Those who want an economic collapse are fools.... My observation living through Hurricane Ike

I just "survived" hurricane Ike. I don't know if this bail out will work or not. (I am thinking not just because anything bush touches turns to shit...) Regardless, I think this nation is in DEEP trouble if the status quo is even slighlty disrupted.

After hurricane Ike we had no power or water. Actually most people STILL have no power... The radio stations are constantly talking about all the callers calling asking when they can expect the AC to work. Complaining they have no TV and "nothing to do".

At the retail store I work at people were acting like savages. Almost getting in physical fights over water, food, freaking plastic storage containers.

Prior to the hurricane entertainment sales (movies/music) went through the roof. So did portable DVD players, I mean we did TONS of business just selling movies and portable DVD players. People were commenting that they couldn't take a few days with no TV to watch.

One of the people in my neighborhood attacked some electrical workers because they wouldn't fix the power to his house first.

Folks, this was the behavior from just around 3 days of stores being closed. People were behaving almost like animals because they lost TV, power, and had to eat non-perishable foods for a few days.

Can you imagine if we had a REAL crisis that disrupted things for longer than few days? Maybe a few months or years perhaps?

I have never owned a gun in my life, (and do not believe in them) but based on just how people acted during this relatively minor (in comparsion to how things would be if the economy collapsed) event I would literally buy some weapons and stock up on ammo.... just because I truly believe it would turn in to citizen attacking citizen in short order over basic needs.

It was an eye opening experience to see how people acted. Very eye opening.

Kos and some other people at Dailykos are suggesting that the Dems should let the bailout proposal die until after the election. They foolishly assume that most of the Repubs will not vote for a bailout. In fact, most of the Repubs will support the bailout because the corporate funders of the Repub party strongly want it. With no bailout, the stock market and economy will quickly tank in the next few weeks, and the Repubs will correctly blame the Dems. In that situation, we could even lose NJ, CT and maybe even NY, all of which depend on Wall Street. Repub pres and Repub Congress (at least the House) would be the result.

Huh?

He supports it and will do just fine if it comes through.

The economy is people keeping body and soul together. Wall St. is organized theft by parasites.

Not to worry. The economy will adjust.

and most of all US of A is a parasitic growth on the face of the Earth, a melanoma.

I like human-kind for the most part.

But the heart of the problem is that the so called civilized part of human kind has turned against nature, and in that war I cannot but side and abide with nature. Because unlike civilized people are led to believe, nature is not just "out there" to be exploited, at least in this human both inside and outside are nature and I like living in peace with self.

Mere liking the human-kind won't help those that are fighting nature, themselves. It won't even open them chances to stop fighting and start living in peace. But then, every civilized person knows better and who am I to preach?

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and civilization is the misanthrope number 1! Look at how it molded you, for example!

I like humans so much that I will not settle for less than Garden Planet, Paradise on Earth, if not in this life then in some other... :)

Build a spaceship and leave this planet for Chansy Gardeners. :)

let me tell you how.

You want to take YOUR money out of an ATM at the other side of town... well that other bank no longer trusts YOUR bank... no deal

Your employer needs that credit to keep his short account going, such as payroll... no credit, pink slips

That is the beginning

:banghead:

People lived for THOUSANDS of YEARS without High Finance and Wall Street.

from the first use of a coin system you had a system of credit... it goes back A LONG TIME

:banghead:

Very wrong. This isn't about Wall Street. This is about everyone.

You obviously think it isn't but unless you're in one of a very few fields, this will hit you, and hit you hard. You could be part of one of these fields, and it could still hit you (it will hit your field too, but you may survive).

The economy will adjust after some (long, most likely) time, but even then it won't be fixed. I'm hoping this bailout allows for the keys to make sure this doesn't happen again. At a minimum, I'm hoping it will not allow the exact same crisis to happen again in 10 years. Not only does regulation need to come back in a big way, but it needs to be malleable as things change.

Until the cable is shut off.

Your post goes a long way toward reinforcing my belief.

I think some of them don't have kids to feed or look after, because few would wish that kind of circumstance on their families.

I've lived in and traveled in some desperately poor third world countries and these people don't realize what they are wishing for.

and it's not up to me to hope or to decide, except to accept that the collapse (of the whole civilization) is unavoidable during our lifetimes. The only real choise is to adapt or not to adapt.

