Re: Financial topics
Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2014 2:51 pm
Higgenbotham wrote:The process of destruction is underway in Detroit and this should spread across the G-7 as other urban areas go dark. The disadvantaged majority, when it becomes that, and it is getting close to being a majority, will work off its resentment by smashing and burning with impunity. I predict government control will be nowhere to be found and a Katrina-like state of affairs will exist in most places as they go dark. The muni bond market in the US has on average peaked out in late 2012 and should be the first major US market to go toward zero as city after city collapses. Likewise, not only will the infrastructure of roads, bridges and electrical systems not be maintained or replaced, vandals will rip up whatever they can salvage and cart it away - guard rails, manhole covers, or what have you, and smash up the rest with pick axes and sledgehammers, or destroy what they can't smash up with homemade bombs. When only 10% or less of the population can afford to drive, the other 90% will make sure they can't. I expect some of the destruction to be quite mindless and vengeful. Before the grid goes down due to nuclear accidents or plant shutdowns, it will probably be destroyed by clever folks who wish to get even with their tormentors, as folks are already doing in Detroit. Again, when only 10% of the population can afford full electric, the other 90% will make sure they can't access it either. The G-7 isn't really set up to give everyone free utilities as the Warsaw Pact was, so the collapse in the West from that aspect should be comparatively worse. Likewise, the Russians didn't build their country with African slave labor; the kind of resentments that are harbored here and are causing the demolition of Detroit didn't exist when the Warsaw Pact collapsed.
Detroit’s Water and Sewerage Department has begun turning off the taps of 150,000 residents who are at least two months behind on payments. People are being left without a drop to drink and no ability to bathe or use the toilet. Now a coalition of water and human rights activists has banded together to ask the United Nations to step in and end the disconnections.
Last week, advocates from the Detroit People’s Water Board, Food and Water Watch, Blue Planet Project, and Michigan Welfare Rights Organization submitted a comprehensive report to the U.N.’s special rapporteur that details the dire situation facing folks whose water has been cut off.
“Sick people have been left without running water and working toilets. People recovering from surgery cannot wash and change bandages. Children cannot bathe, and parents cannot cook,” write the report’s authors. And “families concerned about children being taken away by authorities due to lack of water and sanitation services in the home have been sending their children to live with relatives and friends, which has an impact on school attendance and related activities.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-2 ... no-detroit“We really don’t want to shut off anyone’s water, but it’s really our duty to go after those who don’t pay, because if they don’t pay, then our other customers pay for them,” department spokesperson Curtrise Garner told Al Jazeera America.
