GENERAL COMMENT FROM CARDIN: We just entered Act Three of a three-act economic disaster movie It’s illuminating to consider the unfolding economic disaster in narrative terms. That is, it’s illuminating to look at it as a story, because although life isn’t stories (an insight that post-modern theory has helpfully established), you can still get your…
Category: Economy
Primed and ready to blow (Headlines from the Meltdown)
General comment from Cardin: Primed and ready to blow Beware the coming week. If you’ve kept even one eye and ear on any news outlet, you’ve seen a swelling flurry of events and stories indicating that the excrement is starting to sail toward the propeller at high speed in multiple clumps. Several clumps have of…
Peak oil rising
Lately there’s been a slew of articles, columns, and essays beating the peak oil drum. It’s easy to understand why, with the price of oil reaching new record highs every day and economic stormclouds gathering like divine judgment over America’s head. Nor are these issues unrelated; as James Howard Kunstler said a couple of weeks…
On the wisdom of welcoming doom (Headlines from the Meltdown)
General comment from Cardin The past seven days, February 24-March 1, made up a fairly extraordinary week in terms of both news and events. (And it’s always prudent to make a mental distinction between the two, since the former has become its own self-generating industry that often deviates from actual events; a very attentive rereading…
The spiritual wisdom of disaster (Headlines from the Meltdown)
GENERAL COMMENT FROM CARDIN (two parts) 1. This is real life, not a disaster movie — and that’s frightening In my February 6 “Headlines from the meltdown” post, I linked to and quoted from an article by economist and NYU professor Nouriel Roubini, the arch-pessimist of the current economic environment. The article listed what Roubini…
It’s worse than they’re telling us (Headlines from the Meltdown)
General comment from Cardin: It’s worse than they’re telling us Henry Paulson Jr., secretary of Treasury, left, with Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, during a Senate hearing Thursday. (Doug Mills/The New York Times) As the intentionally redundant saying goes, it’s deja vu all over again. Be sure to read the first two items…
What a difference a year makes (Headlines from the Meltdown)
America’s accountant-in-chief: The United States is bankrupt (streaming videos) 60 Minutes, March 2007 The Real Story, CNN, March 2007 [Cardin comments: What a difference a year makes, at least in today’s world of throwaway news and entertainment with its attention span dwindling to such a vanishingly small point that it verges on instant amnesia. When…
Week of wild cards (Headlines from the Meltdown)
Analyst says dozens of U.S. banks will fail by 2010 Ottowa Citizen (Reuters wire piece), Feb. 6 Dozens of U.S. banks will fail in the next two years as losses from soured loans mount and regulators crack down on lenders that take too much risk, especially in real estate and construction, an analyst said. ….Between…
Swirling galaxy of systemic risk (Headlines from the Meltdown)
The Rising Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown: The Twelve Steps to Financial Disaster Nouriel Roubini’s Global EconoMonitor, Feb. 5 [Cardin comments: Read this one very carefully, bearing in mind that Roubini’s grim outlook on the American economy is now being embraced by many of the very same economists who formerly dismissed him. Case in…
Detonating economic bombs (Headlines from the Meltdown)
General comment from Cardin: This ongoing scan of dire-sounding economic news and opinion pieces may have grown unworkably large. I’m contemplating creating a separate page to house these things, thus freeing up the main blog page for other items. For now, though, here are the choice items I’ve found over the past few days. *…