http://www.stephanie-osborn.com
This is the follow-on post to Sarah Hoyt's "Preparing for the Long Rains" blog. Once again I am splitting it into two halves due to her blog formatting versus mine.
~~~
The Center Cannot Hold, Part 1
by Sarah A. Hoyt
I was thinking this morning that there
are other things that make this path we’re on uniquely dangerous in
terms of preparing for bad stuff, because it’s simply impossible to
guess what form the horrible stuff will take.
Here’s a grab bag at random – just
off the top of my head.
We’re the largest country organized
on non-authoritarian lines (yes, I know, but we’re not organized
for it)…I was going to say “to risk collapse” but now that I
think about it we’re just the largest country in history organized
on non-authoritarian lines. For those who will protest that, go look
at the constitution of the European Union. When we organize under a
constitution that classifies the curvature of a banana, then we’ll
be in the running. (Yes, there are a series of abuses, and we’ve
been trending authoritarian and centralized since the civil war –
not arguing the rightness or justness of the war, just saying it
centralized and strengthened los Federales and their power – but I
don’t think it’s got into the DNA of the nation, yet. Having
lived here and in Europe and traveled a bit all over, Americans are
still likely to tell authority to take a hike.)
I have massive faith in the American
spirit. 9/11 happening anywhere else in the world would have turned
NYC into well, something out of the movie "Escape from New
York", instead of a place where people helped each other get
through, which by and large it was. Yeah, I know there are spots
where this fails, but by and large Americans look at what needs done
and go, "I'll do it," instead of waiting for the duly
constituted authorities.
We are being treated to a very weird
financial combination. I think I know what the idiots in power are
trying to do, but if it REALLY is what they’re trying to do, they
are some sort of unique in the realm of dumb.
Look, I was thinking about this
yesterday, in terms of what an economic collapse looks like. Portugal
[Sarah was born and raised in Portugal. -Steph] sailed dangerously
close to it in the mid-seventies, with inflation going insane and
people panicking and buying supplies months in advance, and then
hysteria about hoarders being drummed up when supplies failed to
materialize. (We also had price controls then. An absolute boon for
the black market.)
But no one starved and by the end of it
several people were better off than they’d been, (though not those
who owned real estate, due to rent freeze and not those who’d
failed to acquire saleable skills – more on that later.) People who
owned gold or had money in the bank, for instance. (Though how much
the future prosperity came from America I don't know. I know in the
eighties we joked our GDP was made in America.)
HOWEVER to my knowledge – and I’m
not as exhaustively well read on it as I’d like to be, because for
the last five or six years work/kid stuff has kept me from reading
economics as much as I used to. (Shut up. It’s a hobby.)
I don’t know any other country where
currency has been printed like ours, and yet the interest rates are
held artificially low. The combination is at best daft. Inflation is
already showing up, though they keep doing weird stuff to how it’s
calculated. (No, I’m not going to argue that. If you buy food, you
know inflation has shown up – but beyond that, because the price of
fuel goes up {being paid for in devalued dollars} it pushes
everything else up, because fuel is used to MAKE everything.) [Or
transport it. -Steph]
A lot of the places that can, and where
it’s direct, they are already raising prices/lowering sizes –
restaurants; food packaging; services; prices for minor stuff like
mini-golf courses.
But the lack of employment is holding
salaries down. And for those of us like me, who work at a job with
irregular pay and who therefore of necessity have “savings” –
i.e. a big paycheck goes in bank and is slowly drawn out to
supplement my husband’s salary which is our main support – are
seeing those savings eaten away. By the time we need to use them, we
need more of them, which we're not getting because interest rates are
low.
~~~Part 2 next week.
-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com
