Darron C,
Basically I agree with you.
To a small extent it is already happening.
Because of the increased cost of freight across the Pacific, steel and
furniture manufacture has started moving back to the US and no doubt
the same will apply here.
As fuel costs bight into the difference between Chinese and US wages
more product manufacture will move back to the US, Europe and Australia.
There are thousands of container ships tied up in Europe and the
Singapore Roads. Many will never put to sea again.

We will not move to an import/export economy, we will move to an
everything local economy. It will I think, and hope, happen gradually
so as to let us adapt and not panic everyone.

Government and business are the problem as they do not wish to even
consider that we are in for initially a zero growth economy.
Followed by a contraction economy.

Just today I had the opertunity to speak with a property fund
executive, and it was enlightening to see the disbelief when I
questioned his planning for just the next two years.
They believe absolutely that we are recovering fast and it is all
go go go. Business as Usual state of mind is what will not just crash
their business but be a disaster for every Tom Dick & Harry.

At last an article that tells it like it really is.
Forget higher energy prices, these could be offset by modest gains in efficiency. Despite the FUD campaign from Old Energy, we could easily cut both our CO2 and energy expenses simply by investing in the right areas. Of course investment to *reduce* spending is anathema to the Right and to extreme capitalist generally.
The real issue is that a huge chunk of GDP is being siphoned out of the productive economy by the financial sector. Imagine if governments suddenly increased taxes by 30% and gave it to the wealthiest 2% of the population! This has been the effect of allowing our production to be off-shored and profits in the parasite industries to soar.
Interest rates will not be allowed to rise to the market level now as it would risk a cascading failure that would bring down the financial system. Tax payer handouts have delayed the issue and transferred it to the public sector, which allows the Leach Party to then claim that it is Government spending that is the issue. Of course the obscene profiteering that caused the need for "stimulus" is brushed aside.
Trouble is, as the USA and England has shown, keeping rates artificially low to prevent defaults just pumps up the bubble and makes it worse. Rather than put a stop to spending wealth that isn't there, the currency must be devalued via inflation. Prudent savers will lose the value of their savings, only the wealthiest asset holders (ie. the thieves) will not suffer hardship.
Competition in the financial sector is obviously not working. Other methods must be deployed to reduce their ability to suck the wealth from the rest of the economy.
And we need a proper media again urgently too.

Sir,

I read your writings with the deference due to a person of intellectual honesty and visual clarity.

I had just compiled and sent a reply to an article by Mr. David Richardson (OLO 15/03/10), and felt angry for the unchecked power of Banks and their blind greed, when I fell into reading your last piece.

Probably I should not have gone on reading.

You did not say anything that I did not know, but the way you said it made me feel that you were annoyed if not, like me, disconsolate.

Watching the crowd waiting to board an already overcrowded train on their way home, and reflecting on what you wrote, a question came to me, unexpected.

Is man really civilized? If he is as he claims to be, what does civilization mean?

Dictionaries have not helped me grasp the meaning of this term.

None of their definitions reflected a society wherein, as I observe, its individuals seem to have one and one only scope, that of ‘overpowering each other’.

As a young man, attending to colonies of laboratory animals, I noted that, properly managed, those beings did not cannibalize and, probably would not do so if they were not in cages, while man is now very close to doing it in its society.

Is there a gene that compels us to fight each other? Further, if there is such gene, and someone were to identify it, we should try to free ourselves of it.

As things are, I can but see man self destruction, much earlier then the time assigned to it by the ‘Geological Clock’.

Skeptic,

Of course dictionaries won't help you understand Western Civilisation... for they are merely the shorthand aids to literature.

Read the great works of the Western World and explore the development of ideas over hundreds of centuries and generations

Sadly your attitude, of seeking answers to complex questions in a reference book, unknowingly exposes the evidence of what it is our world lacks today.

ie a depth of understanding of what we are and where we came from!

Read the classics, the phisolophers, the mathematicians, the medicos, the judiciprudence practictioners and scientists who explored ideas and our culture over centuries and don't look to the musings or intrepretations a few later day wordsmiths and language afficianados.

goodluck my friend.

As Bazz may recall, I concur with his identification of the energy crisis being key to future global prosperity. Since man discovered the ability to make fire, the harnessing of energy has been key to our progress. For we now realise linear energy sources are unsustainable and inefficient, there is no alternative than to move to renewables.

Of the remaining reserves of current energy sources, it may be observed the asian tiger economies have realised the securing of their amassing of a significant proportion of those reserves, that is ongoing. As have western economies before them, which still retain that significant access. However, as the US was the predominant global economic power prior to the GFC, it may be observed the asian tigers have achieved ascendency. [e.g. currently, if the US did nothing with its GDP but pay its debt, it would take four years for it to break even]

So if we follow the maxim, if you are shivering from the cold and on a hiding to nothing, you are going to deal with the ‘man,’ we may observe currently the ‘man’ is the asian tigers. Curmudgeon demonstrates some common sense. Bazz identifies a key to the problem but is never able to articulate a qualified and comprehensive, potential resolution.

I disagree the hub of manufacturing will soon return to the US and Europe as current energy resources recede. For behind the eight ball of the asian tigers, who are observed with common global market parity, and hold advantage in economic prosperity, why would they allow that to happen?

It is observed a myopic westerncentric myth that western technology will prevail against economic and market forces. If that were evident, the asian tigers would be currently observed offering significant economic concessions to the west, and they are not.

They took the hit of the GFC, and it hardly dented them. It was a lot of their money driving the boom, yet with the onset of the GFC, the GDP growth of China only halved to 4%, a rate any country would be very happy with at any time.
Continued

Yes China is facing inflationary pressures owing to creeping global recession, and very recently reported, it has determined slowing its rate of growth, however, currently it is a decision of which it retains the privilege of setting the time frame and settings.

The global western economy is reliably predicted to enter into gradual decline over an extended indeterminate period, until GDP growth rates [and effectively standard of living rates] between the west and asian tigers comes into balance. The reliable factor qualifying this prediction is the expenditure multiplier ratio.

For whether you are anti capitalist and anti moneymen, or pro sustainable living, those sentiments do not address the issues which are before us now.

With further potential impacts of climate change, the moot question in the west is, which reliable instrument do we use to turn this juggernaut around? For as the GFC potentially demonstrated, economics as a comprehensive science retains a few bugs at the least, and is why it is not yet generally accepted as confirmed.

The instrument most obvious to deliver resolution to this issue is the science of management, constant of observation of its applied principles, to deal with, and deliver on such issue. The reason it did not save us from the GFC, is simply because it was benched by the abject contempt demonstrated by those responsible for its application, political, and market leaders, inclusive.
Continued