What Northern Rock and every other lender that is busily foreclosing fails to understand is that the sheer volume of foreclosures feeds the ever-widening economic black hole by further depressing property values, which in turn further depresses the value of the securities backed by interests in the properties, which in turn reduces the Asset side of their Balance Sheets, which ends up (1) reducing their Capital, and their ability to make new loans. Since banks make money by lending money, ultimately Northern Rock and every other lending bank will have expenses (of staffing and, of course, of foreclosures) but no income.

The only way out of the death spiral is to STOP FORECLOSING. This is counter-intuitive for bankers used to normal conditions. BUT WE ARE NO LONGER IN NORMAL CONDITIONS. Operating as though things were normal is INSANE. If a lunatic were dangerous to himself, most societies would restrain him. Bankers also need to be restrained for their own good — and for the good of many national economies.

In the U.S. the sheer volume of foreclosures seems to require a moratorium of at least 5 years — with a disclosed system to allow foreclosures on the properties subject to the moratorium to proceed at a very slow trickle — in order to allow some semblance of normal market forces to re-establish themselves.

Davos delegate comment: George Soros

Well said Craig and very interesting comment Paul. Now you’re going to make me go research floating cities. When global warming really occurs and if the oceans do rise to levels we have not seen for millions of years, I wouldn’t mind living on one of these floating cities.

Get rid of the FED and the United Stats Government start printing it’s own money why borrow from these users when we don’t have to. The FED is a not a government bank.
Hello?
Any thoughts? Huh any?

The world lacks anything like the “frontier” it still had in the 19th century. All places and resources are effectively bought up and owned by someone.

AS false as some of the investment mechanism of the past 20 years were - some derivatives like the options based on market performance alone - they at least made money move. We were an economy that had to “make work” to keep the machine rolling and to keep the population alive. How different from the situation the world was in when it was able to develope vast new territories (unfortunately at the expense of the indigenous peoples) and was able to create real wealth based on increased production.

But we still have a vast resource that is in terrible condition and needs to be restored. The oceans. They are 3/4 of the earth’s surface and may occupy somewhat more in time.

The landscape of most countries on this planet is very thoroughly utilized and is even over utilized in many places. It is not a difficult task to build new cities on the water. Some countries - Holland in particular - already have contingency plans for floating towns in case Global warming should do it’s worst. They’re designing rafts to float more or less conventional structures.

New development on water has many great advantages. They could serve as models of contained communities for habitation and occupation. Why would mankind send people to space colonies when they have not yet demonstrated that they can live in such strict quarantine from any natural environment. In space there is only “inside”. “Outdoors” means death. Ocean life is not as inhospitable.

They could be sited in the more temperate zones of the planet, and could augment isolated island communities that might themselves suffer under a severe global warming sea level rise. They could take pressure form population growth in areas - like the drying deserts of Northeast Africa, or vast populations as in India. They could serve as outposts for the monitoring and rehabilitation of the seriously damaged ocean eco systems and might in fact not be exploiters of that system themselves but careful managers of it.

There are hundreds of thousands of citations in any online search that will wield information on “Ocean Floating Cities” It’s not a crackpot idea or even very difficult to accomplish. In fact - it tends to look like the natural, safe and most agreeable place to live. I have no doubt that if they were built to be as affordable as life “on the prairies” once was - they would be very attractive to peoples from many very populous countries now.

And building that is water based does not require the high costs of a piece of land to put it on and unlike land-based buildings it is never fixed in place. When buildings and people cannot be trapped to a fixed place on the ground - there can be no “slums” or areas of physical decline and abandonment. A city of deep or shallow draft “rafts” can be rearranged to grow and to perpetually adapt to changing demographics. There is no limit to their size either.

There principal activities could be food production and for that they should be inexpensive to occupy and the home first and foremost to people who now find it difficult to do that anymore on the land. They could do this with contained aquaculture and without recourse to trawling or other direct exploitation of the seas.

The ocean is the natural place for vast development. Even cities - and one needn’t visualize development patterns very different from land-based development - merely buoyant. That is not that difficult either when one holds in mind that a typical big box stores one finds in any suburban shopping mall - if they had been made buoyant would not displace more than a few feet of water. A typical wood frame house would displace even less. Water is rather heavy and building can be amazingly light. They could make use of petroleum-based plastics rather than use oil as fuel.

They could also be built to utilize wave motion, wind motion, solar gain and gas from waste decomposition. They could migrate or they could stay more or less stationary. They could create lifestyles that were low energy consuming to start and could actually eliminate the need for combustion of any type of fuel for their energy needs (with the exception of gas from organic decomposition.

They could be built and lived in according to a new paradigm which they would define to utilize energy and resource sustainably and they would have no need for infrastructure such a roads or rails. The natural and historically easiest way to ship heavy freight has always been by water.

We shouldn’t just try to fix the problems on land but to relieve the burden on the land and also have the joy of creating entirely new and fresh communities on the oceans. The natural home for some of the most far-fetched and large sized land based structures is the ocean. Does anyone remember Paolo Solari?) All of the human population could hypothetically live in vast floating cities and it would require GPS to locate them at all on the high seas. It’s and enormous unoccupied area. And we use it very primitively now and might even be killing it. The planet actually has three times the area mankind currently occupies.

Davos Files Administrator,

Progress will not occur by implementing the North American Union. The system is rotton to the core and needs to be gutted.
Common sense dictates an end to War immediately and a tack towards Global survival as a priority for the species but not through Earth Government, corporocracy, etc.

Use the United Nation’s statistics to end World Hunger and devote resources to enviromental, and energy concerns. Outlaw banking as it exists ..
This is not a cyclic normal event of finance..it has been done by plan.
Simple math suggests that it would only cost a few hundred billion to end War and Hunger on this planet.
Bend your fabulous economic prowess towards that end for a change. Use all your skill and take some pride in your fiancial wizardry…
Quit living on credit to support military budgets.
Canada especially…Shame on you!
Just cut the miltary spending out of your budget from 2006. Or do you absolutly have to spend that $490.billion you intend to waste allready on Public Safety and Soldiers.
Cut the Chaff….quit funding Psychiatry and War.

Davos can do nothing. We should look at people who gather there. Those are the people who led the world economy to current horrendous situation, notwithstanding their given power to go the other way. Davos just helps to give participants faulse perception that they are the elites who are capable to steer the world. If they do really still want to meet, why don’t they meet at a simple ballroom of a local hotel in the cold field of Michigan, not at luxury resort hotel of Switzerland? Then they will recognoize what is going on.

The powers that be are not interested in anything that delegitimizes how things have been done. So regardless of what I write nothing will change. Global fertility is down drastically. Bee populations are at critical levels. Aquatic species have been demolished. We are at the doorsteps of human extinction. There are lots of good places to spend money. But we want to spend our cash on infrastructure. My idea is to pretend everything will be fine in a couple of years, tell people to be more confident and to ignore all the negativity. Just ignore people with strange notions of how things should be.