We've been warned: the system is ready to blow

We've been warned: the system is ready to blow

Only a new way of managing the global economy can prevent more mayhem in the markets and on the streets.

A rather dramatic headline and opening there. I just happened to find this article while looking on another forum and thought to post this here. The Guardian is not a source I typically cite but figure it is pretty interesting anyway...

Lesson number one is that the financial and social causes are linked. Lesson number two is that what links the City banker and the looter is the lack of restraint, the absence of boundaries to bad behaviour. Lesson number three is that we ignore this at our peril.

To understand the mess we are in, it's important to know how we got here. Today marks the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's announcement that America was suspending the convertibility of the dollar into gold at $35 an ounce. Speculative attacks on the dollar had begun in the late 1960s as concerns mounted over America's rising trade deficit and the cost of the Vietnam war. Other countries were increasingly reluctant to take dollars in payment and demanded gold instead. Nixon called time on the Bretton Woods system of fixed but adjustable exchange rates, under which countries could use capital controls in order to stimulate their economies without fear of a run on their currency. It was also an era in which protectionist measures were used quite liberally: Nixon announced on 15 August 1971 that he was imposing a 10% tax on all imports into the US.

Four decades on, it is hard not to feel nostalgia for the Bretton Woods system. Imperfect though it was, it acted as an anchor for the global economy for more than a quarter of a century, and allowed individual countries to pursue full employment policies. It was a period devoid of systemic financial crises.....

The system is an utter mess, particularly since almost every country in the world is now seeking to manipulate its currency downwards in order to make exports cheaper and imports dearer. This is clearly not possible....

The break-up of the Bretton Woods system paved the way for the liberalisation of financial markets. This began in the 1970s and picked up speed in the 1980s....

For a while in the late 1980s, the easy availability of money provided the illusion of wealth but there was a shift from a debt-averse world where financial crises were virtually unknown to a debt-sodden world constantly teetering on the brink of banking armageddon.

Currency markets lost their anchor in 1971 when the US suspended dollar convertibility. Over the years, financial markets have lost their moral anchor, engaging not just in reckless but fraudulent behaviour. According to the US economist James Galbraith, increased complexity was the cover for blatant and widespread wrongdoing......

A crisis that has been four decades in the making will not be solved overnight. It will be difficult to recast the global monetary system to ensure that the next few years see gradual recovery rather than depression. Wall Street and the City will resist all attempts at clipping their wings. There is strong ideological resistance to the policies that make decent wages in a full employment economy feasible: capital controls, allowing strong trade unions, wage subsidies, and protectionism.

But this is a fork in the road. History suggests there is no iron law of progress and there have been periods when things have got worse not better. Together, the global imbalances, the manic-depressive behaviour of stock markets, the venality of the financial sector, the growing gulf between rich and poor, the high levels of unemployment, the naked consumerism and the riots are telling us something.

This is a system in deep trouble and it is waiting to blow.

Though a heavily left perspective, the author raises some very good points. He looks at some key historical developments as data contributing to the current economic crisis we see today, notably from the time when Nixon removed the dollar from gold and other behavioral misgivings along the way. I've noticed there's been more mention of the gold standard appearing in the media just recently, probably due to the fact it has been right on 40 years to the day that Nixon closed the gold window.

So there we have it, 'a system in deep trouble and it is waiting to blow'.

If the system blows, the elite better find some place to hide...oh, they already have their bunkers. I say we barricade the entrances to those bunkers so they can never get out!

reply to post by CasiusIgnoranze


There's probably a fortune to be made in bumper stickers on that subject these days.

the system has already got blown...the TARP was the result...

Now, it's just a matter of time and manner of just how & when the peasants straddled with never ending 'Debt' taxes that fund the bankster class, finally 'blow up' and demand justice....

along with repealing the Federal Reserves guaranteeing the liquidity and legitimacy of the system of creating unregulated & under funded derivitives/toxic paper, naked Shorting to the detriment of honest business enterprises... the reinstatement of the Glass–Steagall Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Banking Act of 1933, Pub.L. 73-66, 48 Stat. 162, enacted June 16, 1933,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_Act - Cached



i've said it till i'm blue-in-the-face.... issuing unregulated & underfunded paper that has the appearance of insurance (CDOs, CDS', etc and other abstract Derivatives) is in fact the Corporation creating 'Money' out-of-thin-Air.... a priveledge given to Congress and then Managed by the Federal Reserve.
Goldman Sachs, JPM, ML and a host of the other TBTF investor banks, issued Trillions in this Toxic Paper, knowing they could never make good on their promise to Pay...& Fed maestro Bernanke said the American People, the taxpaying public will pay out 100% of these pieces of counterfiet bonds and other toxic paper the Banker-Elite criminals issued to anyone rich enough to pay $250k for a $1Bn policy/CDS/CDO/MBS/toxic paper



Nixon closing the Gold Window and making the USD totally fiat money may have led to the string of 'creative' avenues in which to sanitize Fraud... but ultimately it is the Federal Reserve that holds the reins and has led the system down the road of entropy and feverish cannibalism of businesses & markets...
Corporatism and Fascism

'Heavily left perspective...' always the need for a simplistic, polarizing label. This is one of the more succinct and well thought-out assessments I've read on the subject. Especially his first line acknowledging that the looters and banksters are responding to the same moral vaccuum.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Originally posted by jtma508
'Heavily left perspective...' always the need for a simplistic, polarizing label. This is one of the more succinct and well thought-out assessments I've read on the subject. Especially his first line acknowledging that the looters and banksters are responding to the same moral vaccuum.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I see it rather as the looters and bankers are simply contrived tools that they will in turn use to justify their "proposed peace and prosperity plan". E.g. Greed being one of the factors to justify their Age of Aquarius, their Phoenix Rising. Same way they are using "religious terrorism" as the reason to institute their one world religion.We all know they believe that the Phoenix must burn before rising from the ashes...pure evil.