Seems my entry from last week was premature. Specifically, I wrote: “The federal government’s complete unwillingness to deal with the tsunami of economic news, from home foreclosures to runaway inflation and supply disruptions in gasoline, is truly pathetic.” The federal government and its primary media outlet suddenly leaped into action.
The hallucinatory economy of the United States, based on the “service” industry and consumption of salad shooters, is starting to drag. Seems the absence of cheap oil, along with the closely related inability to use our homes as automatic teller machines, removes the grease from the skids. The associated friction has the Dow doing its best impression of a man falling down the stairs, lurching and spinning and almost recovering before he falls headlong into the abyss of the black widow-infested cellar he couldn’t even imagine except for the old stories about the previous Great Depression.
I took my favorite urban walk today, perhaps for the last time. It’s in the nation’s capital city, and I doubt I’ll have many more chances to get here in the years ahead. Usually I take the walk in the morning so I can watch the sun rise from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, but tomorrow’s weather forecast calls for freezing rain.
Hate mail is just part of the reason I submit the occasional commentary. It reminds me that, lacking the ability to love the future yet unable to change it, at least we can despise the messenger.
The lamestream, corporate media are finally beginning to spread the news about peak oil, though they’ve been remiss in pointing out the ramifications. And, as with global climate change, they’re too late to this party to do much good, if any.
I’ve spent some time in the heartland lately, attending to the ceremonies associate with my father-in-law’s death, and also to my wife’s grief. My father-in-law had the kind of life, and death, we all dream about: He died suddenly after a good, long, and full life.