Final Performance
The dinosaurs are on short rations. But even the little mammals are finding it hard to get enough food. This is the landscape of 2013 and while nobody knows yet how it will turn out the prospects are not encouraging.
First let’s examine the condition of the giant saurians. Real Clear Markets tracks Europe’s continued economic decline. The days when it expected to conquer the world from Brussels are over. “One has to hope that the markets are right in betting that Mrs. Merkel will be able to hold Europe together in 2013. However, policymakers in the United States would be ill-advised to base their policies on the assumption that all is going to be well in Europe next year. Since all the signs are pointing to a deepening economic recession and a further deterioration in Europe’s political environment that could lead to another intensification of the Euro crisis.”
In other words Europe may survive, but don’t bet on it. Nor on the flashy and glitzy world of the media which is already writing its own obituary. Everything is failing, according to Matt Haughey. Not only are the papers going bust, so are the blogs, Twitter and Facebook. “The disruptors are getting disrupted” he exults.
What I’m noticing now is the feeling that the disruptors are beginning to be disrupted themselves. Many of the companies labeled Web 2.0 in the mid-2000s are either no longer with us (Friendster, Bloglines, etc.) or were long ago sold off and subsumed into larger companies. The rise of blogs in the early 2000s seems to be following an opposite trajectory in the early 2010s. Social media/software is taking over not just blogging, but search, and events, and existing location-based startups. Even the giants of the social space aren’t showing signs of blockbuster success beyond their registered user numbers (Facebook is struggling with revenue and its stock price, Twitter is slapping ads on everything and hoping for the best).
The wolf is at the door of every media undertaking. Paywalls will be erected everywhere say pundits, to keep the lupine interlopers out of doors. But some enterprises have already been given up for dead. Martin Lagevald says the dead tree press is as good as pushing up daisies: “the business model for seven-day printed newspapers in most markets is toast”.
If it’s any consolation, so is the daily news. Heidi Moore says “newsrooms will be less about the day’s news — much of which has already been taken out of our hands by the 24-hour, minute-by-minute news cycle — and become more like a war room, or a science lab, where teams of researchers think about how to contextualize, present, illustrate, and spread key information, whether it happened that day or not.”
There may in fact be no more reporters as we know them. People calling themselves journalists will be aggregating video and reports from social media. The New York Times is now creating products where information comes entirely from the readers. “Although it was curated and edited by us, the content came from readers and it was a really striking and pretty incredible piece of journalism. I would expect to see a whole lot more of that.”
Journalism is becoming an appendage to an entire industry based on tapping into the stream of consciousness of the person in the street. News has been redefined away from what Presidents and business leaders say to what what the crowded masses are thinking to-day.
They include Geofeedia, Spundge, Twitter Search, Instagram* and RSS feeds, for example, to find out what people are talking about when a story breaks, and “potentially tap into users who are on the scene”.
News will come from mobile devices, get processed by ‘journalists’ and then turned around and redelivered the same way. There may still be role, some say, for quality controllers. The ‘social news agency’ Storyful does nothing but verify “stories, images and videos for news outlets.”
Another trend of 2012, particularly around Hurricane Sandy, has been that the journalist’s role has moved to sometimes stopping the spread of information. “It is very counter-intuitive for journalists as we don’t like to kill a story, we like to spread a story, but this year we have seen a lot more journalists, people like Storyful, like Craig Silverman in the US, the efforts of The Atlantic during Hurricane Sandy, dedicated to debunking, calling bullshit on the hoaxes, making sure that they stop the picture of the five foot shark in a flooded garden in New Jersey”. “We are starting to see verification processes scale,” Little added. “Simple tools from Google Maps all the way to TinEye, which helps detect false imagery, are becoming more and more a staple of the journalist’s tool box.
But as the news cycle quickens it will converge to real time and verification will rely more on the online reputation of the source, or the collective collateral of unknown sources, than any fact checkers. It’s getting to the point where people who want a career in journalism are best served by majoring in information technology. The day of the pure wordsmith is dead.
