The Depression Could Be So Severe That I Don’t Think Our Civilization Could Survive I

[jdhoch]

“We’re in a very unfortunate position to be here,” Richard Duncan, author of The New Depression, warned on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Monday.
“When we broke the link between money and gold (http://www.cnbc.com/id/48191480), this removed all constraints on credit creation. This explosion of credit (http://www.cnbc.com/id/46896289/States_With_the_Best_Credit_Scores) created the world we live in, but it now seems that credit cannot expand any further because the private sector is incapable of repaying the debt it has already, and if credit begins to contract, there’s a very real danger that we will collapse into a new Great Depression,” he argued.
“If this credit bubble (http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000099446) pops, the depression could be so severe that I don’t think our civilization could survive it.”

MORE…


http://www.systemiccapital.com/the-depression-could-be-so-severe-that-i-dont-think-our-civilization-could-survive-it/

[Brosa Luxemburg]

You are a member of the CPUSA? Why are you on a website for the revolutionary left and not on one for getting Obama reelected?

[Yuppie Grinder]

You are a member of the CPUSA? Why are you on a website for the revolutionary left and not on one for getting Obama reelected?

Hey now, keep on topic.

When the credit bubble pops it'll of course mean a major economic crisis.

[Vorchev]

Melodramatic media never ends...

People will say anything for ratings. News hardly contains insight anymore, so they have to fluff everything up to make things exciting.

It's like watching one huge commercial.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Hey now, keep on topic.

When the credit bubble pops it'll of course mean a major economic crisis.

sorry :blushing:

[Lenina Rosenweg]

“We’re in a very unfortunate position to be here,” Richard Duncan, author of The New Depression, warned on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Monday.
“When we broke the link between money and gold (http://www.cnbc.com/id/48191480), this removed all constraints on credit creation. This explosion of credit (http://www.cnbc.com/id/46896289/States_With_the_Best_Credit_Scores) created the world we live in, but it now seems that credit cannot expand any further because the private sector is incapable of repaying the debt it has already, and if credit begins to contract, there’s a very real danger that we will collapse into a new Great Depression,” he argued.
“If this credit bubble (http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000099446) pops, the depression could be so severe that I don’t think our civilization could survive it.”

MORE…


http://www.systemiccapital.com/the-depression-could-be-so-severe-that-i-dont-think-our-civilization-could-survive-it/

There are grains of truth to this but overall he sounds like a right wing "goldbug", blaming going off the gold standard for the current crisis. Its not a Marxist analysis.As far as " the depression could be so severe that I don’t think our civilization could survive it.” well, there are and have been societies which have been though much worse and have "survived". The answer of course is to change the system.

[The Jay]

I don't think that civilization would collapse in full, but there would be panic.

[Lynx]

A decade of austerity is no walk in the park either :(

[Le Socialiste]

Richard Duncan has clearly demonstrated his ignorance then, if he truly believes our current predicament lies in the loss of the gold standard. His general argument contains some truth in it, but he fails in just about every other regard.

[ckaihatsu]

Richard Duncan has clearly demonstrated his ignorance then, if he truly believes our current predicament lies in the loss of the gold standard. His general argument contains some truth in it, but he fails in just about every other regard.


Capitalist factionalism aside, Duncan's *empirical* claims are consistent with anything any Marxist would say -- what *is* the measure of valuation that the capitalist economy uses today, decades past the gold standard?

I'll argue it's Euro-based debt, judging from the global attention paid to its meltdown in particular -- the U.S. and its dollar are too militarist-based and -- from what I can see -- therefore no longer attractive for the purposes of a cosmopolitan-minded world trading system since there's too much political baggage that accompanies it. I think the 2001-2008 "decade" proved that.

People forget that, without a common basis for economic interchanges -- including the measure of debt risk -- the whole system instantly turns into a "Tower of Babel", with no two entities speaking the same economic (valuation) language anymore.

