All You Need to Know About the Economic Crisis

As the casinos meltdown, and the bankers run around like firefighters in tuxedos, and I'm forced to contemplate the possibility that the future of the global economy depends on whether the Europeans buy Berlusconi bonds.

Which isn't too reassuring eh?

I think the time has come to simplify this ghastly show, so even the dumbest Canadians i.e. the ones who voted for Stephen Harper, can understand what it's really all about:

(1) The Republican Teabaggers and their Big Business masters are entirely to blame for triggering the latest capitalist convulsion. The Teabaggers want to destroy the government and Obama.

The Big Business porkers want to hose him down for daring to suggest they should pay more in taxes...

Because just the word TAXATION makes them belch and squeal. Like piggies at a sausage factory. Even as the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

(2) Sooner of later some politician is going to have to make the case for taxation.

And convince the dumb and the greedy that you can't have the benefits of civilization unless you pay for them.

Or we're all going to end up living in a JUNGLE.

(3) All of the above are just symptoms of a far greater problem. The leaders aren't just clueless, the blind are fighting the blind.

Neoliberalism and free market fundamentalism are both used up, obviously failed dead ends in the world of ideas. Yet the proponents of these ideologies both cling desperately to their beliefs, fighting for control of Washington like two people fighting desperately for an inner-tube as they fall out of a doomed airplane, confident that their preferred version of the same policies will save them from certain death. Meanwhile, progressives have all the parachutes, but are strapped, helpless and curiously irrelevant, into the plane as it careens inevitably into the mountains ahead.

And all the clueless media can do is report on who's winning the seesaw battle for the useless inner-tube, while moaning about how they could both be saved if only they would learn to share it like nice little children.

Yup. It is just kabuki theatre. The economic system that has governed our lives has failed. Just like Communism failed, and another version of the Capitalist system failed before that.

We need to be really clever and come up with a better one, if we are going to survive the challenges of the 21st Century. It's really as simple as that.

And as complicated. Because when you're steeped in the values of a society, the simplest truths are the hardest to see and understand. Just ask the Mayas.

Oh well. Fasten your seatbelts, or hang on to the bar eh?

Because until the truth hits us, or sinks us.

When you're on the good ship Rusty Capitalism.

You can count on a thrilling ride...