But global population will just keep growing, growing, growing. Why? The math is simple: Today there are more than two births for every death worldwide. One death. Two new babies.

Bomb? Tick-tick-ticking? Or economic “bubble?” Population growth is a basic assumption hard-wired in traditional economic theory. Unquestioned. Yes, population is our core economic problem. Not a military problem. But the bigger this economic bubble grows, the more we all sink into denial, the closer the point of no return where bubble becomes bomb. Where war is the only alternative. A military solution is the only solution.

Yes folks, ultimately, population growth is a economic nuclear bomb, tick-tick-ticking a silent countdown to global disaster. In denial, we march a self-destruct path to WWIII.

Ssh. Stop. Ssssh. Be silence. Don’t say “bomb.” Don’t? Why? Deny it all you want, the global “Population Bomb” will just keep tick-tick-ticking. Out of ear-shot. In the dark shadows of your mind. Warning, denial just prolongs the inevitable day of reckoning.

Simple Math: Two Babies Minus One Death = World War III

Worldwide population doubled to 3.5 billion between the Great Depression and the Great Society. One generation, from the thirties to the sixties when “The Population Bomb” was published. Since the sixties, we’ve doubled again. This year global population shot past seven billion. Two billion living in poverty, surviving on less than two dollars a day. We do live in a globalized economy. And the math is simple: One death, two new babies.

Warning: This economic bomb will not stop tick-ticking any time soon. Why? Scientific American said population is “the most overlooked and essential strategy for achieving long-term balance with the environment.” No wonder Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, warns: “Act now, we’re told, if we want to save the planet from a climate catastrophe. Trouble is, it might be too late. The science is settled, and the damage has already begun.”

We’re on suicide watch and yet population control, the world’s number one economic issue in “off the table.” Why? Last year Mother Jones made it abundantly clear why. In “The Last Taboo,” columnist Julia Whitty asked: “What unites the Vatican, lefties, conservatives, and scientists in a conspiracy of silence? Population.” That hot button issue ignites so many powerful reactions. Politicians won’t touch this “third rail.”

Our denial is a massive “conspiracy of silence.” Yes, we’re all in this global self-destructive conspiracy. Families love making babies. Economists obsess about their population growth assumption. Stockholders demand earnings growth. Wall Street is insatiable. Corporate CEOs shoot for quarterly targets to get ever bigger bonuses. The global “Super-Rich” see population growth as opportunities to increase their wealth, widening the wealth gap. We’re all in this rat race together, in a “conspiracy of silence.”

Population, the key economic power that’s driving all economic issues

Yes, you can forget “Peak Oil.” Forget global warming. Forget debt, deficits, defaults. Forget commodities, scarce resource depletion. Forget all other economic, political, military problems. Yes, forget all of them. None of them matter … if our leaders fail to deal with the world’s out-of-control population bomb. Nothing else matters. Nothing. Still, the silence is defining. We’re trapped in this deafening “conspiracy of silence.” ….

read more: MarketWatch.com

Atlas Shrugged

In The Fountainhead Howard Roark is the ultimate individualist, an idealistic architect and archetypal free market capitalist. Enraged when second-rate competitors compromise the integrity of his plans for a modern building, Roark seeks revenge, takes the law into his own hands and in a terrorist act, he sneaks onto the construction site in the dark of night … and dynamites the building … kaboom … destroying it.

Flash forward: You have a perfect metaphor for Rand’s extreme ideology, how today it is turning against America, blowing up capitalism, self-destructing as the excesses of a great ideology spin out of control, choking on the very dreams that fueled it for decades.

Warning, the commanding inner voice of Ayn Rand’s super-capitalism that’s imbedded itself deeply in America’s collective unconscious will soon trigger the suicide of capitalism, in a volley of excesses taking down the market, triggering a total economic collapse, and profoundly altering America’s political destiny as the global super-power.

Ayn Rand’s terrorist solution: If you don’t like “the system,” blow it up!

Since The Fountainhead was published during WWII, Ayn Rand has been a driving force in America’s collective consciousness. Today she is the patron saint of conservatives and free market capitalism everywhere: in the ideology of the GOP and Tea Party, in the mindset of Greenspan, Bernanke and Reaganomics, in the ranting of Beck, Sarah and Rush, in the Ryan Plan to kill social programs.

The polarizing of all American politics has its strongest roots in her classic, Atlas Shrugged, where a capitalist elite engage in a perpetual cultural warfare for the soul of America, fighting society’s “moochers, looters and parasites,” anyone and everyone demanding government money to solve their problems. The elite see America degrading into a socialist welfare state and communism. Rand says capitalism must be totally free:

“When I say ‘capitalism,’ I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism, with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as a separation of state and church.” Why? Because “capitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice because capitalism demands the best of every man, his rationality, and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.”