[passenger57]

Hi, and indeed. And you know a big problem in this world we have which is an impediment for a world socialist anti-capitalism revolution? It's a tactic that millions and millions of poor people and the economically oppressed use as a sort of motivational tactic to feel good living in a poor life. That tactic is comparing themselves with people who are a lot worse than they are. they compare themselves with the homeless, in America I think that many poor americans feel good about living in the USA even if they are poor by comparing their lifestyles with the life of the poor of Haiti, Mexico, Guatemala, Africa, Palestine and with people who are in very tragic conditions like people who have cancer and life-threatening diseases. That self-defeating thinking is one of the main impediments for a marxist revolution in America. IN A WORLD LIKE THIS WHERE THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE SUFFER FROM SELF-DEFEATING PERSONALITY DISORDER WE WILL NEVER SEE A REVOLUTION. MAN THERE ARE A WIDE ARRAY OF PERSONALITY THINKING PROBLEMS AND MENTAL DISORDERS OUT THERE THAT ARE A GREAT PSYCHOLOGIC IMPEDIMENT FOR THE MILLIONS OF POOR PEOPLE, TO UNITE INTO LEFTIST WORKERS PARTIES IN EACH COUNTRY OF THE WORLD.

BUT HUMANS ARE NOT LIKE THAT, HUMANS HAVE BEEN EDUCATED TO BE FULL OF FAMILY-NARCISSISM, GROUP-NARCISSISM, CONTRARIAN THINKING, AN EXCESS OF SKEPTICISM, PASSIVE-NIHILISM, SUICIDAL THOUGHTS ETC. THAT ARE MAJOR BLOCKS TOWARD FORMATION OF LEFTIST MARXIST FRONTS IN EACH COUNTRY OF THIS WORLD AS A FINAL SOLUTION FOR THE SUPER BIG ECONOMIC DEPRESION


.



“We’re in a very unfortunate position to be here,” Richard Duncan, author of The New Depression, warned on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Monday.
“When we broke the link between money and this removed all constraints on credit creation. This created the world we live in, but it now seems that credit cannot expand any further because the private sector is incapable of repaying the debt it has already, and if credit begins to contract, there’s a very real danger that we will collapse into a new Great Depression,” he argued.

[Zannarchy]

when was the last time civilization collapsed due to some green paper? hate to poop on the party but seriously? plague is one thing, or war. but it takes more than a few dollars missing to see the collapse of civilization. theyll probably reorganize a few governments

[piet11111]

when was the last time civilization collapsed due to some green paper?

Weimar germany's hyper inflation and devastation of living standards along with the failure of the revolutionary left led straight to the victory of nazi germany.

I would argue nazism is a collapse of civilization.

[ВАЛТЕР]

I could lead to war, and in a nuclear armed world, that spells a death sentence for our civilization.

[Lynx]

I think what Zannarchy is saying is that a financial collapse is an imaginary disaster. There is no physical destruction, as in a natural disaster. An economy always recovers from a financial collapse because the useless debt burden is finally lifted.

Deterioration of infrastructure, skill loss and psychological damage due to unemployment occur before a collapse. War is also possible.

Because of our economic belief systems, suffering is prolonged for no reason other than the belief itself. See Tinkerbell effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinkerbell_effect)

Advances in technology and standards of living suggest that modern depressions might be less severe.


The name is a reference to some versions of the Peter Pan story, in which Tinkerbell is mortally wounded, but since faeries are powered by belief, the audience can heal her by applauding to show they believe in faeries. There’s an old saw that reality is that which doesn’t simply go away when people stop believing in it; tinkerbell effects are the exceptions to that rule, things which are indisputably real but which only exist because people believe in them. Speculative bubbles are one example: for many years, it was widely believed that housing prices always went up, and it was true so long as everyone believed it, but once people stopped believing it, it abruptly ceased to be true.
Source (http://deanesmay.com/2010/10/14/efficient-market-hypothesis-and-the-tinkerbell-effect/)

[JPSartre12]

I don't think that civilization would collapse or anything.

Oh sure, if there's a major global economic bubble burst, we'll be in for a rough decade or two. But things would eventually iron themselves out, and we'd have some new form of government that would have been born out of that struggle.

If anything, it won't cause capitalism to implode and vanish. It would probably use some wily survivalist tactic and come back again, as strong as before, just looking different.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Let's just stick to the reality that we have a Great Depression ahead, none of this "cvicilisation" bullshit. As far as i'm concerned, civilisation stops in capitalism if you're poor, and if everybody's poor, well...

