Recession? Let the Revolution Begin!

The economic drum I have been beating for a while now has gone mainstream as the "R" word, recession, rolls off the tongues of almost every news broadcaster. Suddenly, or so it seems, the economy is tanking. Sure the housing market was already sliding but Christmas season provided a pregnant pause in hopes that increased consumer consumption might save the day.

But those kinder and gentler days are over. Right out of the 2008 gate, the "R" word came roaring shamelessly into our living rooms with major Wall Street sell-offs catching everyone's attention.

Yet, as I mentioned in the beginning, many writers and thinkers including myself have seen the writing on the wall and this day coming down the pike since the good-old dot com bubble of 10 years ago. How could that be?

There's no crystal ball and it's not rocket science once a person wraps their mind around how money works in the context of a monetary system. James Carville, Bill Clinton's political strategist in the 1992 election, placed a sign over his desk in the Little Rock headquarters: 'It's the economy, Stupid!' The sign answered the often asked question: What is the campaign about? Though a catchy slogan, our current economic state of affairs would be more aptly put as: It's the system, stupid!

The Bush administration's proposed economic stimulus package will be a short-term fix at best on an unrecoverable monetary system; the blueprint of which was designed to obscenely benefit a few while extracting wealth from everyone else. In addition, none of the mainstream presidential candidates have more than some new version of the same-old tax and entitlement-type reforms to offer, that is except for Ron Paul who has recently lost visibility.

You might want to read my colleague Richard C. Cook's latest article, Will Economic Stimulus Measures Stave Off Recession? As far as I'm concerned, Cook is the man with the big-picture-economic plan. It's a plan informed by 32 years of practical experience with US public finance including his 21 years in the Treasury Department and based on knowing how a debt-based monetary system has wrecked the US producing economy and threatens to destroy the world and mankind. Plus, he has already won his stripes as a whistleblower given his career as the analyst who back in 1986 blew the whistle on NASA for having known for years about the flaws in the O-ring joint that doomed the space shuttle Challenger, the flaws that led to the explosion in January 1986 which killed seven astronauts and changed the U.S. space program forever. In January 2007 Cook published Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age. (Thunder's Mouth Press, New York)

In December, he invited me to write the introduction to his first economic book soon to be published; a compilation of 22 essays written over the course of 2007 titled: We Hold These Truths: the Hope of Monetary Reform. In it the author exposes the fatal-design flaw of a monetary system that is debt-based and privately owned. More importantly, he provides a new economic vision and practical model that benefits all concerned and not only for an elite group of shareholders.

After Cook read my own book, The Quality Life Plan: 7 Steps to Uncommon Financial Security, he endorsed my off-the grid personal finance approach as some of the best stop-gap measures individuals and families can apply right now to reduce the impact of a debt-based monetary system: A system that ultimately leads to debt-slavery. Similar to the fact that until recently most doctors did not have nutrition as part of their pre-med curriculum, nor have most traditional financial planners ever heard of or learned about the link between personal finance and the implications of a debt-based monetary system. The result? Conventional wisdom has not stopped the bleeding and life on the edge has become the new norm. Until Cook's vision of genuine economic democracy becomes reality, we are left on our own to empower ourselves with personal finance strategies and tactics that can reverse negative trends.