Unfortunately, Rand’s radical dogma has gone far off the course defined by Adam Smith in 1776, warping into an secret conspiracy binding conservative politicians and the egomanical excesses of Wall Street, Corporate CEOs, and the Forbes 400 Super-Rich against the middle class and the rest of society.

Warning: Rand hates altruism, religion, social programs, and average Americans

In a recent USAToday op-ed piece, “Ayn Rand and Jesus,” Stephen Prothero, a Boston University professor of religion and author of God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World—And Why Their Differences Matter, poses a serious challenge to Rand’s disciples: “Idolatry of the conservative icon should lead to some soul-searching within the GOP. After all, Christian morality has no place in an ‘Atlas Shrugged’ world.” ….

… read full column in MarketWatch

Nothing else matters in their upside-down world: Wealth increases at the top. Global poverty balloons everywhere else where living on $2 a day isn’t enough for a third of the world. Easy pickings. The rich only see more opportunities to make more money when they read in Foreign Policy that “in the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75%, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10,” warns Lester Brown in “The New Geopolitics of Food … Inside a Hungry Planet.”

But if “you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in the world price of wheat actually means that the wheat you carry home from the market to hand-grind into flour for chapatis costs twice as much. And the same is true with rice. If the world price of rice doubles, so does the price of rice in your neighborhood market in Jakarta. And so does the cost of the bowl of boiled rice on an Indonesian family’s dinner table

New economics of commodity inflation, resource scarcity, and getting rich
“Welcome to the new food economics of 2011: Prices are climbing, but the impact is not at all being felt equally. For Americans, who spend less than one-tenth of their income in the supermarket, the soaring food prices we’ve seen so far this year are an annoyance, not a calamity. But for the planet’s poorest 2 billion people, who spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food, these soaring prices may mean going from two meals a day to one. Those who are barely hanging on to the lower rungs of the global economic ladder risk losing their grip entirely. This can contribute—and it has—to revolutions and upheaval.

Yes, it will get worse, far worse. Global population is sky-rocketing, tripling from 3 to 9 billion between 1950 and 2050, as the “Super-Rich” at the top will get richer, as poverty spreads, as more and more go to bed hungry in emerging and developing economies. And “revolutions and upheaval” mean increased global wars over depleting hard assets. In the upside-down worldview the “Super-Rich” will soon have to deal more than that extra dime for a loaf of Walmart bread. The cost of America’s denial will be trillions as the threat of WWIII grows exponentially.

Remember the Pentagon forecast: Global population growth leads to “massive droughts, turning farmland into dust bowls and forests to ashes … By 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening … an old pattern could emerge; warfare defining human life.” As this threat of WWIII increases, America is the major target for many emerging and developing economies.

“Commodity Inflation Revolution” ends America as “Global Super-Power”
Jeremy Grantham is a Cassandra, warning, crying wolf. Has been for many years. His firm manages $100 billion. He warned of the 2008 meltdown 18 months in advance. While Grantham’s latest Quarterly Letter offers faint signs of hope, the truth is, he’s predicting a no-win scenario for America in “Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices Are Over Forever.” ….

read full column at MarketWatch.com

Yale scholar Immanuel Wallerstein warns that capitalism’s at the end of a 500-year cycle: The “political struggle is over what kind of system will replace capitalism, not whether it should survive.” We cannot stop this cycle. Yes, “Super-Rich” capitalists will fight to the death, take the rest of us down with them.

Why? Destiny is trapped in our DNA warn historians, will not change. America is run by these short-term thinkers. They never learn the lessons of history. They do not want you to know that their capitalism is self-destructive, hell, they don’t even know capitalism’s cycle is in a suicidal endgame, that their “mutant capitalism,” as Bogle calls it, is destroying the very soul of America’s democracy.

Instead, leaders inside this conspiracy want Americans to follow their rigid doctrine: In Milton Friedman’s 1962 Capitalism & Freedom, the bible of Reaganomics; In Ayn Rand’s manifestos that misguided Alan Greenspan and now Paul Ryan; and in Steve Forbes post-meltdown apologia, How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today’s Economy. Capitalism has become a religion for the “Super-Rich,” with many such “saviors.” Heretics must be denied, such as this one: Doomsday Capitalism is destroying America from within. Here are highlights, with links to a few of the earlier hundred columns on topic. Ten macro-trends building to a perfect storm, a critical mass, flashpoint

1. Doomsday Capitalism—Death of The American Dream, Spirit, Soul
After our bankrupt Wall Street was resurrected in 2008—thanks to their Trojan Horse, an ex-Goldman CEO inside the Treasury stealing trillions from a clueless Congress—it became obvious that capitalism really is killing America’s soul. Nobody trusts government. And no matter who’s elected, wealth, Wall Street and the “Super-Rich” will rule America, total collapse is coming.

