I stopped reading Jim Kunstler’s scathing blog when he rabidly turned pro-Trump.
This morning, in the absence of interesting news, I decided to check him out. Too bad. From every pore of his poisoned post, came a withering rightwing rant.
EXCEPT FOR THE LAST THREE PARAGRAPHS which I found to be dead-on-point. Besides, who writes like THIS?
“An autumn wave of Covid-19 (one “variant” or another) would take out whatever remains of the service economy, the restaurants struggling just now to return to normality (ha!), the hair salons, the gyms, the florists, booksellers, sports, theaters, live music venues, what-have-you. Since we no longer have much of a manufacturing economy, the only thing left would be Wall Street — which was originally designed to raise money for the manufacturing and service sector but now only raises money for itself via the seemingly magical mingling of “leverage” with “liquidity” to conjure profit from black holes where the ghosts of productivity howl.”
TUDOR PLACE: Yes, Wall Street is still a trapeze act but no longer missing just a net. Now, it’s lost its trapeze.
“It’s some trick but, let’s face it, it’s still just a trick. Also in that picture is the weird three-legged race of deflation tied to inflation running both uphill and downhill at the same time like a nightmare out of M.C. Escher by way of Stephanie Kelton. The USA will be toting up a $3-trillion-plus deficit just for the current fiscal year at the same time that debt becomes ever more obviously unpayable. How does debt even mean anything if there is no prospect of paying it back? Especially in the form of financial instruments, namely: bonds. And how does a financial system based on debt behave when all that is the case? I guess we’re going to find out.”
TUDOR PLACE: For those who don’t know, Stephanie Kelton is the leading guru/magician for Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Or as I refer to it — Magical Monetary Theory.
“My guess would be a price collapse in financial instruments — abstract things represented by money — and then a collapse of money itself. You may be thinking: not a pretty picture. I know. And we thought the last days of the Soviet Union were bad in 1990. Hoo boy, are we in for a rough ride. One can hardly imagine the social side-effects of all that, but it would seem to imply people having a rather hard time finding something to eat, or getting anything else they need. Remember good ol’ Ross Perot talking about “a giant sucking sound?” Think of that against a background of things on fire. What flavor ice-cream will “Joe Biden” be ordering on Halloween?”
TUDOR PLACE: Let’s hope this isn’t prophetic.
Tudor Place 