Dear DK,

I have a feeling that this is already ‘planned’ in a way.

The old must die before the new can emerge.

Our planet does not need to be rescued though. She will survive.

It is us that need to learn a deep lesson here in order to survive.

And it has always been this way:

When the need is the deepest, the rescue is at hand

He/she who perseveres, will win.

"Is the Global Credit Crunch going to help to Save the Planet?"

yes

then the planet will become unsaved in another area
and will require saving there

then the planet will become unsaved in another area
and will require saving there

then the planet will become unsaved in another area
and will require saving there

then the planet will become unsaved in another area
and will require saving there

.
.
.
.

upon which the earlier saved area will have again fallen into the need to be saved...

upon which the earlier saved area will have again fallen into the need to be saved...

then the planet will become unsaved in another area
and will require saving there

upon which the earlier saved area will have again fallen into the need to be saved...

then the planet will become unsaved in another area
and will require saving there

upon which the earlier saved area will have again fallen into the need to be saved...

then the planet will become unsaved in another area
and will require saving there

then the planet will become unsaved in another area
and will require saving there

▸ noun: (sports) the act of preventing the opposition from scoring ("The goalie made a brilliant save")
▸ verb: to keep up and reserve for personal or special use ("She saved the old family photographs in a drawer")
▸ verb: feather one's nest; have a nest egg ("He saves half his salary")
▸ verb: spend less; buy at a reduced price
▸ verb: spend sparingly, avoid the waste of ("This move will save money")
▸ verb: bring into safety
▸ verb: make unnecessary an expenditure or effort ("This will save money")
▸ verb: refrain from harming
▸ verb: save from sins
▸ verb: retain rights to
▸ verb: save from ruin, destruction, or harm
▸ name: A surname (very rare: popularity rank in the U.S.: #39321)

Definitions of save on the Web:

salvage: save from ruin, destruction, or harm
to keep up and reserve for personal or special use; "She saved the old family photographs in a drawer"
bring into safety; "We pulled through most of the victims of the bomb attack"
spend less; buy at a reduced price
accumulate money for future use; "He saves half his salary"
make unnecessary an expenditure or effort; "This will save money"; "I'll save you the trouble"; "This will save you a lot of time"
deliver: save from sins
spare: refrain from harming
spend sparingly, avoid the waste of; "This move will save money"; "The less fortunate will have to economize now"
keep open: retain rights to; "keep my job for me while I give birth"; "keep my seat, please"; "keep open the possibility of a merger"
write: record data on a computer; "boot-up instructions are written on the hard disk"
(sports) the act of preventing the opposition from scoring; "the goalie made a brilliant save"; "the relief pitcher got credit for a save"

planet.....Saved..........in which sense?
socially and/or economically and/or politically and/or spiritually and/or ecologically and/or .............?

and WHO (for whom) (and by whom)?

do the Aborigines in Australia or the tribespeople in Papua/New Guinea or the Inca descendants in the mountains of Peru really give much of a fog about the credit crunch?

Is is a candy bar?

depends on the lessons we get from the credit crunch

for regular people: when the offers of credit are too juicy and too generous, don't take the offer

for banks, mortgage companies, credit card issuers, etc.: don't try to hook people into accepting credit they cannot afford

Dear DK,

Yes if it allows one to succeed in getting the world's attention so as to impart awareness and garner cooperation.

The credit crunch is the result of the destruction of an illusion and a failure to embrace the truth.

There was a prophet who spoke here on Intent Blog as to the coming destruction of the illusions of ego and the ego empire.

It does not seem prudent that we would have the same people who played the most dominant role in creating the current situation, trying to create a remedy and fix; same consciousness same reality, new consciousness new reality.

They still cling to the old system and its illusions, they try to preserve it and that is their folly. I have yet to see anyone publicly address the core foundational flaws in the monetary and finance systems.

