How will this economic disaster we face affect America?
Naomi Klein has written about disaster capitalism, in her book, The Shock Doctrine. Economic disaster is often accompanied by shocks inflicted upon the nervous system that cause a person or a society to forget who her or her or it is. This takes the will to maintain the values, the standards that define a sense of self.
We've already seen this, as Republicans and Democrats alike, in congress, have sold out civil liberties, democracy, free speech, prohibitions against inhumane acts, like torture. We see that disaster economics and the shock doctrine allows the worst aspects of human nature to rise to power. We see that the fall of American integrity, in terms of liberties, democracy and respect for human rights and decency, has been reflected in worsening of freedoms, democracy, human rights and increases in frequency of torture and atrocities in other countries.
As things get worse, we will see fear drive policy. Where principle should rule and set standards, we will see "reasonable compromise" grease the American slide downwards, into third world instability, economic weakness, failed democracy, worsening of our status as a surveillance state and further failure of the nation to protect and take care of the most vulnerable.
We will not see the leadership we need come from DLC Democrats. They are the compromisers who sell out democracy, sell out our freedoms to make deals with no longer American supercorporations.
This election will be a bellweather for America's future. If a Republican wins, the US will, in the next five to ten years, become, like a rotted husk that has been infested by a parasite-- in this case corporate parasitism. The philosophy of drowning government will be institutionalized and by 2020, the US will be a subsidiary of China, Russia or India-- probably China, with a huge percentage of US assets-- roads, buildings, water, minerals, oil, energy delivery-- all owned by extra-national entities. And let's not forget oil megawealthy states like Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela...
If a populist democrat wins, and then finds his vision thing (sorry, no populist females are running) there may be hope, IF, the congress supports and encourages the visionary action it will take to pull the US out of its economic tsunami. There WERE indonesians who, saw the warnings and saved themselves by finding higher ground. There were New Orleans residents who drowned, doing the ordinary, climbing to their attics and rooftops, only to drown, when ordinary solutions failed.
Will Americans see the signs and vote for a leader who will lead towards a path to higher ground? That's what it will take to survive the economic disaster we face.
Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com and is a columnist with Northstarwriters.com. He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, Impeachment, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates. He recently retired as organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.
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It appears that in the masters of the universe first experience in applying disaster capitalism to an economy this large, they may find that they have inadvertantly entered into a suicide pact that they didn't bargain for. They are about to discover what should have been clear from the beginning. If you kill the world's largest market, you kill the purveyors to that market. There are no alternatives to turn to that won't be joining us on the downward slide.
When the economic disaster hits and takes down the mighty with the modest, it will be inarguable that unfettered free markets are no more than government assisted economic suicide. The universal repudiation of the free trade notion may, indeed be the best thing to come out it.
The horrible cost of learning that lesson will be very expensive tuition to pay for knowledge that is self evident. Its a shame that Milton Friedman won't be here to appreciate it and to bask in as much of his reward as we can sentence him to.
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John Sanchez Jr. (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 1266 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 10:21:34 AM
"Will Americans see the signs and vote for a leader who will lead towards a path to higher ground?" Are you serious? That likelihood is slim in my estimation. First off the MSM will not give much airtime, or print, to anything such a leader has to offer. The American public really doesn't want to see that the United States is sliding rapidly into Third World status. The majority of them are way too busy spending money they do not have in order to show how well off they are. So long as our nation bases the economy on War we'll continue to slide down, down, down. We'll continue being jingoistic and see enemies behind every tree. As someone in her sixth decade I find it appalling how far we have fallen.
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paz love (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 71 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 10:42:12 AM
QUIT LYING! Lies lead to theft; theft leads to murder. Robbing a man of his savings forces a slow death due to being unable to purchase food, clothing and shelter. A slow death is still murder, although acceptable under our laws. "Hey, I didn't do anything illegal!" they say.
QUIT LYING. Simple, but complicated. Subprime loan officers accepted the lies of their applicants. Then lied when they sold the loans. Then the bankers repackaged the loans and lied to the buyers. The hedge funds took billions off the top, and left their holders with more paper lies. Like having a tenth mortgage based on a subprime note. When the subprime borrower stopped paying, all the other lies became exposed. Pure fraud, but again, acceptable under our laws. This is the price we pay for accepting lies.
Even OpEdNews suffers, because as readers finally understand, they have little left to pay the messenger for the wonderful education.
