Monday, February 9, 2009

Updates on Economy

James Kunstler: "Seemingly overnight America has become a different country; All the old mechanisms that enabled our way of life are broken"

The attempted re-start of revolving debt consumerism is an exercise in futility. We've reached the limit of being able to create additional debt at any level without causing further damage, additional distortions, and new perversities of economy (and of society, too). We can't raise credit card ceilings for people with no ability make monthly payments. We can't promote more mortgages for people with no income. We can't crank up a home-building industry with our massive inventory of unsold, and over-priced houses built in the wrong places. We can't ramp back up the blue light special shopping fiesta. We can't return to the heyday of Happy Motoring, no matter how many bridges we fix or how many additional ring highways we build around our already-overblown and over-sprawled metro-plexes. Mostly, we can't return to the now-complete cycle of "economic expansion." We're done with all that. History is done with our doing that .