Volvo was given as an example, I am sure there are 10 million people on the planet that would like to have a new Volvo. I am also sure that these 10 million people could produce something of value for the workers at Volvo in exchange for the cars. Since is is not happening it means the system that would facilitate this exchange is ineffective if not corrupted and therefore a new one must be put in place, but not with the same stewards and design as before.

The global solution would cost less than $100 million to develop and implement. If we can get these funds appropriated then we can quickly proceed, going down the not so bad path.

If not then one will implement the runs on the banks, which one is set to do, this will bring reality to the forefront and generate the impetus for dramatic revolution and change this might be called the ugly path.

There is not a choice of destination, but there is a choice of which path is taken to it.

There is not a choice of destination, but there is a choice of which path is taken to it.

There is not a choice of destination, but there is a choice of which path is taken to it.

Well I have expended enough energy here for now; I hope some will come in return.

TO PARAPHRASE
and PLEEEEEZE please do not sue me, Rinaldo
LOLOL

Saving the U.S. Economy
through Trickle-Up Economics

by Jane Núñez and Rinaldo Brutoco

STATUS

The federal bailout plan (or “rescue plan,” as it now is being called) did not solve any underlying fundamental weakness in the economy. All it did was buy escape-to-Mexico time for certain members of already overprivileged and overstuffed sectors of the economy by band-aiding the bleeding caused in large part by their greed, as conveniently and suspiciously potentiated by the television-stoked pop-eyed slurpy hunger of the average low-income American to live far far beyond his means, and indeed, by the latter’s ability to do so, courtesy of easy credit conveniently provided by, gasp, the very folks now splashing about giddily in the new flood of worker-blood-soaked governmental largesse. We should at least have the presence of mind to use this expensive and elitist window of opportunity to try to address as best we might the structural basics of what is really wrong so that we may change the fundamentals that created the tornadic-ly circular and taxpayer-gouging meltdown in the first place. If these needed structural changes are not made, and made quickly, our piling this new federal debt on top of layers of existing private and public debt will have served only to damage an already-struggling economy.

THE BAD NEWS

The economy as we have known it since World War II is so fundamentally broken that it cannot be fixed by merely fine tuning it in its present form, regardless of the level of financial intervention by the government.

THE GOOD NEWS

Once we develop a dramatically different approach to the economy, we will create wealth in the United States, and ultimately abroad, far greater than the wealth created under any outmoded and ineffective post–World War II economic system.

THE FIX

(SUMMARY)

——buy up and renegotiate troubled mortgages and provide free credit counseling to homeowners with troubled loans

——freeze interest rates at today’s levels on adjustable rate mortgages and home equity lines of credit and prohibit lending institutions from further capital calls on mortgages and home equity lines of credit

——allow bankruptcy courts to modify the mortgage payments make it easier for consumers to use bankruptcy to discharge credit card debt

——get control of the unregulated market for credit default swaps and prohibit the issuance of any new credit default swaps

——increase margin requirements for all stock purchases, in order to continue reducing leveraged, speculative purchases of all stocks, including equities, bonds, and commodities

——reevaluate short-selling rules to prevent short sellers from speeding up crisis-induced downward spirals in share prices

——-restore a needed wall between investment banking and commercial/retail banking

——-undertake a massive project to rebuild and expand American infrastructure

——reduce our defense spending

——enact a universal healthcare system and require pharmaceutical companies that sell drug products in the United States to sell at the lowest price they charge for the same product anywhere else in the world

——-cease the taxation of companies for the dividends they pay out

——reinstitute the federal one-fourth-of-a-percent securities transfer tax

——demand the effectiveness, fairness, and probity of the powerful oversight or supervisory panel created as part of the bailout plan

——create a temporary financing fund for state, county, and city government entities

