One of the chants the more radical of my generation used to shout was "Your children will kill you". This was intended to be an expression of how we were going to change the world by abandoning the mindless mores and customs of the past. The only problem is, we forgot the wisdom contained in the aphorism "Be careful what you wish for - you might get it". We did get it, only we are going to be those murdered by our offspring serving in the name of greed.
According to an internal client note from Citigroup chief technical strategist Tom Fitzpatrick, the infusion of Wall Street bailout funds is going to lead to "either a resurgence of inflation; or a downward spiral into depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars" as early as 2009. Fitzpatrick doesn't see the latter option as being likely, but it could become so as the lack of confidence in the economy grows. Fitzpatrick sees the outbreak of strikes and other civil unrest erupting as people feel they are becoming "disenfranchised" from their political leadership. (with Citigroup buying Spanish highways after begging for bailout funds, this could happen sooner rather than later.)
I figure that inflation is the more likely outcome, as the Obama administration is already expressing a strategy of "pump priming" to repair the economic damage done by the maladministration of George W. Bush, but the other outcome isn't out of the picture. Poverty is growing in suburbia, adding these formerly affluent areas to the traditional lower income rural and inner-city areas. This doesn't leave much of the nation unaffected by the economic crisis. Bruce Katz, a director of the conservative Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program, observed recently, "Poverty is spreading and may be re-clustering in suburbs, where a majority of America's metropolitan poor now live."
The effects of such a development aren't especially obvious at this time, but there are portents of them arriving soon. For example, doctors are considering dropping innoculations. According to two separate surveys published in the December issue of the journal Pediatrics [see free abstracts here and here], doctors are both losing money on giving the inoculations, and are paying more for the vaccines they dispense than they are getting reimbursed by private insurance companies.
Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
I love the title, but although you've been on a streak of good articles recently, I have to say that this is a return to form as a kind of purely reactive and not very well thought-out hit piece which falls back on your old technique of blaming Bush rather than thinking things through.
Bush didn't create the military or its appeal to the working class. He hasn't sent recruiters out to brainwash kids into joining and the military is not being specially redirected against civilians. All of that is just a bunch of Alex Jones-style fearmongering.
Many of your links don't even support your claims. The article you link to to substantiate your claim that doctors are going to stop giving innoculations specifically says that only 1 in 10 doctors are even considering this, and says "Experts say there's no evidence that significant numbers of doctors are quitting the vaccination business yet because of financial concerns." So, in fact, it really doesn't support your assertion at all.
The article you link to on the ROTC is incredibly biased and one-sided. It doesn't explain at all the fact that ROTC programs which receive federal funding are one of the few physical conditioning programs which some of these schools can afford when their school districts cut funds for gym and intramural athletics. This is a failure of the education system, not some sort of conspiracy to railroad poor kids into the military. It also references only a few examples, overlooking the dominant nationwide trend for schools to do away with and deemphasize ROTC programs, not enhance or expand them as the tiny number of schools they cite have done.
But your crowning achievement in irrelevancy is your link to CitiGroup buying a Spanish Highway construction company. CitiGroup buys things. That's what they do. The bailout money wasn't given to them to NOT carry on their business of investing money. And as they see it, this Spanish company is a reasonable investment. You overlook the fact that the way the deal is structured, CitiGroup will immediately resell some of the assets and make an immediate profit. That seems like a positive way to use our bailout cash.
But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of your ranting.
Dave
2 - Brunelleschi
Realist raises a good point about turning today's youth into state stormtroopers, regardless of the real motivation or mechanism behind it-it's still a bad trend.
Overall, it's too early to predict mass unrest due to long term Wall Street panic and collapse. I don't see a reason to expect the crisis to last so long that things fall apart before they fall back together. Wall Street got what it could out of the treasury, and the US is going to keep pumping money in. Throw enough money at it, it will right itself. That bugs just about everyone, but it's a reality and the rest of the world's advanced economies are doing the same thing.
A year from now I doubt there will be panic. It's just going to be a bumpy ride.
3 - Dave Nalle
Realist raises a good point about turning today's youth into state stormtroopers, regardless of the real motivation or mechanism behind it-it's still a bad trend.
Only if you reflexively consider the military to be state stormtroopers. Experiene suggests the contrary. The military has a strong independent streak, and when put in a position of enforcing the will of a despotic state I think they're much more likely to turn against the state and act on behalf of the people.
Dave
4 - Baritone
Dave,
You say:
"All of that is just a bunch of Alex Jones-style fearmongering."
I don't agree with much of Realist's article, but it doesn't go that much further out than your already stated fears concerning Obama's coming assault on gun rights.
B
5 - bliffle
Bush is just the most recent and most witless of a long series of presidents who have taken it as their Holy Duty to suppress inflation while increasing federal spending. That old anti-government reagan was one of the biggest.
They wanted to spend more fiscal money on their friends, but they didn't want to pay the price of raising taxes, nor did they want to allow inflation to do it's job and devalue debt: rich people HATE inflation because it dilutes their money and that forces them to try to do something useful like invest or build companies, and that's too much like work.
So, wanting to spend more and hating inflation they try to control inflation with monetary policy, and it can actually work. For awhile. But then the dam bursts, like in the 70s-80s, and people get hurt.
So the idea is to push 'risk' down to the lowest levels so that the high levels don't have to face it and find solutions. Thus, you privatize profits and socialize risks, as we see.
So there's a lot of pent-up inflation in our economy which will explode sometime. this is especially dreadful for the poor souls who tried to get on the American Dream home ownership escalator by overextending themselves with bad home loans at 7 or 10 to 1 multiples of annual income (instead of a modest traditional ratio of 2.5 to 1) and soon found themselves foreclosed and homeless. Soon, when inflation hits, they will further suffer at being unable to own anything because of the devaluation of their meager income.
Bottled-up inflation will cause suicides, and eventually societal revolution.
6 - Dave Nalle
Gun rights is a comparatively small issue, and there's good evidence to support the left's hostility towards those rights.
On the other hand, what Realist brings up here is poorly supported by any evidence and really just gratuitous fearmongering.
Dave
7 - Baritone
Dave, Your reading of the tea leaves concerning gun rights is no less bogus, and consequently, no less fearmongering than Realist's.
B
8 - Dave Nalle
Baritone, read his links. I can at least point to examples in past legislation from the left and in the actions of Eric Holder to back up my concern on guns. Realists links don't even begin to support the arguments he attempts to make from them.
Dave