It's like dominoes!
Egypt is getting the most press, but protests and government changes are happening all over.
Who will be next? And what is the end result of all this going to be?
scooterbug44scooterbug44SoWal ExpertSowal16,706 postsJoined View profileMessageSoWal Expert
scooterbug44SoWal ExpertSowal16,706 postsJoined View profileMessageSoWal Expert1,739 views
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sunspotbabysunspotbabySoWal InsiderSanta Rosa Beach5,000 postsJoined View profileMessageSoWal Insider
sunspotbabySoWal InsiderSanta Rosa Beach5,000 postsJoined View profileMessageSoWal Insider2012. :cool:
AlphaCrabAlphaCrabBeach FanaticInlet Beach981 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach Fanatic
AlphaCrabBeach FanaticInlet Beach981 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach FanaticMaybe we should see if the rest of the World (i.e., other than America) gives a s_ _t. For a change.
TNJedTNJedBeach FanaticSeagrove Beach, FL588 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach Fanatic
TNJedBeach FanaticSeagrove Beach, FL588 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach FanaticNobody saw Egypt coming and that's how it happens. This is what happens when the world's reserve currency is debased and we export inflation further deflating 3rd world countries. All the talk of high-finance mumbo jumbo sounds grand and everything is going to plan until life happens and starving people revolt because commodities, aka food, have skyrocketed.
C'mon Ben, dial back that inflation knob just like you said you could within 15-minutes by raising rates. That would cause the US to default in New York second. Never happen. Print to infinity is the plan. It's the only plan. It's a Hail Mary.
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
C'mon Ben, dial back that inflation knob just like you said you could within 15-minutes by raising rates. That would cause the US to default in New York second. Never happen. Print to infinity is the plan. It's the only plan. It's a Hail Mary.
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
TNJedTNJedBeach FanaticSeagrove Beach, FL588 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach Fanatic
TNJedBeach FanaticSeagrove Beach, FL588 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach FanaticI think this says just about everything.
Egypt's Revolution: Coming to an Economy Near You - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review
It was a society in stagnation, if not decline. Despite ostensible stability, its people ? especially its young people ? faced a future bleaker than the dark side of Pluto. For decades, the richest grew even richer, as national debt mounted, middle-class people tried to make ends meet, and upward mobility fell. Government failed to address these problems, and the governed felt increasingly disenfranchised ? and partisan. Mass unemployment metastasized from a temporary illness to a chronic condition. One of its major cities decided to erect a permanent tent city, for a permanently excluded, marginalized underclass.
This isn't Tunisia, or Egypt ? but America. Yes, in many ways Egypt and America couldn't be more different. But the broad contours are just a little too similar for comfort.
Consider a tweet that made the rounds this weekend. "Youth unemployment: #Yemen 49%, #Palestine 38%, #Morocco 35%, #Egypt 33%, #Tunisia 26%". It sounds staggering. But youth unemployment rates are 20-40% across Europe. And in the USA, estimates range from 20-50% depending on how you count, and when. Egypt's youth unemployment crisis ? which many seemed to think on Twitter was merely an Arab problem (oh, those Arabs!) is, in point of fact, a global one.
What we're watching is a massive malfunctioning of the global economy. At the root of the problem: dumb growth. Dumb growth is, in many ways, bogus ? rather than reflecting enduring wealth creation, it largely reflects the transfer of wealth: from the poor to the rich, the young to the old, tomorrow to today, and human beings to corporate "people." Dumb growth is growth without prosperity. And it's far from an Egyptian problem.
Lane Kenworthy has recently called America's version of it "the Great Decoupling." In the US, net worth, median income, job creation, happiness ? all have been flat for a decade (plus). Other measures of prosperity, which I'd argue matter more, haven't just flatlined, they've cratered: polls show that trust, connection, stability, social mobility, are all down. The problem of dumb, empty "growth" is global.
And my hunch is that it's going to get worse, before it gets better. Consider the food, commodity, and energy price spikes likely to sweep the globe this year. Consider the costs of climate disruption. If it's bad for a family whose breadwinner is unemployed in the States, how bad is it for the more than three billion people ? that's more than half the world, folks ? living on less than $2 a day?
