Let us not forget amid this cavalcade of financial crises resulting from the surreptitious manipulations of scheming speculators, that business is still pretty simple. I have something you want and/or you have something I want and we cut a deal. Of course, finesse in these matters is no less than an art form, practiced by businesspeople throughout history to the nth degree and beyond. Yet the basic tenets remain plain. There is an agreement.
This is why cash is the epitome of diplomacy. Empirically, money is the human measure of a thing's worth (a 'thing' being an object or service) and as such, a physical manifestation of the most basic business agreement. Whether coinage or paper, it documents the essential essence of business, namely getting paid.
Perhaps since the flurry of stocks and bonds, credit/debit cards, and electronic banking descended upon our financial world, we may have somehow displaced our faith in currency. With convoluted loan and interest structures, as well as intricate legal language interwoven into the financial documents of today, the idea of cash as an agreement seems almost quaint. IF it weren't for the fact that these pieces of paper and metal are physically traded amongst billions of us every second of everyday, one could argue that dollars and cents are an antiquated form of exchange. That's what we call a big "IF", by the way.
With humble beginnings as simple record keepers, bankers quickly blossomed into a full-blown economic mafia complete with strong arms and territories. And this was before the written word, mind you! The first accountants were scrawling their calculations into stone long before the Mesopotamians started dotting i's and crossing t's. The machinations of this industry rely on a simple truth, namely, some people are smarter than other people.
It works like this. I come up with a deal that benefits you in the initial short run, but benefits me more than you in the long run. We shake hands, sign papers, do the hokey-pokey or whatever symbolizes this understanding. The bottom line is there is a record of this agreement, thus if you fail to fulfill the latter portion of the bargain, I get to whoop ass. This has been the basic arrangement since counting was standardized.
This concept really gathered steam after writing came into being. With an absolutely huge contingent of humanity unable to read at all, much less even wanting to, the smarter people had a big advantage when it came to writing and writing legal documents and recording agreements. To make a long story short, this is basically what goes on today, with lawyers as the primary translators of a meticulously twisted code. Along with these changes, the 'ass-whooping' aspect has taken on infinitely complicated permutations, including such morally awkward aspects as rewriting the terms of any agreement that led to the ass-whooping currently in progress.
Now this is where the situation begins to unravel. As the plethora of financial agreements grow in number and complexity, the ability of the system to 'whoop ass' properly in a timely manner becomes unmanageable. Soon, far too many agreements become unenforceable and wa-lah... fiscal meltdown! Welcome to the "Smart People/Stupid Choices" portion of the program, where otherwise pragmatic beings compete for cash and prizes in lieu of common sense. The major problem with this process is that it is all ultimately based on promises, which I have been told, is hardly the most reliable of currencies.
The point is... IF we had stuck to the simple agreement, (cash only) the likelihood of said disaster decreases one hell of a lot. That's another big IF, folks. Unfortunately, it is the rear-view mirror kind, unless you are one of those that think printing more money makes you richer. In that case, you probably shouldn’t be handling a spork, much less a pen to sign financial papers. Yet, outrageously enough, this is the very course of action we see our leaders promoting today!
Therefore, my initial hypotheses, although accurate, needs to be footnoted with " ...of course, there is good diplomacy and bad diplomacy". This is due to the fact that even cash can lose its meaning as an agreement if enough people contend otherwise. However, by the time that scenerio arises, most thinking individuals have returned to the more traditional forms of 'whooping ass' to get their needs met. It's not a pretty picture, but one worth a thousand words... of warning.
I cannot imagine that the perpetrators of the demise of world financial markets can even comprehend the ramifications of their actions. Lost in the manufactured tunnels and gilded caves of a metropolitan hamster cage, how can we expect such illusion-drunk corporate chattel to understand anything but what's put in the trough for them? The unfortunate reality is that one can be clever, without being wise. A disfunction that seems increasingly prevalent the higher one goes in financial circles.
Knowing that seeds become plants isn't the same as thing as being able to grow your own dinner. Hunting and gathering, and even farming have becoming lost arts for the majority of us. If cash becomes valueless, most of us will be at a loss to provide for ourselves. Despite assurances of so-called ‘smarter’ people to the contrary, this system seems destined to collapse under the weight of it's unfulfilled obligations. This “breakdown in diplomatic relations” means that all prior agreements are non-binding, effective immediately.
Still, it is human greed, rather than banking itself, greasing the rails to economic Ragnarok. Financial agreements are needed for civilized society to function, and cash on the barrelhead, although the most basic and proven financial agreement of all, does not serve the overwrought expectations of expanding oligarchies. Perhaps the rise and fall of civilizations are as cyclical as day and night, and this rollercoaster to financial devastation is not new. Evidence would seem to bear out that this crisis is not the end of the human race, only a massive portion of it- which is just fine... they probably owed us money anyway.
