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We Are Now Entering The "Discovery" Phase Of Financial Collapse
Submitted by James H Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
Theory du jour: the new Star Wars movie is sucking in whatever meager disposable lucre remains among the economically-flayed mid-to-lower orders of America. In fact, I propose a new index showing an inverse relationship between Star Wars box office receipts and soundness of the financial commonweal. In other words, Star Wars is all that remains of the US economy outside of the obscure workings of Wall Street — and that heretofore magical realm is not looking too rosy either in this season of the Great Rate Hike after puking up 623 points of the DJIA last Thursday and Friday.
Here I confess: for thirty years I have hated those stupid space movies, as much for their badly-written scripts (all mumbo-jumbo exposition of nonsensical story-lines between explosions) as for the degenerate techno-narcissism they promote in a society literally dying from the diminishing returns and unintended consequences of technology.
It adds up to an ominous Yuletide. Turns out that the vehicle the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee was driving in its game of “chicken” with oncoming reality was a hearse. The occupants are ghosts, but don’t know it. A lot of commentators around the web think that the Fed “pulled the trigger” on interest rates to save its credibility. Uh, wrong. They had already lost their credibility. What remains is for these ghosts to helplessly watch over the awesome workout, which has obviously been underway for quite a while in the crash of commodity prices (and whole national economies — e.g. Brazil, Canada, Australia), the junky regions of the bond markets, the related death of the shale oil industry, and the imploding hedge fund scene.
As it were, all credit these days looks shopworn and threadbare, as if the capital markets had by stealth turned into a swap meet of previously-owned optimism. Who believes in anything these days besides the allure of fraud? Capital is supposedly plentiful these days — look how much has rushed into the dollar from the nervous former go-go nations with their wobbling ziggurats of bad loans and surfeit of production capacity — but what actually constitutes that capital? Answer: the dwindling faith anyone will pay you back next Tuesday for a hamburger today.
We now enter the “discovery” phase of financial collapse, where things labeled “capital” and “credit” turn out to be mere holograms. Fed Chair Janet Yellen herself had a sort of hologramatic look last Wednesday when she stepped onto her Delphic platform to reveal the long-heralded interest rate news. Perhaps Mrs. Yellen is a figment conjured by George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic shop (now owned by Disney). What could be more fitting in a smoke-and-mirrors culture? Anyway, the rude discovery that capital is not what it has appeared to be is now underway, with the power to derail political systems and societies.
Is there anyone who thinks the Presidential election campaign is not completely deranged? Well, it is the analog for America’s deranged financial polity. The graceless Mr. Trump necessarily reflects the just grievances of the great public wad, but has anyone noticed that he is incapable of stringing together two coherent thoughts? I suppose one thought at a time — or maybe a percentage of one thought — is enough to satisfy the sputtering masses, faced as they are by the arrant theft of both their patrimony and their future. But it adds up to something like flying blind through a shitstorm with your pilot in the throes of cerebral infarction. I don’t want to be on that plane.
Then there’s the giant flying reptile known simply as Hillary. She will blow up the sad and noisome remains of the Democratic party and then she will preside over the blow-up of the USA as an advanced techno-industrial society. That final outcome may be inevitable one way or another, but the journey there need not be so harsh. America needs a vision of something other than itself as a permanent demolition derby, which, by the way, will not be “solved” by pushing everyone into a Tesla instead of a Ford F-150.
It’s not just the Federal Reserve; everything around us is backed into a corner. Come January, when the dazzle of Star Wars fades away, you will hear instead through the long dark nights a howl of raging animals. Merry Christmas to all.
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What a fucking downer - not!
I value family over possessions, love over money. The season is one to celebrate the birth of my Redeemer.
No one can change what is to be, best to prepare and live life to it's fullest.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Itz coming. Barbarians at the gates. LOL
http://wtnh.com/2015/12/21/man-leaves-machete-in-mcdonalds-bathroom-prom...
Fuckin' linebacker this guy... Funny though - it's almost cliche', the ubiquitous 'white substance found in a small plastic bag', which of course, always turns out to be 'narcotics'... As my dear brother would snark - 'we're more Soviet than the Soviets'...
Forward Stasi...!!!
here is Trump prediction
https://www.rt.com/business/326639-trump-bubble-us-economy/
That one is walking free, released on bail, when he ought to be involuntarily committed and under psychiatric evaluation.
Greenwich can't be bothered with this sort of riff raff. Back on the Amtrack to Grand Central he goes.
Hey, gotta luv Kunstler!