How do we fix it? In his new book, Tyler Cowen argues that the problem is that that we've eaten all the "low-hanging fruit," ? that there's not a great enough quantity of innovation. That's a sharp insight, but I'd argue that the problem's slightly different: not a high enough quality of innovation. The challenge now is leaping to a higher order of innovation: institutional innovation, because it's institutions that set the incentives that mold and shape human achievement in the first place.
And for far too many people, yesterday's economic institutions are literally not delivering the goods.Yes, the tools of capitalism have lifted entire nations out of poverty. But for decades, real prosperity has been flat. Now, at a macroeconomic level, our current economic institutions simply transfer prosperity upwards, to the richest 10% --> 1% --> 0.1% --> 0.01% and so on. This is what I call a global "ponziconomy" ? a titanic, gleaming whirling, wealth transfer machine. And we can't fix it with the same tools we used to build it. That's why it's never been more vital for us ? we, the people ? to challenge the institutions of yesteryear.
All of which brings me back to Egypt as the canary in a very large coal mine. It's hard to overstate just how unexpected a transformation is occurring in Egypt. Death, taxes, and Hosni Mubarak ? they were the three great certainties in modern Egyptian life.
But just underneath the surface, the tectonic pressure of dumb growth was steadily mounting. Bogus prosperity's like magma, filling the volcanic chamber of a society: you can bottle it up for only so long before it erupts, and spectacularly. Today, the world's gaze is fixed on the pyroclastic flow: never-ending demonstrations, protests, people self-organizing in a state that has shut down the internet, mobile networks, and public transport. But the fault lines underneath this explosion were laid down decades ago ? and they might just run across the globe.
The lesson: You can't steal the future forever ? and, in a hyperconnected world, you probably can't steal as much of it for as long.
Now, I don't think Americans will take to the streets to oust their government. The challenge of the democratic, developed world is a quieter rebellion: against a bankruptcy not just of the pocketbook, but of meaning. It's not to take a stand against a dictator, but to take a stand against an unenlightened, nihilistic, hyperconsumerist, soul-suckingly unfulfilling, lethally short-termist ethos that inflicts real and relentless damage on people, society, the natural world, and future generations.
If we want to deliver the goods ? enduring, meaningful stuff that engenders real prosperity ? we're probably going to have start with delivering them to one another. Our untrammeled path back to prosperity ? should we choose to blaze it ? is millions of personal revolutions made up of billions of tiny choices that reclaim our humanity from the heartless merchants of indifference, fear, anger, and vanity.
Some say it's impossible. Me? I believe that in a world of bogus prosperity, what's impossible is for the status quo to stand.
Egypt's Revolution: Coming to an Economy Near You - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review
It was a society in stagnation, if not decline. Despite ostensible stability, its people ? especially its young people ? faced a future bleaker than the dark side of Pluto. For decades, the richest grew even richer, as national debt mounted, middle-class people tried to make ends meet, and upward mobility fell. Government failed to address these problems, and the governed felt increasingly disenfranchised ? and partisan. Mass unemployment metastasized from a temporary illness to a chronic condition. One of its major cities decided to erect a permanent tent city, for a permanently excluded, marginalized underclass.
This isn't Tunisia, or Egypt ? but America. Yes, in many ways Egypt and America couldn't be more different. But the broad contours are just a little too similar for comfort.
Consider a tweet that made the rounds this weekend. "Youth unemployment: #Yemen 49%, #Palestine 38%, #Morocco 35%, #Egypt 33%, #Tunisia 26%". It sounds staggering. But youth unemployment rates are 20-40% across Europe. And in the USA, estimates range from 20-50% depending on how you count, and when. Egypt's youth unemployment crisis ? which many seemed to think on Twitter was merely an Arab problem (oh, those Arabs!) is, in point of fact, a global one.
What we're watching is a massive malfunctioning of the global economy. At the root of the problem: dumb growth. Dumb growth is, in many ways, bogus ? rather than reflecting enduring wealth creation, it largely reflects the transfer of wealth: from the poor to the rich, the young to the old, tomorrow to today, and human beings to corporate "people." Dumb growth is growth without prosperity. And it's far from an Egyptian problem.
Lane Kenworthy has recently called America's version of it "the Great Decoupling." In the US, net worth, median income, job creation, happiness ? all have been flat for a decade (plus). Other measures of prosperity, which I'd argue matter more, haven't just flatlined, they've cratered: polls show that trust, connection, stability, social mobility, are all down. The problem of dumb, empty "growth" is global.
