Collapse (2009) by Mike Ruppert

by Mincan 33 Replies latest social current

  • PrimateDave
    PrimateDave

    I once followed Ruppert's website with great interest. I first learned about Peak Oil from the documentary The End of Suburbia. I've read The Long Emergency by James Kunstler and Twilight in the Desert by Matt Simmons. I have read other books and websites dealing with Peak Oil and similar topics. I would also recommend Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed for an interesting historical perspective on the rise and fall of human civilizations.

    These days I get most of my energy related news from Energy Bulletin.

    The good thing about Ruppert, in my opinion, is that he is not weird like Alex Jones. I have no illusions about our governments. I know they are fully corrupt and capable of perpetrating crimes at home and abroad. Nevertheless, this documentary is a one man show which is unfortunate. I disagree with many of his predictions and solutions.

    Fifty-five Real Things to Worry About (If You Must...)

    1. Job loss is up there.

    7. We’ll also have to deal with the harmful side-affects of worry and fear, not brought on by the FBI tapping our telephones, but because we have no clue where the money’s going to come from to pay off our credit cards.

    20. Crime will increase. But you won’t have 40 inner-city youth with oozies ransacking your living room. The kid who lives down the street, the one that couldn’t get a summer job, he’ll be the one stealing your stuff. Keep teens busy. We’ll need them even more as time goes on.

    32. And things will start to look older and shabbier: Cars that we drive, clothes that we wear, homes that we live in. We’ll understand the word “decaying” in a whole new way, when we can’t afford to replace our roofs, or repair our driveways.

    38. Fancier electronic ways will be developed by governments to separate us from our money–automatically.

    45. Those times we told other people that we ‘just couldn’t live without X,Y, or Z’– we’ll learn that we can. Some of us will be surprised to find out that we don’t miss the things we were so sure we couldn’t live without.

    47. We’ll have to swallow the news that most people who don’t live in the “developed” world already got: “we aren’t automatically entitled to be wealthy, have an easy life, be constantly amused,” and for some, that fact will make life absolutely miserable.

    54. Some of us will watch the worst of this Greater Depression from the comfort of our “still working lives,” and will retain much of what we need to get by, in a comfort that we now appreciate a great deal more.

  • kurtbethel
    kurtbethel

    Ruppert does make a case that collapse is right around the corner. Certainly this creaky old system of things can not last much longer.

  • diamondiiz
    diamondiiz

    I like Ruppert's Crossing The Rubicon but I'm not totally sold on Peak Oil theory. Collapse was alright but it's all based on Peak Oil whereas I see the collapse having to do more with Bankers and the fiat pyramid scheme more than peak oil. The two may be related but I can't prove it but I know that the fiat currency is a pyramid and as long as people spend and create debt it's fine. There has to be a time to pay back the banker and this is partly what has occurred last year in the market which was like a heart attack. The governments haven't fixed a single thing but allowed more debt to be created to postpone another economic convulsion. The huge inflow of money went to help the banks which pumped the markets and made it appear that the economy has improved when the jobs are still bleeding and foreclosures are continuing. Because many banks have hoarded the money instead of passing it to the public they were able to improve their reserves and their balance sheets thus not creating the inflation that would be natural with the money hitting the mainstreet thus we are still seeing deflationary recession. But at some point the trillions of dollars will start to flow into the mainstreet and create inflation. No one is talking about another wave of mortgage renewals coming up which are prime and Alt-A mortgages. These ones will peak sometime in mid-late 2010 with many of these being underwater. After all why would you pay a mortgage on a house that's worth less than a loan? What about commercial real estate? That thing is big too and bleeding. So if peak oil is a problem, it may be but what we're experiancing IMO has more to do with debt and asset bubbles that central bankers created. What about the derivatives being somewhere in 1000 trillion area. We seen Iceland have problems a while back but what about latest Greece and Dubai? What about UK and US? Easter Europe and China? Yes, China is not immune to asset bubbles and their real estate seems to be quite bubbly according to some Chinese officials. China also needs jobs as many of Chinese are starting to enjoy the western lifestyle but that comes with a cost - debt. If jobs are eliminated because the world buys less Chinese goods that will put strain on the Chinese government which may see a threat to it's government from restless population. At present I view the problems in the world due to fiscal mismanagement and not due to peak oil.

  • Judge Dread
    Judge Dread

    Old news...................really.

    Judge Dread

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