Maybe that’s because there are no more press releases to rewrite. Oh they still exist, but they mean less and less. Right now the big worry is how anyone is going to get paid. They’re agreed ads don’t work. Nor do pay walls. And as for selling papers at newsstands, forget it.
Still everyone’s cheerful. But it is a forced kind of gaiety, the sort that assumes that things will work out simply because they have to.
About the best that media prophets can come up with is that they’ll operate like Reddit, whose Gold Membership lets you pay not to receive ads and to “belong”. Belong to what group is not specified. But in the future what were formerly called newspapers will charge you for the privilege of being in the company of social friends. When Reddit was running out of funds, the solution, it announced, “was its for-pay Gold program.” What do you get from it? Nobody can say, but its it’s better than anything else the NYT can think of right now.
There are a few perks like receiving exclusive access to new features before public release, surfacing content from up to 100 Subreddits, access to a super secretive members-only lounge whose existence is neither confirmed nor denied by Reddit, and a few other goodies.
It is clearly an attempt to create a kind of private currency or barter system. But it is redeemable only in the world of Reddit. Taken to the limit that kind of world will fragment a formerly homogenous public into private clubs each with their own memberships, rules facts and chits. Sort of like a gentleman’s club in 19th century Pall Mall without the gentlemen.
The “gentlemen” are having it rough. They no longer make the news. They can only detect it by putting their finger on the pulse of social media. Yet the little mammals aren’t that much better fed. And there is precious little pulse. Someone stole Christmas. With the gloom thick in the air Jordan Weismann at the Atlantic argues that it must be the Republicans who ran off with the Holiday Cheer.
Reuters reports that, according to early data, the U.S. may have just experienced its weakest holiday shopping season since the woeful days of 2008, when the country was still dealing with, you know, a financial crisis and a recession. Holiday-related spending from late October through Christmas inched up 0.7 percent this year, down from last year’s 2 percent growth, according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse. Other sales trackers found similarly meager results. ….
Santa, Rudolph, Dancer, and Prancer also appear to have collided head on with the fiscal cliff. Americans are watching the negotiations in Washington carefully, and after months of shrugging them off, recent surveys show the impasse in Congress appears to finally be taking a psychological toll on country, making everyone feel a bit nervous about opening their wallets.
So just raise Obama’s credit card limit and happy days will be here again. But that’s too facile an answer. I’m not sure even Weismann believes it. Maybe there are just too many virtual things — like printed money, Reddit Gold Membrships, diplomas in gender studies, Obamaphone giveaways — chasing fewer and fewer tangible objects. We’re in the last stages of a bubble and you almost hear it start to pop. There is not enough real stuff left in the landscape to redeem the all the appetites that have been whetted over the years.
The year 2013 may be the one in which the public — monitored via Twitter — either decides it ain’t working or to enrol in Obama’s Federal Gold Membership. The one that gets you a front row seat to his special inner sanctum of 150,000 people.
If that doesn’t sell well then … maybe the new year won’t be one in which the world actually prospers, but it may be one in which it finally decides it needs a Plan B. There are some solutions that fail not for lack of trying but because they would never work.
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
Tip Jar or Subscribe or Unsubscribe
“newsrooms will be less about the day’s news — much of which has already been taken out of our hands by the 24-hour, minute-by-minute news cycle — and become more like a war room, or a science lab, where teams of researchers think about how to contextualize, present, illustrate, and spread key information, whether it happened that day or not.”
Uhhhh…hasn’t it already been thus since at least the time of Cronkite and the Vietnam War? Longer if you count back to Duranty or the good old days of late 19th century Yellow Journalism (which isn’t looking so yellow compared to today’s “news”).
…and Reddit is a hive of scum and villainy which could be useful if it wasn’t so infested with loudmouthed leftists.
Real reporting in the MSM has been long dead. Hell, it was barely there to begin with. They only exist to sit back, collect press releases and talking points, then regurgitate them in a way framed to support the Narrative.
