Big A
07-20-2007, 03:22 AM
This article I think it says everything:
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March 14, 2007
Political and Economic Predictions for 2007
I've had a couple of friends tell me lately that things I said about American politics and the economy 4-5 years ago turned out to be exactly as I'd projected. It's too bad, since they weren't very happy things. But I figured that since I was right last time, I might as well publicly go on record about what I believe the future holds for the U.S. My analysis is based on my study of history and culture and what I'm talking about are probabilities. I don't claim any of the skills of a seer.
Foreclosures in the U.S. have already hit Great Depression levels in many areas and exceeded them in some.. This is coupled with unprecedented unemployment (well over Great Depression levels) if you use the real numbers and not the fudged government "statistics." And even the corrected stats don't count the underemployed and the working poor. My prediction is that the U.S. economy will continue to spiral downwards at an increasing rate, but that corporate "profits" (which, of course, include massive layoffs and neglect of infrastructure to appear to reap short-term gains) will allow the government to sustain the illusion of a potential recovery for a while yet. I expect that the facade will begin to break down completely after the 2008 election, and will be entirely gone by 2010, at which point the U.S. will no longer be able to pretend it's not in dire straits. By 2015 it'll be a recipient of international aid, rather than a bestower.
Along with the mortgage foreclosures, the contracting job market will plunge hundreds of thousands of heavy consumer debtors into bankruptcy, and the new laws will not allow those people to make a fresh start. Instead, they will be enslaved to debts they can no longer pay, and a new version of the crop-lien system will evolve in which creditors begin to control virtually every financial aspect of a consumer's life. Student loan debt will also push the current and next generation into debt servitude, without providing jobs that allow them to work off those debts in a reasonable time frame.
The U.S. stock market will become increasingly volatile as it's buffeted by one shock after another, and at first the world markets will take a hit ever time that happens. Eventually (and sooner rather than later), it will become apparent that the value of the dollar is no longer of primary importance to the rest of the developed world, and the European market will get stronger and become more stable as the U.S. market collapses. (Asian markets will remain more volatile, but will also eventually become independent from the U.S. market) This process will be accelerated when the world oil market -- except for U.S. holdings -- moves to the Euro.
As the dollar continues to drop in value, more and more of the multinationals with large U.S. holdings will invest in Euro, since that currency is likely to hold its value in the world market. (We can see this already, as large U.S. real estate companies are now buying up blocks of European apartments to counter the tumble in the real estate market in the U.S.) The U.S. dollar will go the way of the peso and the illusion of prosperity in the consumer market will take an enormous hit because imports will no longer be "cheap."
Debt-ridden, cash poor, with a diminishing tax base, a desperate U.S. will pursue acquisitions of oil and other resources via military adventurism. At the same time, repressive measures will continue to be employed, increased and tightened at home as an increasingly destitute population becomes more restless and resistant to a government that acts consistently against majority interests. More and more behaviors will become criminalized, adding to the artifical populations of criminals created by drug laws, "terror" laws, copyright laws, and the suggested "family violence" laws (which would criminalize any parent who physically disciplined a child). If everyone is a potential criminal, that will serve as the rationalization for increased surveillance, control and emphasis on "homeland security" and "protecting the public."
The U.S. prison population will continue to swell, as will U.S. "guest worker" programs (indentured servitude), so that the corporations that remain in the U.S. will have access to an enormous slave and indentured labor force. This will not, however, work out well for corporations in the long run, since even a huge drop in the wages in the U.S. won't bring the work force down to the level of labor in the third world countries they prefer to exploit, and U.S. made products will never be competitive with those produced in Asia, even if it were possible to retool the U.S. infrastructure and rebuild the country as a kind of third-world manufacturing base. The U.S. has also squandered the bulk of its easily accessible raw materials (oil, timber, copper, etc.), so that it is more cost effective to turn to richer stocks in Africa and Asia.
Destruction of the U.S. public school system and the promotion of largely unsupervised charter schools has already produced two generations of poorly educated additions to the citizenry and the work force. The lack of foundation makes it impossible for students to rise to high levels of achievement even in good colleges and universities. The U.S. underproduces highly trained personnel in almost every field in the sciences, and it has largely given up attempting to educate persons in the humanities and the social sciences. Increasingly, those corporations remaining in the U.S. will be forced to recruit from Europe and Asia to fill technical and professional positions.
Religious fundamentalism will rise as the economy worsens, and scapegoating of those who are different will dramatically increase, and will include the passage of laws (and perhaps Constitutional amendments) to abridge the freedoms of queers, women, and aliens and nonwhite persons. Black and brown people will be increasingly under the control of the criminal justice system, feeding the needs of the corporations who use them as forced labor and the police system that uses the threat of incarceration as a way to discourage political and economic protest.