Why? Senator Bernie Sanders, the lone independent, said it best: “There is a war going on in this country … the war waged by the wealthiest people in America on the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The nation’s billionaires are on the warpath. They want more, more, more. Their greed has no end and they are apparently unconcerned for the future of this country if it gets in the way of their accumulation of power and wealth.”

continue reading in MarketWatch

Don’t Believe Goldman

The Goldman report is titled “The U.S. Will Not Face a ‘Lost Decade,’” and has a “subheading in the report, which later calls the odds of that prospect ‘very remote indeed’.” But then Goodman adds: “the words at the top of Goldman’s report, ‘Stay the Course’ amount to a threat for the rest of the nation. The course is untenable. For most people, it leads to credit card debt, ulcer medication and, perhaps, bankruptcy.” As Suzanne McGee says in her book about Goldman. “they’ll take us to the brink again.” Except this time Wall Street will take us over the cliff with them.

The new Goldman Report sounds like they’re trying shoot down my recent 1o annual predictions for the decade, 2011-2020: “America’s 10 Worst Years Start Right Now.” If you really want to learn how bad Goldman is for the American economy, democracy and capitalism, read both of these columns.

The bottom line is simple folks … the Goldman Conspiracy is afraid American investors won’t jump on the new bull market bandwagon that they’re hyping … won’t jump in and start betting at the Wall Street casinos … won’t help Wall Street blow another too-big-to-fail bubble … won’t get suckered into their runup to the next meltdown. Yes folks, Goldman’s worried America is catching on to their congame. If you want more investigative background on the toxic “moral hazard” that the Goldman Report is spreading across America, here are ten of my MarketWatch columns on the “Goldman Conspiracy” from recent years.

Goldman’s secret moral pathology: 15 symptoms of Wall Street disease killing democracy & capitalism
Goldman Conspiracy helping China defeat USA: By 2040, China’s the new global super-economy rules
6 reasons Goldman Conspiracy must kill reforms: derivatives-bonus culture needs Reaganomics to survive
Goldman’s Reaganomics vs Obama: Kill Dodd’s reforms & set up Wall Street’s 2012 Meltdown
Goldman’s new dream-inception technology: Inside “Brother Lloyd’s” brain, laws from “God is My Broker”
Goldman’s ‘Chainsaw Massacre’ Halloween party. Vote: Best costume from your favorite ‘celebrities’
Goldman’s new American Socialism Manifesto: 8 ways ‘The Conspiracy’ is destroying American democracy
Goldman Conspiracy, Bogle’s ‘pathological mutation: Wall Street & Washington inspire 13-episode TV plot
Jack Bauer can’t even stop ‘The Goldman Conspiracy: 10 reasons Wall Street rule our American democracy
Goldman Should Pay Paulson a Big Fat $1 billion Bonus: King Henry’s the world’s greatest nudger

Dateline December 2020.

“The U.S. economy appears to be coming apart at the seams,” warns Columbia Professor Robert Lieberman in the new Foreign Affairs Journal. Unemployment remains at nearly ten percent, the highest level in almost 30 years.” A long trend of “ballooning incomes at the very top and stagnant incomes in the middle and at the bottom. The share of total income going to the top 1% has increased from roughly 8% in the 1960s to more than 20% today. … a level of economic inequality not seen in the United States since the eve of the Great Depression.”

And yet, here we are being conned again, like before the 2008 meltdown. But the same crooks we bailed out. Warning: Forget all Wall Street’s hoopla about a 2011 bull market with the Dow rocketing to 15,000. Think long-term. Wall Street lost an inflation-adjusted 20% of your money the last decade. They will lose another 20% by 2020. Today’s new “Gilded Age” bubble will end in a crash worse than 1929, triggering a new depression that will wreak havoc on your retirement portfolio. Yes, Lieberman is warning of class warfare dead ahead: “Income inequality in the United States is higher than in any other advanced industrial democracy … It breeds political polarization, mistrust, and resentment between the haves and the have-nots and tends to distort the workings of a democratic political system in which money increasingly confers political voice and power.” A costly new “Civil War” makes our enemies cheer.

So here are my 10 predictions for 2011-2020, a flashback, a retrospective, a year-by-year look back from 2020 at a decade of increasing battles between the haves and have-nots, where there is no longer room for “compromise” between the two ideologies destroying America from within. “The Gap,” the divide, the greed, the entitlements, the hostilities are now so entrenched that “negotiations” are impossible and only a catastrophic 1929-style collapse of our self-destructive capitalism and a descent into economic hell will force America to restructure. Here’s the 10-year timetable:

2011. Wall Street’s super-rich spend billions to control Washington
Thanks to the conservative takeover of America’s so-called democracy the past three decades, from Reagan to Obama, our activist Supreme Court delivered the coup de grace into America’s psyche last year, overturning long-established precedent giving rich owners of zombie corporations absolute rights of live humans, a decision that would have gotten a failing grade in my constitutional law class at the University of Virginia.

