The Pending Collapse Of The U.S.A.

[ninakat]

The Pending Collapse Of The U.S.A.
By Timothy V. Gatto

November 20, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- The truth that most people realize but can’t openly talk about is that America has seen better days and that the system of capitalism has long outlived its usefulness. The last part of that sentence, that capitalism has outlived its usefulness, is thoroughly the fault of the capitalists themselves.

For many years now, transnational corporations have sent much of America’s manufacturing overseas in order to take advantage of low cost workers. About the only manufacturing this country does on a large scale is earth moving equipment (Caterpillar) and military equipment. Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon, General Electric and firms like that are the major remnants of a once thriving industrial base that made America. Detroit is still trying to hang in there, but shortfalls in sales have left it up to the workers in these plants to take it on the chin as their pay and benefits get cut.

The Dow is trying to make a comeback but the way I see it, much of the rise of “blue-chip” stocks is really more wishful thinking than serious thought. The stocks being sold on the backs of some of these companies are being bought on speculation that the market will go higher based on the rise of the GDP. The question that I would like to ask, is how far can the GDP go when 70% of the GDP is based on consumer spending? Where is consumer spending going to come from when realistically over 16% of the people in America aren’t working?

In an essay, written by Richard Heinberg entitled “Should We Prop-up a Dying Economy” (19 October 2009), he argues that the economists and the people who follow physical science disagree sharply about where this economy is going. Peak Oil, whether it is present now or just years away, will mean that the economy will contract. The economists state that growth can happen in any environment, yet it is apparent that when oil prices spiked in 2008, the auto industry and the airline industry almost went belly-up. Shrinkage of energy means shrinkage in the economy, we have all been under the notion that we can borrow against a growing economy. The facts are that if the economy does not grow, there will be very little in the growth of capital to repay debts that are leveraged at an average of an average of 350% of debt to GDP ratio. Where will new capital come from?

(continues)

[beamofthewave]

Really good, thanks, he is so right.

[wordnerd]

Great article
And I agree, Obama is not dealing with, or addressing our real problems. He is addressing the symptoms "as if" they are the problem
But then, did anyone really think that he "could" do anything at this point.
I think Mr. Garro made it sound as if Obama has more blame about our situation than he really has. It is our society - civilization - that has created this. But I agree Obama is NOT doing the things that need to be done. He has chosen people to advise him that are not people that are a lot of help to him

I am really glad that so many people are starting to speak up about the reality of our situation. Things must REALLY be bad - for so many people to start speaking up

We had a thread about the 5 stages of collapse before.

The Five Stages of Collapse
 

1.       Stage one: Financial Collapse

2.       Commercial Collapse

3.       Political Collapse

4.       Social Collapse

5.       Cultural Collapse

And I still believe that we do not have one "complete" collapse in each stage before we go to the next one
I believe we are pretty far into 1), and 2)  --- with 3) not far behind. Look at what is going between the democrats and republicans right now
and we are the beginning of stages 4) and 5)

In order to survive we will need to establish small self-sufficient  communities... but will we ?

Here is a link to my web site that I made for my book. I wrote a book (which I will never publish) . Called The 8th Day of Creation. I wrote it a couple years ago... then added some rambling during the elction  
The Eight DAy is a Download at the bottom of the page

It is a "spiritual " approach... so some of you may not be interested
http://sites.google.com/site/lindabranhamsite/Home

Here I will just cut and paste my ending:

C


What can you do now? And how do you begin? How do we create the world anew in this The Eighth Day of Creation?


1. The first step is to acknowledge that we are all one. We share the same genetic make-up, the same cells and atoms in our bodies. That what happens to one, happens to us all. When we drill a hole anywhere on the boat – we all sink.
We all live on this same earth, and when it dies, we all die.

We need to begin by realizing that we are all in this together. We are all people with the same basic needs and desires. We all find meaning in our existence with 1.)  work that maximizes our talents and gifts in order that we feel accomplishment in our lives, 2)  by giving to others, and, 3) by the people and things that we love. When we come together to ensure that each person has the opportunity to fulfill these 3 three dimensions, then we begin to create a garden of Eden.


2. The second step is to create ourselves anew.
The first step in creating ourselves anew is to change our beliefs and our thoughts. We can become aware of the negative activities and self-defeating thoughts that are weighing us down.
In The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton states:
“I started closing the doors and windows by carefully examining where I was wasting my energy. For example, it was easy to get rid of energy-draining activities like those deadly faculty parties. It was harder to get rid of the energy-draining defeatist thinking in which I habitually engaged. Thoughts consume energy as surely as does marathon running.”
(page 121) (81)

Ask yourself where are you wasting your energy? What activities can you close the door on? And most importantly, assess the energy-draining thoughts that consume your time, your energy and your emotions. Discover the repeating negative patterns within yourself, that are keeping you stuck in creating a life that is not what you want to create. When we consume our days with focusing on negatives, pain, misery and sadness, we bring more of those things into our lives. We must face our fears and see that they are only limitations that we have placed upon ourselves. When we overcome a fear we grow as a person because we begin to realize that it was our own belief system that was fearful.

