butchersapron
Bring back hanging
It's to do with creating new jobs essentially i believe. Articel from China Worker that touches on it:
A 15 year recession?
- Thread starter Divisive Cotton
- Start date
It's to do with creating new jobs essentially i believe. Articel from China Worker that touches on it:
Mr Moose
What the hell are we supposed to tell the kids?
Truly fevered fucking ego's aren't they?
We haven't yet hit a time that energy, or food production means that the world can't produce what it used to, or indeed a bit more, so no reason for the big gang bang to go wholly off the rails just yet.
You'd hope that the world might back a more egalitarian approach to the distribution of resources in order to keep it going, but thats unlikely, more than tinkering.
Nevertheless solutions to energy problems, such as renewed Nuclear Power (I'm not backing it btw) might actually add stimulus. There are plenty more 'markets', plenty more cheap labour (Not advocating it) and no reason for trade not to flourish.
I'm not saying everything's rosy - for most of the world it isn't - but its a great temptation always to think we are at 'defining' moments.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
ooh, you got a link for that? does seem a bit odd, as I'd expect that cheapo toys would still sell reasonably well during a recession, it's normally the more expensive lines that get fucked (not the most expensive ones tho, they are only bought by fuckers who are barely affected by such events)
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
From that first link, on the political problems China will be/is facing
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Couple this with looming, and massive, environmental problems (expansion of the Gobi desert, drying out and pollution of it's major watercourses, badly planned intensive agriculture which is leaving the most fertile regions of China dustbowls)...
A Dashing Blade
Takes horses to water but can't make donkeys drink
Take that argument one step further, a concerted global recession means that concerted policy reponses may well work.
Idris2002
Stay Alive in '25
An relative of mine who teaches engineering took on a Chinese postgrad student a couple of years back. To put him at his ease, my relative quoted Deng Xiaoping's line about how 'it doesn't matter if a cat is red or white, so long as it catches mice'.
On hearing this, the Chinese student got quite huffy, and said 'Deng Xiaoping right wing, I left wing'. He then proceeded to hold forth on the 'three mountains' every Chinese person has to carry on their backs; the mountain of housing, the mountain of health care and the mountain of education. Add a few more mountains to that load (e.g. 'the mountain of man-made environmental disaster') and you will see some interesting times indeed in the dear old PRC. . .
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
It'll be Interesting Times for sure if the wheels come off the environment in China - I reckon the potential is there for a full on rebellion of the kind not seen since the Imperial dynasties...
GarfieldLeChat
fucking awesome but wrong
yes and no.depends if you think we're at the beginning, middle or end of the chain of collapsing dominoes.... could well turn into a collapse as there's not really any sector you could look at and think well at least that sectors safe.
The other factor that I think's going to kick in is that pretty much as soon as the global economy picks back up, the oil price is going to sky rocket again and fuck things back up again as we're bumping against the top of the peak oil curve.
Also worth considering that in 5 years time we'll be spending around 10% of our entire current annual national GDP on importing oil and gas unless we do something drastic in the meantime, and I see no sign of that happening at the moment.
It would help if our own out going pipelines were at more than about 10% capacity which they are present....
we could weather this storm if we started shipping oil again...
panpete
Blokes name, birds body.
While we have peak-oil, and the shoe-shine-boy's early 20th Century american sham, there obviously is some financial unease in the world, but can all those who are either scaremongering or capitalising on credit crunch/recession speculations, please piss the fuck off.
Thankyou,
Thankyou,
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Yeah, they just blew a huge mound of cash building LNG infrastructure for product the Saudis might not be able to deliver in the quantities planned for...
Steve Booth
Bourgeois apologist
Global pandemic
It might work the other way round though, where the problems in one place are quickly transferred across to the other regions. Also the concerted policy responses all follow the same type of thinking, and make the same sort of errors?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Possibly. I don't expect a concerted response though.
elbows
Well-Known Member
If this is the big one where we have to face up to the realities once and for all, then I dont think its a question of how long it will last, but rather that things will never be the same again.
eg we could have a recovery in 20 years but the measure of success will be rather different. If not the total death of the god of growth, then at least an end to growth in waste.
