1. Kunstler is ripping good this week. I recommend his post highly. He covers health care and other topics. Here is one little taste regarding Obama's sliding poll numbers among white voters: I think it is about Mr. Obama's shoveling of huge sums into Wall Street, and the unabated obscene money-grubbing by the executives there-while millions of ordinary people get thrown out of their houses, lose jobs that they'll never get back, and slip-slide permanently out of the middle class.
3. Debt relief. Check out the first line in this piecefrom Marketwatch about the debt Americans paid off in July. U.S. consumers sharply reduced their debt in July, posing another threat to the nascent recovery... It's a perfect microcosm of how ass backward the economic elites are. The 'little people' paying off debt is bad news to these trolls...Actually, on Planet Sanity, where Wall Street never alights, debt is bad and solvency is good.
4. Palin Watch. She has a piece in the Wall Street Journal. As I've often done before, I'll say - I don't agree with her much- but if you're a political junkie like me - she remains one to watch. The bad P.R. advice that plagued her for nearly a year is being corrected. The Wall Street Journal telegraphs seriousness.
Today I read Kunstler's Monday post as is my habit. It was, as always, juicy. In it he states:
There is something in the political wind this summer. I think events will force Mr. Obama to assert some real leadership and take the national debate on our predicament in another direction, even if it is an uncomfortable direction for him and everybody else. Despite the massive disappointment being expressed by so many Obama voters these days, I believe the president will redeem himself before long.
There is, at least, something to think about here.
The oddity of Obama is the contradiction between who he claimed to be overtly and covertly last year on the one hand, and the need to please those who paid for his ascendancy on the other. Kunstler's post is a fine example - though I bet he would chafe at the label "true believer". In the post he hammers Obama, then expresses bizarre (and unexamined) faith in him. All the while wondering when the furious masses will give the likes of Goldman Sachs their comeuppance - not seeing or wanting to see the most obvious fact:
Goldman Sachs owns Obama.
The entire point of this blog most days is to point out the basic contradictions of the current President. Among the Obama true believers (that would be the self described progressive left) some have given up on him already. Most are hanging on by their fingernails and ability to absorb or ignore cognitive dissonance.
BUT could Obama "come to" and confront the realities of the fix we are in?
We are in a fix. Agree with Obama's economic policies so far - or don't. Both sides are basing their support or opposition on one assumption: We can return to the credit based model of continuous economic growth like we had in the previous 50 years - and we ought to. Our "way of life", having hit a major pothole, must now be returned to its previous - alleged - splendor.
I do not think this is doable, feasible, or desirable. It was a false economy. Liberal economist Robert Reich sounds vaguely like many a libertarian when he writes in a post called When Will The Recovery Begin? Never.
This economy can't get back on track because the track we were on for years-featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity...simply cannot be sustained.
Nor should it be. If a "recovery" comes based on banks creating more debt by lending more conjured money into a system already drowning in debt it will only put off the pain for another business cycle. The cold reality is that we, as a nation, have lived beyond our means for a very long time. "Recovering" based on another line of credit is stupid, foolish, and dangerous.
In reality this is not even a discussion about our economy. It is a discussion about our autonomy as a nation. We better notdouble down on the bet that China will continue to underwrite our flat screen TVs and holidays in Cabo without extracting payback.
So is there a summer revelation simmering in the West Wing? If so, what is it? For all my criticism and distrust of Obama if he comes forth and levels with us - telling us the way forward will be difficult and full of sacrifice but we must begin. Further if he holds all those who wrecked the economy to account - including the Goldman boys and Soros's cabal - and all the working stiffs who bought McMansions they could not afford - this will go a very long way to rehabilitating him in my eyes.
What are the chances of this happening?
Just barely this side of zilch.
The persistence of the illusion that we - the people - have any true say in the things that affect us most remains astonishing.