Racist and homophobic violence will increase dramatically in this period, justified by the alleged "terrorist threat" that paints everyone who is not a Republican, white, American male as a potential "enemy." Profiling will be the rule, habeus corpus will be suspended for Americans, and detention camps for American political dissidents will spring up in different parts of the country. Dissidents will be criminalized, jailed, and isolated. Media control will continue to be more and more consolidated, and access to information will become harder to get. The U.S. internet will become entirely privatized and the large providers will be the gatekeepers, baldly employing a political agenda to limit free access to content. The "news" is already close to being as seamless as it was under the Soviet republic, and this will continue to be the case.
American military adventurism will continue to be justified by the "war on terror," and the U.S. will set up missile defense stations in Poland, Czechoslovakia and other "friendly" countries. It will retool its nuclear arsenal and revive the nuclear threat, forcing other nations to beef up their nuclear programs in reaction. As U.S. real power dwindles, U.S. imperialist efforts will become more desperate, and U.S. foreign policy of the next decade will make the brinksmanship of the Nixon/Kissinger era look like a calm and friendly game of chess.
The Democrats are not going to make an iota of difference -- they don't have the power to stop the coming economic crash, which is already well under way. Nor do they have the will to walk away from the strategy of military-intervention-as-resource-grab. They don't give a damn about the poor, or about the fact that the American middle class has virtually disappeared. They don't have the guts to stand up to to corporations, to socialize utilities or medicine, or to insist on rebuilding our infrastructure. They don't want to reinstitute the civil rights that were stripped from Americans or foreign residents. They will not end the drug war, and they will not end the war on terror. They will hold power briefly and ineffectively, and they will be replaced by the cronies of the same Republicans they are attempting to oust from power. The electoral system of the U.S. is bankrupt, the Constitution is shredded, and we no longer live under a rule of law -- the Democrats have neither the ability nor the fortitude to confront that fact and to set things right.
Over the years a lot of people have called me a pessimist when it comes to predicting what will happen. I'd like to take a moment to point out that I have been on the money about everything I've said would happen, and that things are just as bad there now as I said they'd be... and they're heading for worse.
Personally, I'd suggest getting and staying the hell out of the country if at all possible. If you have anything to invest, do it outside the U.S. and stay away from the dollar like the plague.
Posted by kalital at March 14, 2007 1:51 PM
-------------------------------------------
March 14, 2007
Political and Economic Predictions for 2007
I've had a couple of friends tell me lately that things I said about American politics and the economy 4-5 years ago turned out to be exactly as I'd projected. It's too bad, since they weren't very happy things. But I figured that since I was right last time, I might as well publicly go on record about what I believe the future holds for the U.S. My analysis is based on my study of history and culture and what I'm talking about are probabilities. I don't claim any of the skills of a seer.
Foreclosures in the U.S. have already hit Great Depression levels in many areas and exceeded them in some.. This is coupled with unprecedented unemployment (well over Great Depression levels) if you use the real numbers and not the fudged government "statistics." And even the corrected stats don't count the underemployed and the working poor. My prediction is that the U.S. economy will continue to spiral downwards at an increasing rate, but that corporate "profits" (which, of course, include massive layoffs and neglect of infrastructure to appear to reap short-term gains) will allow the government to sustain the illusion of a potential recovery for a while yet. I expect that the facade will begin to break down completely after the 2008 election, and will be entirely gone by 2010, at which point the U.S. will no longer be able to pretend it's not in dire straits. By 2015 it'll be a recipient of international aid, rather than a bestower.
Along with the mortgage foreclosures, the contracting job market will plunge hundreds of thousands of heavy consumer debtors into bankruptcy, and the new laws will not allow those people to make a fresh start. Instead, they will be enslaved to debts they can no longer pay, and a new version of the crop-lien system will evolve in which creditors begin to control virtually every financial aspect of a consumer's life. Student loan debt will also push the current and next generation into debt servitude, without providing jobs that allow them to work off those debts in a reasonable time frame.
The U.S. stock market will become increasingly volatile as it's buffeted by one shock after another, and at first the world markets will take a hit ever time that happens. Eventually (and sooner rather than later), it will become apparent that the value of the dollar is no longer of primary importance to the rest of the developed world, and the European market will get stronger and become more stable as the U.S. market collapses. (Asian markets will remain more volatile, but will also eventually become independent from the U.S. market) This process will be accelerated when the world oil market -- except for U.S. holdings -- moves to the Euro.