[passenger57]

Lynx: wow you are like a Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, Eric Fromm, Slavoj Zizek and other great sociologists and psycho-analysts. Because you have explained in a clear way the differences between an economic collapse, and a physical destructive collapse and destruction of nations and of the whole world. Like with a major weather crisis, like in the movie 2012 with John Cusack.

And, one thing I would like to add to your statement about the differences between an economic invisible collapse and a visible physical collapse, is that the majority of people are trained and educated to judge the world with their own senses and eyes. Instead of relying on statistics, scientific statistics and numbers.

So, For example to an average american joe, you can tell him that the total debt of USA is 200 trillion dollars. And that the US economy is on the edge of a dollar devaluation and a hyperinflationary situation, and he wouldn't even care about it. And for example the 12 people who were killed in Colorado by the mass murderer there, has a deeper stronger impact on most americans than 12 people killed in Afhganistan by US forces. Because we have to realize and be aware that even the emotions and perceptions of most americans are manipulated by the corporate mass media of the USA (The TV news channels and most mainstream newspapers)

That's why americans are no so worried about the US Imperialist wars in Iraq that have killed about 1 million people under Bush. Because they couldn't see with their own eyes and senses those 1 million people killed by US forces.

So like you said a major economic collapse might not have that revolutionary effect to wake up the masses.

Maybe a hyper-inflation in the USA where the minimum wage would be kept at 7 dollars per hour, while the basic foods like the pound of chicken would rise to 10 dollars per pound, a gallon of milk would rise to 40 dollars, and the lb. of rice would rise to 5 per pound. Maybe a sudden rise in the price of basic food would trigger a revolutionary objective situation in America



I think what Zannarchy is saying is that a financial collapse is an imaginary disaster. There is no physical destruction, as in a natural disaster. An economy always recovers from a financial collapse because the useless debt burden is finally lifted.

Deterioration of infrastructure, skill loss and psychological damage due to unemployment occur before a collapse. War is also possible.

Because of our economic belief systems, suffering is prolonged for no reason other than the belief itself. Advances in technology and standards of living suggest that modern depressions might be less severe.

[Lynx]

So, For example to an average american joe, you can tell him that the total debt of USA is 200 trillion dollars. And that the US economy is on the edge of a dollar devaluation and a hyperinflationary situation, and he wouldn't even care about it.
Some Americans are worried about the debt. Politicians tell them that government is like a private household, and must live within its means. And they believe this!


And for example the 12 people who were killed in Colorado by the mass murderer there, has a deeper stronger impact on most americans than 12 people killed in Afhganistan by US forces. Because we have to realize and be aware that even the emotions and perceptions of most americans are manipulated by the corporate mass media of the USA (The TV news channels and most mainstream newspapers)
Seeing is believing. Remember the attempt to prohibit the distribution of photographs/video of American soldiers returning home in coffins?
Risk assessment is similarly askew. People are more worried about terrorism than traffic accidents.


That's why americans are no so worried about the US Imperialist wars in Iraq that have killed about 1 million people under Bush. Because they couldn't see with their own eyes and senses those 1 million people killed by US forces.
These kinds of statistics rarely make the news. There was a war in Africa that killed several million people and it received scant coverage.


Maybe a hyper-inflation in the USA where the minimum wage would be kept at 7 dollars per hour, while the basic foods like the pound of chicken would rise to 10 dollars per pound, a gallon of milk would rise to 40 dollars, and the lb. of rice would rise to 5 per pound. Maybe a sudden rise in the price of basic food would trigger a revolutionary objective situation in America
Current economic policies (ie. austerity) are causing a deflationary spiral. The lack of purchasing power is causing the economy to shrink. Hyper-inflation episodes require a collapse in production.
In any case, when food is unaffordable, an appropriate policy response would be to offer poor people subsidies. When food is in short supply, another policy is rationing.
A government that did nothing, that relied on market mechanisms to sort out food supply problems, would face a potentially revolutionary situation.

[Ocean Seal]

There are grains of truth to this but overall he sounds like a right wing "goldbug", blaming going off the gold standard for the current crisis. Its not a Marxist analysis.As far as " the depression could be so severe that I don’t think our civilization could survive it.” well, there are and have been societies which have been though much worse and have "survived". The answer of course is to change the system.
Yep I'm pretty sure that most people here should understand why the gold standard will never be re-initiated and why we should treat it as historical capital.

