Two quick ones:

1: USA Fire Sale, 2nd Meeting, June 2009: Political capital call – Eric Janszen. A somewhat satirical view of what a meeting between China and Geitner might look like today. This is part 2, here is Part 1. This post is worth reading because it’s basically true, and even if China isn’t going to say these very words to the US, they should. Now. Before the US is allowed to further destroy their future in a vain attempt to prop up a corrupt and rotten financial ‘industry’ (though the use of the term ‘industry’ requires quotes, since it produces nothing of value, and simply filters money towards its primary benefactors).

The result, probably? The American Empire Is Bankrupt. Covered further in De-Dollarization: Dismantling America’s Financial-Military Empire: The Yekaterinburg Turning Point.

“This means the end of the dollar,” Hudson told me. “It means China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran are forming an official financial and military area to get America out of Eurasia. The balance-of-payments deficit is mainly military in nature. Half of America’s discretionary spending is military. The deficit ends up in the hands of foreign banks, central banks. They don’t have any choice but to recycle the money to buy U.S. government debt. The Asian countries have been financing their own military encirclement. They have been forced to accept dollars that have no chance of being repaid. They are paying for America’s military aggression against them. They want to get rid of this.”

2. The Message of Overconsumption. If you’re fond of your denialism about the status quo (ie, economy, environment, resources), these graphs are nice reminders that in fact, you cannot enter into exponential growth and expect to have long term success. For those of you who don’t follow such things, exponential growth is the essence of our modern ‘capital’ based economies (see Hubbert’s discussion of the ‘culture of money’ as well, which is a critical point to understand). More on this topic at hubbertpeak.com.

Capital as found in our interest based systems is a method of finance that lends money, debt, which then requires growth to pay it back. Failure to generate this growth means the system fails. I know, of course, that denialists are all sheep who don’t use actual facts or data to come to their conclusions, so no amount of real data will ever change their minds, but for the rest of us, there might be some hope. And the sheep will just follow along eventually anyway, once you explain to them what the new reality and truth is…

Stop buying from corporations, start localizing, there is nothing they can do about this if more and more people refuse to gut their local communities, and start buying local, that money stays local, in your community. It’s a simple idea. Manufactored needs are not real needs, step out of the con-game.

Just a short note: check out this recent fora.tv video, Healing Mother Earth: E.O. Wilson

Long discussion about various ecological and biological issues, along with political etc, confronting the planet.

He has that sort of required view that some type of reform can fix this situation, but otherwise the video is pretty interesting, check it out.

What can you say? Things aren’t looking good.

Recently, in Barrons we have this interview with William Black:

Barron’s: Just how serious is this credit crisis? What is at stake here for the American taxpayer?

Black: Mopping up the savings-and-loan crisis cost $150 billion; this current crisis will probably cost a multiple of that. The scale of fraud is immense. This whole bank scandal makes Teapot Dome [of the 1920s] look like some kid’s doll set. Unless the current administration changes course pretty drastically, the scandal will destroy Barack Obama’s presidency. The Bush administration was even worse. But they are out of town. This will destroy Obama’s administration, both economically and in terms of integrity.

Yep, that’s about that. Or we can read to a recent winner of the (fake) nobel prize in economics (created because, as you hopefully have figured out by now, economics doesn’t merit a prize for anything), Joseph Stiglitz, Stiglitz Says Ties to Wall Street Doom Bank Rescue :

“All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients,” Stiglitz said in an interview yesterday. The people who designed the plans are “either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent.”

The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, isn’t large enough to recapitalize the banking system, and the administration hasn’t been direct in addressing that shortfall, he said. Stiglitz said there are conflicts of interest at the White House because some of Obama’s advisers have close ties to Wall Street.

A bit more of this interview under the fold.
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Excellent in-depth interview with Matt Simmons (43 minutes, flash video). That is on the oil drum, the actual Reality Check page requires some viewer or other.

This is one of the most comprehensive overviews of the entire oil production and peaking process I have ever heard, and Matt Simmons speaks extremely clearly, without the aid of the somewhat annoying powerpoint presentations he tends to favor.

This is a one on one interview that covers his writings and analysis over the past 16 years. As he says: what has amazed him most is just how wrong the mainstream views have been, and continue to be.

This guy knows what he’s talking about, with one glaring exception: his belief that the global economy can function when it’s paying producers more than 100 or so a barrel.
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