***************

True recovery requires us to replace that old treacherous rider-biting warhorse — trickle-down economics — with trickle-up economics, thereby doing away with the debilitating culture of debt spawned by, again, that old elitist, condescending, self-serving, undemocratic, status-quo-preserving, plutocratic, hypocritical bullshit piece of trickle-down philosophy foisted off on the infinitely gullible American public as a serious approach to economic equity and progress. We must immediately and massively fund infrastructure projects ($50 billion to $100 billion per year) to create reasonably well-paying jobs in the various trades. We must radically slow down the rate of home foreclosures by modulating interest rates on home purchase and home equity lines of credit. And we must help American workers attain comprehensive health care, affordable college education for their children, and solid retirement prospects through an intact and adequately funded Social Security system. The following is a punch list of fourteen steps necessary for economic recovery:

1. Create the modern-day equivalent of the depression era Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, which was designed to buy up and renegotiate troubled mortgages and provide free credit counseling to homeowners with troubled loans (and which closed shop less than twenty years later after posting a profit for taxpayers). The new Home Owners’ Loan Corporation should similarly have the power to negotiate on behalf of a mortgage holder unable to represent himself in such negotiations. When a mortgage has been chopped up and syndicated into a thousand pieces, generally no one entity, including the servicing agent, has the authority to speak for the mortgage holder. For a host of reasons, it would be wise to put the great bulk of the recently authorized $700 billion into this modern-day Home Owners’ Loan Corporation rather than leave the funds washing around the Treasury Department.

2. For at least a year, a) freeze interest rates at today’s levels on adjustable rate mortgages and home equity lines of credit and b) prohibit lending institutions from further capital calls on such credit lines in the name of collateral ratio declines stemming from drops in home prices. The president needs to be given the authority to continue this freeze and prohibition on a year-by-year basis for up to five years by notifying Congress of his intent to do so and the reasons for his decision. Taken together, these twin reforms would save any homeowner from foreclosure who is capable of making his current mortgage payments as they come due. The prohibition on further capital calls on home purchase and equity loans based on the falling value of the home would essentially do for homeowners what the new guidance by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Financial Accounting Standards Board has done for financial institutions by effectively suspending “mark to market” accounting rules.

3. Immediately a) allow bankruptcy courts to modify the mortgage payments on a person’s primary home just as bankruptcy courts already modify mortgage payments on commercial properties and b) have Congress hold hearings to reexamine last year’s bankruptcy code amendments that make it more difficult for consumers to use bankruptcy to discharge credit card debt.

4. Immediately get control of the unregulated market for credit default swaps and prohibit the issuance of any new credit default swaps at least until a new law or Securities and Exchange Commission rule defines credit default swap as a “security” within the meaning of the 1933 and 1934 Securities Acts if any material portion of the underlying insured obligation relates to a company or asset based in the United States. Without this reform, it would be destabilizing to bail out the financial industry by buying up assets that cannot be sold on the private market, because investors would still use swaps to hedge transactions they deemed to be unacceptably risky. If we do not immediately begin to bring the credit default swap market under control, trillions of dollars more of swaps will be created even as we try to deal with the damage caused by the $63 trillion in swaps already outstanding.

5. Steadily increase margin requirements for all stock purchases by 5 percent per month for each of the next five months so margin requirements are at least 25 percent higher than now and impose subsequent monthly increases as necessary to continue reducing leveraged, speculative purchases of all stocks, including equities, bonds, and commodities. Congress should immediately hold hearings to help determine at what point we will have raised margin requirements high enough to damp down speculation while still providing adequate liquidity for the range of transactions from the relatively nonspeculative to the forward-purchase oriented.

6. Reevaluate short-selling rules through congressional hearings to determine whether short selling plays a necessary role in the markets and, if so, how it should be regulated and whether the “uptick” rule repealed 14 months ago should be reinstated. That rule, part of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, was designed to prevent short sellers from speeding up crisis-induced downward spirals in share prices. The rule prohibited any short sale that was not “higher than the last different price.” In other words, a seller could not short sell a stock unless the share price first ticked upward by a fraction of a point.