Luckily, I have a friend who does a great deal with almost nothing. THe healthcare is the only thing I would worry about.

I read a comment by someone here yesterday and the person said he/she would rather dig potatoes for food, than give these wall street thieves a penny. I agree.

That is the wrong description of what is going on. This is to stave off the trickle down on a rapidly cascading scale, in the reverse.

This affects almost everyone to some degree, and that degree is not minor.

The initial proposal is crap, but it needs to be reworked and probably adopted because we are in a bad place currently.

and if so, who is the "them" of which you claim membership?

there have been people on every side politically who either support letting it collapse or don't. I am responding to those who want it to collapse.

myself included, that feel the bailout is worse than worthless and will only contribute to the magnitude of the eventual collapse that is, as of now, completely inevitable.

I actually am acquainted with a person who talks about "how cool" it would be to see the system collapse. He has his scenario laid out in which he finally gets a chance to use his "survival gear and ammo" in some dystopian, post-apocolyptic fantasy borrowed from bad science-fiction "literature".

He prints out a copy of a bad (poorly written, poorly typeset) on-line survivalist magazine and distributes it to his coterie of like-/simple-minded friends, and proudly displays the current issue of 'Guns and Ammo' magazine on his desk as though it's a golf trophy.

This co-worker cheerfully crows on and on about his preparedness and that he'll gleefully shoot anyone who looks hungry and approaches him. I've come to believe that those who wish for collapse to actually happen are more often than not among the dimmer lights of of our collective intelligence.

But then again, I should also state that in an informal poll done in the office late one Friday afternoon, this co-worker was voted "Most Likely to Bring a Gun to Work and Go Postal".

they will take the $7 mil and it will STILL collapse. since when has BUSHCO EVER been on our side? my credo has always been follow the money....

man...this is really pitting DUer against DUer! aren't they clever?

later when it will have cost us at least an extra $700 Billion.

Paulson being the main purveyer of that terrorism. This is not either/or and reducing it to that does not help anybody. If the economy collapses, we all get hurt terribly but this supposed "bailout" or rather giveaway will at most forestall what is right in front of us. How about we take that 700 billion (as if we really have such a sum, just sitting around!) and invest it in the fundamentals of America? Or the infrastructure - we can re-employ the stock traders to help rebuild the economy they plundered. It will be a new kind of chain gang, one where the perps actually pay back for their crimes.

They will be the very first to beg and whine if it happened. But they will be ignored and would be gone soon.

(Teenagers with post-apocalyptic Mad Max fantasies really shouldn't count)

I don't know how many are teenagers.

Counting those that believe the bailout is a bad idea because a collapse is inevitable isn't fair.

can you see to read? How many fingers am i holding up?

But if that is what gets you through the day.....

I really wonder what gets you thru the days.

I don't bash DU. Just irresponsible posters. If that fits you then OK.

Anyone that is not sufficiently joyful over a fat-cat bailout should be exposed for the america haters that they truly are!

One thing DU has taught me over the years is that people don't actually have to be a teenager to behave like one.

are wanting the collapse of the economy? There's an implied assumption in your comment that there is only one way to save the economy and the venerable (terrorist) Paulson has the only answer. That is implicit in what you're saying, isn't it?

So if I don't believe we should give a $700 billion dollar ransom to the terrorist, I'm now ginning for the collapse of America's economy? If that's the jump you are making, be very careful, for it is a long jump and there is a shark under there.

I am at 95% of what Obama has said so far, so I guess he is a terrorist in your book too.

wouldn't it be nice if you stopped accusing others of what you do best - beg and whine.

I just said that is what they will do in the future if they get what they want. I am not begging or whinning about anything.

If these fuckers won't take pay cuts, then there is no emergency. Period. We already have a gun at our heads.

I don't know if the bail out will work, and suspect it won't. All I am saying is my observation of just a few days of the status quo being disrupted wasn't pretty.

First, we're going to be injecting what is essentially one trillion dollars of new cash into the system. That devalues the dollar and rachets up inflation. Next, that huge debt load is going to really stretch our debt. US Treasury Bonds are the way that we service that debt, by selling bonds to other folks, like the Chinese. This only works so long as though bonds are highly, Triple A rated. However if the rest of the world decides that we've overextended our debt, those bonds will be downgraded and we won't be able to pay our debt. That is what happens in places like Chile or Argentina, that way lies monsters. It will be ugly, ugly, and yes, there will be violence.

