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Kunstler: Flight Path
This age of battling narratives tends to conceal the broken consensus behind it. What’s gone is a broad social agreement that there are certain fundamental realities, and then codes of conduct that follow from them. When anything goes, don’t expect people to do the right thing, or even know what it is.
The Covid-19 debacle presents just such a set of quandaries and puzzles. For many people stewing in quarantine, the virus is a just another evil phantom lurking in the permanent twilight zone of television, and even there, among the familiar jabbering figments, there’s little agreement about it. The statistical projections mutate weekly. It’s no worse than any annual flu… It’s a savage illness that attacks every organ in the body, leaves survivors maimed, and you can even catch it again… The lockdowns are imperative… the lockdowns amount to economic suicide… There’s no sorting it all out, and the uncertainty itself is intolerable.
The only certainty is that most of the people in lockdown are going broke fast. By any ordinary rules, they are wiped out. They can’t even pretend anymore to keep juggling all those monthly payments for rent or mortgages, food, the cars, the medical insurance, the electricity, the cable, and on and on. The $1200 mad money checks promised by Uncle Sam are little consolation for that, and the small business “loans” – if you can even jump through the infuriating hoops to get them – just pile on an additional layer of obligation in a lifetime of debt serfdom. You don’t have to leap too many steps ahead mentally to imagine utter personal ruin on that glide path. And so what if millions of others are feeling squashed by the same phantom forces of disease and finance?
One firm reality is this: the global debt system that supported the turbo-charged global economy was disintegrating badly in the early fall of 2019, threatening every financial asset and the markets that affected to manage them – and all the operations of modern daily life that they represented. Nowhere on earth was the debt load more out-of-control than in China, where there were no constraints whatsoever on the banks’ accounting fraud, since they answered solely to the ruling party, which had but one overarching policy: to keep ruling.
And the biggest economic fiction of all was that China could maintain its supernatural growth rates in a world that had actually reached the limits of growth. Mr. Trump’s trade wars sent tremors through the system. A whole lot of bad loans were about to be flushed down the drain. Banks everywhere else felt the vibrations, too, you may be sure. The Wuhan virus was, at least, a very convenient distraction from all that. And then, the darn thing got loose on countless airplane flights around the world.
The Covid-19 corona virus didn’t initiate the financial disorders of the moment in the US and Europe, but it ensured that there would not be another appearance of any “recovery” a la the central bank interventions of 2008-09. What it portends is a fast-track journey to a whole new disposition of things: first, for a while, a harsher, hungrier, angrier society of broken promises and dashed expectations; and then adaptation when a consensus emerges that the set of facts at hand amount to a new reality. In the meantime, we’re living in the meantime, which is not a comfortable place.
Money is not an economy. Money is a medium of exchange within an economy where people grow things, make things, move things, and serve each other in countless ways. We’re not going to replace all those growings, makings, movings, and services by just giving people money. Money may produce more money by the magic of compound interest, but money is not necessarily wealth, it just represents our ideas about wealth, and interest stops compounding anyway when the trend is clearly for reduced growings, makings, movings, and servicings. That’s exactly how and why capital vanishes. The hocus-pocus of Modern Monetary Theory can only pretend to work around that reality.
The world never reached such a pitch of activity up to the blow-ups of 2008, and it went through the motions for a decade after that. Now that it’s stopped, all that’s left is the law of gravity, and it doesn’t get more basic. The “wealth” acquired in the decade since by the so-called “one-percent” was loaded onto a defective aircraft, like a Boeing 737-MAX, and an awful lot of it will fall to earth now on broken wings. Their agents and praetorians on Wall Street are working feverishly to stave off that crash-landing, like a band of magicians casting spells on the ground while that big hunk of juddering metal augers earthward. Wait for it as spring brings new life across the land and things unseen before steal onto the scene.
120 Comments on "Kunstler: Flight Path"
Abraham van Helsing on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 4:29 pm
I detect a certain level of frustration.
Duncan Idaho on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 4:47 pm
“If you leave it to Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell we will have a Great Depression. If we had the right policy structure in place we could avoid it easily.”
I don’t know.
While psychopathic idiots (Fat Boy and MoscowMitch), it would of been hard to stop.
Maybe a good thing- the survivors (if any) might have more resources.
Duncan Idaho on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 4:50 pm
“The need for a post-capitalist system was already evident to anyone paying attention.”
JuanP on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 5:18 pm
“If you leave it to Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell we will have a Great Depression. If we had the right policy structure in place we could avoid it easily.”
Duncan, what planet are you from and your Berkeley education is showing
I AM THE MOB on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 5:39 pm
Trump just said he is going to have the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds fly over American cities and do air shows. To pay tribute to frontline healthcare workers.
JuanP on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 5:54 pm
GO Trump 2020. Did I tell any of you I went to a party that Trump was at a a few years before he ran for President? I am special.
Davy on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 6:01 pm
“Expert Warns US Is On The Brink Of “Mass Civil Unrest””
https://tinyurl.com/yavwaonr zero hedge
“An expert with the United States Studies Centre says that America is on the brink of “mass civil unrest” that threatens to emerge out of anti-lockdown protests now taking place nationwide. Demonstrations against coronavirus stay-at-home measures have exploded across the country over the last week after President Trump encouraged them on social media. The National Guard has been called out in some areas to deal with potential disorder.”