7. Restore a needed wall between investment banking and commercial/retail banking. This Glass-Steagall–like distinction between investment banking [banking services for corporations, banks, and the like, including corporate finance/mergers/acquisitions] and commercial/retail banking [banking services for individual customers] is even more critical now that there are no pure investment banking houses of significance left on Wall Street. Goldman and Morgan Stanley have decided to enter retail banking, and the other big investment banks have either been acquired (Bear Stearns by Morgan Chase and Merrill by Bank of America) or liquidated (Lehman Brothers), making the investment banking field fertile ground for new approaches and combinations and for newcomers who would most likely serve the economy best if functioning under clearly defined guidelines.

8. Launch an immediate project, in the $50 billion to $100 billion range annually for the next five years, to rebuild and expand American infrastructure, including roads, bridges, hospitals, public buildings, water supply, sewerage, broadband, green transit, and alternative energy.

9. As fast as possible, zero out the $10 billion per month we spend on the Iraq war and reduce our defense spending from $700 billion per year to $600 billion, theoretically making more federal funding available for undertakings such as a crash green-fuels program, infrastructure improvements, and reduction of the national debt. Military spending could be reduced to pay for the entire fourteen-suggestion package and still leave the U.S military with historically extraordinary high level of funding. The American people must realize that even after the minor 10 percent cut we have recommended, military spending would be dramatically higher than when George Bush took office. We are broke and can no longer afford to spend more than the rest of the world combined on military matters. Fundingwise, we have been on a permanent wartime footing in this country since World War II, and such funding, more than any other single item, has led us to the brink of financial ruin. The cost of maintaining a global military presence exceeds its value to us and is not making us safer. The time has come for us to take our responsible role as one nation, albeit a very powerful one, among a whole family of nations. We must quit attempting to run the world at the expense of the American taxpayer. We can no longer afford to have hundreds of military bases around the world nor can we continue to procure weapons at the staggering rate we have for more than sixty years now. President Eisenhower warned us precisely of this danger in his farewell address at the completion of this second term; it is time we took his admonitions to heart.

10. Enact a universal healthcare system that provides affordable care to every American independently of his or her employment status; the inordinate financial burden on employers to provide their employees with healthcare coverage makes U.S. industry less competitive than industries of many western industrialized countries in which employers do not have to absorb such costs. As an additional measure, require pharmaceutical companies that sell drug products in the United States to sell at the lowest price they charge for the same product anywhere else in the world (no pharmaceutical company refuses to sell drugs in Europe, where comparative prices are as much as 40 percent lower); lowered selling prices would still allow pharmaceutical companies more than adequate profits while dramatically reducing the nation’s healthcare bill. These two healthcare proposals will be especially helpful to those who are currently underinsured or uninsured (statistically likely to be the same population facing foreclosures and bankruptcies) and to those whose general healthcare needs are increasing because of declining overall health (such as the elderly, who are faced with a disproportionate burden of paying for our broken healthcare system even as their incomes are declining).

11. Immediately cease the taxation of companies for the dividends they pay out (which unfairly has shareholders pay taxes doubly, first as owners of a company that brings in earnings for its investors and then again as individuals who must pay income taxes on their own personal dividend earnings). Allow companies instead to take a tax deduction for dividend payments just as they already take for interest payments, with the benefit of a) decreasing the incentives for companies to assume more debt than is absolutely necessary, b) increasing the incentives for companies to pay dividends, c) increasing federal tax revenue as a result of the higher tax rates on dividends received by shareholders than on dividends paid out by companies, and d) allowing the individual investor, 401(k) plan holder, IRA holder, and the like to make investment decisions based on companies’ actual dividends rather than on some number that is subject to manipulation (companies would no longer be judged by a price/earnings ratio that can be manipulated but rather by a dividend/earnings ratio that cannot; a company’s dividend payment amount cannot be hidden or cynically misrepresented by application of any known accounting sleight of hand, a common, deceptive, and hell-spawned practice that tempts people to trick other people and make the whole stock market thing more oogie-oogie than it has to be (or indeed even should be at all), leading to an underlying ethos of dishonesty and fudging that breeds me-firstism and monetary and financial ruthlessness, leading ultimately to disregard for other human beings here and abroad and to a miserable life experience ultimately for oneself and other human beings with whom one comes into direct or indirect contact (100 percent of the earth’s population).

