Oh Six (Kunstler on the housing bubble and peak oil)

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/

Well worth reading, IMHO. Excerpting a bit:

You can only introduce so much perversity into an economic system before distortions cripple it. From 2001 through 2005, consumer spending and residential construction had together accounted for 90 percent of the total growth in GDP, while over two-fifths of all private sector jobs created since 2001 were in housing-related sectors, such as construction, real estate and mortgage brokering. Much of the money spent did not really exist except as credit -- incomes as yet unearned, hallucinated liquidity, wished-for wealth, all based on the expectation that house values would continue to rise at 10 to 20 percent a year forever. It became a reckless racket, all predicated on sustaining an economy that had lost its other means for generating wealth -- foremost its infrastructure for making things besides suburban houses.

But he *has* been predicting doom for many years now. Of course, he could be right this time. He's smarter than I am, that's for sure.

in Rolling Stone. That '06 prediction a worst-case scenario, I'd have to admbit. But for the life of me, I can't understand why there isn't more movement towards some kind of a sane energy policy. Well, I guess I can understand...

human nature tends towards inertia. when gas got to $3 for the rest of murka (didn't seem that much of a shock out west), notice how all the sudden people started freaking?

when the crisis hits, then we'll do something about it, while waving our hands in the air & looking for someone to blame (hoard ammunition, environmentalists, its you who will be scapegoated). then we'll elect a nationalist reactionary who'll complete the transition to blatant fascism.