The Coming Siege of Austerity

      It's a curious symptom of the consensus trance zombifying the American public and its auditors in the media that something like a "recovery" is now deemed to be underway. And, as events compel me to repeat in this space, it begs the question: recovery to what? To Wall Street booking stupendous profits by laundering "risk" out of bad loans with new issues of tranche-o-matic securitized paper? This I doubt, since there isn't a pension fund left from San Jose to Bratislava that would touch this stuff with a stick, even if it could be turned out in collector's editions of boxed sets. Does it mean that American "consumers" (so-called) are awaited momentarily in the flat-screen TV sales parlors with their credit cards fanned-out like poker hands, ready for "action?" Not too likely with massive non-performance out in cardholder-land, and half the nation's electronics inventory wending its way onto Craig's List. Are we expecting more asteroid belts of new suburbs carved in the loamy outlands of Dallas and Minneapolis, complete with new highway strips of Big Box shopping and Chuck E. Cheeses? Go to banking's intensive care unit and inquire (if you can) among the flat-lining production home-builders and the real estate investment trusts on life support when they expect to rev up the heavy equipment.
     The idea that we're about to resume the insane behavior that induced the current epochal malaise of economy is so absurd it will only be heard in the faculty dining halls of the Ivy League. And if America is not picking up where it left off eighteen months ago -- the orgy of spending future claims on wealth unlikely to accrue -- then what is our destiny? Based on what's out there in the organs of public thinking, it seems that we don't want to think about it.
     So many forces are arrayed against a return to the previous "normal" that we will be lucky, in another eighteen months, to still find ourselves speaking English and celebrating Christmas. What's "out there" is a panorama of mutually reinforcing critical problems pertaining to how we live on this continent. Like the obesity, heart disease, and diabetes that plague the public, these problems are disorders of lifestyle habits and the only possible "cure" is a comprehensive revision of lifestyle. With the onset of spring weather and the cheez doodles and monster truck rallies and Nascar tailgate barbeques and the drive-in beer emporiums all beckoning, can the public shift its attention from these infantile preoccupations to saving its own ass?
     So far, the most striking piece of the economic fiasco is the absence of any galvanizing spirit among the millions getting crushed in the tragic unwind of our relations with money. It will be interesting to see, for instance, if there is any uproar over the evolving story of Goldman Sachs's latest raid on the US Treasury, after booking billions in taxpayer-funded payouts funneled through AIG, based on double-hedged credit default swaps. Such magic tricks are understandably hard to follow, but a dozen-or-so federal attorneys with a middling background in differential calculus might suss out the trail that leads from Ben Bernanke's work station to Lloyd Blankfein's cappuccino machine.
      Something similar may be said in regard to revelations last week of White House economic advisor Larry Summers' connection with a number of hedge funds shoveling millions into his deep pockets for showing up once a week to cheerlead their "innovations" -- not to mention his shadowy visits to the Goldman Sachs gravy train even after he signed onto the Obama campaign. As long as the stock markets seem to rally -- no matter what else is really going on in America -- nobody will pay much attention to these disgusting irregularities.
      Since it is that time of year, and I am haunting the gardening shop, one can't fail to notice the many styles of pitchforks for sale. My guess is that the current mood of public paralysis will dissolve in a blur of blood and spittle sometime between Memorial Day and July Fourth, even with Nascar in full swing, and the mushrooming ranks of the unemployed lost in raptures of engine noise and fried cornmeal. It doesn't take too many determined, pissed-off people to create a lot of mischief in a complex society.
     On the agenda in the second quarter of '09 are ominous rumblings in the oil and food sectors. Half a year of cratered oil prices have decimated the oil industry and we're driving at 100-miles-an-hour straight off a cliff into a new kind of supply crisis -- even if industrial production and global exports remain moribund. So many drilling rigs are being decommissioned that the oil industry itself looks like it's preparing for its own death, investment in exploration and discovery has withered with the credit markets, and the world may never recover from the year long hiccup in oil industry activity -- translation: peak oil is biting back now with a vengeance. Its peakness will look peakier and the yawning arc of depletion beyond will look steeper and pose a threat to every globalized and continental-scale enterprise in the known world.
     So many dire elements are ranging around our food production system (i.e. farming), from widespread drought and water table depletion to "input" shortages (especially fertilizers) to sickness in credit availability, that we're all one bad harvest away from something that will make Pieter Bruegel-the-elder's "Triumph of Death" look like Vanity Fair's annual Oscar Party in comparison.
     Barack Obama, charming as he is, had better drop his pretensions about kick-starting the old consumer economy, fire the Wall Street clowns and parasites who are running that futile exercise, and start preparing a US Lifeboat Economy aimed at reducing the scale and scope of our outlays so we can survive the coming siege of austerity. Meanwhile, I'm glad that he finally got a dog for the White House, because the President knows full-well where to turn in Washington if you want some genuine love and affection.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder -- The Triumph of Death

