Financial Methamphetamine Addiction and Withdrawal
Bob Waldrop - a pretty good metaphor for the financial problems that the bankers and politicians are attempting to convince us threaten a disaster. I tried crystal meth a few times in 1979, long before the modern methamphetamine craze. The stuff I did was a brown powder that stung when snorted into the nose. It's an incredible high, clean, cogent, lucid. But coming down is a bad crash. And I never did more than a few lines at a time. A few incidents was enough to convince me that the stuff was bad news, and I went back to less dangerous drugs, like cocaine and LSD. Well, the cheap credit that the Federal Reserve has been printing is just like that. Feels great. Bad crash when you come down. Worse crash the longer you try to stay up. Time to go cold turkey and get off the stuff, like I did with meth, and cocaine, and LSD, and hemp, and alcohol. [lrtdiscuss]
This high will probably work through the election, maybe even through the next couple of years.
But make no mistake about what will happen: This will not be the last multi-hundred billion dollar bail-out of the imperial economy. There will be more and more financial meth until -- as with the homeless crack smoker, crouched under a bridge toking on an empty pipe desperately trying to get one last rush -- there is no place else for us to go.
We are in big financial trouble.
Letting the system get rid of its bad debts through bankruptcy, foreclosure, and write-offs would be painful -- but the alternative, most likely an inflationary depression, would be much worse, and last much longer.
...
Financial methamphetamine withdrawal will not be pretty, easy, or fun. We might as well accept that right now and act as best we can to protect ourselves.
In other words. . . Slash household spending, curb your consumption, save money, live well below your means, move your money to a credit union, and get ready for a Category 5 financial hurricane.