There is certainly a lot of apocalyptic rhetoric in the media these days. Just today I’ve been inundated with examples. This op-ed in The Weekly Standard, for example, is sub-captioned “The global debt apocalypse approaches”. The op-ed itself points to the Asian debt crisis of the 90s as a harbinger, takes not of the slow motion collapse of the eurozone today, and predicts our own debt crisis within the next few years. I note in passing that the author neglects to mention the enormous amount of borrowing that’s been done in China over the last several years, some of it legitimate (as much as anything in oligarchic China is legitiimate) but a lot of it in the black market.
At MarketWatch Paul B. Farrell warns of an imminent global apocalypse due to overpopulation:
Today, First World citizens consume 32 times more resources and put out 32 times more waste than Third World citizens. And now they all want our lifestyle.
Yes, by 2050 the American dream will be the Global dream, exhausting the world’s natural resources. In fact, if all nations consumed resources at the same rate as America today, we’d need six Earths just to survive today.
Fast forward to 2050 and a population of 10 billion. Warning: In our silence today, we are committing suicide tomorrow.
At RealClearMarkets Joe Calhoun takes note of Europe’s continuing competitive can-kicking contest, China’s modern pyramid-building strategy, and tips his hat to our own economic problems:
The economy will probably have to fend for itself until 2013 and luckily there are some reasons to believe growth will continue, assuming the Fed can resist the urge to tinker. Housing appears to finally be on the verge of healing itself – construction will probably add to GDP this year – and corporate investment continues to be strong. Corporate lending continues to pick up with C&I loans rising steadily since late last year. Corporate earnings are once again coming in better than expected and inventories are conservative. The caveat is that a European debt implosion or a Chinese hard landing would probably overwhelm this natural momentum and there is no room for stimulus – monetary or fiscal – if we fall back into recession. Let’s hope neither comes to pass before we decide to get serious about solving our budget and growth deficits.
The title of his post is “Cloudy With A Chance of Armageddon”.
Have a nice day.
I think we may be in an Armageddon bubble. You heard it here first.
The over-population thing is tired. Worst case scenario the Four Horsemen are always saddled up and ready to ride. In other words, it would be a return to what, 1800?
I see it as 70s nostalgia, Icepick.
Apparently they either don’t remember the 1970s, or were heavily medicated at the time.
Maybe Dave is talking about this?
I was just a kid in the 70’s but I remember population being a bogey-man, followed by nuclear winter, though I think that was the 80’s.
I know what Dave was talking about, I’ve got one of Ehrlich’s books on my shelves. (Actually, I think it must be in a box, I didn’t see it last weekend.) Ehrlich actually makes for a funny read these days – he was off at least as much as the Jetsons were. But nostalgia for the 1970s overall? Are they AWARE of what children had to wear back then? [shudder]
Nuclear Winter was definitely an ’80s thing. We even had a really crappy TV “event” about it IIRC.