We are not facing a rerun of The Great Depression. What is coming will be both worse and not as bad in different ways. I have decided that a more appropriate term is The Great Restructure.
Follow me over the jump to respond to my call to action.
For months, I have been fighting the depression that Jerome a Parisdescribed yesterday. I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Pluto's diaries this week
Money & Madness in 2009 - A Prediction
and yesterday
We Will We Will Rock You. The $$$ Was Just Devalued.
clarified some things for me.
Following Pluto's ideas and references led me to
GlobalEurope Anticipation Bulletin
I suggest you read GEAP No. 32 and 33 as a start.
I find this European Economic Think Tank appropriately blunt and clear.
I'd like to point out that one of my favorite lines from one of my all time favorite teevee series "Dark Angel" created by James Cameron takes as its signature line,
"It is supposed to be a depression but people don't seem all that depressed."
It would be good if we could collectively approach this crisis with that in mind. However, when people stick their collective heads in the sand, I do get depressed. I'd rather face any threat head on; that greatly lessens my anxiety.
Any chance we have to avoid The Great Restructure is evaporating at lightning speed.
GEAP will be publishing an update this Tuesday. Normally, they publish once a month on the 16th; however,
due to the urgency, LEAP/E2020 has decided to publish next March 24th on a global scale an open letter to all the leaders of the G20. This will be our team’s attempt to divert the system from the long and tragic crisis option.
According to LEAP/E2020, there are only two options left for the G20 leaders who gather next April 2nd in London: either they rebuild a new international monetary system, creating the conditions for a new global system that involves all the main global players, and reducing the crisis to a maximum of 3 to 5 years; or they strive to prolong the current system, thrusting the world into a decade long tragic crisis starting at the end of 2009.
I am not an economist although, unlike Sarah Palin, I earned A's in my undergrad economics courses. I do not understand the financial industry and am horrified that even during this crisis our media do not take the time to define even the most simple terms like "credit default swaps."
I can, however, smell bull$hit.
This is my proposal:
We gather here in the next few days in a series of diaries which I am more than willing to post to put all our best ideas for ameliorating this crisis in one place. We then take those ideas into the most public forums possible, using any and all tools we collectively possess to get light on all of this before the G20 meeting April 2nd.
It is clear that Obama is listening to Geithner and Summers and excluding the clear thinking of people like Krugman and Galbraith.
We do not have time to dither. He chose the wrong advisers and the world will pay unless we rise up and make a great noise.
There are lots of interesting and exciting ideas spread out in many diaries here. Ditto critical nuggets of information. Collecting them is beyond any single individual's capacity, but gathering in one set of diaries and collating all the ideas posted in that set is completely possible.
Massive change is coming. We dither at our peril. We have a marvelous tool in our hands. Can we learn to use it wisely?
Throw me your ideas.