Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Falling Through Space

Though over half of the People of America and the world are happy about Obama becoming the President this week, generally most people feel like they are falling through space. There is a general feeling that there is no bottom or top to what America and the world is going through the last few years. In other words for most people there is no rhyme or reason to all of this. Even people who study such things are surprised by much of what is happening.

I think the most important thing to be aware of is just how fragile the world economic system is. It has been built over hundreds of years in such a haphazard way that this sort of thing I guess was inevitable. Little did most people who started getting subprime loans or who first went to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq know that their(in most cases) well intentioned plans could lead to anything like this.

It appears that the whole financial structure of the world is a house of cards that reminds me more than anything else like a belief system or even a religion. The rise of oil this summer and the subprime losses of average americans brought a lot of people to the edge of losing their belief in the world economic system at least for now.

Without a belief or confidence in the system, it just doesn't work and won't work until a new system is developed that people can believe in. It is unlikely none of this can change until some new enforceable system is in place that everyone or at least most people can trust. We're just not there yet. And because we are not there yet people around the world won't return to investing their money in the stock market, and until they do there won't be enough money for people to have or borrow to easily run businesses worldwide unless big governments get into the banking business by starting to nationalize banks.

Unfortunately, the nationalization of at least some of the big banks of each nation to get loans and money flowing again might be the only short term solution that might actually work in getting things moving again. It will never be the same. Too many people lost their beliefs in the world financial system. But if it stays in the present direction we might see serious collapse of major world governments. Unless you want to live Mad Max the movie you don't want to see your government collapse into chaos. So supporting your government into creating at least one nationalized large bank might bridge each countries finances until a more permanent solution is found.

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