Now then, like I said, if they decide to try and print their way out of their mess, well, think Depression era Germany. Hope you've got a wheelbarrow handy.

This so called cure is worse than the illness. Better to let Wall Street fail than the whole country.

It will either collapse or it will be modified significantly-- and either event will likely cause a great deal of pain. We've been living on credit for decades, for christ's sake. Sooner or later (1) that has to stop, and (2) the consequences come due.

it does not mean you want the economy to collapse. I think of it as wanting to rescue the real economy while we still can. Did Roosevelt cause the Great Depression, or did he fire all the weasels and work to fix it, to help people get through it? Should we have stuck with Hoover? How does bailing Paulson out help anybody but Henry Paulson and his cronies? Are there not many much more direct ways to use $700,000,000,000 to help people, if that is what you really want to do? And will giving money to real people not do much more to revive the real economy than protecting greedy weasels like Paulson?

are allready getting first taste of that, because of wide shortages caused by hurricanes and the underlying fragility of US energy system - which of course is related to peak everything.

http://www.peakoil.com and on http://www.theoildrum.com. And they were spot on.

For the un-initiated, Google and Youtube "peak oil", "overpopulation", "limits to growth", "exponential function", and "export land model". Edited to add: "EROEI".

Think this financial crisis is scary? Half way through that research is enough to scare the fucking shit out of you.

or walk!! Imagine!!

If we go through with the bailout we're going to see US Treasury Bonds downgraded. We're going to see the value of the dollar drop, with the double whammy of all that new liquidity further devaluing the dollar. That in and of itself is enough of a perfect storm to bring down our economy and our government. If the people over in Treasury decide, in all their infinite wisdom, to print ourselves out of this debt, hello hyperinflation.

Sorry, but if we don't do this bailout, Wall St. goes under. If we do do this bailout, we're all going under. It is basic economics.

But I have to wonder about the truth of the bailout preventing wall st from going under...

Given their GDP and debt, if they were the US they would have $23 trillion in debt.

While it is bad that we have to take on debt, we are not yet near the breaking point where additional debt would cause inflation.

While unfortunate, this bailout does not test the limits of the US's borrowing power.

Moreover, this, unlike war spending, is not really spending; it's the exchange of one asset for another, and looks more like temporary secured lending than spending.

They universally think that we've already taken on too much debt, which has, in part, caused the devaluation of the dollar. Any more piled on top could very well push us over the brink.

yen is not (in fact, BoJ is essentially extention of Fed, as Japan is since WW2 a country occupied by US). And too much debt burden will cause dollar to weaken and loose it's status as reserve currency.

to smooth the economy and markets out. We are a debtor nation and most of our GDP since the mid-nineties has been based on consumer spending. The way they kept the consumer spending as jobs went off shore or to Mexico was to allow folks to max their credit cards and use low interest rates to create a housing bubble.

This bailout isn't going to address the problem that folks are in over their heads and cannot afford to keep shopping anymore. There's no way to prop up housing to use as an ATM...and folks owe too much money. We are in a terrible state that doesn't compare to Japan because the Japanese still manufacture things...We don't. We just buy from China and the rest of Asia.

That's why this bailout isn't going to help the average American except to put the country in debt we can't pay off for decades.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean that electricity is something to sneeze at, but acting like being without tv is unbearable? The way we have been getting natural disasters lately, even with a bailout and all the money on Earth, electricity and gas could still be in short supply or non-existent and perhaps these uncouth individuals need a little dose of reality.

Being without TV is indeed almost unbearable for many people.

No TV leaves a huge hole in their life which they struggle to fill.

If my power goes off, which it has for a week before, I just pick one of the thousands of books in my home and start reading.

I would guess that the majority of Americans are incapable of reading for entertainment, even if they had anything in their home to read. I go into even upper class homes and there are no books or magazines at all.

It keeps the natives from getting restless...and that is why they are advertising that blasted digital converter box 24/7! Heaven forbid if people couldn't continue to get brainwashed!

BTW, I have chosen 2/17/2009 to officially quit watching the idiot box. I never got cable because it was too enticing to watch tv even more than I do now.

actually, it's rather scary to think about the meaning of teevee to the general u.s. population who lives off the results of survivor or america's next top model! and don't forget the beer and sports! believe me, i work with them!

