Alas, Through The Looking Glass

I stopped writing about financial matters and the economy in recent months because quite frankly I was tired of of talking about what was then an incipient catastrophe. Well, in my view, the oft prognosticated Depression is here, and it will become obvious, and I mean OBVIOUS, to everyone by Christmas at the earliest, and by Spring at the latest. You may have noticed that the authorities have now admitted that the nation has been in a recession for a year, and no less than Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman has offered that what he has seen so far in the U.S. is even more dire than what occurred in the worst year of Japan's so called lost decade. Well, Professor Krugman, that is because, in my humble opinion, what we are witnessing is the greatest economic contraction of The post Enlightenment epoch. Planet Earth, with the U.S. acting (for the time being) as its economic epicenter, is now in the process of correcting several centuries worth of economic growth. With that in mind, it is not only possible, but probable, that anyone over the age of thirty will not see general prosperity, at least as we have known it, again in their lifetime.

All the great panics of the last two hundred years, including the 20th century's Great Depression, were economic calamities that qualify, by my reckoning, as ones that were an order of magnitude smaller than the one we are now experiencing. No one alive, and none of our ancestors going back several generations, had any experience with the manifestation of a super cyclical trend of the size and scope of this one. Our only consolation, if indeed it can be any consolation at all, is that history of the sort that is written about and discussed for hundreds if not thousands of years is being made right now. I know, what I am saying sounds like the rankest hyperbole, and though I suspect you are likely dismissing my fantastic claim, I think by this time next year, most, if not all doubts, will be erased.

This is because the changes I have in mind are coming very quickly and will affect everything to a degree that will be the unmistakable harbinger of something that could only come along but very rarely in human history. Most, if not all of what is now still fashionable, ( I use that term not to denote trendiness, but rather to refer to what passes as "common practice/status quo" behavior) as reflected in art, entertainment, civic life, education, farming, governance, and money itself, will, as a result of what is transpiring right now, become almost unrecognizable within approximately a decade. Such are the times that we are living in and hopefully that we will live through.