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Page added on February 15, 2016
Kunstler: Repricing Reality
It ought to be a foregone conclusion that Mr. Obama’s replacement starting January 20, 2017 will preside over conditions of disorder in everyday life and economy never seen before. For the supposedly thinking class in America, the end of reality-optional politics will come as the surprise of their lives.
Where has that hypothetical thinking class been, by the way, the past eight years? Don’t look for it in what used to be called “the newspapers.” The New York Times has become so reality-averse that the editors traded in their blue pencils for Federal Reserve cheerleader pompoms after the Lehman incident of 2008. Every information-dispensing organ has followed their lede: The Recovery Continues! It’s a sturdy plank for promoting the impaired asset known as Hillary.
Don’t look for the thinking class in the universities. They’ve surrendered their traditional duties to a new hybrid persecution campaign that is equal parts Mao Zedong, the Witches of Loudon, and the Asylum at Charenton. For instance the President of Princeton, Mr. Eisgruber, was confronted with a list of demands that included 1) erasure of arch-segregationist Woodrow Wilson’s name from everything on campus, and 2) creation of a new all-black (i.e. segregated) student center. He didn’t blink. Note: nobody in the media asked him about this apparent contradiction. That’s how we roll these days.
Don’t look for the thinking class in business. The C-suites are jammed with people still busy buying back stock in their own companies at outlandish prices with borrowed money. Why? To artificially boost share price and thus their salaries and bonuses. Does it do anything for the fitness of enterprise? No, in fact it makes future failure more likely. Why is there no governance of their insane behavior? Because they’ve also bought and paid for boards of directors composed of a rotating cast of praetorian shills, with fresh recruits entering the scene weekly through the fabled “revolving door” between business and government regulators.
Oh, and then there’s government. Anyone viewing the boasting-and-defamation contests that the cable TV networks call “debates” knows that these spectacles are based on the opposite of thinking. They are not only reality-optional, they’re thought-optional. Hence, it appears for now that America is fixing to elect either a primal screamer or a road-tested grifter to preside over the epochal collapse of our hobbled, exhausted, way of life.
The recent carnage in the stock markets will probably see a retracement after the President’s Day hiatus. They’re bouncing up in other parts of the world today, the triumph of hope over all the available evidence that something fatal has happened out there in Tom Friedman’s supposedly permanent global economy. Some observers suspect that it has something to do with the price of oil, because the oil futures market and the stock indexes seem to go up and down in tandem. But they don’t really get it.
How hard is it to understand that A) that something adverse happens to oil companies when it costs them $70-a-barrel to hoist the product out of the ground and then sell it for $30-a-barrel? And B) that all of the infrastructure of techno-industrial civilization was designed to run on oil under $30-a-barrel and founders when the price goes higher? That’s how it is. That’s your basic reality.
We’ve been trying to work around this vexing problem — the non-linear manifestation of the supposedly bygone predicament called “peak oil” — since the early part of this century. Mainly, we worked around it by borrowing money that wasn’t there. Having created this matrix of borrowed money, we’ve also created an expectation in market obligations that it must be paid back. In fact, the process of paying back money owed is the only thing that supports confidence in a system based on that essential trust — even if that expectation was unreal to begin with. When it is violated, terrible things happen in markets and economies.
Those terrible things are underway. We’re going to be a much-distressed and poorer so-called republic when this year is done with us. The markets will crack and the trade relations that comprise globalism will fall apart as nations and regions of nations struggle to survive. We’ll move inexorably to a very possibly disastrous election. We’ll face the basic choices, as distressed societies always do, of freaking-and-acting-out (usually in the form of war), or opting for a reunion with reality and its mandates. So far, it’s not looking good for the better option.
If you are a thinking person, the months ahead might be your last chance to protect whatever wealth you have and to move to some part of the country where, at least, you can grow some of your own food and become a useful part of a social and economic network that might be called a community.
17 Comments on "Kunstler: Repricing Reality"
onlooker on Mon, 15th Feb 2016 2:07 pm
Eloquent writing by Kunstler. I challenge anyone to dispute any of what he has stated. I love the way he parodies and mocks the current BAU as the total sham it is. Something that has somehow continued but is fast dissolving under the burden of facts and indelible reality. Our civilization has run out of tools in its arsenal time to buckle up it could be a bumpy ride.
penury on Mon, 15th Feb 2016 2:25 pm
Kunsler is probably accurate in his prognostications, however the timeline may be longer than anyone anticipates. Rome did not fall over night, and barring nuclear war the empire will take a very long time to disintegrate.
onlooker on Mon, 15th Feb 2016 2:30 pm
Yes penury I concede that the timeline is very difficult to gauge.