And my hunch is that it's going to get worse, before it gets better. Consider the food, commodity, and energy price spikes likely to sweep the globe this year. Consider the costs of climate disruption. If it's bad for a family whose breadwinner is unemployed in the States, how bad is it for the more than three billion people ? that's more than half the world, folks ? living on less than $2 a day?
How do we fix it? In his new book, Tyler Cowen argues that the problem is that that we've eaten all the "low-hanging fruit," ? that there's not a great enough quantity of innovation. That's a sharp insight, but I'd argue that the problem's slightly different: not a high enough quality of innovation. The challenge now is leaping to a higher order of innovation: institutional innovation, because it's institutions that set the incentives that mold and shape human achievement in the first place.
And for far too many people, yesterday's economic institutions are literally not delivering the goods.Yes, the tools of capitalism have lifted entire nations out of poverty. But for decades, real prosperity has been flat. Now, at a macroeconomic level, our current economic institutions simply transfer prosperity upwards, to the richest 10% --> 1% --> 0.1% --> 0.01% and so on. This is what I call a global "ponziconomy" ? a titanic, gleaming whirling, wealth transfer machine. And we can't fix it with the same tools we used to build it. That's why it's never been more vital for us ? we, the people ? to challenge the institutions of yesteryear.
All of which brings me back to Egypt as the canary in a very large coal mine. It's hard to overstate just how unexpected a transformation is occurring in Egypt. Death, taxes, and Hosni Mubarak ? they were the three great certainties in modern Egyptian life.
But just underneath the surface, the tectonic pressure of dumb growth was steadily mounting. Bogus prosperity's like magma, filling the volcanic chamber of a society: you can bottle it up for only so long before it erupts, and spectacularly. Today, the world's gaze is fixed on the pyroclastic flow: never-ending demonstrations, protests, people self-organizing in a state that has shut down the internet, mobile networks, and public transport. But the fault lines underneath this explosion were laid down decades ago ? and they might just run across the globe.
The lesson: You can't steal the future forever ? and, in a hyperconnected world, you probably can't steal as much of it for as long.
Now, I don't think Americans will take to the streets to oust their government. The challenge of the democratic, developed world is a quieter rebellion: against a bankruptcy not just of the pocketbook, but of meaning. It's not to take a stand against a dictator, but to take a stand against an unenlightened, nihilistic, hyperconsumerist, soul-suckingly unfulfilling, lethally short-termist ethos that inflicts real and relentless damage on people, society, the natural world, and future generations.
If we want to deliver the goods ? enduring, meaningful stuff that engenders real prosperity ? we're probably going to have start with delivering them to one another. Our untrammeled path back to prosperity ? should we choose to blaze it ? is millions of personal revolutions made up of billions of tiny choices that reclaim our humanity from the heartless merchants of indifference, fear, anger, and vanity.
Some say it's impossible. Me? I believe that in a world of bogus prosperity, what's impossible is for the status quo to stand.
beachFoolbeachFoolBeach Fanatic938 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach Fanatic
TNJedTNJedBeach FanaticSeagrove Beach, FL588 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach Fanatic
TNJedBeach FanaticSeagrove Beach, FL588 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach FanaticWhile I respect your opinions on currency and inflation, IMO this was born more of injustice, downtrodden people, starvation, unemployment, and long overdue change than currency issues.
TNJ hit it on the head - what we consider abject poverty, our darkest hour, and vile conditions is what these people would consider wealth and splendor. It is no coincidence that the countries he listed are the ones revolting.
By Sowal/US standards, I am poor - but I am richer than 99% of the world. $2 is what I tip a waitress for a $10 lunch, not my household's daily income.
I have a roof, food, heat, clothing, shoes, health care, a car, electricity, potable water, education, no fear of the police, leaders I technically elect, and a less than 10% employment rate is a crisis ............
King Midas is I.
TNJ hit it on the head - what we consider abject poverty, our darkest hour, and vile conditions is what these people would consider wealth and splendor. It is no coincidence that the countries he listed are the ones revolting.
By Sowal/US standards, I am poor - but I am richer than 99% of the world. $2 is what I tip a waitress for a $10 lunch, not my household's daily income.
I have a roof, food, heat, clothing, shoes, health care, a car, electricity, potable water, education, no fear of the police, leaders I technically elect, and a less than 10% employment rate is a crisis ............
