The Great Mistakes of the Great Depression; Are They Haunting Us Once More?
Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation
It's four years later and our credit crisis has worsened. A second dip is coming, to be followed by, not a third dip, but a swan dive off a cliff! Don’t believe it? Ask your neighbor.
The banks are sitting on cash they refuse to lend out for fear of deflation. Why loan $200,000 out for a mortgage when the home will be worth $180,000 soon? They are so cash flush from QE-2 that they are offering to pay off long term CDs with no interest penalties just to stop the bleeding of long term interest payments. They don’t want or need your money!
Like the banks that survived the onslaught of the Great Depression, banks today are not confident at all in the way the current economic conditions are blowing and are unwilling to create new loans. This always leads to a downward spiral.
The only game in town now for banks, in order to make enough profits to satisfy stockholders demand, is to gamble on hedge funds and commodities (raising all of our prices like oil, cotton and corn artificially) and in general become professional speculators. And they have the money to do it. The amount of money in the world circulating between these gambling schemes, to the tune of hundreds of trillions, could all come tumbling down within hours when the circumstances become ripe.
Just before the Great Depression of the thirties, everybody was speculating on stocks and borrowing money to buy them. The good times would never end, just like the prices of homes in 2005 would never come down again.
The roaring 20s, similar to circumstances in the bling 90s and early 2000s, was an unprecidented boom period whiuch bred a gambling psychology. People literally had money to burn and didn’t know what to do with it. There was in America a false optimism – the glass was always full, never to be empty again.
As is true now, the financial institutions back then had no clue as to what was about to happen. The political cronies were not only ill equipped to handle the coming disaster, but not equipped at all, again similar to the present times.
Conservatives have not changed one iota, still insisting on letting market forces handle the problem. If we would have done that, and allowed every bank in the country to fail in 2007, all the banks would now be closed and all our money in banks, in the stock market, and in our 401ks, would be MIA.
Like now, the government finally intervened but to little avail. It was too late. The only thing that got us out of the depression was the Second World War when everyone went back to work to make bombs. This all is happening again, right here in America except for the war, which is coming as soon as conservatives grip the reins of power again and conclude that war is the only answer to our diminishing power.
Instead of Japan and Germany becoming militarily aggressive as they did during the Great Depression, we are the ones behind the Chinese eight ball with little options other than force. Our military now spends close to twenty times more than any other country, including China, but the conservatives still feel that 20 times is not enough. Let old, sick and poor people die in the streets, that don’t matter, only our military matters.
What is really happening now is that long term credit availability, which became a crutch in order to sustain decadent Western lifestyles, is gone. Our addiction hasn’t been cured but our stash has dried up. And the addicted is just beginning to feel the first pangs of withdrawal, ergo; the budget wrangling.
This, along with other troubling developments such as housing and real estate bubbles, tech bubbles, borrowing money recklessly with which to speculate, sovereign debt, and a host of other mostly surreptitious problems, does not bode well for Europe and America. As a matter of fact, I am certain, more certain even than when I wrote about the coming hard times many years ago, that we are headed for disaster.
I am certain now because I see what is happening in congress. In order to insure Obama’s defeat in 2012, the Republicans have sacrificed America by insisting on a retraction of our economy by cutting spending just at a juncture when spending is the only thing that could possibly avoid disaster, or at least postpone the great depression that is soon coming to a neighborhood near you. And when it takes hold, it will last for decades.
My only advice would be to keep your money under your mattress, starting today, or better yet, your gold and silver.
And don’t let anyone know that you have it! Get as poor as you can outwardly, non-assuming, then simplify, get down to basics and then down to basic basics. Get ready for a long haul. This will change lives.
E. Raymond Rock (anagarika eddie) is a meditation teacher at the DhammaRocksprings Theravada Buddhist Meditation Retreat Center: http://www.dhammarocksprings.org and author of “A Year to Enlightenment: http://www.amazon.com/Year-Enlightenment-Steps-Enriching-Living/dp/1564148912
He lived at Wat Pah Nanachat under Ajahn Chah, at Wat Pah Baan Taad under Ajahn Maha Boowa, and at Wat Pah Daan Wi Weg under Ajahn Tui. He had been a postulant at Shasta Abbey, a Zen Buddhist monastery in northern California under Roshi Kennett; and a Theravada Buddhist anagarika at both Amaravati Monastery in the UK and Bodhinyanarama Monastery in New Zealand, both under Ajahn Sumedho. The author has meditated with the Korean Master Sueng Sahn Sunim; with Bhante Gunaratana at the Bhavana Society in West Virginia; and with the Tibetan Master Trungpa Rinpoche in Boulder, Colorado. He has also practiced at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the Zen Center in San Francisco.
Article submitted Tuesday, August 02, 2011 & read 425 times.
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» left by Dave from Magnolia, Tx (274 days 8 hours ago.)
We are haunted by the same thing that has haunted each and every economic superpower in the history of mankind, greed. We are a species that is predisposed to eat our young if they get in the way of our rise to self glorification, and it is our predominantly conservative values that bind us to failed and even false policies designed to enrich the very few at the expense of those who do not have the wherwithall to assess and respond to opressive policies.I do not cry for those that naively follow their annointed leaders orders to step over the edge of the cliff, nor for their leaders that will eventually cut their own throats after they have eaten the final goose from which laid their golden eggs, but for the ones that will be left to pick up the tattered pieces of what once was erroneously known as civilization.As for me, nothing from nothing leaves nothing. As I once was, I shall be again, and if you're right, I will be again and again and again, so help me Buddha.:-)Nuttin but luv for ya,Dave» left by Anonymous (274 days ago.)
Prophetic Dave. Long term views are not in conservative DNA. Oil will last forever and is repleishable to a conservative. Who cares about global warming and co2 footprints? we cares about grandchildren when we can make money now and buy expensive cars and yachts. But as you say, it doesn't end with death. What comes around goes around. the greedy will end up in a situatoin where they will have a ringside seat on poverty and poor people's suffering. That's where they are headed. "e"