For the record, there are more than a few positives associated with hurricanes is that people finally discover their neighbors and neighborhood and kids discover that they can make friends away from school. Families learn to talk and play board games. Yep no power is annoying but if you lived in the islands where we expect hurricanes for six months a year, you actually prepare for them.

And people don't have to eat non-perishables - not if they really prepare - a coal stove or the BBQ works wonders.

Glad you survived.

The question we have is, will this bailout stop it? All I'm reading says no, it won't. At best it will only cover up how badly the economy is doing by producing strong signals from WS for a short time. At worst it will exacerbate the underlying problem of insolvency by hastening the decline of the dollar, resulting in increased inflation. That will make things worse, not better, even if the brokers on WS are doing a happy jig.

How is this bailout any different from the previous cash injections and bailouts that have FAILED to resolve the situation, aside from the fact that it's that much bigger? That's what I and others would like to know.

The economy could collapse in spite of the Bailout, and then not only are we left to fend for ourselves, we, our children and their children will be left with a mass debt to pay off. I think people just want to make sure this is going to work. It's a huge gamble that shouldn't be taken lightly.

There was an ice storm here a couple winters ago. A lot of trees were blown down over power lines, and people in some of the small towns around here were without power for almost a week. There were long lines at the gas pumps. My sister and I were driving through one of these towns, and went park the car. She passed an SUV in the parking lot, and there was plenty of room. However, the middle-aged woman driving the SUV got really pissed off for some odd reason stuck out her tongue at my sister (who was driving) and did that weird thing with her hands at her ears. WTF? We were a bit stunned, but burst out laughing. It was weird, but yes, people do get fucking nuts when they've been without power for a couple of days.

What people do in a real, permanent crises is organize. You'll do what they did in San Francisco and in Chicago. You'll organize thru your churches, your unions, the masons, and the ladies' Tuesday afternoon book club. Within hours after the planes hit the towers, New Yorkers were on blood lines (why did it take so long? They insisted we eat lunch before giving blood.)

Where there seems no leadership, people will follow anyone with a plan for survival.

Ever heard Hold the Fort? Ballad for Americans? Bread and Roses? Do You Hear the People Sing?

I'm sorry Texans never learned to stand up for and with each other. But you will. Or you will die.

after we were hit by three hurricanes in a row and beefed up my pantry with six months of food. My next purchase will be a solar A/C. I saw the behaviour you are talking about and I am trying to be at least semi sufficient. No way I am shopping prior nor after a major storm. People are stressed and totally lose it.

at any given time I have a stack of books from Half-Priced Books to read - and YES I would read by flashlight

& had to go to bed early, I'd pull out the trusty flashlight, LOL.

Too many people have no clue what it means to rough it. No clue. And for them, it's unimaginable. But think about all the developing countries and how they live day to day. Makes a person feel like a wimp to bitch and moan, I would hope...

it would be tough for me only if food and shelter were threatened - yes - I've never had to deal with that

I heard about some weird behavior before and after Ike's reign on SE Texas. The day after the hurricane, my niece and her boyfriend caught on their digitial camera a mob of people digging through the dumpster at an HEB Pantry store that threw away meat that thawed. From what I understand, one idiot went in and picked up some meat then several idiots after him follow suit. Okay, now this was the day after the hurricane and I know these people weren't that desperate for food yet. Fights in grocery store lines and gas lines. I didn't witness any of this but I was told this was happening a lot.

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but it needs to come with a multitude of strings. It can't just be the blank check with no oversight that fool Paulson thinks he deserves for making the problems worse over the past few years.

A great deal of reform is needed at every level of the financial industry, from excessive salaries and golden parachutes for failed executives to being able to pad the balance sheet with bogus securities that had no real value but promised high return as long as nothing went wrong.

Well, something always goes wrong. The system the GOP and their fat cat contributors have created has failed once again.

The bailout has to be combined with a complete 180 degree turn in that system.

Stupid will veto, of course, but let him. Let the GOP be shown as being opposed to regulation that will prevent future disaster. Let them to be shown as only wanting to loot the taxpayers to cover up their mistakes.

The bailout can come after January 2009. I think we do have that much time. However, it will have to come at some point.

I'd rather the economy fails than capitulate.

(and I assume you're not, either), but you are correct: Bush/Paulson's scheme is economic terrorism. They're probably laughing in a smoke-filled room somewhere, wondering if the suckers will be suckered-in once again.

