I haven’t written in a while because I am finding the whole thing just too depressing. The stock market is over 14,000 again, home prices are rising 10% and more per year, with buyers bidding against each other and condo builders holding lotteries, consumer confidence is soaring and pundits are crowing about recovery. We’ve been here before, remember? It was in 2007 and we were on top of the world.
It’s all different this time, we are told. The fundamentals of the stock market are different and the housing market is not a bubble this time. Right, exactly how is it different?
The only difference I can see is that fewer people are supporting this garish display of greed and excess, given that the lowest percentage of our population is employed since 1980, and more of those who are employed are working in jobs that produce nothing. The bulk of our employment today is retail, entertainment and financial services; jobs supporting and catering to a lifestyle of consumption.
Government no longer even pretends to be anything but utterly corrupt; openly displays that it is controlled by corporate and special interest money, and nobody cares enough to vote them out of office.
We are still at war or threatening war against several nations who are no threat to us, and practicing assassination as an instrument of foreign policy; killing others in the name of preventing the possibility of a smaller number of American casualties. And nobody cares enough to even hold up a sign asking for it to stop.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. We don’t care what the oligarchy does or what happens to the rest of the world, so long as we have our “bread and circuses.” Hail Caesar.
I'm totally picking up what you're putting down. I talked to my mom today (age 62) and she's so excited that my dad will retire soon because the stock market is doing better now and his 401-k has recovered. They also want to downsize to a smaller house, and they think it's a good time to sell because house prices have come back up. I wouldn't be surprised if his 401-k takes a -40% hit by the end of the summer, and the area they live in has a tourism/retirement based economy, so I wouldn't be surprised if that gets smacked, too. The "recovery" is nothing but a side effect of Fed stimulus and it will end badly. The clowns on both sides of the aisle seem are beating the war drums ...
ReplyDeleteYeah we know cynicism abounds, no more so than with you. But you need to snap out of your funk and write again. We miss you.
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