I write about this here because I believe this is both a good idea, and for once, an idea based in reality. James Howard Kunstler is spot on when he says the American suburban project of the last century is unsustainable. He calls it the greatest misallocation of resources in history. That may be extreme as Soviet farm collectivisation is part of "history" - still the the point is well taken. The exurbs and suburbs of America are fading rather grotesquely - created as a culture for cars, not people, it was bound to fail regardless. More than the lack of human scale, the suburban project has always assumed that the car and the energy needed for it would be around forever. So living in the faux countryside, 50 miles from employment, had an appeal that could not be matched. It became the American dream. Driving to the mall for any food or bobble from anywhere became an integral part of that dream. (There is a riff in here about the entitlement that has resulted...but that is another post.)
In the long view of history 1970 will be seen as the tipping point for the U.S. It was in 1970 that the American oil production peaked and began its long decent. We stopped being the world's largest producer of oil and Saudi Arabia became the world's "swing" producer. Which it still is. Within three years they let us know rather harshly that they were the new Dons. Within 3 decades years, Nixon made the dollar a floating currency, all oil transactions world wide had to be made in American dollars, Carter declared that any interruption of Mideast oil flow was to be considered a national security concern and the American military could intervene (The Carter Doctrine) and Reagan made sweet deals with the Saudi royal family for military hardware - moving them very much into our camp. George H.W. Bush went to war to ensure that a nutcase did not seize too much oil. Clinton, in office when the price of oil had fallen dramatically because the North Sea and Alaska fields had come fully on line, (The North Sea is now well into its depletion phase.) benefited both economically and politically from all the cheap oil. Then George W. Bush took us to war again in the Middle East.
One can argue forever about the real reasons for the second Iraq war but remove Iraq's oil from the calculus and the invasion becomes an absurdity that no major power would have attempted. One can argue that the American Civil War was about states rights and not about slavery as well. Still, the "right" the Southern states wanted to maintain was the right to enslave people. Therefore the civil war was about slavery. In the final analysis, one must conclude that the Iraq invasion was a resource war. Oil being the resource. In fact, realizing this did not change my view of its legality but it did help me understand its gravity and logic.
Before 1970 America's oil output grew every year for over a century. Had that continued the last 40 years would have looked substantially different. We've involved ourselves in the Middle East because it has more oil than we do. To support Israel as well - but that hardly justifies 6 successive Presidents wheeling and dealing in Saudi Arabia or fighting wars in Iraq. Even Obama's much discussed "withdrawal" from Iraq (the same plan as W's.) ends with 50,000 American soldiers based there....forever? Why? It is not to secure the safety of Iraqi fig exports and it has nothing to do with Israel's safety.
Without ready access to oil American society cannot sustain itself. Period. Every President from Nixon to W was aware of this. I presume Obama is as well, though his alleged intellect seems to be behind the curve on this point. Oil is the goopy ghost in the machine. It is our wealth. 40 years after the oil shocks of the 70s there is still no other energy option that comes close to light sweet crude. If it disappeared tomorrow the United States as we know it would disappear with it.
The alternatives are not good. Drill Here, Drill Now is a fine slogan. It may help a little. But not nearly enough and not soon enough. Even during conservative administrations in the last 40 years oil companies did not push much for more domestic drilling. The reason is probably simple: It made no sense. There is not much oil left here.
No form of oil other than light sweet crude makes economic sense until oil sustains a price of at least $150 -$200 dollars a barrel. That is to say 5 dollars a gallon and up for gas- for years.
(Car travel is not the biggest problem with high oil prices - getting food around the country IS. Again, Kunstler's rants about the embarrassing train system in the U.S. - Kazakhstan without the basic competence - is spot on. Investment in rail in the 80s and 90s would have softened the economic and social degradation that is now unfolding and set to worsen. The only reason to take a plane from San Francisco to Los Angeles or Minneapolis to Chicago is because there is no other choice.)
