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Predicting Worse Ahead from America's Economic Crisis - by Stephen Lendman
Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881 - 1973) said:
"There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."
Under Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and successive US Treasury Secretaries, America chose the latter path and now faces the consequences of their reckless, criminal behavior.
In early 2009, economist Michael Hudson said:
The (US) economy has reached its debt limit and is entering its insolvency phase. We are not in a cycle but (at) the end of an era. The old world of debt pyramiding to a fraudulent degree cannot be restored," only delayed to postpone a painful day of reckoning.
Economist Hyman Minsky (1919 - 1996) described a "Ponzi finance" system during prolonged expansions and economic booms. Speculative excesses create bubbles, triggering structural instability, then asset valuation collapse that turns euphoria to revulsion and market crashes.
On December 29, 2008, the Wall Street Journal online headlined: "As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of US," then continued:
"For a decade, Russian academic (and former KGB analyst) Igor Panarin has been predicting the US will fall apart in 2010" to include an "economic and moral collapse, a civil war, and the eventual breakup of the country." For years, no one took him seriously, but no longer. He's invited to Kremlin receptions, gets interviewed twice a day, publishes books, is a frequent lecturer, and appears regularly in the media as an expert on US - Russia relations as well as the great interest in his predictions and new book titled, "The Crash of America."
On March 25, 2009, RussiaToday.com headlined: "Is there anything Obama can do about the US Collapse?" No, according to Panarin, for these reasons:
-- "the moral and psychological factor and the stress of the American population;"
-- America's deepening financial and economic crisis; and
-- "the increase of anti-Americanism in the world," the result of continued US belligerency.
Panarin sees America collapsing into six areas of foreign influence and perhaps disintegrating as a nation:
-- depressed northern states close to Canada "in their mentality and economic development;"
-- the Southwest "fuel and energy complex, the oil sector" close to Mexico;
