"The material I am presenting here is not meant to cause alarm"

But it does, doesn't it. Perhaps you can write a meaningful article sometime about the effect of the internet and seamless global communications on the "panic" dumping of stocks. One can follow the stocks around the world 24 hours a day and no one knows who is leading anymore, Asia, Europe, or North America.

Call me crazy, but how about global debt forgiveness? Wipe the slate clean and start over as it were. Take the market average from the past year as a basis for new values. Seems to me a much better solution than continually throwing hard earned tax dollars at the beast!

"Dr." Ellen Brown is not the most credible of sources to draw information from. Much of the 'historic' material she bases her conclusinons on are fabrications put out by the late 19th century American "Greenbacker" movement.

The late G. G. McGeer, Depression-era Mayor of Vancouver, Liberal MLA, MP, and later Senator, and uncle of former BC Liberal Party leader, and later so-called "Socred" cabinet minister, Pat McGeer, popularized many of these fabrications as 'fact' in a book he wrote on monetary reform in the 1930's.

They have since been investigated and debunked by unbiased, qualified researchers dealing with the joint subjects of 'monetary' and 'accounting' history. And the fallacy of the ideas Ms. Brown promotes, a version of the "state theory of money" once experimented with in Nazi Germany, revealed for what it really is.

Though it's doubtful, maybe, that "Dr." Ellen Brown realizes the implications of what she advocates should her present day 'Greenbacker' monetary ideas ever be enacted.

Within them is the basis of a centralized government tyranny that would make the original Bush bail-out plan with the powers to be vested in the US treasury Secretary look positively democratic in comparison.

There is only ONE 'cure' for the present financial mess that will deal with the real problems that cause it, and that is genuine Social Credit. Not the 'political party' of the same name, but the original principles developed by Major C H Douglas and expounded under that name. It is the only way that 'citizen-consumers', all of us, in other words, not 'governments', nor 'banks', can ever control THEIR OWN credit to both common and individual advantage.

Can Peter, or any other posters, tell me the purpose of the huge bank bailout in the states, not to mention the money our government has been throwing at our banks. Can't we just let the chips fall. I don't get bailed out if I make stupid risky loans. I think the uber rich see alot of commoners with healthy nest eggs, ripe for harvest.

Govsux, the purpose is to try to keep the banking system able to make loans at all.

If that capacity is seriously impaired, as it has been, then the existing loans they've already made, the vast majority of which are 'good' loans, will be unable to be repaid in anywhere near their totality as they come due.

For the simple fact that there'll be insufficient money available with which to pay them. Since virtually all of that money presently comes from the banking system as new loans.

I agree that the money must be able to keep moving. If that stopped, everyone who carries debt would be hooped. Our whole monetory system is dependant on having money available when needed. Even the largest companies in the world need financing at times. Cutting off their lifeline at a critical time would spell diaster for many, many companies. I would like to suggest that most companies have an operating line that they dip into at times during the year when sales or income are down to carry on business. If this was not available, many businesses would cease to be in business. And it has nothing to do with poor business sense.

Right, Chester. Only "the largest companies in the world", even more so than any others, need financing ALL the time. If loans stop, sales stop. And if sales stop, production stops. And if production stops, the incomes distributed in payment for that production, inadequate already to totally liquidate all the costs of it through final consumption over the retail counter, also stop. Completely.

So, did the massive bailouts help? I don't see the credit loosening up, or the markets rebounding. Maybe the government should of gone after the gamblers from the banks and hedge funds. Hedge fund managers earnings start around $250 million and top out over $3 billion, PER YEAR!!! We can argue whether that's right or wrong, but in the end, it's absolutely retarded. How are these poor guys going to make it through the tough years ahead. Better give em another trillion!

The bailouts are simply a means to attempt to stabilize a deteriorating situation.

If that succeeds, what comes next will determine whether we want to simply buy time until another similar crisis develops in the future, as it inevitably will, (which is what ALL our current political parties both here and in the US and elsewhere seem to want to do), or whether we want to finally examine and fix the underlying problem that really CAUSES these recurring financial debacles once and for all.

Lynching all who are suspected of having profited from what's happened, whether they really have or not, might give many people great satisfaction.

But it does nothing whatsoever towards fixing WHY what's happening is happening.

Nor will 'nationalizing' banks, and further concentating what is already far too concentrated, the existing 'monopoly of credit' creation , into the hands of a 'government'. And thereby making that 'monopoly' even more absolute than it already is. Nor will banning 'hedge-funds', 'derivititves', and 'sub-prime mortgages'. These things are merely symptoms of a much larger disease, as is the 'greed' that has driven them to the levels they have reached.

These types of crisis can not help but develop as long as any economic system is not able to be fully financially 'self-liquidating' in each and every succeeding cycle of production.

To make it so takes no more effort, in reality, than it does to add a leap year to the calendar every four years.

Or for any individual business to do as all of them occasionally have to do, and make "accounting adjustments" to reflect the proper value of inventory, plant, or other assets.

Without that leap year, our calendar would get progressively out of whack. To the point where it would eventually become useless to us as a means of tracking the seasonal changes and everything affected by them. And so it is with money as it relates to our economy as a whole, and all of the individuals within it.

Govsux:-"How are these poor guys going to make it through the tough years ahead. Better give em another trillion!"

If they actually were able to SPEND that trillion, on satiating their own personal needs for 'consumption', we could say with complete impunity, "Go right ahead." And a large part of the problem would disappear.

But they are NOT able to spend that much, nor the full amounts of the billions, or even millions, they more likely did get. (Which are before tax figures, by the way ~ but even so, spending the residual after tax amount on personal consumption would likely still pose most with a considerable problem. What would you buy with it if you were them?)

I think I saw one time that Bill Gates, who's said to be the world's richest man, is supposed to be worth something like $ 80 billion US. This does not mean, however, that Bill Gates actually HAS $ 80 billion in CASH. Rather that he has ASSETS that are estimated to be worth that much.

Most of which, I suspect, is his stockholding in Microsoft valued at probably some average price that stock has sold for over some period, say one year.

I think it's safe to say that if Bill Gates were to throw all his Microsoft shares on the market, and take in CASH whatever he could get for them, the total he cashed out at would be far, far, less than $ 80 billion.

The same would be true of Jimmy Pattison, and others of those we think of as being super-rich.

Now keeping that little digression in mind, just what do you think those who have said to have so unjustly profited from the current financial mess are going to do with most of their ill-gotten gains?

Buy the missus a couple of thousand pairs of new shoes ala Imelda Marcos? What for? She'd have to change shoes five or six times a day every day of the year just to wear them all!

Buy more clothes for yourself? You'd reach a limit very quickly there, too, since you've still only one body to put them on.

Likewise buying other residences. The Queen, who is a wealthy woman in her own right, maybe has five or six residences she and the Royal family use throughout the year. But would she want fifty or sixty? What for? How could she ever live in them all long enough to ever feel 'at home' in any of them?

Same with ANY other thing you care to name, be it plane, train, automobile, or yacht. Pattison owns Frank Sinatra's Hollywood mansion. But would he want more than one of those? And even if he did, is even the one he's got now really of any use to him ~ how often does he stay there?

Now you'll say those people will do what Gates and Pattison, and even the Queen would do with their surplus funds. They'll invest them. But tell me this, if the global markets are affected, as they are, by the current financial crisis, and the ability of the banks to make new loans is impaired, HOW ARE THOSE INVESTMENTS EVER GOING TO BE WORTH WHAT THEY'VE JUST PAID FOR THEM? Won't they be just about as useless as Frank Sinatra's mansion is to Jimmy when he's at home in Vancouver?