King Midas is I.
TNJedTNJedBeach FanaticSeagrove Beach, FL588 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach Fanatic
TNJedBeach FanaticSeagrove Beach, FL588 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach FanaticGreat thoughts Scooterbug. It is probably more complex than I should be allowed to pontificate on, sitting from similar luxurious surroundings.
When I think of the life-lottery jackpot most of us hit, my "problems" become an embarrassment.
When I think of the life-lottery jackpot most of us hit, my "problems" become an embarrassment.
AlphaCrabAlphaCrabBeach FanaticInlet Beach981 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach Fanatic
AlphaCrabBeach FanaticInlet Beach981 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach FanaticIf all Americans had electric cars and there was no state of Israel, no one would care what all these internal uprising were about.
beachFoolbeachFoolBeach Fanatic938 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach Fanatic
Syria...next
Maybe we should see if the rest of the World (i.e., other than America) gives a s_ _t. For a change.[/QUOTEt
It looks like more folks do.
Syria Strongman: Time for 'Reform' - WSJ.com
In Egypt and Tunisia the people just want democracy and something to eat.
BeachSiO2BeachSiO2Beach Fanatic3,294 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach Fanatic
BeachSiO2Beach Fanatic3,294 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach FanaticMiddle east in turmoil, crazy weather from pole to pole between the US and Australia.... Someone told me to read my bible. Anybody know if Russia's up to anything?
You mean besides terrorist bombings at the Moscow airport that Putin has said will be avenged?
BeachSiO2BeachSiO2Beach Fanatic3,294 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach Fanatic
BeachSiO2Beach Fanatic3,294 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach FanaticSo SB should we all get our ticket for the Apocalypse train. 🙂
No, but we should all get off our butts and DO something to balance our budgets, reform how things are done, and make common sense, decency, and integrity epidemic. 😀
RitaRitamargarita brocoliaDune Allen Beach5,207 postsJoined View profileMessagemargarita brocolia
Ritamargarita brocoliaDune Allen Beach5,207 postsJoined View profileMessagemargarita brocoliaIt's like dominoes!.
Egypt is getting the most press, but protests and government changes are happening all over.
Who will be next? And what is the end result of all this going to be?
Mubarak has told Christiane Amanpour ?I was very unhappy about yesterday. I do not want to see Egyptians fighting each other.? Seems he's had enough and says he wants to go, but that if he resigns today there will be chaos. ................ ummm will be chaos?!
.
Christiane Amanpour (camanpour) on Twitter
.
Just out is an uplifting photo of Christians protecting Muslims while they pray during protests in Egypt.
.
If he doesn't want violence, maybe he should tell the people inciting it on his behalf that he doesn't want it. :roll:
Alicia LeonardAlicia LeonardSoWal InsiderIn the little town with FUN in the middle5,058 postsJoined View profileMessageSoWal Insider
Alicia LeonardSoWal InsiderIn the little town with FUN in the middle5,058 postsJoined View profileMessageSoWal Insider.That photo you posted made me tear up. They so get it.:roll::wub:
Mubarak has told Christiane Amanpour ?I was very unhappy about yesterday. I do not want to see Egyptians fighting each other.? Seems he's had enough and says he wants to go, but that if he resigns today there will be chaos. ................ ummm will be chaos?!
.
Christiane Amanpour (camanpour) on Twitter
.
Just out is an uplifting photo of Christians protecting Muslims while they pray during protests in Egypt.
.
Lake View TooLake View TooSoWal InsiderEastern Lake7,000 postsJoined View profileMessageSoWal Insider
Lake View TooSoWal InsiderEastern Lake7,000 postsJoined View profileMessageSoWal InsiderThis photo is cool, not only for the underlying message of christians defending muslims in prayer, but just in the faces of these two guys.
Edited
DuneAHHDuneAHHBeach FanaticPt Washington - west ;)3,072 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach Fanatic
DuneAHHBeach FanaticPt Washington - west ;)3,072 postsJoined View profileMessageBeach FanaticIt's a nice photo.
But... How do we know it's Christians protecting Muslims? I can't tell who's who or what's what.
Is there some sign I missed? :idontno:
But... How do we know it's Christians protecting Muslims? I can't tell who's who or what's what.
Is there some sign I missed? :idontno:
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