[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Coming Siege of Austerity

[Bill Totten]

Clusterfuck Nation

by Jim Kunstler

Comment on current events by the author of
The Long Emergency (2005)

www.kunstler.com (April 13 2009)


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 2009 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
(that is, 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.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Triumph of Death
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834515e6b69e201156f20fe61970c-pi
(Click image to enlarge)

_____

My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at
all booksellers.

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2009/04/the-coming-siege-of-austerity.html


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