Black Friday: Why This One is Especially Dark

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/11/24/black_friday_why_this_one_is_especially_

Black Friday: Why This One is Especially Dark
Carolyn Baker


A few moments ago I posted on my site the MSNBC version of "The Coming Consumer Crunch" which forecasts severe and painful belt-tightening for American families in 2008. Then when I checked my inbox, a Truthout bulletin listing Kelpie Wilson's latest article "Give Thanks For Oil" appeared. One paragraph leapt out at me:

Why should we give thanks that the future holds no cheap oil? There are several reasons, but the first is that cheap oil has fueled a 50-year-long party in the industrialized West that has left us with an unsustainable economy that is wrecking the planet. The recent awareness of global warming is beginning to put a damper on our out-of-control binge, but not fast enough to slow the heating of the planet. Rising oil prices will force a cutback in consumption. Rising oil prices will also chill the fantasy of endless growth and force us to confront the reality of planetary limits.

I have no crystal ball, nor do I claim to have well-developed psychic powers, but I'd be willing to bet almost anything that next Thanksgiving season will be dramatically different from this one. A dark curtain of despair has descended, along with $100 oil, on Wall Street, and the amount of debt that the American working and middle classes are trying to juggle is, as Stan Goff so eloquently stated in his article on my site, "Middle Class Angst", nothing less than "pre-volcanic."

snip//

These are the "good ole days" to be remembered when we have almost nothing that we now take for granted or feel entitled to. And at the same time, these are dark new days that begin and end amid the sea change occurring all around us. That darkness signals and end to holidays as we have known them. This year, like all those other years, we will lament that despite our best intentions, we ate too much. In what year will we remember Thanksgivings of the past and weep and salivate as we search for whatever morsels of food we can find? I am convinced that absolutely nothing will awaken Americans except starvation, but by the time they have arrived at that horrifying circumstance, it will be far too late.

In these dark new days when readers email me with questions or arguments about aliens or engage in nit-picking philosophical posturing, I refuse to respond with anything other than the following questions: What will you do when you have no food to eat and no water to drink? How will you obtain healthcare when it no longer exists? What have you done to liberate yourself from debt? Where are you living and how sustainable is it? If you need to relocate, why haven't you done so? I then refer them to the Survival Acres banner ad at the top of my site and the Preparedness Store at Matt Savinar's site. In other words, does it really matter what I or anyone else thinks about aliens or what method of intellectual masturbation we prefer when we have no food or water?

These are the good ole days, my friend, and these are also the dark new days. Happy Thanksgiving; savor every bite.

So kindly shut up and start enjoying. Everybody dies one day of something.

hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

until it doesn't. I very much resent reading articles about how good I've had it, and how bad it's going to be. People assume an awful lot. Makes me think they have a very limited perception about life.

They just wanted to have fun and pretend none of it was really happening.

Or Nero playing his violin.

of people wanting to have 'fun'? Who are you, to assume to know my life?

you know...there are people living in this world who do not celebrate Thanksgiving..because..they do not have, and never did had..family. You know..orphans...who became orphans due to war, sickness..death. I don't know if you know, what kind of memories those kind of kids have..but I can tell you that my next Thanksgiving..if I have one...will be very much like this one...a day in the life. Homeless and hungry are not strangers to me..and I do know..that life goes on...until it doesn't. That.

This administration has set about the destruction of this country, and you're discussing the fact that life isn't perfect. Your purpose for being on DU is to convince everything to just take whatever comes and do nothing?

politically active is to try and prevent lives like mine from happening in the first place. Life is not perfect..but politics shape the society that creates the individual. Fear of the future, or fear of the unknown..is not something I believe is conducive to change. I would prefer education, and I'm sorry to say that I had thought that my life experiences might add something to the discourse here on DU. Thank you so much for pointing out my error.

Sarah Ibarruri

The Violin wasent there when Nero was playing his sitar.. And even that the history of Nero is dark, he was not that eveil as some want him to be, he was not playing his sitar when Rome was on fire.. Rather, when he was getting the message of what happend in Rome, he was traveling as fast as horses can do, and helping to get the fire out... Even that the fire security that time was not capable on doing that.. The most of Rome was burning down, houndres of years wort of history was in fires.. But he was also not the evil that many in history tell him to be.. And popular movie had builded under..

But what he was doing AFTER Rome was finished, and the rebuild of the City was beginning is a another history. As everyone know, he made himself a pretty neet palace to live in.. And as he was saying himself.. "finaly I have a decent house to live in":.. But he also demanded that in Rome, the roads, the streets and other roads, to be more vwied so a catastropic fire cant repeat itself.. But even then, mutch of the Rome was building as they allways have been, and fire and other catastropes was to repeat himself, long after Emperor Nero was killed in 68-69

The violin is a invention, from the 15 or 16 century...

