US Economic Outlook: Inverting the Cost-Benefit Structure

Bill Bonner

Mumbai Traffic

"When you visit India...and I suppose it is true when you visit China or Brazil too...you don't even notice at first...it's not so much a thought...but more like a feeling..."

We were explaining to colleagues why it's the end of the world as we have known it.

Back to that in a minute...

The Dow rose 102 points yesterday. If this keeps up we're going to have to amend our view.

In our way of looking at things...we are still in a prolonged bounce following the big drop of '08-'09. Stocks have yet to realize that the economy is in a depression. Yes, we know it doesn't seem much like a depression. Even we have stopped using the term...

Now we're calling it "The Great Correction"...in which we're expecting a number of things to get sorted out - including the stock market boom from '82-'07...the post-'71 dollar-backed monetary system...and the huge credit expansion that goes all the way back to 1946.

But that's not all. It could be that this period will correct the whole, extraordinary surge in Anglo-Saxon power that began in the 17th century. English speakers have been on a roll since Sir Francis Drake defeated the combined armada of Spain and France in 1588. Soon after England began putting together her empire...and then, the industrial revolution turned Britain and America into economic powerhouses.

In addition to reducing asset prices and de-leveraging the economy, The Great Correction could be reducing the relative power and influence of the English speaking peoples. We don't know...but that's the way it looks now...

Returning to our conversation...

"Of course, things are a mess in Mumbai...I mean, the traffic is terrible...the heat is appalling...there are people who look like they haven't eaten in a month...

"But you can't help but notice that India is moving forward. It's chaotic; it's uncomfortable; it's unpredictable...but it is going ahead. People are young. Buildings are new. There are new cars on the road...and new shops opening up.

We saw a couple of Tata Motors' new Nano cars - cute little cars that sell for only $2,500. But there were dozens of car varieties we never see on American or European roads.

"You can't help yourself...you begin looking into the future...and imagining what it will be like when they finish a bridge or complete a road...or demolish a slum...or find new ways to do things...new ways to get along with one another...and new ways to run the country...

"Then, when you come back to France or America, you're suddenly back in the past. It's a relief, because everything seems familiar and orderly. Like a museum. But it's a let-down too...because you're back to dealing with old problems...old people...and old institutions. While the emerging economies look ahead...the developed ones look back.

"What is this health care bill? Is it a new way of making the future better? Or is it an old solution to an old problem? The feds first considered a takeover of the health care industry during the Roosevelt administration. They've been working, planning, plotting their way towards the same objective ever since - for 80 years.

And what they've finally gotten is yesterday's bad solution to yesterday's problem.

The nation state was invented by the French at the beginning of the 19th century. By the middle of the 19th century, Otto von Bismarck added the refinements that we know today as the modern welfare state.

And now...as every welfare state in the world faces decline and bankruptcy...America has completed its collection of welfare state essentials - with a national health care system.

Why are the old welfare states going broke? Because the payoffs to the past have become too great. There are too many old people who expect pensions and health care. There are too many old industries that, like patients in a mental hospital, need to be cared for. There are too many bailouts...too many subsidies...too many protections...too many safety nets.

Every society is a pact between the future and the past. A new society looks to the future. An old one looks back at the past. As a successful economy matures it owes more and more for things that have already happened. China builds new high-speed railways, for example, while in the US we're still paying Amtrak's losses of the last 40 years.

Over time, more and more special interests, anglers, parasites, leeches and lobbyists get a grip on a financial system. They find ways to take advantage of it...to exploit the system for their own ends. Trade unions, business groups, the rich, the poor, the middle classes - everybody wants a benefit.

The health care act is not a bold new initiative that will lead the country forward into a new era. It is 2,400 pages of payoffs to old interests - payoffs to senators and congressmen for supporting the bill, payoffs to the pharmaceutical industry, payoffs to organized labor and insurance companies...payoffs to groups that were set up many years ago.

The benefits go to the past; the costs go to the future. Even if the economy were running at normal speeds, the deficits of the world's leading welfare states would still be increasing. Only 10% of current deficits are related to "stimulus" efforts. The rest is payoffs... To organized interests representing the past.

In the US, Federal debt is expected to reach 140% of GDP by 2014. In the G7 countries as a whole, debt-to-GDP will go over 100% just two years from now.

The welfare state model is no longer the model for the future. It's a model for the past...that will soon be defunct.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Author Image for Bill BonnerSince founding Agora Inc. in 1979, Bill Bonner has found success and garnered camaraderie in numerous communities and industries. A man of many talents, his entrepreneurial savvy, unique writings, philanthropic undertakings, and preservationist activities have all been recognized and awarded by some of America's most respected authorities. Along with Addison Wiggin, his friend and colleague, Bill has written two New York Times best-selling books, Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt. Both works have been critically acclaimed internationally. With political journalist Lila Rajiva, he wrote his third New York Times best-selling book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, which offers concrete advice on how to avoid the public spectacle of modern finance. Since 1999, Bill has been a daily contributor and the driving force behind The Daily Reckoning .

dailyreckoning.com

The Most Important Chart of the Century

Nathan Martin

The latest U.S. Treasury Z1 Flow of Funds report was released on March 11, 2010, bringing the data current through the end of 2009. What follows is the most important chart of your lifetime. It relegates almost all modern economists and economic theory to the dustbin of history. Any economic theory, formula, or relationship that does not consider this non-linear relationship of DEBT and phase transition is destined to fail.

It explains the "jobless" recoveries of the past and how each recent economic cycle produces higher money figures, yet lower employment. It explains why we are seeing debt driven events that circle the globe. It explains the psychological uneasiness that underpins this point in history, the elephant in the room that nobody sees or can describe.

This is a very simple chart. It takes the change in GDP and divides it by the change in Debt. What it shows is how much productivity is gained by infusing $1 of debt into our debt backed money system.

Back in the early 1960s a dollar of new debt added almost a dollar to the nation's output of goods and services. As more debt enters the system the productivity gained by new debt diminishes. This produced a path that was following a diminishing line targeting ZERO in the year 2015. This meant that we could expect that each new dollar of debt added in the year 2015 would add NOTHING to our productivity.

Then a funny thing happened along the way. Macroeconomic DEBT SATURATION occurred causing a phase transition with our debt relationship. This is because total income can no longer support total debt. In the third quarter of 2009 each dollar of debt added produced NEGATIVE 15 cents of productivity, and at the end of 2009, each dollar of new debt now SUBTRACTS 45 cents from GDP!

This is mathematical PROOF that debt saturation has occurred. Continuing to add debt into a saturated system, where all money is debt, leads only to future defaults and to higher unemployment.

This is the dilemma created by our top down debt backed money structure. Because all money is backed by a liability, and carries interest, it guarantees mathematically that there will be losers and that the system will eventually reach the natural limits, the ability of incomes to service debt.

The data for the diminishing productivity of debt chart comes from the U.S. Treasury's latest Z1 data. Click here to view the Treasury report

I included Financial debt onto the end of the table, that data comes from page 14 of the Z1 report.

This table makes clear what is happening. Business, household, and financial debt is trying to cleanse itself, to bring the level of debt back within the ability of incomes to support it. Our governments, armed with people who cannot explain the common sense behind debt saturation, are attempting to compensate by producing prolific amounts of Governmental debt.

They feel they must do this because if they do not, then debt and money - since debt backs our money - would both decrease and that would cause the economy to slow. But by adding money, and debt, they have created a sovereign issue where our nation's income cannot possibly service our nation's debt. In just the month of February, for example, our nation took in $107 billion, but spent $328 billion, a $221 billion shortfall. That one month shortfall exceeds all the combined shortfalls of the entire Nixon Administration - one month.

This is like an individual earning $5,000 but spending $15,000 a month. Would you lend your money to such an individual?

Last year we spent just under $400 billion on interest on our current debt, plus we spend another $1.5 Trillion buying down rates via Freddie, Fannie, and Quantitative Easing. That's $1.9 Trillion spent on interest, most of which wound up in the hands of the central banks and their surrogates. Compared to our $2.2 Trillion in income, interest expense last year nearly took it all. That means that nearly all your productive effort used to pay Federal taxes last year were transferred to the central banks.