GregT on Mon, 15th Feb 2016 2:36 pm
“How hard is it to understand that
“A) that something adverse happens to oil companies when it costs them $70-a-barrel to hoist the product out of the ground and then sell it for $30-a-barrel?”
“And B) that all of the infrastructure of techno-industrial civilization was designed to run on oil under $30-a-barrel and founders when the price goes higher?”
The 5 ton fluorescent orange and green striped elephant in the room.
shortonoil on Mon, 15th Feb 2016 2:59 pm
“The 5 ton fluorescent orange and green striped elephant in the room.”
Yep, that pesky old pachyderm does seem to get around. Want a time line? How long will it take the world to come up with the $39 trillion it will need to keep oil flowing for the next decade. Or on the flip side, how long will it take the bond market, thus the entire world’s economy, to collapse after the CB print another $39 trillion. We’ll take that in seconds so we don’t have to deal with all the decimal points.
Revi on Mon, 15th Feb 2016 3:38 pm
It looks like the consequences will hit this year. Most people are going to be caught totally unawares.
pennsyguy on Mon, 15th Feb 2016 5:00 pm
The oil predicament is just another symptom of the real problem: human population is at least 5 billion above long-term carrying capacity.
makati1 on Mon, 15th Feb 2016 7:25 pm
Revi, I suspect that TPTB will try to keep the whole ponzi going until after November elections. They usually do. However, it may not be possible this time.
If the crash doesn’t happen by then, next year is a high probability. Fun watching the tight-rope act most of the world’s countries are performing, isn’t it?
Everyone is guessing the date it will fall. Someone will be correct(by accident). Don’t wait until all the milk and bread are gone to start to prepare.
Nony on Mon, 15th Feb 2016 7:46 pm
Lost me at “peak oil”. We’re producing more oil than ever. Always will.
Nony on Mon, 15th Feb 2016 7:52 pm
This is BS. Some fake Nony is posting stuff. I am the real Nony.
theedrich on Mon, 15th Feb 2016 11:48 pm
John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has accused the Department of Defence of effectively covering up fraud and waste in its Afghan operations. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), Rep. Austin Scott (R-Georgia), among others, participated in an Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations inquiry with civilian and military officials who are dealing with the situation in Afghanistan. To make a long (almost two hours) story short: despite all of American efforts, the fraud, waste, duplicity and coverups on all sides, plus the very low level of Afghan literacy (perhaps ~30%) and the inability of our intelligence operatives to move outside of their compounds due to the security situation, along with the rise of opium production there, is leading, according to Sopko, to the extreme danger of Afghanistan collapsing into a narcoterrorist state (his words).
On Saturday, 2016 February 13, CBS News hosted a Republican debate which produced a lot of cantankerous back-and-forth and accusations among the presidential candidates. The results, such as they were, were confusing, but few opinions were changed. Nonetheless, CBS News attained what it wanted: attention and the advertizing funds that accompanied the debate. The CBS moderators, who of course favor the current business-as-usual-through-bribery model, asked questions and “moderated” in a way guaranteed to provoke conflict. Indeed, CBS News and its affiliates were the main winners of the show.
CBS mysteriously neglected to ask anything about the aforementioned impending collapse of Afghanistan or the corruption by American military subcontractors involved in that ominous threat. Also ignored was the corruption, mendacity and duplicity of Demonic Party candidate Hotflash Clitory. The issue of the countless millions of parasites flooding into America from the Third World was give short shrift, as was the exploding federal debt. Instead, the focus was adroitly guided toward the mutual attacks of the debate participants. Later, the Leftist media had a field day deprecating the Republicans, especially the anti-bribery Donald Trump.
There was much talk about filling the Supreme Court seat of Justice Antonin Scalia, who had regrettably died in the morning of the same day. But this, as everything else, was addressed in a manner which ignored the darkening world around us. The unspoken assumption is that the future is going to be like the past: America can absorb infinite numbers of alien “refugees,” can continue the sickening symbiosis between the Federal Reserve and Hungarian Jew billionaire Georg Sörös and other corrupt financial organizations, and can continue to destabilize the rest of the world for the sake of political and financial gain masked as “American interests.”
