Mid
Year Digest
by
James Howard Kunstler
24
June, 2013
Wondering why the
money world got its knickers in a twist last week? The answer is
simple: the global economy is breaking apart and its constituent
major players are doing face-plants on the downhill slope of a
no-longer-cheap-oil way of life. Let’s look at them case by case.
The USA slogs deeper
into paralysis and decay in a collective mental fog of disbelief that
its own exceptionalism can’t overcome the laws of thermodynamics.
This general malaise precipitates into a range of specific
quandaries. The so-called economy depends on financialization, since
it is no longer based on manufacturing things of value. The
financialization depends on housing, that is, a particular kind of
housing: suburban sprawl housing (and its commercial accessories, the
strip malls, the box stores, the burger shacks, etc.). Gasoline is
now too expensive to run the suburban living arrangement. It will
remain marginally unaffordable. Even if the price of oil goes down,
it will be because citizens of the USA will not have enough money to
buy it. Lesson: the suburban project is over, along with the economy
it drove in on.
But so is the
mega-city project, the giant metroplex of skyscrapers. So, don’t
suppose that we can transform the production house-building industry
into an apartment-building industry. The end of cheap oil also means
we can’t run cities at the 20th century scale. That includes the
scale of the buildings as well as the aggregate scale of the whole
urban organism. Nobody gets this. For one thing, there will be far
fewer jobs in anything connected to financialization because that
“industry” is imploding. The recent action around the Federal
Reserve illustrates this. When chairman Bernanke’s lips quivered
last week, the financial markets had a grand mal seizure. He floated
the notion that his organization might “taper” their purchases of
US government issued debt and mortgage-backed securities — the
latter being mostly bundled debt originated by government-sponsored
entities and agencies. That’s the “money” that supports the
suburban sprawl industry.
If the Fed were to
reduce its purchases of this debt paper, nobody else would buy it.
The reason the Fed buys the quantity it does in the first place ($85
billion-a-month) is that nobody else would touch it at the offered
zero interest rates. The US Treasury and the mortgage bundlers could
only sell the stuff if they paid higher interest rates. But the US
government would choke to death on higher interest rates because its
aggregate debt is so huge and the scheduled interest payments so
gigantic that a one percent increase would destroy even the fantasy
of economic equilibrium.
Apart from that
unhappy equation, entropy never sleeps. Everything in America except
the Apple stores and a handful of big banks is falling apart —
especially the human habitat and households. Suburbia will only lose
value and utility. Big cities will have to get smaller (ouch!). Tar
sands, shale oil and shale gas will not ride to the rescue (they cost
too much to get out of the ground). The entire declension of
government from federal to state to local will be too broke to fix
the roads and make “transfer payments” to idle, indigent
citizens. This populace will lose faith in their institutions… and
disorder will eventually resolve in a new and very different
disposition of things on-the-ground. If we’re lucky, this will not
include cruel despotic leadership and war.
If the “taper”
talk is empty rhetoric, and the Fed continues sopping up issued debt,
it will eventually destroy the credibility of its issued money. That
is just another way of going broke, though it might beat a shorter
path to the general loss of legitimacy of governments and other
institutions.
Young people, harken:
prepare for careers in agriculture and activities that support it.
Consider moving to small towns in parts of the country where farming
is possible and get ready to rebuild a very different economy. Also,
consider repudiating your college debt en masse, since the fantasy of
repayment is but another mental shackle holding you back from your
future.
As for the other
parts of the global economy, a digest:
Europe doesn’t have
enough oil and gas to run itself. Its suppliers (Russia, various
Islamic states) are all basically hostile to it. As the late, great
Tony Soprano might say, “end of story.” Europe has been playing
financial pocket pool with itself for five years with credibility
ebbing. Soon Europe will descend into painful economic re-set. Its
era as the go-to theme park of advanced civilization is ending. Go
there while it’s still possible and take some snapshots of what
comfort and artistry used to look like.
China is imploding
under the weight of its half-assed crony command economy and banking
system. Nice try. Cookie fortune says, “Industrial era entered too
late in game.” All else there is desperation: e.g. the idea of
moving hundreds of millions of peasants into new cities. As Tony
would say, “Fuggeddabowdit.” They’re better off growing bok
choy en situ. Anyway, no one should assume that China can remain
politically stable. Let’s hope that its economic and political
crack-up doesn’t transmute into war.
Russia’s oil
production is in permanent decline. It has a lot, but it gets most of
its income from selling it to other people. Hence, Vlad Putin’s
notion of finding something else to base Russia’s economy on.
Like…what? I don’t think they’re going to replace China in
making salad shooters. Farming would be the way to go, and Vlad’s
government is hoping that global warming improves Russia’s
prospects for doing more of that. In any case, Russia might benefit
in the long term by not selling off all of its oil and gas — though
Western Europe would surely suffer from that decision. On the plus
side, Russia’s government is not crippled by idiot squabbles over
abortion, gay marriage, and the Bible in schools.
Japan. Sorry to
repeat myself. Going medieval. They have no oil and gas. (Cue Tony
Soprano again.) In the event, Japan’s financial hara-kiri will drag
down the rest of the world’s banking system — or at least hasten
the damage already self-inflicted elsewhere around the globe. I’m
also informed that much of the essential computer chip fabrication in
the world still happens in Japan, and that will go away, too, as the
Japanese engine seizes, smokes, and expels its final belch of CO2.
What else is there?
South America? Think: spreading jungle (or desert, take your pick).
Canada? There’s an idea. Maybe Labrador becomes the new Hamptons?
Second biggest national land mass… 30 million people (2 percent of
China’s population). Only one drawback: the view to the south.
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