(Click image to enlarge)

____________________________________

My 2008 novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available in paperback  at all booksellers.

Comments

[Gobe]

Wow. Amazing picture.

[And the band played on...]

awesome, i can't wait. Sharpen them pitchforks...

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

Speaking of pitchforks,

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=111310

The tune I am thinking of is called "Halliburton Boadroom Massacre".

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

Make that "boardroom", not "boadroom".

[FARfetched]

Speaking of diabetes, our boarder (DoubleRed) was diagnosed with diabetes last night. We saw the warning signs earlier in the week… fortunately, she didn't get as bad-off as The Boy did before she went to get looked at.

I have to agree with your energy outlook — the second quarter of '09 has already begun, so I'd guess peak oil will start "biting back" somewhere between August and October. I'm slightly more sanguine about food production: if the planting is mostly on schedule now, we should be OK this year. There's been a huge uptick in gardening this year; it won't do much for grains but it could alleviate any problems this year.

However, I doubt we'll see much social upheaval by early summer… the teabaggers have their whine-fest, designed to protest tax increases for the same boyz that caused the financial crisis, scheduled for Wednesday. It's pretty likely they'll make some aimless noise, declare victory, and go back home thinking they've accomplished something. However, the frothing from the likes of Glenn Beck and the rest of Fox Spew and their allies do make your "corn-pone Hitler" theory ominously possible.

We had some rough weather on Planet Georgia on Friday — tornadoes and other severe t-storm events — and the "fun" continues this morning with high wind warnings. Aftermath pics are up on my blog if you're interested. Such things are a good reminder: whether you think things are bad and only going to get worse, or kind of bad and ready to get better, Mother Nature doesn't always wait to bat last. Pick your poison: tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, ice storms, volcanoes… no matter where you live, there's a mini-disaster waiting to happen. And in between, there's always the drunk driver heading toward a power pole. If you don't know how you're going to deal with the local problems that can hit you this afternoon, how can you expect to deal with the fallout from oil depletion or financial collapse?

In March 2035, spring is finally arriving in the FAR Future. It's blowing in some other kind of undesirable though: http://is.gd/s8Ol

[FARfetched]

Oops, shoulda been March 2036. The years go by fast, now and then. :-P

[free_way_4_life]

Happy to see some graphics in this blog, even if they do depict darkness.

As far as people being complacent with the shadowy figures that are looking the remains of our crashed growth system, well I'd have to say pretty much everyone I meet has a sense that something is not right. They have just not taken the time to do the proper research into what's wrong, or if they have tried to do research they have not been found the right approach due to the pervasion of misinformation from "experts." Heck, it has taken me over seven years of underground articles and videos to go from a teenager who suspected some kind of social brainwashing (lol the late 90's prefab music scene fertilized that even before GW Bush) to a young man who is reasonably aware. Still, though, I'm confused half the time and I'm constantly updating my opinions as new facts are dug up by the underground.