12. To discourage speculative trading and raise federal revenues, reinstitute the federal ¼ percent securities transfer tax like the one in effect in the United States between 1914 and 1966 and still in effect in the United Kingdom and other areas of the world. A group of Democrats, averring that such a tax would raise $150 billion a year for the federal government, included a securities transfer tax provision in the “No Bailouts Act” introduced after the House voted down the first bailout plan.

13. Ensure the effectiveness, fairness, and probity of the oversight or supervisory panel created as part of the bailout plan for rescuing financial institutions via the purchase of these institutions’ soured assets. Such a strong and highly principled panel will be necessary to ensure the fairness to taxpayers of the contracts that the Treasury Department will need to enter into with financial experts to manage those assets. What must happen next is for the Treasury to write the rules it will play by, have the Congress review those rules to ensure they provide for adequate oversight, and then have the rules take the full force of law.

14. Immediately create a temporary financing fund for state, county, and city government entities to provide relief from funding shortfalls caused by the economic downturn’s falling tax revenues. The entities should be required to guarantee repayment with a priority lien against future tax receipts on some equitable basis. The fund is not intended to encourage governments’ deficit spending but to provide liquidity at a time that banks are unwilling to provide bridge financing. In addition, provide a governmental financing authority for state, county, and city entities until the market for revenue-backed municipal bonds and the state financing of revenue-backed infrastructure projects normalize.

WON’T THESE FOURTEEN SUGGESTIONS
TEND TO MAKE OUR ECONOMY MORE SLUGGISH?

The domestic economic activity that will be stimulated by our fourteen suggestions will bring new clarity, fairness, and rationality to our economic and financial dealings with each other, reigniting our economy to levels of life-enhancing productivity and vibrancy as yet undreamed of. The only way we can ever pay off the massive federal deficit we have accumulated is to recreate our vision of how we can most fairly compensate each other for the energy expended each to each in the pursuit of our lives’ dreams, so that we generate far higher levels of real wealth, democratically and ecologically redefined and more equitably distributed, favoring all our populace, not just a privileged and ethically challenged few who live like royalty from the bread of other people’s sweat. Let us move to enhance our country’s economic transparency and accountability, protecting the pocketbook of the common man, in order to optimize and make maximal use of the special skills and talents of every single one of our citizens equally. Government’s issuance of regulations and its selective handing out of sweat-soaked taxpayer-squeezed largesse and elitist and expensive rescue packages must be a one-time-only event, and we must use the temporary respite it seems to provide from our economic panic to ensure that the ultimate benefits will be directed toward the well-being of all of us, not just a few of us. Changes are crying out to be made. This shift can be achieved by implementing the fourteen points suggested, which in tandem will contribute to necessary structural changes in our economy and to greater clarity and fairness in the way we do business as individuals, as a community, and as citizens of the world. Because of the famous “multiplier effect,” implementing the suggestions will contribute measurably to the creation of an economy dramatically larger and more efficient than we can currently envision in all its particulars, and we must hunker down, shoulder to the wheel, demanding accountability and requiring from ourselves a willingness to live within our current means and to continue to give good solid value for the money we do receive, never discouraged by the lack of conscience of those who only Seem to be succeeding more than we. The earth continues to turn, time wounds all heels, and the wheels of justice grind slowly but exceedingly fine. Transparency and fair dealing are the only way. Let others muddy the waters. We shall take a vow never to contribute to that sullying but rather to keep on toward the light as Our Heavenly Father gives us to seek it, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.

