What Caused the World Economic Crisis of 2009?

It is absolutely amazing to me that, I know the world is hurting, Obama and Congress did not learn their lessons. The reason the US is in trouble and hence the world is that too many people took out loans to buy what they could not afford. Then as these people were paying off these loans, the jobs they were counting on started disappearing to outsourcing and, the more destructive, offshoring. Many corporations irresponsibly displaced workers to save a buck or two. Next, even corporations that wanted to protect their workforce were forced to offshore jobs, just so they could compete with the less scrupulous companies. This had a domino effect. It is Incredible short sightedness on the part of the corporations, and share holders, pushing for ever greater return on investment (ROI). Why couldn't they see the golden geese they were killing?

Free Market Economy? What is free market but veiled monopolism. Truly "efficient" markets lead to no less than complete international monopolies with no border controls. We are now experiencing the full failure that is Free Market Economy.

First we started paying a little. When you start displacing a workforce you are not only displacing that worker but also the entire community. It is "okay" when one job is at stake, but a whole factory? With each job comes numerous community jobs that get either reduced or eliminated or both. Just imagine how much money gets pumped back into a community with each $40,000 job.

Sure the job is not actually lost in the world economy as it is being sent somewhere else. But the new person does the job for less, which means less money in the system. Less money means extra cash that kept the economy in motion is now sitting in the bottom of the executives pockets.

The problem that Free Market Economists have missed is the instability that this creates in the world. If these corporations decided that they wanted to open a new branch and add jobs to the wold that would be economic expansion. But by displacing workers they are extracting money out of the system. and when you extract enough money out of the system at some point no one is left to buy your products. This is the point the corporations have achieved at this moment in time.

For example, if you have a community of 1,000,000 people, and you take one hundred $40,000 jobs out of that community. Just how much money is that? 40 MILLION DOLLARS. Just imagine how many groceries could be purchased. how many boats, campers, electronics, clothes and fashion items that could buy. We the people of the United States and the world have allowed our multi-national corporations to loot our cultures in allowing unchecked job displacement.

Yes, sometimes jobs need to fall by the wayside to make room for better, newer technology. It is a different story if a job is being displaced out of obsolescence, e.g. no one would argue that we still need stage coach manufactures anymore. But, if that job is displaced due to being shipped half way across the world...

So what is Obama's plan to rescue these people, take out loans for which the US or world can not afford and drive hyper-inflation that will destroy what is left of the US economy. Hopefully this will not also bring down the rest of the world with us.

The fix is not complete protectionism, on the contrary if an individual or corporation wants to start a new business or part of a business in a foreign land, excellent! This is job creation and should not be penalized. This will grow the world economy. What will sooner or later shrink the world economy is when corporations and companies displace their work load by removing money from local communities. This needs to be weighted heavily and heavily discouraged with penalties and taxes to insure that when it DOES happen it is for good reason.

What can be done? We need to stem fear, you can not do this with a loan on a bank account that is empty. We have seen the consequences of bad checks. How is it that we are allowing Obama to continue the same bad practices started by the people? Fear can not be a market motivator. It will continue to drive the market down, which will take good companies with it as it goes.

My guess is that maybe we should shut down world markets for a while till the fear factor can be reset. Fear needs to be mitigated, and maybe suspending market activity will do it. Then somehow everybody who relies on the markets for a livelihood needs to be taken care of with what they financially need to get them by till the markets are restarted, things such as food, water, medical coverage. Then after a designated time, maybe 6 months, the markets can be restarted where they left off.

What do you think? would this idea work or is it crazy? If I am crazy why wouldn't it work and what are your ideas to fix our problems?

Is it all for not?

Sometimes I wonder, what makes us think we are more civilized than nomadic tribal peoples. Just who is more civilized? We have taken over the world, with our computers, big fancy hospitals and globe trotting jet planes.

Almost always the conquerors have thought they offered more to those "uncivilized people", from the Kings of Europe, To the Soviet Empire, to the Chinese "improving" Tibet, to the USA and Canada teaching American Indians how to be "civilized."

But just what have we accomplished? Before we came along life was simple. Everything revolved around the community and family. You could not survive a day without your tribe. Now we cant survive a day without our computers, and we could go a lifetime without actually seeing people.

