[Cid_Yama]

The last 8 years were spent setting up the fleecing of the planet. Not that they hadn't been preparing it for some time before, but it was only once the political engine was in place, were they able to blatantly enact their ponzi mortgage derivitive scam without fear of oversight exposure or regulation.

Want to know where the money went? It was spent in conspicuous consumption over the last decade and lost to each other as the fleecers turned on each other when the peasantry became tapped out, even to the third generation.

Most of the wealth was fictitious. Phony ledger entries of leveredged nonsense.

All of it insured by companies unable, and never intending, to cover.

Everyone was trading Monopoly money, pretending it was real, and even to this day seeking to convert it to a 'real' currency.

The bailout has not been about recapitalizing the banks, it's been about recapitilizing the oligarchs. Covering their losses and ensuring they continue in power.

That's why they won't tell you where it went.

Won't do them any good, though. The financial system is toast. The channels of power have been wrecked and the levers no longer work.

Sure they can continue to pretend for a couple more years, but the structure of commerce is collapsing and trade will soon no longer be possible.

When the grocery store shelves empty, then the stores close, when business activity all but ceases and everyone begins to starve, there will be no control.

Locked behind their barricades, with their private armies, and their private networks, they will face the desperation and anger of the masses.

It is inevitable. There will be no conspiracy, no leaders of the revolution. There never is, until it's over and the survivors vie for power.

We are globally approaching France, 1789.

The French Revolution

The inefficient and antiquated financial system was unable to manage the national debt, something which was both caused and exacerbated by the burden of a grossly inequitable system of taxation.

Another cause was the continued conspicuous consumption of the noble class, especially the court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette at Versailles, despite the financial burden on the populace.

High unemployment and high bread prices caused more money to be spent on food and less in other areas of the economy.

There was too little internal trade and too many customs barriers.

[mark]

Spot on, I have long thought the same, but, have you any references?

[Zel]

That was nicely written. Thank you.

I've long suspected that this "collapse" was engineered. But as I watch the upper echelons cannibalize each other, it seems to have gone wrong for them at some point.

Not that I have much sympathy for them, you understand.

[Jotapay]

There have been depressions, collapses and panics before. They are always used by the most elite of the elite to consolidate their power. They just buy up all their competitors and use it as an opportunity to pass more laws and clamp down further on the common people.

That is what Kissinger and most other world leaders have been saying about this just in the past few weeks. This is an opportunity to bring forth a "New World Order". They are the ones who said it, not me. They will use this crisis to further consolidate their power and control.

[Hawkcreek]

There have been depressions, collapses and panics before. They are always used by the most elite of the elite to consolidate their power. They just buy up all their competitors and use it as an opportunity to pass more laws and clamp down further on the common people.

They may have miscalculated a bit. If the peasants get too uncomfortable, heads will roll again.
I personally believe it should happen. Greed should have its reward.

[lawnchair]

Look at where we are. In the West, at least. We're not running out of food (unless we can't afford to plant enough this year). There's more than enough houses for everyone. There's a massive surplus of human capital. We're laden with plastic pumpkins. The only commodity we're running into problems with is oil. And we're, at most, 1/2 a percent down the downslope with that. Certainly within the realm where even the mildest conservation would balance the equation.

Yet, people are going to be starving, homeless, and dying of easily treated maladies as a result of the dancing numbers on someone's screen.

You see why people drift toward revolutions, regicides, and why socialism is appealing.

Obviously the rich getting rich was a part of it. But, I submit another.

We are in debt to China (in particular). Not just dollars, either. They traded their environment and peoples' productive years to provide plastic pumpkins. Morally, they deserve some return on their 'investment' in ruining themselves for us. But, as it turns out, getting their pound of flesh isn't necessarily easy.

From a selfish Western perspective, the answer would be to wipe the slate clean. We got fifty years of polluting you. China gets, well, what it's already gotten and nothing more. Good day, sirs. This may be what we do, and there may be no stopping us.

[Ronin]

There have been depressions, collapses and panics before. They are always used by the most elite of the elite to consolidate their power. They just buy up all their competitors and use it as an opportunity to pass more laws and clamp down further on the common people.

That is what Kissinger and most other world leaders have been saying about this just in the past few weeks. This is an opportunity to bring forth a "New World Order". They are the ones who said it, not me. They will use this crisis to further consolidate their power and control.

+1
I'm comforted by the words Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"They(who)seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings By a handful of individual rulers call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order"

IMHO such a plan will not work due to the magnitude of control needed. My one fear is that from defeat their vindictiveness would have them choose to destroy and kill as many as they could.

Peace and love
Masterless