Empire of lies
Benny and the Inkjets are tossing the money around, but it didn't pump up the industrial economy the last time and QE2 will be no better, even if the next version is expectedly gihugic. He's destroying the dollar in the…
Economic dominoes continue to fall
Passing the world oil peak has had, and doubtless will continue to have, relatively little impact on the long-term price of gasoline. The economic implications of getting through the first half of the Oil Age have been much more significant, a trend that seems likely to continue until the collapse is complete.
We’ve seen 106 banks fail, so far, including some of the monsters. Others were perceived by the Obama adminstration as too big to fail, so we tacked on a series of taxes to future generations of Americans. A majority of those taxes will never be paid because the whole country is bankrupt (and not merely financially). Regional banks are suffering, too. We’ve seen house prices plummet under the weight of massive foreclosures and a bubble pumped up by the likes of Greenspan and Bernanke. We’ve seen entire airlines disappear, along with a plethora of other companies. The nation’s largest car company was socialized when we the people took ownership. (Against our wishes, of course. Isn’t faux democracy great?) Unemployment has risen, and continues to rise even as the Obummer administration throws massive fiat currency at every enterprise they deem worthy (expectedly excluding you and me). Suddenly, shopping at Wal-Mart is all the rage because, despite lies from the federal government, prices continue to rise for the average consumer.
A Typical Reaction
Occasionally when people talk to me about my new life in and around the mud hut, their conclusions include one of the following statements: (1) You’re selfishly wasting your talent as an excellent and inspiring teacher. You should be teaching at the university, saving students, instead of preparing for economic collapse. (2) Don’t be silly. The United States cannot suffer economic collapse.
My responses go something like this:
Revising my forecast
U.S. stock markets are down more than 50% since they peaked in October 2007, but that figure really doesn’t indicate how rapidly the decline is accelerating.The markets are down 25% in the first two months of 2009, and down 10% in the last week. If the markets fall another 25% or so within the next two months, we’ll reach capitulation. Therefore, I’m revising my earlier forecast, which called for complete economic collapse by the end of this year.
Business Party II slithers by Business Party I
Now that Barack Obama has been hanging out in the Oval Office for a whopping two weeks, he’s starting to show his true colors. Turns out those colors aren’t bright blue. They’re purple, with a red tinge. Obama has bought into the Calvin Coolidge notion that, “The business of America is business.”
The Greatest Depression, Briefly Described
We've built a set of living arrangements that relies on infinite access to a finite resource. That set of ill-conceived living arrangements is comprehensive, including capture and delivery of water, production and delivery of food, construction of shelter, the systems of health care, education, and finance, our sense of community (or absence thereof), and thousands of attributes we take for granted on a daily basis.