I’ve returned from a much needed long-weekend in Grand Cayman with my better half and some great friends and am catching up on news and developments. Below are a couple of links worth sharing. Enjoy.
James Howard Kunstler’s latest post Swingtime, January 25, 2010 7:13 AM
The underlying reality is that the financial sector of the economy has got to shrink. It ballooned from about five percent of the US economy to about 22 percent over the last two decades — mainly as a way to compensate for our declining real productive activity as we off-shored and outsourced and disassembled US industrial capacity.
John Robb has written a book review of Carroll Quigley’s 1961 book, “The Evolution of Civilizations.”
The shift to institutionalism is also a good predictor of our future. Financial capitalism, the owner of Western Civilization’s Universal Empire is an institution. It has taken on a life of its own at the global level and is no longer an instrument of cultural advancement for Western Civilization. It will advance its interests at the expense of everything else. From outright fraud (the Shadow Banking system) to rentier lawfare (the proliferation of intellectual property protection to usury), financial capitalism will enrich itself mightily while the world stagnates endlessly.