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That
sound you hear out there is spaghetti hitting the wall. Everybody wonders:
will it stick? The European Union lobbed a wad of kartoffelkloesse
at a Greek wall last week. The thud was impressive, but then the darn thing
started sliding down the greasy wall to where a gang of CDS counterparty
wolves waited, snapping and slavering for it. And then there was a crowd of
curious Germans in the alley, wondering who stole their precious kartoffelkloesse and lobbed it at the Greek wall, anyway.
Grumbles were heard but, as yet, no mob action against the flingers of the
purloined kartoffelkloesse.
Here
in the pitiful tweet-sphere that contains the atomized remnants of USA
governance, there is no such clarity. We don't know if that's spaghetti
hitting a wall or the shit hitting the fan. But due to the amazing obduracy
of the parties involved, the next sound you hear may just be the wall itself
tumbling down, perhaps even the famous wall with the famous street attached.
All
I know is that I dumped a largish bundle of 13-week US treasuries on Friday,
a tad shy of the August 4 rollover and moved the hypothetical cash into less
freaky hypothetical foreign sovereign instruments. I found a great bid for
the T-bills, too. The whole transaction cost me a buck. I wondered: what were
these people thinking who bought this crap at just the moment in history when
everything is flying into walls and fans?
Whatever
other conclusions can be drawn from the great debt ceiling debate of 2011,
the main one seems to be that this country can no longer govern itself. Our
reverence for the constitution appears to be inflated along with everything
else in the USA these days: gas prices, waistlines, cable TV bills. Even
congresspersons themselves seem to hold it in low regard, since proposals for
a "super-congress" were floated last week. A lot of sentient folk
who follow national affairs actually wondered out loud, "what the fuck
is that supposed to mean?"
I
took it to mean that our faith in the apparatus of governing has evaporated
at the same rate as faith in our promises to pay back stuff-of-value
denominated in certificates called dollars, our faith in which also melts
into air. One thing for sure everybody knows: this is not a good time of year
for financial shenanigans and chicanery. The rough beast called Reality comes
back from its vacation in foul and turbulent spirits. Things shake loose when
it roars.
There
is widespread and growing agreement that the two major political parties have
reached the end of their useful lives. No other serious faction is waiting in
the wings to replace them, except the one led by a claque of overfed radio
clowns and know-nothing Jesus Jokers with an axe to grind against the wicked
hosts of birth control. Seek no further for the answer as to why our
political leaders are not serious: there is nothing they can do at this
point. In order to conceal the reality of epochal economic contraction, they
have run our money affairs off a cliff - and so the next sound you will hear
may not be of things hitting walls and fans, but of a sickening crash, as the
overloaded carriage of government (drawn by a scrawny coyote) spirals down
into the Canyon of Lost Causes.
We
need a financial convulsion to sweep away the accumulated debris of poor
choices, false hopes, squandered resources, frauds, swindles, and lies. Such
an event can't help but set off a true political convulsion. Let the banks
eat their own tails and strangle to death. I hope somebody catches a photo of
Lloyd Blankfein paddling a surfboard due south off
Georgica Beach, destination: Fortaleza. I hope he brings a few Red Bulls with
him for the trip, and perhaps a whiffle bat to hold off the sharks - if there
are any left in overfished deep blue sea.
I
post a few seconds before the markets' openings this ominous Monday. Gold is
already riding high. The rest is largely up to the robots in Lower Manhattan
and the zombies in Washington.
James
Howard Kunstler
James
Howard Kunstler’s new novel of the post-oil future, World
Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers.
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