““newsrooms will be less about the day’s news … and become more like a war room, or a science lab, where teams of researchers think about how to contextualize, present, illustrate, and spread key information, whether it happened that day or not.”“
This is what magazines like Times and Newsweek did before they decided that their charter was to influence voters to support leftist policies. Every “news” outlet that I can remember took a turn hard left as their numbers faltered. Maybe they were on the best strategy for staying profitable but I can’t imagine that one would have tried to tell the truth rather than a tabloid of half-baked lies. I think they doubled down on mendacity while thinking they were cool and cool they were, problem is, teenagers and twenty somethings don’t subsribe to magazines. They alienated their base. I cancelled my subscriptions so long ago I can’t remember but I was pissed at their “screw you” mister middle class attitude. Same with the local newspapers in San Diego that were inherited by a gay pedophile.
The future is probably in custom news aggregation that one adjusts the filters and sources to create trusted data pipelines that can be applied to ones’ personal interests, business activities, or political affiliations. A Drudge Report that you control yourself. Until then I get my news filtered from Wretchard.
By all accounts the electorate voted for free cheese and a depression. They’ll get one, then the other.
Chicxulub (0bombus) has already hit the economy…
We’re reduced to vulture cronyism.
The Stash Man
The Wan strides the skies
On a carpet of fiat paper
Checking off those who’ve been humbled
And those who’ve been iced
As any coyote would howl
It’s looking down that is the peril
Lest reality intrude
=======
What is the Wan’s ‘end-carcass’ plan?
=======
The big trend underpinning 2013 is the rise in American sweet oil production. That’s an even bigger game changer than crude oil production, per se.
To elaborate: Alaskan oil is not light, sweet oil. It was the previous ‘elephant’ of North America.
Today’s boom is in fracked crude — all of which, by definition, is light — and sweet. (Tight sands / shale is still too tight to let heavy, sour crude flow — even with fracking.)
That’s a drastic reversal of trend. By far the bulk of recent discoveries/ production expansion has occurred with heavy, sour crude.
[ California, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, KSA, Kuwait, Alaska,... typically started out as light, sweet plays which morphed into heavy, sour producers. KSA is now maxxed out in Arabian light crude. Her only pumping reserve is in the heavy stuff.]
And, it’s not just America. Canadian tar sands are pre-processed such that they’re sold as sweet and light at the point of delivery. (The Keystone Pipeline would’ve changed that.)
And now we’re getting reports that Kenya has struck oil… as has Afghanistan. The Kenyan strikes are into Permian strata, IIRC; making it appear to be an extension of the zone that runs from the Caspian Sea to KSA — and now down to Kenya.
Which implies that Somalia has off shore oil — right along with Yemen.
Good grief.
Has a Situational Enabler and Recycled Conceptualization Distributor yet to sell our host on the many benefits of relocating the Belmont Club to Second Life? It would not surprise me in the least to discover that our budget is now balanced in Linden Dollars.
Agriculture, Mining and Manufacturing create wealth, Banking and Finance service wealth.
Nations whose economies are rising are heavily invested in wealth creation sector. Nations whose economies are collapsing are heavily invested in wealth servicing. This has held true since the first Nation states organized themselves.
Its not brain surgery, we don’t need a degree to understand basic principles of economy. If the USA would get off its high horse and support Mining and Manufacturing we would see the economy leap ahead.
Instead we accept the Lie Bankers know whats good for the country.
all of the failing institutions/companies are leftist run, and everything leftists touch turns to s***. unfailingly. the cycle seems to go:
affluence => leftism => collapse => affluence
yeh, debunking themselves is the ideal role for “journalists”. The ones capable of the effort, that is. The rest can aggregate what people with brains say about things. (if they are capable of that)
With any luck, they will disappear altogether. The world has enough liars without the professionally trained ones.
”I cancelled my subscriptions so long ago I can’t remember … ”
I can tell you exactly when I cancelled my subscription to Time, which I discovered in about 61 or 62 and dearly loved to read. It covered a variety of areas and I felt reading it really made me more informed and, yes, sophisticated (I was about 20 at the time).
Then came the movie Red Dawn in 1984–by which time I was becoming unhappy with the magazine–and the resulting movie review, which called the film ”fascist”. Mind you, this was about American teens fighting against a Communist invasion via Cuba. Anti-Communist equaled ”fascist” in this guy’s book.
