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How Did We Get in This Economic Mess? Is It Over Yet? Are We There Yet?

By Joseph McDaniel, Esq.

There are plenty of places to point fingers about the economy, but few folks have studied the area in great depth.

Because of modern media, most folks now have the attention span of a gnat. 

Including me.

Was I saying something?

Oh, yeah. I just stumbled upon a really smart guy who's writing a book, and who has put a lot analysis into the issues relating to this Depression.

His name is Richard Heinberg, and I like his writing style and his profound intelligence.

I also disagree with his basic conclusion that we can't fix this economy quickly and easily, which is my belief.

But even though I believe that our present economy is easy to fix, that doesn't mean it's going to get fixed. We're all relying on the collective intelligence of a bunch of guys in Congress, and if they were smart enough to listen to me, we'd have no problem.

So I expect that we're going to continue to have a biiiiiiiiiiig problem with the economy.

But if you want to read about how we got here, and the size and the shape of the economic problem, Richard Heinberg is a good place to start. He also suggests that the other shoe (commercial real estate) hasn't fallen yet, and that we may get to watch a deeper depression, or just another round of this depression.

Enjoy!

Now, since I'm just a simple back-country Arizona Bankruptcy Attorney, the chances are that I will continue to watch this depression from the perspective of a lifeguard during a Tsunami; that is, I drag somebody drowning in debt to the beach, make sure they're still breathing, and then get distracted by another scream from the direction of the ocean.

I figured this could happen; you can see the obvious resemblance to David Hasselhoff in his prime. 

But at some point I may snap, and tell everybody and his brother how we can fix this mess quick as a bunny, since it seems pretty obvious.

Or not.

Watch this space for further developments.

p.s. when the U.S. Economy was moving up, predictors said en masse that it would keep going up. Now that it's gone down, predictors tend to say that's all she wrote. Predictors of all sorts tend to predict what is in front of them, because that just makes sense to them. But the future depends on the actions that people take, and people do stuff that's hard to predict.

For instance, we may at some point say exactly what the Japanese said, which was "We hate being without energy. We don't have a lot of oil. We lost wars because we didn't have oil. So we'll build THREE TIMES as many nuclear reactors as we need to supply our country with energy, because it's safe as can be, and cheaper than any other way of producing juice. Besides, then we don't have to pay for oil, and we can keep our pretty, pretty Yen at home with us!" Those Japs are pretty smart, neh? 

Or we may say, "we like tulips, so we'll make windmills." It's waaaaaay more expensive than nuclear, but you can put a lot of people to work building GIGANTIC, SCARY LOOKING windmills. Of course, one nuke hitting us puts us out of the energy biz (windmills are above ground, and utterly vulnerable to being knocked over, hence the nuclear plants all over Japan. Because they were nuked, and they just like to be prepared!).

Or we might say, "Let's drill for our own oil offshore, and our own coal here in the United States, and use that while we're building Tulip-loving windmills and three hundred underground nuclear plants (based on ultra-safe Japanese designs), so that our balance of payments is improved, and so we can put a ton of people to work getting wealth from the ground."

Or we could do all three, right now!

Or not. Just a thought.

p.s. one thing pretty important about fixing the United States Economy: if we decide to take on gigantic projects to build our infrastructure and energy independence, do you really think it would be smart to outsource the building of prefab nuclear power plants or GIGANTIC, SCARY-LOOKING windmills to India or China? Or anyplace else? 

Full post as published by Arizona Bankruptcy Attorney Blog on January 21, 2011 (boomark / email).