Here's part of a nice rant from The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle (http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary7.html ):
In the meantime, the United States finds itself in a multi-layered predicament at home that hardly anyone in the media is paying attention to, and it goes something like this:
Due to the phenomenon of the global oil peak having been passed around the year 2001, the US economy is unlikely to enjoy "growth" rates of between 2 and 5 percent that have been considered both normative and necessary for the past 100 years of oil-based industrialism. That translates, more or less, into permanent recession. Helluva political problem.
What's more, the United States is not much of an industrialized nation anymore, since we outsourced the making of things to other countries. What is sometimes referred to as "post-industrialism" is really a skeezy blend of suburban sprawl creation (i.e. ongoing misallocation of resources), "service" jobs (tanning parlors and fingernail extension boutiques), mindless motoring, and a massive financial fraud revolving around hallucinated wealth (credit), much of it in the form of mortgages attached to the aforementioned suburban sprawl.
The American people themselves show no sign whatsoever of apprehending the trouble we are in at home, and show every intention of trying to keep the racket going. The big questions are: How long will circumstances permit this illusion to be sustained? How much pain will Americans feel when the credit train wreck occurs? And what kind of extreme social, economic, and political behavior will be generated at game's end?
Here are some of the things to watch out for. The price of a barrel of oil has not gone down since the end of the Iraq campaign. 2003 is turning out to be a piss-poor production year, with Venezuela crippled, Nigeria in chaos, Iraq closed for repairs, and the Saudis pumping at 100 percent of capacity. Global peak is probably behind us. A contest for the remaining oil now ensues between America, Europe, Japan and China. Virtually everybody else is shit out of luck. |