2012. Super-Rich gain absolute power over Washington
That bizarre decision destroyed legalized political bribery. Now billions pass through lobbyists to politicians in all parties, with one goal: A guarantee that all politicians (President, Congress, Fed, regulators and state governments), all adhere to Reaganomics and the ideology that money talks and wealth rules. As a result, America is no longer a democracy, not even a plutocracy. America is an Anarchy. Our middle class is in a rapid spiral down into third-world status, while the rich get richer and “the gap” between the richest and the rest widens. Worse, it’s irrelevant who wins the 2012 race, because money corrupts all in Washington and Obama is already a puppet of America’s super-rich conspiracy.

next: 2013-2020 on MarketWatch

Go Mitch! You stir my cinematic imagination. Made it go into hyper-drive last week when your GOP team decided to defeat Reagan’s signature national security victory, the nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia. You guys sure have a bizarre suicidal idea of leadership and governing. Ol’ grumpy Mitch also led his GOP saboteurs in killing the unemployment benefits extension, while making an even more bizarre claim that billionaires “need” a $800 billion bailout (that’ll trickle down to unemployed Middle Americans?). Then he played his ace, calling the GM IPO a failure that should have been left to the bankruptcy courts, with more jobless millions. Yes folks, ol’ grumpy would definitely get on a domestic list like “The Committee to Destroy American Capitalism.”

Folks, this is the stuff of great movie plots. Not an Oliver Stone or Michael Moore film. No, this is a true Eastwood thriller. Think “Magnum Force,” Dirty Harry killing real bad guys. Better yet, “Absolute Power.” Imagine: What if McConnell’s GOP gets their wish? Game on. The hunt begins. The GOP tried once before under Bush. Now they want a new shot at that old adage: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Eastwood brilliantly reveals why power corrupts. Why it blinds. Why it self-destructs. In “Absolute Power” we see an arrogant President convinced he’s untouchable, surrounded by Secret Service officers who will do anything to protect him, hide affairs, even murder. Until the unexpected, what economist Paul Krugman calls the “great unraveling.”

“Kamikaze Capitalism:” GOP stars in Eastwood “destroy the presidency” thriller?
Eastwood plays Luther Whitney, a small-time crook. Just wants enough from one last job, before retiring in the American Dream. His victim is out. But as luck would have it, the President, Gene Hackman, suddenly appears with the lady, upsetting Luther’s cleverly planned robbery. Luther hides in a secret room, a voyeur behind a one-way mirror. This President’s into kinky sex. But sadomasochism consumes him, he kills her.

Luther is what economists call a Black Swan, every thriller has them. Unpredictable events you never see coming, can’t plan for. They blindside you, taking a thriller into new dangers. Filmmakers love them. Tittilated, Luther watches the lurid sex, the murder, the cleanup by the Secret Service. They dispose of the body. But later, a new twist, they find evidence of Luther. Then frantic spinning, blaming a home invasion robbery gone bad. The hunt for Luther begins … and ends … absolute power corrupts absolutely … the presidency falls. Yes, Eastwood planned this … but McConnell can’t … no trick mirrors.

 …. read column on Marketwatch

“Suicide, not murder:” Toynbee’s chilling warning came to mind a few years ago as I read three reports of dangerous economic trends, all tied directly to America’s addiction to drugs and how they are destroying us from within, rendering our borders vulnerable, giving our enemies billions to buy weapons and attack us from without. These three reports highlight threats far more ominous than any threats from terrorists, nuclear war, energy shortages, entitlement failures, global warming, or government deficits, as bad as they all are. Why? Because we are creating an inner world that is far darker, far more lethal. The reports cover these three areas:

1. “The Lost War on Drugs.” America’s failed 30-year “War on Drugs” that’s now sabotaging our “War on Terror.”
2. “Weakening Defenses.” America’s leaky borders that expose us not just to terrorists, but openly invite transnational drug syndicates, mobsters, criminals.
3. “Prescription addiction.” America’s out-of-control addiction to prescription drugs, with Big Pharma as the main pusher.

These three trends have been exposed in recent media reports as three separate trends with significant economic impact. However, they are very much linked together in the inner workings of the American soul. So why does the media treat them separately? Very simple: The media (like people in general) is also trapped in America’s ubiquitous state of denial, denial of a disease so cunning and powerful that most Americans refuse see the underlying disease, either as individuals or as a nation: In her writings noted psychotherapist Anne Wilson Schaef aptly describes America as a “Nation of Addicts.” Once “in” the disease we can no longer see ourselves objectively, we become zombies, like pod people in “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

For the record, I researched the addictive brain for years. A couple decades ago I took time out of the business world and worked as a professional helping addicts, alcoholics and their families deal with their problems. A few hundred of them went through the Betty Ford Center, including executives, doctors, royalty, rock stars, actors, government officials, professional athletes and others celebrities. I traveled nationwide and overseas to do interventions. Behind the insanity I saw painful self-destructive behavior: Throwing away hundred-million-dollar careers, successful businesses, mansions, beautiful families, destroying their health, killing people, going to prisons, dying horrible deaths. Once in their private hell, nothing matters. Many, like my parents, never make it out, they become trapped, blind to the havoc they leave in their wake. I’m lucky, in recovery 37 years.