I wrote an angry letter but it was the reply that ran me off. A brief, snotty and condescending note implying that if I didn’t like the review I must be a little bit fascist myself (after all, I lived in Texas).
So … goodbye Time and I haven’t missed you a bit. Some several years back, same to The Economist.
Once webcams cover every inch of land, then people might get a clue. For now social news is as bad as regular news (although there is a lot of Space Truth being told).
I never saw Blue Dawn, but if people knew what Cuba was (and is) then I think they’d want their money back, whatever tickets cost in those days.
Well, they still have some influence. After Newton happened and the gun control push began, Walmart sold out of fire arms in 5 states.
6. cjm
Or:
poverty => capitalism => leftism => collapse => capitalism => leftism => collapse
In prior times newspapers and news magazines were unabashed mouthpieces of a political organization. Everyone knew where they stood, and their readers agreed with them or they didn’t read it. People who don’t agree with Fox News don’t watch it, and people who don’t agree with Rachel Maddow don’t watch her. Newspapers were not named the Whosis Democrat and the Whatsis Republican for nothing. In this transitional period most of the MSM has already achieved this prior status, and is the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party and the liberal point of view. Apart from talk radio we have not yet seen the rise of an alternate and competitive MSM, but we will.
Ed Murrow smoked his cigarettes
While Cronkite smoked his pipe
We thought that what they said was truth
But truth was over ripe
“teams of researchers think about how to contextualize, present, illustrate, and spread key information, whether it happened that day or not”
I thought that was the DNC’s job.
I think as more of the so-called “news people” scuffle after the diminishing supply of dollars flowing their way, you might see a real decline in quality. If that is even possible. How low can they go? Will David Gregory’s wardrobe get tackier as he hosts “Meet the Press”?
People used to comfort themselves with the old bromide that “Things will get worse before they get better”, but nowadays, I think things will just get worse.
There is no incentive or energy for things to get better. Or maybe I am just getting old and grumpy. This could, after all, be the New Normal. Everything just gets worse and that’s what we expect.
Obama, now more than ever. The answer to the riddle of our times. It’s kind of like George Kennedy showing up in the church at the end of Cool Hand Luke. The answer to Luke’s prayer, sort of.
With the gloom thick in the air Jordan Weismann at the Atlantic argues that it must be the Republicans who ran off with the Holiday Cheer.
Wretchard, a week ago I left this comment:
So Jordan proves me right for Christmas!
As for big media, I came to the conclusion that their stock must be owned by organizations not looking for a good dividend but rather a political pay off (ie Public employee pension funds and Left leaning Foundations). They let the properties be used by activists which destroyed the brand since many people stopped trusting the information.
The major media did “fact checking” during the campaign and it was a joke — and a rather putrid one at that. Since that’s an early indication of how they do “verification” I’ll prefer rumors spread by strangers — at least I don’t know they lie pathologically.
3. blert
The big trend underpinning 2013 is the rise in American sweet oil production.
………..
There’s another one. It looks like the in-sourcing boom has reversed the tide to manufacturing outsourcing beyond the USA’s shores. http://bit.ly/U0WHF5
#5. alex: “Agriculture, Mining and Manufacturing create wealth, Banking and Finance service wealth.”
If Mining includes oil and gas drilling then I agree. I prefer the term “utillization of all available natural resources.” I include in that category: logging, fishing, hydro-electric dams, irrigation projects, as well as mining of useful ores/coal, and oil/gas drilling.
Banking and financial services service wealth, but so do many other businesses: restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, drugstores, department stores, etc., etc. The service industries provide many, many jobs and an efficient way to circulate the wealth produced by the basic wealth creating activities – ag, natural resources, and manufacturing.
As you say, it ain’t brain surgery. I just returned from visiting New Zealand. A modern, reasonably well off country that produces the lion’s share of its wealth from agriculture. They have very little in the way of natural resources, energy reserves, or manufacturing. Australia is a more dynnamic country than New Zealand right now because it has large reserves of natural resources (iron ore, coal, and natural gas) and a very productive agricultural sector.
