The Great Transformation; It Sound’s Better than Great Depression Doesn’t it?
Good Morning Middle America, your King of Simple News is on the air.
How many of you thought the Dow Jones Industrial average, the NASDAQ and the S&P 500 would lose nearly half of their highest values this year? I certainly didn’t.
As I know someone will quickly point out, my prediction when the Dow was soaring was that is would fall to 9300. As of yesterday, 9300 was 1400 points ago.
Remember the articles that I ran a year ago when Bernanke, Greenspan, and Bush said that housing wouldn’t crash? When they said that housing would make a soft landing and that the U.S. was not headed for recession? And when I said, “These guys are lying too you?” Well, they were.
The Democrats have already tipped their hand as to the magic that they will work once unhampered by Republicans and vetoes; print enough money and this puppy will run like a Greyhound. Of course it won’t.
There is an end to all the fun and games of political and monetary manipulation and hopefully the new President with the help of his loyal Congress will lead us to that end in short order so that we can turn around and go home.
I’m convinced that Albert Einstein was correct and that human stupidity really is infinite. In all fairness, perhaps I’m the one who is infinitely stupid and that we really can grow exponentially in a finite world. Perhaps the problem really is that we aren’t using enough natural resources to create the necessary commerce and that printing paper called money in ever greater quantities is the ultimate answer.
Perhaps we will mine the stars and beam unlimited energy from space and will turn baron desert into crop land. Perhaps we will get a clean air machine and clean water maker that will provide endlessly for the world.
Perhaps the need for oil and gas and coal and iron ore and copper and tin and a hundred other natural resources that are being depleted at a record pace will not longer be necessary once the Democrats take over.
It’s a cinch that the Republicans didn’t have any of the answers. If they had, they would still be in power. Certainly I have considered some 10,000 times that I personally may have this whole thing wrong.
The last thing I would ever want to do is cause someone to take personal actions that would jeopardize their future. Before writing my book, I did my level best to anchor myself in what I believe are irrefutable facts, and that as humans, we cannot continue our consumption based economy of the past. The world plainly won’t support us. And that seems plain enough to me.
It is apparent that world commerce is failing and I believe that it is a permanent state. I also believe that the U.S. has reached our limits to growth when measured as an increase of Gross Domestic Product.
Our local economies will become far more important to us than what is going on in Singapore or London or even New York or Los Angeles, unless of course, one lives in these cities and then they will become your local economy.
The large cities and sprawling suburbia that surround those cities cannot provide for themselves. Thousands of what today are considered upscale jobs will disappear into history much the same way as the wheelwright and harness maker of the past. Don’t laugh, those guys said, “Who would want to operate a horseless carriage?” The automakers today are asking the same question.
There will be many new opportunities unveil themselves as local economies strengthen and global economies weaken. Wealth will not so much be created, but transferred from cities to rural areas. There will be winners and losers in this great transformation so for goodness sakes; get our there and be a winner.
Live simple, live free, live well, and live long. That is about as good as it gets.
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I agree, Mike, that this sucker is going down (to paraphrase “The Decider”).
But they’re not giving up without a fight. The financial crisis has become a license to consolidate the financial system, giving the powers-that-be even more power. Great! Just what we need. See Statement From G-20 Summit: In English (solari.com/blog/?p=1823″).
Then there’s our new president-elect. The health care system is so screwed up because of the insurance companies and government acting as middlemen that prices are out of control. So the government’s solution: enlarge the middlemen! That’s how government works: identify the most egregious failures and enlarge them!
So because there aren’t enough bodies funding the health insurance scam, the Messiah wants to force everyone to buy health insurance at gunpoint (ala Mrs. Clinton, the new Secretary of State). See the Wall Street Journal, The Obama Health Plan Emerges (online.wsj.com/article/SB122714181668742739.html):
The last cog is the “individual mandate.” This requirement that everyone buy coverage has grabbed most media scrutiny of the Baucus plan, because Mr. Obama opposed it during the campaign. But the many moving parts don’t work together unless the young and healthy foot the bill for care of the older and sicker — one reason Hillary Clinton kept nagging Mr. Obama about the individual mandate during the primaries.
I am so laughing at all the fools who voted for the Messiah as an agent of change! People close to me were so desperate for “change” that they voted for this moron. When I pressed them for specifics on what would change, they couldn’t say, but implied that “anything but Bush” would be a start. Ha! His Chief of Staff is a huge supporter of Israel and a warmonger; the Messiah himself has expressed interest in expanding warfare; now his Secretary of State is a former First Lady. Some “change.” I’m laughing my a** off at these fools who voted for the Messiah. It’s mean and wicked of me, I know, but I’m in a mood today.
I’ll say it now, there is no way on this Earth that I will be forced to buy health insurance. If I have to move to a desert island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or a shack at the top of Mount Everest, that’s what I’ll do.
Dave
http://daveeriqat.wordpress.com/
Mike..
That’s a great outlook.. I wish I could feel as rosy.. Maybe need new glasses.. I agree with you, except for one little option.. Too often when a government fails completely, the last thing they try to cover their failure is to start wars.. As for the u.s… Our only tool is our military.. What’s that saying.?? When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.. I wish us luck.. We’re gonna need it.. WmA…
If we continue for the next 20-25 years with the same program we are on now, many of those top notch jobs will once again be millwrights, harness makers, black smiths, farmers, etc.
It will take 40-50 years of research and development, using all known forms of alternative energy, combined to equal what oil provides us today. Peak oil production will happen somewhere around 2032, give or take 5 years. Just 8th grade math will tell anyone who is not in total denial that we have a major problem confronting us in the very near future, and it ain’t just our exponential growth economy. But in fact, if we persist with our present form of economy, peak oil production will happen much sooner than Hubbert predicted, possibly even within the next 16 years.
So if the late 1800’s era seems like a really nice place to be, forever, we should continue on our present path. We are approaching that goal rapidly. If we let it go that far, we will not have another chance, ever. And that will be a very long time for us all. -bb
Transformation - I like that. I also notice it seems to be happening in and around the small town I live in. What was once an old town with lots of empty storefronts has come alive again - restaurants, hobby shops, art galleries, offices, second hand stores, repair shops, etc., etc., etc. It seems like the local economy is becoming just that - local again.
The town seems to be saying, “let’s take care of each other and what we have and let the world work it out.”
Thanks for all the thoughtful comments. The seriousness of our current decline seems to be news that many will never face.
I was in the barber shop today and one guy said, “I think things will pick back up in the spring.” When I asked why he believed that, he replied, “We have always pulled out of these things before.” The remainder of the patrons seemed to agree with him.
I reminded them that we have never been in this much trouble before. That we are in worse shape than in 1929 to weather the storm.
But, they all thought things would get better just the same as those who voted for Obama thought things would change. And they will.
On the issue of health insurance, there is no possible way to make the current “for profit” insurance system work…end of story.
Karen, thanks for observing that your small town is turning around, it gives us all hope. Difficult times pull people back to together and that is the way we should have been living all along.