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Edward Ulysses Cate (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 221 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 10:46:55 AM
don't be so sad when you write such an oped...............you know as well as I do it (the economy, more wars, maybe another 9/11) has to get much, much worse before the delusioned becomes disillusioned..................they've got to experience personal bankruptcy, become shattered, embittered, have all their savings dwindled, be endebted to the hilt and become destitute before you can pry the stupid bastards off their couch potato asses and impeach the Satan that runs this country........................................can you believe the recent news................GWB is peddling a War on Iran with the allies............reminds me of cheap shoe salesman...........
No disrespect intended............
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Ernest (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 132 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 11:12:57 AM
Using the Gov't's own numbers, our national debt has increased more than .5 Trillion in the last year. It simply isn't getting better, as they have pretended.
If the economy stalls out during a period of war and enourmous deficits, what does that hold for the future?
This economy is in much bigger trouble than people realize. We are at the beginning of the retirement of the boomers, with intractable deficits, a never ending war, and a flat, at best, yet deteriorating economy. There is no room for tax cuts, and little room for interest rate cuts.
We're boxed in, weak, and helpless, just like in Iraq. Our president has weakened this country dramatically, and provided us with few, if any, viable options for turning things around.
Meanwhile, Bill Kristol is trying to scare us about all the bad things that will happen if Obama, or any Democrat, gets elected president.
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Robert Sargent (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 26 diaries, 316 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 11:21:08 AM
of the great depression. Mom wore a dress made from flour sacks and walked to school barefoot. She had no pencil or paper or crayons. My grandma would take a few seeds of corn and walking past the neighbors farm would drop a trail of corn kernels all the way home, and leave the door open. The neighbors chicken would follow the trail all the way into the house, gramma would slam the door shut and kill dinner. My dads family were a little better of. They would pick cow peas to eat. They owned a cow which was the only way to afford milk. A good Christmas back then was to recieve an orange or a small bag of peanuts.
The good book has foretold "a time of trouble" the likes of which the world has never known. The concentration of our population in urban centers eliminates the ability to garden or have livestock, which I believe will prove to heighten the acute shortages of food staples. The probability of civil unrest will be higher and the destruction more intense. I believe it was Marx that warned to spread the people out to avoid these concentrations thereby minimizing the possibility of the spread of disease, drug abuse and the clashes between classes and racial groups . Of course we dont take advice, we give it.
The next depression promises to be a real mess. Get ready for food , fuel and power rationing. Make your move out of the country or at least out of the urban areas now, before lockdown.
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john riggs (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 440 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 11:26:45 AM
than leadership, it's the entire system. The U.S. lives, eats and breathes growth. A full 62% of all U.S. jobs are dependent on consumer spending.
Our underlying ecomomic basis is that of exponential growth and consumption in a finite world; a mathematical impossiblity. We hit zenith in that respect some 30 years ago. The national debt has risen by 1000% since 1980.
The housing debacle is NOT the problem, its a symptom of a failed system. Fixing all the loans or even giving the people the houses for free, would have no impact what so ever on the problem.
I wrote a book on this very subject, "The Biggest Lie Ever Believed." Read a chapter for free at kingofsimple.com.
We cannot borrow and consume our way to prosperity.
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Mike Folkerth (120 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 566 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 11:56:17 AM
unlimited growth is very possible in the neo-con world view by......reducing the demand .....by wars that eliminate the unnecessary population who have outlived their usefulness. I feel their goal is a world reduction of maybe half the people alive today and explains why there is no moral problem for them to engage in arms trafficking.
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tjb (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 228 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 10:02:14 PM
No one asked America if it wanted to be consumerized. It happened because it was profitable, glitzy and easy to promote. The consumerization of America finally found its way down to the people who had nothing and the top found a way to turn the bottom into profit-centers as well.
Hundreds of thousands of Main Street businesses gone to put 11 Waltons on the top of the billionaires list. That's not an angry statement, but a fact.
Tens of thousands of wonderful restaurants in small town America swept under by clusters of fast-food joints out at the Interstate.
Banking turned into the same bait-and-switch the used car salesman finds profitable.
University grads turning away from the humanities and liberal arts, desperate to be picked up by an 'Investment Bank'
The previous writer talks about life during the depression--when people cared for one another and the system was changed because it was finally, desperately, vulnerable to change.
I don't have a problem with that. But I have a problem with readers who think there is some 'fix' that an Obama or a Giuliani can manage. I would far prefer the fifteen years of luring chickens home to eat, rather than a lifetime spent watching us eat each other.