Diclotican

Sorry my bad engelish, not my native language

about it...slick?

Sometimes food is worth more than gold at $800.00 dollars.

Well ok, two letters and a number. They are: Y. 2. K. Remember them?

I think that's also unrelated to the deeds of this administration and the current economic situation. This situation has everything in common with The Great Depression, and nothing to do with a malfunctioning computer.

What's fascinating about The Great Depression is that while the financial situation in this country was vertiginously crashing, there were many "optimists" who said it wouldn't be bad at all, that it would pass, and that it would not cause much damage. Economic societies in Harvard and Yale, for example, watched the bottom fall out of this country but continued their optimistic outlooks.

Here's an article about The Great Depression you might want to read:

http://iws.ccccd.edu/kwilkison/Online1302home/20th%20Century/DepressionNewDeal.html

Excerpt from the article:

The 1920s "boom" enriched only a fraction of the American people. Earnings for farmers and industrial workers stagnated or fell. While this represented lower production costs for companies, it also precluded growth in consumer demand. Thus, by the mid 1920s the ability of most Americans to purchase new automobiles, new houses and other durable goods was beginning to weaken.

This weakening demand was masked, however, by the "great bull market" in stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. The ever-growing price for stocks was, in part, the result of greater wealth concentration within the investor class.

Eventually the Wall Street stock exchange began to take on a dangerous aura of invincibility, leading investors to ignore less optimistic indicators in the economy. Over-investment and speculating (gambling) in stocks further inflated their prices, contributing to the illusion of a robust economy.

The crucial point came in the 1920s when banks began to loan money to stock-buyers since stocks were the hottest commodity in the marketplace. Banks allowed Wall Street investors to use the stocks themselves as collateral. If the stocks dropped in value, and investors could not repay the banks, the banks would be left holding near-worthless collateral. Banks would then go broke, pulling productive businesses down with them as they called in loans and foreclosed mortgages in a desperate attempt to stay afloat.

But that doomsday scenario was laughed off by analysts and politicians who argued the U.S. stock market had entered a "New Era" where stock values and prices would always go up. That, of course, did not happen. Stock prices were seriously over-priced (when measured in the actual productivity of the companies they represented) making a market "correction" inevitable. In October 1929 the New York Stock Exchange's house of cards collapsed in the greatest market crash seen up to that time. Students are often surprised to learn that the stock market crash itself did not cause the rest of the economy to collapse. But, because American banks had loaned so heavily for stock purchases, falling stock prices began endangering local banks whose stock-buying borrowers began defaulting on their loans. (continues)

But the significance of Y2K is that while there was a legitimate issue with some computer systems having only two digits to represent year (and which was largely fixed through great efforts of legions of legacy programmers) there were these Doomers that insisted that Y2K will spell disaster and were hoarding food, hunkered down in fallout shelters and the like. This Y2K hysteria reminds me of "hoard the food" call expressed here.

Great depression is a good cautionary tale, but you have to realize that the economy is very much different now than it was then. Ability of a crash in one segment of economy to bring down the entire economy is much less now.

You're saying that the existence of doomers render a situation untrue? Then nothing is true since there are doomers for everything.

I will one thing. It's very typically American (I think, as a non-American - and correct me if I'm wrong) to need to focus everything in a positive light, even when the matter at hand isn't positive. Almost as if they had a predisposition to get depressed and become non-functional if they were to find out the truth about things.

See, the way we look at it...well, frankly.... Post-Katrina New Orleans.

As I said in another thread it's like Katrina, in that we know it's coming. Not one person has yet denied it. Not one mass media "expert" thinks it will die down or miss us completely. But the severity and timing of the hit and whether there are unforeseen circumstances (think badly engineered levees) that could compound the problem including the human herd and their larger reaction (i.e to the govt. or the potential for riots and revolutionary acts).

So, knowing what you know now about how Katrina played out, not just in N.O. but in the whole Gulf area, given that the Government literally had years to prepare for just this scenario, given the FUBAR cluster-fuck of Post-Katrina just how do you think one should prepare?

That about sums it up. A complete and utter lack of confidence in the people "running" this country. Not just Shrub and his cabal, but ALL of them.

Add to that the steady stream of stories in the MSM (the MAINSTREAM MEDIA mind you) about the unfolding economic crisis and when you hear those folks expressing doubt, well your mind flashes back to how reticent they were to say anything negative the first 6 years Bush was in office and you think: Damn! if they are speaking out now, it must be bad.

