End days
Monday, October 13th, 2008 By Mike Maurer
She Who Must Be Obeyed and I celebrated our ninth anniversary with a cabin at Burr Oak State Park. We’re fans of Southeast Ohio and usually find a cabin in October, enjoying the leaves and the woods.
Fridays seem to be the bad days for the market and Thursday was bad enough. It led me to thinking about what you do in the serious sort of crash — ATMs don’t work, banks not open, grocery stores in a panic. Where would you want to be and what would you want to have? You need to be safe and to have food, water and power, fuel and transportation, but for how long? Would a cabin be good enough? And what’s around you? For those of us who grew up with nuclear war and civil defense, this isn’t a stretch. It’s a return to our youth. Besides, survivalism is even chic these days. Glenn Reynolds blogs on it regularly, and good for him.
That’s the truly extreme version. It isn’t so bad for you, if you own land and have prepared a bit, so long as the property system itself doesn’t collapse. Of course, property systems collapse with disturbing frequency, as often or more because the government goes socialist than because the government collapses altogether. God help you either way.
It’s an existential thing, as in, Am I going to continue to exist? Really, the last time we approached something like this was Sept. 11, and that was much worse. Sept. 11 might have been 50 percent to 80 percent of the real deal, it might have been only 30 percent of it; the market turmoil now is probably 20 percent real deal, just serious enough to be a reminder for those willing to be reminded. For the most part, this is more buying opportunity (or if you’re the Manhattan Media pushing a candidate, a selling opportunity).
But, we will face the real deal sooner than we would like. Government entitlements is a herd of elephants bearing down on us, while what we’re going through now is just chasing the cat around the living room. When will we be trampled underneath? Two years? 10 years? Certainly not 40 years, as a recent Congressional Budget Office calculated as the time when the U.S. economy would quit growing because of the free-lunch, “compassionate” path we are on now. We don’t have nearly that much time. Right now we’re protected by a bit of irrationality, because most of the world believes that the U.S. government and U.S. economy are strong and can recover. This is based on history, not fact. U.S economy has a problem? No problem! Just issue another trillion dollars of debt. But legitimate seeds of doubt are growing and when those seeds sprout, watch out. The crash will come then, and these will seem like the days of our youth.