[Ocean Seal]

Hi, and indeed. And you know a big problem in this world we have which is an impediment for a world socialist anti-capitalism revolution? It's a tactic that millions and millions of poor people and the economically oppressed use as a sort of motivational tactic to feel good living in a poor life. That tactic is comparing themselves with people who are a lot worse than they are. they compare themselves with the homeless, in America I think that many poor americans feel good about living in the USA even if they are poor by comparing their lifestyles with the life of the poor of Haiti, Mexico, Guatemala, Africa, Palestine and with people who are in very tragic conditions like people who have cancer and life-threatening diseases. That self-defeating thinking is one of the main impediments for a marxist revolution in America. IN A WORLD LIKE THIS WHERE THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE SUFFER FROM SELF-DEFEATING PERSONALITY DISORDER WE WILL NEVER SEE A REVOLUTION. MAN THERE ARE A WIDE ARRAY OF PERSONALITY THINKING PROBLEMS AND MENTAL DISORDERS OUT THERE THAT ARE A GREAT PSYCHOLOGIC IMPEDIMENT FOR THE MILLIONS OF POOR PEOPLE, TO UNITE INTO LEFTIST WORKERS PARTIES IN EACH COUNTRY OF THE WORLD.

BUT HUMANS ARE NOT LIKE THAT, HUMANS HAVE BEEN EDUCATED TO BE FULL OF FAMILY-NARCISSISM, GROUP-NARCISSISM, CONTRARIAN THINKING, AN EXCESS OF SKEPTICISM, PASSIVE-NIHILISM, SUICIDAL THOUGHTS ETC. THAT ARE MAJOR BLOCKS TOWARD FORMATION OF LEFTIST MARXIST FRONTS IN EACH COUNTRY OF THIS WORLD AS A FINAL SOLUTION FOR THE SUPER BIG ECONOMIC DEPRESION


.
Weren't you that Chavez Jeffersonian socialist guy? I can tell just by the fact that you type and place your quote boxes just like that guy.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I think what Zannarchy is saying is that a financial collapse is an imaginary disaster. There is no physical destruction, as in a natural disaster. An economy always recovers from a financial collapse because the useless debt burden is finally lifted.

Deterioration of infrastructure, skill loss and psychological damage due to unemployment occur before a collapse. War is also possible.

Because of our economic belief systems, suffering is prolonged for no reason other than the belief itself. See Tinkerbell effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinkerbell_effect)

Advances in technology and standards of living suggest that modern depressions might be less severe.


Source (http://deanesmay.com/2010/10/14/efficient-market-hypothesis-and-the-tinkerbell-effect/)


I disagree, you have to see who has been carrying the main debt in this crisis. The State has taken over massive debts from the private economy to stimulate growth, has thrown trillions at the banks to do something, has lowered central bank interest rates (risking inflation), has taken over the debts from the banks to itself, been the debtor of last resort, while even though the banks are having all this money thrown at them, corporations subsidised, capitalists gotten massive tax cuts etc., no one is investing into the real economy. So when the State cannot carry its debts anymore, defaults on them, when industries collapse etc. it will still not be profitable for capital to invest (without any state help that is). The amount of machines that have replaced live exploitable labor, has spelled a near to complete automation of production; so even if the old debts are rid, the Rate of Profit of the production process is too low for capital to invest into it, profitability has collapsed. Within the next ten years we will see Capitalism become historically obsolete due to the advance of the productive forces. To quote Marx: "It is not what is made but how, and by what instruments of labour, that distinguishes different economic epochs. Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development which human labour has attained, but they also indicate the social relations within which men work."

The looming crisis will be one in which the question will have to be asked why all the advanced means of production we have, should not be used to fulfill human needs, contrary to profits and capital, which do not function anymore.

[Per Levy]

Weren't you that Chavez Jeffersonian socialist guy? I can tell just by the fact that you type and place your quote boxes just like that guy.

not to mention the large texts in casps and the writing style is alo pretty alike, so yeah seems like trotskismarx is back. also he was the anti-semit guy.

