Current credit crunch: just a bear-bull game for stock markets to play or a point of no-return in the path for re-organizing societies

Thread-thoughts dangling their wares stimulating new thoughts

- Investors shun Greek debt as shipping crisis deepens
- Credit crunch 'may hit UK growth'. What kind of growth are they talking about?
- The human mind is an invaluable asset to be wasted by the monetising societies.
- Throwing overboard relentlessly whatever is remotely connected with what is not agreed now.
- The paradigm shifts in our minds.

This article 'Investors shun Greek debt as shipping crisis deepens' in Telegraph.co.uk announces the spread of the credit crisis in the shipping industry stating that

"The daily rental rates for Capesize big ships have dropped $234,000 to $7,340 in weeks, leaving operators stuck with heavy losses on long leases. Empty ships are now crowding Singapore and other global ports."

why would they be empty ships crowding Singapore and other ports? Are there no goods to be transported, has the world stopped producing

"... coal, iron ore, and grains, and other dry goods."

why in the same article states that

"... It is telling us that world trade in raw materials has slowed dramatically."

is it not the case that

" .... banks shut off credit lines to the industry .."

that created the woes in the shipping industry. Certainly, you would expect a reduction in the amount of raw materials produced worldwide, but not to the extent that they would entirely account in the announced downturn in the shipping industry.

And besides that, raw materials will get cheaper as they would cost less for the individuals the world over. What is the primary and foremost concern of the article's author, for such an unsolicited act? Interested only to safeguard the unscrupulous demands of shipowners, speculators, or any other parasites that suck up unreasonable profits, just because they happen to have the control of the means for rendering the services the world expects from them.

The comment by the article's reader John Wood,on October 29, 2008, at 05:04 PM, readers comments that have a lot more juice than the article has, gives a proper account of the reasons for the credit crunch

"All that this 'credit crunch' is doing is proving that you cannot borrow for growth indefinitely. It is like the cartoons when a character is carrying a leaking barrel of gunpowder and a fuse is lit behind. Eventually he stops, the lit fuse catches up and Kaboom."

incessant purposeless growth, growth for the sake of growth, that do not add any value in the lives of individuals, as the reader, O G Osborne, on October 29, 2008, at 07:43 AM, states

"Perhaps, as it's no longer easy to transport goods, de-industrialised nations that no longer produce anything but forms and pop music can start producing a real form of wealth again. Wait till fuel gets so expensive that we have to make stuff right where it's sold!"

De-industrialised that produce thin air, services that offer so little, materializing just for the sake of keeping societies in motion, creating jobs that are worthless and which are wasting individuals lives.

And on whose shoulders the burden will fall? The reader, A German in Spain, on October 29, 2008, at 11:49 AM, spells it out

"Both countries will have to suffer a lot. Spain because of the housing crisis and low productivity and therefore unemployment and Germany because a big part of the industrial sector will be send on forced holidays for some time. Mercedes will close all factories for 5 weeks in December. In the end unemployment should soar there too."

Unemployment which is expected to rise, forced holidays and/or what has already been decided for Iceland

"... Iceland was forced to raise interest rates 6 percentage points to 18pc by the IMF as a condition for its $2bn (£1.3bn) rescue package."

straightaway, the burden is passed on to the people in Iceland to bear it, to bail out the handful of individuals that caused it, in the first place. A fate that is in store for other countries to come.

Whereas individuals who have exploited to the hilt their privileged positions, as the reader named Greek, on October 29, 2008,at 04:02 PM, stated in his comment

"Most of the traditional Greek Shipping companies, are very cash rich and have mortgage free ships. This drop in the market has been anticipated and is an opportunity to purchase more ships at reduced prices, only to have more mortgage free ships, when the market picks up again, as it will."

will remain unscathed and not only but, as the reader Aloicius, on October 29, 2008, at 11:49 AM so emphatically declares

"Today's piece is more of the same. The situation is shipping, banking and elsewhere is extremely serious but it is no more then par for the course as evidenced by the past couple of centuries of cycles and excesses. To the astute it spells opportunity while all the others whine and regret."

This callous remark, indicative of an individual so detached from his surroundings, so cocooned within his bubble, his little world, ignorant of others, sees the whole affair as just another opportunity for making more money. So much gives the essence in the whole shambles. For the astute, he says, it spells opportunity, while the others whine and regret. The astute, the wise guys, who would not be affected at all. And who are the ones that, not so much about whine, but certainly will regret it, all the other individuals, that through no fault of their own, they would allow these smart-alec individuals to make a kill and make more bucks.

