Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>]

Food, rents, and many other necessities are too expensive for a third of
the US population already. We don't see that on TV "news" yet because the
tsunami hasn't hit most of the middle class yet. And being a card-carrying
member of the Nature Conservancy won't shield us when it hits. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

>From "The Daily Reckoning" newsletter. Some things must be repeated and passed on:

“The credit of the...money market is intimately bound up with the
prosperity of Asia.”

That sentence quoted in our speech perfectly describes the economic situation of the United States of America in the 21st century. The Asians make; America takes. The Asians save; Americans spend. The Asians lend; Americans borrow. Were there no Asians, the economic situation would be far less appealing in America today, since those nice people in Asia actually make it possible for Americans to spend far more than they earn year in and year out. Asians sell valuable goods and services to Americans. Americans pay for them in dollars of no particular value at all.

But that quote about Asia did not come to us from last week’s Financial Times or Wall Street Journal. It came to us from Cicero, writing two thousand years ago.
Then, as now, the Empire of the West depended on the economy of the East. And when the expansion of the empire ceased under the reign of Trajan, so did the big flow of slaves and booty. And then, it became hard to squeeze enough tribute out of the captured territories to pay the centurions.
But, by then the old Republican families had disappeared. Many of the farmers and tradesmen were disappearing too - how could they compete with the grain shipped in from Egypt or North African...how could they compete with the new, abundant slave labor?
In their place was a new class of upstarts - who made their money from the slave trade...or by lending money...or by finagling government contracts. And the simple folk who had made their living as honest farmers and hard-working tradesmen...these ‘plebes’ were no longer the supporters of the army and the government; now, they expected to be supported by the government.

Back in 1903 or so, the stock market was falling as Theodore Roosevelt began actions against the Trusts. JP Morgan had a fit that the stock failures would destroy America. Roosevelt said that America was prospering everywhere but Wall Street.
I think we have the exact opposite situation right now. Every newspaper reports that Prosperity is Everywhere because the stock market went over 13000, yet the value of the dollar is at a serious low compared to other currencies, jobs are disappearing from the land, and prices are going up for necessities. The advertisers who blow smoke and the oil companies who sell smoke are propping up everything with toothpicks right now.
"No amount of charity in spending such fortunes," T.R. said, "in any way compensates for misconduct in making them."

Putting people back on the land is getting more critical every day. 

Dan