Or if its not really the big one, and we'll have some kind of recovery in a few years only to have to face the inevitable in the end. Or a miracle happens and we find a way to avoid resource realities from biting us on the lifestyle, dunno ho thats supposed to happen though.
eg we could have a recovery in 20 years but the measure of success will be rather different. If not the total death of the god of growth, then at least an end to growth in waste.
Or if its not really the big one, and we'll have some kind of recovery in a few years only to have to face the inevitable in the end. Or a miracle happens and we find a way to avoid resource realities from biting us on the lifestyle, dunno ho thats supposed to happen though.
elbows
Well-Known Member
but can all those who are either scaremongering or capitalising on credit crunch/recession speculations, please piss the fuck off.
Thankyou,
The clash between scaremongers and ostriches gets us nowhere fast.
I am not convinced by the 'this recession will only last a year or two' people.
15 years? Well that is catastrophe and what they really mean is a 1930s style slump. You can't predict the end of such a thing. The New Deal failed to rescue the economy back then. It took the mass destruction of WW2 to end it - war and fascism.
Let's just examine the talk of a 2 to 3 year recession. Based on what? Largely because that is how long previous recent recessions have lasted. It is a pretty superficial 'analysis'. The fact is that the scale of this crisis on a World scale dwarfs recent recessions. there is increasing evidence that recession has been staved off over the last few decades precisely by the lunatic expansion of debt that precipitated the credit crunch. The cure for previous recessions - and the recipe for avoiding recession in the US and UK - has triggered and deepened the crisis now and is not available as a remidy no longer.
Then there is the hope that the rising and relatively strong economies of China and India can pull the World out of recession. But the growth of China, whilst significant, still leaves the Chinese economy small by US standards. There has been impressive growth but from a very low base. If China and India were to pull the World out of recession this would itself lead to a shift in the balance of World power that would increase instabilty. However, it is highly unlikely. China has been buying from Japan (helping Japan out of a recent 10 year recession). China has been using Japanese products to churn out cheap mass produced goods. The USA has borrowed from China and has provided a market for these cheap goods. Now that the USA, Germany, UK etc are collapsing into recession the market for Chinese goods freezes up, and the Chinese economy slows down. The World recession is too interconnected.
In the 1930s 10% of banks went bust. This time round more than 10% of banking is in severe crisis and faces meltdown. We could be facing a deeper crisis than the 1930s. The World economy is more integrated. Blocks of capital are much larger. It is not possible to allow inefficient parts of the economy to go bust - the knock on impact is too huge.
This is not simply a problem of credit and of banking. The debt economy simply masked deeper problems in the economy. Though of course a crisis in the banks is always going to impact upon the rest of the economy. Take the case of General Motors. GM are desperately asking for state bail outs to stop this old company from going bust. There are two problems that GM faces. One is that the company diversified into finance chasing the quick fix of profit from loans..doh! This part of GM is fucked. But the very reason they did that was because of a crisis of profitability in car manufacturing. There has been no shortage of demand for cars. The problem is the level of investment required to keep up with the market compared to the profitable return on that investment. Hence the diversification. Now of course, demand for cars is shrinking fast because of the credit cruch/recession. But the emerging crisis of profitability was evident before that.