Just unleashing our oil/natural gas drilling, freeing farmers from environmental obstacles, and reducing the environmmental barriers to building new manufacturing plants would goose our economy very nicely.
I think the media’s big ploy in turning hard left and working so diligently to ensure Obama’s election and further his political ends is the hope that when they finally fail they’ll be bailed out and propped up at taxpayer expense as being “too big” or “too important” to fail. This administration has not been shy about providing ample remuneration to its supporters so far, look at all the exemptions to Obamacare that have been handed out, or note that the company selected for the lucrative “Obamaphone” contracts is owned by an active Dem campaign bundler.
I think that this administration’s real game is to make crony capitalism the only way to play. Pass regulations that will bankrupt anybody forced to actually adhere to them, then offer exemptions to anybody who plays their brand of politics. That’s really what Obamacare, cap and tax, frank-dodd, etc is all about, offering very lucrative exemptions to corporations for services to the party. Fascism at its best.
This observation has not escaped the old media who expect that if they carry enough Democrat water (or whatever other liquid) they’ll be rewarded in kind and saved from their impending obsolescence. I can already hear all the pious appeals to the importance and sanctity of the “fourth estate” that would accompany a request for bailout money from the likes of MSNBC.
If the Republicans have any brain at all they’ll throw everything they’ve got at preventing these propaganda organs from being propped up. I know that historically they’ve earned the name “the stupid party” but some of them are starting to wake up to the fact that the media is the enemy, more dangerous than the Democrats they enable. They may have overplayed their hand in being so blatant about their bias during the last 2 presidential elections, I can only hope that as they succumb to the whirlwind of market forces the Republicans in congress do whatever they have to to ensure they find no shelter.
Remember, Fox is a part of this… They’re the lowercase “g” in Google.
18. TPM
media is the enemy, more dangerous than the Democrats they enable.
………….
The thing is the USA is going to “succeed”. There are a lot of great trend reversals going on. By how much? Not much but enough.
The heart of the economic/statist argument in the last election was whether you solve the fiscal crises with more taxes and lower spending or more growth and lower spending. The fiscal cliff was what was really decided in the last election. The US is going to get lower growth, more taxes and lower spending–because that’s what the fiscal cliff mandates.
Obama is not actually negotiating with the pubbies because– failure of negotiations produces a result with which he’s pretty comfortable .
Judging by the behavior of the stock market–the markets are pretty comfortable with the fiscal cliff too.
TPM:
“I think that this administration’s real game is to make crony capitalism the only way to play. Pass regulations that will bankrupt anybody forced to actually adhere to them, then offer exemptions to anybody who plays their brand of politics”
Bingo
It’s damn near impossible to get a loan for a new venture.
And if that doesn’t crush you, the new regs will. It’s exactly like Pay to Play in the Deep Blue Ciites writ large.
“If the Republicans have any brain at all they’ll throw everything they’ve got at preventing these propaganda organs from being propped up.”
Huge If. The Pubs under Boehner and McConnell think if they can play the straight man/stooge (playing the befuddled, inept, corrupt opposition) making the Dems Crony Act look good, they personally will be rewarded.
Far too many are in it only for themselves, not for the good of the Country. So far, among this Congress, there are damn few who are willing to stand up and fight to save our Republic. We will see if they dump the King Crony Collaborator, Boehner. If not , we are surely toast.
The handwriting is on the wall. This Debt Ceiling Leverage gambit may be our last shot to avert the Fall.
TPM…
From the very first…
“To carry water for ^*&^*(&)*” ALWAYS meant that kind of ‘water.’
It’s a reference to being a ‘chamberlain’; which, in English custom was a functionary in the Royal household AND a Royal representative as the centuries passed and the usage of the term permuted.
Though skipped over in Wiki, monarchs didn’t have to wipe their own rears. That task was relegated to only die hard confidants.
So much so, that the ‘position’ morphed from ‘sensitive duties’ to representing the Crown much more generally.
It’s more than significant that the first Lord Chamberlain was but an adolescent — son of a very trusted peer — which gives one some idea of the ‘unmanly duties’ required at the start.