As the dollar continues to drop in value, more and more of the multinationals with large U.S. holdings will invest in Euro, since that currency is likely to hold its value in the world market. (We can see this already, as large U.S. real estate companies are now buying up blocks of European apartments to counter the tumble in the real estate market in the U.S.) The U.S. dollar will go the way of the peso and the illusion of prosperity in the consumer market will take an enormous hit because imports will no longer be "cheap."
Debt-ridden, cash poor, with a diminishing tax base, a desperate U.S. will pursue acquisitions of oil and other resources via military adventurism. At the same time, repressive measures will continue to be employed, increased and tightened at home as an increasingly destitute population becomes more restless and resistant to a government that acts consistently against majority interests. More and more behaviors will become criminalized, adding to the artifical populations of criminals created by drug laws, "terror" laws, copyright laws, and the suggested "family violence" laws (which would criminalize any parent who physically disciplined a child). If everyone is a potential criminal, that will serve as the rationalization for increased surveillance, control and emphasis on "homeland security" and "protecting the public."
The U.S. prison population will continue to swell, as will U.S. "guest worker" programs (indentured servitude), so that the corporations that remain in the U.S. will have access to an enormous slave and indentured labor force. This will not, however, work out well for corporations in the long run, since even a huge drop in the wages in the U.S. won't bring the work force down to the level of labor in the third world countries they prefer to exploit, and U.S. made products will never be competitive with those produced in Asia, even if it were possible to retool the U.S. infrastructure and rebuild the country as a kind of third-world manufacturing base. The U.S. has also squandered the bulk of its easily accessible raw materials (oil, timber, copper, etc.), so that it is more cost effective to turn to richer stocks in Africa and Asia.
Destruction of the U.S. public school system and the promotion of largely unsupervised charter schools has already produced two generations of poorly educated additions to the citizenry and the work force. The lack of foundation makes it impossible for students to rise to high levels of achievement even in good colleges and universities. The U.S. underproduces highly trained personnel in almost every field in the sciences, and it has largely given up attempting to educate persons in the humanities and the social sciences. Increasingly, those corporations remaining in the U.S. will be forced to recruit from Europe and Asia to fill technical and professional positions.
Religious fundamentalism will rise as the economy worsens, and scapegoating of those who are different will dramatically increase, and will include the passage of laws (and perhaps Constitutional amendments) to abridge the freedoms of queers, women, and aliens and nonwhite persons. Black and brown people will be increasingly under the control of the criminal justice system, feeding the needs of the corporations who use them as forced labor and the police system that uses the threat of incarceration as a way to discourage political and economic protest.
Racist and homophobic violence will increase dramatically in this period, justified by the alleged "terrorist threat" that paints everyone who is not a Republican, white, American male as a potential "enemy." Profiling will be the rule, habeus corpus will be suspended for Americans, and detention camps for American political dissidents will spring up in different parts of the country. Dissidents will be criminalized, jailed, and isolated. Media control will continue to be more and more consolidated, and access to information will become harder to get. The U.S. internet will become entirely privatized and the large providers will be the gatekeepers, baldly employing a political agenda to limit free access to content. The "news" is already close to being as seamless as it was under the Soviet republic, and this will continue to be the case.
American military adventurism will continue to be justified by the "war on terror," and the U.S. will set up missile defense stations in Poland, Czechoslovakia and other "friendly" countries. It will retool its nuclear arsenal and revive the nuclear threat, forcing other nations to beef up their nuclear programs in reaction. As U.S. real power dwindles, U.S. imperialist efforts will become more desperate, and U.S. foreign policy of the next decade will make the brinksmanship of the Nixon/Kissinger era look like a calm and friendly game of chess.
The Democrats are not going to make an iota of difference -- they don't have the power to stop the coming economic crash, which is already well under way. Nor do they have the will to walk away from the strategy of military-intervention-as-resource-grab. They don't give a damn about the poor, or about the fact that the American middle class has virtually disappeared. They don't have the guts to stand up to to corporations, to socialize utilities or medicine, or to insist on rebuilding our infrastructure. They don't want to reinstitute the civil rights that were stripped from Americans or foreign residents. They will not end the drug war, and they will not end the war on terror. They will hold power briefly and ineffectively, and they will be replaced by the cronies of the same Republicans they are attempting to oust from power. The electoral system of the U.S. is bankrupt, the Constitution is shredded, and we no longer live under a rule of law -- the Democrats have neither the ability nor the fortitude to confront that fact and to set things right.
Over the years a lot of people have called me a pessimist when it comes to predicting what will happen. I'd like to take a moment to point out that I have been on the money about everything I've said would happen, and that things are just as bad there now as I said they'd be... and they're heading for worse.
Personally, I'd suggest getting and staying the hell out of the country if at all possible. If you have anything to invest, do it outside the U.S. and stay away from the dollar like the plague.
Posted by kalital at March 14, 2007 1:51 PM