That being said, people need to be pointed toward a few good comprehensive sources that are not too inflammatory (there are several, but www.oftwominds.com is a blog that immediately comes to mind).

Furthermore, there needs to be some sort of positive vision for the future that the people can get involved with. If anything, it is something to do in lieu of the dead malls and mindless entertainment that's becoming affordable anyways. The green, localization, open source and liberty/constitution movements ought to come together to provide this vision.

I'll be working on bringing about this unification this summer, will post links to this project once they are up.

Have a good morning everyone!

[Uncle Al]

Sunday 12 April 2009 Los Angeles Times p. A27.

Derivative paper value: Securities and Exchange Commission estimate: $596 trillion (10X global annual productivity). Bank for International Settlements, Switzerland estimate: $1.2 quadrillion.

"In fact, some derivative paper is so sloppily structured that banks have been unable to figure out the contents of their own portfolios" "$50 trillion hole in the US economy from losses in stocks, home values, and revenues in less than one year." "Although there is only $13 trillion in cash and coins worldwide, there are hundreds of trillions of dollars in "property paper."

The 1929 wake-up call violently oscillated through 1931. Only then was the hole bottomless until 1941. We have already had our recovery war - accompanied by 60,000+ wounded veterans who will require expensive perpetual medical care. Will every space in parking lots be Officially designated Handicapped (er, Other-Abled)?

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

Saw that Panzner guy on Book TV yesterday. Makes JHK look like an optimist. "Falling Giants" or something was the name of his book.

[steve]

What does Blankfein's cappuccino machine have to do with anything? Keep reading about it in each column.
Actually, I view Kunstler's warnings optimistically. It's all going to happen sooner or later, so why not sooner?
But, I still can't figure out his approach to Obama or any other politician. Does he really think our hope lies in these people? Sad!
Good luck to us all.

[edhurley]

So, its the apocalypse then? I'm gettin' my hayfork this weekend at Lowe's.

[stvo]

Where is the anger? Internet porn and anti-depressants/anti-anxiety medication have probably helped retard the movement to serious anger. Unmanageable personal debt and financial failure also creates feelings of shame and encourages people to avoid social connections or new situations.

Extremely worrisome is the upward surge in the sale of AYN RAND novels. Shyte like the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have apparently been racing up the Amazon fiction chart. How twisted is that? People may be slowly coming out of shock/reactive mode and are looking for all-in-one simplistic answers. Messiah complex is what its called.

Yeesh, Ayn Rand!

[Jynx]

Ayn Rand's philosophy assumes that people are basically noble if left to pursue their self-interest. Really it's as delusional as delusional gets. Government regulation, however onerous, is necessary. Always will be.

[dale]

“Pick your poison: tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, ice storms, volcanoes… no matter where you live, there's a mini-disaster waiting to happen. And in between, there's always the drunk driver heading toward a power pole. If you don't know how you're going to deal with the local problems that can hit you this afternoon, how can you expect to deal with the fallout from oil depletion or financial collapse?” ---FARout
Yeah!...get out there and start protecting those power poles people!! (Pant,Pant,Pant) Pretty fracking funny. I think some of the people here must have been the same ones who were worrying extravagantly about “ritual satanic abuse” a few years ago. The only genuinely scary thing is how many people buy into this hysteria, hook line and sinker.
JHK makes sense just often enough, between the bug eyed apocalyptic forecasts, you can almost imagine that he has a grip on reality. For example, will the “standard of living” for US citizens fall? Duh.....Will Oil prices spike again? Duh.....Are we running out of fertilizer? Huh?...according to the markets prices are falling and demand is slack for a number of reasons....none of which is approaching apocalypse. Oh well....two out three ain't bad.
Relax....take a few deep breaths.....you'll adapt, and perhaps evens survive for a few more years. If civilization is going to collapse it will almost certainly take a lot longer than any of JHK's predictions. A lot of you guys remind me of the only kind of people I will take a wager from......rabid fans....they always get it wrong, if not the outcome then surely the odds. Wanna bet?

