Scary graph of Cash flow problems in US economy here. openDemocracy asks if anyone can see any cheer in the situation. I reply: Of course, the graph might be wrong. Maybe they left the data out for August, September and October, perhaps just for a joke, to see if anyone would notice. Anything could happen to save the world economy. It might be that mathematicians or physicists find that it is in fact possible to expand forever into a finite space, so that the world economy will go on growing for ever and ever. Maybe they will find deposits of oil on Mars, together with a way of getting it back here without spilling it all into space. Maybe even, we could discover that the climate change denialists are in fact right. We can all cross our fingers and hope for any of these things to happen...
On the other hand, we may be headed exactly in the direction the graph suggests: either to a recession, or, well, to a recession. Personally, I think we are heading for a recession.
Two bits of good cheer. First, a recession will result in less CO2 emissions, so the Gadarene rush towards runaway global warming will slow down to a Gadarene waddle.
Second, Green Keynesianism, used as a tool to diminish the impact of a global recession could result in a new, green, economy rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of the present ridiculously unsustainable world economy. The way to do this is to identify the activities that are ecologically and socially constructive, and make it easier for them to employ unemployed people. Read all about it here.
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