Modern monetary theory does not understand, nor does it correctly describe the debt backed money world in which we live. Velocity, for example, slows as debt saturation occurs. This is only common sense, and yet the formulas do not account for the bad math of debt, nor its non linear function. Velocity is blamed partially on the psychology of "consumers." What nonsense. It is as mechanical as the engine in your car, it was designed that way. Once people, businesses, and governments become saturated with debt, new money/ debt when introduced can only be used to service prior existing debt.

Thus money creation at the saturation point stops adding to productive efforts and becomes a roll-over affair with only the financial services industry profiting via interest and fees. In other words, money goes out and circles right back around to the banks instead of rippling through a healthy non saturated economy. If you cannot follow that most simple logic, then going to Harvard will not help you.

Below is a chart of the Gross Federal Debt, it is now $12.6 Trillion dollars and headed straight up, a classic parabolic rise:

Below is a chart of the Gross Federal Debt expressed in year-over-year change in billions of dollars. The same phase transition of debt saturation is clear as a bell.

Below is a chart of Federal Net Outlays, parabolic and again headed straight up:

Clearly this is not sustainable and that means that change to our monetary system is rapidly approaching. No, it will not be left to your children or your grandchildren. It is an immediate problem and fortunately there is an immediate solution. That solution is called "Freedom's Vision." It can be found at SwarmUSA.com.

That chart of diminishing returns is the window to understanding why humankind is trapped in a central banker debt backed money box. No money for NASA manned space flight - NASA's total budget a puny $18 billion in comparison to the $1.9 Trillion that went to service the bankers last year. One half the schools closing in Kansas City, states whose debts and budget deficits seem insurmountable all pale in comparison to how much money went to service the use of our own money system.

It doesn't have to be like that, in fact it's a ridiculous notion that the people of the United States, or any country, should pay private individuals for the use of their money system. Ridiculous!

It's difficult to see this from inside the box, so let's look at what happened to Iceland to illustrate. The central banks of the world created financial engineered products and brought them to the banks of Iceland. These products created a boom in the amount of credit. Prices of everything rose, and the people of Iceland then had no choice but to go along for the bubble ride. Then with incomes no longer able to service the bubble debt, the bubble collapsed.

To "save the day," the IMF and central bankers around the world rushed in to "rescue" the people, banks, and government of Iceland. They did this by offering loans... documents that create money simply by signing a contract of debt servitude. That contract demanded ownership of Iceland's infrastructure such as their geothermal electrical generating plants. It also demanded the future productivity of the people of Iceland in that they should work and pay high taxes for decades to pay back this "debt." Debt that they did not create or agree to service in the first place!

There were some wise people who saw through this central banker game and started a movement. They DEMANDED that the President of Iceland put the debt servitude to a vote and the people wisely said, "Central Bankers Pound Sand!"

Thus they now control their own destiny, their future productive efforts still belong to them.

It's easy to see from the outside looking in, but it's not so easy to see that it's EXACTLY the same thing occurring in the United States and no one is rising up to stop it. No one, that is, except the movement of people at SwarmUSA.com.

To all the naysayers who think the people do not have the power to make the change, I say take a look at history and how humankind has overcome its obstacles to progress with each new step. Mankind is now teetering between the brink and the dawn of a new renaissance. A new renaissance is coming because mankind is about to free itself from the chains of needless debt that are holding humanity back.

fedupusa.org

We Stand on the Cusp of one of Humanity's Most Dangerous Moments

Chris Hedges

We will have to resist the temptation to fold in on ourselves and to ignore the cruelty outside our door. Aleksandr Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.” All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort.

These communities, if they retreat into a pure survivalist mode without linking themselves to the concentric circles of the wider community, the state and the planet, will become as morally and spiritually bankrupt as the corporate forces arrayed against us. All infrastructures we build, like the monasteries in the Middle Ages, should seek to keep alive the intellectual and artistic traditions that make a civil society, humanism and the common good possible. Access to parcels of agricultural land will be paramount. We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. Resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance, as those who retained their integrity discovered in the long night of 20th-century fascism and communism.

We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy.

My analysis comes close to the analysis of many anarchists. But there is a crucial difference. The anarchists do not understand the nature of violence. They grasp the extent of the rot in our cultural and political institutions, they know they must sever the tentacles of consumerism, but they naïvely believe that it can be countered with physical forms of resistance and acts of violence. There are debates within the anarchist movement – such as those on the destruction of property – but once you start using plastic explosives, innocent people get killed. And when anarchic violence begins to disrupt the mechanisms of governance, the power elite will use these acts, however minor, as an excuse to employ disproportionate and ruthless amounts of force against real and suspected agitators, only fueling the rage of the dispossessed.

I am not a pacifist. I know there are times, and even concede that this may eventually be one of them, when human beings are forced to respond to mounting repression with violence. I was in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia. We knew precisely what the Serbian forces ringing the city would do to us if they broke through the defenses and trench system around the besieged city. We had the examples of the Drina Valley or the city of Vukovar, where about a third of the Muslim inhabitants had been killed and the rest herded into refugee or displacement camps. There are times when the only choice left is to pick up a weapon to defend your family, neighborhood and city. But those who proved most adept at defending Sarajevo invariably came from the criminal class. When they were not shooting at Serbian soldiers they were looting the apartments of ethnic Serbs in Sarajevo and often executing them, as well as terrorizing their fellow Muslims. When you ingest the poison of violence, even in a just cause, it corrupts, deforms and perverts you. Violence is a drug, indeed it is the most potent narcotic known to humankind. Those most addicted to violence are those who have access to weapons and a penchant for force. And these killers rise to the surface of any armed movement and contaminate it with the intoxicating and seductive power that comes with the ability to destroy. I have seen it in war after war. When you go down that road you end up pitting your monsters against their monsters. And the sensitive, the humane and the gentle, those who have a propensity to nurture and protect life, are marginalized and often killed. The romantic vision of war and violence is as prevalent among anarchists and the hard left as it is in the mainstream culture. Those who resist with force will not defeat the corporate state or sustain the cultural values that must be sustained if we are to have a future worth living. >From my many years as a war correspondent in El Salvador, Guatemala, Gaza and Bosnia, I have seen that armed resistance movements are always mutations of the violence that spawned them. I am not naïve enough to think I could have avoided these armed movements had I been a landless Salvadoran or Guatemalan peasant, a Palestinian in Gaza or a Muslim in Sarajevo, but this violent response to repression is and always will be tragic. It must be avoided, although not at the expense of our own survival.

Democracy, a system ideally designed to challenge the status quo, has been corrupted and tamed to slavishly serve the status quo. We have undergone, as John Ralston Saul writes, a coup d’état in slow motion. And the coup is over. They won. We lost. The abject failure of activists to push corporate, industrialized states toward serious environmental reform, to thwart imperial adventurism or to build a humane policy toward the masses of the world’s poor stems from an inability to recognize the new realities of power. The paradigm of power has irrevocably altered and so must the paradigm of resistance alter.

Too many resistance movements continue to buy into the facade of electoral politics, parliaments, constitutions, bills of rights, lobbying and the appearance of a rational economy. The levers of power have become so contaminated that the needs and voices of citizens have become irrelevant. The election of Barack Obama was yet another triumph of propaganda over substance and a skillful manipulation and betrayal of the public by the mass media. We mistook style and ethnicity – an advertising tactic pioneered by the United Colors of Benetton and Calvin Klein – for progressive politics and genuine change. We confused how we were made to feel with knowledge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand for an experience. Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand. He had almost no experience besides two years in the senate, lacked any moral core and was sold as all things to all people. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertisers want because of how they can make you feel.

We live in a culture characterized by what Benjamin DeMott called “junk politics.” Junk politics does not demand justice or the reparation of rights. It always personalizes issues rather than clarifying them. It eschews real debate for manufactured scandals, celebrity gossip and spectacles. It trumpets eternal optimism, endlessly praises our moral strength and character, and communicates in a feel-your-pain language. The result of junk politics is that nothing changes, “meaning zero interruption in the processes and practices that strengthen existing, interlocking systems of socioeconomic advantage.”

