The answer is quite simple. Stop the wars and end the militaristic insanity. Cutting the Pentagon budget would save every dime we need to save. Close at least half of the bases around the world. It is that simple !!! Then there would be enough money for everything else we need. It is all a question of priorities. It is that simple.

Thank you, Naomi. Return to sender is good advice but I'm afraid the cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river - the cat being what little security we thought we had. No use blaming the money boys and gals. The Iceland volcano, the Gulf gusher, these, curiously, may be harbingers of how our problems may be resolved - we may well be drifting from a modicum of man-made order into natural chaos. Even so, a lot of money still protects a lot more than a little or no money. So even if we're going down the river toward the falls, some people will travel more comfortably than others.
Pete Edler, Stockholm

YES - what happened to supposed G20 country ethics related to fairness?! "...not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price." Well said, Naomi!

The system we live under(the pyramid) where the few reap huge benefits at the expense of the many is what we need to flip over upside down. If we would grow up & take responsibility as citizens instead of playing 'children/parent rulership' these things wouldn't happen. We are just as guilty for these crimes for letting them happen & letting the elitists get away with it while we whine & complain. What are we, still ignorant & stupid vassals & serfs working under feudalism? No we are now, in this age,somewhat more learned & yet we still let these folks, ride this system to our back-breaking sufferage. We need to become good, concerned,infor med active citizens that are involved instead of bitching whiners who squack about the whip but do nothing to stop it or take it away. Overturn the system, call your reps, get involved. If you grow up, get involved and rule yourselves as adults, then you wouldn't live under a system that rules you as children & exploits you,right?
Return 2 U!

Naomi only touched on one of the key issues of the next several decades; energy. Simply put, there are no alternatives to hydrocarbons. Nope. None. No alternative energy resource or combination of alternatives can come close to supplying the 24/7 energy flows we take for granted. The global economy is in crisis and the movers and shakers in the financial sectors know it. The coming energy famine means the end of the perpetual exponential growth paradigm. The signal is the $70/bbl floor in the price of oil. The only way to keep the profits rolling in is for the economy to canabalize itself. Instead of feeding on the labor of the working class, it now feeds on them directly by cutting their access to resources. The snake is dining on its own tail.

What can we do in a game where others set rules that render our personal economic decisions nearly pointless? In the May/June issue of Dollars and Sense magazine, Katherine Sciacchitano traces the history of international economic arrangements from Bretton Woods to the present. She makes it clear that under Reagan and Clinton we traded manufacturing for finance, relying on recycling our debt in dollars for cheap goods from the Global South and a trade deficit. We also got the housing bubble financed largely by foreign investors holding trade deficit dollars they exchanged for mortgage-backed securities.
Sciacchitano points to the need for an alternative to cutting back on government social spending;namely , re-instituting controls on international capital flows, democratizing control of the IMF, and reworking neo-liberal trade agreements like NAFTA. It all seems to come down to reforming the global financial system (which is hard to even understand) or deficit reduction and misery.

We are not powerless. Damn those who say we are. We are not organized - that's the problem. Organize and attack the capitalists where they are the most vulnerable - financially. Choose one company and organize a relentless international boycott until that company is bankrupt - then, pick another. Only then will the rules begin to change.

A two-tiered society is where this will lead
The smell of roses at the top while at the bottom we bleed
At the trough of inequality the elite will still feed
While the test for all the rest is to create a new seed

Folks, we have a problem. It is structural. Historically, we have vested ``legitimacy`` in our police and armed forces.
These governmental branches with a monopoly on the exercise of naked power, the use of force, and physical coercion have been hijacked by corporate-controlled politicians.
Either we, as free citizens, re-take control of these "security" institutions, or else we alter our monopoly-on-force structure, and de-legitimize the use of force against those who demonstrate peacefully for a more equitable socio-economic distribution of public resources.
Something's got to give. Back in the late 1920's even Hitler knew that in order to stage a successsful coup, he had to seek Constitutional "cover."
Seems legal persons, corporations, have learned that lesson only too well...