Life is not going downhill; the system is going downhill, now more rapidly than ever. I have never said, though, that there have not been technological advances, or even that some aspects of life are better now than in the past. Of course there have been many improvements and advances in various fields of science and some of these have been transferred to the everyday world. Obviously, we wouldn’t even be having this little cyber-exchange had not the computer and the Internet been developed in recent years and made affordable so that nearly anyone can own one. Yet in the face of the forward-looking optimism of the early 60’s there were strong counter currents that were beginning to be felt. For the most part, while the world is changing more and more rapidly, as time seems to compress, some changes are subtler and go by seemingly unnoticed.
In the work-a-day world most people are content to just collect their pay and take care of the business at hand without giving too much thought to how the system that we are all dependent on actually works. The only time people seem to sit up and take notice is when they are directly affected---when the system doesn’t work so well. For instance, almost immediately after Nixon scrapped the gold exchange system set up by the Bretton Woods agreement after WWII, there was the so-called oil crisis. People were shocked to their senses. Gold shot up to over $800/oz. For years a gallon of gas cost about a quarter. Then in a very short period the price of a gallon of gasoline shot up over a buck. The once vibrant steel belt turned into the rust belt. The economic system shuddered under the shock. During that period inflation was eating up the buying power of the dollar and interest rates were over 20%. The underlying physical economy began a slow-motion deterioration during that period that has continued to the present. The term “rust-belt” was coined during that time to describe the northern cities that had once been the industrial engine that was driving the world’s economy. It has never fully recovered. The great science-driver projects, so-called, like the space program, have seen drastic cutbacks. The PC by the way, is a direct result of the space program, as scientists needed a compact computer, as opposed to a gigantic mainframe, to run spacecraft. The Super-Collider program, which was scrapped a few years back, no doubt would have spun off a whole new generation of technology. That’s how technology is translated into the actual physical economy so as to serve as a benefit to people. So, the programs and policies that made the nation what it is have been subtly destroyed. Instead, in the place of progress has come speculation and money schemes, which have fraudulently been hailed as the so-called “new economy.”
During the 80s and especially during the 90s globalism took over. Third world nations became swamped in debt and have become part of a global plantation designed to exploit their resources and cheap labor. Most ominously is that America, the world’s great economic engine for years, is now the world’s greatest debtor nation. The nation has been living off the fat of previous decades. But, that cannot continue indefinitely.
But, to keep the game going a little while longer, new and ever more inventive schemes have to be devised. During the 90s currency trading and derivatives became the primary source of income for financial institutions. Money became the most heavily bought and sold commodity by far. Dollars buying Yen; Yen buying Pounds, Pounds buying Lira; and back again to dollars. Trillions of dollars everyday; like the temple moneychangers, only on a vast global scale facilitated by instantaneous computer programs. Because of the rotted industrial base of the United States, the nation can no longer afford to produce its own needs. Instead the U.S. has become totally dependent upon cheap imports from plantation nations. Wal-Mart for example, typifies how the system has subtly changed, for the worse, whereas it is now the largest employer and retailer in the nation; paying low wages and importing cheap goods that in some cases were produced by slave labor. But, for many Americans, that’s the only way they can afford to buy the things they need.
Enron is a classic example of the hollow and predatory nature of the so-called new economy, which some imagine to be a new and improved way to MAKE MONEY! Instead of actually producing gas and energy products, Enron got into buying and selling futures sales of non-existent gas and electricity. They found that it was much more profitable to sell virtual energy than it was to actually go out and transform nature into something useful. Of course when the gig was up their pyramid of virtual dollars came unwound and vaporized. Most people assume that Enron was an anomaly. It wasn’t. Many companies are dealing in vapor. The largest so-called industrial company, General Electric, acquires half of all its revenue through playing the very money games that burned Enron. Enron’s meteoric demise is a portent of things to come for the whole ponzi-based speculative system.
The bottom line is that the system that we depend on for sustenance and life is nothing but an intricate house of cards. The laws of economics cannot be violated indefinitely with impunity. Neither can Jehovah’s moral laws. A system predicated upon usury, exploitation, and deception is immoral. Soon it will be weighed in the balances and found wanting. The Anglo-American dyad is definitely in its dying days.
/ You Know