As I see it we hold all the chips - if they want us to save their Wall Street asses they need to sign on OUR dotted line and commit to OUR paradigm shift in the economy away from Reaganomics and back to a regulated mixed economy like we had between the 1930's and the 1970's.

Here's my take on it:

For decades now, ever since the days of Ronald Reagan we’ve heard the conservative Republican mantra repeated over and over:

Privatize, deregulate, and downsize government.

There’s never been a merger they’ve been against – banks, airlines, oil companies, credit card companies, insurance companies, energy utilities and phone companies.

We were told there was only an upside to these mergers, never mind that they increased corporate power at the expense of consumer, labor, citizen, and government power. Never mind that these mergers made it harder to find a job, harder to bargain for a fair wage, harder to bargain for a fair price and harder to enforce rules to protect people, the environment and even national security.

Now we are being told that these merged institutions are simply “too large to fail”. Where was that important piece of information when they were asking us for permission to merge?

There’s never been an industry that’s had too little regulation for them – Savings and loans, airlines, telecoms, energy companies, real estate, stock brokerages, and banks. Their claim was “just get the government out of our way and we’ll make all of you rich”.

Well somebody got rich, but it wasn’t most of us.

They’ve effectively privatized health care already and turned it into a commodity that the poor and middle class increasingly can not afford – over 45 million Americans are without health insurance today because a family of 4 has to pay $1200 a month for basic coverage a figure that is rising 10 to 20% a year and those who have it are still likely to be bankrupted by the first major medical problem they face.

When the people have cried out for affordable healthcare, they haven’t been told that they were “too large to fail” but rather that they were “too small to matter”. So what if you go bankrupt because your spouse had a heart attack or cancer? That’s a problem for the marketplace to resolve.

Now they want every American to bail out insurance giant AIG but they won’t provide those same Americans with affordable health care coverage because they’re too big to fail and we’re too small to matter.

They’ve privatized a college education too.

Beginning with the GI Bill after World War II and reaching its peak in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the government treated a higher education as a national investment in our most important asset – “We the People”.

Loans and grants like the Pell Grant made it possible for anyone who studied hard and worked hard to go to college and have a better life for themselves and their children.

Since the 1980’s however, they have increasingly decided that college is for them and their children – not you and yours. If you can’t afford $60,000 up front for your college education, they’ll loan it to you at expensive rates – if you qualify for the loan that is.

And they aren’t satisfied with privatizing college, they want to privatize primary and secondary education too through school vouchers which are not enough to pay for private school but are enough to defund public schools and bankrupt them.

They don’t believe in public schools because:

Your dreams are too small to matter –theirs aren’t.

Owning your own home used to be the American dream too.

Wages have been nearly stagnant for a decade now because our good jobs have been shipped overseas where these companies that are too big to fail can find workers who they can pay a few cents an hour, workers without representative democratic government to protect them and workers without a right to collectively bargain for their labor – rights we have taken for granted in this country for a century or more now.

Meanwhile the price of a home has climbed 10 to 20% a year in many places and to force housing prices upwards in spite of these flat wages, the banks have created risky loan packages to artificially inflate demand that were ultimately doomed to fail and then resold them to institutional investors on Wall Street to make a quick buck and avoid the inevitable consequences of these doomed loans.

Had they not been allowed to play these financial games, had an agenda of common sense regulation ruled rather than corporate greed pushed through by corporate lobbyists, housing prices would have tracked the flat wages because the law of supply and demand would have forced the issue.

Now they tell us that these Wall Street investors are “too big to fail” – Well what about the rest of us?

When it was Bourbon Street, they dragged their feet to help those trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina and it was too little and too late. Apparently the Lower Ninth Ward and Coastal Mississippi were too small to matter.

When it was Main Street with hundreds of thousands of homeowners being foreclosed upon, that “wasn’t the government’s problem – we should let the market work” we were told. We were too small to matter too.

They’ve also largely privatized our company pensions by turning them from a guaranteed payment by our employer for a lifetime of hard work into a risky 401K or IRA investment in a stock market where it is becoming increasingly clear that there are two levels of transparency available – one for the ultra-rich who are given the real story and one for the rest of us who have to fend for ourselves amongst all the marketing hype that passes for financial news on TV and in the newspapers.

