Dorothea Lange‘Mother and Children in Shantytown During the Depression’
We live in the pop- culture universe of Andy Warhol and his gruesome, tin- foil factory. The collapse of the Western world and its fundamental precepts is just another mediocre work of post- modern art.
Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Iron Man’
Can he see or is he blind?
Can he walk at all,
or if he moves will he fall?
Austerity has arrived, kiss any recovery goodbye! Best for all of us to prepare in the mind for poverty. Our leadership has abandoned us while it plays golf or watches a yacht race. While Congress cuts the lifeline for thousands of unemployed, the president says nothing. Has he lost his mind?
Has he thoughts within his head?
We’ll just pass him there
why should we even care?
Absent are preparations in the country for what is taking shape just over the horizon. The safety net is in disappearing fragments. One reason for the illusory recovery has been the support from structured payouts such as unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements which have been recycled into the economy. Our fiendlishly complex and interconnected systems have no ‘fail safes’ or back-up systems. There are no lifeboats, other than what we can cobble together on our own. Has he thoughts within his head … besides ‘Let them eat cake’?
The government is unprepared; revisit the BP fiasco and look to see if any steps are being taken to protect the citizens from the likely outcome of an all- out money panic. Because the government is unprepared it perhaps believes that being so is talismanic. Ours are systems built upon the foundations of wishful thinking. Why should we even care?
Our government never mentions Peak Oil, even though it is striking the country and the world in the wallet.
In the great magnetic field
When he traveled time
For the future of mankind
The world- wide stimulus was completely mismanaged, the opportunity to restructure the finance system has evaporated. Judging from appearances any serious restructuring activities would have been fatal to the economy. Perhaps not, but with events soon to force restructuring everyone will find out.
There was never going to be any recovery, anyway. Ours is a crisis of over- consumed energy resources. The bier for our rotting economy is the silent and invisible gusher in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.
He just stares at the world
Planning his vengeance
That he will soon unfurl
Treasuries and central banks fear adding more borrowing to finance systems staggering under burdens of unpayable debt. There is no ‘growth’ no or little real returns to what is glibly considered ‘production’. The world’s energy consumption- based economic model is a cadaver. The appearance of economic activity is just that; the direct result of government stimulus and recycled funds. It is more a matter of nature’s vengeance or perhaps our own directed at ourselves.
For iron man to spread fear
Vengeance from the grave
Kills the people he once saved
Depression 2.0. The original featured the Dust Bowl, Okies, Dorothea Lange and the WPA/FDR. It was as serious as a heart attack. The Warholian version is Frankenstein’s nightmare writ in Day- Glo silkscreen ink. What you see and feel around the edges is that nauseating sensation of the heroin addict getting ready to O.D.
Southern Europe and most of the US states are shambling blindly toward the edge of the fiscal cliff. Tax receipts have fallen, the silken promises of real estate developers, highway construction contractors and ‘Big Finance/Big Insurance/Big Industry’ of endless growth have turned out to be catastrophic lies.
They just turn their heads
Nobody helps him
Now he has his revenge
Austerity arrives not on silver wings but on Iron Man’s boots of lead.
Self- destructive Republicans in Congress are hammering the thousands of unemployed. They must be punished for causing this mess in the first place. Right?
Congress Fails to Pass an Extension of Jobless Aid By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
WASHINGTON — Legislation to extend unemployment subsidies for hundreds of thousands of Americans who have exhausted their jobless benefits teetered on the edge of collapse on Thursday, as Senate Democrats and Republicans traded bitter accusations about who was to blame for an eight-week impasse.
Senate Republicans and a lone Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, joined forces to filibuster the bill in a procedural vote on Thursday. Visibly frustrated, the majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said he would move on to other business next week because he saw little chance of winning over any Republican votes.The vote was 57 to 41, with the Democrats falling three short of the 60 votes needed to advance the measure.
“You’ll hear a lot of excuses,” Mr. Reid said at a news conference. “The bottom line is the minority just said no.”
How are businesses supposed to sell products when their customers are broke? I guess the Republicans would offer more credit with one hand while the other takes it away. Congress’ action could be called the ‘War on American Business Policy’. In keeping with all the other Reaganomic policies designed to bankrupt American businesses by pauperizing business’ customers. It aims to send the rest of American business overseas to China.
Even as China follows us into fuel- price induced bankruptcy.
Without fiscal tools to support those at the bottom of the economic food chain, the heavy lifting becomes the Fed’s responsibility. Here to, the deficit hawks are circling:
Ben Bernanke needs fresh monetary blitz as US recovery faltersFederal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is waging an epochal battle behind the scenes for control of US monetary policy, struggling to overcome resistance from regional Fed hawks for further possible stimulus to prevent a deflationary spiral.
Fed watchers say Mr Bernanke and his close allies at the Board in Washington are worried by signs that the US recovery is running out of steam. The ECRI leading indicator published by the Economic Cycle Research Institute has collapsed to a 45-week low of -5.7 in the most precipitous slide for half a century. Such a reading typically portends contraction within three months or so.
Key members of the five-man Board are quietly mulling a fresh burst of asset purchases, if necessary by pushing the Fed’s balance sheet from $2.4 trillion (£1.6 trillion) to uncharted levels of $5 trillion. But they are certain to face intense scepticism from regional hardliners. The dispute has echoes of the early 1930s when the Chicago Fed stymied rescue efforts.
“We’re heading towards a double-dip recession,” said Chris Whalen, a former Fed official and now head of Institutional Risk Analystics. “The party is over from fiscal support. These hard-money men are fighting the last war: they don’t recognise that money velocity has slowed and we are going into deflation. The only default option left is to crank up the printing presses again.”
Mr Bernanke is so worried about the chemistry of the Fed’s voting body – the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) – that he has persuaded vice-chairman Don Kohn to delay retirement until Janet Yellen has been confirmed by the Senate to take over his post. Mr Kohn has been a key architect of the Fed’s emergency policies. He was due to step down this week after 40 years at the institution, depriving Mr Bernanke of a formidable ally in policy circles.
Chris Whalen is wrong, we have never escaped the first dip, only a cruel pause … a head fake. Now the deleveraging begins again with central banks and treasuries in far worse shape to contend with it. With most developed nations sporting Zero Interest Rate Policies (ZIRP) there is no room to cut; there is no new money available to recycle and multiply through fractional lending.
The inflation hawks wait for the storm that never arrives to be indundated by the flood. Deflation is marching. Even with stimulus spending, ever easier credit and restructuring of bad loans and lenders, the outcome is certain. Our waste- first economy crossed its Rubicon ten years ago. Without limitless quantities of cheap fuel there are no complex, centralized manufacturing economies. They are simply too expensive.
Fills his victims full of dread
Running as fast as they can
Iron man lives again!
The governments stand aside while the powerful have their way and the less so are swept aside. At issue is the relative decline in available fuel. There has been less since 1999 when oil was massively plentiful. Now, credit stands in for fuel consumption and allocates by willingness to indenture oneself to continue to waste. It’s a hard as in pitiless choice; drive a car or wind up in debtor’s prison.
I cannot be surprised by the likely outcome. We love our cars.