The cultural belief that we can make things happen by thinking, by visualizing, by wanting them, by tapping into our inner strength or by understanding that we are truly exceptional is magical thinking. We can always make more money, meet new quotas, consume more products and advance our career if we have enough faith. This magical thinking, preached to us across the political spectrum by Oprah, sports celebrities, Hollywood, self-help gurus and Christian demagogues, is largely responsible for our economic and environmental collapse, since any Cassandra who saw it coming was dismissed as “negative.” This belief, which allows men and women to behave and act like little children, discredits legitimate concerns and anxieties. It exacerbates despair and passivity. It fosters a state of self-delusion. The purpose, structure and goals of the corporate state are never seriously questioned. To question, to engage in criticism of the corporate collective, is to be obstructive and negative. And it has perverted the way we view ourselves, our nation and the natural world. The new paradigm of power, coupled with its bizarre ideology of limitless progress and impossible happiness, has turned whole nations, including the United States, into monsters.

We can march in Copenhagen. We can join Bill McKibben’s worldwide day of climate protests. We can compost in our backyards and hang our laundry out to dry. We can write letters to our elected officials and vote for Barack Obama, but the power elite is impervious to the charade of democratic participation. Power is in the hands of moral and intellectual trolls who are ruthlessly creating a system of neo-feudalism and killing the ecosystem that sustains the human species. And appealing to their better nature, or seeking to influence the internal levers of power, will no longer work.

We will not, especially in the United States, avoid our Götterdämmerung. Obama, like Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the other heads of the industrialized nations, has proven as craven a tool of the corporate state as George W. Bush. Our democratic system has been transformed into what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin labels inverted totalitarianism. Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, a free press, parliamentary systems and constitutions while manipulating and corrupting internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens but are ruled by armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington, Ottawa or other state capitals who author the legislation and get the legislators to pass it. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion. Mass culture, owned and disseminated by corporations, diverts us with trivia, spectacles and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. “Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,” Wolin writes. “Economics dominates politics – and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.”

Inverted totalitarianism wields total power without resorting to cruder forms of control such as gulags, concentration camps or mass terror. It harnesses science and technology for its dark ends. It enforces ideological uniformity by using mass communication systems to instill profligate consumption as an inner compulsion and to substitute our illusions of ourselves for reality. It does not forcibly suppress dissidents, as long as those dissidents remain ineffectual. And as it diverts us it dismantles manufacturing bases, devastates communities, unleashes waves of human misery and ships jobs to countries where fascists and communists know how to keep workers in line. It does all this while waving the flag and mouthing patriotic slogans. “The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed,” Wolin writes.

The practice and psychology of advertising, the rule of “market forces” in many arenas other than markets, the continuous technological advances that encourage elaborate fantasies (computer games, virtual avatars, space travel), the saturation by mass media and propaganda of every household and the takeover of the universities have rendered most of us hostages. The rot of imperialism, which is always incompatible with democracy, has seen the military and arms manufacturers monopolize $1 trillion a year in defense-related spending in the United States even as the nation faces economic collapse. Imperialism always militarizes domestic politics. And this militarization, as Wolin notes, combines with the cultural fantasies of hero worship and tales of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds and a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility to sever huge segments of the population from reality. Those who control the images control us. And while we have been entranced by the celluloid shadows on the walls of Plato’s cave, these corporate forces, extolling the benefits of privatization, have effectively dismantled the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services and public housing) and rolled back the social and political ideals of the New Deal. The proponents of globalization and unregulated capitalism do not waste time analyzing other ideologies. They have an ideology, or rather a plan of action that is defended by an ideology, and slavishly follow it. We on the left have dozens of analyses of competing ideologies without any coherent plan of our own. This has left us floundering while corporate forces ruthlessly dismantle civil society.

We are living through one of civilization’s great seismic reversals. The ideology of globalization, like all “inevitable” utopian visions, is being exposed as a fraud. The power elite, perplexed and confused, clings to the disastrous principles of globalization and its outdated language to mask the looming political and economic vacuum. The absurd idea that the marketplace alone should determine economic and political constructs led industrial nations to sacrifice other areas of human importance – from working conditions, to taxation, to child labor, to hunger, to health and pollution – on the altar of free trade. It left the world’s poor worse off and the United States with the largest deficits – which can never be repaid – in human history. The massive bailouts, stimulus packages, giveaways and short-term debt, along with imperial wars we can no longer afford, will leave the United States struggling to finance nearly $5 trillion in debt this year. This will require Washington to auction off about $96 billion in debt a week. Once China and the oil-rich states walk away from our debt, which one day has to happen, the Federal Reserve will become the buyer of last resort. The Fed has printed perhaps as much as two trillion new dollars in the last two years, and buying this much new debt will see it, in effect, print trillions more. This is when inflation, and most likely hyperinflation, will turn the dollar into junk. And at that point the entire system breaks down.

All traditional standards and beliefs are shattered in a severe economic crisis. The moral order is turned upside down. The honest and industrious are wiped out while the gangsters, profiteers and speculators walk away with millions. The elite will retreat, as Naomi Klein has written in The Shock Doctrine, into gated communities where they will have access to services, food, amenities and security denied to the rest of us. We will begin a period in human history when there will be only masters and serfs. The corporate forces, which will seek to make an alliance with the radical Christian right and other extremists, will use fear, chaos, the rage at the ruling elites and the specter of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian controls to ruthlessly extinguish opposition movements. And while they do it, they will be waving the American flag, chanting patriotic slogans, promising law and order and clutching the Christian cross. Totalitarianism, George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith but an age of schizophrenia. “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell wrote. “That is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Our elites have used fraud. Force is all they have left.

Our mediocre and bankrupt elite is desperately trying to save a system that cannot be saved. More importantly, they are trying to save themselves. All attempts to work within this decayed system and this class of power brokers will prove useless. And resistance must respond to the harsh new reality of a global, capitalist order that will cling to power through ever-mounting forms of brutal and overt repression. Once credit dries up for the average citizen, once massive joblessness creates a permanent and enraged underclass and the cheap manufactured goods that are the opiates of our commodity culture vanish, we will probably evolve into a system that more closely resembles classical totalitarianism. Cruder, more violent forms of repression will have to be employed as the softer mechanisms of control favored by inverted totalitarianism break down.

It is not accidental that the economic crisis will converge with the environmental crisis. In his book The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi laid out the devastating consequences – the depressions, wars and totalitarianism – that grow out of a so-called self-regulated free market. He grasped that “fascism, like socialism, was rooted in a market society that refused to function.” He warned that a financial system always devolves, without heavy government control, into a Mafia capitalism – and a Mafia political system – which is a good description of our financial and political structure. A self-regulating market, Polanyi wrote, turns human beings and the natural environment into commodities, a situation that ensures the destruction of both society and the natural environment. The free market’s assumption that nature and human beings are objects whose worth is determined by the market allows each to be exploited for profit until exhaustion or collapse. A society that no longer recognizes that nature and human life have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, commits collective suicide. Such societies cannibalize themselves until they die. This is what we are undergoing.

If we build self-contained structures, ones that do as little harm as possible to the environment, we can weather the coming collapse. This task will be accomplished through the existence of small, physical enclaves that have access to sustainable agriculture, are able to sever themselves as much as possible from commercial culture and can be largely self-sufficient. These communities will have to build walls against electronic propaganda and fear that will be pumped out over the airwaves. Canada will probably be a more hospitable place to do this than the United States, given America’s strong undercurrent of violence. But in any country, those who survive will need isolated areas of land as well as distance from urban areas, which will see the food deserts in the inner cities, as well as savage violence, leach out across the urban landscape as produce and goods become prohibitively expensive and state repression becomes harsher and harsher.

The increasingly overt uses of force by the elites to maintain control should not end acts of resistance. Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience understand the moral imperative to challenge systems of abuse and despotism. They should be carried out not because they are effective but because they are right. Those who begin these acts are always few in number and dismissed by those who hide their cowardice behind their cynicism. But resistance, however marginal, continues to affirm life in a world awash in death. It is the supreme act of faith, the highest form of spirituality and alone makes hope possible. Those who carried out great acts of resistance often sacrificed their security and comfort, often spent time in jail and in some cases were killed. They understood that to live in the fullest sense of the word, to exist as free and independent human beings, even under the darkest night of state repression, meant to defy injustice.

When the dissident Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken from his cell in a Nazi prison to the gallows, his last words were: “This is for me the end, but also the beginning.” Bonhoeffer knew that most of the citizens in his nation were complicit through their silence in a vast enterprise of death. But however hopeless it appeared in the moment, he affirmed what we all must affirm. He did not avoid death. He did not, as a distinct individual, survive. But he understood that his resistance and even his death were acts of love. He fought and died for the sanctity of life. He gave, even to those who did not join him, another narrative, and his defiance ultimately condemned his executioners.

