Academic Reflections on the State of the Global Economy

                I thought I should take this opportunity to write out something that has been on my mind as of late.  I truly have no excuse not to write other than idyllic sloth. Since and even before the North American Mortgage Crisis of 2008(2008NAMC) I had subscribed to a fringe group of apocalyptic millennials religiously adhering to a belief that a crude oil shortage and crisis was imminent.  I won’t say that I no longer believe in the doctrine but rather that I - like most ppl - push it off into the background of my worries.

                I will confess that even after I returned to my academic community in May of 2007 my direct experience with the mortgage industry and thus my insights into the 2008NAMC was the reference point around which my new studies organized themselves. This remained unchanged for quite some time and in truth I must think very hard if I am to pinpoint exactly when I broke out of its grip.

                As I think on this, the breakthrough will have to be attributed to a combination of two events. The first was my decision to take a sabbatical in Kerala. I had planned the trip for quite some time but things really got going after I booked my ticket. I boarded an Emirates Airlines Boeing 777 bound for Kochin via Abu Dhabi from Pearson on January 27, 2012. I arrived in Kochin and caught a taxi to my apartment in Ernakulam after a twenty-four hour flight. The second event is so miniscule that it would certainly be overlooked by anyone trying to identify the causes of my apparent change of mind.

                When I was packing I was truly disorganized and scatter brained. I wanted to simultaneously take everything and nothing. The exigencies of the moment, however, rectified my human failing and crystalized the necessities at the last minute. At first I had elaborate plans to catch up on my fiction. I had ambitious vacation plans to hunker down by the beach and at last treat myself to Hemingway and Rushdie, and even finish Crime and Punishment. Oddly enough, in the panic of the moment I elected instead to pack John Tomlinson’s Globalization and Culture, Tarak Barkawi’s Globalization and War and even most surprisingly Ellen Wood’s Empire of Capital.

                There is a recurring instinct or need for me to make a claim or a prediction with regard to the 2008 Mortgage Crisis. As I mentioned above the urgency of this need faded into the background as I focused on my health and experienced moderate pain relief. I had adopted the default position that my obsessing on:

1. the international price of crude (WCP), 

2. the 2003 US Invasion of Iraq (USII), and

3. the 2008 Mortgage Crisis (MC)

was caused by my medical issues and were therefore not backed up by the facts.

                However, in my fine health and intellectual serenity I have no excuse to utterly neglect an academic treatment of the phenomena noted above. The question I want to address intellectually and academically is: were they related and if so what are the conclusions that would follow as it relates to the future? In other words: what does the future hold after the 2003 US Invasion of Iraq, the doubling of world crude oil prices, and the 2008 Mortgage Crisis?

                My intuitive conspiracy theory apparatus does its own thing and has joined these phenomena into the following conspiracy. It asserts that the 2003 USII was a pre-emptive move to safeguard the economic interests of the US in its contest and increasing vulnerability to China. It puts forth that the US conspired to artificially inflate the WCP to increase the cost of inputs for Chinese industry. This would therefore be a drain on China’s FX and simultaneously make its industry less competitive. Broadly speaking, the overall objective of this conspiracy is to stunt and hobble China’s meteoric economic rise and thus subject it to US control. Ofcourse, if you are invested in US capital then you have an interest in the above-noted outcome. The fear if you are one such as noted above is that the mission will not succeed and doubts as to the security of one’s investments in the US in the short and long term.

                Again I return to you to address widespread anxieties about the North American and global economy. There is prevalent dissatisfaction and doubt in the vigor of the state of the economy despite the Panglossianism of the media. I am seated here in some discomfort as I could easily divert my interests into more immediate forms of instant gratification. So you see, I am not here to achieve some sort of psychological catharsis by way of literary and logical exercise. The only compulsion driving my current intellectual activity is the dissatisfaction with the dearth of high calibre scholarship on the phenomena mentioned above.

                The most widespread anxiety on the minds of North American investors is simply the question or instinctive panic that the recession will become a permanent depression. In other words, GDP will no longer grow. The allure of the historical precedents such as the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the rise of Totalitarianism in Europe evokes fear that the 2008 Mortgage Crisis is the twenty-first century equivalent of Black Monday. I suppose it is only prudent to speculate that the coming future will be a repeat of history. So, the unarticulated fear is that, “Yes, this is not a recession it is only the beginning of the Second Great Depression which will lead inexorably to a global political and social upheaval, in other words: World War III – The Nuclear Holocaust.”

