Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
What if the fun and games of 2017 are over? The hidden message behind the sexual harassment freak show of recent weeks is that nothing else is sufficiently serious to occupy the nation’s attention. We’re living in the Year of Suspended Reality, stuck in the sideshow and missing the three-ring circus next door in the big tent.
It probably all comes down to money. Money represents the mojo to keep on keeping on, and there is probably nothing more unreal in American life these days than the way we measure our money — literally, what it’s worth, and what everything related to it is worth. So there is nothing more unreal in our national life than the idea that it’s possible to keep on keeping on as we do.
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The weeks ahead may be most illuminating on this score. The debt ceiling suspension runs out on December 8, around the same time that the tax reform question will resolve one way or another. The debt ceiling means that the treasury can’t issue any more bonds, bills, or notes. That is, it can’t borrow any more money to pretend the government can keep running. Normally these days (and it’s really very abnormal), the treasury pawns off paper IOUs to the Federal Reserve and the Fed makes digital entries on various account ledgers that purport to be “money.” And, by the way, the Fed is a consortium of private banks not a department of government — which is surely one of a thousand ways that the public is confused and deceived about what condition our condition is in, as the old song goes.
There’s a fair chance that congress may not be able to resolve the debt ceiling deadline. The votes may just not be there. If the deadline comes and goes, the treasury can only use incoming tax revenues to cover its costs, and it won’t be enough. It will have to choose whether it issues paychecks to the roughly 2.7 million US government employees, or pays the vendors that sell things like warplanes to the military, or pay out so-called entitlements like Medicare and SNAP cards, or pay the interest on the previously-issued bonds, debts, and bills that the US has racked up over the years. Believe it or not, making those interest payments is probably the top priority, because failing to do that would shove the nation officially into default for the first time and destroy the country’s credit standing. The full faith and credit in the US dollar would shatter.
And then the fun and games would really cease. The country would discover it doesn’t have its mojo working, as another old song goes. The reality of being truly broke will set in. After all, there are two basic ways of going broke as a nation: you can run out of money; or you can have plenty of money that is worthless. Take your pick.
There is some kind of revolution coming to American life. One way or another, it amounts to a much lower standard of living. The journey there may take the public by surprise, a la Ernest Hemingway’s crack about how a character in one of his stories went broke: slowly, and then all at once. The main question about this journey must be whether it is accompanied by political violence. One would have to think the potential for that is pretty high, given levels of animosity and delusional thinking among the two opposing factions — can we even call them Left and Right anymore? — which may even exceed the ill-feeling of 1861.
The tax reform bill, whether it lives or dies, may only become a laughable footnote to the greater quandary of national insolvency. And, anyway, the proposals so far amount to a hall of mirrors inside a three-card-monte house of horrors that almost nobody really understands. As yet another old song says, this ain’t no Mud Club… this ain’t no foolin’ around. Meanwhile, down in the rococo dining room of Mar a Lago, the Golden Golem of Greatness tweeted yesterday that he was presiding over the greatest stock market ever! Kind of reminds me of the moment that old Joe Kennedy got a stock tip from his shoeshine boy.
I believe the Democrats are using the sexual harassment allegation narrative to set the standard to go after Trump in 2020 and in parallel to ‘kill off’ the Clinton Machine. They are willing to incur some democratic casualties (Franken, Conyers etc) to accomplish their goals.
It does hide the continuing inside the beltway BS going on.
Except that no one cares about that. Bill Clinton won multiple races despite being a known cad, Roy Moore’s going to win and Franken’s not going to resign. The media’s telling everyone they should care – so you’re probably right that it’s an orchestrated effort.
Iska….times have changed and IMO it has to do with economics. In 1998, the majority still had decent paying jobs, although declining.
Now, 20 years later, the situation is getting dire and people have learned what has happened and are slightly pissed. Any chance to stick a knife in a politician helps the emotional get-even stance.
When and if the media starts exposing the pedophile rings in Hollywood and DC, it will get a lot more “real.” Kunstler, like most of (((them))) is pretty uninterested in a subject in which the major players are of similar ethnicity.
If the government shuts down and there’s no enough incoming tax money, the answer’s easy: cut off the free shitters: SSDI and Social Security.
Social Security recipients are NOT free shitters. They paid into the system and only get a portion back the way it is. And many of them are doubly taxed since they paid income tax on their contributions to the system and are paying income tax again on their payments received. GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT BEFORE POPPING OFF! Welfare recipients are the free shitters.
Although the numbers get worse by the decade, a couple retired in 2010 will receive about 1/3 more out of SS than they paid in. It used to be even better than that. In the 60s, retirees got up to 6 times what they put in.
Social Security is a wealth transfer from the younger to older generations. Always has been, and will continue to be until the wheels fall off. Which is guaranteed to happen since the realities of demographics demand it. If you actually believe you have “paid into a system”, like some kind of savings account, you are sorely mistaken. It’s pay as you go.
If you’re cool strip-mining your kids’ and grandkids’ wealth to fund your golden years, more power to ya.
Don’t disagree that the debt situation is unsustainable but the problem will go critical in Europe or Japan before it reaches here so we’ll have some warning.
We also owe a debt of gratitude to our oil and gas industry which is keeping our trade deficit manageable and preventing the dollar from sinking. Also our demographics, while shitty, are not at the level of Japan, Spain or Italy even if too many of what young people we do have are low IQ third world types. They can still do low skill labor and that is the sort of jobs we are producing.
Two points of reference from the past, the Greek bankruptcy and the Deutch Bank default were all supposed to bring the world to the brink; but nothing happened.
I totally respect the authors writings, but the doom and gloom scenarios always seem to get magically fixed at the last minute. Not saying its not gonna happen, but TPTB always seem to have a way of averting disaster; until the next crisis…. stay tuned.
The dollar will last, and maybe prosper, until foreigners lose confidence in the stability of the American government and economy. I’d guess 15-20 years, but a chain reaction failure of European banks could precipitate worldwide depression, as in 1930…
I agree that the Euro or Yen will fail first. In fact, the death of either will boost the dollar system for a decade or more.
We have time to prepare, but eventually even the dollar system dies.
Couldn’t resist…one of the few I liked by them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DblvhECdws0
A good one.
The PTB will continue to make those payments typically considered Welfare, and support cheap internet entertainment – Bread and Circuses.
When people who have only subsistence and diversion in their lives are cut-off from either, with literally nothing left to lose, revolt is inevitable.
Though with the right priming and prep by the PTB, such a move to precipitate explosive violence in areas which could be contained and controlled could be deemed preferable to a world war for decreasing surplus population.