[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Joker

Tue Apr 28 05:58:27 MDT 2009

Clusterfuck Nation

by Jim Kunstler

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

www.kunstler.com (April 27 2009)

Things come out of the woodwork. All of a sudden it's a mutant H1N1
swine flu, with bird and human DNA accessories. We don't know where this
is taking us. It could be a media blowover, like SARS, or it could be a
big deal, shutting down travel and assemblies of humans. It would be a
very big deal if it killed, proportionately, as much of the population
as the 1918 flu event - the worldwide toll then was roughly thirty to
one hundred million out of a global population around 1.7 billion. Now
the world population is over 6.5 billion. The only thing anyone can
predict at the moment is that there will be a lot of very worried health
officials and politicians out there in the days ahead.

This flu epidemic comes just as global economy itself lies comatose in
the economic intensive care unit, with IV lines of dollars, euros, yen,
and renminbis transfusing its hollowed-out carcass. It's an odd time for
attention to be diverted from that awful spectacle. The cash
transfusions have sent the Cable TV gang into raptures of "optimism" -
meaning they expect debt securitization to resume as before, along with
Yuletide-level credit card shopping sprees in the malls, a mass
splurging on new cars, and a renewed frenzy of house-building in the
Florida buzzard flats. Those "green shoots" and sprouting "mustard
seeds" they report seeing may themselves be a flu-like symptom. I don't
know what the so-called Mexican swine flu will lead to, but the global
economy as we've known it is a goner.

Even if the Mexican swine flu turns out to be something of a false
alarm, it will require billions of dollars in unexpected new outlays for
prevention operations here in the USA - reinforcing the false idea that
the nation has bottomless resources (the same idea that has been driving
the bail-out fiesta). My guess is that the fear emanating from the story
will be a potent generator of paranoia in the meantime, leading to
widespread closures of things, canceling of events, restrictions on
travel (official or otherwise), and a sell off in the financial markets.
And that's if the flu turns out not to amount to anything.

If the flu is the real deal, it will surely drive a stake through the
faintly-beating heart of that invalid global economy, and possibly even
continental-scaled economies like the US, the Euro-zone, and China - any
place where things and people have to move long distances to keep life
going. The US, obviously, suffers in this instance from its proximity to
Mexico, and the fact that so much of our food comes from places that
employ casual Mexican labor. A serious flu outbreak would be a short
path to food shortages in the US, with our three-day supermarket
inventories and just-in-time shipping methods. It would not be such a
bad idea now to lay in supplies of beans, brown rice, cooking oil,
onions, and toilet paper.

The big story at the end of last week was New York Attorney General
Andrew Cuomo's pursuit of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed
Chairman Ben Bernanke in the matter of Bank of America's gobbling of
Merrill Lynch last fall. It is alleged that the dynamic duo importuned
BOA chief Ken Lewis to avoid disclosing some important particulars to
the BOA shareholders, as required by law. The outstanding stage-whisper
coming from all this was the word "indictable" in reference to messers
Paulson and Bernanke. It goes to show how swiftly events can move beyond
"unthinkable" in extraordinary times. Now, former Merrill Lynch chief
John Thain - of thousand-dollar trash-basket infamy - has come back out
of the woodwork to backbite BOA's Ken Lewis over who-said-what in regard
to a treasure chest of bonuses divvied up during the blur of TARP
payouts last fall. Thain complains of being unemployed since then -
though one wonders why he doesn't just shut the fuck up, buy half of
Nantucket with his untold millions of booty, and learn to play the oboe
or something. This giant CEO cat fight was just getting interesting when
the Mexican flu pulled the news-plug on it.

Of high interest to those confused and perplexed over President Obama's
actions so far in the banking fiasco, I commend a great piece by fellow
blogger-on-the-margins Charles Hugh Smith: Obama's Secret Plan {1}. This
analysis is low on the paranoia and high on the Machiavellian
maneuvering insight. The basic idea is that Mr Obama has gone along with
all the TARPing and PPIPing because it was tactically the only way that
he could give the Wall Street plutocrats enough rope to hang themselves
- and that this was the only reality-based strategy that could get
public opinion in the mood for real change. It explains a lot, if it's
true. Alternately, it would be very sad to learn that Mr Obama really
believes he can rev back up a securitized-debt-and-consumption fiesta by
turning the Federal Reserve into an ATM.

In any case, the banking-and-investments sector has been on auto-pilot
for a few weeks. Lesser banks are crashing around the country (Idaho,
Florida, California last week), but the remaining Big Boyz are still
lurching through the landscape like so many Frankenbanks, jazzed up on
electric surges of digital cash. There are ever more hints of a peasant
uprising against the castle of privilege, but no sign just yet of the
flaming brands and shaking fists from the village below. This flu thing
will put the schnitz on their distempers for a while.

For an excellent background briefing on flu matters, I direct you to a
recent blog by Elaine Meinel Supkis {2}. Have a healthy week.

Links:

{1} http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr09/obamas-secret-plan04-09.html

{2}
http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/viral-flu-earths-oldest-trojan-horse-invaders/
_____

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-joker.html

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