Psalm 18:1-18 (KJV) I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid. The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death preceded me. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears. Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. At the brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed, hail stones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hail stones and coals of fire. Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings, and discomfited them. Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils. He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them which hated me: for they were too strong for me. They prevented me in the day of my calamity: but the Lord was my stay. He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.
Well, let's be true and celebrate his miraculous conception .. (1st week to mid Dec.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQt9pBSYY5Y
Now the true date of his birth, that is the spooky one ..
Why was it co-opted?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/10/04/americas-sad-terror-confession/
We might even want to celebrate Hanukkah ................. as HE did!
Hey, I'm LCMS .. Still I'm for upsetting the church calendar for accuracy sake ..
A study in Bankruptcy. ( annual 2000-14 all cars) Total diesel Irish private car mileage. Y2000 : 4.4 billion km Y2014 : 18.3 billion km. We are now much poorer then we were in Y2000. So what's the point of it ? Does this benefit the corner shop. The village pub. Nope. Its bloody madness .
"Theory du jour: the new Star Wars movie is sucking in whatever meager disposable lucre remains among the economically-flayed mid-to-lower orders of America. In fact, I propose a new index showing an inverse relationship between Star Wars box office receipts and soundness of the financial commonweal."
Try not to cut yourself on all that edge.
Nuthin' means shit until the "clawback" phase. Time to put these dozens of corps completely out of business forever.
I just discovered there was a phinancial collapse.
Re-arrange the deck chairs and dance to the music because the ship is only listing a little bit. The modern media has taught the herd to avoid reality as much as possible, for as long as possible, then panic as much as possible....
Everything is Fine..
it's christmas time!
Spend! Spend! SPEND!
The truth about fiat. It's a lie.
Fractional Reserve will be exposed as Full Frontal Nudity without the Night Stick.
Still not convinced Obama will leave office regardless of which turd is selected from our daily dose of circus entertainment.
Yeah, I'm wondering about that myself and I'm beginning to think they'll try an insurrection to seize power......
If you like your Reichstag, you can keep your current one.
Sure life blows, but you can only focus on that stuff for so long before you go insane.
Do what you can to plan, but come to the realization that you might die a horrible death and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Life is easier to live that way.
pods
Sounds like a good time to head out to Maui...
The Big Island was named number one of all public islands in the World by some snooty pretentious magazine last year.
If you want to disappear, a nice spot on the islands would be nice...
Maui and Oahu have the surfing, Hawaii has the space, and Kauai has the nature.
However there are military bases on every island and Oahu has the naval strategic nuclear missile reserve there with hundreds if not thousands of nukes, so it is a first strike attack by our enemies.
So Hawaiians have that going for them, which is nice.
I think once you realize you really have little or no control there are no horrible deaths. Focus on what you can change leave the rest to God.
Nice to see the tsunami, though. Lots of people going to pass on trying to hold their breath.
The new Reality Game ... Discover that you are in a Financial Collapse!
To be aire on The Discovery Channel
I don't know how people spending money on movie tickets and cheap popcorn helps the economy. I think it shows the absolute disconnect of the labor force and the owned wealth.
A few thousand teenagers keep making minimum wage during the box office weekend while the board members of Disney and the actors of the movie make hundreds of millions of dollars on the back end. Not to mention the profit of the theaters who show the film.
Sure the rent of the theater meets payment, the city gets a small land tax, but that is more wealth to land owners and the State, neither which really benefits the common people.
Yes The End is here. The curtain is closing on the Empire. America is done. But it has been for awhile. Accounting gimmicks only last so long as the board can be paid out, and the accounting gimmicks began in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window. Everything from Greenspan's tech bubble and real estate bubble to Bernanke's bond bubble has been theater of the absurd. Now Yellen will close the show and the audience will go home.
Unfortunately for the audience while they were at the theater the banks robbed them. Their cupboards are bare, their heat is turned off. They have no jobs and when stocks and bonds crash they will have no wealth and no income. And this because everyone just wanted to be entertained. Because everyone thought entertainment is what is enjoyable in life. People failed to learn that what brings true enjoyment is finding self worth. And in the consumer economy self worth was marginable, sold off for popcorn at a movie.
Irish total car miles
2000 : 23 billion km
2008 : 32.1billion km
2009 : 31.6 billion km
2010 : 31.3 billion km (trough)
2014 : 34.9 billion km
Please I love Zerohedge...so don't dumb us down with this horse shit!
Click over to one of George Washington's paranoid-narcissist rants, and when you come back you'll feel better about this article.
