If you scratch at economic theory long enough, you discover it's
little more than long strings of arcane mathematical formulae
grounded in superstition (the Invisible Hand of the Market),
platitudes (peaceful competition) and pipe dreams (eternal
growth).
This could explain why our economy has made a terminal trip to
the outhouse. Future historians will look back, scratch their
heads and wonder how so many bright and educated people allowed
superstition to drag them around by their collective nose. Our
economists bear a scary resemblence to medieval scholastic
counting angels on a pinhead.
Author Richard Heinburg (http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49798)
points out that our government has committed $23.7 trillion
dollars in "total potential government support" in an attempt to
reinflate a new asset bubble. This figure comes from the
inspector general of the government's Troubled Assets Relief
Program (TARP).
Million, billion, trillion-so what! They all sound the same, so
it's hard to distinguish between them
unless you substitute seconds for dollars, and then you get the
following relationships:
• A million is the equivalent of 11.7 days. • A billion is the
equivalent of 37 years. • A trillion is the equivalent of 37,000
years.
Yet Obama assure us that the worst is behind us. And he is
right. When you fall off a mountain, the fall eventually stops.
However, the fall doesn't kill you; it's the sudden stop at the
end.
Prior recessions have been like diving into a body of water. You
go under water and then you bob back to the surface.
With this meltdown, we fell off the mountain, and it's doubtful
we'll climb back up again.
According to Heinburg, capitalism's superstitious believe in
unlimited growth has hit a wall-resource depletion. As could be
expected, the mainstream response to this is another platitude,
"Man's" infinite ingenuity, i.e., it's only a matter of time
before we invent ourselves out of the mess we've made. The only
problem with this is that you can't invent coal or oil unless
you kill a lot of dinosaurs and keep them under heat and
pressure for millions of years. And given that oil, coal and
natural gas supply 95% of the world's energy needs, it's
doubtful we'll come up with an alternative
As Heinburg explains:
If the physical scientists who warn about limits to growth are
right, confronting the global economic meltdown implies far more
than merely getting the banks and mortgage lenders back on their
feet. Indeed, in that case we face a fundamental change in our
economy as significant as the advent of the industrial
revolution. We are at a historic inflection point-the ending of
decades of expansion and the beginning of an inevitable period
of contraction that will continue until humanity is once again
living within the limits of Earth's regenerative system.
One could argue that the tremendous technological advances of
the past 200 years have been a fluke made possible by an
abundance of cheap oil, and that is what is happening now is a
restoration of sanity as the Earth forces us to return to a more
balanced lifestyle.
Heinburg bases his arguments on science that has not been funded
by Big Oil. Counter arguments tend to leave the world of science
and wander into the foggy fields of theology. "You gotta
believe! We'll come up with something, so stop being such a
heretical naysayer and join the church. God (the Invisible Hand)
is in his heaven, and we are his chosen species, so nothing bad
can happen to us."
And witches fly on broom.
Note: If you want a good read, click on the above link. The
article is long, but Heinburg is a fluid writer whose prose
carries you along.
Case Wagenvoord is a citizen who reads. He blogs at
http://belacquajones.blogpsot.com and welcomes comments at
Wagenvoord[AT]msn.com