The Long Crisis Spins Out of Control

Politicians are often given far too much credit as to what they can and cannot control. Sure, their policies can make some difference at the margins but every one or two hundred years forces evolve that are much more powerful than politician’s ability to control them. We are now in such a time. As the present crisis evolves President Obama and his team will be more like cheerleaders and hand holders than saviors.

Thomas Friedman is correct in saying that this time we have hit a wall. “We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese …

We can’t do this anymore”

Actually the wall may but more substantial and hardened than even Tom Friedman realizes.

The converging disasters of a financial system meltdown, climate change, and peak oil, all occurring within a narrow time frame, will overwhelm the politician’s and society’s ability to deal with them. It is unlikely that economic growth can ever again be ramped up to pre-crash standards.

In order to survive people will largely have to take matters into their own hands and adapt to a more austere life of small scale local enterprise and of community organization. Big cities will become death traps for many.

We are now experiencing large scale enterprises in an accelerating state of collapse. Consider the state of AIG, GM, and even GE. The collapsing entities includes governments. Iceland may have been the first to go but certainly will not be the last. Ireland, the UK, Latvia, Spain, even Russia and the US are on the endangered species list. This is actually a very short list of potential collapses of large governments. All of Eastern Europe is on the ropes. Amazingly, even that former fortress of financial strength and stability, Switzerland, is endangered as it lend trillions of Dollars to Eastern European borrowers that will probably never be repaid.

Obama and the Democrats, along with the rest of us, are merely along for the ride into the Long Crisis. Events have already spun out of control.