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interactiveleaf

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Aug 05, 2010 15:58

From the Associated Press, about one month ago:

Even though the prospects of deflation - a widespread and prolonged drop in prices for goods, the value of stocks and homes and in wages - is remote, some Fed officials are worried about it. Keeping rates low would help prevent deflationary forces from taking hold.

Emphasis mine.

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draggonlaady August 5 2010, 23:09:18 UTC

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/30/don-t-panic-about-the-economy.html

interactiveleaf August 5 2010, 23:21:33 UTC

That article makes sense to me. We're turning into a global economy, like it or not, and that means that lifestyles are going to start averaging out, which means that--guess what--this unsustainable American lifestyle we've been saying for decades is, well, unsustainable? We're about to find out what unsustainable actually fucken means.

draggonlaady August 5 2010, 23:52:45 UTC

Yep. Also, you might try wandering through http://xthread.livejournal.com/
He posts lots of good economic stuffs.

interactiveleaf August 5 2010, 23:56:21 UTC

Ooooh, I'ma spend some time wandering through that landscape. Thanks!

draggonlaady August 5 2010, 23:58:51 UTC

Welcome :)

valatan August 6 2010, 00:07:25 UTC

that article sounds really, really dour to me, actually. It actually seems to be implying that the US economy is close to doomed, and the only profitable thing to do anymore is to export capitol elsewhere. That's bad news for those of us who live here.

interactiveleaf August 6 2010, 00:09:23 UTC

That's what I read in it to; see my comment on the matter, above.

valatan August 6 2010, 00:14:10 UTC

Indeed. that article reads like this one, except without the Jonathan Swift-style irony.

interactiveleaf August 6 2010, 00:30:43 UTC

Yes. What I don't understand is why people are upset or surprised by this. I have known this was coming since I was old enough to think about it, and frankly, I have never had a problem with it.

This is what globalization leads to. This is inevitable.

And I don't see a point in getting mad at the scorpion when it stings you halfway across the river. The difference between that fable and this reality, though, is that the scorpion ain't gonna die.:)

Seriously, though: unsustainable. I've heard that word used all my life. I knew what it meant. This was predictable.

Yep. valatan August 6 2010, 01:41:50 UTC

I was hoping that some of these crises would be able to turn away from some of this. I was genuinely surprised that September 11th didn't end with Bush dropping an atom bomb on Kabul on September 16th. For about two weeks, I was thinking that everything may have had a chance to change.

Same when Obama started getting elected. I was a good cynical Gen Xer, I never really trusted him, but I did think there was an opportunity to reverse a lot of this. The promises to push a strong stimulus and rein in the financial institutions and rethink NAFTA sounded promising. And then we watched him piss away all of his goodwill and political capital in some idiotic attempt to govern to the same center that screwed everything up in the first place. And watched the Republicans undermine the stimulus, then healthcare, and then the financial bill, never intending to vote for any of it, just weaken all of it.

Clearly, the only real option is total systemic failure.

Re: Yep. interactiveleaf August 6 2010, 01:47:16 UTC

The stuff you're talking about? I don't think that any of that has anything to do with what I mean.

America has been so rich, for so long, that we've come to think we deserve it. We're angry at the corporations for not "giving" us jobs even though there are people perfectly willing and able to them more cheaply in other countries. None of our foreign policy or domestic* policies have had a damn' thing to do with this.

Globalization means that the resources (and that includes jobs and money as much as oil) are going to be far more evenly distributed, and when you're on top, "more even" is a bad thing.

* We maybe could have put this off by investing more into R&D and education. But we cut those things instead.

Re: Yep. valatan August 6 2010, 01:57:31 UTC

Ah, I actually see that a little differently. I think much of our wealth was based around having a well-educated society that had reasonable amounts of social mobility ( ... )

Re: Yep. interactiveleaf August 6 2010, 02:16:30 UTC

Rather than building on that when it stalled in the late '70s, we decided to reverse all of it and start redistributing everything in society to the super wealthy, who then used their wealth to export jobs abroad where those jobs could be done more cheaply and with fewer labor standards.OK, yeah, that's what I mean by globalization. We may be on the same page here after all. Those policies led directly to what we're facing today ( ... )

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