District faces a $1.1 billion structural deficit and thousands of possible teacher layoffs after Christmas…

We review Kilkenomics 2015 where comedy meets economics in Kilkenny, Ireland. They look at black swans, the ‘US Crisis,’ housing bubbles, the inequality of R.I.P. and the rock star economist, Yanis Varoufakis. During the course of the episode, we play

One of the most appealing beliefs about technology–that it will always create more jobs than it destroys–is no longer true. It was true in the first and second industrial revolutions, for one simple reason: the new industrial revolution created vast

The CEO of the world’s biggest shipping company Maersk, Nils Smedegaard Andersen, is with the CEOs of Caterpillar, UPS, Fastenet and other globally-connected companies, in seeing a continuing industrial recession. Andersen told Bloomberg the reason why…

A hard-hitting article was posted on the blog of the prominent liberal-conservative author Roland Tichy, under the headline “China baut, Europa schaut zu” (China Builds, Europe Just Watches”). Written by Fritz Görgen, a former advisor to German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, it makes the same point as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has made in her Nov. 1 statement, that The New Silk Road could become the spark of hope in an utterly destroyed Middle East.

The article initially contrasts China’s future-directed high-speed rail projects in Europe with the struggling EU, caught in the here and now. The author dismisses the U.S. State Department version of the Silk Road as not serious. Then he makes his main argument, saying that if the European nations want to stabilize the Middle East, then they have to have China as a partner.

The author continues:

“Along a logistical artery of this magnitude, industries will be lining up like pearls on a necklace: a magnet for short-term and long-term migrants, who are looking for a better life for themselves and their kin. A digital broadband will be accompanied by a logistical broadband such as the world has never seen. Just a statement of intent by the EU to join this project, even just a statement by its member-states, would change the political climate.

Once the first activities of planning and building appear on mobile screens, many will see the first longed-for silver-linings on the horizon. Such a strategy would improve the situation in the Near East, and would weaken the Islamic State decisively: Where people are gripped by hope and confidence, fundamentalism will cease to find its nourishment. This would be true not only for the Islamic State, which is usually talked about, but also for its relatives, such as Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.”

 

The United States can stop killing and dying, and start building again.

November 2, 2015 brought news of a devastating shock to the United States: The death rate has been steadily rising since 1999 for white Americans 45-54 years old— some 44 million people — and has risen by at least 15% during that time, covering the entire Presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. No such thing happened during the Great Depression of the 1930s, nor at any time in the 20th Century; and no such thing has happened in any other industrial country since World War II.

The causes are overwhelmingly drug and alcohol intoxication, suicide, and liver diseases associated with substance abuse. This “disease of hopelessness,” to quote one rust-belt mayor, is the disease of deindustrialization and constant war. The authors of the study which discovered this shocking reality, say “these Americans are the first to find, in mid-life, that they will not be better off than were their parents.”

Every nation has a mission for mankind; and every nation’s mission for itself is to allow each generation to give way to another which rises higher, and is of greater benefit to future humanity.

The United States’ mission, to save itself, is staring us in the face. We must stop the killing in our name, illegally, of at least hundreds of thousands in wars and drone wars, by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It is illegal and unconstitutional, and it is still being escalated by Obama. He must be removed from office, to stop it.

We should shut down Wall Street’s speculations by re-establishing the Glass-Steagall Act. Then, start building again, by linking up with the most powerful initiative building modern infrastructure to develop the world economy: The China-initiated ‘New Silk Road’ projects across Eurasia by land and sea. We should usher this into the United States by high-speed rail across the Bering Strait and down to the U.S. West Coast; and build out a high-speed rail grid to match China’s 11,000 miles already operating.

America should accept responsibility for the huge crisis of refugees in Europe created by Obama’s and Bush’s Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan wars — by taking a lead in building the ‘New Silk Road’ into the Mideast. As a German author’s article put it yesterday,

“Just a statement of intent … to join this project would change the political climate. Once the first activities of planning and building appear, many will see the first longed-for silver-linings on the horizon. Such a strategy would improve the situation in the Near East, and would weaken the Islamic State decisively: Where people are gripped by hope and confidence, fundamentalism will cease to find its nourishment.”

So will the “disease of hopelessness” cease in the United States.

I want to help build this new perspective.