In a recent post Tamar quotes a great piece by Michael Lind on how “Europe, China, Russia, Latin America and other regions and nations are quietly taking measures whose effect if not sole purpose will be to cut America down to size” and then adds

Kos calls this article sobering. I have the exact opposite reaction. It gives me tremendous hope. It’s obvious BushCo is on a destructive rampage and will do little to nothing to further the wellbeing of the world at large. How wonderful that other countries are stepping in to fill the breech — not only that, but that they’re cutting the US down to size in the bargain. We no longer have any real balance of power in this country as we drift ever closer to tyranny. Thank god this kind of international balance of power has begun to blossom. The US does not need to be a major world power. At this point, it’s better for the world if this country is not setting the agenda.

And I might agree with her, except for the way this is going to happen isn’t going to be a simple readjustment of the world’s power. The way this is going to happen is going to be violent and awful.

One of the things I’ve wanted to do since we moved into this house is redo the floors. I hate this orange carpeting; I want hardwood floors. We have the savings, I’ve gotten the bids. But as I told Darin this week, I can’t pull the trigger. Why? Because I’m scared shitless of what’s going to happen to the economy in the next year or so. What good are new floors going to do me if we need wheelbarrows of money to take to the supermarket?

I’m obviously not the only one thinking along these lines: Stupid over at Altercation is thinking along the same lines:

Name: Stupid
Hometown: Chicago

Hey Eric, it’s Stupid to put my money where my mouth is. I’m not kidding when I say I’m afraid of a dollar collapse. It’s not just that the high deficits and unprecedented foreign control over the economy. It’s all these timebombs waiting to go off. Everyone knows about the baby boomers and Social Security/Medicare, but that’s not going to be the end of it:  Pensions have dwindled or gone bankrupt, homes have been remortgaged, and the adult children who might have helped are in hock like never before. All that “deficit as percentage of gross national product” talk isn’t reassuring. 9/11 proved that a fast-rising GNP is not a law of nature. When the Israel/Northern-Ireland type terrorism begins, it’s safe to say consumer confidence will take a hit.

So yes, I am really scared. I just don’t know what to do about it. Not politically, I mean as a selfish SOB!  For example, with my retirement savings — I called the Big Name Financial Outfit which manages my work’s 401(k) plan and apparently I wasn’t his first “apocalypse call.”  One suggestion was to shift towards European market funds. But if the dollar collapses, other economies will falter too (that’s why the world may take unilateral action to prop up the dollar. Zeesh, I never expected to read something like that, but it was in today’s papers…)  There’s the historic risk-adverse investment: gold. It’s at a pretty high price already, but who am I to argue with history?  (This company also has an investment fund that is indexed against inflation. $20 apples, anyone?)

And what about the present — what am I supposed to do with my life?  Pundits may be safe, but I don’t think there’s going to be a huge demand for quasi-patent attorneys who can handle simple pro bono family law cases. I’ve even considered taking a LPN nursing program at my community college, but there’s a waiting list!  My point is this: as much as we need to fight the good political fight, a little practical CYA is the least the left can do for itself if/when we’re proved right. Suggestions welcomed!

I grew up as the child of Depression kids—and my mother grew up in Ireland, which was really no picnic during the Depression. My Dad, who was 13 when we entered World War II, had a job as a seven- and eight-year-old at a market, bagging groceries, which allowed my grandmother access to foodstuffs that hadn’t been bought, that were going to be thrown away.

Boy howdy. I really want that kind of life for my kids.

But maybe I’m wrong? Maybe I’m overreacting? Let’s hear what Seymour Hersh (who has a longer track record of telling what’s really going on than you or I do) has to say:

Another salvation may be the economy. It’s going to go very bad, folks. You know, if you have not sold your stocks and bought property in Italy, you better do it quick.

And the third thing is Europe — Europe is not going to tolerate us much longer. The rage there is enormous. I’m talking about our old-fashioned allies. We could see something there, collective action against us. Certainly, nobody — it’s going to be an awful lot of dancing on our graves as the dollar goes bad and everybody stops buying our bonds, our credit — our — we’re spending $2 billion a day to float the debt, and one of these days, the Japanese and the Russians, everybody is going to start buying oil in Euros instead of dollars. We’re going to see enormous panic here.

But [Bush] could get through that. That will be another year, and the damage he’s going to do between then and now is enormous. We’re going to have some very bad months ahead.

