Friends, it's been a while since I wrote here. After an extended vacation and a hurricane of a personal life at the moment, I am, indeed, back.
I left ya'll alone for two lousy months (not even) and look at what happened. The American economy is suffering its biggest collapse since the great depression. This is something we'd mused, muttered and warned about for years, but watching it unfold at the moment still has a sort of surreal feel to it. How much farther will this go? I'm caught between my cautious optimism (doomsayers embarrass themselves all the time playing chicken little) and desire for a nice, peaceful and easy historical niche, and the fact that every cynical, critical and realistic prediction we've made so far seems to be coming true. The arctic ice is melting faster than anyone at the IPCC predicted, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in recurring losses and destabalization of the region, our pyramid-scheme of an economy is floundering and energy prices have gone through the roof.
And nobody running for the continent's leadership - not Harper, Dion, Obama or McCain has any sort of grasp on the problem.
I wish I could say it's nice to be able to say "I told ya so", but the dire predictions here go a lot farther than exciting headlines in the business papers. This could get really ugly. It may not be time to start stockpiling dried beans and ammunition now, but it never hurts to start that kind of thing before you need to. Our culture has bought into a a system which taught us that only it is necessary to rely on for survival - the assumption that food, shelter and clothing would always be available if only we give over our lives to bankers, landlords and managerss. We all need to start thinking about investing in a different sense - about how we can apply ourselves now to meet the challenges of the uncertain world which lies ahead. Could you heat your house if the gas was cut off? Even in the dead of winter? Can you treat basic wounds - broken bones, cuts, infections, gunshots? Could you grow enough food to keep your family alive?
Our economy is, at this point, an abstraction. Trillions of dollars in value have been created out of thin air over the last few decades, most of it loaned, in one way or another (mortgages, student loans or national debts) to relatively poor working people, without any basis in real value or wealth. To create these mountains of paper money they destroyed forests, rivers, mountains and valleys on every inhabited continent, wiping out entire species for a bunch of disposable junk we're throwing away anyway. Now that the world's catching on to the fact that these trillion-dollar junk bonds aren't worth anything (something markets are supposed to do), they're all going down in price. In the few years since oil production plateaued, the economy has indeed felt every dollar of it's rise in price, and will doubtlessly continue to do so.
This, in all likelihood, is still only the beginning. There's an old Arabic curse, which always haunts me - "may you live in interesting times".
I left ya'll alone for two lousy months (not even) and look at what happened. The American economy is suffering its biggest collapse since the great depression. This is something we'd mused, muttered and warned about for years, but watching it unfold at the moment still has a sort of surreal feel to it. How much farther will this go? I'm caught between my cautious optimism (doomsayers embarrass themselves all the time playing chicken little) and desire for a nice, peaceful and easy historical niche, and the fact that every cynical, critical and realistic prediction we've made so far seems to be coming true. The arctic ice is melting faster than anyone at the IPCC predicted, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in recurring losses and destabalization of the region, our pyramid-scheme of an economy is floundering and energy prices have gone through the roof.
And nobody running for the continent's leadership - not Harper, Dion, Obama or McCain has any sort of grasp on the problem.
I wish I could say it's nice to be able to say "I told ya so", but the dire predictions here go a lot farther than exciting headlines in the business papers. This could get really ugly. It may not be time to start stockpiling dried beans and ammunition now, but it never hurts to start that kind of thing before you need to. Our culture has bought into a a system which taught us that only it is necessary to rely on for survival - the assumption that food, shelter and clothing would always be available if only we give over our lives to bankers, landlords and managerss. We all need to start thinking about investing in a different sense - about how we can apply ourselves now to meet the challenges of the uncertain world which lies ahead. Could you heat your house if the gas was cut off? Even in the dead of winter? Can you treat basic wounds - broken bones, cuts, infections, gunshots? Could you grow enough food to keep your family alive?
Our economy is, at this point, an abstraction. Trillions of dollars in value have been created out of thin air over the last few decades, most of it loaned, in one way or another (mortgages, student loans or national debts) to relatively poor working people, without any basis in real value or wealth. To create these mountains of paper money they destroyed forests, rivers, mountains and valleys on every inhabited continent, wiping out entire species for a bunch of disposable junk we're throwing away anyway. Now that the world's catching on to the fact that these trillion-dollar junk bonds aren't worth anything (something markets are supposed to do), they're all going down in price. In the few years since oil production plateaued, the economy has indeed felt every dollar of it's rise in price, and will doubtlessly continue to do so.
This, in all likelihood, is still only the beginning. There's an old Arabic curse, which always haunts me - "may you live in interesting times".
posted by Undustrial at 11:55 AM
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