The current culture war being waged by the two-faced political establishment aims to maintain the international Ponzi scheme to the point of global collapse. Given the ability of the Ministry of Propaganda to keep the masses TV-hypnotized with circuses, and of Big Brother to provide the proles with free bread, it appears that that collapse is now inevitable.
GregT on Tue, 16th Feb 2016 12:34 am
“America can absorb infinite numbers of alien “refugees,””
Perhaps now would be a good time for all of those ‘aliens’ to go back to their respective homelands, and leave America to her indigenous peoples. They did rather well for tens of thousands of years before whitey came along and royally fucked everything up.
Apneaman on Tue, 16th Feb 2016 1:36 am
Greg, can you smell douchys shame? I can – he reeks. White shame. America went from the most powerful nation in history to a 3rd world retard nation on douches watch. Yankee whites had it all and gave it up for a few trinkets. Douche didn’t even get that – double shame. Blaming and raging is a full time job for the wannabe superman and a necessary guilt deflector. Anything but look in the mirror. Douchy, throw some more of those latin and german phrases at us in another one of your feeble and desperate attempts to look all intellectual and sophisticated. I like it – makes me laugh watching you try and impress. Douchy, if the pain becomes unbearable you can always succumb to that Afghan heroin like so many millions of your white brothers already have. I think they know that whiteys best days are long gone and will never ever be back. Why fight it douche? Take all that anger away………forever. There, there, shhhh, shhhhh, it’s ok.
Davy on Tue, 16th Feb 2016 3:55 am
“Where Deflation Comes From”
http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2016/02/where-deflation-comes-from/
“(it’s just entropy, really). Fighting this is futile, and grossly costly to boot. The only sensible thing to do is to guide the process as best you can and try to minimize the damage”
This should be what our global leadership engages in at all levels from climate to the economy to global relations. The world is in macro entropic decay with no hope of solutions for keeping the status quo whole.
Acceptance is a powerful concept. Yet, the resulting prescription is difficult medicine. It will necessarily mean worse for less worse down the road. Maybe if we are lucky it will slow the decay and lengthen out a period of drop. There are no guarantees only a gamble and hope.
This prescription will mean whole segments of the economy and along with it the people associated with those segments being disenfranchised. We are also talking regions of the world starving. None of us should believe you can lower economic activity and still feed and shelter everyone. No one should think we can keep employment adequate in a declining economy.
The alternative is worse because fighting something you can’t defeat will drain the system of vital strength. What we have currently with this fight is the “haves” sacrificing the “have-nots” for a maintenance of the “haves” status quo. How can that end well? This will work for a time but it is basically a social Ponzi. All Ponzi schemes end horribly with little to show for.
What is needed now is a crisis that rocks society to its core with acceptance of no solutions for the status quo. We could then adapt and mitigate something from the worst of what is ahead. The problem is always getting from here to there. Our whole edifice is built upon confidence and economic motivation through confidence. It is unclear how our complex system can survive the kind of shock that destroys confidence and motivation. A crisis is what would get results and without a tangible crisis nothing will change except the resulting continuous decay seen with the irrational and dysfunctional that characterizes our modern life until the bottom falls out.
The best way to implement a crisis is to implement rationed food and fuel. This is the only way you can force localism as a management tool from the top. This will likely happen soon anyway by circumstance. The sooner the restructure the better. Everything would shrink and focus on local food, shelter, and transport. This would also be deadly no doubt but less deadly than waiting and deceiving ourselves of continued status quo development and growth. Acceptance is always preferable to deception.
Apneaman on Tue, 16th Feb 2016 10:25 am
“Paul Aker says he was arrested at his home last week for a $1500 federal student loan he received in 1987.
He says seven deputy US Marshals showed up at his home with guns and took him to federal court where he had to sign a payment plan for the 29-year-old school loan.
Congressman Gene Green says the federal government is now using private debt collectors to go after those who owe student loans.”
http://www.fox26houston.com/news/local-news/92232732-story
Apneaman on Wed, 17th Feb 2016 3:53 pm
Kunstler says, “anything goes and nothing matters”. It’s top to bottom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihLBCbNIDbI
onlooker on Wed, 17th Feb 2016 3:58 pm
Yeah maybe they will get armed Marshals to go after the girls who stole the girl scout cookies. funny but sad.