Which brings me back to Flint. Confining and rolling back growth is logical. It is forward thinking in a country addicted to immediate or magical fixes. The United States has 1/16th of the world's population, yet it uses 1/4 of its oil. If we had 1/4 of its oil underneath our feet we might be able to justify our way of life for another 50 years. We don't. We have not been oil "self supporting" since 1970. All the bubbles conjured by all the pixilated Wall Street brokers in Christendom can't change that geological fact. Nor can the largest military machine the world has ever seen.
I am inspired by Kildee's drastic attempt at being reality based. Dan Kildee is one community organizer we ought to listen to.
Books:Powerdown By Richard Heinberg and The Long Emergency by Kunstler* are both well worth putting on your summer reading lists. As with all peak oil primers the sense of immediate doom can be off putting. The predicted economic blow up - and it remains worse than we are told - has, in fact, commenced. Occurring in occasionally surprising ways it is still tied directly to suburban "dream homes " and the creation of "wealth" out of nothing.
*Kunstler's nasty attacks on Hillary Clinton last year and deluded support for Obama caused me to stop reading him. However his writing on energy and its ramifications for the U.S. remains the best- and most fun. Though, I do wonder what the smarter Obama supporters from last year think now that it is clear that Clinton is the only member of the Obama Adminstration who comes close to being worthy of the label adult.
Kunstler is extra, super, delicious this week.Go. Read. Now. Burger King was doing some kind of promotion in its Watertown huts and the marquee in their several parking lots proclaimed -I swear to God -"Ask us about our Angry Burger." WTF? Is the rage of lumpen America so repressed now that it can only be expressed in menu items that turn people into hulking four-hundred-pound monsters?
Speaking of food, and in very much the same vein Food for the Thoughtless reviews a book called The Food of a Younger Land. The book explores American cuisine before the advent of the interstate highway system, fast food, and chain restaurants. The review is so enticing I intend to snatch the book from the Pio Pico/Koreatown branch of the library as soon as it arrives. (How much do I love "Pio Pico" and "Koreatown" mashed together? There are so many countries in our country...)
Staying on the nostagia stick. The anniversary of D-Day is coming on June 6th. I become a puddle of mush whenever I see the vets who participated interviewed. Just before D-Day the Allies took Rome. Something I did not know until recently was that a segregated battalion of Japanese-Americans, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, took part in the the invasion of Italy. A documentary will be released soon about their battles and bravery. Check it out.
Quote:Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it. William Shakespeare Coriolanus
Kunstler's book "The Long Emergency" is a fascinating read. It is about the effects of oil depletion, but reads with the ease and engagement of a great summer, apocalypse novel. I recommend it because, while he is an alarmist, there are times when alarm is the sane and appropriate response.
That's my preface to saying one of Kunstler's biggest contributions is the title. I've been thinking about what the right name for the current era should be. Great Depression 2, and The Great Recession, don't quite fit. Neither reflect enough anxiety. They imply that this is a retread crisis. Something we lived through before as a nation. It's the 70s or the 30s all over again. I am not at all convinced this is true. I can't pinpoint exactly why. My guess: the advent of the culture of entitlement changes the social dynamic drastically.
This entitlement culture is evident in all social strata, from BofA/Merrill Lynch looting tax payer money to single mothers willy nilly bringing 8 children into the world while on the public dole. The biggest sports story in L.A. for the past 2 weeks has been the multi million dollar negotiations between a baseball player and the Dodgers. It is reported with the seriousness of a city wide crisis. Meanwhile, California itself is effectively insolvent. Entitlement has distorted our thinking and priorities beyond recognition.
We've never been so dependent on a vast infrastructure for our survival- while at the same time being utterly disconnected from it. Does anyone, but a precious few, have the foggiest notion how beef gets to the supermarket? Or gas gets to the station? Or drugs get the pharmacy? Mostly on credit, that's how. If credit is the crisis then we are in for many more shocks in the months and years ahead. In other words, The Long Emergency may be here.