Yes I am biased: As a journalist what I see and write about is a product my experience. And the fact is that 12% of Americans, roughly 36 million, are chemically dependent, addicts or alcoholics. But worse yet, their self-destructive behavior has a huge negative impact on another 100 million or more Americans, their children, spouses, parents, loved ones, friends, co-workers … their accident victims. Moreover, the burden on American economy is staggering, hundreds of billions. That’s why these three reports hit me square in the face. They are disturbing enough each by themselves. But taken together it’s like watching an NFL quarterback being hit by three blitzing 300-pound tackles, simultaneously. Thud, whack, crack!

One. America’s “Lost War on Drugs.”
Today America’s 30-year “War on Drugs” is a miserable failure. But worse yet, it’s now undermining our “War on Terror.” In 2007  Foreign Policy magazine published their “Third Terrorist Index,” based on the collective opinions of 100 experts. They concluded that “instead of treating the demand for illegal drugs as a market, and addicts as patients, governments [including The Pentagon] continue to pursue policies that have boosted the profits of drug lords and fostered narcostates that threaten all of us.”

Afghanistan is one example. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, now supplies 95% of the world’s poppy crop and opium production. According to the BBC News, it has “soared to frightening record levels,” largely because we took our eye off the Taliban and marginalized Afghanistan to attack Iraq. Illegal narcotics traffic from Afghan’s cash crop exploded 57% in 2006 . Our politicians and our military are virtually helpless to stop this expanding contagion that matches America’s addiction for illegal drugs (demand) with the entrepreneural spirit of Afgan farmers, politicians, war lords and the Taliban (supply).

America has had a “War on Drugs” for since the Nixon administration, based on prohibition and criminalizing drugs. That policy has drained hundreds of billions from our economy, driven drug traffic underground, and raised the price on a commodity that otherwise would cost pennies. Domestically and internationally our “War on Drugs” policies are not only a dismal failure, they produce the exact opposite result.

Worse yet, our failed drug policies are sabotaging our “War on Terror” in Afghanistan. As the Washington Post reported, “The drug war has become the Taliban’s most effective recruiter in Afghanistan,” reinvigorating Muslin extremists. Thanks to our obstinate adherence to failed drug policies plus minimal alternatives for Afghan farmers, we are playing into the Taliban’s hand and they’re “becoming richer and stronger by the day.”

Two. America’s “Weakening Defenses.”
America’s leaky borders expose us only just to terrorists, but also to international drug mobsters, cartels and war lords. The Post’s Misha Glenny has been “traveling the world researching a book on the jaw-dropping rise of international organized crime” in recent years. “The problem starts with prohibition, the basis of the war on drugs,” says Glenny. “The theory is that if you hurt the producer and consumers of drugs badly enough, they’ll stop doing what they’re doing. But instead, the trade just goes underground,” into a “shadow economy” where “the state’s only contact is through law enforcement.”

Moreover, the American drug economy offer such lucrative payoffs – involving huge margins on a global turnover of $400 to $500 billion sales annually – that narco-criminals simply don’t care if they lose a $1 million investment now and then in a police raid, because billions do get through our open borders, both north and south. At the same time the “expansion of world trade and financial market has provided criminals ample opportunity to broaden their activities,” with no comparable increase in police to deal with this surge. So one of the consequences of our failed “War on Drugs” is that while “international mobsters, unlike terrorists, don’t seek to bring down the West; they just want to make a buck … these two distinct species breed in the same swamps” conspiring against American police, military and political policies.

Three. America’s “Prescription Addictions.”
In addition to the illicit drugs, prescription drugs are also rapidly becoming a favorite for America’s addicts. Don’t get me wrong, Americans may be “living in a world of pain and they are popping pills at an alarming rate to cope with it” for legitimate reasons, but the truth is, medical doctors and drug companies indulge our weaknesses, like the Taliban.

When the Associated Press analyzed US Drug Enforcement Administration data a few years ago they concluded: “More people are abusing prescription painkillers because more are available,” and while doctors are “spooked” by high-profile celebrity arrests, patients have become more and more enterprising and driving greater distances to find known “pill mills” that “dispense prescription medications without verification.”