Rav Berg states that the way to create ourselves anew is to restrict our selfish desires, and focus on giving and helping others. To emulate the Creator  we need to come from an unconditional place of love. The Kabbalist viewpoint is that self-defeating thoughts are the product of our Ego, and that we need to overcome the Ego in order to assess our true nature that lies inside of us.
Rav Berg Nano:
“By now, the reason for loving our neighbor unconditionally should be clear: it will bring this world into the world of endless Light, and by doing so it will give our neighbor the gift of immortality. This includes unending happiness, serenity and pleasure. (page 266)  (82)

How do we begin to do that? We need to begin by looking toward what we can do using our imaginations, instead of by looking back at what we used to have – that way of life that we are quickly losing.
We begin by sharing, by giving our time and our care to our neighbors, family, and friends. And then again, we need to look at the negative thoughts and selfish-desires that are blocking us and standing in our way. And we can begin to focus on what brings value, joy and happiness to our lives.  Not stuff that we think we have to have, but what relationships and useful activities bring us joy and a sense of self-worth.


3. The third step is to bring people together into cooperative communities:
 
Mr. Braden describes a shared-vision exercise that was developed in traditional times.
“Through a shared vision, each individual offers a view of what the conflict would look like if it were to be resolved successfully, as well as the view of what may happen if negotiations fail. The purpose of the vision is to provide a forum that contributes to the foundation of what they would like to accomplish together.  In this way both sides have ownership in the outcome and feel included in the process.’ (page 234)  (83)

With the cost of gas today, we are all going to have to become more community oriented. We are going to have to pull together to make our communities work.
If there is a global crisis like the one that is prophesized, we will all need to work alongside one another in order to survive. All of us will be in the same “boat.”
We will need to create ways to feed our community, to have heat and medical assistance. To have a clean water source. Having money will not help. As the poster said, “we cannot eat money.” To change to a new social and living system will require that we be able to put aside the inequities in our current system, and come together as one.

There are people today who are coming together to form self-sustaining communities. They are doing this by turning their back on our current societies belief in the business world and living outside of their means. They have found like minded people who want to live simply and create a self-sufficient way of life. They have jointly purchased tracts of land where they have a local source of drinking water on their land, they grow their own food and then can their harvest for winter consumption, and are finding ways to create a way of life that is outside of corporate influence.  The Native Americans naturally created this type of community system. The Amish is a religious group that has also chosen this type of community system for years. I’m not saying you have to become Amish, or part of a religious group, but we can use their design for a self-sufficient community life and create one that works for us. You don’t even have to purchase land for a group. You can form a group of people within a city, who agree to create a growing co-op in their back yards or on a vacant lot that is purchased by the group.  People in large cities have created rooftop gardens which supplement their food source. We need to be creative and find ways to be less dependent upon the corporations for our survival. So that when the corporations fail, we have an alternate plan in place in order that allows us to be self-sufficient. We need to make a difference in our own lives.

When the environmental, economic, political, catastrophes occur, we need to have bonds and connections with local groups already in place in our community. If we don’t, then fear and separation will create a reaction of killing one another in panic and desperation. Remember Katrina – or any catastrophe for that matter – once the initial shock wore off, panic, gangs and looting set in. We can rebuild our communities into a way of life that supports the survival of everyone. It won’t be easy, but the alternative is annihilation.

Again, the community at Highgrove that Prince Charles has built is one example of what can be done. Are there changes that your community can make that will benefit everyone? Changes that demonstrate a way of live that loves people and the land?


4. The final step is to create a global community:

As we make the positive changes in ourselves, raise our own consciousness, reach out to help others in our communities, we begin to raise the consciousness of the world. We do it one person at a time. And it starts with looking within. You can’t change the world, unless you look inside yourself and realize that it is you personally that is impacting the world. Take responsibility for yourself; learn to love yourself. Not your ‘ego” but your true self. Then once you accept and love yourself, then you can reach out and assist your neighbor, a friend, a family member, a stranger with a pure love that comes from your heart  The Internet is one way that people can come together and create global communities that are informed and share ways to begin to live more simply.