Even today, the Lord Chamberlain holds ceremonial duties only consistent with one who, historically, had to bathe and clothe the monarch. (Serving the water on coronation day — dressing the monarch for same, etc.)
We still use terms like: it’s a stinky job… he had to carry the boss’s water… etc.
For centuries there has always been the need for the dirty messages to be delivered by any other party but the principal.
In police states this leads to Beria dishing out the bad news for Stalin, Himmler for Hitler, etc. That way when the boss man shows up he can hand out nothing but accolades and good news.
Barry, then, has his Holder. In the time honored manner, the Wan shows up only for the party.
I hold no brief for the newspapers. Twain said that if you did not read the paper you were uninformed, but if you did you were misinformed. But if news aggregators rely on “citizen reporters” they are vulnerable to “astroturfing” and sock puppets. The better organized and better funded groups will be able to manufacture the news.
The thing is the USA is going to “succeed”. There are a lot of great trend reversals going on.
………..
Of course, those successes have nothing to do with the dems. At best the trend reversals will happen despite the dems best efforts to throttle them.
If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.
– William T. Sherman
Sometimes something is said which is an eternal and indesputable truth.
Unsk:
I don’t think that the Republican leaders recognize the political briar patch dead ahead.
============
I must especially scold Conservatives: for political, tactical reasons one must adopt a flexible defense.
As Adolf showed generations ago, a “Stand-fast! Not-one-step-back!” defense can’t hold back a political ‘Blob.’
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051418/
=============
Instead, the Republicans must parry the Spendists/ Stashists with a flexible defense — and get themselves thrown into the Briar Patch.
Which is what opting for the $ 1,000,000 per annum income tax — sur-tax must do.
1) Do entirely to Stashist policy, it’s statistically impossible for a non-crony capitalist to earn $ 1,000,000 per annum any more.
This is no place to write a book… but all incomes at that level are being fueled by Stashist Government. This is true even when the monies are earned at a second, third and fourth remove.
2) High marginal rates for this crowd are unique in that they close the loop on their government benefits.
It’s essential to make crony capitalism far less remunerative on the margin. FDR pulled this off by re-calculating all war contracts — pulling back statutorily defined ‘excess profits.’ While this is an (politically) admirable tack; at present, an income tax — sur-tax is at least a partial step forward.
3) It forces the Wan to argue for taxes upon Small Business America, Inc. — Filing as a Sub-chapter S Corporation.
(IRS form 1120S — available by pdf download for you foreigners.
It’s a cross between corporation classic — the Fortune 500 — and Ma and Pa’s sole proprietorship.
Taxation flows off of the 1120S directly onto the form 1040 — personal income taxes.
Sub-chapter S Corporations pay no tax at the corporate level.)
============
As economic policy it’s madness. That’s its virtue.
It’s far, far better for the Titanic to hit the iceberg dead straight on at cruising speed — than attempt any swerve.
It’s the swerve that sunk the ship, BTW. It was designed to take a complete ‘header’ and still float. Even a torpedo hit would’ve left her floating. However, ripping a gash right down the side — across five bulkheads — did her in — as well known.
===============
And that’s the Hell of it.
If Smith had rammed to a full stop:
No-one would’ve been in doubt for 45 minutes that they “had a problem.”
The radio room would’ve called for help before routine had nearby ships leaving the air.
Smith would’ve been impeached by facts before he could take everyone with him — in his paralysis. (He ‘sat’ on the information for over 30 minutes — in shock.)
============
We’re not going to get rid of el Presidenté for Life until he hits his iceberg.
ALL other events have him accreting power — Marius style.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YtP46drL-g
^^^^^^^^^^While tediously slow to the chase… The above is where 0bombus’ self selection is taking us.
One must ponder the multi-player dynamic that was Republican Rome — and how a ‘perpetual war threat’ caused the polity to morph out of all recognition.
While the proximate solution seemed imperative, it vectored the path of history awry.
=========
We have our Mule. Will anyone take him by the horns?
Co-inky-dink that we have this over at Breitbart today?