                 In plain investor speak the prevailing common wisdom is that 2012 is not a good time to buy simply because acquisitions are likely to depreciate and thus lose us money. This is the fear that is retarding investment and an economic rebound. The governments of the world are doing what they can to ‘stimulate’ the economy by printing more money and the fear is that this will lead to hyperinflation and conclude with the loss of confidence in currency notes, and state institutions. As I said, this is the unspoken fear. It is little addressed in the mass media but it is the prevalent fear of the business and intellectual elite. Despite the spending spree of state treasuries the only real way that the economy will truly rebound is if these captains of industry put their fears to rest and retire the intuition that a Second Great Depression is imminent.

                There are reasons why I refer to the financial crisis of 2008 as the Mortgage Crisis and not the Housing Crisis or the Sub-prime Crisis in tune with the mass media. The simple reason is that from my vantage point what went sour were a lot of mortgage deals. I worked for a firm whose job it was to securitize loan disbursements by ensuring that in the event of default legal title would pass to the lender – our clients. Realtors, for similar reasons may refer to the same crisis as the Housing Crisis and mortgage brokers as the Sub-prime Crisis.

                The summer of 2008 is truly a date that simultaneously intersected both my routinely commercial office space, the halls of government, and the news studios. It stands out because the fortunes of my industry and profession rose and fell in tandem with the fortunes of the business and political worlds. My firm prospered from 2002 to 2008 as did most North American firms. My firm has struggled to make ends meets from 2008 to 2012 – the present day. The majority of firms in North America are in the same boat.

                2002 saw an almost compound rate of growth in mortgage lending, refinances, and second mortgages. The economy saw its financial sector grow year on year. Mortgage brokers would confess that it was subprime borrowers signing NINJA loans who kept the growth alive. Realtors would testify that it was the ‘housing boom’ where houses kept selling for higher and higher prices. People like me who had to securitize all the signing saw the details. This is why I believe that we saw the Devil.

                Prior to the current work my previous attempt at making sense of these individual phenomena consisted of religious adherence to the Peak Oil Theory (POT). It seemed to bring the three individual phenomena together that seemed almost intuitively certain. POT had an especially privileged place in the conspiracy theory due to its explanation par excellence of rising crude oil prices. POT also seemed to be the common sense explanation as to why the US Army would invade the dustbowl of Iraq, i.e. “It’s the oil. Duh!”

                The conspiracy that the US is actively adopting a policy to sabotage China’s political position can be broken down and analyzed further. The conspiracy implies coordination between various arms of the US Government as it draws upon the economic phenomena of increasing crude oil prices, the political phenomena of the 2003 USII and the financial phenomena of the 2008 MC. Therefore, one who subscribes to this theory must be implying that the architects of the conspiracy include prominent officials in the regulatory and executive branches of the US Federal Government. Broadly speaking, this refers specifically to the Federal Reserve, US Treasury Department, and the White House.

                Then came the bombshell 2006 report by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that found systematic market speculation was artificially inflating the price of crude oil.

               

               

               

               

               

               

                 

               

               

Co-existance of the Aryan and Dravidian Language Families in India

I've been reading the Rt. Rev. Dr. Robert Caldwell's book A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages which was first published in 1856. It is a profound work in linguistics. It is meticulous, precise, and factual. It is a scientific work.

Although I have known for quite some time that Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada were Dravidian languages I didn't know exactly how. I still don't know exactly how, but it seems that these languages share identical syntax, that is, rules for sentence formation. 

It's so refreshing to read the work of an enthusiast of Dravidian languages who has spotted this commonality among these superficially different languages. But it brings to a point something much greater in significance. It becomes obvious that the entire peninsula of India is inhabited by speakers of the Dravidian tongue. However, modern India is co-inhabited to the north of Dravidian-speaking areas by speakers of Marathi, and Bengali: both Aryan languages which belong to the Indo-European family of languages. 

A topographical map of the Indian subcontinent is instructive. The Dravidian languages occupy the Deccan plateau and the peninsular coast of East and West India. The Indo-Iranian languages - we'll just call them Aryan - are spoken in the Indus River basin, the Ganges basin and all the way into Bangladesh. The question is: was India always bi-lingual? That is to say was Aryan and Dravidian always spoken in India? Or - as has been the traditional - view, was the current Aryan distribution of languages the results of migrations into the Indian subcontinent displacing the indigenous Dravidians?

