How did we get here...?

I write either late at night or early in the morning - I prefer mornings as there is something reassuring about the sunrise that confirms my belief in immortality…

So here I sit at 03.30, mug of tea in hand – and a blank screen in front of me. I have been invited to write a compelling chapter for a new book on the subject of Business Accounts…

So you won’t be surprised to know that I have “writers block” – and in order to remove the block I have started playing on the internet.

At first I did an ego search – typed my own name into Google – but that drummer out of Judas Priest still pops up along with the Jazz Musician of the same name. No fun there…

It is now 03.40 so I have decided to type in “conspiracy theories” just for the heck of it…

So far I have learned that man didn’t land on the Moon, 9/11 was planned by the CIA, Elvis is actually alive and the Philadelphia experiment really happened – they are all on the internet so they must be true…!

Something has just caught my eye – and it has to do with the Banking System…

Now, I do know that I need to tread carefully here, and that there are plenty of cranks and nut cases out there who are probably uploading bizarre facts and theories dreamt up in an alcohol induced haze – but there is something here that is just plain interesting, and whether it is true or not doesn’t matter; it just seems to make sense…

How did we arrive in this financial mess, where the USA has a “debt clock” located in Times Square. The Clock was first installed by Seymour Durst on Feb 20^th 1989 in order to raise awareness of the consequences of the economic policies of the Reagan era. 

Back in 1989 – just 22 years ago – the USA had a debt of $2.7 Trillion. Then in late September 2008 the clock ran out of digits – the debt in the USA passed $10 Trillion and the digital “clock” needed an extra digit to display the amount.

Checking the value of the USA Debt today at 04.00 – it stands at around $14.5 Trillion. So that means that in the last 22 years the amount of US debt has increased by a total of $11.8 Trillion, which looks like this $11,800,000,000,000. My calculator won’t accept numbers that big so I have now switched to Excel to calculate that on average, every day , the USA has been getting deeper into debt to the tune of  $1.5 Billion every Day or $62,500,00 every hour, about $1,000,000 every minute..

Looks like there is something wrong...

So how did we get here...?

Look back in time to the control of the Money Supply to find out how we arrived at this ridiculous situation. Look at the rise of Fractional Reserve banking and the current banking system, check out what happened to the tally stick system in the UK, and look at the how the Federal Reserve – which is a privately owned corporation – controls the economy of the USA  and effectively those of Europe too…

My point is this – it is not the things that we can predict that will have the greatest effect upon us, whether positive or negative. It is always the unseen actions that we can’t see coming that have the most dramatic effect – and those dramatic effects are the manifestations of actions and decisions that have already taken place, so you can’t change them.

The financial crisis we are currently experiencing is the consequence of bright men in dark suits making huge amounts of money at the expense of the other 99.9% of the population – remember money does not disappear; it simply transfers to someone else… 

So plan for what you know, but always prepare for the unexpected – for that is where success and failure are found. Be grateful for your wins and chastened by your losses, but remember always that they both may simply be symptoms of someone else’s turn of the card…

Above all – enjoy the ride, make it fun, play nice and look after what no one can take away from you; your spirit, your relationships and your humanity. Travel, do crazy stuff like the world ends tomorrow – nothing you can do will be as stupid as the men in dark suits who have got it wrong by $1m every minute..

Oh, and recycle your plastic too.

At least now I have a chapter to write of the book – and it is now 04.45, here in the Moselle...