[Lynx]

I disagree, you have to see who has been carrying the main debt in this crisis. The State has taken over massive debts from the private economy to stimulate growth, has thrown trillions at the banks to do something, has lowered central bank interest rates (risking inflation), has taken over the debts from the banks to itself, been the debtor of last resort, while even though the banks are having all this money thrown at them, corporations subsidised, capitalists gotten massive tax cuts etc., no one is investing into the real economy. So when the State cannot carry its debts anymore, defaults on them, when industries collapse etc. it will still not be profitable for capital to invest (without any state help that is). The amount of machines that have replaced live exploitable labor, has spelled a near to complete automation of production; so even if the old debts are rid, the Rate of Profit of the production process is too low for capital to invest into it, profitability has collapsed. Within the next ten years we will see Capitalism become historically obsolete due to the advance of the productive forces. To quote Marx: "It is not what is made but how, and by what instruments of labour, that distinguishes different economic epochs. Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development which human labour has attained, but they also indicate the social relations within which men work."

The looming crisis will be one in which the question will have to be asked why all the advanced means of production we have, should not be used to fulfill human needs, contrary to profits and capital, which do not function anymore.
Continued here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/capital-and-falling-t173729/index.html?t=173729).

[Lynx]

The "super-rich elite" are hiding more than $21 trillion US in tax havens around the world, an amount roughly equal to the combined GDP of the United States and Japan, according to a new report.

Commissioned by the Tax Justice Network, an independent British organization, the report is said to be the most comprehensive ever done concerning what it calls the “offshore economy.”

Researched and written by James Henry, an expert on tax havens, the report states the hidden money could be as large as $32 trillion, and represents a massive black hole in the world's economy.

The amount of tax income lost "is large enough to make a significant difference to the finances of many countries,” Henry noted.

Hidden money from elites living in developing countries is "enough to make a significant difference to the finances of many countries... that are now struggling to replace lost aid dollars and pay for climate change. Indeed, once we take these hidden offshore assets and the earnings they produce, 'debtor countries' are in fact revealed to be wealthy," he said.

The report says:

UBS, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs are the three private banks handling the most assets offshore

92,000 people, or 0.001 per cent of the world’s population, hold $21 trillion in hidden assets

Henry, who collected data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Bank of International Settlements, said the figure he came up with is conservative because it doesn’t take into account property like yachts or other physical assets.

"These estimates reveal a staggering failure: inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people," said John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network.
Source (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/wealthy-hiding-21-trillion-tax-havens-report-says-175737425.html)

[Positivist]

There are grains of truth to this but overall he sounds like a right wing "goldbug", blaming going off the gold standard for the current crisis. Its not a Marxist analysis.As far as " the depression could be so severe that I don’t think our civilization could survive it.” well, there are and have been societies which have been though much worse and have "survived". The answer of course is to change the system.

Yes but you have to understand that "civilization" as referred to by most people today is intrinsically tied to capitalism.

[passenger57]

Hi friend. Not at all I am new in this discussion board



Weren't you that Chavez Jeffersonian socialist guy? I can tell just by the fact that you type and place your quote boxes just like that guy.

[passenger57]

By the way how can you be a Trotskist and a Stalinist at the same time? That's like being atheist and christian at the same time. Or like being a vegetarian and meat-eater at the same time



Weren't you that Chavez Jeffersonian socialist guy? I can tell just by the fact that you type and place your quote boxes just like that guy.

[Zannarchy]

If capitalist civilization is on the verge of collapse, bring it. reshape the world as we know it

[Geiseric]

no we need to stop a collapse so fascism doesn't come around. We need to actually fight for things the working class needs, NOW, before we're all too poor to do anything about it.

[aty]

no we need to stop a collapse so fascism doesn't come around. We need to actually fight for things the working class needs, NOW, before we're all too poor to do anything about it.
Fascism wont stop the collapse of capitalism, and that will become very clear very fast.

I actually hope that some fascists take over some countries at this moment and then gets the blame when the economy collapses. In the 30s the fascists could take power and basically use keynesian economics to uphold capitalism. Just as most capitalist democracies did.

But what sort of economic system could they use today that would actually improve the economy and not lead to an economic collapse of epic proportions. It would be funny to see the fascist leaders trying to put up boundaries for capital trying to control it at this moment in history. The technological advancements have gone too far, it is not possible for a country too isolate itself and strengthen the nationalstate.

The people will realise this very fast.


The only possible way out of this is too go beyond capitalism, to reject the state, labor and property. There is nothing worth saving, and there is nothing to save. This capitalist mode of production is history.