We must continue to resist, but do so now with the discomforting realization that significant change will probably never occur in our lifetime. This makes resistance harder. It shifts resistance from the tangible and the immediate to the amorphous and the indeterminate. But to give up acts of resistance is spiritual and intellectual death. It is to surrender to the dehumanizing ideology of totalitarian capitalism. Acts of resistance keep alive another narrative, sustain our integrity and empower others, who we may never meet, to stand up and carry the flame we pass to them. No act of resistance is useless, whether it is refusing to pay taxes, fighting for a Tobin tax, working to shift the neoclassical economics paradigm, revoking a corporate charter, holding global internet votes or using Twitter to catalyze a chain reaction of refusal against the neoliberal order. But we will have to resist and then find the faith that resistance is worthwhile, for we will not immediately alter the awful configuration of power. And in this long, long war a community to sustain us, emotionally and materially, will be the key to a life of defiance.

The philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote that the exclusive preoccupation with personal concerns and indifference to the suffering of others beyond the self-identified group is what ultimately made fascism and the Holocaust possible: “The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.”

The indifference to the plight of others and the supreme elevation of the self is what the corporate state seeks to instill in us. It uses fear, as well as hedonism, to thwart human compassion. We will have to continue to battle the mechanisms of the dominant culture, if for no other reason than to preserve through small, even tiny acts, our common humanity. We will have to resist the temptation to fold in on ourselves and to ignore the cruelty outside our door. Hope endures in these often imperceptible acts of defiance. This defiance, this capacity to say no, is what the psychopathic forces in control of our power systems seek to eradicate. As long as we are willing to defy these forces we have a chance, if not for ourselves, then at least for those who follow. As long as we defy these forces we remain alive. And for now this is the only victory possible.

Chris Hedges, a staff member of the New York Times since 1990, has been a foreign correspondent for fifteen years. An adjunct professor of journalism at New York University, he is the author of Losing Moses on the Freeway and What Every Person Should Know About War. Chris was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the New York Times's coverage of global terrorism. A senior fellow at the Nation Institute, he lives in New Jersey. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

My Inflation Nightmare

Michael Kinsley

Am I crazy, or is the commentariat ignoring our biggest economic threat?

Right-wing talk radio these days is carrying fewer commercials for second mortgages. (Consolidate your debts, lower your monthly payments, and have enough left over for that dream vacation!) They've been replaced by commercials for gold. Gold bugs have long had a small place on the map of the American right, but to most people gold seems like a crazy investment. It doesn't produce anything, unlike a company in which you might own shares. It can't provide shelter, like a house. It's too expensive to use widely in industry or commerce, except for tiny amounts that go into people's mouths, wrap around their fingers, or hang from their ears. Gold just sits there. And yet the price of gold has gone from about $280 an ounce 10 years ago to about $1,140 today.

The only reason to buy gold is fear that the currency may collapse. Paper currency used to represent claims on a share of the gold in Fort Knox. Now it is just "fiat money," backed only by the "full faith and credit" of the United States government. Ditto electronic money - the $5,000 you allegedly have in a savings account at the bank, whose only corporeal existence is on a hard drive somewhere. That $5,000 is $5,000 only because the government says it is. For the gold bugs, trusting the government seems as unwise as hoarding gold seems to most other people.

Another way to say "collapse of the currency" is to say "hyperinflation." Hyperinflation is when inflation feeds on itself and takes off beyond control. You can have stable 2 to 3 percent inflation. But you can't have stable 10 percent inflation. When everybody assumes 10 percent, all the forces that produced 10 percent push it to 20 percent, and then 40 percent, and soon people are lugging currency in a wheelbarrow, as in the famous photos from Weimar Germany.

Thirty years ago, we peered into this abyss and pulled back just in time. As inflation neared its peak of more than 13 percent, Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Using his control over the money supply, Volcker purposely plunged us into a deep recession, which is the only certain remedy. Carter got blamed for both the inflation and the recession that cured it. The columnist Robert Samuelson tells the story in his book, just out in paperback, The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath.

Even 13 percent inflation was a nightmare. A stable currency is firm ground on which you can build a life. Inflation turns life into Through the Looking-Glass: you have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place. Saving is for suckers, and money needs to be spent sooner rather than later. Planning even a year or two ahead becomes nearly impossible. Worst of all, economically, the hard knocks and lucky breaks of life, which people generally accept when they are distributed by fate, become politicized, and therefore embittering. Stop fighting, and you start losing.

Furthermore, as Samuelson notes, the damage is more than just economic. These days everyone is disenchanted with civic institutions and government. They hate the press, they loathe Congress, and so on. Studies by foundations puzzle over why. Was it the '60s? No, it was the late '70s and early '80s, when government failed to deliver on its obligation to provide a stable currency.

Samuelson worries that "the entire episode" may "slip from our collective consciousness." I'll spare you the Santayana and just say that if we are doomed to repeat this particular bit of the recent past, the press has failed in its self-imposed obligation to be the "first draft of history."

According to the considerable discussion of inflation on the Web, my alarm is misguided. Every economist I admire, from Paul Krugman and Larry Summers on down, is convinced that inflation will remain low for as long as we can predict. Greg Mankiw, who was George W. Bush's economic adviser, has examined the evidence in his New York Times column and concluded that a return of debilitating inflation is pretty unlikely (although "current monetary and fiscal policy is so far outside the bounds of historical norms" that who can say for sure?). Krugman has charged that inflation fearmongering is a nefarious Republican plot. The Congressional Budget Office (usually known by its nickname, "the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office") projects inflation rates of less than 2 percent for the next decade. Some say the real danger is the opposite: deflation, or prices (and wages) going down across the board.

Maybe I'm like those generals who are always fighting the last war, but I am not reassured. I worry that when and if the recession is well and truly over, there is a serious danger of another round of vicious inflation. (If the recession is not over, or gets worse, we'll have other problems.) This time, inflation will be a lot harder to stop before it turns into hyperinflation. Whether Obama navigates these shoals successfully will be a big factor in his historic reputation. And journalists will be kicking themselves (and other people will be kicking journalists) for missing a disaster story on the level of Hurricane Katrina, if not 9/11 itself.

In short, I can't help feeling that the gold bugs are right. No, I'm not stashing gold bars under my bed. But that's only because I lack the courage of my convictions.

My fear is not the result of economic analysis. It's more from the realm of psychology. I mean mine. The last time I wrote about this subject, The Atlantic's own Clive Crook called me a "fiscal sado-conservative." I would put it differently (you won't be surprised to hear). Maybe, at least on economic matters, I'm a puritan. The recession we've been going through did not occur for no reason. Even though serious misbehavior by the finance industry triggered it, sooner or later it was bound to happen. For a generation - since shortly after Volcker saved the country, and except for a brief period of surpluses under Bill Clinton - we partied on borrowed money. We watched a real-estate bubble get larger and larger, knowing but not acknowledging that it had to burst. Then it did burst, and George W. Bush slunk off to Texas, leaving Barack Obama to clean up the mess. Obama has done the right things, mostly, pushing through a huge stimulus package and bailing out a few big corporations and banks. Krugman says we need yet another dose of stimulus, and maybe he's right.

But this cure has been one ice-cream sundae after another. It can't be that easy, can it? The puritan in me says that there has to be some pain. That's not to say that there hasn't been plenty of economic pain. But that pain has come from the recession itself, not the cure.

My specific concern is nothing original: it's just the national debt. Yawn and turn the page here if you'd like. We talk now of trillions, not yesterday's hundreds of billions. It's not Obama's fault. He did what he had to do. However, Obama is president, and Democrats do control Congress. So it's their responsibility, even if it's not their fault. And no one in a position to act has proposed a realistic way out of this debt, not even in theory. The Republicans haven't. The Obama administration hasn't. Come to think of it, even Paul Krugman hasn't. Presidential adviser David Axelrod, writing in The Washington Post, says that Obama has instructed his agency heads to go through the budget "page by page, line by line, to eliminate what we don't need to help pay for what we do." So they've had more than a year and haven't yet discovered the line in the budget reading "Stuff We Don't Need, $3.2 trillion."

