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2011 AND BEYOND

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IMPORTANT WORDS IN THIS LECTURE ARE RED

 

In the 16 years that we have been studying global trends one theme appears again and again and again and again. This theme is the criminal destruction of the planet that we live on. Let me repeat that the criminal destruction of the planet that we live on. There are few things stupider than to present the current world order as some sort of benevolent system that somehow, is suffering from some sort of innocent confusion.  There is nothing innocent about the current system.

In America part of the delusions go back to the hysterical propaganda of the three world wars that America has been in, World War I and World War II and the Cold War, where America presented itself as the savior of the world the ultimate expression of goodness. This is nonsense, and it's an incredible study in arrogance and hypocrisy and dishonesty. All world history is a big struggle for power, and America is not some exceptional case of goodness. Indeed quite the contrary in many ways America is among the most brutal and malevolent of all the world empires.

Every empire in history has its pluses and minuses.  Inside America is a central illness and a central delusion. There is the concept that man can conquer nature this is connected to religious delusions that God has somehow ordained the American people or the American rulers to build a great wonderland here by destroying nature. This shows a fundamental lack of understanding of reality.  It also shows a fundamental inner moral sickness, a fundamental inner moral evil. You don't have to be a scientist to see the madness and the criminality of the American dream. The most elemental analysis of the data shows that all this is headed towards total disaster without drastic change.  But the American people continue to live in a dream world, and their leaders continue to feed them delusions of grandeur that nobody's ever had it so good, America's number one, so on and so on and so forth even though basic studies of international well-being show America is way way behind a good part of the rest of the world.

One of the studies that we find most I guess you could say amusing is the endless claims by America's leaders that the they got the American dream and things are getting better and better and better for the average guy. Let's just let's just take a cold shower here and get a look at reality.  The minimum wage in America is back to where was in the 1950s today. Average wages are back to where they were in the early 1960s. Class mobility in America is actually below that of Europe ...contrary to the totally delusional rubbish that you can be whatever you want to be in America ... certainly a study in madness if there ever was one. Actually if you're born in the lower classes in America, you're probably going to spend the rest your life and the lower classes. So these are realities,  and we don't want to spe a whole lot of time on this lecture dealing with all the delusions of the American people have about themselves because this could turn into a 5000 hour lecture.

What we do want to do is to refocus on where all this is heading, and where all this is heading is towards a total crisis and a total disaster. So people need to understand that moderate reform is a fantasy and drastic reform is absolutely necessary and the key question of our time is what is the nature of that drastic reform does America have what it takes to make those drastic reforms? Obama is in many ways a source of hope. He is aware of a good part of the problems.  However, his solutions are weak and  inadequate.  His solutions aren,t going to work so the question is what happens when the big crisis hits? The big crisis is going to be probably the economy before environmental crises kick in because the American economy is a giant house of cards. The center of gravity of world economic history is moving East it's moving to China it's moving to India it's moving south it's moving to Brazil it's moving to the developing world, so-called developing world.

The American dream such as it is since 1980 has been an ever-expanding debt bubble really probably the greatest debt bubble in history this debt bubble exploded in 2008. Rather than solving problems the American elite have run up an even bigger debt bubble on top of that particular using government debt to paper over rotten private debt to use public money to paper over private greed and incompetence. Obviously this is not much of a solution so the we need to be prepared for the turmoil to come and to think creatively about whether America can reform itself or the nature of the totalitarian regimes which are going to come in and clean up the mess it's also important to understand that there is likely to be a shift in the global balance of power how this works out who knows. A we believe that Europe is underestimated because Europe does not have a good part of the problems that America has and we think it's important to pay attention to the EU and see how that evolves. China is also another emerging power. It is important to understand however that the whole diseased structure of the world that was built after 1945 is not going to collapse in a happy cheerful manner and this is going to be a very brutal struggle all around the world.

So these facts need to be kept in mind and we will continue to expand our coverage of these issues in 2011 and beyond and stay tuned. Pay attention to our website as we are going to evaluate whether Obama has what it takes to turn it around if he doesn't then the world needs to be thinking much more creatively about authoritarian solutions to the current problems and whatever happens there is going to have to be a major centralized nation of state power both on a national level and in international level. That is our conclusion for looking out from 2011 and beyond come to our website read our world future outlook report, read our building a sustainable future report.