The points raised are open to various interpretations due to the nature by which money is created today. That is, most of the total money supply worldwide isn't in the form of central bank notes, coins, or paper bills, but numbers in accounts created when mostly commercial banks issue credit. See the chart in this page for details:
http://www.greatcreditcontraction.com/
The largest amount is $800 trillion in unregulated derivatives, part of $1.6 quadrillion in derivatives worldwide.
The purpose of increasing credit is to support increasing production and consumption of goods and services, especially through the use of oil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w6gf3tSGTg
which is needed to fuel ever-increasing demand not only from a rising global population but also demand per capita.
It should not be surprising, then, that two things will result from this system: credit bubbles popping and a resource crunch.
We are now seeing the first of these problems appearing, i.e., fallout from subprime lending. This is part of increasing debt in the U.S. that was caused by government, households, and corporations, as the first sought increasing global power, the second a middle class lifestyle, and the third easy profits. We can expect more bubbles bursting when interest rates for prime lending start resetting, when "recovery" that is being sustained through stimulus packages can no longer go on as interest rates reach zero, and when increasing debt can no longer take place to support economic "growth," 70 pct of which is based on consumer spending, in an economy riddled by four decades of trade deficits.
And what is affecting the U.S. will affect other countries, too, as people begin to cash out and start spending and speculating, as seen in similar problems with regards to real estate in China and the drive for accumulating more debt in order to sustain spending.
The second problem, as seen in terms of peak oil, is already underway. Oil production has remained relatively flat since 2005, and while demand from OECD members has decreased (which is bad news because that means their economies are doing badly) demand is going up in BRIC (which is also bad, because that means demand may soon exceed supply). Renewable energy requires resources that are also affected by the same problem (from lithium to uranium), the EROEI for other sources of energy is not as good as that of oil, and much of the global economy is geared for using oil, around 30 billion barrels needed a year.
We have now received reports from the U.S. military, Lloyd's of London, and even a draft from the German military, warning of peak oil after 2012. At the moment, production is still dropping for Cantarell, and Saudi Arabia has been announcing that no new explorations will be made in order to preserve oil for future generations even as the country is constructing nuclear reactors.
Given such, there is no more need to "challenge" the "lefties" because internal flaws from global capitalism itself is already creating problems: increasing credit needed to finance increasing economic growth, leading to credit bubbles bursting, and increasing production and consumption of resources leading to a resource crunch.
) to use a political scale that is so wide that it doesnt catch the nuances within the west.
