A Distant Sound of Churning (James Howard Kunstler)

[Tace]

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

June 13, 2011 -- In my last dream of a febrile night, I put my flat-screen TV on top of an old house in town and watched it crash onto the street. There was nothing inside it. The darn thing was empty. The ghost of Little Caylee wasn't even in there.

From the news this weekend, you'd think the world was in a coma, but I swear I heard ominous bassoon phrases through the night rain... something large groaning out there in the dark. A great churn, coming closer. The world is in a box, tortured with its obsolete ideas about how economies are supposed to run, especially the money part, and the economists are clueless.

A case in point: the eminent Vincent Reinhart at the Council of Foreign Relations last week. (Conspiracy theorists just shut your pie-holes):

"There are very few debt defaults... there are a whole lot of restructurings. For most of history, default is something the strong declare on the weak when they lose their patience. And if you're members of the same club, you're less likely to lose your patience. Hence you're less likely to default. Greece is in the club."

The club he refers to -- the Euro money club -- is less a jolly fraternal lodge than a funeral insurance association. The latest restructuring for Greece he referred to is a cockamamie perpetual rollover with no redemptions allowed, while Greece has to agree to become more like its neighbor, Albania, in lifestyle -- that is, like Borat, minus the joie de vivre.

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http://worldnewstrust.com/all-content/a-distant-sound-of-churning-james-howard-kunstler.html

[xchrom]

1. 'minus the joie de vive' -- sadly true and funny. nt

[Poll_Blind]

2. I recommend everyone read this, but not at night: It'll scare the pants off you.

:thumbsup:

PB

[grasswire]

3. Kunstler never fails to be stunning

"The sad fact is we don't want to go where history wants to take us: to a smaller human imprint on the planet, with all that implies. This is true especially of the intellectual avant-garde, who can't imagine a world without the narcissistic joys of perpetual novelty, of levitating skyscraper cities with hanging gardens and flying cars, full of girls with green nail-polish in get-ups so fantastic mere mortals could never have dreamed them up, flaunting hand-held gadgets so miraculous that life itself seems besides the point. Oh, shimmering future! Oh Ray Kurzweil and your nano-ladder to the worm-holes of forever!

This Ancien Régime is about to be swept away on the tsunami of its own futility.

The failure of leadership around the world is now complete. Nobody who needs to get it gets it. Our own money management team here in the USA is in a box even worse than Europe's. It's not even a hall of mirrors. It's a broke-down Winnebago with moldy upholstery and the propane line is leaking inside. Everybody's wondering if Ben Bernanke is going to light a cigarette. What else can he do? If he doesn't keep the QE-ZIRP racket going, the wheels will come off the Winnebago. If he lights that American Spirit, she'll blow."