We’ve seen these investments go up in smoke at places like Enron and now it appears that we are at the edge of a disaster that will make Enron and the 1980’s S&L crisis look “bush league” If you’ll pardon the pun – they’re too big to fail and they are going to take us down with them if we don’t help.

For decades they’ve been about privatization – they were all about privatizing their profits and not sharing the wealth - now that they’ve gotten into trouble they have all become socialists overnight who want us to help them socialize their debts. Why?

Because they’re too big to fail – we’re too small to matter.

They’ve tried to privatize our social security safety net, arguing that that money would be better off invested in the stock market and trying to claim that Social Security was going to be insolvent in a few decades if we did nothing.

Thank God we did exactly that when George W. Bush pushed this plan a few years ago – nothing .

Had we let them invest our Social Security money in the stock market, Social Security would be insolvent right now not in 20 years.

They’re too big to fail – but hey - your grandma’s too small to matter.

The conservative Republican economic dogma has failed spectacularly this week and now they want the rest of us – the ones who are too small to matter – to bail them out without any strings attached. They don’t want us to hold them accountable for their colossal blunder, they just want a trillion dollar ($1,000,000,000,000.00) blank check from us so that they can try the same thing again.

I say now is the time to take our country back. Now is the time to take our dreams back. Now is the time to take our future back from all those who think that “Greed is good” and that we don’t matter.

If they want our help, it must be with strings attached:

• It’s time to elect a new leadership to the White House that puts people first – put Obama in – show Republicans the door. If we keep voting for more of the same leaders we will get more of the same results.

• Demand real regulation of key national industries like banking, investments, healthcare, telecommunications, airlines, and energy.

• Break up these big monopolies that are “too big to fail” and enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust act. Prohibit any more buyouts of companies not already in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

• Restore common sense bankruptcy laws in this country – if they’re too big to fail, we should have the same kind of protection too – reverse the recent changes to bankruptcy laws that are strangling families finances.

• Put caps on credit card interest rates that are prime + 5%. These companies are making obscene profits and trapping regular people in debt for their entire lives and giving them no chance to get ahead.

• Cap executive salaries to some reasonable ratio of the lowest salary paid by that company – I would say 250 to 1 is reasonable to me. If the stock room clerk makes $20,000/yr, the CEO should make no more than $5 million. Many of those responsible for this mess are walking away with tens of millions in bonuses and golden parachutes while their employees get to file for unemployment and use up their dwindling savings and find an even lower paying job.

• Raise the minimum wage to exceed the poverty level by a significant amount. At the very least it ought to be $10/hr – which is what the 1969 minimum wage would be today were it adjusted for inflation.

• Make those who profited the most in short term capital gains pay the most to clean up the mess. The motivation to turn a quick buck on Wall Street has short circuited the real productivity in our economy and created a hollow economy where little real wealth is being created in terms of actual goods and services and substituted a phony paper economy in its place.

• Require those who sell goods and services in this country to abide by American health, safety, labor and environmental laws unless they can demonstrate that their own laws constitute a higher standard. Tax any company who moves offshore to avoid these American laws an equivalent amount plus a penalty to create a financial disincentive to doing so. They are avoiding the costs but we end up paying them with tainted pet food and vegetables and lead based toys for our children.

• Pay off people’s defaulted mortgages first and let that money “trickle up” to the lenders rather than paying off the lenders and leaving the borrowers hanging. This way Wall Street gets its money but Main Street gets it first.

• Make affordable health care and education universal basic rights of all Americans, not commodities to which only the rich can afford.

We are all in this boat together – if they’re “too big to fail” – it’s time that the rest of us start mattering again.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

:thumbsup:

Recommended. This is the right thing to do for American people. We shouldn't give in to 700 billion bailout unless they give us what you just post, everything! Thank you!

:hi: from your fingers to obama's eyes!

for listening to Mother Earth who badly needs collapse of the system that is raping Her.

Most people are animals just below the surface. Sometimes not even that far below.

It will strictly be everyone for his/herself. I would buy something to defend myself with. It doesn't have to be a gun. It could be a very large dog or pepper spray or a taser. But whatever it is, it should hurt badly enough that people will leave me alone.

I tend to believe that "Lord of the Flies" was far more accurate than we care to think.

The most common response is for people to band together to solve their own problems.