GO TRUMP!
#CW2
JuanP on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 6:11 pm
Expert Warns Miami Beach Is On The Brink Of “Mass Civil Unrest
“An expert with the Studies Centre says that Miami Beach is on the brink of “mass civil unrest” that threatens to emerge out of anti-lockdown protests now taking place nationwide. Demonstrations against coronavirus stay-at-home measures have exploded across the country over the last week after President Trump encouraged them on social media. The National Guard has been called out in some areas to deal with potential disorder.
GO TRUMP! My Man
#CW2
JuanP on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 6:13 pm
Time to confess by JuanP
Every day the PO.com gets worse. Millions of good posts are displaced by record-breaking insanity and socking, violent mood-swings and hot flashes. Unprecedented juanPee socking burns out of control, scorching massive tracts of articles and posts, and plunging nearby threads into surreal scenes of day-long darkness. Meanwhile, scientists solemnly inform us that any life at PO.com could be wiped out by mid-century, as the JuanSkum continues to gradually transform the once vibrant areas of rich discussion into the spam and sock-filled graveyards of formerly sane and on-topic conservation. Try as we might… the consequences of juanSkum unmoderated posts and rampant lunacy, are becoming harder and harder to ignore.
It’s become widely accepted JuanSkum, unfortunately, exists, and that his current rate of ass emissions are imperiling future discussions. Millions of people agree that juanPee is robbing our unborn descendants of their right to express comments and opinions contrary to ones only he approves of – something that JuanPee foolishly takes for granted. This increasing awareness is translating into a growing consensus that our so-called ‘juanturd’ needs a mental health intervention in order to fix his problems and correct his historic insanity. Unfortunately, most PO.com activists continue to be hampered by the fact that there is no moderation for extremists and there is no power operating in this forum, the scale of juanPee problem that we face… and what would actually be required to fix it. In Troubled PO.com, skumMedia takes a closer look at these dynamics, arguing for the importance of taking bold action to defend sane and coherent conversion, even as we work towards to overthrow of juanPee reign of insnaity and replacement of him with something more intelligent and polite, like an inert chuck of rock. or pile of 3rd world South American feces
makati1 on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 6:16 pm
The above is a Davy word salad. Ignore.
JuanP on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 6:22 pm
Well, the virus has reached my personal life. A sex worker friend of ours tested positive. He works at a Miami Beach brothel
He spent the whole day at the beach with me on Tuesday volunteering with massages. He started feeling sick on Wednesday, was hospitalized and tested positive for AIDS and COVID on Thursday, and the test result just came back positive. We knew Hewas at high risk of I being infected because He has been working the beach hard. My partner and I spent several hours in a session with him on Tuesday. We very carefully practiced oral sex, but we could both be infected anyway, of course. I would welcome our being infected now to get it over with and because the healthcare system in Miami is not overwhelmed yet. My partner and I will be monitoring our penis discharge hourly for the next two weeks. I guess I will be here a lot more the next two weeks. I hope I die in a way because I am so depressed.
makati1 on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 6:23 pm
I meant to say JuanP word salad. Sorry
Davy on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 7:54 pm
All the juanpee comments are me makato.
stupid
I AM THE MOB on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 8:08 pm
Is this a global pandemic or a global agenda? Events and data seem to suggest the latter.
makati1 on Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 9:32 pm
MOB, A global agenda, until I see evidence otherwise. And, I think insane, satanic Bill Gates is behind it. We shall see.
I AM THE MOB on Thu, 23rd Apr 2020 7:56 am
Mak
I here ya brother. They are so brainwashed here it’s totally surreal. I went to grocery store yesterday. And nearly every single person had a mask on. I felt like I was in some sort of dystopian movie. And I was afraid I would spotted for my lack of faith in their batshit insanity and paranoia.
I AM THE MOB on Thu, 23rd Apr 2020 8:02 am
We have lost 565 jobs for every confirmed US death from COVID-19 (46,785).
Was it worth it?
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/565-americans-have-lost-their-job-every-confirmed-covid-19-death-us?fbclid=IwAR3WQ-svEJZRC1Xmpg_Qo9MahoowC5y7bD6lTSF7uuzThHfQbRph1F2V9aA
This is pure insanity.
I AM THE MOB on Thu, 23rd Apr 2020 8:50 am
Thinking that humans and governments can stop a virus. Is the same kind of thinking the captains of the Titanic believed. And we know how that experiment turned out.
I AM THE MOB on Thu, 23rd Apr 2020 9:32 am
“The kids went outside when we told them not to. What do we do?”
“We were going to let them out after three weeks. Let’s make it a month. That’ll teach them a lesson.”
“Good. Where can we publish our decision?”
“I suggest the New England Journal. I’m sure they’ll be interested, if we dress up the language.”
“A new computer model?”
“You bet.”
“Where will we find it?”
“You’re kidding, right? I have six on my laptop. For all occasions. Give me a minute. I’ll find the most frightening one.”
Davy on Thu, 23rd Apr 2020 9:33 am
MOBster, what are you doing linking a Zero Hedge article. Isn’t that a bit hypocritical? LMFAO
LOL, that is something the lunatic juanPee would do although using ID theft and socks as a child like disguise.