Indeed, there are victims of massive corporate fraudulent inducement, but they are not members of upper-level management of Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, or Lehman Brothers. They are millions of former homeowners soaking in financial bloodbaths of foreclosure and bankruptcy, as well as the hoards of employees that have been and will be laid off as a result of the carefully-crafted housing bubble train wreck. As if all of this were not egregious enough, Bethany McLean, Fortune Magazine Editor and co-producer of "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room" comments on the a pending lawsuit by what's left of Enron against Citibank which claims that Citi helped the now defunct firm manufacture financial statements. Well, we all know what happened to the pensions and retirement funds of former Enron employees. 

Worse yet, as Squeezed points out, "The dollar may be in a free fall. Hold on to your hats and your homes." Freefall? Yes indeed, said Gerald Celente, Director of Trends Research Institute in a story reported on November 19 by United Press International which stated that a financial crisis will likely send the U.S. dollar into a free fall of as much as 90 percent and gold soaring to $2,000 an ounce. Celente, forecasting a "Panic of 2008" asserted that "We are going to see economic times the likes of which no living person has seen." 

Sunday Telegraph reporter Liam Halligan stated in "Dollar's Fall Is Now A Bigger Political Issue Than An Economic One" that "The importance of ‘dollar divestment' cannot be overstated. At the very least it means the greenback has much further to fall -- plunging the US into recession. But it begs a bigger, more alarming, question: How will Washington react to the end of the US hegemony?" 

Astutely, Schechter picks up on the "Shock Doctrine" nature of the crisis as perceived by Naomi Klein through the lens of "disaster capitalism" and concludes: 

One analyst in the New York Times called it "shock therapy," the very term writer Naomi Klein explores in her new book on "disaster" capitalism showing the link between the shock therapy once doled out in mental hospitals, shock and awe bombing, shock interrogation techniques whose aim is to "disorient" prisoners and shock strategies used in economic policy that has devastated so many countries in which it was tried. Now it has come home to the US - the country that has been exporting it overseas. On a recent Democracy Now show, Klein explained: "The history of the contemporary free market was written in shocks.... Some of the most infamous human rights violations of the past thirty-five years, which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by anti-democratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical free-market reforms."

The only difference here is that, so far, there have been no serious reforms proposed and the market is anything but free. With its interest cut, the Fed bails out and rewards the very institutions that were profiting on ill gain profits from predatory lending. (70) 

And now for the part that is really American-you know-all of the "So what do we do about it?" questions. Danny would answer: 

The first step is raising awareness. People don't usually talk about this problem. It's a point of embarrassment to be overwhelmed by debt. When you give people permission to talk about this, they pour out. We also need grassroots political action to promote responsible lending. We have to roll back the bankruptcy law changes. We have to fund counseling and advice. We need to make financial literacy part of our educational system. 

Fundamentally, I agree with him, but as he already knows, I no longer believe in any intact political system that could make any of this happen. When I talk about debt, I almost always speak of it in relation to the Greater Depression we have entered and take these realities much further by illustrating how they are an integral part of the collapse not only of the American empire, but of civilization itself. 

For years I have been referring to the Terminal Triangle: Peak Oil, climate change, and global economic meltdown, the latter explained in Danny's book in terms of the international ramifications of the Greater Depression. And of course, there are "other horsemen" of the apocalypse, as enumerated by Sally Erickson in her recent blog, so I find it impossible to discuss the mortgage crisis without connecting it with the additional impending global catastrophes that spell the end of the world as we have known it. Just as we have entered the Greater Depression, we are engulfed by collapsing institutions-especially the American political system, which are in an abject state of dissolution and therefore incapable of affecting change at requisite levels, for all the reasons Danny has so thoroughly documented in his book. 

As for an educational system that will teach financial literacy instead of testing students five hours a day, four days a week-well, there's just too much dumbing down to be done. After all, who prints those tests and the textbooks students can barely read even when they're seniors in high school? Go to the head of the class if you answered: "Subsidiaries of all the scumbag corporations you just mentioned above." 

When I talk about collapse, my second paragraph usually goes something like, "Get out of debt, get out of debt, get out of debt-unless you plan to be an unincarcerated (or incarcerated) wage slave of corporate capitalism for the rest of your life." 

I could not agree more with Danny's directive to talk about debt, become financially literate as individuals, avoid and liberate ourselves from debt, and watch and share with others "In Debt We Trust." But I must add that all evidence points to the frightening reality not only of an economic depression dead-ahead, but an even more frightening scenario: a world in which it will be very difficult to obtain food, drinkable water, or healthcare-thanks again to the Terminal Triangle. 

As I scour the blogosphere, I find almost no progressive voices discussing the dire economic realities of this moment. After all, it's much easier to bash Bush, obsess about clueless, corporately-owned candidates, or blog about green products, green shopping, green living, and all manner of green-wash. Meanwhile, I continue to ask: What have you done to prepare for a post-petroleum world? As the Terminal Triangle becomes ever-more cataclysmic, how will you acquire food, drinkable water, and healthcare for yourself and your loved ones? 

Feeling "squeezed" now? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

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