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Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."

 
Anonymous Coward
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05/26/2008 08:04 PM
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Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
[link to www.kunstler.com]

May 26, 2008

Anxious Hiatus

Loveliness was everywhere this holiday weekend in upstate New York, and it was probably hard for many to believe that the wayward nation would return to the dread uncertainty of life in the crash lane when the barbeques were over. There was even a wan overtone to the late-night sports news about the Indy 500 race -- as though the spectacle of cars droning round and round a speed oval epitomized the futility of American life in this moment of our history.

I had a discussion with one guy at a Sunday night party about the prospects for hydrogen-powered cars. We rehearsed the usual reasons why such a system was unlikely to get up-and-running -- and then he said, "...but what if we took all the money from the war and put it into something like the space program and... they came up with some way to make it happen...!"

This is certainly the golden heart of the great wish out there, as the empire of Happy Motoring begins to run down on $4 gasoline. It seems inconceivable that a society so bold as to put men on the moon (fer crissake) can't overcome such a prosaic problem as finding something other than oil byproducts to run our cars on.

From this holy font all cognitive dissonance flows.

It seems inconceivable, but it begins to look like that's the way it really is, and we just can't accept it.

Of course, one of the reasons that Americans are so anxious to get away on a holiday weekend from the places where they live is because we did such a perfect job the past fifty years turning our home-places into utterly unrewarding, graceless nowheres, where the private realm of the beige houses is saturated in monotony, and the public realm has been reduced to the berm between the WalMart and the strip mall. Now, we barely have the gasoline to run all this stuff, let alone escape from it for a weekend.

We're at a dead end with all this and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next. This may actually be a deeper fear than the anxiety about money and banking in 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt was sworn in and tried to reassure the nation. Back then, despite the grave problems of capital, we still had plenty of everything: plenty of good productive land, plenty of manpower earnestly eager for hard work, plenty of ore in the ground, shining cities equipped with excellent streetcar systems, a railroad network that was the envy of the world, sturdy small towns and small cities fully equipped with locally-owned business, and a vast number of small family farms that could re-absorb family members unable to get wages in the cities. Most of all, we had plenty of oil in the ground, and the world's biggest industry for getting it out and selling it. What we didn't have in 1933 was cash money.

The crisis at hand now goes way beyond a crisis of capital -- though that is certainly part of it. Notice how many of the things we had in 1933 are gone now. Our cities, with a few exceptions, are imploded husks. Our small towns and small cities (Schenectady, home of G.E.!) are gutted, especially in terms of locally-owned business. Our passenger rail system is worse than anything a Soviet ministry might produce (while the airline industry that replaced it is dying of a kind of financial hemorrhagic fever). Our local transit hardly exists anymore. Family farms have all but disappeared. We have plenty of manpower earnestly eager to become American Idols (but certainly not for heavy labor). Our oil industry now supplies only a fraction of the world's daily supply (and not even enough for half of our own needs).

What happens now? We face not just change but convulsive change. The public senses the rapid unraveling of our car-centric arrangements. In the week before the holiday, gasoline prices went up several cents each day -- in upstate New York, it crossed the $4 mark and kept going up. The trucking system faces collapse as diesel fuel price-rises exceed even the rise in gasoline, and the vast number of independent truckers who make up the system confront the individual calamity of a personal business failure. American Airlines last week announced severe measures to keep operating through the fall of 2008. but none of the airlines can feasibly carry on as usual with oil prices above $120-a-barrel -- and the ominous message is of a business model that has no conceivable way to adapt to the new reality. Most likely, in a very few years air travel will no longer be a "consumer" enterprise.

In the background of these practical problems -- "off screen" during the holiday of car races and ball games -- is a crisis of capital orders of magnitude worse than the one faced by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. For behind the "liquidity" (i.e. insolvency) issues faced by the big institutions lurks the Godzilla of the derivatives trade, which has evolved into a black hole capable of sucking all notional "money" into oblivion. That "money," which represents the aggregate value of our society, also amounts to the emperor's new clothes of an empire in serious trouble. As the black hole of derivatives sucks away these "new clothes," America will stand naked against the elements of fate.
Anonymous Coward
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05/26/2008 08:07 PM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
this economy is debt based
that is the problem
debt never produces wealth
Anonymous Coward
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05/26/2008 08:12 PM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
There is way more productive ag. land that is not in production today than there was in 1933. I have nothing to support that claim other than my own eyes.
Anonymous Coward
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05/26/2008 08:16 PM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
There was even a wan overtone to the late-night sports news about the Indy 500 race -- as though the spectacle of cars droning round and round a speed oval epitomized the futility of American life in this moment of our history.