There is a way out. It's called inflation. In 1979, for example, the government ran a deficit of more than $40 billion - about $118 billion in today's money. The national debt stood at about $830 billion at year's end. But because of 13.3 percent inflation, that $830 billion was worth what only $732 billion would have been worth at the beginning of the year. In effect, the government ran up $40 billion in new debts but inflated away almost $100 billion and ended up with a national debt smaller in real terms than what it started with. Ten percent inflation for five years (if that were possible) would erode the value of our projected debt nicely - but along with it, the value of non-indexed pensions, people's savings, and so on. The Federal Reserve is independent, but Congress and the White House have ways to pressure the Fed. Actually, just spending all this money we don't have is one good way.

Compared with raising taxes or cutting spending, just letting inflation do the dirty work sounds easy. It will be a terrible temptation, and Obama's historic reputation (not to mention the welfare of the nation) will depend on whether he succumbs. Or so I fear. So who are you going to believe? Me? Or virtually every leading economist across the political spectrum? Even I know the sensible answer to that.

And yet ...

www.theatlantic.com

Think deficits don't matter? Just ask Portugal

By MoneyWeek Editor John Stepek Mar 25, 2010

John Stepek

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Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva © Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images

Portugal: no boom, but still bust

What happened yesterday?

Little of consequence. At least, not here in the UK. Alistair Darling stood up. He gave a speech in which he tried to clear the Labour party of any responsibility for the state of the economy they've been running for the past 13 years. He bribed first-time buyers. He battered cider drinkers. Then he sat down.

Both sides then got down to the serious business of trading insults over how corrupt the other party's members are. Anyone who actually cares about how the British economy is going to get out of this mess might have felt the urge to go in there and slap the lot of them.

And while we were all watching the Chancellor try to rewrite history, elsewhere in Europe, Portugal was warning us of what happens when people lose faith in your ability to repay your debts...

Yesterday's Budget was just election campaigning

We covered most of the headline grabbers in our Budget coverage yesterday. I have to say that my overwhelming sense from the whole thing was, "what's the point?"

There's something about Alistair Darling that makes you want to give him the benefit of the doubt. It might just be the fact that he's not Gordon Brown. But this really was just a cynical piece of election campaigning.

Stephen Barber at online brokerage Selftrade summed it up well: "This was a neutral budget for investors, since it wasn't a budget at all. Budgets set out taxation and spending. But the Chancellor told us his taxation plans in the pre-budget report three months ago. Spending won't be revealed until the comprehensive spending review after the election in the autumn. This was a political act which drew the dividing lines for an election campaign which begins in earnest today."

He fiddled with stamp duty in the hope of giving house prices a little bump up in the month before the election. But what happens after, when all those first-time buyers who paid too much are left with rising interest payments and falling equity?

He categorically denied that the recession had anything to do with Labour's economic governance. But if that's true, how come we're one of the last countries to emerge?

He said that efficiency savings will be made. But given the government's track record on that front, how can we believe that's realistic?

And it's this point – the deficit – that really does need to be addressed. By the end of this tax year, Britain is expected to have overspent by £167bn. That's all added to our national debt. Next year, and the year after, we'll still be overspending by £160bn-odd a year. So that gets added to our national debt too. And even if we do halve the deficit by 2013/14, as promised, we'll still be adding to the debt pile.

The UK's in a vulnerable position right now – just look at Portugal

And a lot of these predictions depend on us having good economic growth every year between now and then. That's a very vulnerable position to be in. There's not much room for error or bad luck. Do you really believe that in the next four years there won't be any more macro-economic shocks? And we're now surely at the point – if we're not already past it – where any further rises in the state's tax take will just be counter-productive.

And if you want to know what happens when people start to worry that a country can't repay its debts, you just need to take a look at what happened in the eurozone yesterday.

Portugal was downgraded by ratings agency Fitch, from AA to AA-. To give you some perspective, Britain is AAA (still), while Greece is BBB+.

I feel a bit sorry for Portugal. They didn't have a boom, and they've still managed to have a bust. Of course, the economy is much smaller than Britain's. It's also structurally pretty sclerotic – which is what happens when too much of your economy is dependent on government bureaucracy. That's why we've still got a AAA rating even with our budget deficit at 11.8% of GDP, while they've been downgraded even although their deficit is 'just' 9.3% of GDP.

Douglas Renwick at Fitch said: "Although Portugal has not been disproportionately affected by the global downturn, prospects for economic recovery are weaker than 15 European Union peers, which will put pressure on its public finances over the medium term."

How can you profit in this mess?

As a result, the euro took a hammering against the dollar, falling to a ten-month low. We've been suggesting that the spread betters among you short the euro against the dollar for most of this year now, so hopefully it's been a winning trade for any of you who have done it. We also write about some other potential trades in the current issue of MoneyWeek magazine (if you're not already a subscriber, claim your first three issues free).

Do bear in mind, if you're tempted, that spread betting is a risky business. It's not like buying shares (which is risky enough in itself). You need to use stop losses, you need to be disciplined, and if you make mistakes you can lose an awful lot of money in a very short space of time. If that hasn't put you off, then to get a great deal on an account provider, check out our spread betting comparison service.

As for the pound – well it fell yesterday against the dollar, but rose against the euro. What that suggests to me is that the markets felt exactly the same about the Budget as we did – it was a non-event. The real Budget will come after the election, be that under Labour, Conservatives, or Lib Dems. And Lord help us if they make a mess of that one.

Our recommended article for today

Profit from the new space race

The US has opened up America's space exploration programme to private industry. And it's not only the US that's splashing out. Europe, Russia, China, Japan, India and the Middle East are all committing vast sums. Here, Paul Hill examines the opportunities for investors.

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Come come???

COMMERCIO: STRETTA FAMIGLIE, -3,3% ACQUISTO ALIMENTARI/ANSA (ANSA) - ROMA, 25 MAR - Le famiglie italiane stringono ancora la cinghia. La crisi economica, a leggere i dati diffusi oggi dall'Istat sulle vendite del commercio al dettaglio, non e' ancora alle spalle e si affronta riducendo gli acquisti, a partire da quelli alimentari. A gennaio - sottolinea l'Istituto di statistica - le vendite complessive sono diminuite dello 0,5% i prodotti alimentari il calo e' ancora piu' forte con un -1% su dicembre (il dato peggiore da aprile 2007) e un -3,3% su gennaio 2009, il dato tendenziale peggiore da marzo 2009, mese considerato di picco per la crisi. La diminuzione degli acquisti alimentari non ha risparmiato nessuno con un calo tendenziale delle vendite della grande distribuzione del 3,5% e una diminuzione per i negozi piu' piccoli del 3,1%. Per il comparto non alimentare il calo complessivo delle vendite e' stato rispettivamente dello 0,3% su dicembre e del 2,3% su gennaio 2009 con una sofferenza maggiore per la grande distribuzione (-2,9% a fronte del -2% delle imprese operanti su piccole superfici). Gli indicatori peraltro si riferiscono al valore corrente delle vendite e quindi incorporano la dinamica sia delle quantita' sia dei prezzi. In pratica la quantita' di merci acquistate e' ancora inferiore al 2,6% complessivo di calo delle vendite perche' questo ingloba anche l'aumento dei prezzi. Gli indici tendenziali sono negativi per tutti i settori ma hanno riduzioni meno pesanti rispetto alla crisi le vendite di abbigliamento e calzature (-1,2% per entrambi i settori) dopo aver pero' subito cali consistenti in precedenza mentre le dotazioni per l'informatica perdono il 4,3% e i prodotti farmaceutici il 4,2%. Se l'Istat non specifica nel dettaglio quali sono all'interno dei consumi alimentari i beni meno acquistati la Cia (Confederazione degli agricoltori) rileva che nel carrello della spesa ci sono meno pane, carne, vino e olio d'oliva ma soprattutto meno piatti pronti e salumi dop mentre la pasta tiene insieme agli ortaggi (in aumento) e il comparto di latte e derivati. I commercianti hanno commentato i dati con preoccupazione: la Confesercenti sottolinea che l'alimentare e' l'ultima cosa che si taglia mentre la Confcommercio evidenzia come i consumi deboli siano figli della bassa crescita. Le associazioni dei consumatori tornano a chiedere al Governo un intervento per la detassazione dei redditi fissi mentre l'opposizione con l'ex ministro del Lavoro, Cesare Damiano definisce ''fallimentare'' la politica dell'Esecutivo, ''irresponsabile'' nel minimizzare la crisi. (ANSA).