Another reason America’s prescription addiction is exploding; Big Pharma’s ratio of two reps for every five docs, plus relentless advertising. Between 1997 and 2005 drug company ad costs nearly tripled from $11 billion to $30 billion, while the “amount of five major painkillers sold in the nations stores nearly doubled, and alarming trend.” Yes folks, “civilizations do die by suicide, not murder.” First death within … perhaps a failed “War on Drugs” policy backfires … addicts indulge, multiply … our enemies get the money… then complete the ritualistic hari-kari for us … and another civilization falls.

original: MarketWatch 9/3/07

Warning: For Buffett this revolution began years ago: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Yes, that is exactly what Buffett told Ben Stein a few years ago in a New York Times interview.

Get it? This new preemptive war is already in progress, and America’s billionaires are the aggressors: Buffett’s billionaire buddies on the Forbes lists, his Wall Street banker buddies, his exporter buddies in China, all of Buffett’s buddies in this “rich class” are already engaged in a hostile takeover war against the American middle class, against the working class and the poor, against all Americans not on the Forbes lists of billionaires. And yes, they’re already winning big, as you can see in their latest war strategies to “buy” the midterm elections and further concentrate their power at the top.

But they’re doomed to implode. We warned of the dotcom crash in early 2000. Warned of a subprime credit meltdown for four years before 2008. Now we’re warning that a “Doomsday Capitalism” revolution is near ignition. Buffett’s aggressive “rich class” is overplaying their power grab, and … well, listen, here’s how I imagine this revolution unfolding as a series of rapid-fire Tweets, as citizen-warriors pass along this collection of earlier warnings to reenergize and drive the rest of America to rebel against Buffett’s “rich class,” Tweets that will trigger an anti-capitalists revolution.

Warning to all investors, prepare now: Play defense. Expect an economic upheaval rivaling the 1929 crash, creating a climate for true reform that will make the 1930s look like a real tea party. Stretch your imagination: See these earlier warnings as edited Tweets traveling across America in milliseconds, a rebellion energizing 300 million Americans to rise up, counterattack, overwhelm and defeat Buffett’s “rich class” buddies. Here’s how we see America’s emerging new ideology unfolding rapidly, a tense drama in four acts:

Act 1. Huge “Wealth Gap” is Fueling “Class Warfare”

Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary, Aftershock
“The last time in American history when wealth was so highly concentrated at the top … was in 1928, just before the Great Depression. … The economic game is rigged—that no matter how hard we try we cannot get ahead because those with great wealth and power will block our way.”

Robert Frank, New York Times
“During the last three decades … all significant income growth has been concentrated at the top of the scale. The share of total income going to the top 1% of earners, which stood at 8.9% in 1976, rose to 23.5% by 2007, but during the same period, the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage declined by more than 7%.”

Kevin Phillips, Bad Money
“Deceptive statistics … that the U.S. economy is stronger, fairer, more productive, more dominant, and richer with opportunity than it really is. … Growth since the recession of 2001 has been mediocre, despite a surge in wealth and incomes of the superrich.”

Robert Samuelson, Newsweek
“Americans are progress junkies. We think that today should be better than yesterday and that tomorrow should be better than today … We may now be on the cusp of a new era … Americans do not have a divine right to rapid economic growth

Frank Rich, New York Times
“What disturbs Americans … is the fear that almost everything … is fixed … in hock to the interests of powerful lobbyists and the wealthiest few who run Washington.”

Act II. The Coming “Third Meltdown” Ignites Deadly Anti-Capitalism

Simon Johnson, 13 Bankers … Next Financial Meltdown
“A crazy ‘doomsday cycle’ infiltrated our economic system … in 2008-09, we came remarkably close to another Great Depression. Next time, we may not be so lucky.”

Reinhart & Rogoff, This Time is Different
“Excessive debt accumulation … poses greater systemic risks … We merrily rolling along for an extended period, when bang, confidence collapses, lenders disappear, a crisis hits.”

Robert Shiller, on the “Third Meltdown”
“We recently lived through two epidemics of excessive financial optimism, we are close to a third episode … another meltdown … another depression.”

Jeremy Grantham, Chairman of GMO
“Several dozen people saw this crisis coming for years. It seemed so inevitable and so merciless. Yet the bosses of Merrill Lynch and Citi, even Paulson and Bernanke, none saw it coming, which guarantees that every time we get an outlying event they will always miss it.”

Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism
“Free-market ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done, and the massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis.”

Act III. America’s Worst Case Scenario: Total Collapse

Niall Ferguson, The Rise & Fall of the American Empire
“What if history is capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car? What if collapse does not arrive over centuries but comes suddenly, like a thief in the night?”

Marc Faber, economist, GloomBoomDoom.com
“The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today. … arrogant … corrupt … overspends … costly wars … inequity … decline.”

Kevin Phillips, Wealth & Democracy
“Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant, wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt … burning … out.”

Barton Biggs, Wealth, War & Wisdom
“Investors must assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure. Your safe haven must be self-sufficient … Think Swiss Family Robinson.”

Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail/Succeed
“Many civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power.”

