Guest Post: No More Industrial Revolutions, No More Growth?

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog, The common feature of the transformative technologies of the 20th and 21st centuries is that they were one-offs that cannot be duplicated. What if the engines of global growth that worked for 65 years (since 1945) have not just stalled but broken down? The primary "engines" have been productivity gains from industrialization, real estate development and expansion of consumption based on the continual expansion of debt and leverage--in short-hand, financialization.  The Status Quo around the globe has responded to the obvious endgame of financialization (the 2008 financial crisis) by doing more of what has failed: expanding credit and leverage, flooding the global economy with liquidity (money available for borrowing), credits and subsidies for real estate development and a near-religious belief in "the next...