Appendix

8. Ibid. 9. Torstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership, Business Enterprise in Recent

Times: Te Case of America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction

Publishers, 1997 [1923]), p. 84. 10. R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New York, NY:

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1954 [1926]), p. 235. 11. Morris Berman, Why America Failed, p. 24. 12. Randolph Bourne, “Trans-national America” in Olaf Hansen,

Te Radical Will: Randolph Borne Selected Writings, 1911–1918 (New York, NY: Urizen Books, 1977), p. 264. 13. Morris Berman, Why America Failed, p. 66. 14. Jones, Te New Social Face of Buddhism, p. 27.

Stock Market Bubble

Te Standard & Poor’s Index representing a broad segment of the corporate sphere shows stocks infated signifcantly above the long-term trend. If the markets were to return to trend, which is popularly referred to as a correction, this would mean a collapse—about a 1000-point drop or roughly 39% (Fig. A.1).

The Housing Market Bubble

Te Case Shiller U.S. Housing Market Index representing 20 major metropolitan areas, shows housing prices signifcantly above the longterm trend. If the markets were to return to trend with a correction, this would mean the markets would tank showing a fall in the index from its current level of 204 to collapse to about 160, or roughly 22% (Fig. A.2).

© Te Editor(s) (if applicable) and Te Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 J. Magnuson, Financing the Apocalypse, Palgrave Insights into Apocalypse Economics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04720-7

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Figure A.1 S&P 500 Index, 1980–2018 (Source S&P 500 Historical data, https:// www.google.com/search?q=s%26p500+historical+chart&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS798US798&oq=s%26P500+hi&aqs=chrome.3.0j69i57j0l4.10349j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8. Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission)

The Federal Reserve Asset Bubble

To rescue Wall Street from its troubles, the Federal Reserve embarked on a buying spree of Mortgage-backed securities, government debt, and other securities. Its holdings of assets soared from about $800 billion in 2007 to nearly $4.5 trillion a decade later. To do this it created about $3.5 trillion dollars out of thin air. If the Fed were to try to unwind its holdings of these assets and return to trend, it would have to reverse that process and dump about $3 trillion of these back on the markets. Such a move would crash the market and precipitate a global fnancial meltdown (Fig. A.3).

Figure A.2 S&P Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, 1987–2018 (Source Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and Standard and Poors, S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA)

Figure A.3 Federal Reserve Total Assets (x trillion) (Source St. Louis Federal Reserve, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=WALCL,TLAACBW027SBOG,#0)

Figure A.4 Atmospheric carbon dioxide, 1975–2018 (parts per million) (Source National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Climate Change: CO2Breaks Record in 2017, https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/ climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide)

The Carbon Dioxide Bubble

According to scientist James Hansen, it is estimated that the world can limit the worst efects of climate change by bringing the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide to below 350 parts per million from its current levels of over 400. Tis number was considered the key to avoiding the climate change “tipping point” beyond which the global climate condition moves from stable to unstable. Humans have already past that point and there is no turning back (Fig. A.4).

The Inequality Bubble

Te Gini Index is a measurement of income distribution (see Chapter 6). Te higher the index number, the more unequal the distribution of income becomes for the population. Te long-term trend is for an

Figure A.5 Gini Index for the United States, 1967–2015 (Source Federal Reserve District Bank of St. Louis, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_ id=212325&updated=2000 and Luxembourg income study, https://www.lisadatacenter.org/our-data/lis-database/)

increasingly wide chasm of separating the wealthy from the rest of the population. Given the current political climate, the trend will continue and shows no sign of ever returning to a condition of equitable income distribution. Tis trend is certain to cause social instability at some point (Fig. A.5).