Iran stands today isolated like no nation before, at least since electronic banking became the standard.  They have been cut off from Swift, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, so money can’t enter or leave the nation except that which is carried over the border manually.  This came in response to their failure to allow an inspection of their nuclear program.

How Iran came to be contained so tightly and so quickly may set a new precedent for dealing with rogue nations.  But the process for doing this is not what most people would ever expect.

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Dave Barry was a kid when the Soviet craft sputnik was launched, sending out a “bleep” through low orbit all around the world.  His teacher intoned to the math class that, “From now on, you kids are going to have to learn a lot more about math and science.”  Barry added, “As if it was all our fault.”

People around the world are going to have to learn a lot more about economics and banking.  This time, however, it really is our own fault.  If we’re going to get some control over our lives in something like a democracy we better get moving.  Movements like “Occupy Everything!” are a start, but there has to be a lot more attention and education.  Fortunately, we have people like David McWilliams and his “Punk Economics” to help – teaching what’s going on with more than a little fun.

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Halfway around the world in New Dehli, a conference will be held later this month between developing nations.  It’s hard to imagine anything further from the minds of most Americans, and it’s unlikely to make the news.  Yet what sources say will be announced could change our economy and standing in the world more than anything else that will happen this year, given enough time.  It could mark the moment that China takes its natural next step on the world’s stage.

Economic restructuring always occurs in a Depression as the system that crashed at the start emerges as a different arrangement that looks ahead to the future.  It’s a time of great opportunity, sometimes disguised as desperation.  That restructuring is taking place in the USofA slowly, but much more rapidly when the sun shines on the other side of the globe.  That’s why we should be careful what we wish for in the dead of the night.

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