August 21, 2009
There is an old saying, “The jug goes to the well until it breaks”. The jug started to break as recent as last year, in March 2008. One of the large American investment firms, Bear Stearns, went belly-up in the wake of a crisis of the world’s financial markets. This crisis was caused by a lack of regulation and oversight of the US mortgage industry during the 8 years the administration of George W. Bush was in office.
Arguably, the problems started long before Bush was almost elected in 2000, but in the end, the lack of corrective action during his two terms really made things fall apart. And as always, a small group of very will connected people profited enormously from the investment schemes that banks came up with to take advantage of the situation. In the end, countless investors all over the world were defrauded of their life savings, and the little guys ended up paying the bill. But this time they went too far. The jug goes only to the well until it breaks.
What was striking during those final months was that both the president and his vice president insisted until the very end that things were going well and there was nothing to worry about (“The White House is on top of the situation“, MSNBC 3/17/2008). How delusional this guy was. Even as corporations crashed left and right, this message kept coming. Had the government been engaged in stockpiling food reserves, coal, and oil, maybe a larger number of Americans would still be alive today.
But the government was not engaged in any activities that require foresight. Instead, they were doling out billions in the form of ‘stimulus tax rebate checks’. Hahaha ….the money for these checks wasn’t even there anymore and had to be borrowed from the Chinese. And the brainwashed Republican establishment applauded their own demise.
Funding for the still-ongoing Iraq war dissipated quickly because of a complete dry-up of tax revenues. There was no money to bring back an army of several 100,000s. Who knows what happened to them ….
All but a few jobs in the country were lost over the course of the summer months last year, and these few remaining jobs are almost exclusively in the private security space. Harvard University, for instance, no longer has students or classes, but recruited a small army of 2,500 heavily armed militiamen.
Interestingly, only 3 years earlier a hurricane had devastated New Orleans, caused thousands of deaths and made tens of thousands homeless. George Bush and his government did virtually nothing. Two years later the whole area had seen little improvement, and the rest of the country did not seem to care much. Do you think that there would have been a different response, had the people of the US known that only a few years later they would be affected in their entirety by a much more profound catastrophe? Who knows …
I suppose the Bush administration had taken the jug to the well just a bit too often, because not long after Bear-Stears disappeared, Americans were trying to pull their money out of the banks. The other big players ran out of cash as well, and there was nobody else to buy up the remaining pieces. Citi Bank was one of the last ones to fall. They held the mortgage on my home. Because the company disappeared over night, nobody came to claim my house, and I stopped sending monthly payments. For a while I was excited about being able to claim sole ownership of my house, since the Registry of Deeds no longer existed and any record of my mortgage had long been taken away by looters. It does not matter what it is that burns in the fire, as long as it keeps you warm for a while. Of course we no longer had utilities at that point, since the natural gas pipelines were burning and the power plants were either blown up or had run out of fuel. But how much is a home worth that you can’t live in?
Once the US currency, the Dollar, had lost most of its value and all of its reputation in the world over the 2nd half of last year, other countries stopped lending Bush the money that the US economy was already no longer capable of generating, and that he needed so badly to keep up the facade of a working economy, and to fund his moronic politics. And Bush and his croonies watched in awe as things started to blow up into their faces. The jug goes to the well until it breaks.
It was a chilly march for those 12 million Americans who walked to Washington to force an impeachment and make the administration take responsibility for their criminal actions. Somehow they must have had an effect, because Cheney and Bush committed suicide during their final days in office, two days before Christmas. Some people thought that jumping off the roof of the White House into the Rose Garden was the only positive thing that Bush ever did in his life. I don’t necessarily agree with that. I once saw him pet his dog on TV. And he made me laugh a lot, too. Remember all those funny videos on the Web?
It was sad to see, though, that not many of the millions of brave marchers survived the nuclear attack that followed the next day. A missile was launched on the White House from an Iranian sub. I couldn’t really be upset about it, though. I mean, how would you react after having been abused by a government for so many years, and then you finally have an opportunity to strike back? You would do the same thing, I bet.
Oh yes, last year was an election year, too. How unimportant this little fact has become. The three main contenders in the primaries, from today’s perspective, seemed like three little ants fighting for a breadcrumb, totally oblivious of the approaching elephant that would soon turn them into dust. Neither one had the slightest idea of how quickly the situation was deteriorating. All the bickering was no longer important once the bomb hit, and neither of the three ultimately seemed to be willing to govern what used to be the United States of America before, but is now a burning continent. It never even came to an election.
My son did not survive the ensuing food crisis. He had been somewhat malnourished all along because of his strange eating habits, and he just could not adjust to the new diet that consists of mainly roots and worms. Fruit is virtually impossible to come by, and even if it existed, you’d have to stay away from it because of the radioactive fallout. Oh yes, the fallout.
I had a swimming pool installed in 2006. I did that when it was already clear that things were going downhill quickly, and that the end was going to be rather drastic. The idea was that, once the wells in my town would stop pumping, we would be able to survive for a while on pool water. Well, the nuclear fallout that followed the attack on D.C. rendered this plan impractical. The mob stormed my back yard one day regardless, armed with tubs, buckets, even wheel barrows, and emptied the pool in a matter of a few hours to the last drop. My family and I hid in the basement and watched the whole thing. You should have seen them fight for it …
Without water or food we had to abandon the house last September, but I had to leave my wife behind after a few miles. Her bad knees just did not allow her to keep up with me. I hope she made it back to the house and at least had a chance to die in dignity.
Not that I am moving all that fast. Armed militias and insurgents are occupying strategically important roadways, and so I have to hide during daylight and try to make progress at night. Who would have thought that I would end up on a similar trip as my grand father 65 years ago, who deserted from Hitler’s army in Romania and fled back to Austria on horseback, riding only at night and hiding during the day. He made it back alive, but he at least had a horse. I am on foot, and I have no idea where I am. My laptop battery has long died. The two old bicycle dynamos attached to the heels of my boots slow me down a bit, but being able to write these lines is priceless.
Although, I almost gave up when I lost my little daughter to a group of armed Chinese the other day. We had always been so proud of her, my wife and I, and seeing her being taken away almost broke my heart for good. I had heard of Chinese gangs herding together American girls and shipping them to Chinese brothels, only I just did not think that they would operate this far north. I was not careful for a few minutes, and that was all it took .
But I made it through this little setback, and I am on my way again. I hope that I can make it to Alaska by next summer and across the Bering Strait to get off of this doomed continent. I will report back to you once I am there.