The Coming Collapse and Then What?

by Michael Astera

February 23, 2009

Some of you may have read about what Paul Volcker and especially George Soros had to say at Columbia University in New York City a few days ago. Soros bluntly stated that the world economy is falling faster than at any previous time in recorded history, faster than the aftermath of 1929. Volcker agreed that we are in deep doo-doo. Eric deCarbonnel's well researched article predicting a catastrophic fall in global food production in 2009 has also gotten some attention.

California is already banko, as is Kansas I believe. The other day I read that 46 out of the 50 states are likely to be bankrupt in 2009-2010. If that's according to the official figures from the states themselves, which it is, then it looks like we have a good old fashioned systemic meltdown on our hands.

Note that California is not sending out tax refund checks, but still expects its citizens to pay their property and income taxes. The first action of the state will be to stop providing services to the people, while it continues to care for its own, its own being the state bureaucrats and retirees. How long do you think that will last?

Cities and counties nationwide are undoubtedly heading for default as well, as most of their budgets and bond issues were based on the real estate bubble. See HERE. And I refuse to believe that anyone above age sixteen and with an IQ above room temperature did not see this coming.

Lets look at employment. Forget the Reagan era fantasy numbers where those who have given up looking for work and those with part-time minimum wage jobs aren't counted. Count them in and we have at least 14% unemployment nationwide, right now. Best guesses are that at least 250,000 retail businesses will fail in 2009. The bankrupt states and local governments will also be forced to let people go. How many people are dependent on taxpayer money funneled through the state? How about all the drug treatment and DUI facilities with their employees and psychologists? All the privately owned road and infrastructure maintenance companies that depend on state contracts? All of the people in prisons and jails, and all of their guards and food suppliers etc? Then there are all of those who never show up on employment figures anywhere because they work for cash and don't file for unemployment when they are out of work.

Don't forget all of the more or less retired people depending on government pensions, all of which are unfunded or invested in shaky stocks and bonds. And all of the private industries who will lay off workers, and all of the retirees from those industries who are today depending on Ponzi-scheme pensions or pensions invested in a rapidly falling stock market.

And let's not leave out those presently employed by the Federal government, which has at least 50 trillion in unfunded obligations and is further in debt than all of the states put together.

Are we up to 30-35% yet? I'd say no problem. Those with no income are going to be willing to work for anything, even food and shelter alone, rather than starve and freeze or see that happening to their families. The competition for any employment will get fierce and wages will tank. Keep in mind, everyone I have read who is trying to tell the truth is saying this is going to be way, way worse than the 1930s depression. Hey, at least back then there were still family farms, and some could go back to them from the cities. A lot of people even in the cities still knew how to grow a garden or fix something when it broke. What happens to the large percentage of Americans who have been dependent on government food stamps and other support since the 1960s?

In a situation where perhaps 3 to 5% of the population is bankrupt and can't pay their property taxes, not to mention their mortgage, then that 3 to 5% will lose their homes and be out on the street. When that figure rises to 30 or 50%, what is going to happen? Will the Sheriff and his deputies be willing to try to throw half of the population into the streets to starve, just because the bankers and the judges tell them to? Yeah, probably. As long as the government is still able to tax the people they are oppressing in order to pay the Sheriff's wages. When that turnip is wrung dry, best guess is that the "long arm of the law" becomes a little more openly mercenary.

So far I've been describing what I see as the best case scenario: a gradual collapse of social order leading to a chaotic period of readjustment.

It's worth noting that I see no possibilities on the horizon for avoiding this. The only thing that could save the USA from its impending destruction would be a renaissance of manufacturing and agriculture and there is no sign of that happening. The last time things looked almost this grim to me was in the late 1980s when most of the heavy industry had already left the country; the collapse at that point was averted by the "software revolution", products that the world wanted and only the USA was providing. That economic windfall took the country through the 1990s up until the dot.com speculation busted the bank. By then the creative and productive advantage of the USA was pretty well gone and things might have been allowed to take their course, but the rich weren't done looting and no one wanted to be left holding the bag, so Greenspan and crew invented the housing bubble to get everyone totally in hock while pretending to believe there was free lunch tomorrow. Meanwhile, Congress gave tax breaks to the major corporations to ship all of the remaining high paying manufacturing jobs overseas.

There is no sign of anything like the software and PC revolution coming our way this time around. No sign of anything riding to the rescue; quite the opposite. Congress and the Fed have rewarded the commercial banks and Wall Street for their criminal fraud and incompetence by saddling the US taxpayer with another 10 trillion or so in debt, given directly to the banks with no oversight, based on the questionable logic that this money, borrowed from the Federal Reserve at interest and put on the US taxpayers tab. would be loaned back to the US taxpayer at even higher interest and that would somehow save the economy. But even that isn't happening; the banks are stashing the loot, unloading their toxic assets on the USA, and paying themselves bonuses. I'll only briefly mention the blatant attempt to crash the US economy on Sept.11, 2008, when 550 billion was secretly withdrawn from US banks over a period of a few hours. Funny the mainstream media hasn't mentioned that....and no one seems to have a clue where the money went.....

