Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Guns or butter?


Long morally bankrupt, the US is now falling into a tailspin of financial turmoil. How could it not? Reality has finally reared its head. Truisms are called that for a reason. You can’t have guns and butter.

This from James Howard Kuntsler, whose blog, “Clusterfuck Nation” has recently caught my eye:

The United States is so broke, its people at every level from the Federal Reserve on down don't know whether to shit or go blind. The homeowners cringing in the media rooms of their 5000-square-foot personal family resorts don't know how long they can stay put microwaving pepperoni hot pockets with the default clock ticking. The mortgage "servicers" don't know how they will persuade interested parties like, say, the Illinois State Cafeteria Workers' Pension Fund (holder of X-amount of mortgage-backed securities underwritten by, say, Merrill Lynch or Deutsche Bank) to foreclose on properties scattered everywhere from Key West to Bainbridge Island -- or if there is actually any legal mechanism known to man that would make it possible to "work out" the sliced-and-diced collateral. The millions of maxed-out credit card holders and the issuers of their plastic are stuck together paddling a leaky tub in a sea of troubles every bit as wide, deep, and polluted as the one the mortgage junkies and their enablers are sinking in.


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1 comment:

DetroitGirl said...

Am I crazy to buy a house now? I guess so! ; )