The edicts of Asoka are the first tangible archaeological record indicating that Dravidian kingdoms were in existence as early as the third century BC(300 BC). Asoka mentions the Chola kingdoms in Tamil Nadu. Extrapolating from this it seems obvious that the Dravidians were inhabiting the Deccan plateau as early as 300 BC. That is to say, Dravidian languages were being spoken in South India as early as 300 BC.

Whatever the case may be, factually, and historically, in the abstract we have the co-existence of these two language families, and this abstract fact must be reckoned with in the abstract. Speaking abstractly, much is possible. We can ask the question: how did this co-existence come to be?  

Here, it is profitable to discuss a parallel example with respect to China. It is argued by Jared diamond and others that the distribution of Thai, Viet, and Cambodian languages was far more extensive especially to the north into southern China that is currently the case. It is argued that the Sino-Tibetan family of languages “pushed” into areas inhabited by Thai, Vietnamese, and Cambodian speaking people. This is an abstract argument. Based on the current factual evidence of the distribution of language families in China.

The only argument which exists attesting to the presence of Aryan languages in the Indus Valley basin and the Ganges basin puts forth that Indo-Iranian languages were extant in the Indus Valley basin and Ganges basin and Aryan in fact was the language of the Indus Valley civilization. This suggests that the Indo-Iranian family of languages radiated from a common ancestor spreading across the Indus Valley into Iran and Afghanistan. 

How does this compare with Diamond’s parallel argument with regard to the distribution of Sino- Tibetan languages in China? He didn't specifically argue that there was a period of invasion, instead, he certainly does proffer that Sino-Tibetan languages “pushed” southwards displacing the indigenous languages that were present, namely, Thai, Vietnamese, and Cambodian. His argument is based on and follows logically from the modern distribution of languages in China and Indo-China.

So, to construct an argument as persuasive as Diamond’s but addressing the co-existence of Aryan and Dravidian language families in India, we would only have to base a similar argument on the modern distributions of languages in India and Central Asia.

So, arguing from Diamond's position we can conclude - as he did - that the distribution of Dravidian languages was far more extensive than at present and Aryan languages “pushed” southwards displacing the indigenous languages that were present, namely, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, and Tamil.

Having established this and returning to the parallel argument perspective we cannot go to the Vietnamese and say 'Look your language was far more extensive than it is right now. Therefore, you should use this as a political advantage to at least assert your rights from a historical point of view. The same thing could be said to Thailand, and Cambodia. But this doesn't change the economic and political status quo, which is the economic power of Sino-Tibetan languages and people.

It occurred to me that the civilizations in Cambodia evolved much later than the period of a classical Indus Valley civilization in India. But, what I want to note is that the language of the Huang Ho civilization spread out from the Huang Ho civilization. In China civilization spread out South from the center of civilization around the Huang Ho, and this spread displaced the Vietnamese, Thai, and Cambodians further south. But, what's interesting is that in India 'Dravidian' doesn't really refer to a race so much as it does to the language and culture. For instance the Sino-Tibetan is the language of the Burmese but racially they are much different than the northern Chinese. But the language spread south and assimilated the people.

Is this what happened to the indigenous populations of India? Were they assimilated by the Dravidian language and culture? The only way to know for sure is to decipher the Indus Script.

Aryan Migration or Cultural Transformation

According to Robert Winston 140,000 years ago, or 138,000 BC the African branch of the Homo Heidelbergensis is dying out. It is a period of glaciations -an ice age-and there's very little rain in Africa. This creates the conditions for accelerated natural selection. According to Winston only the most fit and resourceful survive. And in this time of accelerated natural selection Homo sapiens is born.

This species is distinguished from Homo Heidelbergensis by the presence of imagination as attested by the existence of buried ostrich eggs which were used for preserving water in a drought. Arguably, these were found at the same time and is evidence for the dawn of man: the wise ape. 

Then, around 110,000 years ago - that's 108,000 BC - the Ice Age ended and rains returned to Africa. From this time onwards Homo sapiens radiated outwards from Africa coming into contact with Neanderthal in Europe, and perhaps other hominid species of the Homo genus in the rest of the world. 

But how does all this relate to the discussion of Hinduism, the Indus Valley civilization, Dravidians, and the Aryan Migration Thesis? Well, it has to do with indigenous Australians, or aboriginals. The earliest human remains in Australia called Mungo Man date to 38,000 BC, and aboriginals may have been in Australia from as far back as 125,000 years ago - that's 123,000 BC. 

Apparently, they got there by island hopping on boats. There are other aboriginals in Papa New Guinea. But what does this all mean? This means that dark-skinned Homo sapiens radiating throughout modern-day Indonesia, Malaysia, Borneo, and Papa New Guinea, all the way to Australia. Basically, colonizing the known world very soon after the origins of Homo sapiens in about 138,000 BC. 

