All is not well in the USA. Gas and food prices are high, our presidential candidates are less than scintillating, the Suns are out of the playoffs, and our educational system is failing a significant chunk of our citizens.
But maybe, just maybe, common sense will start to prevail and the hysteria over "financial meldowns" and "deep protracted recessions" will now quiet down at least a few decibels.
Many troubled financial firms have re-capitalized and financial markets seem to have stabilized. A recession of any type has not, to date, been uncovered. Job losses continue but the April numbers are quite a bit less bad than the previous two months. The unemployment rate is 5%.
America has a lot of problems, but a deep extended recession does not appear to be one of them. Somehow we (me included) consistently underestimate the resiliency of our still mainly free market economy.
Of course one big downside to a lessening of the business cycle apocalypse meme is that it will lead directly to an equi-proportionate increase in inequality hysteria.
This is a direct application of Will Self's "quantity theory of insanity" which posits that whenever insanity falls in one dimension, it rises in another.
2 comments:
Self's is actually just the conservation corollary to the First Law of Insanity: that the total insanity in the system remains the same. What you're suggesting is the zeroth law...
Glad to see a Will Self reference! His new novel The Butt is next in my queue to read.
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