crises

Sometimes while waiting for God's promises to come to pass, we messed up things and go into so many troubles, but God__ mercy has never failed in bringing us out of them all.

People will come to test and divide us, but, as long as we keep compassion in our hearts for others, they won't win.

Let's stop kidding ourselves that Greek debt is the Euro's key problem. With Greece gone, who's next ?

they that fail to recognize, take and and learn the lessons of discomfort well, meet the comforts of life and still live in discomfort

Ninety-nine per cent of traditional English literature concerns people who never have to worry about money at all. We always seem to be watching or reading about emotional crises among folk who live in a world of great fortune both in matters of luck and money; stories and fantasies about rock stars and film stars, sporting millionaires and models; jet-setting members of the aristocracy and international financiers.

The present convergence of crises___n money, energy, education, health, water, soil, climate, politics, the environment, and more___s a birth crisis, expelling us from the old world into a new.

This malignant persistence since September 11th is the biggest surprise of all. In previous decades, sneak attacks, stock-market crashes, and other great crises became hinges on which American history swung in dramatically new directions. But events on the same scale, or nearly so, no longer seem to have that power; moneyed interests may have become too entrenched, elites too self-seeking, institutions too feeble, and the public too polarized and passive for the country to be shocked into fundamental change.

Why is it that crisis pushes me to my own devices when those devices are frequently the very things that produced my crisis in the first place?

Shall I make you a cup of tea? He asked. It was the classic response to crisis practiced throughout these islands__n England, Scotland, and elsewhere. Emotional turmoil, danger, even disaster could be faced with far greater equanimity if the kettle was switched on. War has been declared! There__ been a major earthquake! The stock market has collapsed! Oh really? Let me put the kettle on_.

Ultimately, we are much more addicted than the junkie because we are responsible for not only our own demise, but the breakdown of the entire natural world. There is no other appropriate response to a situation this grave, this utterly overwhelming, than powerlessness. It has taken countless generations to arrive in this predicament; a solution cannot arise overnight. It will take work. It will take time.

Beyond the speculative and often fraudulent froth that characterizes much of neoliberal financial manipulation, there lies a deeper process that entails the springing of __he debt trap_ as a primary means of accumulation by dispossession. Crisis creation, management, and manipulation on the world stage has evolved into the fine art of deliberative redistribution of wealth from poor countries to the rich. I documented the impact of Volcker__ interest rate increase on Mexico earlier. While proclaiming its role as a noble leader organizing __ail-outs_ to keep global capital accumulation on track, the US paved the way to pillage the Mexican economy. This was what the US Treasury__all Street__MF complex became expert at doing everywhere. Greenspan at the Federal Reserve deployed the same Volcker tactic several times in the 1990s. Debt crises in individual countries, uncommon during the 1960s, became very frequent during the 1980s and 1990s. Hardly any developing country remained untouched, and in some cases, as in Latin America, such crises became endemic. These debt crises were orchestrated, managed, and controlled both to rationalize the system and to redistribute assets. Since 1980, it has been calculated, __ver fifty Marshall Plans (over $4.6 trillion) have been sent by the peoples at the Periphery to their creditors in the Center_. __hat a peculiar world_, sighs Stiglitz, __n which the poor countries are in effect subsidizing the richest.

Had history been democratic in its ways, there would have been no farming and no industrial revolution. Both leaps into the future were occasioned by unbearably painful crises that made most people wish they could recoil into the past.

Regular crises perpetuate the past by reinvigorating cycles which started long ago. In contrast, (capital-C) Crises are the past's death knell. They function like laboratories in which the future is incubated. They have given us agriculture and the industrial revolution, technology and the labour contract, killer germs and antibiotics. Once they strike, the past ceases to be a reliable predictor of the future and a brave new world is born.

If where we are now and whatever we are going through does not motivate us to leave this world better than the way we met it, we are in this world for wrong reasons.

Problem can get bigger or smaller, it all depends on how we view it individually.

Nothing could have been more imprudent or more natural than this reply. It reflected the ecstasy inspired by great crises.

In your walk with Christ, you shall meet crises, but, when crises arise, remember Christ!