Finally getting back to the subject line: Food costs aren't going down (unless we hit a severe deflation). Given that the inflation for food cost is between 12 and 20% per year, what's the harm in storing up? If nothing happens, we have only made a small investment in food futures for less than the price of an ounce of gold. If the levees break, well, then I won't be stuck in the super-dome with no food or water.

Between Blind Optimism and Crippled Pessimism, the prudent choose the middle way: Prepared Realism.

edited for sloppy fingers....

My Favorite Master Artist: Karen Parker GhostWoman Studios

From the Rose-colored glasses wearers to the uber-practical to the tin-foil hatters....welcome.

My Favorite Master Artist: Karen Parker GhostWoman Studios

and when it crashes, it will be even more resounding.

We are every bit as vulnerable to financial shocks as we were before the Great Depression, in fact, more so. In post-industrial capitalism, the financial sector generally is the most significant part of the economy. It supplies credit to consumers. It also provides credit to corporations for their operational credit needs (though it is less important as a source of credit for investment in the enterprise, as retained earnings are the major source of that). It also supplies credit to the government, which it has been using like it is going out of style.

We also don't have a real manufacturing base anymore. This means the (artificially high, due to its international status as the most favored currency of exchange) value of the dollar props up the standard of living of consumers, making imports relatively cheaper in financial terms than the real value they provide. A financial crisis would sharply undercut the value of the dollar, making all those foreign things more expensive. This in itself wouldn't be so terrible, but consumers lack the ability to substitute domestic goods any more, because, as I already mentioned, we don't have much of a manufacturing base anymore. We are also a net debtor nation, rather than a net creditor nation, which makes us vulnerable in the event that our creditors become convinced that our insolvency is immanent and so dump dollar-denominated assets (which, conspiracy theories notwithstanding, they would be loathe to do, but they may have to do it to save their own national economies).

Then there's the rapid rise in the prices of oil and gas, which signs indicate are already causing cost-push inflation. Increased demand for ethanol has increased the price of corn, which made your turkey more expensive this year, among other things. (BTW, some economists do deny the very existence of cost-push inflation, but they are on crack. No, it's not the only source of inflation, but it does exist, as we are about to see).

Then there's the overextension of credit in the mortgage industry, the true extent of which is still unknown, thanks to the securitization of mortgages in the US market. There's the prospect of corporate fraud (as we saw with Enron and others) bringing down a few more major corporations. There's the possibility that former Fed Chair Greenspan used the credit power of the Fed so aggressively that he broke the handle so that the usual Keynesian toolkit no longer works.

In short, yes, it is unlikely that a problem in just one sector of the economy could bring the whole thing down by itself, but that's the point: we have gotten into a situation where the ripple effects are likely to be greater than any initial shock from a supposedly exogenous source. It's like the economy has colon cancer. This prognosis, by itself, may not be fatal nowadays, but what if you also have heart disease, COPD, medicinal allergies, and lymphoma? That's a better analogy for our economy today.

... and because it didn't happen it never can?

Tell you what, I'm prepared and really if you aren't that will be your tough luck. I only have to be right ONCE, you have to be right EVERY DAY.

While the rest will have to sink with the ship. This administration put the hole in it.

What a mixed bag of feelings I am. Having waited in frustration for literally thirty five years or more, I am filled with a sense of (I'm not sure what to call it). It's not happiness. Maybe it's relief. Relief that people are finally waking up. But sadness that it's actually too late. Of course it's never too late. But it's too late for doing this transition with comfort and dignity. Whatever transition it is. But there is going to be one.

And then there is a selfish satisfaction that comes from the relief. One that is like how one would feel if Bush and Cheney were to stand trial and conviction. Relief from the reign of power held by filthy powerful people who are oblivious to the damage they're doing. Americans.

Things are going to get slower, smaller, less comfortable. It could have been much more graceful than I believe it's going to be. But it's not all bad. I see communities coming together, where people were apart. Petroleum has given us the power to be independent, and separate. It's that separation that has left us empty and void. At least that's how some see it. Most don't see it that way. But you know alcoholics. There is denial. It's time to face reality. It's too bad that as with everything, that reality will be faced by those who are forced to face it. That translates to whomever has the means. Those who don't will be facing a cold reality.

I think the key here and now is that we start working together. Isn't that what we're on this planet for?

This administration has done everything in its power, and much beyond its power, to destroy this country.

But it has also been happening long before this administration got into power. Although it has only recently started taking on the extreme sense of urgency it deserves.

Things are falling apart in slow motion, but they are falling apart.

I figure it'll help with the hunger pangs.


My Favorite Master Artist: Karen Parker GhostWoman Studios

and the possibility that I may have trouble feeding my child.