Another shitty, valueless piece by the Uber-cranky-old-man. Tell me, Kunstler, as you shit on absolutely everything to show how contrarian you are and establish your populist bona fides, if you hate technology so fucking much, WHY DO YOU HAVE A FUCKING WEBSITE? And why is your pointless bloviation reposted ON A FUCKING WEBSITE for people to comment here?
Either he's a total asshole or he's manipulating the rubes. Or more likely both.
Somebody forgot to take their medication today.
atomic comment made sense to me. each word, each sentence, logical concise coherent. If, i had a problem with the comment, i would have addressed the issue, the substance, rather than making a superficial ad hominen attack on poor ole wasted atomic
+1 I actually upvoted - as I was increasingly becoming aware - from each subsequent sentence read - that this article was wasting my time. cheers!
Agreed. Good command of the language; no command of a point.
Kunstler's better reading after a couple of drinks to counteract the Debbie Downer effect.
I'm willing to concede that he's a bright guy, but jeez, after an hour with him I think I'd be reaching for the cyanide.
Unpermitted sheeplecide is illegal.
The elitist couldn't plan a financial collaspe better than this.
Flood Europe with hostile middle eastern people.
Aide ISIS and provoke Russia into starting WWIII.
According to Putin the entire point of Russia getting involved is to stop World War III before it happens and to tell the NWO to piss off.
Besides the obvious profiteering, rent seeking, etc, the recent muzzie infestation has the most important effect of keeping sheeple attention off the usual suspects.
The general rule is that at all times the mind of the sheeplemass must be occupied, stimulated by hate/love/lust/....KardarianAss....war, rumor of war...anything, that prevents organic thought. The circus is critical to the state. Coupled with state power, bribes, cheap carb and the last decades in diabetic dependence, grovelling for a Medicar death bed...
Well that leaves such a small minority of questioners such that they are freaks in their own land.
Try to get your head around this.
There is a couple of pubs remaining in Portmagee - they will close unless they capture the Star Wars market.
As the locals cannot afford a pint.
The boatmen will make a living (if they are lucky) transporting Darth Vader and Luke Skywatcher nerds to Skelig....
I have vivid memories of that town doing real work at one time.
Of trawlers full of fish
Not anymore baby.
Have you any idea of the inputs required ( Jet Kerosene etc) to capture this purchasing power.
The waste involved is simply incredible
4TH TURNING !!!!!!11111111.................bitchez !
At least us fat Americans which I am part of will loose some weight...
Very good reminder! I'm gonna have to change my diet to include more healthy, farty foods. I can already see the plants in the front yard wilting from the methane plume.
Supp with your badd selves????
See Some Sup Eat Some Sup
And the purpose of this article is????? Just sounds like a grumpy old man bitching. No data, just opinions.
Charts and data are irrevelant at this stage.
Wasn't this the "Oil Drum" guy?
Why are you such a humorless puss?
Remember, bail-in legislation goes live Jan 1st in Europe. Happy holidays.
Glass-Steagall
All opinion... no facts. MEH. Articles like these don't belong on the hedge.
Most of the world's energy directed toward mercantalism
Very little towards basic production / consumption.
Most of the energy is being lost in distribution.
This is a deep characteristic of finance capitalism.(Usury)
When usury became firmly established in the south of Ireland (Cromwellian Invasion) all of the new roads lead to Cork.
A man had to walk up to 100 miles with a Donkey load of butter to sell his product when the sea was at his doorstep.
Previously there was a older road network which linked communities over mountain passes via the most direct route but these were no longer needed.
The function of the new roads was not to connect but to get the stuff out.
Capitalism is a concentration experiment and nothing else
on
i doubt that puke celebrates xmas
Reality check : The Fed raised rates to maintain CONTROL, not credibility. The central bank has had over 100 years to wrest control from anyone or any other entity and they are NEVER going to give it up. Our future may look like Japan, only much worse because Japan has a homogeneous civilized population
Didn't read the article on Fukushima did yah jew?
I regret that that does look like one of the likelier futures. Japan's economy, only with regular armed riots in the cities, while the countryside quietly secedes without telling anybody. In the case of the latter, the Powers That Be won't even know about it until suddenly they NEED Flyover Country to do something . . . and find that they can't force compliance.