Wretchard says: There may in fact be no more reporters as we know them. People calling themselves journalists will be aggregating video and reports from social media.
The NYT recently posted a curious multimedia account of an avalanche that occurred last February in the Cascades and took the lives of three “extreme skiers” who went skiing on a backcountry slope outside the local resort’s official boundaries on a day of high avalanche alerts. Called “Snow Fall,” the piece can be read/watched/listened to here: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek
It’s a mishmash of text, interactive graphics, video interviews with the survivors, video clips of the downhill run taken by the survivors, and photos. News it ain’t; the piece supposedly took 11 NYT staff members six months to produce and was posted nine months after the accident. The obvious question is why the Times poured so much money and staff time into this production when the paper’s revenues are in freefall.
Some telling comments over at Althouse: “So – 11 people, 6 months – and they produce this technically slick story about: some well off young people looking for kicks by betting their life against nature and losing. I guess that’s interesting. Well, not really. But maybe those 11 people didn’t have the skills to dig into Benghazi for 6 months, or look at the way 0% interest is affecting people and businesses, or something else like that.”
“It’s like a writing workshop, over there at the Times. My two cents:
What they really need to do is get their heads out of their asses and stop being such precious snowflakes who’ve painted themselves into an ideological corner.
I don’t want to read your paper if every story is so didactic, like a kindergarten lesson on why I should like gays, hate Wall Street, live in eco-boxes ….
Seriously, it’s time to clean house.
Work the beat, question politics and follow the money. Cover Wall Street, the courts, the genuine injustice in your city and give me the box scores.
If that means playing some cat videos and adapting, so be it.”
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2012/12/this-is-what-several-hundred-person.html
The dinosaurs are on short rations. But even the little mammals are finding it hard to get enough food. This is the landscape of 2013 and while nobody knows yet how it will turn out the prospects are not encouraging.
I just don’t know, I plain don’t know, I suspect the worst, and yet …
The parking lot at the after-Christmas sale at Target is mobbed, and with new cars, in a middle-class area. It doesn’t look like anyone is starving, of course why should they with a trillion a year in deficit, a trillion a year in Bernanke bucks – but where is the sign of doom, where is this cliff we’ve been hearing about, is it really that close and significant and all these people oblivious?
The press is scum, but as the quotes above point out this is not news, what we had is a short golden age somewhere in the 50s and 60s when the press briefly flirted with something like objectivity, but it was an anomaly.
The population doesn’t know, and hardly cares. They revel in being low-information voters, even in the age of the Internet with information everywhere. Is it a fool’s paradise? I just had dinner with a crowd, and the simple-minded stuff I heard was pure MSM including from some people I would expect to know better, neo-retro-isolationism about Iraq and Dubya featuring prominently, you can fill in the details. There are no handles to grasp on that, the bifurcation is complete, there is no putting the two halves of Captain Kirk back together in this one. The revisionism sliding right back into discussion of Vietnam, and I didn’t even have the heart of bringing up WWII, nobody in this crowd was going to grok it, being such ancient history anyway.
How do you serve news to the likes of that? Clearly nobody is. Yesterday is in full flux, tomorrow is already determined, so today is just a bother, news is a ten cent off coupon on some laundry soap, just wave your phone at the register.
Plus, we’ve got fracking coming down the pike, although the western greens, funded by the Saudi royalists, are foursquare against it. It could buy the broken-down system another decade easily and so I assume it will, and don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
imho the bigger story is how the Chines have believed in US thorium reactors more than the US has believed in the technology. According to this video put out by the Thorium Alliance — The NRC and the DoE are hostile to Thorium. (they are captives of the light water reactor crowd) So much so that they have even gone to the Czechs and Indians and told them to stop developing thorium reactors. Meanwhile the Chinese have just run a salt loop with neutronic stand ins. That means they’re getting closer to developing their own working reactor. When the do they plan to fence in thorium reactor development with their IP. The article also mentions that cheap energy provided by thorium modular reactors would make coal based oil as well as oil shale and tar sand oil cheap to produce.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyqYP6f66Mw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtEw2FdVe_0
As posted before, Japan is imploding because the Fukushima tsunami has convinced Japan to shut down her atomic electric power supply.
