A little bit of Apocalypse to tide you over:
GREECE descended into chaos today with public services shut down as thousands protested against a new round of austerity cuts.
… police say 12,000 people took part in separate protests in Athens and another 6,000 in Thessaloniki… hooded youths smashed the windows of a TV van and threw a firebomb at police, who responded with bursts of tear gas.
Alekos Perrakis, a senior member of Communist union PAME, said: “We want to send a decisive message to the government, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund that we will not let them cut up our lives.”…
The tax break cut on its own “is tantamount to losing one-and-a-half (months’) salary”, Perrakis said.
In return, Greece will enact poverty support measures — such as subsidies on rent and medicine — over the same period of time…
It also expects a clear pledge later this month on measures to ease repayment on its huge public debt, which represented 179 percent of annual output at the end of last year…
There is speculation that Greece plans to issue a three or five-year bond in July.
This is a very small example of what will be in everyone’s futures. Here, they are just cutting everyone’s salary by about 12 percent, but that is enough, because nobody is making it now. And worse, those jobs only exist now because of external influxes of free resources from outside players like Germany, and that will stop at some point.
Meanwhile, Spain’s debt is creeping upward, and beginning to draw attention:
SPAIN’S public debt grew by an eye-watering €11.1billion (£9.51bn) in March to reach €1.12 trillion (£900billion).
The Government owes more than 100 per cent of GDP, according to data published on Wednesday by the Bank of Spain.
Along with high unemployment rates, debt is another huge task for the government to put an end to the financial crisis.
But based on the forecast contained in the stability programme 2017-2020, debt is set to remain at above 100 per cent of GDP…
For the last four consecutive months, there have been increases in the debt, with a rise of one per cent from February to March.
Worse, when the real Apocalypse hits, not only will many of those government jobs evaporate, the banks will go down too:
The top 25 US banks have an eye-watering $222trillion of exposure to so-called derivatives (£171tn), according to the Michael Snyder author of the Economic Collapse Blog.
But small movements in the values on which the products are based, can have a big effect on losses.
Mr Snyder said the data shows that big banks have failed to learn the lessons of the financial crisis in 2008.
For example, he said that Citigroup has assets that are at $1.8tn (£1.9tn), yet its exposure to derivatives is more than $47tn (£36tn).
When these banks go down, the little account holder is not going to be taken care of first and made whole at all costs. Expect all remaining value in the institution to immediately be handed to Wall Street and the big players, at which point everything goes down and Joe Public is left with no savings.
At the same time, the welfare crowd will have to bite the bullet, the anarchists will come out to play, and just as we need civil order more than ever, the government will spontaneously evaporate as the money to feed its employees disappears as well.
Notice how r-selection is still struggling to hold on though. Greece will do anything to keep the external influx of cash coming. Even as they endure to costs of profligate spending in the form of austerity, they still are amping up subsidies, and hoping to be able to issue bonds to bring in more free resources. These are the death throes of r-selection, as it moves up the economic food chain towards the top players.
For now, it still has some ways to go. But when it hits the top of the food chain, and there is nobody higher to bail the lower players out, is when the action will start.
I do not think people in times of r can fathom exactly how times of K will change the psychologies of populations. The rage, the cruelty, the coldness to suffering, the burning drive to win at everything, even things which don’t actually matter like who gets to the moon first, even the burning desire to see enemies suffer and die – it will all come back. People will form groups, and those groups will amplify the K-effects that are already manifested.
And when it does, the people will see few enemies as hated as the leaders who created all of this mess. I would not want to be Angela Merkel, driving down a street when an angry mob happens to notice me in the car. Things will get ugly fast.