Don Coyhis referred to our time today as “The Coming Together Time” and explained that this meant that each culture had a piece of the puzzle that we all needed to share in order to survive. His drawing of the medicine wheel is composed of the colors red, yellow, black and white, which are symbolic of the 4 colors of man. The belief is that all four races must come together to share their knowledge in order for us all to survive; that we each hold a piece of the puzzle.

David Two Bears said that “Necessity Days” were approaching, meaning that this was to be a time when we would return to living for necessities, for basic needs,  instead for extras and the monumental waste that we do now. In his talk, he looked at us and asked how we would be able to survive and trek long distances in the shoes we were currently wearing? Would they last? In other words did we buy shoes for looks, or for their lasting qualities? It made me stop and think. I have changed my shopping choices since his talk.

Native Americans are returning to their old ways, teaching their children to hunt, to grow crops in the desert, and how to be one with nature. We need to learn from them, learn how to honor the earth and to be in balance with her ways.

We need to relearn Derrick Jensen’s A Language Older Than Words (84) where we could communicate with all of nature.

Rav Berg refers to this time from the Kabbalah perspective and calls it the time for us to develop the consciousness of “Love Thy Neighbor”. Isn’t that the same as The Coming Together Time, but in different words?

Bruce Lipton Biology of Belief:
 “…”White Light will only return to the planet when every human being recognizes every other human being as an individual frequency of the White Light. As long as we keep eliminating or devaluing other human beings we have decided we don’t like, i.e., destroying frequencies of the spectrum, we will not be able to experience the White Light. Our job is to protect and nurture each human frequency so that White Light can return.”
Pg. 194 (85)
“We will, I believe, come together in a global community. The members of that enlightened community will recognize that we are made in the image of our environment, i.e. that we are Divine and that we have to operate, not in a survival of the fittest manner, but in a way that supports everyone and everything on this planet.”   Pg.199 (86)

Gregg Braden in The God Code:
“Whatever our tests entail, we will face them as a global family. Whatever fate befalls one community, people, or nation is possible for others as well. It will require every ounce of our collective wisdom, our passion to preserve life, and the strength that can only come from our diversity for us to become more than our tests.” (page 239) (87)

Michio Kaku believes that we are approaching a Type I civilization, described as civilization that “has harnessed planetary forms of energy. That they are able to utilize the entire amount of solar energy striking their planet…(page 307) (88)
“The transition from Type 0 to type I is also the most perilous, because we still demonstrate the savagery that typified our rise from the forest. In some sense, the advancement of our civilization is a race against time.” On one hand, the march toward a type I planetary civilization may promise us an era of unparalleled peace and prosperity. On the other hand, the forces of entropy (the greenhouse effect, pollution, nuclear war, fundamentalism, disease) may yet tear us apart.” Page 310 (89)

Rav Berg Nano
“Loving others is how we access true reality, and affect every atom in the
universe. … And the time is now.” ( Pg. 265)  (90)

Time is getting shorter for us to create our Garden of Eden here on Earth. When we damage our planet, or another person, we lessen the likelihood that we will succeed.
Killing off hundreds of thousands of people will not solve our problem. Taking things away from other people will not solve our problem. Changing our beliefs about each other and our world, and working together, will.

[anarchist]

he probably made a huge mistake when he said we borrowed only 24 BILLION dollars. he meant to say TRILLION.

[Zappalives]

We are definitely in stages 1,2 and 3.

4 and 5 are coming soon.

We....as a nation deserve nothing but pain and anguish.

[ninakat]

he probably made a huge mistake when he said we borrowed only 24 BILLION dollars. he meant to say TRILLION.

Yeah, I had a WTF? doubletake on that one. Plus he spelled Geithner wrong.... but, hey, mostly quite good.

[wordnerd]

Yes, I noticed the "billion"... I just changed it to "trillion" in my mind
But, hey, what the heck... billion - trillion... it's all the same to me. I can't pay either one!!!

[forager]

Stage 6. Die-off

[rbrgs]

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.....

[ninakat]

Great article
And I agree, Obama is not dealing with, or addressing our real problems. He is addressing the symptoms "as if" they are the problem
But then, did anyone really think that he "could" do anything at this point.
I think Mr. Garro made it sound as if Obama has more blame about our situation than he really has. It is our society - civilization - that has created this. But I agree Obama is NOT doing the things that need to be done. He has chosen people to advise him that are not people that are a lot of help to him

First of all, it sounds like you're an Obamapologist when you say "But then, did anyone really think that he "could" do anything at this point." -- because of course there were a ton of things he COULD do and SHOULD HAVE done starting day one as president. Like, live up to his TAKE-IT-TO-THE-BANK PROMISE about ending the war:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/4LsSppYxSHk&amp;ap=%2526fmt%3D18&amp;rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/4LsSppYxSHk&amp;ap=%2526fmt%3D18&amp;rel=0</a>

And secondly, your contention that "It is our society - civilization - that has created this" is just utterly simplistic, and completely ignores the fact that society has had MANAGERS -- people just like Obama, all throughout American history -- there's THEM and there's US. Obama just happens to be the most recent LIAR-IN-CHIEF, who also happens to be so damn personable that many people fall into a trance when he speaks. And of course "He has chosen people to advise him that are not people that are a lot of help to him" -- what else would you expect? It's as if you (and, unfortunately, millions of others) continue to somehow see Obama as one of US, a victim, without choices, who would do the right thing if his hands weren't tied.

