The Economy, the Government, and The Sound Over The Horizon

The Economy's Headed For a Cliff, and There's Nothing We Can Do About It - Except Smile As We Go Over.

In spite of the best efforts of Ben Bernacke, the Fed, Tim Geithner, Barack Obama and the Usual Gang of Idiots in Congress, the American economy is poised to fall off a cliff.   For their part, the only thing the Republicans can say about it is “Kissing rich people’s asses is good!  Regulations bad!  Ugga-ugga!”, in some primal dance-around-the-fire bullshit-session, catering to the equally-primal urges of the semiliterates who make up most of their constituency.

While the Great Dickpic Scandal of 2011 has taken most of the attention and bandwidth of America’s political commentators, and the rest of America’s newspeople are transfixed by Little Caylee's murder-trial in Florida, the Fed quietly announced that it wouldn’t be engaging in printing more money another round of quantitative easing, and the Obama administration has made it clear that they’ve blown their entire load on the bedsheets by way of ‘stimulus’, with not even a goodnight-kiss to follow.

Should the Fed change its mind and provide a third round of QE, it’ll be the strongest signal we’ve had in a while that the current brain-trust in Washington is well and truly out of options – there won’t be another extension of unemployment compensation; no one will address the real issue of jobs and how to create them.  Meanwhile, all of the stats point to another recession – or worse.

When Clinton left office, the American economy could have been likened to a mansion; we were running a surplus, and if we’d stayed that course, we’d’ve had at least a fighting chance at maintaining the status-quo while we tackled the larger problems of deficit and empire.

Instead, we elected a man who couldn’t pronounce ‘nuclear’; who thought cheese curds, French-fries and gravy (‘Poutine’) was the Prime Minister of Canada, and who gave us the lovely thought that the Constitution was ‘just a goddamned piece of paper’.  The critical-mass of Worst Possible Leader and Worst Possible Event kicked us all in the collective nuts on 9/11 – and the trained-chimp we elected President had the casus belli he felt he needed to go to war with half the world.  (Think about it – ‘god’ told him to do it; what more was necessary?)

Flash forward almost ten years – and thanks to the decade-long waste of blood and treasure, the American economy now resembles a double-wide in the cedar-brake of west Texas.  The roof leaks; the plumbing doesn’t work – and the propane-tank which ‘Cletus’ Bernacke jury-rigged into the kitchen-stove is leaking. 

He’s sitting on the couch in his poly-T and sweat pants, getting ready to light a generic cigarette with his buddy “Bubba” Geithner, by way of propping up the fortunes of his buddies on Wall Street.  

His other option – continuing the QE scam by way of printing money ‘till Hell won’t have it – is the only way he’ll keep the economy going.  As I mentioned before, he can keep the double-wide together, or he can blow it off the cliff and into the next county by way of taking care of his banker-buddies;  one or the other – but whichever one he does, the other goes off the cliff.

Now, I’ll allow that there are people who've consumed the government's Kool-Aid who'll point out that the unemployment rate dropped a tick and a half last month, and that foreclosures are down – but if you peel the skin off that rotten onion for a moment, you’ll see that most of those jobs were created by a mass hiring of burger-flippers by Mickey-D, and the only reasons foreclosures haven’t gone inexorably higher is because they’re stuck in processing – Obama and his minions have managed to stave off the inevitable there, but only by way of pulling a stunt which is more reminiscent of King Canute than FDR – he’s put his throne in the surf and is attempting to order the tide to recede. 

It didn’t work for Canute, and it fuck-all isn’t going to work for Obama, either.

If you’re looking for answers, I don’t have any.  I can connect the dots, and point to a future which, if we were smart, we’d begin to embrace:  A future where we restricted our breeding; developed a smaller personal ‘footprint’; used less; worked for the common good; accepted that there are limits; etc.

Only a minority really ‘gets’ this – the rest are saying, “I don't want to go there!  Leave me alone!  I want things as they are!  No regulations!  No taxes!  Only then will we be ‘free’!”

These people are fucking idiots – and frankly, I don’t have the time nor inclination to explain why.  Those of you reading this missive who understand the reasons are among that minority who ‘get it’ – and the rest are part of the great undereducated, nose-picking, poo-flinging monkeys who don’t. If that sounds elitist, that’s fine.  Another thing I’m done with is the political-correctness of dumbing-down for the benefit of the Teabagging majority.

The tacit agreement between the Rest of Us and the rich cocksuckers who run things is this:  We more or less agreed to leave them alone as long as they agreed to pay taxes and not fuck things up.  Instead, they’ve gotten around paying taxes, and they’ve fucked things up so badly we’re likely not going to recover. Why the CEO’s and their minions – about 2,000 in all – haven’t been hung in iron cages at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in New York still amazes me; after this much economic pain, I’d think that a guillotine next to the big bronze bull in the plaza would be a nice touch.  After all, the French revolution shares a lot with our current condition – it was mainly economic, and was brought about by a fundamental failure in leadership.

The assholes who believed we could borrow ourselves into prosperity (you know at least a couple; they were the pre-Teabaggers and their minions who voted for all this nonsense) – haven’t a clue; they don’t hear the sound of impending doom over the horizon for the roar of the engines at the Fourth of July demo-derby.  Meanwhile, the spastic efforts of the wealthy to retain their largesse will be a pathetic counterpoint to the suffering of the masses during the Recession (Depression?) of 2012. 

In a couple of weeks, you’ll see flags pop up in neighborhoods all over the country, as people try to remind themselves not just that we were great once, but that they still live in America.  Not one of them has the foggiest idea what’s coming.

Obama, Geithner, Bernacke, the fools who run Wall Street and the greater fools with the Slurpees at the county-fair are powerless to do anything about the Sound Over the Horizon.   You can count on a lot of pontificating; a lot of speeches, hot air, and bullshit.   Lots and lots of bullshit. 

They can’t fix it.  They can make it worse, though.  Let’s hope Bernacke doesn’t light that cigarette.  

Hope is all we have left.

Get to a boat.