Few economists are predicting a collapse into another 'Great Depression' such as that experienced by the US during the late 19th Century and the 1930s.
One economist--Paul Krugman--does warn of an extended severe downturn, though, and paints a picture that is more than bleak.
Yet no economists have taken the sun into their economic forecasts.
The sun? Yes, the sun. The activity of the sun not only drives the weather, but to a great extent also drives the world's economies: Farming, fishing, horticulture, solar industries, even the chemical industry and animal husbandry depend on a quiet, predictable sun.
But when the sun acts up, all hell can break loose. It has happened before and it can happen again. And now none other than NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are both warning that the sun may be entering a violent cycle--a period of intense activity that has not been seen by humans for almost 150 years.
The last massive cycle that occurred in 1859 brought catastrophe and caused telegraph lines around the US to burst into flames. [1]
Tens of millions of unemployed workers...will never work again
Paul Krugman recently wrote an OpEd piece for the NY Times. In the article he outlined his thoughts on why the US economy is headed for a third Great Depression. Other economists too see the US economy continuing its free fall into financial oblivion. At best, the recovery policies are not working; at worst, the policy coming from Washington is driving the country into long term financial ruin.
"Tens of millions of unemployed workers...will never work again," Krugman predicts. "We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost--to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs--will nonetheless be immense." [2]
But Krugman's vision of a Long Depression pales by comparison under the light of the stirring sun. The sun can change all those statistics and make a depression--whether long or great--look like a relative nirvana. As our distant ancestors knew, the sun--the life giver--can also be the bringer of mass death.
The day the Earth stood still
In the recent article titled, "Nasa warns solar flares from 'huge space storm' will cause devastation" The Daily Telegraph illustrates the step-by-step destruction of the First World countries. Among all the countries with exposure to solar devastation, the United States is the most susceptible.
As The Daily Telegraph writes, "National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power..."
Experts on the sun are very concerned as they see the sun awaking from its unusually long slumber with a violence unseen for generations. That violence could be in the form of mammoth magnetic storms. Those solar flares hitting the Earth will be like a giant's fist slamming into the fragile electronic technology that runs the world.
"We know it is coming but we don't know how bad it is going to be," Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa's Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. "It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world.
The Nasa scientist and his European counterparts are very concerned that no government has taken steps to protect the infrastructure. Time has almost run out and the worst case scenario would catapult the world from the 21st Century to the 19th Century in the blink of an eye.
"Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the earth that is rapid and like a lightning bolt. That is the solar affect," Fisher added.
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