This may sound a bit retrograde,or even corny and old fashioned, but real economics can only be founded on an agricultural system. This is the lesson that I have learned from the current crisis. We all know that green plants fix carbon and convert it into food which we can eat, even in the event of a drought or flood we can still rely on foodstocks. Investments in stock markets, on the other hand, generate more money for reinvestment, in the event of a crash, everything goes bust, and we all know that human beings cant survive on junk bond certificates. Subsidies by the US and the EU over the past few decades ensured that small farmers across the globe lost their livelihoods to the big names in industrial agriculture. Now the US is suffering for its protectionist policy. I am not religious or moral, but i can see that there is a lesson in this for all of us, it is about pride, suppression of the weak by the strong and the eventual payback that restores the equilibrium of things. We need to be realistic about long term growth, in fact we need to reinvent economics to ensure long term sustainability and equity of distribution. Until this is done, the economic world will experience crisis after crisis until it finally collapses. The real solution lies, not in adressing the problem at hand, it lies in understanding the meaning of humanity and nurturing the human spirit.
