politial economy

Take a look where you're livin'
You got the Army on the street
And the RUC dog of repression
Is barking at your feet
Is this the kind of place you wanna live?
What we need is
An Alternative Ulster, grab it, change it's yours
Get an Alternative Ulster, be an anti-security force
Alter your native land
-- SLF

Well another day, another European nation going under, this time the Irish. It's all a bit too predictable at this point. CDS spreads widen and the Germans make noises there will be no more bailouts. Certainly not a bet I'd take, they didn't set up that bailout mechanism last spring not to use it. So, after centuries of putting up with the barbaric English, the Irish will now be in servitude to the bankers, in ten years we can ask them which is worse. Meanwhile, over in Asia at the G20 meeting, our global elite show they are completely incapable of changing direction. If ever I've seen a politician dead in the water it's Mr. Obama, take the under on 2012. The only greater show will be to watch the Zombies that are the Republican party and see how much flesh they can devour before the American people take their heads off.

The problem is we, and I mean all of us, are still in denial, we need to change. The consumptive insanity that is America has to change and the great dream of corporate globalization, that the world can live like consumer America has to be dropped. But we're not doing that, we're, and again I mean all of us, instead are doing everything we can to hold on to no longer sustainable past. The Fed pumps dollars into the global financial system to keep the illusion alive, that all that bad debt can be paid off, further indenturing the future. Meanwhile on the other side of, call it the Bernanke-Krugman reality spectrum, we have the shout for more fiscal stimulus, which without a complete change in direction from the last thirty years will be about as effective as Mr. Bernanke's quantitative easing.

What we are witnessing in Europe and the US is an increasing divergence of wealth and the vast majority. Instead of a recognition that the political economy of the past thirty years, and one should argue the political economy of the past hundred, can no longer provide for the majority, we get in national economies a continued squeezing of the bottom and middle, while the top floats above in a global bubble induced by the world's central banks. The one thing we've learned about financial bubbles is they don't cause inflation, they pop, leaving a lot of worthless debt. This one will too, but how long? Place your bets, though one thing about this life is the irrational can last a lot longer than anyone would conceive reasonable.

When we get to the point where we understand we don't have to uphold our insolvent power structures, that there are indeed alternative healthier realities, the future can once again be filled with opportunity.