Yes occasionally you do get anarchy, but that's the exception and it's generally caused by some extraneous factor (often a screwed up response by the authorities, or underlying social tensions (ethnic conflict, etc.) which explodes with the apparent absence of authority).

So I guess whether you're looking at anarchy or cooperation depends on the community you live in and its resourcefulness.

People are animals basically. They don't even need a crisis to act like animals. I cannot believe the amount of garbage I see at the parks around here; they just throw shit everywhere. People truly are disgusting pigs. I know one thing, I would rather die in the crisis (whatever it is) than survive the aftermath.

pull together in life-threatening circumstances.

This isn't just "my opinion" or "my observation" or my gut feeling: it's the conclusion of hazards researchers in study after study. I'm unaware of any substantial body of peer reviewed hazards research that has concluded otherwise (though I can't rule out the existence of one or two contrarian papers somewhere).

How do I know? I used to work here:

http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/

I used to help publish this:

http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/o/

And I have the training and certification to be an Emergency Program Manager (though I'm disabled and do not work these days).

P.S.: the Observer is a great little newsletter. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in hazards research, even curious nonprofessionals.

Hopefully I'll have it tomorrow.

I hope you have it for all your todays and tommorrows!

PS - glad to see ya.

:eyes:

Yes, this bailout is flawed, it needs to include provisions for accountability and such things and I think it gives Paulson too much power, but the alternative is far, far worse. If the banking system freezes up we are f*cked.

:eyes:

Sounds like dinner to me!

I don't understand your post "You are based on how you guys are bashing HamdenRice constantly. n/t."

"In what way Charlie?"

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You do have VERY bad luck dealing w/ ppl.

sad.

Something needs to be done but helping the fat cats avoid black Monday for another few weeks is not the kind of thing I can stand behind. Spend the 700 billion on the infrastructure of America, get Americans working on that infrastructure, especially out of work traders.

Paulson is lying to you. He's lying to you. I know you aren't used to being lied to, but Paulson is lying to you.

I said pretty much the same thing on a thread this morning, and had three people ready to kick me round for saying anything out of line with their talking points.

This is what I had to say then: We all saw how quick things got ugly there. I don't think it would be too long before Bush etc would do a police action and call in martial law. They'd use the opportunity that the crisis would create.

And look, I'm not a gloom and doom person, and I don't have lots of money tied up in mutual funds etc but I know how interconnected the financial markets are to everything in America anymore. We don't produce that much stuff anymore, we produce debt and securities. If that system breaks down, international trade will stop. If trade stops, everything becomes localized. Do you pay for your utilities? Do you put gas in a car? Do you buy food in a grocery store? Because it all requires credit and banking to keep money flowing,ultimately, the fluidity of the financial system lubricates the engine of commerce. Stop the flow and the engine will seize up.

We all saw how if happened in Louisianna. That could be anywhere. Everywhere.

I'm not saying I like Paulson's plan, and I'm darned glad that there's some effort to improve on it. Nor am I saying I necessarily like being so tied to the grid. I live on a farm and try to do as much as I can off grid. But even if my family can live off the garden, off the chicken's eggs, goat's milk and well water, heat our house with fire wood we collected all summer, there's just not enough to make it without the off farm jobs, without the financial system and without the public utilites and oil that we all use to power our cars.

Years ago I lived in Africa. I know if I was still living there, the impact of a real financial meltdown wouldn't hit me too hard. But most Americans, and myself among them, are pretty dependent on the wheels of commerce to keep turning.

and peak oil. I saw a lot of the same behavior after hurricane Charley. People are pathetic; most have never lived without constant entertainment and few have ever even gone camping. I guess those years spent at summer camp, and a childhood without television-will pay off eventually. I find TV pretty boring and would rather read a book, but I know that few of the younger generations feel the same way. I think that the only way to break the spell of the glass teat WILL be long power outages. Then people might actually care about what's happening in the real world as opposed to what's happening on American Idol. Yes, there will be huge upheavals and violence, but the road we're already on is also leading to ruin.

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TwixVoy is concerned.

"I think that the only way to break the spell of the glass teat WILL be long power outages."

Just surf the waves, dude... :)

:hi:

Roaming the streets after Ike have a grain of truth?

:hide:

I live in Houston and have been without power now for 11 days. I have been amazed at how civil and patient the people have been.
Long lines of people waiting for gas, food, ice and water and very little reports if any of fights breaking out.
With over 2 Million people without power, most of the stores closed and most stop lights not working everyone has been very civil.
I am proud of the town I live in and the courtesy and understanding of all who waited patiently for FEMA to finally show up.

