Cue the Apocolypse? Moody’s Cuts Credit Ratings of 15 Big Banks

This isn't good news that was just sent by an NY Times News Alert:

Moody’s Cuts Credit Ratings of 15 Big Banks
Moody’s Investors Service has lowered the ratings of some of the world’s largest banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.
The ratings agency said late Thursday that the banks were downgraded because their long-term prospects for profitability and growth are shrinking.

If Greece is going through a Cuba-like meltdown, what will be their chosen route forward?

I'm reading this article on the NY Times website, With Work Scarce in Athens, Greeks Go Back to the Land, and it's making be think of the meltdown in Cuba and as well makes me think of the prediction many are making of a societal collapse from one or more of a variety of causes:  stresses induced from climate change, stresses induced from peak oil, or stresses induced from inability of the financial system to maintain itself.  The thing in Greece is billed as a result of financial system problems, too much debt in Europe causing serious problems in Europe's financial systems.

The NY Times article follows some Grecians who are turning back to agricultural work in order to survive.

The collective inability to remember the past may have caused us to forget what happened in Cuba not too long ago.  Or maybe the way Cuba has been spun in the media, that they're just an evil dictatorial communist country, has made Americans unable to properly understand what happened in Cuba.

Many see the events which unfolded in Cuba as a dress rehearsal of what will happen to the rest of us due to one or more of the causes I listed earlier.

Cuba's meltdown was artificially induced when their patron, the Soviet Union, itself collapsed and was unable to keep propping up Cuba.  Another aspect of Cuba's meltdown was the U.S. led embargo of that country, which prevented many countries (the ones who want to stay on positive terms with the U.S.) to forming any relationship with Cuba.

As a result they lost access to international financial markets, and to supplies of oil.  Under the influence of the Soviet Union they'd developed a dependency on oil-driven machines to drive everything, and having lost access to oil the machines ground to a halt.  In particular this hit the agricultural system hardest because the tractors etc could no longer run.  Also their agriculture was focused on exports and not for local self-reliance, and Cuba was not feeding itself.

Cuba is spun in Western media as a dictatorship but the path Cuba chose to navigate their meltdown was not a top down dictatorial YOU MUST DO THIS sort of response.  Instead the country took a grass roots community centric response, where each village or each neighborhood was organized for local resilience.  Every nook and cranny of Cuba's cities were converted into community gardens growing healthy organic local produce so that Cuba could become self-sufficient.

An excellent documentary movie that shows how Cuba navigated their collapse is "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil".  The problems they faced are clearly described such as how Cubans collectively lost 20-30 lbs or more over a period of a few years.  The country went from being as modern as the Soviet Union allowed them, to literally overnight forcibly reverted to the way our great grandparents lived.  (One of my Great-Grandmothers lived in a dugout in Western Kansas .. Dugouts were, well, a hole in the ground)

I haven't read too much on what's happening in Greece but the NY Times article linked above sounds eerily like the period Cuba survived, and depicted in The Power of Community.

What isn't covered in The Power of Community is that Cuba wasn't the only country to undergo an imposed collapse.  Another prime example is North Korea and it appears that Greece will be a modern example.  Hence what I asked in the title of this piece is, what path will Greece be taking.

North Korea with their imposed collapse took a different path than Cuba did.  They went for the actual top down ruthless dictatorship with a reliance on the iron fist of the military crushing any dissent.  There's been a lot of news coverage about North Korea so I won't go over the details here.

The point is to demonstrate - artificially induced collapse has happened in several countries around the world.  It happened to Cuba, they choose a path of grass roots community oriented self reliance.  It happened in North Korea and they chose a path of iron fisted military dominance.

What will Greece choose?

BTW many of us think that the U.S. is not safe or immune from this sort of thing happening to us.  What will the U.S. choose when(if) it happens here? 

BTW I'm really fond of the Transition Town movement for the reasons just described.

Urban Danger, alerting to fragility of urban areas and complete collapse, or sheer alarmism?

There's a lot of people predicting a collapse of our society. Perhaps it's peak oil, perhaps it's the fragile infrastructure and just in time delivery of supplies being disrupted, perhaps it's a global pandemic or disease, or whatever, there are plenty of possible causes. Urban Danger is an online movie talking about the dangers and telling us to be afraid and telling us to move to the country and get an off-grid homestead going.

What they say is:

Danger is stalking the city.
Like it or not, its a fact... life in urban areas is about to radically change due to developments most people are not aware of. Find out what the issues are and what YOU can do to not only survive but also thrive.
Far from a survivalist film, Urban Danger takes a common-sense look at our roots, finding practical solutions to problems we face today. You will meet many people from all walks of life who show you the common-sense preparations they are making for difficult times ahead. And in the process, they have found a superior quality of life. They have found what real living is all about.

The thrust of this movie is that the infrastructure of American Society is fragile, and can easily be disrupted. Cities are more dangerous than rural areas because in a rural area you can grow your own food, run your own solar electricity system, store up wood for the winter, can your own food, etc.

In other words this movie series is selling us on survival fear, and that we'd better go off the grid and learn how to live without money in order to survive.

Maybe this is fearism hyping up false fears that appear real. Or maybe it's a real honest warning of something that's likely to be happening in the not too distant future. How can we predict the future?

Trailer:

Part 1:

Begins with pictures of the Great Depression.. "no money" etc. It was a tough life, no money, little food, etc.

It was worse in the cities. Out in the country people living on farms were more self sufficient.

Today a dramatically smaller percentage of people live in the country on farms. Farming today is dependent on heavy machinery and fossil fuels. If the food supply system gets disrupted store shelves will empty out in about three days.

In other words they're making the case that our society is extremely susceptible to immediate collapse at any time of disruption.

Part 2:

Unfortunately food supply is not the only problem. The cities are going to be targets for terrorism which isn't just big bomb type weapons, but bioterrorism.

Again they're focusing on rural areas as the safe places - rural areas aren't where terrorists are going to strike, instead they'll strike in urban areas.

Part 3:

The electricity grid is fragile and can be disrupted. Think of all the electrical stuff we depend on - if the flow of electricity is cut off it'll disrupt everything.

Very vulnerable to terrorists - supposedly a dozen substations in the U.S. so critical to "the grid" that if those substations were taken out it would blacken the whole grid without recovery in any reasonable time. Take this as a major disruption and the whole system falls apart.

It would involve what they call a "black start" which is to restart the grid without electricity. Supposedly the grid elements can't themselves restart unless there is an electricity supply to get them running.