Disasters Far and Near By James Howard Kunstler

[Crewleader]

on January 18, 2010 6:41 AM

As the disaster in Haiti moves into its "Katrina" phase of a organizational chaos, relief effort failure, and public health calamity, the world will get another lesson in the dangers of techno-triumphalist posturing. American authority pretends to be in flawless control of a situation that by the minute crumbles into anarchy and death as the generals strut their stuff and the CNN crews broadcast yet another feel-good segment about adopted orphans. At this point, one rainstorm is all it will take to kill what is left of the Haitian social order.

It's a tragedy for the ages, and tragedy is a fulcrum of the human condition that techno-triumphalism pretends to have vanquished. All the meals-ready-to-eat on God's green earth won't add up to a happy ending for everybody. Haiti was a disaster waiting to happen every bit as much as the Federal Reserve is for us. For decades, the USA's policy (and the UN's too) was just to stuff more food aid onto an island already so far beyond its carrying capacity for human existence that every new birth certificate was a death warrant in disguise. But free people are free to do what they will do, and in Haiti there was not much more to do than make more people.

Now the USA will also pretend that there is a Haitian government in charge -- as in the pathetic grandstanding of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the other day -- though the Haitian government was a fiction for decades before the earthquake struck. The recent blatherings of Bill Clinton would have us believe that Haiti is poised to become an exemplar of economic development for the Caribbean once things are tidied up there. What planet are these people living on? (Answer: Planet Limousine.) Rather Haiti is the example of what life may become in nations bethinking themselves developed further along in The Long Emergency. If the figures on world crop failures for 2009 are relevant, even places like the USA may get a taste of this before the end of 2010.

On the home front we have President Obama's announcement last week of a tax on banks that received bailouts of one kind or another. This tax, he said, would amount to $90 billion over ten years. That's pretty funny, since there is no shortage of opinion to the effect that ten years from now $90 billion might buy you a box of Little Debbie Snack Cakes -- if the means of production are even there to make the darn things. Here's an idea: if the USA is going to backstop companies that are not allowed to fail, then maybe these companies should fork over hefty premiums for what is, in effect, an insurance policy. For instance, those billions now slated to be paid in in bonuses to the likes of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan / Chase, Citibank, et cetera ad nauseum. Let them just pony up these bonuses to the taxpayers every year as long as they enjoy backstop insurance. (They'll still have very hefty salaries.) And, by the way, those bundles of money don't even cover these bank's off-balance-sheet liabilities.

http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/01/disasters-far-and-near.html#more

[dmallind]

1. More Malthuisian claptrap from a broken record shown to be utterly wrong several years in a row.

When the Dow finally hits <4000 as he has confidently predicted at least three years in succession I'll start giving tiny amounts of credence to the rest of his self-serving crap based on that timeline.

Things can be tough and economies can be fragile without a return to subsistence farming being around the corner.

And before anyone with poor reading comprehension tries to pretend they have just completed some deft syllogism, it is also possible for things to look like they are improving and can further improve without everything being hunky dory and smiles all round too.

[Po_d Mainiac]

2. Where would te DOW 30 be if

AIG, Shitigroup, GM, Altria and Honeywell were still components? Hmm, just a little little did you say?