BartBlog

“Altogether, the circumstances seem as dangerous and intractable as I can remember. Boomers are spending like there is no tomorrow. Homeownership has become a vehicle for borrowing and leveraging as much as a source of financial security… As a Nation we are consuming about 6 per cent more than we are producing. What holds it all together? High consumption — high leverage — government deficits — What holds it all together is a really massive and growing flow of capital from abroad. A flow of capital that today runs to more than $2 billion per day.” [America is facing] “huge imbalances and risks.”
– Paul Volcker, from a speech at the second annual economic summit of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Oct. 2007.

– Standing Still On Its Head: Remember that inimitable 1951 film, “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” one of the greatest, most unique and intelligent science fiction films ever made? Well, none of that’s going to stop Hollywood from remaking it and, according to the press release, Keanu Reeves is set to co-star with bean-pole bikini model Jennifer Connelly. While I admit Keanu’s wooden acting style is perfect for Gort the eight-foot-tall space robot, it doesn’t say who is going to fill out the other roles. My vote for the rational and humane intergalactic visitor Klaatu, played by Michael Rennie in the original — Dennis Kucinich. And Patricia Neal’s meddlesome, dimwit boyfriend Tom Stevens, played by Hugh Marlowe — Alberto Gonzales, of course. I predict Gonzales’ “I can has cheezeburger?” will replace “Gort! Klaatu barada nicto!” in water-cooler wit across the nation.

– A chirpy chipmunk on CNN reported the bad economic news Nov. 9th — stock market dropping, oil prices rising, dollar declining, mortgages defaulting — and then, apparently trying to end on an optimistic note, bubbled that at least the devalued dollar was helping lower our massive trade deficit with the rest of the world. Are they kidding? Our creditors overseas will not be repaid by a trillion dollars of devalued paper worth $500 billion for a trillion dollar loan; they, like any sane creditor, will demand the equal value of the full amount of the loan, or stop lending us money. The financial reporting on the cable news channels is ubiquitously happy-face inane, but this is sheer fantasy. Our economy is falling precipitously and the Big Media tries to pass off this shoddy drivel. Truly amazing.

– While we’re on the subject, not many conservatives would advocate jettisoning laws against robbery realizing that, while a conscientious portion of the public would never steal from their neighbors, a certain faction with a predatory bent would happily plunder anyone in their path, were there no consequences. Yet they continue to wave the flag for unregulated ‘free markets’ that do just that and, unfortunately, Wall Street and big corporations seem to attract more of the latter type than the former. We are now in the ‘rinse cycle’ of unregulated greed, as Citigroup has reported losses of up to $15 billion, and other lenders and investment houses are also swirling the drain. It’s gotten so bad that Ben “Greenspan’s Ghost” Bernanke quietly shoveled out a $41 billion quick-fix of our money to the banking industry to keep them temporarily solvent, but that won’t cure the long-term problem. As Mike Whitney writes in his excellent CounterPunch article, “Welcome to Year 27 of the Reagan Revolution”:

“The country is in a bigger pickle than any time in its 230 year history. The credit storm that was engineered at the Federal Reserve has swept across the planet and is now descending on commercial real estate, credit card debt, and the plummeting bond insurers industry. These are the next shoes to drop and the tremors will be felt throughout the broader economy.”

Although Your Tattlesnapper erred when he predicted a complete meltdown last September — Bernanke uncharacteristically diddled with the interest rate and stuffed a few more fingers in the levee — the evidence is stronger than ever that a collapse is on its way, well before the next presidential election. The reason this time around will be worse than the Great Depression is that the US doesn’t manufacture much of anything any longer, and that we are already deeply in debt to Asia, two conditions that FDR didn’t have to deal with in the 1930s. This time next year, and likely sooner, it will all come down to earth and, if you want a gauge to how useful BushCo will be in responding to this emergency, think Katrina, think Iraq.

The silver lining in this crash is that it will end the stupidity of Republican neoconservatism in this country for generations; lead to the reregulation of banks and large corporations, stop our useless wars overseas, and restore Constitutional oversight of the White House. Then we can only hope Junior’s replacement will do half as good a job as Franklin Roosevelt did to drag us out of the economic gutter.

In the meantime, I’d suggest buying a high MPG car, a house or apartment you can easily afford, and a wheelbarrow to cart around all of your devalued US dollars and worthless credit cards.