Posted on 04/13/2009 8:40:42 PM PDT by B-Chan
It's a curious symptom of the consensus trance zombifying the American public and its auditors in the media that something like a "recovery" is now deemed to be underway. And, as events compel me to repeat in this space, it begs the question: recovery to what? To Wall Street booking stupendous profits by laundering "risk" out of bad loans with new issues of tranche-o-matic securitized paper? This I doubt, since there isn't a pension fund left from San Jose to Bratislava that would touch this stuff with a stick, even if it could be turned out in collector's editions of boxed sets. Does it mean that American "consumers" (so-called) are awaited momentarily in the flat-screen TV sales parlors with their credit cards fanned-out like poker hands, ready for "action?" Not too likely with massive non-performance out in cardholder-land, and half the nation's electronics inventory wending its way onto Craig's List. Are we expecting more asteroid belts of new suburbs carved in the loamy outlands of Dallas and Minneapolis, complete with new highway strips of Big Box shopping and Chuck E. Cheeses? Go to banking's intensive care unit and inquire (if you can) among the flat-lining production home-builders and the real estate investment trusts on life support when they expect to rev up the heavy equipment.
The idea that we're about to resume the insane behavior that induced the current epochal malaise of economy is so absurd it will only be heard in the faculty dining halls of the Ivy League. And if America is not picking up where it left off eighteen months ago -- the orgy of spending future claims on wealth unlikely to accrue -- then what is our destiny? Based on what's out there in the organs of public thinking, it seems that we don't want to think about it.
So many forces are arrayed against a return to the previous "normal" that we will be lucky, in another eighteen months, to still find ourselves speaking English and celebrating Christmas. What's "out there" is a panorama of mutually reinforcing critical problems pertaining to how we live on this continent. Like the obesity, heart disease, and diabetes that plague the public, these problems are disorders of lifestyle habits and the only possible "cure" is a comprehensive revision of lifestyle. With the onset of spring weather and the cheez doodles and monster truck rallies and Nascar tailgate barbeques and the drive-in beer emporiums all beckoning, can the public public shift its attention from these infantile preoccupations to saving its own ass?
So far, the most striking piece of the economic fiasco is the absence of any galvanizing spirit among the millions getting crushed in the tragic unwind of our relations with money. It will be interesting to see, for instance, if there is any uproar over the evolving story of Goldman Sachs's latest raid on the US Treasury, after booking billions in taxpayer-funded payouts funneled through AIG, based on double-hedged credit default swaps. Such magic tricks are understandably hard to follow, but a dozen-or-so federal attorneys with a middling background in differential calculus might suss out the trail that leads from Ben Bernanke's work station to Lloyd Blankfein's cappuccino machine.
Something similar may be said in regard to revelations last week of White House economic advisor Larry Summers' connection with a number of hedge funds shoveling millions into his deep pockets for showing up once a week to cheerlead their "innovations" -- not to mention his shadowy visits to the Goldman Sachs gravy train even after he signed onto the Obama campaign. As long as the stock markets seem to rally -- no matter what else is really going on in America -- nobody will pay much attention to these disgusting irregularities.
Since it is that time of year, and I am haunting the gardening shop, one can't fail to notice the many styles of pitchforks for sale. My guess is that the current mood of public paralysis will dissolve in a blur of blood and spittle sometime between Memorial Day and July Fourth, even with Nascar in full swing, and the mushrooming ranks of the unemployed lost in raptures of engine noise and fried cornmeal. It doesn't take too many determined, pissed-off people to create a lot of mischief in a complex society.
On the agenda in the second quarter of '09 are ominous rumblings in the oil and food sectors. Half a year of cratered oil prices have decimated the oil industry and we're driving at 100-miles-an-hour straight off a cliff into a new kind of supply crisis -- even if industrial production and global exports remain moribund. So many drilling rigs are being decommissioned that the oil industry itself looks like it's preparing for its own death, investment in exploration and discovery has withered with the credit markets, and the world may never recover from the year long hiccup in oil industry activity -- translation: peak oil is biting back now with a vengeance. Its peakness will look peakier and the yawning arc of depletion beyond will look steeper and pose a threat to every globalized and continental-scale enterprise in the known world.