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

A lot of that rabies going around this year, seems like. Watch out for raccoons and bats are what the oldtimers are telling me.

[SouthBranchDaddy]

Neil Barofsky, the former assistant attorney general appointed TARP fraud investigator, is even now huddled with his team of intrepid financial fraud detectors in the basement of some DC office building. I am half tempted to call him to "see how it's going." He has the job of connecting the trail of bread crumbs between GS Chairman Blankfein's cappucino machine at Goldman Sachs and his partners Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner, and what went on over that weekend in September when Treasury, The New York Fed, Bernanke, Blankfein decided to engineer the bailout of AIG, which wasn't even a bank. And suffice to say that whatever foul deeds the prosecutorial efforts of Bedrosky's team uncover as having being committed by these miscreants in dark suits will be quietly buried via the convention of burying it amid overwhelming media static over a weekend, to be followed by cries for reform from Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Me, I shorted the S&P 500 yesterday via ProShares and expect to reap some modest reward by the end of the month. Nonetheless, as Goldman prepares to go public with a multibillion dollar equity offering, and the stakes high on creating a gathering perception that the "Credit Crisis" is over, look for CNBC and WSJ dung beetles such as that putz Kudrow coaching the slow money swimmers back into the water, even as the fast money moves back out. The trouble is, as Jim points out, that there ain't nothing there, and smoke and mirrors cannot a vibrant economy make. The Fed steps up its purchases of Treasuries offerings, monetizing the debt which cannot be sold due to the dwindling numbers of greater fools. GM and Chrysler are lost causes who will file for bankruptcy and ultimately liquidate, and a massive wave of unemployment and bankruptcies will sweep that vastly interconnected industry, with unwelcome consequences. Malls are moribund, CRE is dying, and Jim is correct as to the state of homebuilders (an industry I am very involved with) which are near death. The profits to be announced by the banks this month are illusions, so stay tuned.

[free_way_4_life]

oops - I meant mindless entertainment becoming "unaffordable."

Speaking of that, stvo, I've only read Rand's first novella, Anthem, all the way through. Tried reading the Fountainhead but I got bored halfway through. From what I've read, though, objectivism is a good ideal that is unworkable in our ecological universe. It is also very easily corrupted by central powers, like the ones who created our (now failing) mind numbing corporate consumer society that combines the worst of individualism and collectivism. FYI, Greenspan was an Ayn Rand disciple:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_greenspan#Greenspan_and_Objectivism

Well, I can only hope my novel coming out this summer can present a competing message to Rand. After all, Fairyheart is set in the America of the 2000's, has sex and drugs and hip hop, and I'll have to say both the villians and heroes are all sexier than John Galt :oP Then again, I am a little biased, but see for yourself in my peak oil future based teaser novella being published online in serial:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1634169/island_asylum_segment_1.html?cat=38

Oh, and Steve, your Obama question is right on ... funny how I had this video playing in my head while I cooked breakfast this morning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXpdJLJqG9U

Just fast forward 16 years and laugh your collective asses off :o) RIP Bill Hicks!

[peakoilmom]

I like the painting, but wish you would use the black and white photo of yourself. It was more in keeping with austerity and peak problems. (Maybe you could add a moustache to it.)

Likely the Earth is going into a cooling phase, which will bring us more Valley Forge like winters. I think the DOD might be thinking of that. Remember that report commissioned for them awhile back? It was based on colder, not warmer, weather wreaking havoc on the globe.

Want action? Go to a tea party! Who knows? They may have pitchforks along with the tea bags at their meetups.

[Radical SAHM]

Pieter Bruegel the Elder "Mad Meg" graces my header : )

I tend to agree with some of the other folks commenting that this isn't going to be a top down solution/reaction. It isn't in the nature of an oligarchy to shift. Individual internal shifts are what will turn the tide.

http://radicalsahm.blogspot.com/2009/02/ordinary-hero.html

Maybe a touch of "whithering away of the state" is on the horizon?