EURO

CRISI: GRECIA; REDING, ACCORDO UE O RISCHIO TSUNAMI (ANSA) - BRUXELLES, 25 MAR - La crisi greca, senza un intervento della Ue, rischia di produrre ''uno tsunami'' che puo' travolgere Paesi come Spagna, Portogallo, Francia e Inghilterra. Lo ha detto il vicepresidente della Commissione Ue, Viviane Reding, auspicando un accordo al vertice Ue che si svolgera' a Bruxelles oggi e domani. ''Noi apparteniamo tutti a una stessa famiglia - ha detto in un'intervista alla radio belga Bel-Rtl - e se uno Stato membro va male e' necessario aiutarlo, altrimenti gli effetti si sentiranno su tutti gli altri Paesi che non stanno andando bene, come il Portogallo, la Spagna, l'Inghilterra, la Francia e altri''. ''La Grecia - ha aggiunto - puo' essere l'inizio di uno tsunami''. (ANSA). CRISI: GRECIA; BANCA CENTRALE CINA, E' SOLO L'INIZIO (ANSA) - NEW YORK, 25 mar - La crisi della Grecia e' solo l'inizio. Lo ha detto - riporta il Financial Times - il vice governatore della banca centrale cinese, Zhu Min. ''Non vediamo azioni decisive che dicano ai mercati: possiamo risolvere'' questa crisi, spiega Min. (ANSA). CRISI: GRECIA; MARCEGAGLIA, REALE RISCHIO UNIONE MONETARIA (ANSA) - ROMA, 25 MAR - ''Nelle principali capitali europee si respira per la prima volta da molti anni un'aria che non ci piace, un'aria di divisione, di ritorno ai modelli nazionali. L'integrazione diventa via via piu' difficile e manca una visione comune''. Lo ha affermato il presidente di Confindustria, Emma Marcegaglia, che, parlando alla Giunta degli imprenditori, ha aggiunto: ''Siamo in un momento critico dove il rischio di rottura di cio' che abbiamo costruito fino ad oggi, l'Unione Monetaria, e' un rischio reale. Come dimostrano le dichiarazioni della cancelliera tedesca, Angela Merkel, su come affrontare il caso della Grecia''. Secondo il numero uno di Confindustria, ''bisogna contrastare il crescente sentimento di lontananza o addirittura di ostilita' nei confronti dell'Europa, sentimento che porta a soluzioni populistiche e protezionistiche che noi dobbiamo assolutamente respingere''.(ANSA).

CRISI: GRECIA; BANCA CENTRALE CINA, E' SOLO L'INIZIO

(ANSA) - NEW YORK, 25 mar - La crisi della Grecia e' solo l'inizio. Lo ha detto - riporta il Financial Times - il vice governatore della banca centrale cinese, Zhu Min. ''Non vediamo azioni decisive che dicano ai mercati: possiamo risolvere'' questa crisi, spiega Min. (ANSA).

CRISI: USA; BERNANKE, ECONOMIA RICHIEDE POLITICA ACCOMODANTE

(ANSA) - NEW YORK, 25 mar - I tassi rimarranno bassi per un ''periodo prolungato di tempo'' ribadisce Bernanke di fronte alla commissione servizi finanziari della Camera, precisando che la debolezza dell'economia e l'inflazione contenuta garantiscono tassi bassi. ''L'economia continua a richiedere il sostegno di politiche monetarie accomodanti. Comunque stiamo lavorando per assicurarci di aver gli strumenti per ritirare, al momento appropriato, l'attuale grado elevato di stimoli monetari. Siamo fiduciosi nel fatto che, quando arrivera' il momento, saremo pronti''. Bernanke doveva presentarsi alla commissione servizi finanziari della Camera lo scorso 20 febbraio ma a causa maltempo l'audizione e' stata posticipata a oggi. Il testo del suo intervento era gia' gia' consegnato.(ANSA).