The world can’t let us fall totally apart, because if we go down, everyone goes down. But it’s not exactly in their interest to keep carrying us either, as is demonstrated amply in this Newsweek International cover piece—I would ask, like Tamar, why Newsweek Domestic doesn’t have the balls to print this, but the answer is obvious: we’re so used to saying, “We’re great and everyone likes us!” that we’re not well-attuned to hearing different things. Anyone see that letter in last week’s Entertainment Weekly where one letter-writer was decidedly unhappy with EW’s choice of Jon Stewart as Entertainer of the Year?

…Who exactly was Jon Stewart entertaining this year, other than your magazine staff and buddies on the New York cocktail-party circuit? We “flyovers” find him vicious, one-sided, and borderline treasonous…

Dan Crider
dan0311@yahoo.com
Carrollton, Tex.

All week I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to send mail asking, politely, “What is your definition of treason?” Christ, if Newsweek published that story here, someone would firebomb the magazine’s headquarters. (And what’s even more ridiculous is, I don’t even think I’m joking. You can’t joke about that crap any more. Not that magazines are getting firebombed all the time. Just that it feels like it’s going to start happening any moment.)

I don’t know if there’s a way to let us down, uh, “gently.” At least, gently for them. Them being China, India, and the EU. As the Pessimist said over at the Left Coaster:

So now that these foreign central banks are tapped out of enthusiasm for the Bu$hCo Technicolor Greenback, can the private investor be far behind?

And if China floats the yuan…

Everyone points out that instead of savings accounts, Americans have their houses. Which aren’t going to mean jack when interest rates spike, because everyone’s got ARMs. (Ours turns into an ARM 10 years out; we couldn’t afford a 30-year fixed.) And when housing prices fall — they will, even here in the insane Bay Area — what about your savings then? When you can’t get the fucking money?

The only thing that gives me any hope right now is that I am notoriously bad at predicting the future. There are several books out about the growing divide between Europe and America—here is a multi-pronged review in the always-excellentNew York Review of Books—and maybe there’ll just be gradual changes, a diminuation over time of how we live and our place in the world.

But we’ve been living as though we can get something for nothing. And given the deeply insane way* the Administration has been acting, the bill is going to come due any second.

And more: Just a Bump in the Beltway has the cheery news out of Davos:

The day after the White House forecast a deficit of $427 billion this year, some of America’s most prominent economists sounded warnings of a dollar crisis.

Fred Bergsten, the director of the Institute for International Economics in Washington, told delegates at the World Economic Forum that he feared that the beginning of such a crisis could come within days or weeks if President Bush’s budget proposals did not convince financial markets that the deficit would start coming down over the next few years.

“The dollar would come down sharply, US inflation and interest rates would be pushed up sharply and the world would follow a much slower growth pattern. Trade would be a big casualty it would be poison for US trade policy,” he said.

———————————————————–

*Actually, I don’t believe their behavior is insane. I think they know exactly what they’ve been doing. They can see the handwriting on the wall with Peak Oil and adjustments to world power, and they want to get theirs. So what if theirs includes yours and everyone else’s too? They’re fucking set up for several generations. Fuck you, peasants. We’ve got our castles and we’re drawing up the drawbridges.

You know, sometimes I just want to slap someone. So far I have successfully suppressed this urge. But the time is a’comin’ I’m just not going to be able to hold back.

In today’s SF Chronicle is a story about how the grocery strike has been avoided (yay!), with another story about an idea of requiring supermarkets in the city to charge 17 cents for every plastic or paper bag.

Getting consumers to cut down on grocery bags is a noble goal, but is charging them 17 cents apiece the best way to achieve it?

Today, the San Francisco Commission on the Environment is expected to adopt a resolution urging the Board of Supervisors to pass an ordinance requiring supermarkets in the city to charge 17 cents for every plastic or paper bag “to reduce the proliferation of unnecessary bags and provide funds to mitigate the negative impacts caused by them.”

A fee of 17 cents seems like a lot considering the deposit on standard beverage bottles and cans in California is only 4 cents, and that is refundable to anyone who brings in an empty.

Under the grocery bag proposal, there would be no refunds for shoppers who return bags and thus no motivation for people to paw through trash bins plucking bags out of the waste stream.

So the big problem with the proposal is that people wouldn’t have any incentive to pick up trash. Like they do so well with that now. And maybe a fee would stop them introducing the bags into the ecosystem in the first place.

This is where the urge to slap someone comes in.

We really are the people with the greatest sense of entitlement in the world, aren’t we? These bags have never been free; the cost has been factored into the cost of doing business. But obviously the costs are going up, and rather than spread the pain around to everyone equally, they’ve decided that those who use, get to pay for them.

And this is a problem because people don’t get every damn cent back. I hate our society sometimes.