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Jim Freeman (108 articles, 53 quicklinks, 224 diaries, 386 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 12:36:31 PM
What is most troubling, is that this corporately owned media now has the American people so fixated on this sham they're calling a 2008 presidential primary, when in-fact they and our feckless Congress ought to be focusing their attention entirely on this potentially devastating economic disaster you've spoken of. It is imperative Washington begin to address these lopsided trade and budget deficits immediately!
It is also worth noting and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' nonfarm payroll data, that our U.S. economy only created a mere 1,054,000 new jobs in 2007, many of which filled by foreigners on visas. That is hardly enough jobs to sustain our burgeoning population. And to complicate matters even worse, if this bellicose cowboy, Bush and his cabal of pernicious neo-cons do decide to give the order to strike at Iran? Those foreigners i.e. China and Japan who've accumulated trillions of our dollars and which has helped fund this horrific and illegal Iraq war? They very well may decide they've seen enough and begin to reduce their holdings of this worthless piece of paper, sending our already maxed out, once great country into a complete abyss, making this recession we're now experiencing look like a walk in Tyler park!
You might also want to take a gander at this startling report from The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBO) http://www.cbpp.org/12-14-07inc.htm
If there was ever a time for change in this country? That time is NOW!
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Munich (0 articles, 74 quicklinks, 13 diaries, 900 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 1:17:55 PM
Bring on the chickens, and I don't mean Colonel Sander's style. A complete breakdown and the associated pain is the only thing that will change this bizarre belief that Americans are somehow entitled and have a "right" to wealth and privilege some 10 times greater than most humans on earth.
Live simple, live well, live long.
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Mike Folkerth (120 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 566 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 1:22:10 PM
Paul's Laisse Faire philosophy is very similar to the University of Chicago School of Economics model that got us here.
Paul has some good ideas and great positions, but dealing with this crisis? I don't think so.
OTOH, his radical approaches might not make the economy any worse. THousands might die of starvation, but what the hell, everyone for themselves. That's the libertarian model, right?
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Rob Kall (857 articles, 3983 quicklinks, 343 diaries, 1821 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 3:07:22 PM
I am thinking that you misunderstand the implementation of Ron Paul's positions and have caused your conclusion a predisposed fallacy of viewing through the Libertarian Pigeonhole. Labels are misleading.
Ron Paul is about phasing in the positions he stands by.
Your words:
"Paul's Laisse Faire philosophy is very similar to the University of Chicago School of Economics model that got us here."
This shows that you are not looking at what is different in Ron Paul's suggested Economic Policy. the biggest of all the differences is Money that can not be created out of thin air just because someone says so. Another is of competing curencies. The fact that neither of these two premises has been in the system for quite some time shows that in fact our current system does not well resemble what Ron Paul Proposes.
Your Words:
"OTOH, his radical approaches might not make the economy any worse. Thousands might die of starvation, but what the hell, everyone for themselves. That's the libertarian model, right?"
Again you use The Label Spectacles to skew your view. Without some form of return to sound money this cycle will continue to reoccur. Due to foolish "Laisse Faire philosophy" in the creation of money brought about by our current system, where government and Central banks create money "when they deem necessary", we are set to experience catastrophe like none other in history.
His policies will not make things worse than they will already be. NO one can stop what is already in motion. Yes things will be bad; they will be bad again if the system is not changed Fundamentally.
I do not see how you can think that a sound money system would be bad. I am sure that the fiat system will continue in some form as it is "Crack Cocaine" to the financial industry. Sound money may be able to insulate the general populous from their boom and bust cycles.
I would rather risk what may come by electing President Ron Paul, rather than electing someone else that may pull an FDR and extend our misery.
Things are dire as you well know. What is done this election cycle will determine the fate of America. Will we return to responsible reality or continue fanciful fantasy.
I vote for virtue; I vote for Ron Paul.
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Brad Evans (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 199 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 4:53:43 PM
If we continue down the path of confiscating wealth and killing off productivity, we will not be able to avoid the Tsunami you write of.
The choice is as simple now as in all of history -- freedom or enslavement. Shall we throw away the key to our shackles, or ask for more?
Please correct me if I'm wrong. Debt-currency, economic stagnation, and heavy-handed government will lead to financial collpapse. When people turn to the government for help, and there is not enough to redistribute, the government will resort to forcing people to produce and distributing basic necessities. That is not stable economics either. It's what Stalin did, and he starved enough people this way to make Hitler look like a beginner.
