From Financial Collapse to the GNH of a New Earth

FROM FINANCIAL COLLAPSE TO THE GNH OF A NEW EARTH

The debt bubble,
Carries dreams and hopes,
As the children of the future,
Are mortgaged,
Before their sub-prime,
As their future is no longer,
An option.

The economic system,
Is a global model,
Where supply meets demand,
Graphing equilibrium,
As price settings,
Delivering average prices,
Of goods and services,
Outside of multinational distortions,
And surpassed ecological limits,
For it was designed to meet mass societal needs,
Outside of greed.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP),
Equates government spending,
Investment spending,
Consumption spending,
Exports (selling) minus imports (buying),
An aggregate demand (GDP=C+I+G+X-M),
That generates surrogate wealth,
In theory.

The productive economy,
The foundation stone,
Of bricks and mortar,
Asset backed lending,
For housing, factories and businesses,
Generating jobs and activity,
Redistributing resources with equity,
Of comparative advantage,
Just-in-time.

The speculative economy,
A financial bubble,
Where there is no hubble
to see beyond space and time,
For this market is the giant Casino,
Operating in real time now,
24 hours,
Racing against the clock,
As all players place their bets on stocks,
Spinning the wheel of fortune,
To buy or sell is the ring of a gamblers tune,
Betting on the future,
Betting on gold,
Betting on commodities,
To win the spin,
Grants membership into the flying high club,
To lose is to fall from the wall to the street,
For there is no middle path when greed is good,
As bulls charge and bears bleed the common good.

Overheating profits become stagnation,
Unemployment and inflation become stagflation,
A cesspool of leveraged debt,
Counter-productive buyouts,
As cowboys take the profits and leave the debts,
An income pyramid,
Of unequal proportions,
For there is no trickle down as assets strip down,
Crashing the stock is the marker,
A rash forming around financial addiction,
Strung out for another fixer,
Insider trading wags the dog,
As one wheels and deals away,
Our common future.

Real incomes falling,
Consumption rising,
A credit free for all at staggering rates,
Expands the mortgage bubble,
For it is not the real estate,
As equity to debt falls,
Repayment soars,
Inflating interests,
Is the real state of play,
That is not on the level playing field.

Consuming more than you earn,
To keep up with the Jones’,
Fuelling the Dow Jones Index,
Gives credit now and buys your future options,
Compounding hours of work,
More for less does not pay,
Sold on a standard of living,
Where living standards are the working poor,
Climbing the ladder as the index falls,
Measuring your poor credit rating,
Success is to be seen to be making it,
Getting there…
To impress ones friends is the currency,
That yields belonging and status,
In a society with no real time,
For each other,
Just them and us,
Is the hiatus,
Of the division bell.

The high rollers,
Trading the world away daily,
$1.8 trillion a day,
Circumnavigates the globe,
Faster than volcanic plumes on trade winds,
Cumulative winds of trade in 24 days,
Equivalent to every man, woman and child’s paid work,
In a year,
Imagine if the profits were distributed!
As equal shares in a New Earth Charter,
From markets to a community of common interests,
Where productive work yields happiness,
Measuring Gross National Happiness (GNH),
Joining together in a New World of Nations,
Coming together in a unanimous show of hands,
Exchanging the Security Council,
For a World Council
representing every man, woman and child,
Joining hands and smiling across the face of the earth.

It is time for prophets to peddle wisdom,
And the military to find the missing peace in education,
Revised educational water courses of philosophical inquiry,
Learning the true ecological balance of equilibrium,
Measuring tipping points and honouring limits,
Returning real hope to values over conspicuous consumption,
Self sufficiency over co-dependency,
Truth over deception,
Self governance over control,
A global constituency with universal human rights,
As we invest in fair shares and fair trade,
Yielding returns as exchange on ecological investments,
Ushering in a new world paradigm,
Of heart based intelligence inscribed by the Egyptians,
Over the fear that controls,
Are the new roles where citizens become stewards,
Of a rising consciousness of a new earth,
That returns to first principles,
As Eve replants the Garden of Eden,
As a permanent culture
Of peace on earth.