Jan 17, 2011 | Feature Articles
“Municipal” bonds include bonds issued by states, as well as bonds issued by cities and by many types of smaller entities, such as hospitals and toll roads. To date, everyone has assumed that there is not much risk of default, and even if there is, someone else will handle it. But if one looks at the long term oil situation, and the problems states and cities are having already, it is pretty clear that the debt default problem is likely to get worse over time, and there is really no one set up to handle the default risk.
Jan 12, 2011 | Feature Articles
Buried in the millions of words that were written about the shootings in Arizona last week was a recent poll showing that only 13 percent of the American people think favorably of the U.S. Congress. The implication, of course, is that as 87 percent or roughly 270 million Americans harbor some level of animosity towards their elected federal representatives, the emergence of people who believe that exercising their 2nd Amendment rights is solution to the nation’s woes is inevitable.
Jan 11, 2011 | Carolyn's Articles
In the deepest sense Navigating The Coming Chaos is a handbook for midwifing the birth that is struggling to be embodied through the great death that is erupting, and like any authentic handbook of sacred midwifery, it is at once stringently unsentimental in its facing of the gritty and grueling process of birth, and loving and joyful in its depiction of what could be possible.
Foreword By Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope: A Guide To Sacred
Jan 11, 2011 | Feature Articles
ORIGINAL POST This article is an excerpt from Heinberg’s forthcoming book The End of Growth. If the previous chapter had been written as a novel, one wouldn’t have to read long before concluding that it is a story unlikely to end well. But it is not just a...
Jan 11, 2011 | Feature Articles
The central assertion of this book is both simple and startling: Economic growth as we have known it is over and done with. The “growth” we are talking about consists of the expansion of the overall size of the economy (with more people being served and more money changing hands) and of the quantities of energy and material goods flowing through it. The economic crisis that began in 2007-2008 was both foreseeable and inevitable, and it marks a permanent, fundamental break from past decades—a period during which most economists adopted the unrealistic view that perpetual economic growth is necessary and also possible to achieve. There are now fundamental barriers to ongoing economic expansion, and the world is colliding with those barriers.
Jan 11, 2011 | Feature Articles
If this essay were to serve as an economics primer, then plenty more financial terms should be defined and discussed; however, the aim instead is merely to provide the essential background (by way of history and terminology) necessary to understand the recent financial events and trends that have led industrial society to the point where we are today—the end of growth
Jan 10, 2011 | Feature Articles
I’M CONTINUALLY stunned by how many seemingly sane people believe you can have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. Perpetual economic growth and its cousin, limitless technological expansion, are beliefs so deeply held by so many in this culture that they often go entirely unquestioned. Even more disturbing is the fact that these beliefs are somehow seen as the ultimate definition of what it is to be human: perpetual economic growth and limitless technological expansion are what we do.
Jan 9, 2011 | Feature Articles
[In spite of how the media spins this tragedy, let’s keep the bigger picture in mind.–CB] ORIGINAL ARTICLE January 9, 2011, 10:30 AM PST (Culver City) — The shooting yesterday of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D, AZ) which also resulted in the...