Long live the Un-Tied States!

[DanW]

An Odd Route To Socialism
Basically, unless there really is a tax revolt of epic proportions, the government's plan to save the current system by spending trillions of dollars (printing and borrowing) on bailouts for the banking-set, and then servicing the terrible federal deficits and debt through mind-numbing tax increases, will be the plan of action for years to come. It is rather interesting that we have come to Socialism NOT out of a belief in fairness or in equality or in communitarianism, but out of a desperate attempt to save the wealthiest among us from poverty. Really weird, huh?

[msjanket]

Instead of talking about fluff and Obama-mythology, folks should spend more time with the latest news that is revelatory. Michelle Obama now has her full time beautician attending to her looks 24/7. Damn, we are saved.
I cannot remotely fathom how and why some folks insist this Obama guy is the most brilliant, wonderful, kind, and fantastic president in our history. I don't find him likeable, courageous, experienced, and honest. This guy is a sham. I was deeply touched by the photo of Michelle planting the seedlings in her Victory garden. That is so wonderful, an Ivy League lawyer stooping into God's Earth to plant and nourish her brood with the product of her honest labors (with the help of her squadron of GS16 gardeners). If only we could follow her lead.
Let us all collectively follow our Dear and Great Leader. Those Somali sumbitch warlords never knew what hit 'em. Don't mess with Barry. I bet the guy can probably dunk, too.

[fugeguy]

Continue the discussion at:

www.groups.yahoo. com/group/thelongemergency/messages

(remove the space between yahoo and com)

[David Mathews]

Someone needs to tell the capitalists that capitalism is dead.

Someone needs to tell the conservatives that all that sound of them crying is simply evidence that they are an unpopular extremist minority, out of power and out of time.

Someone needs to tell the economists that economic growth has ended, forever ... and thank God for that!

Someone needs to tell the Reproducers that the Earth doesn't need 100 million more little Americans taught to live in the same reckless, irresponsible manner as their parents.

Someone needs to tell the oil industry to go to hell. Now.

Someone needs to tell The Oil Drum that shilling for the oil industry and the American Petroleum Institute doesn't make those people heroes ... just far-right conservative nutjobs trying to save their jobs and investments at the expense of humankind and the future.

Someone needs to tell humankind to surrender to Nature or suffer extinction. Nature doesn't negotiate. Nature isn't merciful. The price of foolishness is extinction.

Someone needs to tell all these people worrying about their money and jobs that they should worry no longer. Life without money and a job is better than life as a slave to corporatism and consumerism.

This world is too beautiful for humankind:

http://www.flickr.com/dmathew1

[bud4wiser]

JK,

No new angles? Huh? Well, that's Ok. I guess the saddest part of this mess is hoping that a few good men will resist the temptation to get in on the action.

Afterall, the whole reason this scheme went on for as long as it did, and grew as big as it did, was becasue that at every step of the way, - anyone with the power to stop it was cut-in for a piece of the gravy-train.

We can look for this same behavior in the future as we sit by stuptified by our "leaders" and talking-heads inability to see that the game is ending.

Now, as all the players straighten up there own houses and hotels on boardwalk and parkplace, Obama thinks if he opens a new monoply box and brings all the banker's money to the board that the game can go on. But let's face it, only one hotel to a space.

Meanwhile JK, I share your suspicions that futures markets are ready to be cornered for personal gain, now that the bank robbers can buy new monopoly boards with our treasury's credit cards - and why not - with no players to stop them.

I've written my President, Senators and Representatives - I figure that's worth about the same as a garage-sale mural of dog's playing poker......

Over 'n out.

[Dr.Doom]

You know you're in trouble when the only optimistic comment is coming from David Mathews.

dale, I'd love to take your bet but I'm afraid I'll win it.