Economic Armageddon

Economic Armageddon
A book warns 9/11 was a precursor to collapse of the world's fiscal superpowers, famine, plague and WWIII
By LINDA LEATHERDALE


Warning: Today's column is not for the faint of heart.

And before my critics say it, let me say it first: Leatherdale's gone off the rails on a crazy train.

This is opinion, but my gut says feverish doomsayers may be right. This is the beginning of the end of our economic system. And if we do self-destruct, we only have ourselves and our blatant greed to blame.

Believers in a higher power call this Armageddon and the last war man will fight. One such guru, Ronald Weinland, in his book 2008: God's Final Word, warns of the demise of the United States -- where the first blow was struck with 9-11 and now a subprime mortgage bloodbath is shattering the pillars of capitalism with a tidal wave devastating economies around the globe.

Many, I'm sure, will label Weinland a religious whacko with his predictions of natural disasters that'll make Hurricane Katrina look like a spring shower; severe weather patterns leading to famine and food shortages; plagues that will kill man, beast and bird; more terrorist attacks and the collapse of the world's economic superpower. All of this, he predicts, leads to World War III and a deadly battle between the now powerful Europe's economic union and China and its allies.

In the end, "Every economy will be decimated," he writes. Even Canada's.

And in just three and half years, 6 billion people will die. Yikes.

Warnings from others aren't quite as dire. The popular Dr. Ravi Batra -- best known for his book The Great Depression of 1990 and who warned skyrocketing oil prices would sink economies -- has been busy pumping out new words of wisdom. One new book is The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism.

Another The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos. Here we get some hope. A great cleansing will finally put an end to greed and fraud in our capital markets, and no longer will the rich get richer on the backs of hard-working families.

POWERFUL MAN

Batra also wrote Greenspan's Fraud: How Two Decades of His Policies Have Undermined the Global Economy. Alan Greenspan is the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, who many refer to as the world's most powerful man.

No wonder. When Greenspan speaks, markets move.

Batra predicted the hi-tech meltdown of 2000. And all Greenspan had to do was utter the words "irrational exuberance" and trillions were wiped from share values around the world. Some investors still haven't recouped their losses.

Now, critics complain that as head of the world's largest central bank Greenspan should have seen the subprime mortgage meltdown coming. He didn't, and now millions face losing their homes, and perhaps life savings as banks teeter on bankruptcy.

In the U.K., for example, the British government was forced to step in and take over Northern Rock Bank, after the troubled mortgage lender revealed severe funding problems over its exposure to the U.S. subprime crisis. It wasn't long before panicked depositors were lining up at branches in the first run on a bank in more than a decade. British taxpayers are now on the hook for $108 billion US in loans.

Rumours now swirl that two major U.S. banks are in big trouble and will fail within weeks. That's after financial institutions were forced to take writedowns worth more than $150 billion US, while central bankers around the globe crank up the money-making machine to keep financial institutions afloat.

MIDAS TOUCH

Even billionaire Warren Buffett, known as the Sage of Omaha for his investing Midas touch, has been critical: "It's sort of poetic justice, in that the people that brewed this toxic Kool-Aid found themselves drinking a lot of it in the end," he said.

But is it poetic justice when we all end up drinking this Kool-Aid? Even sicker is while masses get slaughtered, a few walk away very rich.

Take Wall Street hedge fund manager John Paulson. In 2007, his hedge funds were up $15 billion US speculating the housing market was in trouble.

Paulson, himself, reaped up to $4 billion US in what is rumoured to be the biggest one-year paycheque in the street's history. And who is Paulson retaining as an adviser with his firm? None other than Alan Greenspan.

Which leads to this: One very concerned reader keeps telling me if I think the subprime crisis will bring the world's economic system to its knees, what about the gorilla of all gorillas?

What he's referring to is our explosive derivatives market, which grew to $681 trillion US in the third quarter of 2007. That's worth far more than the $6 trillion US the world holds in exchange reserves, or global stock markets with a market cap estimate of $51 trillion US, or the global bond market valued at $67 trillion US.

As market watcher Dr. Russell McDougal observes, "Global exchange reserves, U.S. debt, U.S. GDP, U.S. leal estate, global stocks, and global bonds all added together are only a fraction of the size of this wild-card market." Just what are derivatives? Nothing more than side bets among banks and financial corporations, says McDougal. And those side bets made Paulson rich.

Dada Maheshvarananda, author of After Capitalism: Prout's Vision for a New World, calls this the great casino of speculation, where about $1.9 billion US a day is shuffled as investors try to get rich.

The foreword in his book, written by Noam Chomsky, sums it up: "In 1970, about 90% of international capital was used for trade and long-term investment -- more or less productive things -- and 10% for speculation. By 1990, those figures had reversed." The book concludes the system is doomed to crash, causing a depression.

GLOBAL CAPITALIST

Dada is an activist, writer and monk who believes in Prout (Progressive Utilization Theory), which preaches economic self-reliance and the good and happiness of all living beings. We don't have that with a global capitalist system based on profit, selfishness and greed, with the world's richest 52 people hoarding $1 trillion US in wealth, while 2.8 billion live on less than $2 a day.

The world's second richest man, Bill Gates, is also critical of the capitalist system that made him rich. "We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well," he told a recent World Economic Forum.

Gates is giving back by setting up the world's largest private foundation with a $34.6 billion US endowment for charitable projects around the world.

One he's investing in, according to globalresearch.ca, is a "doomsday seed bank" located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, where 3 million different crop seeds from around the world will be stored in a mountain vault.

What does Gates know that we don't?