We've come to assume that they ways things are are the way they will always be. At the same moment entitlement has overtaken our national psyche. This is a lethal combination.
I have no way of knowing how the economy plays out (I wish mightily I did).Many of those who, a few years ago, screamed in corners - and were ignored - about the coming debacle have been proven mostly correct. Some of these same folks are now intoning about coming social upheaval. As I do with all secular doomsaying I cut the predictions in half and take that as a possibility.
(Doomers not in the grip of a religious dogma can be just as kooky- if not worse - than the Christian Apocaliptos.
Do you like "Apocaliptos"? I do - and I think I just made it up. I am a bit of an Apocalipto, myself.
Apocalipto: One who hasa chronic believe that things are worse than they appear and that the end is near. And is quite possibly hiding under the bed right now. But unlike Luddites and survivalists, an Apocalyptos' pessimism is tempered by whimsy about the whole predicament that is often viewed as cavalier - but is, in fact, a deep, reflexive belief that things work out in the end - even if society collapses, and everyone is reduced to canned Spam, and Bones and South Park no longer exist because TV studios become pasture land...again...)
Major breakdowns in our assumptions are here. Major breakdowns in the social order are a real possibility. We should, at the very least, think current realities through to all possible outcomes. Trust me, some are doing just that. At any rate, entitlement will have to be unlearned.
I believe anxiety will be at the core of our lives for the next few years. Adjusting to this long emergency must begin...yesterday.
SOS Clinton is overseas on her first official trip. ("SOS Clinton" may end up being the mantra of the next for years. Just insert a comma and it works "S.O.S., Clinton!") What is already striking about her trip is the level of engagement she demonstrates. It struck me a few years back that Rice seemed exhausted by the job - and spent most of her time spinning her wheels.
Lord knows, President Kool-Aid won't let her get too much credit unless it makes him look good.
Clinton would make an amazing President. I see no reason to stop blogging on this point.
On another note, Kunstler posted on Monday. I always find him a good read. However, as I've said before, his myopic and truly harebrained support of the Lightbringer was - and still is to a smaller degree - disturbing. It is a case study in last years Obama phenomenon. Many who spent their intellectual lives dead set against magical thinking, for unfathomable reasons, engaged in the worst form of projection and magical thinking about BHO. He still largely refuses to see Obama for what he is - the latest clerk fronting the elite's store. But after a month of Obamaland, his cheer leading has disintegrated into reminders that Obama is "smart." Whoopee. Not so long ago being smart in the Oval Office was an assumption, and hardly needed repeating.
(I find the "he's so smart" meme baffling. I certainly find no particular fault with this assessment. He does seem smart enough. But he's hardly the intellectual giant the Pods make him out to be - as a last resort while their agenda gets flushed. The great service that W provided those who will follow him is that he set the bar so damn low. And if speaking off the cuff in complete paragraphs about difficult issues is an indicator, BHO is substantially less intelligent that Bill Clinton.)
Get past the need to bash the Clintons (I do think it may be in the survival DNA of certain types: Air, Food, Shelter, Bash a Clinton...) and he has much to say worth hearing.
I am willing to look on this handicap as just that - a handicap - and enjoy his writing. What is dogging many of us who supported Mr. Obama is the delayed entrance of much-vaunted change. At this moment of "stimulus" and TARP-II, it seems to have been about a desperate attempt to preserve the hypertrophic debt economy of "miracle" mortgages, blue-light-special shopping on credit cards, and endless happy motoring at all costs. And by "all costs" I mean literally bankrupting our society at every level to keep on living as if it were still 1999.
This is the first of two posts on Peak Oil, my fourth or fifth favorite topic.
The future will require us to build better places, or the future will belong to other people in other societies.
James Howard Kunstler
I began my peak oil bender with The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. It is a bit dated already. But nearly every word shines. His The Geography of Nowhere is a wonderful primer on the suburban problem. I recommend going to to peak oil sites and reading up. The crash and burn in the economy is a fine time to check out what they have been saying.
