WHEN GIANTS FALL, By Michael Panzner, A Review By Carolyn Baker

In any event, Panzner argues that where one actually chooses to live is crucial, and in the last chapter of When Giants Fall, he discusses the probable demographics of collapse, that is, the likelihood that smaller cities, especially those situated by rails or rivers, will offer better opportunities for jobs and income, but that those places might become socio-culturally intolerable for all the reasons the author has outlined earlier in the book, as stress, paranoia, and societal breakdown exacerbate. The employment landscape of a Long Emergency world is almost certain to be one of many part-time, as opposed to full-time, jobs--a world of getting one's hands dirty, going into business making and selling necessary items, and drastic lifestyle changes.

Budgets of state and local governments will evaporate in some cases almost overnight, and safety nets and what people have assumed are "essential" services will disappear. Family, social, and community relationships will become far more important, and much of this may be based on the need for safety and security.

The last chapters of "Giants" reads like "World Made By Hand" or Richard Heinberg's "Letter from the Future". I must say that little in its contents is actually new to me. What makes the book remarkably arresting is that a twenty-five year veteran of the global stock, bond, and currency markets-a faculty member at the New York Institute of Finance, is forecasting the collapse of empire and the daunting challenges, not exclusively economic, of a post-industrial world. In this moment, we are witnessing the rapid decline of that world in the form of an unprecedented global financial meltdown, and in his conclusion, Panzner quotes from Barton Biggs who aptly names it an "episode of great wealth destruction."

When Giants Fall analyzes the collapse of empire from the economist's perspective and offers a crucial complement to future scenarios presented by experts on energy depletion and climate change. Your Long Emergency library will not be complete without it, particularly as you encounter those influenced by the Pollyanna economists who assure us that in a few years, "everything will return to normal". Like other analysts of collapse, Panzner argues that "normal" is the worst thing to which we could return and that every aspect of our thinking and behavior in relation to the earth community must be radically transformed.

 1  |  2