The Season of the Witch (James Howard Kunstler)

[Tace]

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

In my father's house are many mansions. Surely one of them has a room with no elephants in it....

Sept. 28, 2009 -- Not to crunch too many metaphors right here at the top, but a consensus seems to be firming up in the animate jello of the Internet that we have entered the Season of the Witch.

An odor of ripeness fills the virtual air -- something between dead carp and apples baking. Whatever else appears to be going on in the upper stories and verdigris-tinged turrets of capital finance -- currency rackets, gold switcheroos, interest rate arbitrage games, concealment of losses under rugs and behind curtains, Chinese fire drills performed by Spanish prisoners, executive three-card-monte set-ups, boardroom work-arounds, accounting quicksteps, Peter-to-Paul-shuffles, check kitings, pigeon drops, Ponzi schemes, hugger-muggers, bezels, shucks, jives, and enough monkeyshines to make Lord Greystroke cry for mercy -- apart, in other words, from business-as-usual, such as it is these days, on Wall Street, there is a rising collective sense of anxious expectation that things are about to shake loose in the sad-ass shell of what remains of our economy. And the most perplexing part is that there hardly seems any safe place to preserve one's savings.

The showmen over at the Financial Sense website have put on an excellent month-long series of interviews and debate podcasts between leading inflationistas and deflationistas -- Daniel Amerman, Peter Schiff, Robert Prechter, Mark Faber, "Mish" Shedlock, Harry Dent -- and after weeks of sedulous listening I still remain flummoxed as to where to stash the dwindling cash.

Harry Dent was a curious case in point this week. He has made some howlingly wrong calls before (e.g. in 2006, predicting a Dow 40,000 at the conclusion of the post-2001 bubble). Perhaps he missed the crack-up aspect of the most recent boom. He did not foresee the long gruesome meltdown of late 2007 to March 2009, or rather, his timing was off, since he called for the commencement of a new Great Depression in 2010. (And I hasten to insert here that my own timing of events has not been so great either.) Anyway, Dent sees a "winter" of finance and economy looming from here forward, characterized by extreme deflation, based on his view that the amount of private debt going bad (est. $40 trillion) far outweighs government's ability to create new "money" (a few measily trillion) and hence that there is no chance in hell we'll find ourselves in an inflationary situation for some time ahead. The private debt workout has to be completed first.

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http://worldnewstrust.com/commentary/3752-the-season-of-the-witch-james-howard-kunstler

[ensho]

1. witches don't have anything to do with it - and they do not smell bad

nt

[LiberalEsto]

3. Amen.

These morans always want to cast asparagus on witches. :evilgrin:

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. After all these years and history, there are still arguments ?

I can't believe it. Time after time and again, the same thing has happened to economies, and people are still arguing over the effects of fiat money?

[Miss Authoritiva]

4. Not only... But also

Loved this bit on false prophet Henry Dent:

It is exceedingly odd that (Peak Oil) does not factor into (Henry) Dent's thinking, because what Peak Oil inescapably does is introduce the very sobering idea of discontinuity -- that is, that the game has changed radically, especially where all our assumptions about continued "growth" are concerned. In that brief exchange on Peak Oil, Dent seemed to take the position that the "winter" part of any historical financial cycle always produced "new technology" that invariably saves the day, putting this seemingly very smart man in the camp of so many techno-cornucopian triumphalists all wishing for the same outcome: that some mythical "they" will "come up with" a set of rescue remedies to keep all the cars circulating on the freeways, and all the WalMarts groaning with swag.

I don't know why techno-cornucopian triumphalists are so optimistic, especially considering that American businesses and American consumers are so whiny about changing anything, except maybe thinking of new things to outsource or adding a new app to their iPhones.

[winyanstaz]

5. As a witch, I do not find your nasty comments entertaining..

There is not a witch on the planet nearly as nasty as the far right wingers..nor have they caused anywhere near the amount of misery, sorrow and death.
So therefor, if you want a season of nasty...use them.
As for how a witch smells...I tend to smell of roses myself. ;)