David Korten: Our Growth Economy -- A System Designed to Crash

The unrealistic expectation that money should grow effortlessly in perpetuity [see my last blog] is more than an issue of unrealizable expectations. It combines with a Wall Street controlled debt-based money system to create an imperative for the economy to grow the profits of bankers, and thereby the richest among us, to keep the financial system, and thereby the economy, from collapsing

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Fools at the Pump

The price of gas at the pump is now averaging $3.65 a gallon in California and has already edged up to $4 in San Francisco and Chicago. Nationwide, it’s at $3.38, a 20-cent rise in the last week (six cents last Friday alone). Meanwhile, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke optimistically of the economy and dismissed the impact of soaring oil prices, spurred by turmoil in the Middle East. “The most likely outcome,” he said, “is that the recent rise in commodity prices will lead to, at most, a temporary and relatively modest increase in U.S. consumer price inflation.”

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