Let people alone, let them keep what they earn, and let them trade with currency that has value -- and we get an improvement in the human condition undreampt of throughout history. Eat away at that, and we will end up as miserable slaves, barely able to survive at a subsistence level. I think history shows that this is not an exaggeration.
Thomas Jefferson warned us of this day.
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John Danforth (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 98 comments)
on Monday, January 14, 2008 at 7:47:05 AM
I mostly agree - we're like passengers on the Titanic, after
the ship hit the iceberg.
As far as elections go, I think '04 was the last chance to change course. The '08 election is already largely over. It can only be a Republican in the mold of Bush, or a so-called "Democrat" who will continue most of what Bush started. The best that progressives can hope for is John Edwards, and he's A) already a "long shot", & B) not really all that great anyway. He's being marginalized by the media -- his punishment for trying to speak somewhat truthfully about excessive corporate power.
The passengers on the Titanic had a few hours to think philosophically before the great ship went down. We have a bit longer than than, but articles like today's NYT story will soon become commonplace.
Above, Mike Folkerth pointed to a simple mathematical impossibility underlying the American mode of economic organization. Namely, our economy requires ever-increasing growth & consumption -- something you can't have in a finite world.
Another simple mathematical argument underlies the futility of our political organization. Namely, capitalism tends to concentrate wealth into fewer & fewer hands. As this process goes forward, society's important decisions increasingly conform to the interests & desires of the richest top half-percent of the population. This dynamic is flatly incompatible with meaningful democracy, & incapable of serving the needs of 80-90% of the population.
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Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1210 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 4:20:00 PM
Those who are on fixed incomes are the people that were impacted first, and it's of tidal wave proportions to millions of Americans, but it's especially impacting the elderly and poor. To emphasize the phenomena properly, I can even use myself as an example, and it's being replayed all over the country - and I honestly don't know how people are dealing with it.
The housing market is shot, and all of those homes that are in foreclosure are vacant, or soon to be, and won't be back on the market until they are finally auctioned-off. Rental rates are still climbing, and after you factor in gas and food, budgets no longer stretch far enough to even pay the basic bills. We are looking for lower rent ourselves and will have to move further away from the city - and important medical care (my mom has cancer) will require longer drives and thus more gas.) Every move is another backward step, and we don't know when that last home won't be available.
I heard today that a well-known liberal/progressive author is also experiencing some of these same difficulties, and as the world begins tumbling-in, it affects the quality of your writing and makes it easier to express the frustration and anguish others are feeling because it's becoming SOP rather than isolated in nature. This is a financial downturn that could take decades to recover from, and money equates to lives, it always does - so there will be a huge death count that will one day be directly associated with Bush destroying our economy.
This will be interesting to witness; other societies who have also experienced financial collapse didn't have the ability to point their fingers directly at those whom caused the collapse. The Internet has brought truth and facts to millions of people, so when it happens, the anger and anguish will be leveled at "compassionate conservatism", the Neo-cons, and all of the "good" it has brought to citizens of our country.
When the economy finally finishes crashing, I believe that corporate America will suffer too, and a large part of their discomfort will come from the demands and demonstrations by the people when they wake-up and understand that Bush and corporate greed are the Grinch’s that stole prosperity from America.
William Cormier
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William Cormier (130 articles, 7 quicklinks, 17 diaries, 318 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 4:48:54 PM
Hey Bill, good post, stands out cause it doesn't repeat the self serving stuff that many of the others do here.
So America is finaly reaping what it's sown over the years for other Nationalities ? Hmmmm, now I wonder why the World finds it difficult to dredge up a little sympathy ?
All my working life I've heard the mantra that "WE" must bow to the IMF and the World Bank, we have policy after policy shoved down our throats by these bodies, polcies that claim to benefit us all, yet I have yet to witness just one such benefit to myself or family.
What I have seen, is longer working hours, less time for families, increased costs, income higher, but STILL nowhere neccessary to keep above growth levels, degradation of infrastructure, familes having to work more then one job, to sustain their lives, and the rich get richer.
I've witnessed one after the other, public assets given away via such policies, assets built with taxpayers money over the years,and supposedly to serve the taxpayer, we are told we will reap rewards in the long run via cheaper costs, again all I see is the degradation of such assets and when run into the ground the profiteers cannot be seen for the dust and the destroyed asset is simply
