What Will Go Wrong Is Already In Train.
Speaking Sunday 4 January with my financial professionals re the big crash of 2008 and the fallout of bad policies that will beggar the US and Europe and Asia in the next months and push recovery well into the future. It is easier than ever to see the future, because, as the wag says correctly, the future is already here, it's just not organized. The 2009 crashettes, the nominees:
1. Car Crash.
The Bush Administration decision to write a check to GM and Chrysler with TARP money was weak, pointless and worse -- it won't work. The Obama Administration will now tangle with Detroit and the UAW and lose more money in a bad deal. The bald fact is that the car companies have crashed because Americans have cut back on buying cars. Not just GM and Chrysler but all car companies are now in sharp decline, including the champions Toyota and Honda. It isn't credit, it isn't GMAC, it isn't the UAW. It is the showrooms. They are nearly empty right now. Yes, there will be sales this year, but the last projection number I heard from Lou Ann Hammond, carlist.com, was 11 million (down from 16 million) sales. The consumer has discovered that the vehicle he or she is driving, one year older and twenty thousand miles on, works just fine.
2. Newspaper Crash.
With cars companies in failure, the mainstay of car ads for the newspapers has gone the way of
the classified department. Newspapers in the major cities were already in retreat because of on-line competition and because the young (under 30) do not much read newsprint. The upcoming year will see newspapers converting to on-line aggregators. Printed magazines are going too. And the business models for network TV and cable TV and terrestrial radio are all in immediate danger of sinking with the well-known 1912 unsinkable craft.
3. Retail Crash.
The Westchester, the gigantic mall in White Plains that serves a vast consumer population, was nearly empty the day before Christmas. And this was with the sales already in place, from 40-60% off clothing and all recognizable products except electronics and jewelry. Five days after Christmas, it was half full -- much of the traffic for returns. This year will see malls with empty stores along the promenades as the franchises retreat. I am watching the Apple Store. When and if Steve Jobs agrees to cut Apple product prices -- the Iphone, the Macs -- is when I will be certain that we cannot see the bottom of the retail crash.
4. Luxury Crash.
A fool and a fool's money. It is hipper to burn the cash than spend it on the detritus of the gilded age 2. I do not know the names to list for failure. I peeked into the Tiffany store window at the Westchester the day before Christmas, and saw several customers, more than at Ann Taylor or Brooks Brothers. Do diamonds fail? Unknown. Certainly leathers goods and fashion rags and perhaps even unusually uncomfortable shoes are going the way of office party planners.
5. Partisan Crash.
The GOP remains undead, unburied and unmourned. The Democrats look to be a deaf party walking toward a cliff edge. Mr. Obama is the unpresident as the dollar is the undollar. World government has arrived with a goofy plot to run the money printing presses till we can all swim in cash like Scrooge McDuck. The worldwide credit crash tops all partisanship. If you are ranting about anything, you are about to be fired. If you have already been fired, we can't see you. Lifeboat America, sinking. Who volunteers to go overboard? And there is only food and water for n% of us. Cheers.
John - It's only the first of January; Obama hasn't even returned from self-imposed (40 days and 40 nights) exile in Hawaii's tropical wilderness yet, and you are already so pessimistic? What gives?
I grant you that "the future is already here". It has always been here - as has the past. Metaphysics aside, however, there's still a lot Bush has time to do. Launching a strike on Iran's nuclear capability is one. Sure, it'll shake things up a bit, but what does he care? He could pardon "The Scooter" (and god knows who else). He could go on television and expose the hoax of "global warming". He could also admit to a temporary lapse in his handling of the economy and reaffirm his belief in the principles of capitalism.
You and I both understand that none of this is likely to happen - with the exception of a Libby pardon, perhaps; just as a gesture to that part of Bush's anatomy that may have suffered most from the occupational hazard of being president: the spine.
I think it's business time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGOohBytKTU
Have we crossed the Rubicon? In the immortal words of Niobe Vorenus, of the series Rome, asked what will happen. "War will happen".
I think 2010 will be a good, if not great, year for Republicans. However, I think it might be by supporting Pres. Obama where the liberal wing of the Dems don't.
“It is easier than ever to see the future, because, as the wag says correctly, the future is already here, it's just not organized,”
I think you have in mind cyberpunk William Gibson, who famously remarked, “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” Soon enough we will learn what constitues that unevenly distributed abstraction we call the future, glittering space stations or Third World mega slums.
"... (T)he young (under 30) do not much read newsprint."
Good to hear. Along with education majors, modern journalists are bottom-rung members of the insulated, credentialist New Class that has done so much to ruin this country. Discipline and punish the journos!
“Do diamonds fail?”
Not as long as stupid and horny men will buy worthless lumps of compressed carbon for women crazy and avaricious enough to want them. In other words, only when that asteroid of yours finally pulverizes Earth.
“The GOP remains undead, unburied and unmourned.
So that explains the awful stink. When there’s no more room left in hell Karl Rove walks the earth.
“The Democrats look to be a deaf party walking toward a cliff edge.”
The Democrats are the living refutation of the notion that everybody should be allowed to vote. By the end of this century, probably sooner, universal democracy will be as discredited as Marxism or the divine right of kings.
“Lifeboat America, sinking. Who volunteers to go overboard?”
I hereby volunteer America's ten or twenty million illegal immigrants. Deport them the way Eisenhower, our last competent President, deported illegals back in the Fifties, then watch the crime rate in the Southwest and elsewhere drop and the drain on social services ease--not to mention a sudden increase in Help Wanted ads in financially troubled newspapers everywhere.
Who’s with me, guys? Anybody? Anybody at all?
[Sound of crickets chirping. Night falls. Curtain.]
And a very happy new year to you too, John!!
Actually, apart from the fact that I'll have to find something else to line the catbox with, I say good riddance to the newspapers. They haven't been worth the paper they're printed on at any time since I learned how to read (i.e., since JFK). Now that I can get hockey scores and highlights online, not much else to miss about the local paper.
I was just reading something else the pols around the country are up to, that is so unthinkably, incredibly, stupid, and two-faced, that I actually had to further downgrade my opinion of them after reading it (it already has less room on the downside than does the Feds' discount rate at this point.)
It's that they're talking about installing GPS systems in new cars and switching from a gasoline tax to a mileage tax. Of course they say "Don't worry about a loss of privacy - these GPS only track general movements." Yeah, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. ***guttermouth comment deleted by author*** I digress.
Stupid because since they won't be able to feasibly put the GPS monitors on older cars, they will be adding another huge disincentive to buy new cars ... right at a time when the auto industry is being read its last rites. Oh, that's a real Einstein of an idea, that one! If that happens, I will drive my 1996 Toyota pickup for another 12 years, till I get too old to hike out in the mountains and desert anymore and can just take the bus back and forth to my office every day. I hereby solemnly swear the following oath for the world to see: I will walk and/or take the bus for the rest of my life before I drive one mile in a car or truck with a government GPS installed on it.
And, two-faced because they are saying it has something to do with Priuses wearing out the roads or something and not paying their fair share. More like, with people driving less and with people already at the melting point over higher taxes, these worthless sacks of dried-up road apples masquerading as "leaders" will have to find some way to obfuscate their actions. Yes, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, because he plans to **** expletive deleted by author ****.
I second the motion to deport illegals. Any time someone is arrested, their residency should be checked and those who are illegal should be deported. Is everyone aware that many police departments don't check legal residency of those they detain?
You don't need to. Reports indicate they are deporting themselves in fairly large numbers.