The Global Economic Crisis and the Experts

If it weren't for the suffering engendered by the global economic crisis, I would be laughing myself sick. None of the self-styled pundits and experts touted in the media knew it was coming. Other than a couple of mavericks, ignored by the mass media and especially the political leaders, none of the economists foretold it either. I, on the other hand, did, expecting it to happen any time in the last three or four years. The obvious signal of the coming crisis would be the imminent collapse of the housing bubble. This spring, I saw that the US housing market was really and truly in trouble, would soon collapse, and due to the interlinked nature of contemporary economies, the rot would spread globally. So I dumped my mutual funds, saving a chunk of my retirement money. In the years previous to this, I had paid off my mortgage, and indeed, had chosen a house within walking distance of down town and a yard big enough for a garden, all in preparation for the ''big one.''

I write this, not to pat myself on the back. I am a retired health care worker, not an economist. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the basic nature of the economy, just a little reading and a dollop of common sense. This same common sense suggests that you should read material critical of the system rather than its touts and ideologues, since they have a stake in it. One should no more believe capitalism's shills, than believing advertising for dish soap.

You find that crisis is endemic to the system, a relatively minor turn-down (that still puts millions out of work!) every 5 to 10 years and a whopper once and a while. Speculation booms are usually the last event before a crisis. A fall in profit in "real" industry – industry that makes things – due in part to market saturation, leads to speculative investment in areas such as real estate. As the value of a speculative product is largely hot air, eventually the balloon bursts, bringing the whole structure down with it. The situation was made worse by deregulation of the financial institutions which allowed vast frauds to be perpetuated.

Getting back to the pundits, experts, and economists who "didn't get it." I suspect that on the sly, most of them did, and have their money stashed safely. But their job was to pimp the system, to get as many suckers rounded up as possible and to protect the political gangsters and corporate bandits who set up the financial fraud.

These same pundits, experts, political gangsters and corporate bandits now claim "the turn-down should end by 2010", "Canada won't be effected much", and "de-regulation wasn't the problem."

They expect us to believe them?