{"id":5178,"date":"2011-03-03T00:05:42","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T05:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingottawa.ca\/?p=5178"},"modified":"2013-01-21T09:07:22","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T14:07:22","slug":"versailles-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/03\/versailles-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"Versailles redux"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Standing at the end of the oil plank: have we left it too late to redraw the map of our cities?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

John Maynard Keynes was one of the very few not to celebrate after the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Famously, he opined that the Prime Ministers, Presidents and Generals had just signed on for the next \u2018world war\u2019. He was, of course, entirely correct. The post-war inflation in Germany was largely the result of the onerous reparations the Treaty laid on the losing side; they made Hitler\u2019s bully party attractive to the German electorate, and the Second World War was soon underway.<\/p>\n

The buy-out sweetheart deal for the New York bank and investment brokers will be the Versailles of the next Great Depression. The banker collapse was a tremble in the earth\u2019s crust, a warning signal that there is a real earthquake coming. And what did we do? Nothing but paper the tremor over. There has been no reduction in currency betting, no Tobin Tax, no banker\u2019s reserve funds established, nothing to stop the merger manias and false wealth accumulations. Nothing in short to change anything and the next time the crash comes and it will, it will be much more brutal because this bail out and the trillion dollar military adventures have created an international indebtedness that will prevent another bail out. The system will just crash.<\/p>\n

It gets worse. The \u2018stimulus\u2019 funding associated with this bail out around the world has not been used to bring about a more sustainable local and world infrastructure. We\u2019re still standing on the end of the oil plank. The entire economy is more dependent on oil than it ever has been. People need their cars more than ever because cities have continued to sprawl and sprawl needs oil and cars, like the human needs oxygen.<\/p>\n

The Treaty of Versailles was the great chance the world had at the end of the \u2018war to end all wars\u2019 to re-write the map for the 20th century away from the old toxic national animosities and create new, healing conditions for a more co-operative, conciliatory international environment. Instead Versailles took that chance to heal and split the moment with an axe burying it with a Treaty that sealed in steel the idea – \u2018you are the bad guys (Germany and allies) and \u2018we\u2019re the good guys\u2019. (U.K.\/U.S. and allies); and it spawned a hundred years of ugliness \u2013 starting with the Turkish\/Greek war. The Nazis. The Second War. The Korean. The Israel\/Palestine conflict right up to day.<\/p>\n

The New York bail out will be remembered the same way. It was the great chance the nations of the world had to re-write the economic and environmental conditions which spawned the recession, the housing meltdown, the pension and wage declines. Instead governments chose to spend trillions propping up the very system that caused the recession and then did nothing to change those conditions. Countries like Canada led the way in making sure that no new banker\u2019s reserve tax was instituted, that nothing changed.<\/p>\n

But there is no such thing as \u2018no change\u2019. The concept is foreign to all physics and philosophy. The only thing constant is change, and change will happen. It will just be more explosive, more destructive,\u00a0 and more difficult when it comes.<\/p>\n

photo by Robert Campbell<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7083,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5302],"tags":[556,3041,687,485,3039,3040,1003,3035,3032,2707,3037,794,3033,3034,3038,3036,471,680,725],"class_list":["post-5178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-bank","tag-banker","tag-canada","tag-clive-doucet-on-cities","tag-co-operative","tag-conciliatory-international-environment","tag-germany","tag-hitler","tag-investment-brokers","tag-israel","tag-john-maynard-keynes","tag-new-york","tag-oil","tag-oil-plank","tag-palestinian-territories","tag-robert-campbell","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-usd"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nVersailles redux - 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