CITTA' IN TRANSIZIONE

Argomento: Ecologia DI EDUARDO ZARELLI ilribelle.com Dalla dipendenza energetica alla sostenibilità delle comunità locali: moneta propria al riparo dalla inflazione, ma soprattutto un nuovo olistico sistema di vita. Si può fare. Transition è un movimento culturale nato in Inghilterra dalle intuizioni e dal lavoro di Rob Hopkins, ora apprezzabile anche dai lettori italiani (Manuale Pratico della Transizione, Arianna Editrice). Tutto avviene quasi per caso nel 2003. In quel periodo Hopkins insegnava a Kinsale, in Irlanda e con i suoi studenti creò il Kinsale Energy Descent Plan: un progetto strategico che indicava come la piccola città avrebbe dovuto riorganizzare la propria esistenza in un mondo in cui il petrolio non fosse stato più economico e ampiamente disponibile. Voleva essere un’esercitazione scolastica, ma quasi subito ci si rese conto del potenziale rivoluzionario di quella iniziativa. Quello era il seme della “Transizione”, il progetto consapevole del passaggio dallo scenario attuale a quello del prossimo futuro. “I progetti di Transizione mirano a creare comunità libere dalla dipendenza dal petrolio e fortemente resilienti attraverso la ripianificazione energetica e la rilocalizzazione delle risorse di base comunitarie...” “Pensare globalmente, agire localmente”: in questo semplice slogan si possono riassumere l’obiettivo e il modus operandi del movimento delle “Città in Transizione”. Una filosofia che ora si sta diffondendo anche da noi in ambito locale, dei piccoli e virtuosi comuni della variegata e propositiva provincia italiana, dopo che Hopkins ha fatto della cittadina di Totnes, in Gran Bretagna, l’esempio più famoso di questo movimento. Questo villaggio di 8.500 abitanti nel sud-ovest dell’Inghilterra è stato da subito terreno fertile per le idee della transizione. Partendo da una presa di coscienza dei problemi che ci affliggono su scala planetaria – il cambiamento climatico, la futura penuria di fonti di energia non rinnovabili, la questione dello sfruttamento delle risorse idriche – Hopkins e i suoi sono riusciti a coinvolgere una piccola comunità che ha iniziato a compiere la sua "rivoluzione" nel nome dell’autosufficienza. L’obiettivo è che produzione, distribuzione e consumo (di energia, di acqua e di cibo, principalmente) diventino il più possibile locali, indipendenti da fattori esterni. E così via libera a progetti riguardanti l’uso di fonti energetiche rinnovabili, farmer’s market, spesa a chilometro zero, coltivazione di giardini e orti comuni, mobilità sostenibile. L’idea forte è stata quella di introdurre una valuta locale complementare, la “sterlina di Totnes”, cambiata alla pari con la sterlina del Regno Unito. Questa moneta – spendibile nella settantina di negozi associati al movimento – incentiva l’acquisto di prodotti locali, cosa che determina una diminuzione delle emissioni di anidride carbonica dovute al trasporto e un effettivo sostegno alle imprese e all’occupazione degli abitanti del posto. Ma sarebbe riduttivo concentrarsi sulla autosufficienza “monetaria”: infatti, uno dei pilastri dell’economia di Totnes viene dallo scambio e dalla condivisione di cose molto concrete come ad esempio, risorse o materiali inutilizzati da ditte e imprese. Chi ha manodopera inutilizzata, materiali che si accumulano, spazi vuoti in immobili o mezzi di trasporto, è incentivato a condividere tutto ciò con altre imprese che ne hanno bisogno, secondo il Business Resource Exchange Project. Chi possiede un orto-giardino che non riesce a curare per mancanza di tempo o capacità, è invitato a condividerlo con chi invece può coltivarlo, nell’ambito del Garden Share Project. Con due progetti chiamati The Great Re-skilling (recuperare abilità perdute) e Transition Tales (racconto di esperienze) si possono condividere conoscenze e saperi stimolando spontaneamente relazioni di vicinato e reciprocità sociale. Raccontata in questo modo Totnes può apparire come un piccolo paesino irenico e decontestualizzato, che ha attuato la sua piccola svolta “verde” proprio in virtù del suo essere irrilevante, circondato da fertili campagne e abitato da una popolazione istruita, ricettiva ed economicamente agiata. Ma è possibile “pensare globalmente e agire localmente” in contesti in cui le politiche ecologiche non sembrano essere il problema più pressante? Il movimento delle Transition Towns può sopravvivere nei sobborghi delle metropoli, nelle aree ad alta densità abitativa, nei sobborghi periferici “difficili” o semplicemente nei tessuti urbani occidentali?
Nella foto: Rob Hopkins
Forse ce lo dirà l’esperienza di Transition Town Brixton. Un tentativo appena nato di applicare la filosofia delle comunità di transizione proprio a un popoloso e degradato quartiere di Londra. Quest’ultimo ha la sua moneta complementare chiamata Brixton Pound che, come a Totnes, cercherà di incentivare la gente a comprare presso negozi locali indipendenti e di spingere i negozi stessi a servirsi di fornitori del posto, inibendo le derive inflazionistiche. A questo si affiancheranno i consueti progetti per la riduzione dei consumi energetici e delle emissioni di anidride carbonica, nel trasporto pubblico, nel riciclaggio dei rifiuti, nella riduzione degli sprechi e nello sviluppo di orti urbani e gruppi di acquisto solidali. Grande enfasi è data naturalmente ai progetti di sensibilizzazione ed educazione. A Brixton si lavora su numeri più grandi di quelli a cui sono abituate le Transition Towns (oltre 60mila persone sono potenzialmente interessate), e soprattutto su un pubblico che, gravato dal bisogno e le necessità, risulta apparentemente insensibile alle “buone pratiche” e alla “semplicità volontaria” della sobrietà ecologista. La Transizione - infatti - è un movimento culturale sperimentale con esplicita valenza metapolitica, avendo l’ambizioso proponimento di traghettare la nostra società industrializzata dall’attuale modello economico basato su una vasta disponibilità di petrolio a basso costo e sul consumo illimitato delle risorse a un nuovo modello sostenibile indipendente da energie fossili non rinnovabili e caratterizzato da un alto livello di “resilienza”. Tale principio è il cardine per ribaltare sul piano della concretezza l’irrealismo dell’economia del mondo industrializzato, che è stata sviluppata negli ultimi 150 anni sulla base sull’assunto paradossale che le risorse a disposizione per i consumi siano infinite. Le conseguenze più evidenti di questa politica sono una combinazione di eventi dalle ricadute di portata epocale: inquinamento, distruzione della biodiversità, iniquità sociale, distruzione del tessuto identitario e comunitario. La crisi petrolifera appare però la minaccia più immediata e facilmente percepibile dall’opinione pubblica. Hopkins parte quindi da questa percezione diffusa per arrivare agli altri di conseguenza - per progressiva consapevolezza - un’intuizione che è probabilmente alla base della considerevole diffusione del suo movimento nell’area anglosassone. Da ecologista ha passato anni a insegnare i principi della Permacultura, da cui deriva il concetto di resilienza. Quest’ultimo non è un termine molto conosciuto, esprime una caratteristica tipica dei sistemi naturali. Consiste nella capacità di un ecosistema, di una specie, di una certa organizzazione vivente o sociale di adattarsi ai cambiamenti, anche traumatici, che provengono dall’esterno senza degenerare, una flessibilità dinamica rispetto alle sollecitazioni indotte. La società industrializzata è caratterizzata da un bassissimo livello di resilienza. Viviamo tutti un costante stato di dipendenza da sistemi e organizzazioni dei quali non abbiamo alcun controllo. “Transition Towns: un metodo che si può facilmente imparare e insegnare, riprodurre e rielaborare nel rispetto delle identità e delle diversità sociali e culturali...” Nelle nostre città consumiamo gas, cibo, prodotti che percorrono migliaia di chilometri per raggiungerci, con catene di produzione e distribuzione estremamente lunghe, complesse e delicate. Il tutto è reso possibile dall’abbondanza di petrolio a basso prezzo che rende semplice avere energia ovunque e spostare enormi quantità di merci da una parte all’altra del pianeta. È facile scorgere l’estrema fragilità di questo assetto, basta chiudere il rubinetto del carburante e la nostra intera civiltà si paralizza. I progetti di Transizione - in controtendenza - mirano invece a creare comunità libere dalla dipendenza dal petrolio e fortemente resilienti attraverso la ripianificazione energetica e la rilocalizzazione delle risorse di base della comunità (produzione del cibo, dei beni e dei servizi fondamentali). Lo fa con proposte e progetti risolutamente pratici, fattivi e basati sul buon senso. Prevedono processi governati dal basso e la costruzione di una rete sociale e solidale molto forte tra gli abitanti delle comunità, e la dimensione locale non preclude l’esistenza di altri e più complessi livelli di relazione sussidiaria e di scambio, regionale, nazionale e internazionale.
Per dirla con la visione solistica del compianto Edward Goldsmith, se seguire la Via significa mantenere l’ordine cruciale del cosmo, si può ritenere che una società lo faccia quando il suo modello di comportamento, o di autogoverno, sia omeotelico. L’omearchia è il concetto chiave dell’intera visione olistica ed indica il controllo di sistemi naturali differenziati da parte della gerarchia di sistemi più ampi, di cui essi fanno parte. Quando, al contrario, è eterotelico (il controllo delle parti di un sistema da parte di un agente esterno/estraneo alla gerarchia), si deve ritenere che la società segua l’anti-Via, la civilizzazione dell’accumulo e dell’entropia, quella che minaccia l’ordine del cosmo e provoca inevitabilmente la rottura degli equilibri. Le unità di attività omeotelica sono le unità sociali naturali entro le quali gli esseri umani si sono evoluti: la famiglia, la comunità e la cultura che la sostanzia. Quando si disintegrano sotto l’impatto dello sviluppo economico, queste unità sono sostituite da istituzioni - politiche, economiche e sociali - il cui comportamento è sempre più eterotelico rispetto all’obiettivo di mantenere l’ordine cruciale della società e della gerarchia naturale. Nascono così le Transition Towns, “città di comunità” che sulla spinta dei propri abitanti decidono di prendere la via della transizione. Qui si evidenzia probabilmente l’elemento di forza più coinvolgente del progetto di Rob Hopkins: quello che lui ha creato è un metodo che si può facilmente imparare e insegnare, riprodurre e rielaborare nel rispetto delle identità e delle diversità sociali e culturali. Questo lo rende contagioso, persuasivo perché non ideologico, grazie alla emulazione della visione del mondo pluralistica che contiene, un’energia che attiva le persone e le rende protagoniste consapevoli di uno stile di vita volontariamente sobrio e disinteressato - nell’anonimato egoistico della società individualistica - che ricostruisce l’appartenenza comunitaria. La crisi profonda di civiltà che stiamo attraversando può quindi rivelarsi una grande opportunità che va colta e valorizzata per una trasformazione profonda del paradigma dominante. Il movimento di Transizione è uno strumento per farlo. Eduardo Zarelli Fonte:www.ilribelle.com Febbraio 2010 Per gentile concessione de “La Voce del Ribelle” La Voce del Ribelle è un mensile - registrato presso il Tribunale di Roma, autorizzazione N° 316 del 18 settembre 2008 - edito da Maxangelo s.r.l., via Trionfale 8489, 00135 Roma. Partita Iva 06061431000 Direttore Responsabile: Valerio Lo Monaco All rights reserved 2005 - 2008, - ilRibelle.com - RadioAlzoZero.net Licenza SIAE per RadioAlzoZero n° 472/I/06-599 Privacy Iscrizione ROC - Registro Operatori della Comunicazione - numero 17509 del 6/10/2008
Questo Articolo proviene da ComeDonChisciotte http://www.comedonchisciotte.org/site L'URL per questa storia è: http://www.comedonchisciotte.org/site/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6888

Alimentari: caro cibo e caro petrolio?

Mar 1025

Restringi post Espandi post

Pubblicato da Debora Billi alle 10:47 in Peak Oil

food3.jpgOggi sulla home di Repubblica campeggia il titolone: Istat, crollano le vendite di prodotti alimentari. Un calo del 3,3% rispetto a Gennaio 2009. Urca, aiuto, ci cade il cielo sulla testa.

Poi mi ricordo che ci sono le elezioni tra qualche giorno, e il cielo che cade sulla testa è un allarme che si lancia spesso in questi casi. La morte per fame è uno spettro valido come tanti altri, come se la nostra stampa si ricordasse delle catastrofi incombenti solo quando abbiamo la scheda elettorale in mano. Tutto il resto del tempo, ottimismo a scatafascio e Italia in cima al mondo.