Here is my rule with the peak oil sites - take what seems on the mark and look further.
Understand that there is a deep strain of Luddite fetishism with many attracted to peak oil info. I find the doomsday stuff very seductive, entertaining, but ultimately useless. With one big caveat: Peaksters are big on being prepared, being thrifty, and being alert. All traits I admire and find empowering. But spending a lot of time reading about the coming die off is ultimately disempowering. If political blogging from one's apartment is anything at all - it is an ongoing personal insurrection against learned helplessness.
I have also found of late that one does not even have to buy the central thesis of peak oil to get something out of what is being said.
All of us knew on some level that the economy was false for the last 4 years. No house is worth 20 times more than one's income. Therefore taking out second mortgages and house flipping was bound to crater.
All of us knew on some level that info was withheld on Iraq. That there were other reasons for the war.
All of us know our life style is run on other people's oil. We spend exactly .001% of our time thinking about it. But it is true. The lights are on here, because the Saudis are home - there.
Even if there will be oil for 1000 years - the peak oil narrative hits at the basics in our society that we know are wobbly already. A democracy that has traded in citizenship for consumerism will not last. We pat ourselves on the back all the time - but our major contribution to the world economy at this point is buying other people's crap and selling them weapons. The Chinese did not keep us afloat during our latest bender because they love us. We bought their stuff. Of course they financed us. Maybe there IS enough oil to keep Chinese trinkets flowing into American Walmarts forever. But is this what we want?
A society that has denuded its towns and villages for suburban sprawl will splinter. Most large cities and suburbs are built for cars not people. I know, I live in one. This is ultimately deadening. A frantic attempt to graft walkable neighborhoods back on to sections of LA shredded by freeways has been underway for a decade. And in some places it is working. My neighborhood along the Wilshire corridor - "koreatown" has become a wonderful walking neighborhood. As has old Hollywood. Both fueled by public transport on rails passing through or ending in these neighborhoods. What is it about subways and light rail lines? After decades of stopping a subway line going through Beverly Hills - implying it would being in the "criminal element" (read "blacks") the city now is bending over backward to accommodate a coming "subway to the sea". Why can't bus lines salvage an auto centered city the way light rail can?
(Also- did the city of Beverly hills think the "criminals" could not get on buses? I always found this excuse racist AND silly. All those petty thief's in South Central would not deign to get on a bus...but would hop the subway train and start a crime wave....)
The resulting social insanity of the emptying the towns and cities and building soulless car wonderlands in the outer rings of urban areas should be obvious. People in the burbs and the rotting cores of some of these cities debt, drug, eat, distract, and entertain themselves to death. Obesity rates have doubled since 1991. Think about that. Obesity rates are skyrocketing in all nations that are "developing" like us. What are we eating at?
We have debted ourselves into a financial nightmare - mostly for toys. Big ones. Like houses. The near universally accepted corrective to this problem is to debt more. (Is anyone else sick of being harangued by those cute boys to go to "freecreditreport.com"? Who is making enough money on a free credit report to buy that kind of ad time? It's creepy. )
A nation run on other nations' resources is on borrowed time. The world in NOT flat. It is bumpy and complex. Most people still do not want McDonald's and Starbucks usurping their landscape. And many resent us for it. And the ones who resent us the most have the oil we need. Not "want to have" - need.
I WANT peak oil to be true. But if it is not, I hope we take the lessons it would force on us. To live within our means, to stop valuing style over substance, to live locally (grapes from South America are not an entitlement), to elevate people who contribute over those who distract us - mostly from the high pitched meaninglessness of all consumption, all the time.
Paula Abdul does not matter. Individual farmers do.
The "consumer lead" economy needs to collapse. I hope it does. Nicely, with everyone getting time to make lovely arrangements.
Either we return to making and doing things of real value, or we deserve what we get - empty strip malls, obese children, and meth labs.