I think of those times and I long for that. I long for a day when every hour "I" am surrounded by the community, raised up by all the life from the young playing and dancing to the old spinning yarns of what it was like in days of old.

As it is, I live in a cold building with few if any actual connections to the people that live around me. People of the earth, what have done? The global economy failures are a testament to our greed. The massive dump of consumerism spreads out from the sea to shinning sea. Our cities are cold, giant masses of life broken by walls. Walls that keep us bound, not to each other, but from each other.

Why? Why? What have we done? Why can't we leave it behind and go back to the days of neighbors and simple lives?

I would give it all up to live in a tribal community. I would give it all up for a simple life of lost connections.

Can we go back?

Incompatibility: Gloabal Warming Related Manufacturing Restrictions and Economic Recession (Depression)

I have been thinking a lot lately. I have come to the conclusion that the world needs to scrap Global Warming restrictions until we can get the worldwide economy out of its nose dive.

When you're driving your car and you do something stupid and it goes skidding recklessly off the road. At that time you do not get out of the car to check the air pressure of your tires. You've got more important things to do, like steering the car so you don't crash. If you do get out of your car it will crash and you will die. This is what the world is doing with fears about global warming. If we do need to put restrictions on manufacturing, now is not the time. thousands of people are losing their homes. Do we really want to cripple an economy that has already lost a leg?

Let's use some common sense and send a strong message to James Hansen at NASA. Now is not the time for drastic changes that mean lost jobs. When we are back on our feet we can decide how to power the planet without coal. Wait till the unemployment rate goes back up.

Just a bit of a thought. Maybe more later.

The Paradox of World Economasics

Isn't this paradox amazing? For the world to grow you need to spend you money. For you to grow you need to save your money.

It is truly a paradox, if everybody saves their money, as they should, and waits till they have money, then the world goes into recession and depression, and the individual has even less money as less and less people spending money causes job loss and market failure. But, if everyone goes out and spends all the time the world is growing and there are all kinds of new toys, ideas and business plans. One of the problem is that if you spend everything you make then you have nothing for retirement. And, if you spend money you don't have, sooner or later it can cause a recession and depression.

I guess it means you have to balance your spending and saving. You can't save it all for a healthy world economy. You can't spend it all for a healthy personal economy.

I'll try to develop this idea more if I remember later and have time.

Love Hate with Linux

Let me just say this Linux is awesome, and just getting better all the time. but fellas, I have one complaint. I am absolutely getting tired of the cliché descriptor "Powerful". Not every single piece of software in the Linux repository can be "Small but powerful."

So those of you making all those new cool applications for Linux that keep me from ever wanting to go back to Windows, check out the thesaurus next time. Please find a few different adjectives before I pull out the remaining hair on my head.

Thank you!

Keep up the great work.

Shocker: Change in climate linked to poverty and food shortage

"I tried to convey that climate change and the loss of the sea ice up here will affect everybody on the planet - unpredictable weather changes, rises in sea levels are all linked to food shortages and poverty." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7897392.stm

Wow! Ya don't say! I bet that is exactly what the settlers of Greenland and France were thinking that fateful year when the crops failed in 1816 and there was no more food left and they were dying because of a little thing we all know as The Little Ice Age.

"Each of the peaks in prices corresponds to a particularly poor harvest, mostly due to unfavorable climates with the most notable peak in the year 1816 - 'the year without a summer.' One of the worst famines in the seventeenth century occurred in France due to the failed harvest of 1693. Millions of people in France and surrounding countries were killed. " The Little Ice Age in Europe

Or how about the 1930's, we have more CO2 in this day and age so what caused The Great Dust Bowl . Obviously we screwed up the land but why the drought?

There is more here than meets the eye. The group out to measure the Ice depth is to be commended: we need this information to know how to better treat the earth, but... let's not make hasty decisions on global warming before the science is done. Let the scientists improve the means of measuring the damage till a point that they actually know what we are doing. You can not base all of your predictions on unproven models, which up till this point seems to be the only "proof."

Jet stream Cycle?

With all the hype that continues to be run about Global Warming, I have a question. Is it possible that the jet stream cycles through a location change that could affect the perceived global warming?