 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 437919



Wow I love that...so true.
Rota

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05/26/2008 08:24 PM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
There is way more productive ag. land that is not in production today than there was in 1933. I have nothing to support that claim other than my own eyes.
 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 440323

Yeah...the government owns most of the land west of the Mississippi. Then again they probably used it as collateral on the national debt so who knows for sure who owns it now.
Solar Guy

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05/26/2008 08:25 PM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
this economy is debt based
that is the problem
debt never produces wealth
 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 409684

Exactly right!
Poor people do poor people things, and rich people do rich people things.

You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation.

You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

when you rob Paul to give to Peter ... ... ... you will always get Peters support!

:Brieffromnativea:
malu

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05/26/2008 08:28 PM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
There is way more productive ag. land that is not in production today than there was in 1933. I have nothing to support that claim other than my own eyes.

Yeah...the government owns most of the land west of the Mississippi. Then again they probably used it as collateral on the national debt so who knows for sure who owns it now.
 Quoting: Rota



it is my understanding that it was used for debt, along with concessions to the UN Biosphere program, which includes many of our national parks


there is one thing different about the food which comes from any farmland we use today , as opposed to 1933, the trace minerals are long gone
we have yet to fully understand the health risks that has created
"By way of deception, thou shalt do war."

Israel's Mossad

"The truth shall set you free."

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Motto
Anonymous Coward
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05/26/2008 08:35 PM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
437919- I have to tell you this is proberly the best post I have read in a long time I salute you.
Ernest
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05/26/2008 10:54 PM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
ECONOMIC REALITY..... has arrived......

It seems to me that the Chinese and just about everybody else have the ability to use oil *more efficiently* than the US of A. This means they can bid a higher price for it than we can. That's --->economic CHECKMATE!


Not only can they bid more they've already got most of our money, trillions setting there waiting to buy more contracts. The part of "the dollar is redeemable in oil" that we just didn't get was the part about *when* it is redeemed for oil the price of oil goes sky high.

Unfortunatly for (the) US money really does work the way money is supposed to work....it measures and meads out value. We got the value (and blew it) now we have to pay the money. No way out.
Billy O'Bibble
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05/26/2008 11:00 PM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
The problem is: WE ARE SLAVES !

[link to harmonhouse.net]
Anonymous Coward
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05/26/2008 11:03 PM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
There is way more productive ag. land that is not in production today than there was in 1933. I have nothing to support that claim other than my own eyes.

Yeah...the government owns most of the land west of the Mississippi. Then again they probably used it as collateral on the national debt so who knows for sure who owns it now.



it is my understanding that it was used for debt, along with concessions to the UN Biosphere program, which includes many of our national parks


there is one thing different about the food which comes from any farmland we use today , as opposed to 1933, the trace minerals are long gone

-------------------------------------------------------------​
we have yet to fully understand the health risks that has created
 Quoting: malu


Health risks? Welcome to 2008. In 2008 "health risk" translates into "a thriving health care industry". It adds to the national Producer Index and "helps to expand our economy". Which is of course a barge load of shit but we're supposed to lap it up all the way to the voting booth.
Ernest
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05/26/2008 11:08 PM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
hitit

OK you've just seen it invented here.....

NWO = No Way Out
Anonymous Coward
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05/27/2008 12:10 AM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
bump to the next day as this deserves due consideration.
PrisonersDilema

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05/27/2008 01:53 AM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
American's need to pull together, and hang tough....

I believe what's next is a long period of Chaos, instability both politically and economically...

There may be shortages of fuel, food, crime, fire, flood, shootings.....all happening at once....

all this has been planned, because there won't be adequate response from our elected officicals.....

There are going to let us simmer for a while....

Then just when things seem to be hopeless.... a political figure....


Will tell the world the he can restore order, he or she will offer to restore the world to an orderly state....
That will be the begninning of the end for mankind unless we resist...
Anonymous Coward
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05/27/2008 03:04 AM
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Re: Kunstler: "We're at a dead end...and a lot of Americans are paralyzed with fear about what's next."
this economy is debt based
that is the problem
debt never produces wealth

Exactly right!
 Quoting: Solar Guy

Exactly wrong. Given enough time, it concentrates ALL wealth into the hands of the creditors.





GLP