THE HAMMER OF THOR… AND LIZ AND BARBRA AND GEORGE AND KAMALA
Lately, I’ve returned to my roots in investigative journalism. I’m trying to get to the bottom to a recurrent episode of collective madness where every four years a marauding posse of celebrities, media figures, and supreme court justices go rampaging through the political landscape w...
Eugene Linden
THE U.S. CONSUMER IS STILL DROWNING IN DEBT:
Job prospects are dire. Households can’t pay existing debt, much less get credit.
IT WILL GET WORSE:
Alt- A/Option Arm resets are just hitting. Commercial Real Estate defaults loom.
Before consumer spending can pick up, several trillion in debt has to be re-negotiated or discounted. Until then we will have Zombie consumers and Zombie banks.
NEEDFUL THINGS:
1) Debt relief – preferably by process, but debt repudiation through easing or inflation will reduce debts if no one does anything else.
2) Restart credit as best we cant – Borrowing is now at half pre-recession levels, but lending will not return to credit bubble level. The securitization process (the “shadow banking system”) that accounted for close to half of bubble-era lending is dead and very unlikely to get back to previous levels.
3) A much bigger stimulus -- get people back to work so they qualify for credit.
4) C2Someone to buy the things Americans can produce -- until we identify a credible engine of growth, talk of recovery is wishful thinking.
INSTEAD, WE HAVE:
1) Massive programs to benefit the bondholders of zombie banks.
2) A PPiP that will not restart lending, but=2 0will be gamed by banks and investors. It may also suck dry the FDIC, which was established to protect depositors.
3) Cosmetic, backward-looking initiatives that kick the can down the road.
IN SUM:
Some of the indebted are a lost cause, but mortgage modification should be a top priority: write down principal, convert ARMS to fixed, and give lenders “price appreciation rights,” or some other option. Revolving debt needs to be addressed too – through payment plans, principal reductions, etc. Or do something else, but let’s do something on the scale of the problem, and soon.
The American Meteorological Society names Fire and Flood its book of the year for 2023, awarding it the Louis J Batton Author's Award.
"Eugene Linden wrote his first story on climate change, for Time magazine, in 1988; it was just the beginning of his investigative work, exploring all ramifications of this impending disaster. Fire and Flood represents his definitive case for the prosecution as to how and why we have arrived at our current dire pass, closing with his argument that the same forces that have confused the public’s mind and slowed the policy response are poised to pivot with astonishing speed, as long-term risks have become present-day realities and the cliff’s edge is now within view.
Starting with the 1980s, Linden tells the story, decade by decade, by looking at four clocks that move at different speeds: the reality of climate change itself; the scientific consensus about it, which always lags reality; public opinion and political will, which lag farther still; and, arguably, most importantly, business and finance. Reality marches on at its own pace, but the public will and even the science are downstream from the money, and Fire and Flood shows how devilishly effective monied climate-change deniers have been at slowing and even reversing the progress of our collective awakening. When a threat means certain but future disaster, but addressing it means losing present-tense profit, capitalism's response has been sadly predictable.
Now, however, the seasons of fire and flood have crossed the threshold into plain view. Linden focuses on the insurance industry as one loud canary in the coal mine: fire and flood zones in Florida and California, among other regions, are now seeing what many call climate redlining. The whole system is teetering on the brink, and the odds of another housing collapse, for starters, are much higher than most people understand. There is a path back from the cliff, but we must pick up the pace. Fire and Flood shows us why, and how." From Catalog Copy
