Kunstler: The Long Emergency Zone

Now that I have written a book titled The Long Emergency, there is a new wave of disappointment gathering that life as we know it has not come to an immediate end, and I am being reproached for suggesting that we have some problems. Of course, that was never the point, as a reflection on the book's title ought to suggest. One funny element of this is that the reproach reached a crescendo the very week that crude oil prices reached record levels above $75 a barrel.

So this might just be a good point to step back and ask where are we now at mid-year, 2006. In January, I predicted that the US economy would get into a lot of trouble, specifically that the Dow would melt down to around 4000 and that we would see carnage on the real estate scene. When you figure in inflation, the Dow has just gone sideways for six months. What is propping it up? Last week I referred to Doug Noland's theory that investments in alt.fuels and technology are starting a new boom. I doubt this can work as a prop to support the huge losses in previous misinvestments. For instance, sooner or later General Motors will go up in a vapor for its failure to sell cars, pure and simple.

In any case, we are faced with the essential problem of ever-increasing prices for far less net energy. That is a recipe, perhaps, for an American peristroika, but not for continuing to benefit from the old arrangements. And so far, America at all levels, in leadership and the public, resists the sort restructuring we require. For example, we are still systematically starving and dismantling the railroad system instead of rebuilding it. There is still plenty of time left in 2006 for the stock market to start reflecting the true character of our phony-baloney economy -- namely that it is based on consuming goods and resources without producing things of value.

It is my observation that the housing market is tanking broadly and steeply around the nation. In my own town, a mini "hot market," there have never been so many "for sale" signs planted in so many yards (and remaining there month after month). Some even have "price reduced" shingles added to them. But there remains mutual reinforcement between the sellers and their realtor agents to keep a happy face on the situation (to avoid panic selling).

Since house prices here, in a tourist town, are falling when the tourist season has hardly gotten underway, I have to surmise that the local market is in deep shit. A few months from now when the tourists depart, and the last golden leaves flutter down from the maples, I expect we'll see psychological capitulation among the sellers and their realtor cheerleaders.

The energy picture, as alluded to above, is certainly cause for concern. Oil prices are creeping up relentlessly into territory that will, at least, stall the consumption orgy among the WalMart shoppers. We are one hurricane or one geopolitical incident away from an energy trauma. The natural gas supply situation is another storm lurking on the far horizon.

So, here at high noon of 2006, I'll stand pat with what I have said more than once: we have already entered the zone of The Long Emergency.