Monday, March 30, 2009

The "correction" will come soon

Michael Panzner reminds us that he predicted hyperinflation to follow after deflation, and quoting Edward Chancellor's recent article, thinks the phase change may be on its way. Chancellor answers the argument about global oversupply by reference to run-down inventories, widespread bankruptcies etc - there is now less productive capacity than there was, and what's left is not running smoothly.

A sleep-deprived Jim Kunstler experiences some of this disruption in a Colorado over-dependent on the vagaries of aviation, and rehearses his central theme that US living standards must (in his view) drop 20 to 50 per cent, whether through deflationary depression or savings-destroying inflation. He thinks the page will turn soon, too - maybe in June.

I said to my brother this weekend, that I think America can cope with being poorer, though the adjustment will be nasty; I didn't think it could survive being so rich. Look at what all that easy, phoney, fraudulent wealth did: that gallery of fat rogues in Wall Street and elsewhere, while the poor were exploited with credit cards and doomed home loans.

Kunstler's healing vision is bucolic, like Alexander Pope's:

Another age shall see the golden ear
Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre,
Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned,
And laughing Ceres reassume the land.

4 comments:

James Higham said...

I said to my brother this weekend, that I think America can cope with being poorer, though the adjustment will be nasty..

Can't agree they'll cope because of the American Dream.

Sackerson said...

Smalltown will come back. And there's loads of very sensible Americans who can see where all the money-madness has led. It doesn't buy you a safe community.

James Higham said...

Agreed but there is the Obama destruction first.

I'm Not POTUS said...

I don't see loads of "sensible" Americans anywhere in my neck of the US.

Most of the population has been lobotomized by public "education" whose only mandate has been to excrete mindless consumers.

I call it as a coin toss between either the movie "Idiocracy" or "The Postman"