And they all have pretty much the same experience as you.......

I look for your posts because you have always presented things the way they are.

We lived through the December 14th Cat 3 hurricane --- oops, windstorm -- in the Pacific Northwest almost three years ago. Our power was out for a week. By the sixth day, some scary things were happening in tree-hugging, latte swilling Western Washington, and we were making a concerted effort to stay out of public. We were afraid of civil unrest or violence, for the same reasons you cite above. One example: Our small town was considered the hardest-hit of any community in Washington, simply because the valley we are in acted like a giant wind tunnel. We were cut off from the surrounding communities for five days, till a path could be cleared to even get anyone in here to help. The National Guard was going door-to-door to pull people out of their homes that were hypothermic, etcetera. It was awful. The mayor of our small town's reaction? They'd better plan "next time" for kids' activities. There was nothing for them to dooooooo.

Our cable modem did not come back on for almost a month afterwards due to infrastructure damage. The surrounding neighbors descended on City Hall en masse.

We learned our lesson in a big hurry. I aspire to the wisdom of the survival/frugal folk, because they're going to make it. We're ahead of most of our neighbors, believe it or not. We have a pantry. We have the rudimentary tools to at least be able to cook and keep ourselves dry, fed, somewhat warm and entertained, and the portable DVD didn't come out once during that week.

Julie

Depression. Anyone that wants that is a fool or just plain stupid. Most of us have never seen anthing even close to those times. My grandfather had a small farm and a store, eggs were 3 cents a dozen but nobody had 3 cents. My Grandfather and the other farmers would take produce clear from West Virginia to Baltimore and Pittsburgh to find someone with cash to purchase it.

We get reminded that from time to time.

Libertarians take note- the government actually does some very useful things.

No AC? No TV? No entertainment?

Your neighbors need to grow the fuck up and your media people need to help get that message across.

for the very reasons stated in the OP.

But I do want American culture to grow up and I'm not sure how it will ever happen without some struggle.

I'd prefer a more gradual shift to a collapse, though.

If Dems to prop up the sh*tty Bush credit bubble then they will be blamed for the even more spectacular fall that will occur sometime in 2009. Trillions of dollars of mortgages will be underwater or fail within the next couple years. Are you planning on inflating us out of that mess as well?

One of the more enlightening "Twilight Zone" episodes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street

"Understand the procedure now? Just stop a few of their machines, and radios, and telephones, and lawnmowers, throw them into darkness for a few hours, and then sit back and watch the pattern."

"And this pattern is always the same?"

"With few variations. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find.... and it's themselves. All we need do is sit back and watch."

"Then I take it this place, this Maple Street, is not unique."

"By no means. Their world is full of Maple Streets, and we'll go from one to the other and let them destroy themselves. One to the other. One to the other. One to the other."

the system will required more patches in the future and more problems to come.

what would I do when I have patch my tires so many times? I just replace them.

and if it does work..how long will that last? Housing still has to bottom out..that won't happen for a while yet, some predict middle of 2009 before that happens. There will continue to be foreclosures, unemployment has gone up considerably, people aren't spending money, health care/insurance is going up, heating costs are going up and food costs are increasing.

Meanwhile some states are cutting back on services to citizens due to cutback from the federal government. My state lost considerable money to help the needy heat their homes this winter...meanwhile the number who need help has gone up tremendously.

Do you really think the bailout is going to work? I have serious doubts about it and no it's not because I want the economy to collapse.

tell me last week that he would be USING his gun if need be, and that if i had something he wanted, he would take it by force, if it came to a situation like you are describing. yes, they are out there! like you, i've never owned a gun nor wanted one, but if push came to shove, i WOULD buy one. but not at this time...this is a manufactured crisis, believe that. if *'s lips are moving, he is lying, that is their MO.

I tried to imagine the situation in today's time....I forsee looters amuck,wars over oil, lawlessness, no rules, it's actually very scary to think how people today would react to a complete meltdown of our country. I do not want to see any type of depression....I want to see our country/world get together and get along and solve these problems together, but it will never happen.

Fear, crisis, and disaster are their bread and butter. Congress is going to invest your money and your future in a Ponzi scheme. Who do you think will be left holding the bag?