So we are left with the one hope that supporters of the capitalist system cling too. State intervention in the World economy and intervention by the World Bank and the IMF. In the 1930s state intervention was on a much smaller scale than we have seen of late, and was not possible on the scale we have seen this time. The IMF and WB did not exist. The question that no-one can answer with any certainty is whether massive state intervention - bailing out ailing companies, nationalisations, public works and flooding banks with billions - will be enough to stave off the crisis this time around. Some hints though - the estimated £700 trillion of bad debt in the World economy is probably not affordable by Governments nor the IMF. The ballouts so far in the US and UK have been MASSIVE. Yet even with the biggest nationalisations ever seen in history the US economy is not beginning to turn around. Brown in the UK has put aside pretty much the equivilant of a years' Government expenditure to bail out the bankers - and it hasn't worked yet. The likelihood of international co-operation giving way to short term panic and protectionism remains high. Apart from anything else international co-operation requires a consensus on the medicine to be administered - and on any consensus reached holding.
So we are faced with a very real possibility of the biggest slump in history with only the most desperate outcomes likely unless we seek solutions other than rescuing the capitalist system.
It is time to revive and repeat the warning given by the great revolutionary socialist, Rosa Luxemburg, in the period preceding the world wars - we are faced with a choice 'socialism or barbarism'.
15 years? Well that is catastrophe and what they really mean is a 1930s style slump. You can't predict the end of such a thing. The New Deal failed to rescue the economy back then. It took the mass destruction of WW2 to end it - war and fascism.
Let's just examine the talk of a 2 to 3 year recession. Based on what? Largely because that is how long previous recent recessions have lasted. It is a pretty superficial 'analysis'. The fact is that the scale of this crisis on a World scale dwarfs recent recessions. there is increasing evidence that recession has been staved off over the last few decades precisely by the lunatic expansion of debt that precipitated the credit crunch. The cure for previous recessions - and the recipe for avoiding recession in the US and UK - has triggered and deepened the crisis now and is not available as a remidy no longer.
Then there is the hope that the rising and relatively strong economies of China and India can pull the World out of recession. But the growth of China, whilst significant, still leaves the Chinese economy small by US standards. There has been impressive growth but from a very low base. If China and India were to pull the World out of recession this would itself lead to a shift in the balance of World power that would increase instabilty. However, it is highly unlikely. China has been buying from Japan (helping Japan out of a recent 10 year recession). China has been using Japanese products to churn out cheap mass produced goods. The USA has borrowed from China and has provided a market for these cheap goods. Now that the USA, Germany, UK etc are collapsing into recession the market for Chinese goods freezes up, and the Chinese economy slows down. The World recession is too interconnected.
In the 1930s 10% of banks went bust. This time round more than 10% of banking is in severe crisis and faces meltdown. We could be facing a deeper crisis than the 1930s. The World economy is more integrated. Blocks of capital are much larger. It is not possible to allow inefficient parts of the economy to go bust - the knock on impact is too huge.
This is not simply a problem of credit and of banking. The debt economy simply masked deeper problems in the economy. Though of course a crisis in the banks is always going to impact upon the rest of the economy. Take the case of General Motors. GM are desperately asking for state bail outs to stop this old company from going bust. There are two problems that GM faces. One is that the company diversified into finance chasing the quick fix of profit from loans..doh! This part of GM is fucked. But the very reason they did that was because of a crisis of profitability in car manufacturing. There has been no shortage of demand for cars. The problem is the level of investment required to keep up with the market compared to the profitable return on that investment. Hence the diversification. Now of course, demand for cars is shrinking fast because of the credit cruch/recession. But the emerging crisis of profitability was evident before that.
So we are left with the one hope that supporters of the capitalist system cling too. State intervention in the World economy and intervention by the World Bank and the IMF. In the 1930s state intervention was on a much smaller scale than we have seen of late, and was not possible on the scale we have seen this time. The IMF and WB did not exist. The question that no-one can answer with any certainty is whether massive state intervention - bailing out ailing companies, nationalisations, public works and flooding banks with billions - will be enough to stave off the crisis this time around. Some hints though - the estimated £700 trillion of bad debt in the World economy is probably not affordable by Governments nor the IMF. The ballouts so far in the US and UK have been MASSIVE. Yet even with the biggest nationalisations ever seen in history the US economy is not beginning to turn around. Brown in the UK has put aside pretty much the equivilant of a years' Government expenditure to bail out the bankers - and it hasn't worked yet. The likelihood of international co-operation giving way to short term panic and protectionism remains high. Apart from anything else international co-operation requires a consensus on the medicine to be administered - and on any consensus reached holding.