The current economic crisis is actually a blessing. No amount of tinkering with the existing “trickle-down” approach to the economy could ever create the wealth necessary to rebuild U.S. society. Because the culture of speculation has made us near bankrupt, we have no alternative but to embrace a more sane culture of equity, savings, and liquidity based on the creation of real goods and services. There really is no other choice left to us.
We must remember Winston Churchill’s wartime observation, “The Americans can always be counted upon to do the right thing — after they have exhausted all other alternatives.” The current crisis makes it abundantly clear that we have exhausted all other alternatives. It is now time to embrace some old-fashioned common sense, acting wisely at this very moment, before the window of opportunity closes, making any subsequent attempt to restart increasingly painful and less efficient. Let us finally get off the endless wheel of financial suffering.

Redemption is built in and on-going, to the moment, I feel.

Is it Time whose days are numbered ;)

#2 Jane, can we save time?

an excerpt from the above, for Richard, who asked for particulars regarding what might be immediately done to improve opur economic/financial infrastructure

——buy up and renegotiate troubled mortgages and provide credit counseling to homeowners who hold troubled loans

——freeze interest rates at today’s levels on adjustable rate mortgages and home equity lines of credit and prohibit lending institutions from further capital calls on mortgages and home equity lines of credit

——allow bankruptcy courts to modify applicants' mortgage payments and make it easier for consumers to use bankruptcy to discharge credit card debt

——get control of the unregulated market for credit default swaps and prohibit the issuance of any new credit default swaps

——increase margin requirements for all stock purchases, in order to continue reducing leveraged, speculative purchases of all stocks, including equities, bonds, and commodities

——reevaluate short-selling rules to prevent short sellers from speeding up crisis-induced downward spirals in share prices

——restore a needed wall between investment banking and commercial/retail banking

——undertake a massive project to rebuild and expand American infrastructure

——reduce our defense spending

——enact a universal healthcare system and require pharmaceutical companies that sell drug products in the United States to sell at the lowest price they charge for the same product anywhere else in the world

——cease the taxation of companies for the dividends they pay out

——reinstitute the federal one-fourth-of-a-percent securities transfer tax

——demand the effectiveness, fairness, and probity of the powerful oversight or supervisory panel created as part of the bailout plan

——create a temporary financing fund for state, county, and city government entities

oops

for the Rinaldo Brutoco article

http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/902889

Ed, can we save time?

we should try to, probably, because it has its uses

else why would folks wear wristwatches?

time seems real enough to me as I examine my crinkly facial wrinkles that weren't there 25 years ago, wiwsfaydnthabwm

http://www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/frameset.php?pageid=http%3A//www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/press/230508.php

again, intrusively edited by the extremely caffeinated janie, with apologies to the brilliant author

i love this article

Toward a Golden Age?
A Wisdom-based Global Economy

Worldwide Crises in Fuel, Food, and Finance:
Pointing the Way toward Holistic Changes

Alliance for a Wisdom-based Global Economy

http://www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/frameset.php?pageid=http%3A//www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/press/230508.php

Executive Summary

D. K. Matai (i believe)

1. The current worldwide crises in fuel, food, and finance are accelerating huge changes at all levels both in the management of the world's available energy resources and raw materials and in human beings' approach toward each other and in their vision and use of each other's talents.

2. These fuel, food, and finance crises and the resultant superinflation stem from the mismanagement of expectations. The present socioeconomic trajectory, if pursued, will ultimately prove incapable of sustaining seven billion people on the planet at median living standards of the West. Therefore, our current course must be dramatically corrected and our false and selfishness-oriented expectations confronted and replaced with entirely reality-based and holistic ones.