Però... appena dieci giorni fa usciva, meno strombazzato, un altro articolo stavolta su La Stampa. L'autore fa notare che, proprio dal Gennaio 2009 ad oggi, il prezzo del petrolio è raddoppiato: e con esso, i prezzi dei generi alimentari. La "ripresa" per il momento è trainata quasi solo dalla Cina, ma

Quando anche l'Occidente riaccenderà il motore dell'economia la domanda si impennerà: sarà complicato tenere fermi i prezzi del barile. Nessuno si aspetta moti di piazza per il cibo in Europa o negli Stati Uniti, ma è un fatto che alcune abitudini diventeranno estremamente costose: per esempio far arrivare un salmone dall'Atlantico del nord e un avocado dai tropici per un antipasto giapponese. O mangiare carne di manzo tutti i giorni - e far viaggiare i bovini per migliaia di chilometri -, mangiare ortaggi indipendentemente dalla stagione. (...) Uno studio ha calcolato l'incidenza del petrolio sulle tavole americane: col petrolio a 70 dollari, per sfamare quattro persone la cifra minima è 188 dollari al mese. Se si tornasse ai livelli del 2008, si arriva a 424. Presto il cibo a chilometri zero non sarà più questione di ambiente ma di portafoglio.

Curiosamente, nel Gennaio 2008 parlavamo dello stesso argomento, qui. Ovvero, che il prezzo dei generi alimentari è destinato comunque a crescere, prescindendo dal governicchio all'opera al momento. Ce lo ha spiegato molto bene anche Lester Brown, che ha dedicato quattro libri alla questione.

http://petrolio.blogosfere.it/2010/03/alimentari-caro-cibo-e-caro-petrolio.html

La Cina alla conquista delle piccole e medie imprese italiane

Stampa E-mail
Scritto da Francesca Morandi (a cura di)
giovedì 25 marzo 2010
Image
Critica Sociale - La Cina va alla conquista delle piccole e medie imprese italiane, vera spina dorsale della nostra economia, dalle quali i cinesi vogliono acquisire avanzate conoscenze tecnologiche e competenze-chiave in settori industriali tipici della produzione “Made in Italy”, come la lavorazione del metallo, la fabbricazione di elettrodomestici e la progettazione e produzione di veicoli.

Si tratta di una sorta di “effetto Marco Polo” al contrario, come lo definisce un'analisi pubblicata, all'inizio di febbraio, dal think tank britannico Chatham House, secondo la quale come il famoso esploratore veneziano, che nel XIII secolo fu tra i primi occidentali a raggiungere la Cina, importò nel nostro Paese importanti scoperte scientifiche e tecnologiche come la bussola, i soldi e il carbone, oggi le aziende cinesi intendono appropriarsi di conoscenze peculiari dell'economia italiana, per la maggior parte collegate a produzioni di alta qualità e al design. La Chatham House sottolinea che la penetrazione cinese nel mercato italiano fa parte di una strategia più ampia che coinvolge l'intera Europa, dove gli asiatici seguono lo stesso “modello di conquista”, partendo da attività commerciali su bassa scala (come i punti vendita) e spostandosi successivamente su operazioni volte ad assorbire competenze manageriali e di marketing, oltre a innovazione tecnologica e particolarità legate alla specializzazione locale. L'obiettivo è costruire un bagaglio di conoscenze utili ad aumentare i vantaggi competitivi che la Cina necessita per incrementare la propria presenza nei mercati internazionali. Le aziende del cosiddetto "Impero di Mezzo" mirano, inoltre, ad acquisire marchi conosciuti, di cui l'Italia è ricca e famosa nel mondo, e asset strategici attraverso acquisizioni o fusioni. Per le imprese cinesi l'Europa rappresenta anche un mercato alternativo a quello domestico che, saturo per l'eccessiva competizione, ha registrato una caduta dei profitti in comparti come quello del tessile e dell'abbigliamento, e ha portato molte aziende cinesi a cercare nuovi mercati oltreoceano per aprire negozi e centri di produzione. Nel quadro europeo gli investimenti diretti stranieri (Foreign direct investment, FDI) cinesi sono concentrati maggiormente nel Regno Unito e in Germania (che insieme attraggono il 50% degli FDI del “Gigante Rosso” in Ue), si regista, tuttavia, un aumento di queste operazioni in Italia, nonostante il nostro Paese rappresenti una fetta di mercato ridotta rispetto ad altri Stati europei, ovvero il 4.05%. Nello studio delle motivazioni che spingono la Cina a investire nel mercato italiano, la Chatham House rileva alcune analogie tra il sistema economico italiano e quello cinese, ovvero una forte presenza di piccole e medie imprese (pmi) specializzate in industrie tradizionali. Se le nostre pmi rappresentano, per certi aspetti, una frammentazione settoriale poco attraente, l'interesse cinese è certamente rivolto verso gli agglomerati industriali italiani legati a produzioni specializzate come quella meccanica, del tessile, dell'abbigliamento, degli elettrodomestici e del settore automobilistico o "automotive" (la progettazione e la fabbricazione di auto, motocicli, autobus, camion, ecc. ...). Da un punto di vista geografico gli investimenti cinesi si concentrano nel Nord, soprattutto in Lombardia, dove Milano è un polo attrattivo senza pari. La seconda meta è il Piemonte, che registra investimenti legati al settore automobilistico. Gli investimenti nelle altre regioni sono basati sui diversi settori di specializzazione a seconda del prodotto industriale tradizionalmente “di punta” che in Veneto sono gli elettrodomestici e in Emilia i macchinari. La Liguria e la Campania sono invece strategiche sotto il profilo della logistica e dei trasporti. Dal 2000 si è registrato un aumento di operazioni di acquisizione o fusione da parte di compagnie cinesi in Italia. La Chatham House cita l'acquisizione, operata da Quianjiang, di Benelli, un'azienda specializzata nella produzione e nell'assemblaggio di motoveicoli, quella fatta da Haier verso Meneghetti, produttore di frigoriferi a Padova, e Elba, che produce elettrodomestici in Veneto, e l'acquisto da parte di Zoomlion della Cifa, impresa specializzata nella costruzione di macchinari destinati al settore edile. L'Italia, la settima più grande economia del mondo, rappresenta per i cinesi anche un importante mercato di “test europeo”: il gusto dei consumatori italiani è ritenuto essere esigente e sofisticato, ad esempio, su preferenze legate alla telefonia e agli elettrodomestici. In sostanza, se un prodotto piace agli italiani, il suo successo in Europa è garantito. I cinesi sono interessati a un'altra caratteristica tipica dell'economia italiana, ovvero i distretti industriali. Non è dunque un caso che Haier, la seconda più grande azienda a livello mondiale, dopo Whirlpool, nella creazione di elettrodomestici, abbia aperto a Varese un quartier generale destinato a coordinare le vendite e il marketing dei prodotti della Haier in 13 Stati europei. Varese ospita stabilimenti di aziende come Philips e Whirlpool, oltre a una schiera di fabbriche specializzate in fasi produttive intermedie. Ad attrarre i cinesi è il tessuto industriale locale, legato alla tradizione italiana, ma anche l'agglomerato industriale che si è costituito con l'apertura di diverse filiali straniere in quello stesso territorio, e che genera “sinergie positive di competenze” derivanti dalla presenza di un "esercito" di lavoratori e fornitori specializzati. L'Italia è strategica anche per l'utilizzo che può essere fatto del marchio italiano, in termini di popolarità e, dunque, di vendita, sul mercato europeo e globale. Un esempio è l'acquisizione fatta, nel 2006, dalla cinese Feidao dell'italiana Elios, una compagnia che produce apparecchiature elettriche o dell'azienda bolognese Omas, specializzata dal 1925 nella produzione di beni di lusso, che è stata assorbita nel 2007 dal gruppo Xinyu Hengdeli. Oltre alle acquisizioni è l'intero processo di ingresso nel mercato italiano da parte della Cina a suscitare timori. Le principali preoccupazioni sono dovute alla competizione sleale da parte delle aziende cinesi che ricevono sostegno, finanziario e politico, da parte del governo di Pechino e all'incertezza circa la solidità delle imprese acquisite dagli asiatici, l'impatto sull'occupazione e i rischi legati alla perdita di conoscenze-chiave. Tra i benefici vi è tuttavia l'iniezione di nuovi capitali nella nostra imprenditoria e, nel caso delle acquisizioni, il salvataggio di aziende sull'orlo della bancarotta.

Articolo originale: http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publications/papers/view/-/id/838/