Act IV. Wall Street Killing Reform, Ignites Revolution

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan
“This crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull …by helping what needs to be broken break on its own.”

Suzanne McGee, Chasing Goldman Sachs
“The ‘Masters of the Universe’ melted Wall Street down … and they will take us to the brink again … They cannot help themselves.”

Michael Lewis, The Big Short … Doomsday Machine
“A machine got built to enrich people for taking really stupid financial risks … too complicated … for the risks … the machine ended up being fooled by its own deceit.”

Stephen Gandel, Case Against Goldman Sachs
“With a trader … if running the economy off the cliff makes you money, you will do it, and you will do it every day of every week.”

Alan Greenspan, Congressional Testimony
“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity … are in a state of shocked disbelief. The model held sway for decades then the whole intellectual edifice collapsed.”

Thomas Hoenig, Fed Governor
“Wall Street wants zero rates … They are earning a guaranteed return on free money from the Fed by lending it back to the government through securities purchases.”

Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew
“Conservatism is not just a political movement. It’s not just an ideology. It’s also a way of getting ahead in the world. It’s a way of making a lot of money.”

Warning, the coming “Doomsday Capitalism” Revolution is much closer than most investors can imagine. So look again through the sharp lens of financial historian Niall Ferguson warning: “What if history is capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car? What if collapse does not arrive over centuries but comes suddenly, like a thief in the night?” What if? Are you shorting your family’s retirement? Will you be prepared?

original MarketWatch 10/19/10

At the crossroads: “Growth!” Capitalism’s most sacred commandment, “Grow OR Die” may itself be on death row. With us since 1776, it’s being challenged by a “New God of Reality” that’s flashing relentless strobe warnings of an emerging new command from critics, contrarians and eco-economists: “Grow AND Die.” Yes, you heard right:

· “Grow OR Die.” Traditional Economists: We need 3% GDP “Growth” to support 100 million new Americans in the 21st century. Drill Baby Drill. New jobs to fuel slow recovery. Worse, exploding growth demands as the rest of the world adds 2.9 billion new humans all chasing their unique “American Dream.”

· “Grow AND Die.” New Eco-Economists: They see Big Oil’s destruction of our coastal economies, the rape of West Virginia’s coal mountains, the unintended consequences of uncontrolled carbon emissions and ask: “When will economists, politicians and corporate leaders stop pretending Earth’s resources are infinitely renewable?” Unfortunately, even the new eco-economists fail to factor population growth, the big 800# Gorilla, into the equation.

Yes, we are all at a crossroads, all facing a dilemma, all confronting the ultimate no-win scenario: “Growth” is essential to support the global population explosion. “Growth” is also killing our world, wasting our planet’s non-renewable natural resources. As a result, the “Growth” mantra will eventually destroy civilization.

Put a face on this dilemma: Governor Bobby Jindal. Louisiana’s greatest economic and ecological assets—marshlands, coastal fisheries—are being destroyed by capitalism run amok, Big Oil’s greed. Yet, Jindal’s already telling the President to forget the oil drilling moratorium, forget new studies, forget regulations, forget restraining the Big Oil greed machine that got us here. Risk new disasters, “drill baby drill,” now! Yes, we’re at the crossroads. This politician’s a perfect example of the no-win scenario confronting all politicians, economists and citizens. He’s on the horns of a very sharp no-win dilemma: We’re damned if we grow. Damned if we don’t grow.

Ultimate sin: Turning a blind’s eye, failing to seek real solutions
“When you get to a fork in the road … take it.” But which fork? Flip a coin? Same result either way: Heads you lose, tails you lose. A no-win situation. Not just Jindal, Obama and America, but Greece, Brazil and China. All politicians, all economies, all trapped in Capitalism’s most sacred, rarely challenged, commandment: “Growth OR Die.” “Growth” has achieved biblical reverence … blinding us to its toxic collateral damage.

The difference between the mindset of traditional economists and the new eco-economists is actually very simple: Traditional economists think short-term, react short-term, pursue short-term goals. New eco-economists think long-term. Initially this may seem overly simplistic, but fits perfectly. Here’s why:

· Short-term thinkers: Traditional economists are highly-paid employees and consultants in organizations with short-term horizons; banks, institutional investors, big corporations, think-tanks, government. Quarterly earnings, tax season, election cycles are more important than what happens a decade in the future. If they can’t survive the next budget cycle, “long-term” is irrelevant.

· Long-term thinkers: New eco-economists see, think and plan for the long-term. They understand Yogi: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.” They know short-term thinkers are setting America up for more and bigger catastrophes than the gulf oil spill. The hit film Avatar is a perfect metaphor: By 2154 Earth’s resources are exhausted forcing us to invade distant planets searching for new energy resources. Critics warn it’ll happen earlier: UN and Pentagon studies predict population increases that will create unsustainable new natural resources demands in excess of 100% by 2050.