3. The age of ignorance is at long last coming to an end as humanity realizes that every action has a reaction and that all aspects of production, distribution, and consumption have associated with them inevitable externalized and internalized costs beyond the immediately apparent. In other words, not all costs can be represented in simple terms of profit and loss, becoming evident instead over decades in terms of finance and quality of life. Some aspects of production, distribution, and consumption call for special attention, in that their consequences are disproportionate, meaning that it takes much longer to neutralize or reverse these consequences than it takes to incur them. For instance, it may take only a few years to cut down a forest for fuel but it will take decades to grow that forest back.

4. Fortunately, brilliant solutions to some of these tricky issues are beginning to appear seemingly out of nowhere, given the ingenuity for invention and innovation that humanity can display when pushed into a corner. The linear processes to which we have all grown accustomed have traditionally consisted of three stages or aspects treated as non-interrelated -- namely, production, consumption, and waste. These old-style processes are now irreversibly evolving into nonlinear and circular processes, more integrated and wisdom based and designed around thoroughgoing energy efficiency and holistic recycling. Not too far down the road lies a whole Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade of highly imaginative, inventive, and innovative applications in a wide range of fields (such as group thinking, incentivization models, continuous education, training, new science, management philosophy, energy efficiency, alternative energy, waste minimization, recycling, and waste processing). The newer production and consumption methodologies are going to use more recycled and recyclable materials that afford extremely high energy efficiency, cutting back on the wasteful use of energy, raw materials, and other natural resources such as water, air, and land. Local sourcing will come to the fore as the fuel, food, and finance crises bite more deeply.

5. The number of wisdom-based solutions deployed in dealing with the crises will become the yardstick of resilience for the individual, family, community, organization, corporation, region, or nation-state. Taxation will evolve dynamically to act as a further stimulus for adoption of the new measures.

6. In today's world, nation-state boundaries are routinely (even though not always for the better) transcended by movements and ideologies and by transnational entities such as corporations and NGOs. This increasingly boundaryless environment is creating a globally interdependent economic, financial, and production matrix. Meanwhile, the concomitant crises in fuel, food, and finance are propelling humanity toward energy diversification, less-wasteful production processes, and more-transparent economic procedures based on holistic thinking and consideration of the collective good. Despite the short-term pain, these latter shifts, especially in the context of an increasingly boundaryless planet, will bring tremendously beneficial long-term consequences for humanity and will eventually result in a Golden Age of individual and world transformation structured on a wisdom-based global economy.

7. The defining characteristic of this Golden Age will be accelerated personal enlightenment based on a renaissance and reinvention of the individual's thinking. This more integrated, planetary mode of perception will form the building blocks of societally oriented group thinking by corporations, organizations, and governments, leading to the gradual conversion of linear industrial-age systems and support mechanisms into nonlinear and integrative, more holistic ones. In the recent past, Europe and North America have had a huge lead and capacity to reinvent. Over the coming years, as the crises in fuel, food, and finances continue to affect poorer nations the most, Asia, South America, and Africa (with China and India in the forefront because of their large-scale demographics) are also going to be rich sources of innovative wisdom-based solutions. Japan's fantastic lead in energy efficiency will be copied, matched, and eventually surpassed across many parts of the world, substantially lowering global energy demand.

8. Traditional and knee jerk responses from established governance organizations and regulatory institutions are not necessarily going to work and may indeed exacerbate the effects of the present crises, especially in the case of the modern solidarity society in Europe and North America based on nation-states, in particular those that evolved after the second world war. On the present trajectory, the mechanics of the old approach are in fact capable of actually bankrupting many nation-states. In the last two decades or so, those arcane systems have survived on the back of Chinese and Indian export of deflation and a relatively low world cost of energy. As superinflation and the crises in fuel, food, and finances remove the crutches, socially and politically acceptable reformation will have to occur. The model that will evolve will have nonlinear and integrative characteristics and will promote sustainability, which is especially needed in the troubled procedural aspects most feeling the pinch because of outmoded and ultimately self-defeating, nonholistic methods of thinking.

