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Til debt does apart beta
Thanks to clearing bankruptcy back in December 2010, I am now debt free.
I ended up in that situation because I needed housing and I lived in the Columbia Valley. In 2008, after spending more than a dozen years renting, I was finally able to squeeze, and I mean SQUEEZE into a really stupid mortgage for a 42 year old home that, I learned after purchasing the place, had a non-compliant septic system (you have to love disclosure, eh?). A blown up relationship resulted in me trying to carry the $380,000 home (which was only worth $220,000 according to the provincial property gurus), on my lavish $40,000/year salary.
I joked upon taking over the place: “watch, the disgusting property values will plummet now that I am in on the game.”
Two or three months later, the world’s economy plunged into the toilet, led by the house of cards that is the United States’ fiscal insanity. Suddenly I was paying a mortgage on a property valued at $380,000 and, just like that, its value was more in line with the BC Assessment Office’s take – of $220,000.
I lost everything in the bankruptcy, including my new vehicle, which was paid for thanks to a small inheritance the year before. I dove headfirst into the ignoble and depressing world of bankruptcy and a year later I emerged, as the debt counselor described, “like a new 18 year old, free of debt” and ready to roll – right back into it, as is the case with most of the world’s better off citizens.
But I still owe $29,625, technically. As do you dear reader, and every other Canadian. It is our technical share of the national debt.
That’s not much money in the grand scheme, when you consider the average American citizen ‘owes’ $46,611 and climbing.
But that’s nothing compared to the average Brit who owes about $144,000, but that in turn is a drop in the bucket compared to the average Luxembourger who owes $3.75 million.
In comparison, the average starving Somali owes $386.
Our world is where it is because of credit. Big banks, big oil and other big bastards – amounting to .01% of the world’s human stain — established almost 100 years ago the ‘buy now and pay later’ ethos that has dragged our world to this point; one week from D-Day (U.S. debt default day)
Back in the heyday of human civilization, the moment when we stopped flinging dung at one another and realized that our thumbs could be better used for such things as killing enemies and prey, a system of economy was established where one person traded a good or goods to another in exchange for other goods. Good for me, good for you, good for we.
Despite all the being eaten by sabre-tooth tigers, learning how to plow a Fertile Crescent, develop empires/huddle the masses and cudgel them with taxes stuff that led to the Renaissance and then the Industrial Revolution, which in turn sent us rocketing to the here and now, the only lesson we humans have really learned is how to let our greed get the best of us.
The Great Depression developed, in North America, a taste for the good life, at least in equal footing with the arrival of automobiles for everyone. Sounds weird but it is true. The many attempts to kick start an economy resulted in the creation of charge cards. The faster moving world demanded faster service and if that meant buying something without having to go to the bank or go home and snatch some green from below the mattress, all the better.
So gas stations, department stores and other businesses began offering ‘charge cards’ to customers.
The charge cards really caught on and people began to abuse them without relent, and thus was launched the now ‘normal’ march into debt that the vast majority of adult North Americans have experienced and are experiencing. Because the rest of the world envied North America’s lifestyle (see also: America’s), they began to follow suit.
Then in 1950, Diner’s Club released a ‘card’ to 27 New York restaurants. Business boomed in those restaurants as a result and so grew forth the putrid evil that is the credit card and credit card companies. I am visualizing one of those Hollywood movies that depict a catastrophic chemical or biological threat and there’s the scene of the map of the United States being incrementally over-run by the threat.
Television, media and now the all-encompassing digital blob known as the Internet has desensitized the world’s ‘connected’ citizens and further driven their greed to consume. Our entire capitalistic system is centred on greed and consumption. Harken back to George Dubya’s plea for Americans to keep on buying crap they didn’t need and stick their heads back in the tarry goop known as ‘blissful ignorance’ shortly after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
That says it all.
Another example of the desperate want for blissful ignorance is what is happening today – and this week – the countdown to America defaulting on its $14.3 trillion debt.
There seems to be a hushed tone to it all, as if the media are trying not to report on it because they themselves don’t want to know how close we all are to entering a whole new era, where beta flops over to alpha. But baby, there’s gonna be learning pains.
It’s been obvious since 2001 that our world needed to, once and for all, give up the credit cards and start using its collective opposable thumbs to scratch their too-often empty, greed and lust-rattled minds and start moving back to the future. Like it or not, we’re heading back to the good for me, good for you, good for we ethos, or else, as Jim Morrison adroitly opined, “the whole shit house” will go up in flames.
It’s some short-term pain for long-term gain. Enough with the buying of complete crap we don’t need, enough with the pretending to be something we’re not, enough with the keeping up with the Joneses and enough with handing massive power over to total lunatic imbeciles with arm-holes up their backsides.
Credit card companies (see also: banks) and their vampirian Igors, the collections companies, like Guido and Luigi’s Restitutions and Shaking Inc., need to have our boot heels planted on their throats. We need to look down at them, choking and gasping, and say in our best Clint Eastwood voices, “I know what you’re thinking, punk.”
More to the point, our American cousins’ leadership in Washington has got to realize the beta-sticking debates of one ideology over another is not helping one iota.
The time for Republican versus Democrat posturing and nonsense must be set aside or the entire world is going to suffer for it.
President Obama harrumphed last week, “This is a city (Washington) where compromise is becoming a dirty word.”
That does not fill me with confidence.
It’s obvious Obama is standing at a precipice and he wants his enemies AND his friends to stop shoving.
