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This past weekend I gave a presentation that offered a (Memetic) value-systems analysis approach to the financial crisis to an integrally-informed crowd of about 60 at Boulder Integral in Boulder, CO. This was part of Dr. Don E. Beck’s Spiral Dynamics in Action training series. (Until we have a full description of the color-coded value systems of Spiral Dynamics on this blog, please click here for a quick description (hover your mouse over Interactive Spiral).
After my presentation many audience members came to me expressing their shock and disbelief about the ominous threat that the shadowy global banking system of financial derivatives presents to the very survival of Western culture.
Many requested additional information and I promised to have that available through this blog. Although my presentation was a result of comprehensive research I’ve done since the beginning of the crisis, I was able to find an article on the web that puts the crisis in proper chronology and identifies the major players in it. Since the publishing of that article in late January the derivatives market has grown from $600 Trillion to $685 Trillion today. Click here to read the article.
Since this blog is about where Economics meets Memetics, most articles on the web, TV and in print fail to take into consideration the cultural impact that cheap and unregulated money (the removal of BLUE (ORDER value system vMEME) in the Money/Commerce Spiral) (or lack of oversight in a free markets system) had on accelerating the demise of UNHEALTHY ORANGE (ENTERPRISE vMEME); or best described as Wall Street on Steroids. The events that broke the weakest BLUE link were the attacks of 9/11 that turned this into “the perfect storm”. I compare Bush’s economic team’s reaction to 9/11 to when a truck hits your house, and you turn around and give the keys to the liquor cabinet to the kids (completely unrelated cause and effect). This is precisely what happened when the Fed dramatically lowered interest rates and the rallying call every where turned to: spend, spend, spend or the terrorists win. We had no complex capacities at the monetary or fiscal policy levels to interpret terrorism.  Sophisticated and highly complex economic policies are often made for the long-term and are never designed to turn on a dime. Bush’s team saw everything as it relates to an unplanned war (short-term, reactive and lacking in insight) and all other policies emanating from his administration followed suit. (A dangerous downshift from a heavy, long-term REGULATOR/ORDER BLUE value system to a reactive and systemic fighter FEUDAL RED value system).
The unregulated derivatives market wouldn’t have grown to the size that it is without the flood of cheap and unregulated capital that enabled both, diabolical ORANGE at the highest levels to package these financial weapons of mass destruction, as Warren Buffet calls them and sell them as securities (insured by AIG and rated AAA by S&P (corrupt REGULATOR/ORDER BLUE vMEME)). At the retail level, cheap capital allowed for a PONZI ECONOMY with a RED consumer (spend NOW with NO GUILT) who just borrowed and spend without ever being held accountable by a lender. That same lender made more money from that consumer by finding him a new and bigger credit card, a new and bigger mortgage and sold all of it to an UNHEALTHY ENTERPRISE ORANGE value system of Wall Street again, and they in turn put it into a derivative and sold it back to a wider institutional market all over the world.
Because of the depth and breadth of the damage done to the entire Western financial system by a few but very destructive, highly sophisticated and rarely understood financial engineers (Wall Street UNHEALTHY ENTERPRISE ORANGE value system), we will witness the damage they caused over a prolonged period of time. The Great Depression was a catalyst that propelled most of the US labor force into the industrial age, this atrophy of financial engineering will also act as a new catalyst as it ushers in a new and complete shift in paradigm and value systems. Unlike the Great Depression however the horizon for new discoveries and a shift away from the function of MONEY will take much much longer to crystallize