http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-davis-crashclub-20110726,0,448545.story
Hurtling toward economic chaos
The economies of the U.S. , Europe and China are on the edge of disaster
By Mike Davis
LA Times Op-Ed: July 26, 2011
When my old gang and I were 14 or 15 years old, many centuries ago, we yearned for immortality in the fiery wreck of a '40 Ford or '57 Chevy. Our J. K. Rowling was Henry Gregor Felsen, the ex- Marine who wrote the 1950s bestselling masterpieces "Hot Rod," "Street Rod" and "Crash Club."
His books — highly praised by the National Safety Council — were deterrents to unsafe driving, meant to scare my generation straight with huge dollops of teenage gore. In fact, he was our asphalt Homer, praising doomed teenage heroes and inviting us to emulate their legend.
One of his books ends with an apocalyptic collision at a crossroads in a small
It's hard not to think of the great Felsen, who died in 1995, while browsing the newspaper these days. There, after all, are the "tea party" Republicans, accelerator punched to the floor, grinning like demons as they approach Deadman's Curve. (John Boehner and David Brooks, in the back seat, are of course screaming in fear.)
The Felsen analogy seems even stronger when you leave local turf for the global view of things. From the air, where those
Let me reprise the obvious but seldom discussed. Even if debt-limit doomsday is averted, President Obama has already hocked the farm and sold the kids. With breathtaking contempt for the liberal wing of his own party, he has offered to put the sacrosanct remnant of the New Deal safety net on the auction block to appease a hypothetical "center" and win reelection at any price. (Dick Nixon, old socialist, where are you now that we need you?)
As a result, like the Phoenicians in the Bible, we'll sacrifice our children (and their schoolteachers) to Moloch, now called Deficit. The bloodbath in the public sector, together with an abrupt shut-off of unemployment benefits, would negatively multiply through the demand side of the economy until joblessness is in the teens and Lady Gaga is singing "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"
Lest we forget, we also live in a globalized economy in which Americans are consumers of the last resort and the dollar is still the haven for the planet's hoarded surplus value. The new recession that the Republicans are engineering with such impunity will instantly put into doubt all three pillars of McWorld, each already shakier than generally imagined: American consumption, European stability and Chinese growth.
Across the Atlantic, the European Union is demonstrating that it is exclusively a union of big banks and mega-creditors, grimly determined to make the Greeks sell off the Parthenon and the Irish emigrate to Australia. One doesn't have to be a Keynesian to know that, should this happen, the winds will only blow colder thereafter.
Unfortunately for the Chinese, and possibly the world, that country's planned consumer boom is quickly morphing into a dangerous real estate bubble.
Despite the reassuring image of omniscient
In effect, a shadow banking system has arisen with big banks moving loans off their balance sheets into phony trust companies and thus evading official caps on total lending. Moody's Investors Service reported this month that the Chinese banking system was concealing $500 billion in problematic loans, mainly for municipal vanity projects. Another rating service warned that nonperforming loans could constitute as much as 30% of bank portfolios.
Real estate speculation, meanwhile, is vacuuming up domestic savings as urban families, faced with soaring home values, rush to invest in property before they are priced out of the market. (Sound familiar?) According to Business Week, residential housing investment now accounts for 9% of the gross domestic product, up from only 3.4% in 2003.
So, will
If
As the three great economic blocs accelerate toward synchronized deep recession, I find that I'm no longer as thrilled as I was at 14 by the prospect of a classic Felsen ending — all tangled metal and young bodies.
Mike Davis teaches in the creative writing program at UC Riverside. He is the author of "Planet of Slums," among many other works. He's currently writing a book about employment, global warming and urban reconstruction. This is adapted from a piece at Tomdispatch.com.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
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