So many dire elements are ranging around our food production system (i.e. farming), from widespread drought and water table depletion to "input" shortages (especially fertilizers) to sickness in credit availability, that we're all one bad harvest away from something that will make Pieter Bruegel-the-elder's "Triumph of Death" look like Vanity Fair's annual Oscar Party in comparison.
Barack Obama, charming as he is, had better drop his pretensions about kick-starting the old consumer economy, fire the Wall Street clowns and parasites who are running that futile exercise, and start preparing a US Lifeboat Economy aimed at reducing the scale and scope of our outlays so we can survive the coming siege of austerity. Meanwhile, I'm glad that he finally got a dog for the White House, because the President knows full-well where to turn in Washington if you want some genuine love and affection.
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The caboose doesn’t know the engine has hit the rock wall.....yet.
There are far more infantile preoccupations, Mr. Kunstler. These provide employment, for activities that segments of the public actually enjoy. If every last person retreats into a defensive crouch, only buying as little food, fuel and basic necessities as absolutely necessary, we will have further still to fall.
The USofA has lost or set aside her moral compass.
We are ‘getting’ exactly what we deserve . . . a taste of our own medicine, so to speak. We have allowed our Country to be overtaken by relativists. We have not stood firm and said “NO” when it needed to be said.
We have dumbed down education so that children who graduate from 12th grade have an 8th grade education. No one reads any longer. The Founding Fathers are glossed over in History class to give more time to study Muhammad and children are taught to say that there is no god but allah which to a Muhammadan means that child has declared his religious affiliation. Children are taught to spy upon parents, to fill out “informational” questionnaires listing the magazines their parents read and what television shows they watch and what church they attend and where the fire arms are kept.
And WE sat on the sidelines because when we spoke out, we were called “narrow minded” and “ignorant” and “racist” and right-wing-radical and made out to be fools ready to be placed in a mental ward.
So we politely did not engage the enemies of our children.
And now, they’re in control of our Government.
THESE TEA PARTIES BETTER PRODUCE MEN AND WOMEN OF VALOR WHO WILL CARRY THE TEA PARTY TORCH TO CONGRESS AND THE WHITE HOUSE.
Because if the Tea Parties fizzle out . . . the Republic is lost and we lose our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.
And we did it to ourselves.
I agree with you in principle. However, I don’t share your belief that the upcoming “tea parties” represent a significant political event. If the people attending the Tea Paties were all willing to do something drastic (like stop paying their federal income taxes and go to jail en masse a la the draft-card burners of the late 1960s), they might have a shot at influencing public opinion, but as things are — not a chance.
I don’t mean to disparage the Tea Party; I merely doubt its effectiveness as a tool of political change. While I certainly understand the emotional release such activities can provide, the political viewpoint they represent is simply too small to ultimately have any effect on the political balance of power in the United States. If the Tea Party could put a half million people on the streets of LA like the Mexicans did a couple of years ago, it might mean something, but the people participating in the Tea Party are neither as numerous as are Mexicans in America nor as united. Mexicans in America are largely bound together by race and culture, not ideology as is the Tea Party. And as an ideological community the Tea Party is far outnumbered by American Left-liberals.
Tea Partiers need to face up to the fact that most Americans like President Obama and approve of his policies, including his tax policies. Those who believe in the things the Tea Party stands for are a minority and will remain so.
You said it!
Thanks.
Why do they think that the lives of regular folks are material for disparagement ?
Not a word about Whole Foods and arugula.
Hey, I’m a snob. I hate all that stuff, too.
“A recession is any time the people lose
confidence in the future.”
R.Nixon
The political decisions are driving a stake into the heart of our economy. The question then becomes.....why?
Hegelian dialectic. Capitalism is being attacked and made to appear as a problem or cause of our economic woes. The end objective is to force socialism in place of capitalism.
Hegelian dialectic. Capitalism is being attacked and made to appear as a problem or cause of our economic woes. The end objective is to force socialism in place of capitalism.
I knew the answer, we are seeing the foundation of our
nation being eroded in ways we did not think possible even
a few years ago.
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