Waiting for Godot

I'm back on the unemployment list and I don't like it. When I graduated college I tried to wait out the recession by going back to do a pointless master's which was almost as big a waste of time as my undergraduate degree. I didn't know what I wanted to be as a kid. I'd like to imagine that most of us don't, how could we? I wanted to be a be a soldier as a child because I was basically a psychotic. I always liked sports. But then I did a career guidance thing that said I should be a diplomat, basically because I never pick sides in an argument and have enormous trouble telling people how I really feel about anyone or anything. That sounds diplomatic, although it never asked me why that might be the case. I never pick sides because I like to sit in the middle, and never tell the truth about things because, essentially, I'm not a complex person. There's very little going on up here [points to head]. I'm not very smart and I don't get along with people because I like weird things. All I really wanted was that my lonely childhood would dissipate into a pleasant adulthood. It hasn't, because I now realise that I need to be alone most of the time. I find it more comforting and comfortable than the alternative, which is to actually have people calling me or trying to make me do things. The biggest problem I have at the end of the day is that I think about myself too much, not in the selfish sense, but in the overly analytic sense that corrodes confidence and leaves me accepting that whatever happens is ultimately my own fault. Take for example the fact that I don't have a job again. I was good at my job, but I hated it. I also knew that I had a short term contract so I did my duties slowly to drag them out. Had I done a quicker more thorough job perhaps I would have been able to fill another position. I don't know that, but it's possible. Now I'm back to looking for work when there isn't any. I tried to wait it out as I said, but there is no waiting this out. We are in the death of capitalism right now. There is no way to have several enormous economies all struggling to grow. We are on a planet of finite resources, how can we increasingly consume eternally? We can't. The main reason that all major Western economies are failing is because we are used to having too much. Enough was never enough. Just look at the myth of food shortages. In America you have a professional Major League Eating, where food is eaten for sport. You have restaurants which serve pounds of food. Nobody needs to eat that much, but they can. In America in particular it's expected. To facilitate this, forests are torn down in poorer countries, particularly Latin American countries, where the majority of citizens live on less than $2 per day, and the cattle that graze are slaughtered and shipped to America where they already have enough food. It's madness. In pursuit of profits, Western companies lay off staff and move operations to the Asia Pacific regions where labour costs are lower. This is not done for the benefit of anyone, as the labourers are treated like slaves. In the West, the company can boast of huge profits (profit levels have actually gone up for most major corporations in the West over the last 3 years), thanks largely to the barefaced lie of cost-saving lay-offs. The directors and executives at the top of the company are obscenely wealthy, and operations that run with profits in the hundreds of millions can afford to take on thousands of staff at reasonable wages, and expand outwards as a result. Profit, as we define it is having more than would be sufficient. Who benefits from that? The new economic system will be more socially leaning, and based on a zero growth principal. Literally balancing the books. Not trying to make the books explode at the seams, just balancing them. This is the key of effective economics in a world that's up the shitter. You have to remember that the pursuit of economic growth is based on greed, avarice to be specific. Now, the thing is, the media has done a shit job of conveying the truth of the situation in Ireland, making them just as culpable for the general uncertainty as Fianna Fáil. For example, RTE news continuously refers to this thing called "government funds". The government is not a business, of course, the funds are actually taxpayer money, or public funds. Now, By using the word public, RTE would be conveying the truth that the public's money is being spent without the public's consent, and being done so to do simply amazing feats such as turning private debt into public debt. Of course, there is a simple way out of our problems. Under Fianna Fáil the pat answer is that "it's not going to be easy". What they meant was they're not even going to try. If you told Brian "State Funeral" Lenihan his shoes were untied he'd reply, "I'm aware that the shoes were untied, and that at present we're looking at tying them in the future. But it won't be easy". Nothing is easy. Then RTE will send economic correspondent David Davin-Power around town for half an hour and he'll find 3-4 economists and entrepreneurs who will each come up with maybe 5 resolutions whatever the problem is, in this instance untied shoes. How is it that these people were so ready with solutions? Is it that Fianna Fáil didn't try? Sure looks that way to me. But what do I know, I only got a 2:1 in Observation. That said, I have observed a little fact that has gone totally unreported: the banks that make up the ECB are the same banks that Anglo Irish, Irish Permanent (misnomer), AIB and BOI owe so much money to. So what is happening right now is that money is being taken out of Bank A, being sent to Bank B, in order that Bank B can pay back Bank A. So they're being doubly paid, with the second loans coming over the odds. You might as well try paying one credit card off with another. It's bollocks. And anyway, why doesn't the public buy the banks, all 5 of them and merge them into one, take all the debt out, write it off (default, because we can't pay it back fullstop), and then use the collective assets, all now debt free, to fund new ventures? Obviously, the problem here, Fintan O'Toole will tell you in his third book on the recession (as a man who is openly benefiting from our misery, he comes as the most false of all prophets), is that we'll be frozen out of the European bond markets. Well this is true, but guess what bastert? Europe is cancelled. The Euro is a monumental failure, mainly because it takes away a nation's ability to increase its competitiveness by lowering the value of its currency, thereby increasing the attractiveness of its exports and combating inflation. Point 2 is that THERE ARE OTHER BOND MARKETS!!!! Ever heard of Asia? All of the top growing economies in the world are in Asia. Asia is the future, provided we continue into a limited future of economic growth strategies, which we will. Give China a call, I hear they have all the money in the fucking world. There is never a lack of options, never, and the government is being held to ransom by a banking system that has been revealed to hold so much power that it appears to rule the whole world. It certainly has far too much say in my life for me to be comfortable with it. And the thing about it is that we have a very nearsighted political and social outlook. Everyone seems to think that a key factor in the banking collapse is "irresponsible lending". This is true. But first of all, you can't have irresponsible lending without irresponsible borrowing, so it's undeniable that many people are in a mess of their own making. However, a bigger point is that Irish people face an enormously uncertain future because the banks irresponsible borrowing has come to haunt them. You see, the money that the banks were "throwing at people" back in the early 00's was itself borrowed. And boy, European banks couldn't lend it fast enough. It was like they were throwing it at the Irish banks. The Irish banks are in debt because they owe irresponsible lenders, why has nobody made a bigger point of that? I mean, if Irish banks default, like many Irish businesses and households have had to, then the debt carries on down the chain, and the major European banks, which couldn't lend quick enough, will feel a bite. And then they'll default. And so on and so on. If that were to happen, the entire global financial system would have to default, and you know what? It will. Eventually. One of the main reasons that Ireland is under such scrutiny now is because we're just the next in line. Portugal, Spain (the 9th largest economy in the world), Belgium, Italy are all going to fall. America, now over $14 trillion in debt, is going to fall. Just do it now. At least, at the very least, what needs to happen is we need to follow the chain all the way down the rabbit hole. I guarantee that almost all of the money in the world is ephemeral. All borrowed against some accountant's valuation of mouldy assets. And then. Somewhere, at the end of the world, is Fred. What you doing with my money in your house Fred?