly how this collapse would affect our everyday lives and interactions.This economic crisis is unlike any we have faced before. Every segment of our society will be impacted as unemployment rates skyrocket, oil and other fossil fuels become increasingly scarce, banks by the hundreds eventually crumble under the weight of 500 trillion dollars in toxic derivatives-based assets, more and more nations follow Ecuador’s lead and default on their loans, international shipping grinds to a halt, etc. And please understand that these are not the prognostications of an overly-opinionated "gloomy Gus". These eventualities are quite easy to predict. The numbers, unlike some of our political leaders, do not lie.”

- Dan W, http://ashizashiz.blogspot.com/