[debt economy] and unbridled acquisitiveness

The Age leads today's edition with a photo of a luxury yacht and the caption:

Billionaire says week-long wedding party on Cote d'Azur "nothing lavish".

Beside this - the main headline announces:

Debt crisis forces mass super raid [meaning superannuation]

And the opening paragraphs:

Tens of thousands of Australian families are being forced to raid their superannuation savings to pay off crippling personal debts. Since 2001, the amount of money taken from superannuation accounts to pay off debt has quadrupled.

It is also possible to have money released from a superannuation account to prevent foreclosure of a mortgage or the exercise of a power of sale over a principal place of residence.

Forgive me but two things immediately strike the eye:

1] The problem itself;

2] The sheer gall of the newspaper running the photo and caption beside that particular lead story. It is as akin to running an airline disaster movie on a flight. It's a disgrace and the sub-editors would have been horsewhipped years ago.

As for the problem itself, one wonders, you know. One really wonders if we're so far into this madness now that we can neither see what we're doing nor wish to discuss it. There have been four major pro-active moves going on in the west since the end of the last world war:

1] The weaning of the citizenry, by the financial institutions, off "live within your means" and onto the debt economy;

2] With the nexus between unit cost and wages now broken, via the mechanism of credit, prices are now free to soar to levels where the only way to purchase anything substantial is to go into hock for it, thereby turning the finncial insitutions into mother pigs and us into little piglets;

3] The fuelling of acquisitiveness. I am no socialist but still one must give the nod to R.H.Tawney, who wrote The Acquisitive Society [1961] in which he understood the dynamics of a society mad for ever escalating personal riches.

4] At the same time:

He [Tawney] was deeply opposed to centralization and saw the problems of an over-concentration of power in the hands of the national state. He was critical, for example, of the support of many socialists in the 1920s and 1930s for the 'Police collectivism' of Russia.

In other words, statism and the wresting of the mechanisms of real power from the citizenry into the hands of a self-perpetuationg elite, masquerading as elected leaders. Was John F Kennedy an accident? Was he heck. Is pre-selection a free rising to the top of the most meritorious? Is it heck.

5] The systematic suppression of Christianity and the Christian ethic by:

a. the rise of anti-christians like Swaggart and the like as its most vocal spokespeople;

b. the relativism and non-action of supposed church leaders - Ramsay, O'Connor and the like, along with the church in Russia, failing to take firm stands, as they are charged to do by their office and instead relegating Christianity to the Sunday "comfort zone" and leaving the moreal crusading to people like John Howard, PM of Australia;

c. weaning people onto the god of acquisitiveness and replacing chapels of G-d with chapels of tat, i.e. smooth tiled and glitzy shopping emporia;

d. the progressive stacking of the education and legal system with morally and religiously relative humanists in key strategic positions, in order to influence policy and take decisions with reference only to similar thinking people;

e. with people's attention effectively distracted and an apathetic malaise in its place, the real attack can take place [take your pick which article to peruse].

The suppression of the "Calvinistic" work ethic and notions of fair pay for a fair day's work, living within one's means, caring for our fellow man, the offering of atonement and redemption, the need to place limits and perspective on our desires, the intolerance of deviance, the championing of the family as the key unit of society - all of these require suppression in order for the new system to work.

6] With all that hard work done, with the people now defenceless and at the mercy of the ruling elite financial cabals, the new feudalism can begin - the increasing Statism, the removal, step by step, of citizens' rights, the re-ordering of the means of economic interaction even down to removal of coinage and its replacement by electronic buying and selling, controlled from centres in the hands of the financial institutions, the replacement of real money on a gold standard with fiat money [Roosevelt was the most to blame for this] and the inexorable move towards the next crash.

The Fed is in the hands of the Morganistic cabals, interest rates are in their hands, personal debt is in their hands, political power is effectively in their hands and the only people who even get a sniff of power are of a certain type.

Call it the Twelve True Fishermen, call it the Skull and Bones, call it what you will. The manifestations metamorphose and reappear in diferent forms but the vermin at the top remain the same - men and women like Tony and Cherie Blair who sold their souls early to be allowed a shot at grasping the Main Chance - these are only victims, almost as much as the very people they're oppressing on behalf of their masters.

The new feudalism is here, the era of the police state - and men and women like ourselves are doing absolutely nothing to stop it, outside of the blogosphere and in one or two other places. And yet even the blogosphere is like an old man in the corner, muttering indistinctly to himself and not hurting anyone.

And yet there's hope - the MSM and its controllers are certainly paying great attention to one of the last media to be suppressed [around 2012, on the grounds of national security].

Trouble is, there are no free lunches and never ever have been.

Let's all get out of the debt economy, live within our means, rediscover our spiritual roots and then the whole world of the people driving this destructive process ever onward and downward will collapse. The fuel of greed and personal acquisitiveness on which the New Feudalism depends will simply evaporate and the calls for war and the state of emergency will never eventuate.

Cassandra, at the Lighthouse, has approached this issue from another direction but we've both ended up in the same place.