Monday, November 3, 2008
So Goes the Nation?
There's an old saying: "As GM goes, so goes the nation".
Well, GM is in big trouble. Its sales are down 45% since last year. It has been shut out of the bond market for the fifth month straight. Indeed, GM may go belly up.
The "Baltic Dry Index" is widely believed to be a proxy for the health of the overall economy. The Baltic Dry is down 90% since May.
They said Lehman - like the U.S. itself - was "too big to fail". Lehman failed.
As GM, the Baltic Dry Index and Lehman go . . . so goes the nation?
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In 1968 it took one billion dollars in new debt to create one billion dollars in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) which is like the GNP except that it subtracts out Imports.
ReplyDeleteToday it take 5 trillion dollars in new debt to make one trillion dollars in new GDP. And soon it will take 10 trillion dollars to make a trillion dollars in new GDP.
We cannot bear the burden of 10 trillion dollars in new debt.
It is time to end the debt-money system which requires us to create a "fictional" debt before we can create money. See www.AMI.org (The American Monetary Institute.)
Linsoln and Kennedy attempted to publish debt free non-interest bearing currencies but they were killed by "lone assassins."
Here's some interesting factoids on the subject. In the American Civil War, there were an estimated 625,000 casualties out of a population that was around 31.4 million. That ended in 1865 and 59 years later, the Great Depression started.
ReplyDeleteIn WWI, America lost 66,944 people out of a population guestimated to be 92 million. Plus there was the Spanish flu epidemic that took even more lives than that in a matter of weeks. 69 years later in 1987, there's a massive market meltdown.
In WWII, the US had a much bigger death toll, 418,500 dead out of a nation of 131 million. 63 years later in 2008, it's a record-setting crash.
Simply put, when the 90210'ers run out of starving Irish/Italians and their children, they have to balance a country on their own output. A country on which the world's economies are dependant on.