Final throes?

I think having the stock market crash and oil prices spike on a Friday (namely, last Friday, June 6) was a fortunate turn of events, as it prevented too much damage being done by panic sellers dumping stocks and greedhead buyers finally trying to hitch their wagons to the oil rocket. Except for after-hours traders. And weekend traders. (Is weekend trading even allowed?) Anyway, come Monday people will be going at the problem clearheaded after a weekend of thinking it through and planning strategies and developing contingency plans...or else they'll be too hung over from a weekend of heavy drinking to do much more than switch off their monitors and rest their heads on their keyboards and cry.

Things are bad and getting worse. Job losses are increasing, the difficulty in finding a job comparable to the one you lost - or, often, any job at all - is increasing, the cost of getting to a job or just driving around looking for a job is increasing. Food, electricity, heating oil, all up. (I just paid 88 cents for the largest container of Wal-Mart's Equate dental floss - 55 yards long. The last time I bought this dental floss it was in the largest package at the time - 125 yards - and about the same price.) Discretionary income, the excess money left over after you account for all of your necessary expenses, the money that keeps the economy running, has dried up or fallen into negative territory. And Bush's Discretionary War grinds on and on.

I had a burst of hope earlier today that suggested that this is a temporary situation, merely an orgy of economic raping, pillaging, and plundering by the people who have been engaging in such behaviors with impunity since the installation of the Bush Administration by five members of the Supreme Court. It's something like the Magnificent Seven: until now, the banditos have been content with coming around periodically and carrying off the women of a certain age, and the crops, and the wealth that the villagers have accumulated since the last raid. But now that those days are coming to an end, they've gone on a final push to squeeze the system for everything they can get out of it. In the past, it's been in their interests to maintain a certain level of sustainability in the system, so that there will be something more to rob in the future; but now that it's become abundantly clear that business as usual is about to change, they've realized that in a few months there will be no tomorrow for them, and they'd better get everything they can today.

Will they kill the goose that lays the golden egg? Will they leave the economy scorched and incapable of regenerating itself? Will the damage that is being done now be fixable in the next four years, or has rapaciousness pushed our economy past the tipping point, beyond the point of no return?

And even if things start getting better on January 20, 2009, can we afford to wait that long?