The world economy will keep itself afloat until the US’ credit runs out. When we can no longer sell bonds at a reasonable interest rate to finance our spending, that is the point at which this country topples, and brings every other nation on earth with it. Fortunately, every other nation on earth knows this, and so they are willing to invest in us. Should the UAE and China decide to give up on us, they will both have their own economies shudder to a grinding and ugly halt.
The goal for the US is to spend as much money on infrastructure as possible before the system needs to be rewritten. If things don’t spiral out of control in the next 9 months, we should see the effects of the stimulus plan Obama is currently developing take effect and put off the ultimate collapse for another 2-12 years. This is good– the big crash is coming no matter what we do, but if we can get most of a decade to prepare ourselves, with decentralized power production, more efficient houses, many more bicycles and localized food production and intelligent plans for the regions we live in, we can mitigate the impact of the hard times coming.
Building strong communities around accomplishing what we need to accomplish to survive and thrive in the post-globalization economy should be our primary investment in terms of money and human capital. The side benefit of that action is of course the dramatic lowering of carbon output in those communities where we can operate most effectively.
Our work is definitely cut out for us: we should give serious thought to what sort of organizational structures we can use to make that work easier and more widespread. Do there currently exist models that we can base our efforts on? What sorts of reinforcing cycles of growth can we come up with?
I have some stuff I’ve been working on… love to talk to folks about some of my ideas in this area.
December 28, 2008 at 7:45 pm
whoa.
December 29, 2008 at 5:52 am
I saw this a while back.
The world economy will keep itself afloat until the US’ credit runs out. When we can no longer sell bonds at a reasonable interest rate to finance our spending, that is the point at which this country topples, and brings every other nation on earth with it. Fortunately, every other nation on earth knows this, and so they are willing to invest in us. Should the UAE and China decide to give up on us, they will both have their own economies shudder to a grinding and ugly halt.
The goal for the US is to spend as much money on infrastructure as possible before the system needs to be rewritten. If things don’t spiral out of control in the next 9 months, we should see the effects of the stimulus plan Obama is currently developing take effect and put off the ultimate collapse for another 2-12 years. This is good– the big crash is coming no matter what we do, but if we can get most of a decade to prepare ourselves, with decentralized power production, more efficient houses, many more bicycles and localized food production and intelligent plans for the regions we live in, we can mitigate the impact of the hard times coming.
Building strong communities around accomplishing what we need to accomplish to survive and thrive in the post-globalization economy should be our primary investment in terms of money and human capital. The side benefit of that action is of course the dramatic lowering of carbon output in those communities where we can operate most effectively.
Our work is definitely cut out for us: we should give serious thought to what sort of organizational structures we can use to make that work easier and more widespread. Do there currently exist models that we can base our efforts on? What sorts of reinforcing cycles of growth can we come up with?
I have some stuff I’ve been working on… love to talk to folks about some of my ideas in this area.