Readers of my articles will recall that I have warned as far back as December 2006, that the global banks will collapse when the Financial Tsunami hits the global economy in 2007. And as they say, the rest is history. Quantitative Easing (QE I) spearheaded by the Chairman of Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke (left) delayed the inevitable demise of the fiat shadow money banking system slightly over 18 months. That is why in November of 2009, I was so confident to warn my readers that by the end of the first quarter of 2010 at the earliest or by the second quarter of 2010 at the latest, the global economy will go into a tailspin. The recent alarm that the US economy has slowed down and in the words of Bernanke "the recent pace of growth is less vigorous than we expected" has all but vindicated my analysis. He warned that the outlook is uncertain and the economy "remains vulnerable to unexpected developments". Obviously, Bernanke's words do not reveal the full extent of the fear that has gripped central bankers and the financial elites that assembled at the annual gathering at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But, you can take it from me that they are very afraid. -Global Research/Matthias Chang

Dominant Social Theme: Don't look now but things are not yet where they should be. A little prayer is all that's needed.

Free-Market Analysis: Here at the Daily Bell, we long ago adopted the position that the Great Recession of the late first-decade of the 2000s is nothing like previous economic downturns. Several years ago we came to the conclusion that this crisis marked the unraveling of the current dollar-denominated fiat money system and that honest money would rise in value substantially as the public's confidence eroded.

At the very least, the Journal is guilty of extremely uninformative and selective editing. One could also read this article, however, as an attempt to cast the Rothbardian school as irrelevant while propping up the Hayekian school as the "respectable" kind of Austrian Economics. This would be perfectly in line with the Wall Street Journal's generally conservative slant, and the Journal has shown itself to be a friend to neither Ron Paul nor any other serious or trenchant critic of the current kleptocracy. As Wenzel notes, the failure to mention Mises is odd at best. If there is a deliberate effort to obscure the importance of Mises or Rothbard, it is also certainly unlikely that a mere beat reporter sent to interview Boettke would insist on such a thing. Such a policy is far more likely to originate at the editorial level, where it can be absolutely guaranteed that a discussion of Austrian Economics will mention neither Mises nor Paul nor Rothbard nor anyone else who is presently central to the real-life political milieu surrounding the Austrian School today. ... So either the Journal is incompetent, or it has deliberately tried to disparage Ron Paul's Rothbard wing of the libertarian movement. I suspect the latter, although the former is always a possibility. None of this should surprise anyone who is familiar with the debate between the Hayekian branch and the Rothbardian branch. Twenty-eight years ago, Lew Rockwell was told in no uncertain terms that his efforts would be sabotaged by the existing libertarian establishment if he tried to name his new institute after Ludwig von Mises (left) who was labeled as "too radical." Rothbard's eventual inclusion in the effort only solidified the animosity toward what is now the Rothbard school. So ... the first question that crosses my mind with controversies like this is: "Should I even care about this?" – The Rothbardian School / LewRockwell.com/Ryan McMaken

Dominant Social Theme: Ignore 'em and they will go away.

Free-Market Analysis: We are returning to the "Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes" Wall Street Journal article to answer the question that Ryan McMaken asks in his fine article at LewRockwell.com (and then answers judiciously as well). We are returning as well because this is an incredibly important issue from our point of view a periodical that analyzes power-elite dominant social themes from a free market perspective. We do have a slightly different take on the answer; in fact we feel, collectively, a tad passionate about the article from a libertarian standpoint.

FDIC sees rule early next year on dismantling firms ... U.S. regulators aim to have a final rule early next year that will lay out how the government can dismantle financial giants if they are headed toward collapse, bank regulator Sheila Bair (left) said on Tuesday. Bair, who heads the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, the agency that will be responsible for this resolution authority, said the regulators will first issue an interim rule that will be a vehicle for getting more detailed comments. – Reuters

Dominant Social Theme: No bailouts anymore!

Free-Market Analysis: So now the government is to step in and undo companies that are "headed" for collapse. This seems to us yet another step forward into a kind of bizarre alternative universe where free-markets are controlled and free-enterprise is managed. Anyone who has lived more than a few decades on the planet in a Western regulatory democracy must know at this point that regulatory authorities consistently fail. A larger dominant social theme here is, "We just have to keep trying until we get it right."

Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium ... If Barack Obama (left) were to marshal America's vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years. Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal ... Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal – named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us Thor's day or Thursday – produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week. Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. "It's the Big One," said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering. "Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it's essentially free. You don't have to deal with uranium cartels," he said. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: Just another energy solution?

Free-Market Analysis: We have lost track of the new energy solutions being offered on the Internet, which is certainly large energy companies' worst nightmare. Solutions abound from cars that run on water or natural gas to more obscure and less immediately comprehensible presentations (many on Youtube) that involve the Universe's deeper "secrets." None of these seem to make an impact somehow, though at least a few of them are evidently and obviously workable, even on a mass scale, if given the chance. The dominant social theme here seems to be "don't look now," as the major media gives alternative energy short shrift unless it is the green kind.

For most of human history it used to be standard practice for parents to insist that their children not only live by principles the parents have found to be sound but also to adopt all sorts of practices of dress, play, work, taste and so forth that they approve of. Father was a barber so son, too, had to be; mother raised four children, so daughter, too, must bear the same number. Parents liked living by the sea, so the kids too must follow suite. Indeed, if a child had another idea, all hell tended to break loose. And those around the family who didn't conform were deemed to be weird or inferior or just plain different in that sort of way that 's quite intolerant of such a thing.

In some cases this was a useful practice but more often it was a matter of habit, nothing much else. And since there are some matters concerning which one size does indeed fit all – such as certain ways of dealing with other people, certain ways to governing one's life, and certain ways of setting up a human community, e.g., honestly, prudently, and justly, respectively – the idea has always been somewhat palatable. In nutrition, medicine, engineering, farming and so on some ways clearly are better than others no matter who is doing it.