When I was in Germany almost 20 years ago (and I still haven’t made it back, and now it’s a different country, sob), bags cost 10pf. at the grocery. Everyone there (except the stupid American, who kept forgetting to reuse her damn bags) brought their own bags. It was No. Big. Deal. No discount for having brought the bags, merely a penalty if you didn’t. Whoops, your bad, so you pay. I can’t remember if this is Europe-wide—I think Denmark did the same thing. And in the article it mentions

six nations—Australia, Bangladesh, Italy, South Africa, Taiwan and Ireland—levy taxes or have enacted bans on plastic shopping bags. It says that in Ireland, plastic bag usage dropped 90 percent in the first year after that nation imposed a fee of 15 cents per bag.

Almost two decades after the first time I saw it in action, paying for bags gets proposed here—wonder what 10pf. is in today’s money?—and people go freakin’ nuts. And this is in the recycle-everything Bay Area. (At the bottom of the article there’s a note that says there’s an upcoming bill to charge consumers statewide 15 cents per bag, which would be really good.)

What’s especially stupid is, those quoted in the article talk about this as though you need to pay the extra money. In fact, it’s completely possible to avoid the fee. All you have to do is bring your own bag. It’s a habit you have to learn, but once you learn it: bing, you’re done. Buying a canvas bag at Lunardi’s or Cosentino’s—mind you, haven’t priced them at Target; they’re probably even cheaper there—costs $10. Ten dollars. We live in a world of $3 lattes, so ten bucks==not that much. If you save 17 cents every time you use one of these bags, I figure it’s going to take you about 60 trips to earn back the cost of that bag.

Think you’re going to go to the store 60 times during the life of these bags? Remember, they’re canvas. They’re sewn. They’re damn near indestructible. You’re going to fall apart before it does. And if you double-bag frequently, you earn the bag back in 35 trips.

I love using my canvas bags. It’s so much better than piling plastic bags up to the ceiling in my pantry.I’ve taken armloads of the high-quality paper Lunardi’s bags with the handles out to the recycling box myself—they’re great bags, but I can’t reuse them for anything. I reuse the grocery bags in small trash cans around the house. In fact, once a month I don’t take my canvas bags shopping with me, so I can restock on plastic bags.

Should the market pay for my trash can liners? Hmmm. Wait a second, let me think about that…

Augh. Okay, I can’t slap anyone. I’m gonna go eat some chocolate and shake my head a lot.

Eric Alterman speaks for me:

What is one to say about today?To the horror of its well-wishers across the world, the United States—once the “last, best hope of mankind”—is re-inaugurating the worst president in its history; one who has exploited an attack, the success of which its own incompetence helped enable, in order to execute an extremist agenda that is killing thousands, costing trillions and leaving all of us far more insecure than when it began. Before November 2, we could argue it was all a mistake; the guy ran as a “compassionate conservative,” misrepresented his record, Nader screwed everything up, and we actually voted for Gore anyway. It took the Republicans on the Supreme Court—two of whom were appointed by the guy’s dad—to stick the country with this regime filled with ideological fanatics and corrupt incompetents. Now, what are we to say? Fifty-nine million members of our nation do not mind that we were deliberately misled into a war that has drained our blood and treasure to create nothing but hatred and chaos; and that the very people who were at fault have been rewarded and promoted, encouraged to look for new targets to spread their hubristic malevolence. It defies all logic and truthfully, my ability to explain or even fully understand it. One thing is for certain: Based on an virtually unanimous unwillingness to consider its past mistakes and learn from them, things are going to get far, far worse before they get better. Thousands more will die. (Twenty six yesterday.) Trillions more will be squandered. Millions more will grow to hate and revile the name of the United States of America and prepare to attack us in ways for which our government is resolutely unwilling to prepare. Avoidable catastrophe awaits this nation and its victims during the next four years as we will undoubtedly reap what we have sown.

One thing’s for certain, none of this would have been possible without the enthusiastic cooperation—if not cheerleading—of the nation’s mainstream media. Thomas Friedman, considered a liberal opponent of the Bush administration who nevertheless advocated for its mendacious arguments vis-a-vis Iraq and then explicitly excused its willingness to lie because, after all, Hussein was a vicious dictator, cannot help but recognize the damage the administration has done to the nation’s good name the world over. Still, he once again chooses to empower its worst instincts vis-a-vis yet another abominable adventure in Iran by finding what? A single Oxford student in Paris. And pronouncing on the basis of this intrepid bit of investigative reporting that Iran is a “Red state” by extension, would welcome an American invasion of the type outlined by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker. Four years from now we will be assessing the fallout from that catastrophe undoubtedly in dead Americans, Iranians and additional hatred—and terrorists—bred the world over. God Bless America. We are going to need all the help we can get.