A Global Meltdown
| Thu Feb. 26, 2009 11:26 AM PST
I wrote a little post yesterday rounding up some of the bad economic news from around the world (exports plummeting in Japan, Italy rescuing its banks, Eastern Europe turning into a basket case, Russian GDP down 8%, etc. etc.), but then my browser crashed and I didn't feel like reconstructing it after I was back up and running. But the bottom line was simple: there's a world of economic pain out there, and economic pain frequently turns into political and national security pain too.Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the White House is worried about the same thing, and has asked the CIA to begin preparing a daily report on the global economic crisis:
The CIA's role in producing the report underscores the level of anxiety within the administration over how rapidly the economic downturn is spreading, as well as its potential to hobble foreign governments and trigger instability overseas.
The report, called the Economic Intelligence Brief, was launched at the request of the White House and delivered for the first time Wednesday.
[CIA Director Leon] Panetta said the document would survey major economic developments internationally and focus on how plunging markets and credit pressures are driving the decisions in nations including Russia and China.
The report covers "economic, political, leadership developments" in other countries as well as "the implications of those developments in terms of the U.S. economy," Panetta said.
We're not going to see pitchforks and torches in the United States, but we might in a few other countries before this is all over. This is a smart move by Obama.
UPDATE: Along these lines, Cernig directs our attention to the recent armed mutiny among the 42,000 members of the Bangladesh Border Guards over lack of pay. Global warming is implicated too.
Michael Klare has a much more detailed piece on this general subject over at Salon:
If you want to be grimly impressed, hang a world map on your wall and start inserting red pins where violent episodes have already occurred. Athens (Greece), Longnan (China), Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Riga (Latvia), Santa Cruz (Bolivia), Sofia (Bulgaria), Vilnius (Lithuania) and Vladivostok (Russia) would be a start. Many other cities from Reykjavik, Paris, Rome and Zaragoza to Moscow and Dublin have witnessed huge protests over rising unemployment and falling wages that remained orderly thanks in part to the presence of vast numbers of riot police. If you inserted orange pins at these locations — none as yet in the United States — your map would already look aflame with activity.
Obama's new briefing is going to be a busy one.
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Comments
political instability
Submitted by Greg in FL on Thu Feb. 26, 2009 11:56 AM PST.
There's a long rant on this at Salon just now:
here
(note my first attempt at a hyperlink in the new MJ format; if it fails, go to
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/02/26/klare/)
Don't be too sure about that
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Feb. 26, 2009 11:57 AM PST.
Don't be too sure about that second line to the end, Kevin.
Race to disaster
Submitted by nahummer on Thu Feb. 26, 2009 11:59 AM PST.
I couldn't agree more with the assessment that the current crisis is going to bring about some profound changes to the world, economically and politically. One doesn't have to be an economics professor or financial guru to figure out that many of the world's economies are headed towards ruin, and most of them are trying to borrow their way out of the mess, the same thing that got them into trouble to start with. Where is all the money going to come from?
In Case You Missed It
Maybe you need to get out more
Submitted by SteveHigh on Thu Feb. 26, 2009 12:06 PM PST.
If there's no direct action in the U.S., it will be because Obama, like FDR, knows how to let some steam out of the kettle.
From Bakersfield to Hunters Point, whenever you get out of gentrified cities and well-bred suburbs, you can find some seriously pissed off people of every ethnic background. If they ever started hating the propertied classes instead of each other, they could pose a danger (and probably a healthy one) to civic ease.
Say what you will about the Isla Vista bank burning and the Watts Riots, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. BoA's comparatively progressive community relations program, for example, dates back to that very moment.
Change doesn't really happen until we get off the Internet and into the streets. I prefer non-violence, but either way, the status quo doesn't move much until somebody gets up in its face.
There was a reason for
Submitted by Horatio Parker (not verified) on Thu Feb. 26, 2009 12:20 PM PST.
There was a reason for Bretton Woods.
And there's still time for pitchfork mobs here.
Hmm, my neighborhood isn't
Submitted by godoggo (not verified) on Thu Feb. 26, 2009 12:43 PM PST.
Hmm, my neighborhood isn't exactly gentrified, and I go to E. L.A. pretty often, and it seems to me that people have, if anything, been a little nicer than usual. Not to say that SteveHigh's comments don't sound reasonable, they do, but I'm curious what they're based on.
Steve High
Submitted by SteveHigh on Thu Feb. 26, 2009 1:04 PM PST.
I don't think greater friendliness and compassion toward others in the same boat is not at all a contradiction. When East L.A. and like-minded lefties make friends--when the brains are behind the muscle and the muscle behind the brains--it's a potentially explosive mixture. The march on Washington, for example, came about when the theories of Bayard Rustin teamed up with 100,000 pairs of feet.
My own observations are based mostly on personal memories of the 1960s and early '70s and ancestral memories from the SF and LA labor struggles 1900-1940.
And I do hang out with angry rednecks, some, I'll admit to it.
so the Obama administration
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Feb. 26, 2009 1:40 PM PST.
so the Obama administration is looking to take away my assault rifle just when I might need it
We're not going to see pitchforks and torches in the US?!
Submitted by tpx on Thu Feb. 26, 2009 2:28 PM PST.
For the past couple of years the native segments of the economy who have not experienced wage increases the past thirty years, minimum and median wage earners, have been poking their pitchforks into the backsides of immigrants and wanting to use their torches to set fire to a race war. As the nation's economic troubles worsen and the immigrants are no longer available to scapegoat, the same native segments of the economy who have not participated in the nation's past economic growth will turn their desperation and fury on other obvious targets. The comments in local newspapers, if they permit them, communicate there is an underlying rage in America today. Continued economic decline may release it.
Continued economic decline
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Feb. 26, 2009 9:07 PM PST.
Golly, something more important than Arab raghead fanatics
Submitted by sdean7855 on Fri Feb. 27, 2009 6:07 AM PST.
So, having blown off trillions chasing the chimera of terrorism and put the American traveling public through billions of person-hours of TSA checkpoint idiocy, we finally have a real threat: the loss of your jobs, your house, your retirement...indeed just about everything but taking you out behind the barn and shooting you. Oh, and your kids, too. Brought to you my the flaming idiots who have been chasing the fairy tales of terrorism and spreading death and misery throughout the Middle East.
Now back to our regular MSM programming and the horror Britney Spears' latest breakdown.......
a nation of McVeigh's
Submitted by tpx on Fri Feb. 27, 2009 8:47 AM PST.
The returning veterans from Iraq will return home to declining living standards with little opportunities for decent jobs in the near term. Their training, belief in violence, stress from serving and the stresses of economic deprivation may influence them to resort to public violence. Many have already resorted to domestic violence.
For those who haven't
Submitted by P Smith (not verified) on Fri Feb. 27, 2009 12:36 PM PST.
For those who haven't noticed yet, all the places that the CIA are talking about are targets of what Naomi Klein calls the "Shock Doctrine", where economic wreckage and political instability provide an opening for the clowns (who caused the economic mess) to further their influence.
Also of note is how rural and agricultural regions are unlikely to be affected at all by the "global meltdown" except where they are dependent on exports or have corrupt landowners.
external editor
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun Mar. 1, 2009 9:43 AM PST.
stop writing posts in your browser.
by the way
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun Mar. 1, 2009 9:46 AM PST.
subscribe to some libertarian, objectivist and conservative blogs. they are literally talking about taking to the streets in response to obama. these people are armed.
i seriously wouldn't be so sure about no pitchforks and torches in the us of a.
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