Stop Me Before I Vote Again

The sudden bursting of most "value" bubbles couldn't, by themselves, bring down a national economy. Not even one like the recent house-lot bubble. So why do we think so?

Despite the chatter about the specifics of home ownership, etc., they're largely incidental to this ongoing horror. Anything could have triggered the present slow-but-steady monster mash. It was in the cards from 1971.

Recall the burst bubbles of yore: The S&L bank blowout of '89... The stock meltdown of '87... The dotcom burst of '01... The energy price collapse of the mid-80's... My own favorite, the gold bubble of '79.

I'm no chronicler of hi-fi mayhem, but that's a start.

There's lots of 'em. They go with modern credit-driven capitalistic asset markets. They're bult into the institutions and rules of the game, and so they come and go like cyclones. Most times the economy sails on through with only above deck wreckage

If you want to study the present...impasse, then forget bubble-watching. Leave that to the portfolio crowd. If you're a regular Mcjobbled type, like me, I suggest you rent your digs, spend your takehome, and die somewhere between 70 and 75.

Yup, plow into the here and now, brothers and sisters.

Recall these words: "Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?"

But I wander.

You're a wage slave. Live with it. But if you want to have some fun pretending to be a prophet while you play out your string, then keep the global economy under constant scrutiny.

Yeah, we get bubble-bursts there too, of course. Just recall the Chinese firecrackerish string of forex crumbles in '97-'98, or Mexico in what, '94? Argentinia in '00, or was it '01? The debt crisis that ate the Iberian continent in the mid-80's. Black Africa just about 24/7. Etc. Etc.

But no. I mean the overall international flows of trade, and what is called, with genteel nicety, "investment".

There are, I dunno, 180-20 bounded outfits stationed around the planet. Prolly 30-40 of 'em are significant, and they're all criss-crossed by multinational corsairing crews scurrying about, making bold real crossings and near-invisible virtual crossings everywhere and always.

This gets to be complex and snared. That's where we come in, we wagelingers of the developed zones. If we're not watching, we settle in for some version of what we got right here today: a yellow-flag slowdown, a "stagnation".

These are protracted "outcomes", right there in the cards from the very production of the deck, just waiting to turn up again and again: not as one or two bad cards in a row, to a few players here and there, but to most players and for many hands in a row, game after game, enough bad cards to immiserate nearly every sucker at every table on the surface of mother Earth.

Despite the fact we're mired in a global crisis of deep structural origins, a crisis that has no exit for us little types without great upheaval or much quiet misery, our mainstream liberal press still flings hammers at itself and at Wall Street over the hammy Brechtian drama of fall '08. That curtain-raiser still keeps most of the MSM ink spilling over. How to prevent a repeat of Lehman-AIG?! -- As if there was nothing but handwringing to do about today's panoramic policy of deliberate cruelty that only continues the great recession -- this giant stag party thrown for us deepfried OECD jobbler-gobblers, so we won't have the cash or credit to import 3 trillion dollars worth of Asian products over the next few years.

Imagine if the calls for austerity got explained that way. Better we analyze the details of the lot bomb/toxic paper fire-dance. Better we use that dark morality play to alibi the present criminally intentional macro regime of Darth Ohbummer, der Hungerkanzler!