[vision-master]

Better Days

[eXpat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'F')or the first time, I'm actually scared. It's very heartening to read all the preps that people on this forum have made, though. I also really appreciate that most here are reaching out to friends, family. Also, to those reinforcing and vitalizing their local community, if they're in towns or cities--good on you. The next few years are going to test the assumption that material wealth, above and beyond what we actually need, has any merit, whatsoever. Those with anything left will have to help their immediate families and then attend to their friends, extended families and beyond. This is a soul building exercise and like any heavy exercise, it will hurt, but it will be a good hurt.

[RedStateGreen]

It's kind of like in Lord of the Rings, where Gandalf and Pippin are standing there in the darkness talking right before the huge green laser beam thing comes up out of Minas Morgul. You know something terrible is coming, just not sure what.

ETA: I agree with eXpat -- if there's things you can do, do them. Otherwise sit back and rest. You'll need your energy later on.

[deMolay]

Red State, Expat you guys are bang on. A dark cloud has descended on the Shire. All us Hobbits feel the presence of Evile.

[lowem]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'F')or the first time, I'm actually scared.

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', ' ')It's the stuff of goose bumps, calm before a storm, the creepy feeling you get going into an empty basement, or entering a mausoleum, but it's not coming from "me", it's the collective.

[Novus]

Peak oil was three years ago, peak economy followed shortly after, and for the last 3 years the world as a collective has been lying to itself trying not believe what was happening was actually real. What we are seeing now is the peaking of those lies. The lie that we can have unsustainable growth in a finite world is now bearing its fruit. The era of perpetual growth brought to you by an oil based consumer economy is over. What we are facing now is permanent decline.

[Cid_Yama]

Tonight we sit on the eve of the end of the world

It's over. More evidence of catastrophic methane release. Citigroup and B of A about to be nationalized. The default of the United States all but certain in the next 12 months. All the lies, especially to themselves.

Notice I did not say ourselves. We have been the brave. Those willing to face the truth and do our best to save ourselves and our loved ones. Alas, I fear none will survive in the long run. But we have done our best, and that is all that could be asked.

The famines that will sweep the world will be the worst. Seek areas lightly populated, with kind people, if possible, who may share the burden. Seek areas with readily available water and forests. Forests means food and shelter. You cannot live without water more than a few days.

The world will face droughts over much of it's surface, in others floods, both wiping out crops and devastating water supplies.(Droughts eliminate water supplies while floods contaminate them.) Go north. Temperate zones will become deserts and dust storms will reign, just as in the 1930's.

War is inevitable. As world resources dwindle, and populations starve, nations will act against their neighbors. Migrant populations by the millions will move, seeking the necessities of life. They will be armed and fighting for survival.

Be first. Those that wait for others to act will die with them. Remember this. Those that see their lives at risk, will do things they never would have under other circumstances. Trust not the goodness of man. Appreciate it when you find it, but watch your back.

[TreebeardsUncle]

Hi.
Looks like it will be business as usual. There are some signs that the current glut that has developed on the back-side of the speculative boom will lead to a recession like that in 1873. Expect a normalizing of the economy within a decade or so. You folks, are so paranoid, pessimistic, and alarmist that it is like watching the ravings of religious cultists.
g

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TreebeardsUncle', 'L')ooks like it will be business as usual. There are some signs that the current glut that has developed on the back-side of the speculative boom will lead to a recession like that in 1873. Expect a normalizing of the economy within a decade or so. You folks, are so paranoid, pessimistic, and alarmist that it is like watching the ravings of religious cultists.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'Y')ou on the other hand must believe in perpetual growth on a limited planet. That is not a very lucid position to take. Not at all.

[Cid_Yama]

You should see the latest pre-market nonsense. Any accumulation of Citigroup and B of A stock MUST be seen in the light of alleged promises that the government will stop short of buying a majority.

CNBC is headlining a story that the government will not purchase more than 40% according to ... who? Not said.

Says Asian markets are up on the ... rumors?

But Tokyo is down 3%, Sydney down 1.5% - up?

Best I can see is SPIN is the name of the game to cover the purchases as the US moves to nationalize.

Once you get down into the meat of the article you see this:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')While the Obama Administration says this isn't nationalization, markets are taking it at face value -- if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

The U.S. government will probably be the biggest shareholder of Citigroup, owning a majority of its stock. This is de facto government ownership, or nationalization. What this ownership means at this point, nobody knows.

[hope_full]

I agree with Threadbear. There's something bone-chilling about seeing the main-stream media pick up comments like Soros.

Tonight on our community list-serv, this message appeared in the midst of a discussion on a recent newspaper article.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he so-called stimulus program is a giant, expensive boondoggle that will drive us into fiscal ruination. It is just another example of we, the sheep, being led to slaughter.

[deMolay]

There is no longer any use arguing what brought the system down. We all have this and that idea. The fact is reality has shifted. "It is what it is" The old time rollercoaster has broken over the top. This is that moment when it just slows a mite before it gathers speed. Look out around you and remember what you saw. The moment when the pendulum slows before righting itself. For the slingshot run down the otherside. Now is the time to fix your pack before the great endurance run. Shake it out throw off the wants and keep the necessary items. It has been 40 years since my eyes first caught sight of our future, I was alone on the top of a mountain in BC with my old one eyed stray dog Savoy. What I saw shook me that day, and I couldn't return all that day, until I got my legs again. In that short time in between I have listened to that inner voice, that we all have inside whenever I could hear it, listen to yourself. And believe what you hear and know is true. This burden has fallen on our generation and we must bear it as best we can. Protecting our families and helping those we can. Trying to avoid the shoals and the rocks that surely lie ahead on our chosen course. Be a neighbour be a friend be a family but most of all be aware of what is really going down around you.