They will continue their past practices, as the reader Peter Charter, on October 29, 2008, at 08:48 AM, states

"Having spent 10 years as a client of these shipping companies I am overjoyed at their demise. A more greedy, unreasonable, lazy bunch of proverbials you will never find. When the goods times roll they double their rates overnight, now listen to them bleat. Their mates the ship brokers are no better always using bunker prices as an excuse to add 50,000 to the charter rate. I will not be alone in rejoicing."

And certainly is not. Voices of this sort, as the reader's Chris, on October 29, 2008, at 11:49 AM, are no longer shouted out in the desert

"Steve at 9:35 is right. It's absolutely wonderful that a destructive world economy system based on raping the planet to produce rubbishy goods most can do without is winding down. A system which requires year on year increase in rubbishy consumption and destroys families because it's all based on fractional reserve banking is breaking down. We should throw a party."

They no longer fall onto deaf ears, they are heard and get responded.

Credit crunch 'may hit UK growth'. What kind of growth are they talking about?

I read in the BBC website about the poor UK growth would be hit. What kind of growth is that, that individuals should be concerned about?

Economies would never ever change, if they continue to operate within the current monetary framework. Being all engrossed in an insane pursuit of a growth based on imaginary, man-made, artificial 'products', that they could be anything else but products.

Economies invented constructs, hanging over precariously; looming; barely supported on thin pillars; like snakes eating their own tails, with nothing solid underneath to sustain their existence, as they are drawn out of the short-sighted, ignorant insistence, to satisfy the needs of steadfastly prescribed monetary rules.

In states administrations, growth indicators become an obsession. Rigidly adhered administrations would account as growth anything that comes into their clutches, no matter where it is coming from. They would have easily accounted as growth even illicit activities, being these loots of bank robbers, drug profits, black market if it was in their hands and if they did not fear the public outcry.

Still they welcome in their folds anything, that ingenious entrepreneurs out of dragons dens out there, all eager to make a penny, make money for the money, so gave away the once free phone directory enquiry service to a horde of disparate providers, council-run car parking to aggressive greedy operators, with telecom companies charging the tenths of the seconds and lots of other initiatives, a mundane task to go through.

And this is the growth they are after? Growth based on thin air? Growth that draws its profits directly out of the pockets, of individuals in a society, being no different than an additional tax, that individuals could without it. No wonder economies fail. That there is a credit crunch, as individuals are squeezed even further, by what governments regard and relentlessly pursue, as growth.

Black swans are always present. Either you choose to ignore or you choose to notice.

Lack of understanding, or I would say of an unwillingness to heed, clear messages shouted out deafeningly in ears which lay mesmerized to the songs of beguiling sirens, oblivious to their imminent doom.

Reporting on the world economy

"Near-zero borrowing costs are the source of speculation since they allow investors to borrow cheaply in yen and take punts in countries where interest rates are higher."

out of thin air, nothing productive, making huge profits out of nowhere, precariously balancing on glass stilts. Is that the growth world economy relies upon, thrives on? Run by speculators?

Created a world of make believe, a bubble afloat a vibrant world, powered by inertia alone, a direct reflection of the so-called economic forces, and have the affront to be called investors.

Black swans? Not seen, unpredicted, your eye. Your eye has not seen them. You can see what you choose to see. A matter of scope. You choose to ignore, but it is there.

A for randomness let's borrow the words from freakonomics

"I keep writing here and there that my definition of randomness is as follows: incomplete understanding or incomplete information."

and

"So the degree of randomness is observer dependent."

And the point is, you are either in knowledge of your incomplete understanding or the fact of incomplete information, or not. And further a matter of choice whether you acknowledge your knowledge or not.

Flap-strapped around the eyes, like cart-pulling cattle, restricting views of the going-ons in the world, in search for black swans. Might as well be blind-folded. Fail to notice the obvious, unwilling to take heed of even the mythoplasy that spawned the term. Black swans did not appear out of nowhere, they were already there, in Australia or wherever.

Likewise, the black swans of today's world are there, but are not given the attention they demand. It is not that they are unpredictable, it is more like the inability, for the sake of want, to predict the chances their predicted values, in the minds of the world's human individuals, stand to sweep you away, fed up of the hogwash they are fed daily, trivializing lives, unwilling pawns to insane insignificant games.

Insignificant as they offer nothing in fullfiling the aspirations of humankind and insane as they are still allowed to exist.