The gods That Failed

Silverfiddle Rant!

Many of the myriad McCain paeans took a fin de siècle tone: McCain was the last of the greats, etc.  Other pundits rebutted that, reminding us how McCain and his generation of global gods wrecked the world and couldn't do anything right: Korea and Vietnam were losses, the big financial crash in Bush the Dumber's last year, the rise of militant Islam, most of the globe still mired in poverty and misery...

The Cold War was the west's singular post-WW II victory, and had it not been for the triumvirate of Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan putting the spurs to the timid, yapping UN diplomacy class, that might have never happened.

It's been ten years since the big financial crash of 2008. Joel Kotkin makes some observations in The Daily Beast...

"nine million jobs and nearly $20 trillion in household wealth were lost"

The financial collapse of 2008 is one of the elites' crowning achievement, up there with the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos. People at the bottom lost everything, while people at the top lost nothing. Government gave us all an extra kick in the balls when they looted the treasury to bail out the malefactors. It was a gratuitous and unnecessary act of shameless malfeasance.

Bush the Dumber's great failure was not making the banksters eat their losses.

Now, according to Professor Kotkin, the economy is recovered, unevenly...

"Obama’s recovery was arguably the most unequal in American history, with 95 percent of all gains through 2013 going to the top one percent."

But President Trump is bringing some good news...

"Middle America is making a major comeback... Industrial employment reversed declines that were hitting at the end of the Obama years, growing by 327,000 jobs over the past year, the best performance since 1995."

"Trump may have shifted the geography of economic growth. The share of growth now taking place in non-metropolitan area America has increased fourfold. …"

"Meanwhile the states of the Resistance, New York and California, are now experiencing increasing domestic out-migration. The rate of population growth in California is among the country’s lowest—less than half that of Texas."

More Housing Bubbles...

"Median house prices in many deep blue enclaves areas have shot past their 2008 bubble peaks. In Portland, Seattle and San Francisco, prices are up 30 percent over the decade. In Denver, prices are up more than 80 percent. They have risen 60 percent in San Jose, where the median price for houses is now a staggering $1.4 million."

What have we learned?

Governments learned nothing. They failed to punish the guilty and they continue to sponsor private gains and socialized losses for the moneyed class and global corporations.

Booming urban housing markets have learned there's a sucker born every minute.

The rich elites who control global finance learned they can perpetrate economic catastrophes, pocket the loot, and leave the rest of us to crawl out from under the rubble.

The American people learned a few lessons. Per capita household debt is down, but millions of us have also learned how to live a transient life, chasing crappy low-paying jobs while living out of our cars.