As If Nothing Matters
The world gave the appearance of doing nothing and going nowhere
over the past month - apart from the sensational liaison of Kim
Kardashian and Kanye West, which, some believe, augurs a dazzling
speed-up of the much prayed-for economic recovery, return to full
employment, $2.50 gasoline by summer, and the selection of Jesus Christ
as VP running mate by Mitt Romney - but, in fact, so much trouble is
roiling under the surface all over the world that it makes you feel
seasick on dry land.
It is true that the European
financial fiasco is a story of such fantastic mystifying complexity
that the public can't possibly be expected to follow each twist of the
plotline. But the fact is that nothing was fixed for Greece or after
Greece and the hazard of evermore profound wreckage is assured. The
only question is how many months before the appearance of normality in
financial matters yields to fighting in the streets of supposedly
civilized countries.
Spain, it was revealed this week, has turned to a form of finance that could only have been designed by M.C. Escher.
The plan for stabilizing Spain's hemorrhaging insolvency position
works as follows: Spain's big banks borrow billions from the European
Central Bank (ECB); the Spanish banks then turn around and lend the
Spanish government the money to fund a bailout operation for the
Spanish banks; the Spanish banks then use the bailout money to buy
Spanish sovereign bonds, that is, lend money to the government. The
world received news of this dangerous idiocy with a yawn. You'd at
least expect a few Germans to choke on a bratwurst here and there.
The idea that shenanigans like this can continue must amuse the
historians looking on. But three weeks into April so far nothing has
penetrated the stupendous wall of illusion that separates money matters
from reality like the one-way mirror in the interrogation chamber of a
police precinct where every last officer of the law is on the take.
The lesson in the first quarter of 2012 is that when anything goes,
nothing matters. Jon Corzine, chief of the fraudster operation MF
Global is still at large how many months after his firm pulled an
abracadabra disappearing act on $1.2 billion of segregated customer
accounts, many belonging to farmers and ranchers engaged in the normal
options trade in commodities prices necessary to their business? Nobody
has been fired at the Chicago Mercantile exchange or the Commodities
Futures Trading Commission for this, either. No newsman has asked
President Obama about any of these things, or how come Jon Corzine is
still listed by the re-election campaign as a continuing major
contributor. The New York Times, for one, is much more focused
on major bullshit propaganda operations, such as its recent giant
spread on how America will soon be an energy independent oil exporting
nation.
No one in the American media is paying attention
to the unfolding tragedy of Japan - and by this I refer not only to the
unfinished Fukushima saga, but the parallel story of Japan closing down
virtually its entire nuclear power industry necessitating gigantic
additional imports of oil and gas to generate electric power - all of
which points to the likelihood that Japan will become the first
advanced industrial nation to bid sayonara to modernity and return to a
neo-medieval socio-economic model of daily life.
The
Middle West and North Africa still smolder away like giant root fires.
Nothing has been settled politically and the prospects are excellent
that Islamic maniacs will shortly be in charge of Egypt and Libya, not
to mention Syria, or even America's trillion-dollar battleground of
Afghanistan where, after ten years of persistent struggle, we can't
control either the terrain or the behavior of the people who dwell on
it. Meanwhile, half of Sudan's oil production was blown up over the
weekend. And King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is not getting any younger
at 88. Saudi spare oil capacity won't matter so much when the kingdom
is up in flames.
What I wonder is how long the American
public will remain in its Kardashian trance. At this torpid moment no
one believes that any theoretical political cohort in this land -
tea-partiers, swindled youth, professional lefties (or what's left of
them), or the fugitive thinking centrists (wherever they are) - might
bestir themselves to bust up a nominating convention or march on one of
many debauched institutions in the nation's capital, from the SEC to
the wax museum formally known as the Department of Justice. I think
differently, though. I think this grim interval of crisis consolidation
is drawing to a close and, like the buds swelling on every tree in New
England, events will soon burst into astounding efflorescence.
