All the press/media I read (including internet) are extremely negative about everything at the New Year of 2008. They are confused and depressed, and when we are in that state everything seems bad: the so-called Iraq War (over in 2003), inflation, falling dollar, politics, immigration, oil and gold at new all-time highs. They are beating their breasts and looking for the scapegoat to explain it all and take the fall for it all so their pain goes away and someone is punished.
All these commentators make it way, way too hard. It's all due to supply and demand. Demand for metals and energy and grains and everything is growing as several billions more of us humans emerge from the non-cash economy we have been in forever and join into the cash economy. And it started at the end of a long period of failure to replace inventories and supply from the mid 1970's to 2003. Demand went up and supply was constricted.
Re-read this short and simple paper below which describes it all in an earlier time (note the password on the page which is needed to open it). Look at and think about the simple charts.
Far from being negative, it's a great time for people throughout nearly all the world: the best in our history. The rest of the current blah is ignorant bullshit. Once the lagging Africans and lagging religious fundamentalist terrorists catch on--and they will-- it's going get even better, both for them and for us. We're all in this world and life together.
Believe me, our "problems" are all due to demands for the good life which has been popularized throughout the world by North America and Europe in so many ways. People naturally want to live better if they've seen that a better life exists and can be had. I can almost hear peak oil bears growling in the background, and peak iron ore bears and peak everything bears. But even they know that as price limits use it also provides the floor for new developments of all kinds to solve constricted supply in new ways.
This is not wishful thinking. It is rational economic thinking. The markets are there, and they are growing incredibly. Old products that no one needs any longer will fail just as buggy whip makers and horse care street sweepers suddenly disappeared a century ago. "Creative destruction" is not vindictive punishment for bad decisions or fraud, as the confused and angry commentators seem to feel. It is the story of obsolescence and newer demand giving rise to newer solutions and products.
If it's hard to imagine a good case, just think of simple examples like Apple (Computer) who gave and are still giving people what they want, nearly always. There are millions of similar but far less well known examples of economic development.
I'll say it again: there has never been a better time in human pre-history or in history for most of humanity to be alive. If we are angry and depressed (two sides of a coin), it's because we don't "get it". If we are losing money or purchasing power or need a scapegoat it's because we are simply wrong or old-fashioned in our thinking.
Happy New Year! Align yourself with the new world of demand and democracy.
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