[rangerone314]

Its not about knowing what was coming, its the shock of seeing someone mainstream echo the truth.

To some extent, economics is about both fundamentals AND psychology. We've known the fundamentals were cracked for a while, but now we know the psychology has caught up to the fundamentals, because people like Soros are coming out now.. .

We are so screwed:

First we have
1) Kick in the balls = credit crunch/realestate crisis
Then
2) Shot in the kneecap = coming dollar, Fed debt & T-Bill collapse
Then finally
3) Grace shot in the brainstem = peak oil

Did I miss anything?

[mos6507]

You missed global warming and overshoot-induced shortages.

[deMolay]

Kunstler's take on Soros and others of that ilk..........
The Abyss Stares Back by James Howard Kunstler for Kunstler.com
The public perception of the ongoing fiasco in governance has moved from sheer, mute incomprehension to goggle-eyed panic as the scrims of unreality peel away revealing something like a national death-watch scene in history's intensive care unit. Is the USA in recession, depression, or collapse? People are at least beginning to ask. Nature's way of hinting that something truly creepy may be up is when both Paul Volcker and George Soros both declare on the same day that the economic landscape is looking darker than the Great Depression.

Those tuned into the media-waves were enchanted, in a related instance, by Rick Santelli's grand moment of theater in the Chicago trader's pit last week when he seemed to ignite the first spark of revolution by demonstrating that bail-out fatigue had morphed into high emotion -- and that the emotion could be marshaled against public policy. The traders in the pit on-screen seemed to color up and buzz loudly, like ordinary grasshoppers turning into angry locusts preparing to ravage a waiting valley. "Are you listening, President Obama?" Mr. Santelli asked portentously.

In the broad blogging margins of the web that orbit the mainstream media like the rings of Saturn, an awful lot of reasonable people have begun to ask whether President Obama is a stooge of whatever remains of Wall Street, with Citigroup and Goldman Sachs's puppeteer, Robert Rubin, pulling strings behind an arras in the Oval Office. Personally, I doubt it, but it is still a little hard to understand what the President is up to. For one thing, the stimulus package, so-called, looks more and more like national sub-prime mortgage itself, a bad bargain made under less-than-realistic terms, with future obligations fobbed onto whoever inhabits this corner of the world for the next seven hundred years -- and all to pay for a bunch of granite counter-tops and flat-screen TVs.

I suppose Mr. Obama is burdened with the knowledge that the economic truth is so much worse than he imagined back in November that there is simply nothing to do at this point except pretend to serve up a "tasting menu" of rescue plans in the hope that markets and mechanisms might be conned back into compliance with our wish keep getting something-for-nothing forever. FDR already used the fear of fear itself trope, so Mr. O is left with little more than displaying pluck and confidence in the face of overwhelming bad news.

The sad truth is that banking has become a Chinese fire drill -- a frantic act of futility -- as insolvent companies persist in covering up their losses in order to avoid the counter-party hell of credit default swaps that would ring the world's "game over" bell. This can only go on so long. All the chatter about "nationalizing" the banks really boils down to what kind of bankruptcy work-out will they be put through, how destructive will the process be, and how much of the pain can be shoved forward in time to people now in diapers and their descendants.

Among the questions that disturb the sleep of many casual observers is how come Mr. O doesn't get that the conventional process of economic growth -- based, as it was, on industrial expansion via revolving credit in a cheap-energy-resource era -- is over, and why does he keep invoking it at the podium? Dear Mr. President, you are presiding over an epochal contraction, not a pause in the growth epic. Your assignment is to manage that contraction in a way that does not lead to world war, civil disorder or both. Among other things, contraction means that all the activities of everyday life need to be downscaled including standards of living, ranges of commerce, and levels of governance. "Consumerism" is dead. Revolving credit is dead -- at least at the scale that became normal the last thirty years. The wealth of several future generations has already been spent and there is no equity left there to re-finance.

If contraction and downscaling are indeed the case, then the better question is: why don't we get started on it right away instead of flogging rescue plans to restart something that is DOA? Downscaling the price of over-priced houses would be a good place to start. This gets to the heart of Rick Santelli's crowd-stirring moment. Let the chumps and weasels who over-reached take their lumps and move into rentals. Let the bankers who parlayed these fraudulent mortgages into investment swindles lose their jobs, surrender their perqs, and maybe even go to jail (if attorney general Eric Holder can be induced to investigate their deeds). No good will come of propping up the false values of mis-priced things.

No good, in fact, will come of a campaign to sustain the unsustainable, which is exactly what the Obama program is starting to look like. In the folder marked "unsustainable" you can file most of the artifacts, usufructs, habits, and expectations of recent American life: suburban living, credit-card spending, Happy Motoring, vacations in Las Vegas, college education for the masses, and cheap food among them. All these things are over. The public may suspect as much, but they can't admit it to themselves, and political leadership has so far declined to speak the truth about it for them -- in short, to form a useful consensus that will allow us to move forward effectively. One of the sad paradoxes of politics is that democracies do not seem very good at disciplining their citizens' behavior. The wish to please voters and the influence of campaign money overwhelm even leaders with mature instincts. In America's case, this could lead to what I like to call corn-pone Naziism a few years down the road. Someone will design snazzy uniforms and get us all marching around to "God Bless America." At the point of a gun.

It's not too late for President Obama to start uttering these truths so that we can avoid a turn to fascism and get on with the real business of America's next phase of history -- living locally, working hard at things that matter, and preserving civilized culture. What a lot of us can see now staring out of the abyss is a new dark age. I don't think it's necessarily our destiny to end up that way, but these days we're not doing much to avoid it.