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-- Posted Sunday, 26 August 2007 | Digg This Article
By: Vincent BresslerFor years now, I’ve been telling anyone who would listen about the corruption of money and what it means. I’ve noticed something since the CDO bubble burst … It used to be that people would write me off as a weirdo, but now I am confronted with irrational denial, rooted in fear. People would rather trust their government, than admit that doing so could cost them almost all of their wealth. That’s social capital, built up over generations. People are not conditioned to question the foundation of the system. This capacity for trust, sometimes seen as the optimism of the American psyche, will be important to the construction of a new financial system, but it has also allowed the current system to grow obscenely dysfunctional. There is efficiency in social capital. I know that I would be more productive if I spent more time thinking about making money than how to protect it. My time horizon would be longer, my nights more peaceful.
The destruction of real capital goes hand in hand with the destruction of social capital. Soon many people will realize that promises of money in the bank, promises of pensions, of insurance, of fixed dollar contracts, annuities, home equity are all suspect. Many things can no longer be taken for granted. A heavy burden of new responsibilities must be attended to personally. At the heart of it all is distrust in money itself and the government that issues it.
As the radius of trust shrinks, the only money that will work is tangible money, in hand, real, physical, gold and silver. From that point we move out, to a new financial system, initially built around precious metals. The radius of trust expands, the economy becomes more efficient and the cycle starts again as a new generation forgets the lessons of the past.
Vincent Bressler
vincentbressler@yahoo.com
-- Posted Sunday, 26 August 2007 | Digg This Article
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