ABSTRACT
A hundred years ago, coal miners would take caged canaries into mines because canaries were more sensitive to the effects of carbon monoxide (CO) than humans, and when a canary showed distress or died, the miners would leave the mine. If the miners had been scientists possessing the instrumentation to measure the CO, there would have been no need for the canaries. In 2008, the tiny nation of Iceland suffered a financial crash that should have served as the canary for the capitalist system; one economic scientist had used his own instruments and saw it coming and raised the alarm. But his advice was shelved and probably never even read by those with authority. The Icelandic crash accompanied financial crisis in the United States and was followed in rapid succession by heightened crisis in the European Union, especially the eurozone countries that adopted the euro as official currency. Outside Europe and the United States, the impact was more transient though appearing in almost every other country, giving China the opportunity to invest in building its own infrastructure (Harvey, 2011).