"But it adds up to something like flying blind through a shitstorm with your pilot in the throes of cerebral infarction. I don’t want to be on that plane." (1)this sentence does'nt scare me 'cause in the laws of physics, if you jump UP before the plane crashes, you'll survive. (2)if however, you are not in a position to jump UP for some inplausible reason, then grab the best looking gal on the plane and make passionate "love" to her. or (3) find the liqour cabinet and get totally shit faced, piss-in-your-pants, numb?... store THAT in your mental data banks, and you're welcome.....merry Christmas .......sgorem.
Transport energy inputs as a % of Tfc is the Rosetta stone for Understanding production / consumption crisis .
All that friction is wasted consumption.
American voters will never elect someone whose focus is taking on the bankers and DC. The average American has no idea that they pay more taxes than many corporations, or that corruption is so rampant that it's just become the new normal. They have no idea that we pay 174,000/yr to officials who are laughing at us, and violating any number of their obligations to the Constitution and the citizenry.
The disintegration of America will continue unabated.
Everything else is just noise.
Good Night and Good Luck
Wow just wow I am shocked and appalled at your thought crime against the mighty and never wrong us government.
Please report to your local gentile concentration camp, and report to who ever jew is in charge.
This is blasphemy against religion and government and is unacceptable hate speech and thought violence.
I am triggered.
Talk about infarction, what do you want to bet Militillary crashes out of the race, account health?
One more time for the idiots who DON'T understand the fundamentals of the Canadian economy.
1. Oil & Gas account for 6.7% of GDP. After you remove the 34 Billion in subsidies, that figure reduces to 5.0%
2. Primary extraction is a mere 43 Billion in a 1.8 Trillion (US) economy.
3. Combined, those two industries account for less than 150 Billion of economic activity so it is not likely that the Canadian economy will 'crash' any time soon.
What we do have is the soundest, best capitalized banking system in the world, voted the strongest for the 8'th year running, and, effective January 1, 2016 we will have reduced our reliance on US exports from 85% to 60%.
The other thing we have is gold, and lots of it, as well as the largest gold mining sector in the world, along with the largest miners in the world. If I were you I would be scraping together as many greenies as I could spare and putting it into whatever physical gold you can find.
So it may come as somewhat of a great surprise to those of you slathering over the possibility of picking up resource companies for 2 cents that the vast majority of Canada's economy is value-added, not resource based.
Better luck next time.
Unfortunately, it's been shown many times that taking 5% OUT of a capitalist economy, which depends on GROWTH for its very survival, is a very unpleasant event indeed, and usually leads to knock-on losses for roughly 30% of the population. So Canada is going to experience some heartburn even if it isn't a full-blown heart attack.
Just sayin'. Canada has a lot healthier economy on the level of fundamentals than the USA, and a lot healthier society. They're not likely to start physically tearing each other apart when the economy stalls a bit. Americans? We're already getting used to a major riot every month. Some time soon, the cops will start shooting . . . and the "protesters" will open up with full automatic. It's really only a matter of time.
Canadians are much better equipped in the full auto
arena than is commonly known.
But, when you combine the second biggest land mass
wit a population around NYC and Chicago combined,
there isn't a lot of opportunity for "collisions"
That's Canada's true secret.
All your comments are quite correct.
Can't argue with arithmetic now can we ;)
Canada's biggest problem is as always that
it has a "central bank"... and evidently a clueless
Gen -X/Y/whatever running the show in Ottawa.
Again... nothing particularly new.
An interesting observation; my American cousins
are complaining that with the strongest US$ ever,
prices have not fallen... sound familiar???
Meanwhile, as the nitwits in Ottawa do their best to
devalue the CAD$ ( now that the oil trade gives them
the chance... ) China ( of Made in China fame ) says
they will devalue based on them as well... read
Made in China won't result in much inflation in
Canada...
Oh, and have you noticed, that real estate has not fallen?
OK, not entirely true... except the BoC has been doing
their damndest... to preseve the price of the properties
of the 1%... LOL... 'cuz thats all that really floats
Ottawa's boat you know.
Na they just need thicker smoke.
"May the Farce be with you." -Darth Yellen
As to the election, Trump promises he will make peace, not war, with Vlad Putin.
That's enough to win my vote right there.
If Clinton gets in we are on a fast road to World War Three and we all die.
Thumbs up Henryhall, Let us get back to business and make some money to pay the bills and keep the food on the table, Vote = Trump, Putin for peace!
Unfortunately, Bernie will win, the terrists will do something terrible, and we'll have Soviet-style internal controls on movement.
And on that happy note I wish everyone a Happy Christmas.
p.s. I hope that gets up the nose of all of the politically correct nuts. _JOHNLGALT. Who is John Galt?