Which leads to the not-so-best case scenario, that this wholesale destruction of the wealth of the US is well planned and quite deliberate. In that case, which appears more likely to me, the general idea is to bankrupt the whole country except for a few big players, who then plan to foreclose and buy up whatever they like, using the very money that they looted from their victims. Civil disturbances will be handled by mercenaries such as Blackwater and Halliburton, who have a good recruiting pool available from the well trained subjects of induced psychopathy returning by the hundreds of thousands from Iraq and Afghanistan. Or from any of around 1,000 presently active overseas US military installations. They have already been screened, sorted, and field tested; their controllers know which of them will be suitable.

The detention camps are pretty much ready to go; KBR had a 400 million no bid contract awarded to fix them up a couple of years ago; Wackenhut seems to have gotten their share too. Under that scenario the newly homeless and starving will be offered food and safety if they just get on the nice yellow school buses; Katrina was a sort of dress-rehearsal for that and went off without any resistance.

One of the wild cards is the amount of guns in private hands in the US. For a number of years now the cops nationwide have been confiscating arms from anyone they stop or any home that they search, but they haven't made that much of a dent. In their favor, though, is the demonstrated cowardice of the population, which has never complained or resisted and probably won't. Most would probably trade whatever arms they have for a sandwich and a place on the bus. Whatever small pockets of resistance arose would either be obliterated with massive air strikes (if they appeared to pose a threat) or simply ignored and left more or less alone for a while if they didn't pose a major threat. Those in relatively remote areas far from major population centers might be left alone as not being worth the trouble. Plenty of time to mop them up later, and it's not like Americans have any history of resistance, unlike the Afghanis.

One or the other or a combination of the above seem very likely to be happening in the mid-term future, i.e. the next few years. In either case, the plan appears to be to offer relief from the chaos and starvation to the surviving population in the form of a World Government and a microchip implant.

I think it likely that the USA will be hit harder by this than anywhere else; they have farther to fall and the people lack any experience of living through hard times. It wouldn't be wise to count on any sympathy or help from the rest of the world. The rest of the world will largely be cheering the downfall of the greed and evil that the US has come to symbolize.

Will this all come to fruition? Will those who have been planning this for the past 250 years or so really manage to enslave the entire remaining population of the world?

I'm betting no, they won't pull it off. Things will get very hairy and a lot of people will starve and die violently, but the end result will not be the NWO dream/nightmare. If I thought there was a good chance the soulless ones and their servants would succeed, I'd likely be spending my time fighting instead of working on alternatives to the present mess.

Exactly what factors could intervene to cause the plan of world government and complete enslavement of the masses to fail? One major factor is the internet; more and more people are becoming aware of the planned scenario. If enough people wake up to the fact that the government IS the enemy and has been working against them since its inception, and enough people realize that the "solution" of a One World Government is exactly the plan behind the creation of the chaos and misery, that would make some difference. Those who continue to look for solutions from a blatantly criminal government, well, I guess they will get what they asked for.

The surest way to foil the enslaver's plot is a change of consciousness of humanity as a whole. This is beginning, and more than beginning it is growing. It might be characterized as "divine intervention" but not in the form of saviors or angels appearing in the skies; more like the emergence of a higher and wiser consciousness that most would readily accept, as they know in their hearts that it is right. That consciousness is the idea of living within one's means, and living in harmony with the planet that is their only home, in a sane and sustainable manner. The majority are not ready to openly accept such a thing quite yet, partly because of the deep hypnosis they have been placed under, largely because of their overriding fear of disapproval from their fellow victims of social programming. However, when a certain undetermined number of people have woken up at least partially, and started openly living their lives differently, i.e. honestly and transparently, there is likely to be a cumulative effect, a tipping point in the collective unconscious.

The most powerful tool for change is that of the living example: When we see others living the life that we secretly dream of living, a life of personal freedom, personal creativity, and personal satisfaction (as opposed to the phony goods sold us in the corporate marketplace), more of us will start to emulate that freedom, bit by bit, in our own lives. For that to happen we need living examples not only of life styles and choices, but of all aspects of health, agriculture, trade, manufacturing, building, transportation, energy, family, and community. All of the alternatives presented, new as well as traditional, must be wordlessly persuasive. They should be attractive and desirable for their beauty alone, and their superiority should be self-evident. By their fruits shall ye know them.

There is abundance in this world for all of us when and if we decide to follow our own personal dreams instead of the fake dreams of wealth, fame, sex, and control that we have been hypnotized, programmed, and coerced into thinking are our only choices. Personal abundance begins with an honest answer to a simple question: What sort of life would you really like to live?

The answer to that will be unique for each of us, and therein lies the key to abundance.