Welcome to a brand spankin’ new week!
Money on our minds this Monday, as the White House predicts a $490 Billion budget deficit next year. Given our government’s fondness for spin and general economic incompetence, I’d say the truth is probably somewhere north of that figure, between $490 and $1 Trillion. Add in bank and FDIC bailouts that will be necessary in the next 18 months, and the larger of those two numbers is probably a lowball.
Too many people today read that news, shrug and say “Well, that’s the government. They can handle it.” What will be an even bigger story in ’09 however, is starting to sneak up on us and seep into the mainstream media. Listen to this segment of the Diane Rehm show (launches a Windows Media file) and you’ll see that dozens of states are under water budget-wise for 2009. This will mean problems with education, health care, police/fire protection, highway and infrastructure maintenance and much more. The resources we need on a daily basis will be strained.
As I write this, the DOW has tumbled already, and even Reuters is reporting that the Gold Futures market suggests that the metal will trade at $1,200/ounce by the end of the year. So, it’s no longer just Jim Sinclair making this claim!
Meanwhile, Jim Kunstler has a terrifically dark piece about a drive through New York State (where he lives), with some pointed, vivid and very compelling observations about the state of our society:
Hopelessness infects this landscape like a miasma. Whatever young adults remain in these places are not thinking about a plausible future, only looking to complete their full array of tattoos and lose themselves in raptures of sex, methedrine, and video aggression.
And that’s the lighter bit 
Seriously though. Kunstler’s views ring so true, even though regularly reading him, you start to get the idea he really, really dislikes tattoos. I believe though, that Jim will one day be seen as one of many visionaries whose dark futures often hit closer to the eventual truth than most. God help us.
Finally, in the “can’t wait for the future” hit parade, George Ure at UrbanSurvival.com unhappily predicts an “October Surprise” that involves a hidden hand, false flag and an attempt to disguise (if not avoid) the Greater Depression bearing down on us right now. I remember similar predictions (not from George) about the last of the Clinton days, where an event causes the White House to declare Martial Law and cancel the elections. Looking at history though, I have to admit it would be more in character for this administration than the last to attempt something like this.
Time will tell. Have a great week. Be watchful.
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I’ve made it no secret that WhatComesNext.net supports Ron Paul for President. Note that I still say “supports,” because even though Dr. Paul has left the race, I will still write in his name as my choice for the office. I believe that he is/was the only candidate who has even the simplest grasp on our economic problems and how to address. Notice I didn’t say “fix” them – that’s impossible at this point. We need a government that has the ability to successfully lead us through the next several years without allowing the nation to succumb to our economic “illness.”
But the two political parties that divide us, do so because we and our money are spoils to be divided. The organizations called the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, are, in reality, one party with two faces that both look upon what we have as something to control, confiscate, and steal. For the good of our nation, they need to slink off to oblivion in shame and humiliation.
There’s a saying: “A people gets the kind of government it deserves,” and that’s true. We have allowed these two parties to flourish and marginalize all others, so we deserve them. We have allowed an elitist political class to develop, rewarding the ability to get elected above any talent for governance. We have stood by and in most cases, participated in the construction of a system where C-student charlatans walk the halls of power in every branch of our government, enjoy enormous political and personal successes while brilliant and plain-spoken men and women like Ron Paul are treated like “whack-jobs,” not even worthy of consideration in the process.
The good people of Texas’ 14th district know something most of the rest of us are apparently unaware of, that Ron Paul has answers. As an economist, I know that he has MANY good answers. Sadly, the two major party candidates vying for the White House are empty suits, bereft of even the barest minimum of ability to address our problems. The news of the past week clearly shows this. McCain spent part of it talking to the Dalai Lama. WHAT? I have nothing respect for the Dalai Lama, but what in the world was McCain thinking?
Even worse, Obama spent the week doing a “victory lap” in Europe, gathering adulation from Europeans. If he wanted to speak to non-Americans, he could have done that easily enough. Just go to Los Angeles, New York or one of a hundred other American cities, where immigration control has failed miserably. But, he decided to go to Europe, to wink at these people across the Atlantic, distancing himself from us “ugly Americans,” and in effect, saying “when I’m elected, I’ll shape these barbarians into polite savages you won’t mind having visit you.” The best thing Obama could do for “his” country, is more of this kind of thing. Keep showing poor judgement like that, and even the most dense Americans will realize he’s not in the race for them and will dump him from not only his White House bid, but also from his Senate seat when the time comes. Anyone who votes for Obama this fall will get precisely the government they deserve.
But sadly, we’ll be right there with them.
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Jim Jubak says that we’re in a great deal of danger, that the US economy is in a precarious position because of the $5 Trillion Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac debacle.
That he’s right isn’t the point of my mentioning it, that it’s Jim Jubak saying things like this is:
With $5 trillion in financial paper in the markets tied to these two companies, a failure at one or the other would panic the U.S. and every other financial market in the world.
We wouldn’t have to wonder about whether the U.S. economy would slip into a recession because we’d be in one — and looking a depression straight in the eye.
Jubak is extremely smart, experienced and mainstream. He’s not a doom and gloomer, and often debunks these kinds of ideas. Read his article Financial Doom and other Fairy Tales and you’ll see he’s no Chicken Little.
But, in the Fannie/Freddie situation, he’s looking up and seeing something that might fall.
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Article from Reuters. That this would be a surprise to anyone defies all common sense.
