Found a new blog yesterday, “The End of Capitalism“. It will blow you away. There is no doubt some scaremongering and marxist rhetoric in there, but also some eye-opening realities about the house of cards that is the global financial system. The usurious Western form of lending with compound interest is little more than slavery for many people. There’s an interesting narrative about political/corporate elites causing bubbles and crashes in order to extract wealth from the middle class, which sounds plausible. Here’s a taste:

• Death of the American Empire « The End of Capitalism
  I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. (Thomas Jefferson, US President; 1743 – 1826)

  America is dying. It is self-destructing and bringing the rest of the world down with it.
  The “sub-prime mortgage collapse” obfuscates the real reason. By attribution to failed mortgages, at least something ‘real’ can be blamed for the carnage. The problem is, this is myth. The magnitude of this fiscal collapse happened because it was all based on hot air.

  The banking industry renamed insurance betting as ‘credit default swaps’ and risky gambling wagers were called ‘derivatives’. Financial managers and banking executives were selling the ultimate con to the entire world, akin to the snake-oil salesmen from the 18th century but this time in suits and ties. And by October 2009 it was a quadrillion-dollar (that’s $1,000 trillion) industry that few could understand.

  Propped up by false hope, America is now falling like a house of cards.

  (tags: economy)

The most Christian response to this turmoil, I believe, is the grassroots community solution: Distributism.

UPDATE: Servant’s Thoughts has published a very good summary of Distributism/Distributivism — an economic approach championed by Hillaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, and Catholic teaching. Well worth a look. Thanks for the link Frank!