No Picture

Hedges: Growth Is the Problem

Source: TruthDig.com

The ceaseless expansion of economic exploitation, the engine of global capitalism, has come to an end. The futile and myopic effort to resurrect this expansion—a fallacy embraced by most economists—means that we respond to illusion rather than reality. We invest our efforts into bringing back what is gone forever. This strange twilight moment, in which our experts and systems managers squander resources in attempting to re-create an expanding economic system that is moribund, will inevitably lead to systems collapse. The steady depletion of natural resources, especially fossil fuels, along with the accelerated pace of climate change, will combine with crippling levels of personal and national debt to thrust us into a global depression that will dwarf any in the history of capitalism. And very few of us are prepared. read more

No Picture

US: In the Twilight of Empire

Source: In These Times

Historians who look back to our time will surely conclude that our problem was not that we didn’t know where we were headed, it was that we didn’t act on what we knew.

Before the financial crash of 2008-2009 and the Great Recession that followed, there was ample warning. Whether you were a journalist who reported the news, a politician who made the news, or a citizen who read or watched the news, it was hard not to be aware that for the past 30 years, the following had been happening: read more