U.S. accountant-in-chief: ‘We’ve never seen the likes of what’s coming’ – Financial Times, Jan. 29 An influential US official on Tuesday hit out at his country’s “addiction to debt,” warning that the federal budget was on an “imprudent and unsustainable path” due to ballooning healthcare costs. David Walker, US comptroller general, warned a Senate budget…
Doomer fringe converging on the mainstream (Headlines from the Meltdown)
Cardin comments: You know life on planet earth has gotten weird when conventionally respectable mainstream news sources start running stories that sound like what would have formerly been dismissed as the ravings of a conspiracy nut. But — and this is a crucial point — is anybody really listening? Case in point: an analysis piece…
Letter to a student: Philosophy for fun and self-deprogramming
Yesterday I received an email from one of my former high school students. He asked me a few questions that indicated he has really entered into a reflective state of mind: Am I familiar with C.S. Lewis and Mere Christianity? What do people mean when they refer to other people, situations, or anything else as…
A plague of toxic everything (Headlines from the Meltdown)
General comment from Cardin: A few things I’m reading and hearing — none of them referenced below — suggest that January’s generalized stock market mini-crash/meltdown may have played itself out, and that the coming weeks may witness a generalized, although volatile, meltup. Only time will tell. What’s certain is that other problematic aspects of the…
Not just an economic crisis but a difficult cultural transformation
As is obvious from my last few posts, I’ve decided to start keeping tabs here at The Teeming Brain on doomer-sounding economic news stories, essays, analyses, op-eds, and rants. Currently the media are presenting a veritable cornucopia of these things, and they seem likely to keep it up for a very long time to come….
A nightmare economy (Headlines from the Meltdown)
Seeing Signs of ‘Systemic Failure’ – The New York Times, Jan. 23 “This is not a normal crisis,” George Soros, the hedge fund pioneer turned philosopher, said today to a group of reporters he had invited to lunch at the World Economic Forum. “It is the end of an era.” It was the “era of…
Economically, this is “the big one” (Headlines from the Meltdown)
U.S. Moves to Avert Economic Meltdown – Associated Press, Jan. 23 Jolted by global recession fears, the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates Tuesday, and President Bush and leaders of Congress joined in a rare show of cooperation in promising urgent action to pump up the economy with upwards of $150 billion in tax cuts and…
Panic sets in (Headlines from the Meltdown)
Global economic crisis ‘serious’: IMF chief – Associated Press, Jan. 21, 2007 The head of the International Monetary Fund called the global economic situation “serious” and said markets worldwide had responded skeptically to a U.S. stimulus plan. Dominique Strauss-Kahn stressed that a U.S. recession would affect economies across the globe. “The situation is … serious,”…
Unfolding financial carnage (Headlines from the Meltdown)
Hmm. It’s been a month and a half since I made the first of six announced updates. Tempus fugit. Right about now, for various reasons, I want to upload this post before it’s possible for me to groom it properly. The haste is due to the fact that I want to beat the American stock…
The Buddha ate my blog, or, The peskiness of nondual insight
Well, I’m back from another long hiatus. It’s been four weeks since my last confession—er, blog post. I’m certainly making good on my previous claim, circa early September, that my foreseeable activity here at The Teeming Brain would be sporadic. At the moment I thought I’d drop in to mention that this downturn in blog…