So we are faced with a very real possibility of the biggest slump in history with only the most desperate outcomes likely unless we seek solutions other than rescuing the capitalist system.
It is time to revive and repeat the warning given by the great revolutionary socialist, Rosa Luxemburg, in the period preceding the world wars - we are faced with a choice 'socialism or barbarism'.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Brilliant post Groucho. The only way I can be optimistic is if I think that the stakes end up being too high for complete international relations collapse, and so rather than a real war effort, we have an effort on an equal scale but focussed on the energy & resource woes of our age. Even then its hard to see how this could be done fairly or be genuinely sustainable under capitalism, as opposed to socialism, and that makes more barbaric outcomes more likely as this struggle becomes real.
Shame we cant do some sort of compromise where socialism or similar is allowed to manage the essentials, but capitalism is allowed to maintain a role somewhere in less-essential arenas. If capitalists could live with that, then we could avoid a clash that will only increase the human horror highscore. Still such things only seem possible if everyone comes to accept the realities and just what the consequences are if we just take the usual path.
Shame we cant do some sort of compromise where socialism or similar is allowed to manage the essentials, but capitalism is allowed to maintain a role somewhere in less-essential arenas. If capitalists could live with that, then we could avoid a clash that will only increase the human horror highscore. Still such things only seem possible if everyone comes to accept the realities and just what the consequences are if we just take the usual path.
I would look for something far more democratic than present state set ups. But small scale co-ops are an irrelevance when it comes to World economy.
My earlier post centered on the dillemmas facing supporters of capitalism, and the very real possibility that we are heading for a major slump that will lead to panic and desperation and consequences for most of us that are too awful to contemplate. My desire for a radical alternative that ditches the priorities of capitalist production - competition and profit for the few - is not married to a desire for a strong centrist state.
The idea that socialism is all about undemocratic centralised state dictatorships has to be junked. We need democratic planning on the basis of need not profit on a world-wide scale with both local democratic structures and local co-operative production and international democratic structures and social planning. 21st Century socialism. But unless we challenge the priorities of capitalism now, and build a movement that can resist the attempts to make the majority sacrifice and pay to bail out the rich, talk of what replaces capitalism is just hot air.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
more attractive to you and me perhaps. but I'm sure if it came to a choice of xxxxx or barbarism, our current leaders of politics and capital would much rather come together in structures that maintain their power - ie. fascism.
I don't think they would take kindly to some 'socialists' trying to take over their power bases.
That's something they've done before as we know, but I wonder what that would achieve for them if people were already trading and sharing by other means. Means that met our needs.
some of it would have to be on a grand scale, whilst much of it can be decentralised. We can't progress by breaking the World up into small units
elbows
Well-Known Member
Local stuff sounds interesting but then I start to worry about regional warlords, local corruption, gangsters, social conservatism, let alone whether its compatible with any of our high-tech modern way of doing things.
Given a clean slate it seems plausible that all sorts of rather nice ways for humans to organise are possible. But given where we are starting from, my hopes arent very high.We might have to decay a very long way before any really different and sane alternatives have change to grow?
Given a clean slate it seems plausible that all sorts of rather nice ways for humans to organise are possible. But given where we are starting from, my hopes arent very high.We might have to decay a very long way before any really different and sane alternatives have change to grow?
elbows
Well-Known Member
Progress could be turned on its head though. A variety of circumstances could undo much of the power & function of globalisation, and whilst even the most gloomy resource-related collapse scenario survival plan would require some stuff to be non-local, circumstance and necessity could make fancy progress seem irrelevant compared to survival.
Similar threads
- Poll
