Poverty of Imagination
by James Kunstler
www.opednews.com
A striking poverty of imagination may lead to change that will tear this nation to pieces.
Venturing out each day into this land of strip malls, freeways, office parks, and McHousing pods, one can’t help but be impressed at how America looks the same as it did a few years ago, while seemingly overnight we have become another country. All the old mechanisms that enabled our way of life are broken, especially endless revolving credit, at every level, from household to business to the banks to the U.S. Treasury.
Peak energy has combined with the diminishing returns of over-investments in complexity to pull the “kill switch” on our vaunted “way of life” — the set of arrangements that we won’t apologize for or negotiate. So, the big question before the nation is: do we try to re-start the whole smoking, creaking hopeless, futureless machine? Or do we start behaving differently?
The attempted re-start of revolving debt consumerism is an exercise in futility. We’ve reached the limit of being able to create additional debt at any level without causing further damage, additional distortions, and new perversities of economy (and of society, too). We can’t raise credit card ceilings for people with no ability make monthly payments. We can’t promote more mortgages for people with no income. We can’t crank up a home-building industry with our massive inventory of unsold, and over-priced houses built in the wrong places. We can’t ramp back up the blue light special shopping fiesta. We can’t return to the heyday of Happy Motoring, no matter how many bridges we fix or how many additional ring highways we build around our already-overblown and over-sprawled metroplexes. Mostly, we can’t return to the now-complete “growth” cycle of “economic expansion.” We’re done with all that. History is done with our doing that, for now.
The Bankruptcy of The United States
The Bankruptcy of The United States United States Congressional Record, March 17, 1993 Vol. 33, page H-1303 Representative James Traficant, Jr. (Ohio) addressing the House:
Mr. Speaker, we are here now in Chapter 11. Members of Congress are official trustees presiding over the greatest reorganization of any bankrupt entity in world history, the U.S. Government. We are setting forth hopefully, a blueprint for our future. There are some who say it is a coroner’s report that will lead to our demise.
It is an established fact that the United States federal government has been dissolved by the Emergency Banking Act, March 9, 1933, 48 Stat. 1, Public Law 89-719; declared by President Roosevelt, being bankrupt and insolvent. H.J.R. 192, 73rd Congress m session June 5, 1933 – Joint Resolution To Suspend The Gold Standard and Abrogate The Gold Clause dissolved the sovereign authority of the United States and the official capacities of all United States governmental offices, officers, and departments and is further evidence that the United States federal government exists today in name only.
The receivers of the United States bankruptcy are the international bankers, via the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. All United States offices, officials, and departments are now operating within a de facto status in name only under Emergency War Powers. With the constitutional republic form of government now dissolved, the receivers of the bankruptcy have adopted a new form of government for the United States. This new form of government is known as a democracy, being an established socialist/communist order under a new governor for America.
Gold and silver were such a powerful money during the founding of the United States of America, that the founding fathers declared that only gold or silver coins can be “money” in America. Since gold and silver coinage were heavy and inconvenient for a lot of transactions, they were stored in banks and a claim check was issued as a money substitute. People traded their coupons as money, or “currency.” Currency is not money, but a money substitute. Redeemable currency must promise to pay a dollar equivalent in gold or silver money. Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs) make no such promises, and are not “money.” A Federal Reserve Note is a debt obligation of the federal United States government, not “money.” The federal United States government and the U.S. Congress were not and have never been authorized by the Constitution for the United States of America to issue currency of any kind, but only lawful money, gold and silver coin.