9. The step-by-step revolution has only just begun and has a long way to go as humanity realizes its full economic potential by integrating the physical, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of productive and financial activity into a more conscious and integrative model that calls us to consume responsibly, to produce near-zero waste, and to be conscious of the consequences our actions at all levels have not just to self but also to others and to the environment. The environment and humanity are not separate from each other and are essentially one, a concept that is going to gain ground as we continue to define forward-looking, global-minded solutions for the current crises. It is well known that what we do to others we do unto ourselves, but never before have we seen this truth so clearly emblazoned across the world's economic firmament. With the final admission of our oneness and the elimination of all thoughts of duality, how easy will it remain to wage war, especially given the sure prospect of mutual damage and possibly even total global annihilation? There is also the wisdom of another great spiritual poet -- Saadi -- to be considered:

The human family is one body with many parts,
creations arising from one unseen essence.
Any harm to any part
summons an awakening, a dis-ease,
and a healing response from all parts.
Those who fail to feel the pain of others
cannot be called truly human.

At the risk of sounding like I'm practicing evasion, it depends on what your definition of "the planet" is, and even further, "save" is.

At this point in time, it's hard to fit the word love in the same sentence with the term global credit crisis, so until that's possible, until we can carve out from this colossal social disaster something shaped so softly that it touches our heartstrings the right way, we're screwed.

Let's talk about the holocaust for a moment: the event--a European nation-state buried in debt and railing against it in tribal terms, such as Deutschland did--means absolutely nothing more than a compilation of facts on punch cards and a really scary dude...but for the millions of stories stitched together that'll just shatter your heart if you're the least bit connected. If you can't cry about it, I feel sorry for you.

As a child, I always loved stories like Ann Frank or One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Not because I was attracted to how bad life could get.

But because I loved how good people could be.

Look. We're all going to die really, really soon. Practically tomorrow. And there's a real chance that there is no reincarnation, and maybe not even a heaven and Deepak Chopra's quite possibly goofing on you about either or both.

Love.

Dana, you're hilarious. And right on.

The earth ate a bug and spit it out.

Hi dana,
I agree with you - Now's the time to enjoy and appreciate Life!
love to you & Jann,
~ Kate

p.s.
I agree with sWordsman, you have a great sense of homor

humor, that is
;-)

Is the Global Credit Crunch going to help to Save the Planet?

Umm...no.

Because the planet isn't going to be destroyed.

Jane, the 14 things might just work - but - will humanity do them? No, they won't.

Take a cue from Dana and do not underestimate the healing power of seeing the humor in it all...

Hey. Thanks.

An excellent blueprint for this may be found in Saul Bellow's, Henderson the Rain King.

Read twice.

I think it could over time if people begin to become more aware of the full circle effect of their purchasing - the dollar squeeze usually gets their attention. Reduced consumption on all levels is key.

I've drafted an Economic Crisis Diet to help everyday people make better food choices for their health, their wallet and the planet. You can read it here: http://tinyurl.com/5ve8r8

Be well, Carla.

DK:

I was going to post one of my long winded ones here but after not so much consideration....

Often times when we say "the planet" we really mean humankind.

As yogi one and others have pointed out "The Planet", mother earth needs no saving. She will go on when and if humankind wipes itself back to 500,000.

So will the credit crunch save humanity?

I don't know.

What I can relate to you here is that a few weeks ago I was watching a talking head on CNN International. He was alarmed because just across the border from Hong Kong, in China, factories were closing their doors at an unprecedented rate.

Now that can't really be such a bad thing for the future of humanity. Maybe for the pocket book of some but certainly not for the body of the whole.

I wonder, sometimes, if it wasn't Hurricane Katrina that actually triggered the about-face in the credit default swap lineup.

It seems to me that a disproportionate number of subprime mortgages would've been written in the area and the floor fell through.