The production of real goods in the developed nations is plummeting. Even the mighty export driven economy of Japan appears to be heading lower as though it had fallen off a cliff.
Countries must begin to encourage consumption in their own economies. To do this, they ought not to be stimulating the old credit/speculation machine called the neo-liberal financial system.
Real economic growth is to be found in a broad employment and consumption, and an increase of the median wage.
This is the deep flaws in much of the third world economies, especially in Asia and Latin America. Economic health can be measured by the size and well being of the middle class in a relatively free society.
The reason is simple. Individuals can only borrow so much before they are unable to service the debt. And the greedy few can only spend so much on consumption using the wealth which the tax and financial system has delivered to them from the many.
Gaming the system so that it overtaxes the income of the many for theincreasing benefit of a few has natural limitations, unless one can enforce a type of involuntary servitude. This model has its roots far back in history, in empires like Rome, Egypt, and Sparta.
As the elite few accumulate real assets using their surplus, they will find that holding on to their wealth as the rest of society deteriorates in a downward spiral of privation can be a bit of a challenge.
Until the financial system is reformed and the economy is brought back into a balance, there will be no recovery, and the fabric of order will remain fragile.
If things continue on as they are, despite all the stimulus and fine rhetoric, the madness will once again be unleashed on the earth, and the people will wonder from whence it came, as they do each time it rises from the same sources and ravages civilization: unbridled greed, malinvestment, and corruption.
Thanks to Diapason Trading for this chart.
