The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle
Commentary on the Flux of Events
The public imagination seems torn right now between the attempt to maintain a sense of emergency -- America Strikes Back ! -- and the even deeper wish to return to the "normality" of consume-o-rama as Christmas approaches.
I, for one, do not believe that our ridiculous Blow-Mart economy is going to "bounce back" in 2002. The amount of money hemorrhaging out of government and business by the hour is out of this world, starting with the billion dollars a day that it costs to prosecute the operations in Afghanistan. Much of the "money" created by the Federal Reserve in the banking credit chain the past decade is now being sucked into that black hole of America's New War including everything from million-dollar cruise missiles to the x-number of extra security guards per shift required by (take your pick) nuclear power stations, bridges, tunnels, port facilities, oil refineries, reservoirs, airports, government offices at all levels. . . . I haven't heard anybody in the news media question the notion that all this money can be drained out of the US economy at the same time that we are supposed to continue an orgy of spending on credit of one sort or another.
Meanwhile, the network of relations we call "the global economy" is suffering conventional strains that were already evident before 9/11, namely saturated markets and excess capacity. Do you need a computer running at 1.5 gigahertz, or is that 800 mh Pentium III you bought last February enough for word processing and tweaking your family snapshots? How many T shirts can you fit in your dresser drawers?? I was at the ragged edge of the third world last week, Nassau, the Bahamas, and they were selling T shirts at 3 for $10. Half the world has too much stuff and the other half of the world is too poor to buy any stuff. The additional problem of mis-investments that typically occur during booms is painfully evident here in the stupendous amount of crap strewn over the American landscape -- the redundant strip malls, power centers, discount marts and related shopping infrastructure that will soon be eating itself alive as the customers thin out.
Another interesting notion has cropped up the past few weeks, emanating mainly from The New York Times, viz: that Russia is going to save our asses in the petroleum department by taking the place of OPEC (mainly Saudi Arabia) in the future. This is pure wishful bullshit for several reasons. One is: what would prevent Russia from jerking the US around once we transfered our oil addiction from the Arabs to them?? Hello. . .? Remember Russia, a.k.a the former Soviet Union, our chief geopolitical antagonist from 1945 to 1990. Two, getting oil out of Russia (and it's former soviet possessions Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) by pipelines not yet even built could easily become a logistical nightmare, these being the most remote reaches of central Asia and some of the most contested real estate in the world these days. And three, Russia may have deeper petroleum reserves than the US, but world peak production is less than a decade away in any case, meaning whether we are economically dependent on OPEC or Russia or Lichtenstein will be academic sooner rather than later.
Anyway, the suicide bombings in Israel this weekend may turn out to be the most momentous events since the attacks of 9/11.
Stay tuned. I promise not to go on vacation again for while.