It’s been replaced by a fantastic surge in OPEC imports of heavy oil — as Japan falls back upon her peaking power oil fired plants — which are now running as base load generators.
(BTW, Japan’s system-wide reserve has vanished, too.)
Crudely estimated, Japan needs an incremental 400,000 bbl/day for electric power.
=============
Mr. Bass must see that the ONLY way forward for Japan, Inc. is to lift retirement ages.
However, the universal solution is universally unpopular.
So, it should be expected later, when the bond tsunami hits.
============
A variation on this folly should hit Europe, too.
Like the insanity of WWII and the reign of ill tempered despots, New Wave economic folly has gone global.
It’s had an impact on the global market. (Iran)
I’m with Josh at #29 in my very reserved view of all this doom-mongering.
I agree that there are perilous signs everywhere, and they will likely bite us in the ass bigtime at some point, but when? And how severely?
The “signs” we “see” should portend various collapses, but not necessarily. I note that N. Korea and Zimbabwe are still going concerns, afte a fashion, and the “failing state” of Mexico is still extant years afte that dire Pentagon assessment. Why then, would the U.S. “collapse” if those entities haven’t?
Oh, and the MSM is NOT dying, bad balance sheet reports or not. They showed their strength in this last election, didn’t they?
The economy is in the doldrums, but showing signs of revival on a number of fronts. These signs may just be the eye of a coming storm, because of the regulatory tsunami waiting to spring on us, but we’ll see. The giant deficits and enormous national debt should have produced serious inflation, but have yet to do so. I’ve said before that many/most people will adjust to a “new normal” that the economy has become, much as Europe had to its economic environment of the last 2-3 decades. It’s a new world requiring new paradigms.
Don
One goes broke s l o w l y.
And then,
All at once.
Just ask the Duck of Death or Baby Assad.
The Soviet Union went the exact same way….
S L O W L Y … then all at once.
Ditto: France, circa 1789.
@ 1 “…and Reddit is a hive of scum and villainy which could be useful if it wasn’t so infested with loudmouthed leftists.” Couldn’t agree more and Twitter is full of fools who troll nobler souls while suspending your account instantly if you take them to task for it. Once certain scum or villains have sent out 10,000 tweets they can even make threats to kill Mitt Romney and not have their accounts taken down (while of course, a few did get visits from the Secret Service weeks later). Meanwhile Facebook is taking down pro-gun accounts and certain Twitter two-legged drones are calling for the FBI and other federal agencies to censor ‘Truther’ accounts and expose the ‘Russian funding’ behind them (@ReginaldQuill, for one). As I’ve told fellow BCers and what has become a kind of refrain, there are many two legged drones on the so-called fake Right who will cheer when Diane Feinstein and BigSis come for your guns and arrest you as a terrorist for not turning yours in during the buyback program. They will welcome it because they worship Power and the god of this World behind that dark power. All their pretensions about stopping Assad or Putin are just preening like the Pharisees’.
Charles…
Both America and the USSR came to the mutual conclusion that Thorium breeder reactors represented an insane risk of universal atomic bomb technology breakout.
Independently, and mutually, they discovered that even the prospect/ research of low-tech breeders was too perilous a path to take.
But, in any event, neither could solve the ‘hot atom’ erosion problem, as discussed before.
It’s something that comes up only when you have an operating system — and discover it the hard way.
Each player gets to find it out on their own — as the previous attemptees don’t share their failures.
It’s a common tick.
the msm didn’t show their strength this last election, the gop showed that they are dead as a national party. hard for some to accept but that’s the way it is.
35. blert
But, in any event, neither could solve the ‘hot atom’ erosion problem, as discussed before.
”””””
Yeah, I know you’ve said this before. I absolutely believe that the Russians encountered this problem.
However, Americans investigating the matter have said that the US had an operating Liquid Floride Thorium Reactor running for four years from 1965-69.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment
The reactor was abandoned because it was not dual use and it was not operating in a district advantageous to Nixon. (He wanted nuclear work to be done in southern california to get some extra votes.)