In concept, debt is an obligation to pay. When too much debt piles up, servicing the debt absorbs economic productivity. There is no growth, so the system begins grinding to a halt. Nobody in their right mind can imagine all that debt actually being paid, so at some point either assets will be seized or the debt holders get nothing. Either way, the obligation to pay disappears. But when it goes, much notional and real wealth is lost and there is nothing left to use for continuing economic activity. It represents closing the gap between real assets and a highly inflated notional wealth. The whole thing freezes assets until the legal ownership changes to hands with no obligations.
Economic activity requires stuff moving — money, products, services and assets. Provisions of law and custom can hinder the process of dissolving debt, but our current debt levels worldwide are unsustainable. If the system remains unchanged, it will grind to a halt as productivity withers and stuff stops moving. It is entirely possible to restart the economy, but it comes at the price of offending some folks whose entire store of wealth is only notional. They aren’t physically present to exercise control over any real assets. In our current system, those folks confine the rest of the world under an agreed system that crosses all national boundaries. You can’t use your farm field because someone in another country won’t allow it. Fixing this requires pulling the authority to use assets back down to a lower level, closer to the folk who live near the assets. Those with the actual power to enforce will have to stop enforcing the will of the bankers and financiers. The people who can actually touch the assets need permission to engage in productive activity without external interference from folks who really have no concern for what’s going on.
It makes not a damned bit of difference who’s fault it is that we got into this mess. Assessing blame is pointless. The only way to restore economic activity is to rob the international bankers and financiers. That means stocks and bonds become just paper without legal power on the ground to enforce their meaning. You can be sure that will happen, at least to some degree, over the next few years. There is nothing left to offer these bankers and financiers that they will accept in exchange for freeing up the assets to produce. It’s all against their own best interest; they are prisoners in their own system. And it really won’t much matter who makes the decision to seize the idle assets and put them back to work while refusing to service any notional debts. It will happen sooner or later.
It is virtually inevitable that this will bring conflict. However, the nature of the conflict depends on whether the bankers can persuade rulers with armies to represent their interests, typically to invade countries where their assets lie. In other words, the bankers and financiers must withdraw into some castle somewhere and recover a national identity, by which they will automatically surrender some of their positions in other countries. There simply is no truly international military force, though the bankers and financiers strove mightily to construct one. They missed the timing simply because it wasn’t possible to make it happen in the first place. The globalist drive has crashed into reality, and all that’s left is nationalism versus imperialism. Everything else will drift off into mere mythology.
Meanwhile, debt that is held entirely within a single political boundary becomes a political football. Somebody has to lose. That’s because somebody else will gain a political foothold and work the system in their favor. Right now is a good time to hold real economic assets; it’s a bad time to hold notional wealth on paper. A total bloodbath is unlikely because the mass of national population simply isn’t in the mood for that here in the US. Economic activity never totally dies because there is no power to stop it; people will trade with our without legal permit. So it works better to take the risks of pissing off some allies in other countries and making new ones to come up with a new set of arrangements to allow the economic activity to recover legally. It means ditching any pretense of “international law” regarding trade and debt under the old regime and starting over.
It also means a good bit of turmoil in creating a different system internally. Of necessity, the globalists will be classed as traitors to the nation’s interest. Over the decades of jockeying for political power, the globalists have hijacked the entire progressive political agenda, so this means liberals are going to be disenfranchised, marginalized and driven into some kind of political exile. Meanwhile, actual liberalism as policy (academically defined) isn’t going to leave the system. It will remain a confused mess for a lot of people who try to apply philosophical purity, as they imagine it, to what actually happens. If there is going to be a recovery of economic activity, it will be messy in that sense, or it won’t happen at all.
It could fail. But I assure you I’m hardly the only person who sees things this way. It’s all there, published in easy reach if you want to see it. All I’m doing here is echoing the thoughts of people far smarter than I am about such things. In order to make things work, it will require adulterating a lot of political and economic orthodoxy and ideals, because they were never connected with reality in the first place. The folks on the ground with a will to engage in economic activity will have to believe that the system will protect them on some level while setting them free to produce and exchange. Otherwise, the folks at the top will lose everything as the social system comes apart. Some of them know this and have written about it. Having less wealth for awhile rebuilding the system is better than no wealth plus a risk to your life. You’ll be surprised who, despite making all kinds of ugly noise, ends up going along with the changes.
But first, it will require some very bloody squelching of doctrinaire globalist protests. It’s the globalists who stand to lose when their legal authority dissolves around a resurgence of nationalism. They will spend some of their notional wealth on trying to provoke a chaos they believe will force us to beg them to take over. But it will fail. Not only have they been exposed to the general public, but the mainstream mass of people will become terribly angry with folks holding back their chances of recovery, so the local police will be encouraged to brutally suppress any riots and protests. A lot of leftist idiots will be dead or disabled in the coming year, unless their sponsors go broke or die first. Serious protests cost a lot of money and human investment.
These are things I want you to ponder as the new year slides past us. It’s important to understand what we should expect in general terms, even if I get some details wrong. Here’s the one thing staring us in the face: Zionism will rise like never before here in the US. The recent ugly noise coming out of Israel about Obama’s failure to protect Israel during the recent UN vote is going according to plan. It won’t matter what Obama actually believes; he’s always been an empty suit holding power for hire. The timing is important. There must appear to be a falling out with the US so that Israel can engage certain unilateral military actions that, officially, the US doesn’t support. Then, when those military actions stir up trouble for Israel, a new administration can ride to the rescue. I’m not making this up; it’s published in several places on the Net. What those writers cannot seem to agree on is the target Israel will attack: Syria, Iran, others, maybe all of them?
Don’t worry about what Trump says. While he’s likely to stick closer to his rhetoric than other politicians, it simply isn’t possible to occupy the Whitehouse without some compromise and he’s a deal-maker. Watch his actions: His cabinet and staff appointments signal a powerful Zionist interest, and the CUFI folks are almost wetting themselves in anticipation. It will take awhile, but with the laws now including a new “Ministry of Truth” as part of the US government, we are likely to take some heat here one way or another.
(Note: The hard drive arrived and I’ve installed Xubuntu and everything is working just dandy; the laptop is now my desktop.)
This was going to be a long hike. This is “winter” where the grass is brown and deciduous trees are bare, but today it was about 60°F (16C) and winds were light out of the NW, sunny skies with a few scattered high clouds. So our first shot is just the kind of scenery visible from this battered road I took. The second shot is the battered road.
Since this runs through the riding area, you can’t avoid seeing trail entrances and exits onto the road. The trails are all marked, color-coded and one-way with little signs warning when you are riding against traffic. Here’s what one of the gates looks like (image right). I noticed that just a little ways farther west of here was evidence that cattle still get to wander out here a bit, but probably not during riding hours.
It was just over a mile one way, over several high ridges, to the main branch of West Elm Creek. Back when this was still a road for autos, there was a trestle bridge across it. I took a lot of pictures but several just didn’t turn out.
I was able to cross the creek on stones using the bike trail, and found a good view from the west bank where the edge of the road is held by a concrete retainer. First is the view upstream, showing a part of the trail descending steeply to the water. The second image is downstream. The bridge collapsed under high water and was pushed down stream.
The final shot is straight across at road level showing where the bridge remains partially attached to the east bank abutment. Thus, you can see more than a decade of nature reclaiming some of the soil, but viewed in winter when there are no insects to devour intrepid photographers.