So, it's almost undeniable that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India. Also, that the similarities between Dravidians and aboriginal Australians suggest that there is a very good chance that they are highly related. So, it is not at all certain, or a foregone conclusion that the Indus Valley civilization was an Aryan civilization. 

It's very, very likely that the first inhabitants of the Indus Valley River basin were Dravidians. And the culture of the Indus Valley and later the civilization is one that was built by Dravidians who had called the Indus Valley River their home and settled there. 

It's also very likely that the continuity of Indo-Aryan with Indo-European is highly suggestive that the Aryan Migration Thesis is correct. That is, that the Aryan culture was not indigenous to the Indus Valley civilization. And, if the religion of the Indus Valley civilization was Hinduism, then, it is very likely that Hinduism is a Dravidian and not an Aryan religion. 

Furthermore, with regard to the Persian people also commonly known as the Iranian people, they are the linguistic kin of the Aryan people. Indo-Aryan includes Hindi and Persian languages. The point is that this is the same group of people – linguistically - that occupy the lands of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and north India.

After this brief prelude it becomes possible to ask much more interesting questions such as: is Hinduism the technology of meditation? And is it this technology which is the hallmark of Hinduism instead of a specific language or culture? If the hallmark of Hinduism is meditation, and if meditation is a technology of a settled people, it's very likely that Hinduism was indigenous to the Indus Valley civilization and not the Aryan culture, which was nomadic.

Preface

A few things about Hinduism especially in regard to the debate as to its origins. This debate centers on the Indus Valley civilization which paralleled Mesopotamian civilization which centered on the rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates. Basically one theory suggests that Hinduism originated within the Indus Valley civilization and generally paralleled its evolution. This theory asserts that the Aryan invaders -who are distinguished by their kinship to the Indo-European family of languages and are therefore identified as distinct from the indigenous Dravidian family of languages - were assimilated into the cultural sphere of Hinduism. This theory is known as the Aryan migration thesis.

Gavin Flood writes with regard to this thesis, “the Indus Valley civilization, which speaks a Dravidian language, declines between 2000 and 1800 BC and the Aryans become the dominant cultural force. This has been the traditional, scholarly picture…”(Flood, 1996:31).

The alternate thesis is known as the cultural transformation thesis. Flood writes with regard to this thesis, “Aryan culture is a development of the Indus Valley culture whose language belongs to the Indo-European family, possibly spoken in the region as far back as the Neolithic period, (the Stone Age) in interaction with Dravidian culture. On this view there were no Aryan incursions into India, but Indus Valley culture is an early Aryan or Vedic culture”(Flood, 1996:31).

So, which theory is correct? The seemingly foreign Sanskrit language - the ancestor of Hindi - and the kin language belonging to the Indo-European group – linguistically- is the main evidence for the Aryan migration thesis. The reason is that - linguistically - the Indo-European family of languages includes English, German, Latin, Spanish, Persian, and many languages of Europe. 

But, why is it so pressing to find out which language was spoken by the culture that built the Indus Valley civilization? Is it perhaps because they built the Indus Valley civilization? This would suggest that it was the Indo-Europeans or Indo-European culture was more advanced than the Dravidian culture. If it is actually in fact the Dravidians who built the Indus Valley civilization it would suggest that the Dravidians were more advanced than the Indo-Europeans who were nomadic sheepherders.

So, the debate itself is jaded by this purpose which overshadows the scholarly work in favor of either thesis. Nevertheless, the culture of the Indus Valley civilization is a key piece to understanding Hinduism. The word Hindu is actually the Islamic popularization of the name given by the Islamic invaders of the 13th and 14th centuries to the inhabitants of the Indus Valley basin.

So, when the Muslims arrived in the Indus Valley - which could be called India - they called them Hindus. So, there were Hindus living in the Indus Valley when the Muslims came in the 13th and 14th century. What about in 1500 BC almost 3000 years before the Muslim invasions? 

Where did the name for the river ’Ind’ come from? Is it an Aryan name? Or is it a Dravidian name? Obviously, the river and the people living on its banks are tied together. They are called by the river which enables them to survive and nurtures them, and they may have also named the river. In all likelihood it was them who named the river, ’Ind’ or ‘Indu’.

Of course, being able to decipher the Indus Valley script would be enormously helpful. Which language is being written in the Indus Valley script? Dravidian or pro-Dravidian? Or proto-Aryan?