Say What? (James Howard Kunstler)

[Tace]

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

June 28, 2010 -- I think America missed something. It must be the time of year, what with inhaling all those fumes from the charcoal starter... and fueling up the Jet-skis so as to turn a perfectly good mountain lake into something like a Cuisinart on the guacamole setting... and the rousing evenings in the Nascar parking lots hitting palmetto bugs with your wiffle bat... and all that anxious waiting for a 10W-40 hard rain to fall on the Gulf Coast states -- but President Obama made a very interesting remark when the financial regulation package passed in the senate the other day. He said the bill would make sure that "Main Street is never again held responsible for Wall Street's mistakes."

Whoosh....

That was the sound of something going over America's head. Something about the size of Rodan the Flying Reptile. And frankly I don't think the president even meant to be coy or deceptive. It just means he doesn't get it either. Never again....

Never again?

What the fuck?

Why even this time? Why isn't there an army of federal attorneys out there, their teeth bristling with subpoenas, beating the bushes in every lane and skyscraper floor of lower Manhattan (and Fairfield County, Connecticut, not to mention a thousand office parks around the USA) to roust out the grifters and swindlers who took Main Street to the cleaners this time.

The audacity of cluelessness! And the hilarity of "next time."

Earth to President Obama: there isn't going to be a next time. This time was enough to git 'er done. Wall Street -- in particular the biggest "banks" -- packaged up and sold enough swindles to unwind 2,500 years of western civilization. You simply cannot imagine the amount of bad financial paper out there right now in every vault and portfolio on the planet. Enough, really, to sink any company even pretending to trade in things more abstract than a mud brick or an hour of labor. What's more, the cross-collateralized obligations between them are so vast and intricate that all the standing timber in North America could not be fashioned into enough pick-up sticks to represent the hideous death-dealing tangle of frauds waiting for the wing-beat of a single black swan to come crashing down.

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[LiberalLoner]

1. I read Kunstler's blog, "Clusterf*ck Nation" religiously every Monday. Great writer and

although he tends to be pessimistic, I get the feeling he sees the future more accurately than a lot of my fellow Americans do at this time...thanks for posting this.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Accuracy and pessimism are not mutually exclusive...sadly.

His blog is excellent.

[alterfurz]

3. for Bailout Part Deux...

...the oligarchy will demand sacrifice of Medicare and Social Security. Maybe that's when the American public will finally have its Howard Beale moment?

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. -- Frederick Douglass

[Demeter]

4. Obama At Least Admits to the Existence of an Injustice--the GOP Still Doesn't