Doom, Gloom, and Then Some

I found the financial analysis blogs that I'm reading in the usual way - following someone's comment from another blog, browsing the internet, who knows where. But I'm discovering something new everyday as I follow the economic news. The only problem with deeper analysis for me is that I am completely math-challenged. As part of a generation of Indians who were given the choice of "Arts (Humanities)", "Science" or "Commerce", I was boxed in after Class X (tenth grade for my American readers) into the most math-deficient club of them all - "Arts". So, dear readers, I am unable to verify the accuracy or even the authenticity of any graphs, linear equations or statistics that the following websites/blogs display (but I beseech you to explain any errors if you find them, I would really, really appreciate it). And, washing my hands even further off any responsibility, these blogs should not be considered investment advice, OK? And remember K.'s warning that some of these blogs should be taken with a pinch of salt. They are, after all, opinion.

The most straightforwardly pessimistic analysis of recent financial and economic trends is by James Kunstler. I cannot type the name of his blog here for fear that my mother might be reading my blog, but you can go over to Kunstler's blog and see for yourself what he has to say. In today's post, he has a particularly bleak assessment of the American economy. Whatever happens, he says, whatever action the United States government takes or does not take, this country is going down, down, down.

Is it? I don't know. But he lays out his position for pessimism very clearly. What is Kunstler's solution? It is a return to traditional American values of hard work, thrift and enterprise. These values, he says, have been corrupted by thirty years of financial corruption as banks threw easy credit at undeserving borrowers who in turn led lives of extravagant indulgence that neither their grandparents and parents had never known. Here is what Kunstler writes:

"Painful as it is, Americans had better get a new "Dream" and fast. It better be a dream basedon the way the universe actually works, which is to say an operating procedure run on earnest effort and truthfulness rather than merely trying to get something for nothing andwishing on stars."