Who's responsible? You fucking are.

I've been away 3 weeks....and you idiots actually bailed out the banks?!

Here's some articles about why the economy must be drastically revised. Not written by filthy stupid economists, but by scientists who look at evidence and data and come up with reasonable conclusions.

Required reading

The free articles are labelled as such at the bottom. I've got the printed issue if anyone wants to read the "not-free" articles(hypocrite capiltalist swines!). I can mention interesting not-free parts here:-

1. If an economist tells you that growth is essential to lift the poor from poverty(always their last line of defence), he is a fanny, and by any reasonable assessment is claiming the impossible. In today's financial system, for the poor to gain a tiny bit of wealth, the rich have to get much, much more richer, and increase all consumption to ridiculous levels. Some simple number crunching shows that to get the poorest onto just 3 dollars a day, we need 15 PLANETS WORTH of biocapacity. We need a new model, clearly.

2. Former senior economist of the World Bank Herman Daly explains that growth must be kept in sustainable limits, but all economists assume the Earth is an infinite well of resources. The Commission on Growth and Health earlier this year reported on 13 developing countries, including Brazil, China, Japan, etc, and suggests the entire world should follow their example of growth over the last 25 years. A global economy would be 5 times the size it is today in 25 years at this rate of growth. This is not sustainable by our planet.

3. One particularly awesome article is a report written from the point of view of a reporter 10 years in the future, in an alternate reality where we transform into a "steady-state" economy to save ourselves. It is intensely scary how different everything would be. It's a world run by scientists, who set rules for consumption and emission. Then economists work out how to achieve those limits. There's no income tax, but all resources are taxed at the point of removal from the biosphere. This increases prices encouraging their spare usage. The tax system is easy to enforce, and almost impossible to dodge(coincidentally, governments lose about 250 billion dollars a year in tax from rich cunts storing money in tax-havens). No fancy mobiles, or next generation wii's or xboxes i'm afraid. Things are buit to last, not to be replaced in 6 months - 6 years. Births are monitored and restricted. Everyone works part-time as a co-owner of a business rather than an employee. Incomes are lower, and we have much more time. It's also regressive: the poorer pay a higher proportion of their wage than the rich do to live. This is offset by benefits programmes from the awesome taxes we're collecting. It's interesting stuff, and illustrates a system which is not a socialist state nor the ultra-capitalist regime we have just now. It's still capitalism, but a relaxed kind.

4. The articles don't focus on the argument about whether global warming is caused by us, because at this stage it's a moot point, quite frankly. It's about the fundamental concept that an economic growth is sustained by inputs and outputs that banks refuse or are too scared to accept exist.

The article that Adam linked to below by an economist was one of the more hilarious rebukes of consumption by an economy I've read, the guy is completely deluded! I quote: " These myths were injected into the mainstream mainly by Keynesian economists or demand-siders who were trying to influence public policy." Hmmmm. Ecological Keynesianism is actually one of the few solutions to the problem of consumption, you fucking moron. And it is sustainable ecologically and economically. Far from hampering the economy, it was what lifted America out of the Depression during wartime thanks to creation of shite-loads of opportunities that weren't available before-hand and rationing of all food and oil.

His "Dependance on foreign oil" myth-busting misses point entirely. In fact, all his "myth-busting" seems to miss the point. Every argument he makes, in fact, the only argument, is that it is due to the control of central banks that everything went down the shitter. This is a complete and utter avoidance of the problem. It goes without saying that if the markets ran free there would be awesome unlimited growth. This has been proven many times mathematically. Awesome unlimited growth, however, is the problem, and it's only by a few smart individuals within the World Bank's efforts that there's still any constraints at all upon the trading system. The markets MUST be controlled and restrained to a much greater degree than they are at the moment to avoid running out of resources.

I haven't blamed the recent economic crisis on various different factors that I've been hearing in the news and on the street. It's speculation and rumour, all of it. The simple fact is, economists' maths failed them miserably after years of "innovation," and we've bailed them out like the capitalist pigs we are. They're all laughing, bet your dick on it. And they'll go on investing money that doesn't exist yet until one of two things happen: our planet collapses or the market dies due to lack of resources. Both will probably happen simultaneously

We are observing the first worldwide civilization dying under it's own weight, gentlemen. Nero fiddled while Rome burned: that is to say, there's not much we can do but point and laugh. I'm off to listen to some Manics: JOIN ME NOW!!!