Fullblown Panic In A Clusterfuck Nation

[kpete]

Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler
Fullblown Panic
January 21, 2008

Knees knocked last week from sea to shining sea as the shape-shifting monster of economic reality cut a swathe of destruction through the markets and financial ranks. The exact nature of this giant beast still remained largely concealed in a fog of accounting gambits, policy blusters, and reporting dodges, but a few intrepid scouts who glimpsed the behemoth up close said it looked like Godzilla with Herbert Hoover's face.

George W. Bush, tried to appease the beast by offering each American adult the dollar equivalent of half a month's mortgage payment -- with the exhortation to drive forthwith to the nearest WalMart and blow it on salad shooters and plasma TV's -- but Hooverzilla just laughed at the offering and pounded the equity markets further into the dust of loss, while the "bank-like" guardians of wealth lay in the drainage ditches bleeding from their ears and eyes.

My favorite moment was seeing Treasury Secretary Paulson and one of his fellow shaved-head deputies at a press conference rostrum frantically trying to calm the news media rabble like a couple of extraplanetary high priests from a Star Trek episode -- the batteries having run down in their laser wands, and their incantations ("liquidity! liquidity!) veering into mystifying glossolalia.

I resort to such admitted extreme hyperbole because it may be the only language that an infotainment-drunk society can still process in the face of an epochal calamity that will transform the lush terms of everyday life as we've known it into something like a bleak surrealist landscape in the manner of Tanguy. That crashing sound out there is the armature of confidence needed to support an economy based on faith that borrowed money will be paid back. It's as simple as that. (Doesn't seem so exciting now, does it?)

more at:
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/01/fullblown-panic.html

[LoZoccolo]

1. Whoever wrote this probably stole the "Salad Shooter" joke from Dana Carvey...

...back when he was impersonating George H. W. Bush in the late eighties and early nineties; I saw a Saturday Night Live skit he did about economic stimulus back then where he suggests buying one. Do they even make Salad Shooters anymore?

[LoZoccolo]

3. I guess they do still make them.

http://www.saladshooter.com

[Bluzmann57]

2. Ok, here's a straightforward way to put it

The economy is fucked. This country owes a lot of money and has no way of paying it back. The invasion of Iraq has taken untold billions of dollars, the alleged tax cut has not, nor will it ever, reach people like me, the oil companies, insurance companies, big pharma, defense contractors, they are all getting fabulously wealthy at our expense. The stock market is tanking and people like me will likely have to work until we die, as we will not be able to afford retirement. So in closing, I will just say this; fuck bush and fuck all the politicians who enabled him to get us into this mess. This does not go along party lines, it goes along the lines of "follow the money".

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

4. I don't know why I'm laughing so damn hard.

Maybe, he's right: ",...nothing is funnier than unhappiness."

I dunno'. Hell, maybe, just maybe people will decide Reagan/Bushonomics SUCKS?!! :shrug:

[greyghost]

5. Beautifully done. K&R