The decision is yours. So sit back for a few minutes, take this little test. Read each of the following 11 news items from my clip files, edited for length. Several are hot off the press. A coupple from the winter months. The rest from earlier reports about “Growth,” the 800# Gorilla hiding in every nation’s living room, hiding in every quarterly economic report, hiding in the expectations that will make-or-break your own retirement plans.

Here’s how to keep score: If you think the message of one of these edited news items supports long-term growth, give it three points. Two points if it’s neutral. And if it favors short-term “Growth” plus has faith that technology and the American Spirit will take of the long-term, add one point. Your total score will be between 33 and 11.

One. “Most New Jobs Temporary …Unemployment High,” Peter Morici report
“The economy added 431 thousand jobs in May but 411 thousand were temporary census jobs. … Forecasters had expected 540 thousand new jobs … the big challenge is to keep GDP growing at least 3 percent to pull down unemployment.” (6/10)

Two. “OECD Raises Its Forecasts for Global Growth.” The Journal
“Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based think tank, cited strong growth in developing economies and the rapid rebound in world trade to predict the organization’s 31 members will see their combined GDP increase 2.7% this year and 2.8% next year. … U.S. economy is expected to grow 3.2%.” (5/10)

Three. “Geithner Rallies Europe on Growth.” Ian Talley, The Journal
Geithner’s “growth” pitch is a fight to minimize change and preserve the status quo for American banks: “We all understand that part of recovery, part of growth, is to make sure that we make clear and credible commitments to restore gravity to our fiscal positions over time. But we’re also working to make sure our economies are growing.” (5/10)

Four. “Economic Outlook: Slow Growth At Best.” Gary Shilling’s Insight Report
“Our forecasts of slow U.S. growth through 2011 may prove overly optimistic … Most investors believe 2008 was simply a bad dream from which they’ve now awoken. We’re returning to the world they knew and loved, with free spending consumers supporting rapid economic growth, fueled by ample credit and backstopped by governments.” (6/10)

Five. “The New Normal.” Pimco’s Bill Gross, InvestmentNews Conference
“Investors will never again see the returns and profits of a few years ago. ‘New Normal’ returns are half what we have grown used to over the past 10 to 25 years.” (12/09)

Six. “Stiglitz Urges End to GDP Fetish.” Bloomberg News Report
“The Nobel Prize-winning economist urged world leaders to drop the obsession with GDP and focus more on broader measures of prosperity. … so many things important to individuals are not included in GDP.” But will short-term thinkers agree? (9/09)

Seven. “Numbers Racket,” Kevin Phillips, Harper’s Magazine|
“The use of deceptive statistics has played a vital role in convincing many Americans that the U.S. economy is stronger, fairer, more productive, more dominant, and richer with opportunity than it really is.” Corruption taints CPI, GDP, unemployment stats. “How bad is it? Real numbers, a face full of cold water. Economic growth since the recession of 2001 has been mediocre, despite a surge in wealth and incomes of the superrich.” (5/08)

Eight. “Darker Future,” Robert Samuelson, Economist in Newsweek
“Americans are progress junkies. We think that today should be better than yesterday and that tomorrow should be better than today … we place more faith in opportunity and getting ahead. We may now be on the cusp of a new era that frustrates these widespread expectations. … Americans do not have a divine right to rapid economic growth. (11/08)

Nine. “New Jobless Era Will Transform America.” Don Peck, The Atlantic
“The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults … leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men … cripple marriage as an institution … plunge many inner cities into despair … ultimately, warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come.” (3/10)

Ten. “Faustian Economics,” Wendell Berry, Harper’s Magazine
“The general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily foreseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning … the American Way of Life will somehow prove indestructible. We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, at any cost to everybody but ourselves.” (5/08)

Eleven. “What’s So Good About Growth?” BusinessWeek book review
“Ben Friedman’s The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth has scored a dead-center hit on the critical question: Why do we value economic growth? The usual argument is that a bigger GDP—more goods and services—leads to happier, more satisfied citizens. But as the average income in a country goes up, so do expectations. As a result, the level of GDP per person in a country, taken alone, doesn’t necessarily say much about the level of happiness. The lack of a direct link between personal satisfaction and the level of GDP per person seems to undercut the purely economic arguments in favor of growth.” (11/05)

So what’s your total score? Folks in the “Grow And Die” crowd (longterm thinkers and eco-economists) will score above 22. Anyone in the “Grow OR Die” crowd (short-term thinkers and traditional economists) will score under 22. Me? I’m still at the plate talking to Yogi about “the fork in the road,” about Avatar in 2054, about why God let that bad umpire’s call kill a perfect game. Yes, still asking the wisest of all zenmasters which way to go? And after he repeats his answer for the umpteenth time, he pauses then silently shakes his head, turns away and walks off the field and into the dugout. He caught a perfect game, scored 33 points.

original: MarketWatch June, 2010