An astounding number of families are grappling under the burden of humongous credit card debts that are constantly eating into their savings and throwing their financial stability off balance. While a lot of people resort to taking new debts to pay up their existing commitments; this step only helps to reduce the interest rate marginally; at the end of the day they still find themselves surrounded by bills and debtors- by Mirsad Hasic (Editor of Think-Credit Cards)   . . read more

There is one response getting a lot of airtime which suggests the future is safe only if we regress to a simpler social framework in which everything gets turned off, we kick back against technology and change the way we live our lives. The ‘Earth Hour‘ world.

But just imagine a world lacking sex, colour and movement and the excitement of experiential exploration and technological innovation. How boring!

Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.  . . read more

But the fact is that our economic system is a lunatic and suicidal system, and it deserves to go down. Why lunatic and suicidal? It is predicated on the delusion, accepted on every level in every modern society, that unlimited Mahnolo Blahniks are possible on a planet of limited resources. Growth without horizon is simply not possible, but the delusion remains in force, a mass glue-huff and consensus trance hallucination. Endless growth on planet earth is by definition entropic; it implies its own end. Its pursuit is therefore suicidal.

What might replace the current insane system I couldn’t venture to say. Certainly, a lot of people will be hurt if we go down the rat-hole that appears our proper and fitting end. If events trend badly enough, a period of contraction, unemployment, economic depression, homelessness, tent cities, rising crime, boarded up storefronts, abandoned homes will be upon us faster than imaginable... Perhaps the crisis will bring about the devolution of the American living standard to something like sustainability. Perhaps it will only bring out a lot of pissed-off middle-classers who refuse to accept that the American way of life is sick and crazy and has no future. That kind of infantile resentment historically either leads to reform or fascism. [More] . . read more

Now we're in a terrible fix. People are scared and removing their money from the banks and money markets. This is intensifying the freeze in the credit markets and driving stocks into the ground like a tent stake. Meanwhile, our leaders are caught in the headlights, still believing they can finesse their way through the biggest economic cataclysm since the Great Depression.

If something is not done to increase the flow of credit immediately, the stock market will tumble, unemployment will spike, and many businesses will grind to a standstill. We could be just days away from a severe shock to the system. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson's $700 billion bailout does not focus on the fundamental problems and is likely to fail. At best, it puts off the day of reckoning for a few weeks or months. Contingency plans should be put in place so the country does not have to undergo post-Katrina bedlam. [More] . . read more