One of my favorite observers, and caustic commentators, on our current society is James Kunstler and his website Clusterfuck Nation. Here are his thoughts on the present and future…
Dec 31, 2007
Forecast 2008
For the tiny fraction of people who actually pay attention to real events — those, for instance, who know the difference between Narnia and Kandahar — the final hours of 2007 leading into the fog-shrouded abyss of 2008 must induce great racking shudders of nausea. Has there ever been a society so exquisitely rigged for implosion? The whole listing, creaking, reeking edifice stands like one of those obsolete Las Vegas pleasure palaces awaiting a mere pulse of electrons to ignite a thousand explosive charges perfectly placed to blow away the structural supports.
The inertia holding everything together that I described in last year’s forecast finally melted away at mid-summer and events began spooling out of control. Specifically, the massive tonnage of debt-backed securities circulating through the financial sector stood revealed for the mostly worthless bales of paper they truly are, and the investment community was left suspended in mid-air, grinning unconvincingly, like Wile E. Coyote thirteen yards beyond the edge of the mesa, with a sputtering grenade in each hand and an anvil tied to his ankles.
Read the full article
In a little noticed news item, it was reported on November 11th (“Levitt and Sons files Chapter 11″) that Levitt and Sons, a builder in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 on November 9th.
According to the company’s SEC filing, the company had defaulted on more than $300 million in loans from Wachovia Bank and KeyBank.
Levitt and Sons (www.levittandsons.com) isn’t just any builder, of course. It happens to be the inventor of post-World War II suburbia, when it created Levittown on Long Island in 1949. It went on to build more than 200,000 homes in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and Europe.
In a related (kind of) item, the Levittown Tribune on November 30 reported “Suozzi Announces Public-Private Partnership to Turn Levittown ‘Green’” that Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi recently announced a public-private partnership to make Levittown, America’s first suburb, America’s first green suburb by reducing Levittown’s carbon footprint by 20 percent in 2008.
The partnership with local and national companies would “make it easy and affordable to install new boilers, make energy-efficient home renovations, utilize bio-fuels, solar heating and to purchase innovative, inexpensive products to quickly reduce home fuel consumption.” Suozzo said that he hoped his program “would provide a template for suburbs throughout America”.
