Hypertiger Posted December 23, 2003 Report Share Posted December 23, 2003 Mumbo Jumbo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odyssey-x Posted December 29, 2003 Report Share Posted December 29, 2003 I think you should add the value of the US Dollar vs other currencies to your chart. An interntational dimension would be interesting. You should check out Jim Bradley, he agrees with you on the whole inflation then deflation thing. In Fact his essay is entitled: Inflation Now, Deflation Later What he's basically saying is that until the U.S Dollar goes into a tailspin against foreign currencies and hyperinflation starts the U.S will try to inflate itself out of this mess. However, It looks like The Japanese are going to bail us out through at least the 2004 election with 930 Billion dollars worth of exchange rate intervention between now and April and then more than a trillion for the rest of the year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odyssey-x Posted December 30, 2003 Report Share Posted December 30, 2003 The US will try to inflate itself out of this... There are two ways to perpetuate inflation...there is no "out" 1. Perpetually lower interest rates... 2. Give money away for free... That is it...Rates can not be lowered forever so that won't work there are still mortgage rates that can drop but that can only go so far also... Giving money away for free but once you start you can't stop and you get in the faster and faster, greater and greater situation... eventually not even supercomputers can keep up... Both paths lead to hyperdeflationary implosions of debt...There has not been a system created yet which does not lead to this... My stance is that we are at the end of the line...Long term economic planning must factor in the total breakdown of the world financial system...if it does not then it is a false plan...assured self destruction... But Hyper.. Deflation has been going on for a long time now. Think how much everything at Walmart would cost if it was made in the U.S or if it inflated at the same rate as health care. Most people wouldn't be able to afford a second pair of shoes.. Our standard of living would be much lower than it is now if it wasn't for all the easy credit that the Chinese are giving us to buy their products for super cheap. I do admit that there is an end but this thing could theoretically go on forever, as in 1000 year mortgages with a baloon payment at the end. Who would fund such a mortgage? Well the Chinese of course, who want to get us in the biggest goddamned hole they can possibly get us in before they pull the rug out. There motives aren't profit but political. You also got to realize that as we move towards hyperinflation, if the Chinese refuse to get rid of the peg we've got their entire economy and Japans, because of their currency intervention to hyperinflate too. There will be a reckoning day but I think they've got another year on it at least with all the "help" they're getting internationally in their inflation adventure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
threadbare Posted December 30, 2003 Report Share Posted December 30, 2003 I suppose you could say most of the middle class are responsible capitalists who believe in real and fair competition. The oligarchs, croney capitalists, or absolute capitalists who steer the economies are the absolute capitalists. Absofrigginlutely! This is the type of capitalism Marx warned against. Though I'm no fan of a communist prescriptions for what ails us, I'm astonished at the clarity of Marx's words. We had (in Canada too) plenty of education about why communism is always doomed to failure. Our K to 12 education conveniently overlooked the many problems and pitfalls of capitalism. Capitalism, as it was practised in the U.S, is the best and probably the most vital economic model. But things have changed. When the govt. ignores the safeguards in the legal system set up to curtail the accumulation of capital in a very few hands, you end up with what we have now. Letting domestic companies merge, in the way they have been, and then letting the same companies do business on a very uneven playing field by opening up trade with countries like China is an abuse of the spirit of real and fair competition. Wal-Mart has destroyed small towns and cities, the heart and soul of America. It has turned the self employed into slave labour in a corporate setting that is not much different than an elaborate cost sensitive penal colony. It is the future, if things don't change. And much like the serfs trying to democratize Russia after the fall of the wall, the employees may have trouble kick starting responsible capitalism. Years of corporate control in the Walmart prison/hive may produce employee drones unable to self motivate and create. When it all falls apart, as it may some day in the distant future, will these worker bees have retained any memory of the small town entrepreneur? Will they be able to restart a truly democratic form of capitalist society? Once you've become a bee can you metamorphize back into a human mind set? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShitEatingGrinner Posted December 30, 2003 Report Share Posted December 30, 2003 The state of"capitalism" now is inevitable. There are not and never will be any such things as free markets. Someone is always going to rig the market in their own self interest. Always. It is human nature to do so. The level of corruption we've reached now was both predictable and inevitable. Walter Benjamin predicted it. So did Wyndham Lewis. 80 years ago. And old Marx pointed out the inevitablity of it as well. The capitalists must destroy the means of production periodically. We are in that period. The system will destruct completely--via a massive nuclear war as its culmination. May take 3 months. May take 20 years. But it's here, like it or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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