Wrong.

HE. IS. ONE. OF. THEM.

Until you start to wake up to the spell that Obama has magically put you under, there will be no change. Sorry to be so harsh, but I don't know how to soft-peddle this, especially at this stage.

[picasso moon]

ninakat: while Obama is for sure one of them, do you honestly think that anyone in his position would do something different? The president of the US is simply the manager of the American state, whose main interest is the health of American-based CAPITAL, you make it sound like someone could conceivably walk into that office and start doing things differently, when, even aside from assassinations or other ways to keep people under control, the US government would be broke in a matter of hours if it ever failed to uphold the interests of capital. The crisis is systemic, nothing any manager of the state can do about actually solving it, all they can do is damage control (damage to their control, that is).

[TheDignityofStruggle]

ninakat: while Obama is for sure one of them, do you honestly think that anyone in his position would do something different? The president of the US is simply the manager of the American state, whose main interest is the health of American-based CAPITAL, you make it sound like someone could conceivably walk into that office and start doing things differently, when, even aside from assassinations or other ways to keep people under control, the US government would be broke in a matter of hours if it ever failed to uphold the interests of capital. The crisis is systemic, nothing any manager of the state can do about actually solving it, all they can do is damage control (damage to their control, that is).

+1

[TheDignityofStruggle]

@Word and Zappa:

We are, IMO, not into stage 3 at all, and are not in stage 2 either.  I loves me some good doomin', but the trucks are trucking, and the credit cards are buying all sorts of plastic pumpkins off the fully stocked shelves this holiday season.  That is NOT commercial collapse.

You won't have to guess at these stages like you are feeling around for a light switch in the dark.  When they happen, they will be blindingly obvious. 

[Madnsassy]

@Word and Zappa:

We are, IMO, not into stage 3 at all, and are not in stage 2 either.  I loves me some good doomin', but the trucks are trucking, and the credit cards are buying all sorts of plastic pumpkins off the fully stocked shelves this holiday season.  That is NOT commercial collapse.

You won't have to guess at these stages like you are feeling around for a light switch in the dark.  When they happen, they will be blindingly obvious. 

Hello.  Do you read the same news I do?  Do you read Matt's breaking news page? 

Do you read about malls that are giving free rent to anchor big box stores so that everyone else in the mall doesn't fail for lack of traffic?   (Acts of desperation, without ample revenues to pay the banks = commercial RE failure)

Do you read about people who have not made a mortage payment in months or even years, and are not foreclosed on so the bank can show the asset on their balance sheet?  (In reality, the homeowner is already homeless, just not yet physically on the streets; and the bank is already insolvent, but not showing such on its balance sheet.)

Have you read about derivatives in the trillions that cannot ever possibly be repaid?  (Debts which have been accrued by gambling and betting on the retirement funds and savings of our populace by trusted WS financial institutions, that will NEVER be relieved)

Have you noticed that our currency has lost over 95% of its purchasing power since the Federal Reserve Bank was created?  (The banksters are the winners)

Do you remember in 2001 when the Pentagon couldn't account for over 2 trillion dollars lost in its accounting audit?  (ah, but 911 happened and everyone forgot)

Have you seen the photos of miles of rail cars parked on RR tracks across the country?  (they're rusting away and becoming blights on the landscape)

Have you noticed the photos of our seaports with thousands of automobiles parked because the deliverees cannot get the financing to actually take home their inventory?  (our seaports revenues are down 30%)

Have you noticed that many colleges' tuitions have gone up 20-35%?  Have you paid attention to the real unemployment figures?  (check out www.shadowstatistics.com)

Have you noticed that our economy is a ponzi scheme that will screw the last folks in?  (Who are the big winners?  Who's skimming off the top, with taxpayers' futures?)

Have food prices gone up?  Is gasoline and heating oil going up?  Are your wages going up?

I could go on, but the blindingly obvious is here, now.  Unless, of course, one is wearing blinders.

[rbrgs]

Nope, no collapse yet.  People are even borrowing money and buying new cars.

When the collapse finally comes, it won't be subtle.