Simply put, if America doesn’t stretch its debt limit or find a compromise to steer away from the hot sun that is default, be prepared for as-yet-unknown consequences that will forever alter our ways of life. Yes, I am being alarmist but also realistic.
How bad is the world’s debt? If you haven’t checked it out, you should. Let me help you get started.
The following are the top 25 nations in terms of external debt and this list reads as a who’s who of the haves and wealthy in the global village. The following chart, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt, notes the nation, its external debt, the average figure per citizen and percentage of Gross Domestic Product. It’s a startling collection of zeroes but fascinating to consider as it shows how those who have must have MORE. The figures are also all about one year old.
1. United States – $14,300,000,000,000 – $45,097 – 95%
2. European Union -13,720,000,000,000 – 27,864 -85
3. United Kingdom– 8,981,000,000,000 – 144,338 – 400
4. Germany – 4,713,000,000,000 – 57,755 – 142
5. France – 4,698,000,000,000 – 74,619 – 182
6. Netherlands – 3,733,000,000,000 – 225,814- 471
7. Japan – 2,441,000,000,000 – 19,148 – 45
8. Ireland – 2,253,000,000,000 – 503,914 – 1,103
9. Norway – 2,232,000,000,000 – 454,768 – 538
10. Italy – 2,223,000,000,000 – 36,841 -108
11. Spain – 2,166,000,000,000 – 47,069 -154
12. Luxembourg -1,892,000,000,000 – 3,746,535 – 3,443
13. Belgium – 1,241,000,000,000 – 113,603 – 266
14. Switzerland – 1,200,000,000,000 – 154,063-229
15. Australia -1,169,000,000,000 – 52,596 – 95
16. Canada – 1,009,000,000,000 – 29,625 – 64
17. Sweden – 853,300,000,000 – 91,487 – 187
18. Austria – 755,000,000,000 – 90,128 – 200
19. Hong Kong – 750,800,000,000 – 105,420 – 334
20. Denmark – 559,500,000,000 -101,084 -180
21. Greece -532,900,000,000- 47,636 – 174
22. Portugal – 497,800,000,000 – 46,795-217
23. Russia – 480,200,000,000 -3,421- 33
24. China – 406,600,000,000- 303 – 7
25. Finland – 370,800,000,000 – 68,960- 155
Further with world debt
The US has the 36th worst ‘public debt to gross domestic product ratio’ in the world, at 58.9%. Greece, the current weak cousin in the bunch, was fifth at 144%. The worst nation in the world for public debt against the GDP, Japan, with a whopping 225.8%, as of 2010.
Canada comes in a decent 85th place, at 34%, one-tenth of a percentage point behind China, sitting in 86th spot with a 33.9% ratio. The nation with the best percentage; civil war-torn Libya with an envy-inspiring 3.3%.
So what? Just numbers. True, to a point and believe me, I think we should all just pull the fiscal nets to the side of the road, shout “car” and then pull the nets back out and resume play. Because it is just numbers – but ooooh, they mean so much to those who ‘own’ them, as opposed to those who owe.
Consider this; China and Japan have more than $2 trillion invested in the American treasury. China needs its money back. What happens when America shrugs and says, “whoops, the cat’s eaten it.”
Now think of how much money most of the world has invested in the US Treasury, seeing as how it has been the benchmark currency since the Second World War?
Some financial experts are shrugging it off, saying they believe the Americans will come to a resolution in time.
Others are not so confident.
The only real way out of this mess for the Americans, and by association the rest of us — is more borrowing.
Right now the Republicans want assurances that there will be spending cuts before they agree to more borrowing, while the Democrats want a blend of lower spending and increased taxation. And like a Three Stooges versus Abbott and Costello wrestling match, they nyuk, nyuk, nyuk and ‘why I oughter’ back and forth. Meanwhile, people continue to whip out their plastic to buy cheap electronics built in China or more clothes produced in child labour utilizing sweatshops in southeast Asia, even though they could dress the Mormon Tabernacle Choir three times over. And banks and credit card companies continue to coerce the sheep and barnacles into upping their credit limits to spend baby spend.
And who gets stuck with the bill at the end of the day – the symbolic day of reckoning, which may be closer than you want to believe? That’s right. The sheep and barnacles that are we the taxpayers and consumers.
It is likely, seeing as how we are talking about Americans, who love high drama, that a resolution will be reached by the Democrats and Republicans and default will be delayed at the last minute. But that is just the start. There then has to come a period of accepting reality and actually halting the quasi infinite rampage that is the American debt.
It must begin with their government and then trickle down to the average Mississippi River crawfish sucking sodbuster. Stop spending what you don’t have. Period.
See New Zealand history for another perspective.
Perhaps this is what is needed for our world. It is unlikely we shall cast aside our greed unless faced with grave ultimatums. Perhaps this will lead to a world currency and sweeping changes, where a feeble and doddering institution like the United Nations may actually become a world governing body ensuring that the rights and well being of all human beings are considered first, and not after the .01% get their cut.
Enjoy the next week and mark August 2 down on your calendar. It could very well be the future birthday of a forced movement that separated humans from the beta wave length and shepherded us into the alpha.
Let’s hope it’s only a spiritual awakening, because the consequences could be much more severe if limited minds continue to strut their stuff for their greed-crazed puppet masters.
Go to https://www.usdebtclock.org/ for a chilling look or go to https://www.debtclock.ca/ for a look at Canada’s debt.
Ian Cobb/e-KNOW
