Rollercoaster redux

To his imperial credit, Barack Obama did manage to calm the stock markets for a year. But his promises of oversight and transparency are being overwhelmed by his actions. It’s obvious the banksters will not be regulated on Obama’s watch in any significant manner because the entire American economic system is based on fraud, and hope is the only thing left in Pandora’s Obama’s box of tricks.

As adults know, hope is for little kids and tooth fairies.

Today’s panic-infused stock-market crash was an ode to days economists thought long gone. But those economists continue to be stunned at every substantive event, as if passing the world oil peak couldn’t be expected to generate any economic consequences.

“High prices will cause the market to generate substitutes,” they cry. I guess we can expect a comprehensive substitute for crude oil to show up any day now. Or perhaps these long-predicted swings in the price of oil will continue to destroy capital and therefore lead to one canceled alt-energy project after another.

I suspect we’re back on the stock-market rollercoaster with a general trend down. Probably way down, by year’s end. But the crash that completes the collapse of American Empire could come any day, and today was a near miss after a six-month series of near misses came to a halt last March. The Dow lost about a thousand ticks today in a 15-minute span before the plunge protection team (PPT) took quick action to save the imperial day.

Oh, wait, there’s no PPT. It wouldn’t be completely legal for the federal government to buy stocks in the beloved free market, would it? And certainly not when the mantra is hope change transparency. I guess those traders just came to their senses and regained confidence in the markets. Lucky thing, too, from the imperial perspective: Another hour without intervention from the PPT and we’d be looking out over the smoldering ashes of the industrial economy this time next week.

If all goes well, the U.S. will be forced into hyperinflation or default even before the next oil-price shock brings down the industrial economy. If we’re really in the midst of the empire’s last dance, soon enough we won’t be forced to choke down lines such as these:

“There’s more war in America’s future — a great deal more, judging by the Obama Administration’s reports, pronouncements and actions in recent months”

“U.S. exempted BP rig from environmental study”

“The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter”

“Scientists and environmentalists from around the world assessed the state of global biodiversity and found that it has been in steady decline”

“An American Chernobyl”

And so it goes, headline after headline, until the process of killing the planet to transfer money from the poor to the rich finally succeeds in killing us, too. Until, if the corporatocracy running the industrial show has its way, the last human on the planet accumulates all the material wealth and celebrates gleefully with his last breath.

This story could end another way, if only we’d let it. If only we’d trade in hope wishful thinking for action, the culture of make believe for the reality of the real world, insanity for reason, the horrors of extirpation and extinction for the living planet, a dead-end road in a hellish future for the heavenly wonders of life itself.