Entering the 20th century, the vast majority of Americans were employed in food production. Our resources were vast, and required a lot of hands to make the food we eat. Industry came, and with it, both higher paying jobs making cars (and other things). Fortunately, that same technological advance brought automation to the farm, freeing up a lot of those previously food-producing hands to go look for work in the factories in the big cities.
When foreign competition killed our steel and automotive industries, we started using the computers the industrial revolution made possible to create and sell “information.” The ridiculously cheap oil supplies we enjoyed (thanks to our “friendship” with oil sheiks in the ME) allowed us to create huge constellations of suburbs with their accompanying fast food franchises and big box stores, and sell things to each other, soaking up the enormous tidal waves of cash created by an army of manipulators of the economy.
America now has an economy that can be reduced in metaphor to a village of people who pay each other to do each others laundry. As long as some outside entity keeps sending checks to the villagers, it all works. But the many trouble-chickens coming home to roost in the U.S. right now are drying up the resources of that outside entity and the money is stopping.
What you are seeing right now in America, as we celebrate the birthday of this glorious Republic, is that we’re starting to do our own laundry. And so are our former customers, our neighbors.
And that’s a problem.
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And his name is Ron Paul
Dr. Paul smells something big happening, and is entering a statement about it into the Congressional Record. When the history of the early 21st century is read a hundred years from now by my descendents, I sincerely hope they are reading the inspirational story of how the ideas of Dr. Ron Paul saved this nation and the liberty of her citizens. I don’t believe those children will be reading about an evil Bush family who plotted to steal those freedoms from us, but rather a greedy and bungling clan who misused the trust a nation placed in them to put us all in a very, very difficult place.
I’d be happy if there were no villains in the story, just heroes and dolts.
On November 4th, please write-in Ron Paul for President.
We cannot afford the inexperience of Obama or the ignorance of McCain. It’s too critical a time for our Republic, and many, including myself, see it coming to bad end if things don’t change for the better very, very soon.
Ron Paul for President. He’s withdrawn from the race, but not from the revolution.
WhatComesNext.net stands with Dr. Paul.
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If anyone doubts that a shift in the way Americans live is underway, they only have to open up their browser and search, not among the Cassandra-like websites that inhabit the fringes of the net (a region I’m proud to say that WhatComesNext.net lives in, by the way), but the main body of the “respectable” internet.
For instance, searching Google News for “food shortages” leads to a wealth of articles from hundreds of news souces, including Time, US News & World Report, The Telegraph (UK), and on and on. This is a real and fast-developing situation.
The Third World has been battling this issue for a long time, but mainstream America has, for the most part, deemed it a problem “over there” rather than one “right here, right now.” That is changing. Searching Google News for “food shortages in America” leads to a significant package of stories as well.
George Ure’s fine site Urban Survival discusses this again this morning, part of a continuing focus his site’s had recently on food shortages and food riots around the world. Rice shortages at Wal-Mart and Costco are troubling. As Ure notes, even a Wall Street Journal columnist is advising Americans to stock up and store food. It’s one thing when Mormon conservative newsletter publisher Howard Ruff advises stocking up, but another thing entirely when a Wall Street Journal writer suggests it.
Sure, the approaches are different. Sure, the WSJ column is about buying relative ly cheap food today so you don’t have to buy more expensive foodstuffs later and Ruff has been predicting “the coming bad times” since the 70s, evoking imagery that could include violence and some degree of social breakdown
What is especially troubling, is that in the past when writers and analysts who predicted coming economic crashes and severe shortages of important resources, they did so at a time when Peak Oil was coming not here.
And that’s what has changed. The era of cheap oil is over, which means the era of cheap anything is over. It’s time to realize that and take steps to protect yourself and your family.
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What humans tend to understand very little about, is the cyclical nature of civilization, and more specifically, society. Apparently, evolution of our species has built into it the assumption that things will either a)stay the same pretty much forever, or failing that, b) improve a little or a lot (depending on just how grand your sense of optimism is).
But that’s sadly, a misreading of how it all works. Everything in our world and universe, for that matter, works through the machine of cycles. It’s built into the source code of our existence, and to deny it, is just self-delusion. We see it and teach it in our educational institutions, study it in our labs and think-tanks and even applaud it in our entertainment (Think The Lion King’s ‘Circle of Life’. But when it comes to life in the U.S. and the Western World, we think it can only get better, bigger and faster, forever and forever.
We are wrong. Read more »
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As the votes are tallied up in New Hampshire, and Granite State Republicans and Democrats state their preferances for the November elections, this is clear.
Whether it’s McCain, Obama, Romney or Clinton as the 44th President of the United States, we’re in trouble. The New Year barely begun, and we have another bad day on Wall Street, and the price of Gold is knocking on $900′s door. No, things are not good.
The funny, interesting or pathetic (take your pick) thing about this primary season is that “CHANGE” is the watchword, the phrase everyone from candidate to media pundit is saying every few minutes. But look at those four names. 3 are currently serving Senators and Romney a Repblican fave-boy with the Million Dollar smile. What possible change can either of these people make?
I make no bones about the fact that Ron Paul is our only chance for real change. The rest are political insiders who promise more of the same. We’ll continue down the same road to fiscal and military destruction we’re on now. A little heartening is that over 8% of New Hampshire Republican voters voted for Dr. Paul.
It’s a start.
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