The big "if" on the U.S. stimulus package

BUSINESS: "Foundation of New World Order Is Uncertainty," by Tom Lauricella, Wall Street Journal, January 2, 2009

The bit that caught my eye:

In a recent report about the Fed's aggressive steps to flood the financial system with credit, Anatole Kaletsky of Hong Kong-based GaveKal Research, posed the question: "What happens when an irresistible force"--the Fed's actions--"hits an immovable object"--the paralyzed global economy?

"The correct answer is that there is no answer," Mr. Kaletsky wrote. Eventually, the Fed's moves are likely to fuel a rebound in economic activity, he says, but "nobody yet has any idea how much permanent damage may have been done to the structural underpinnings of U.S. and global capitalism."

What I like about the piece and especially the title: now we're finally describing this world order directly--its economics rather than the fantasy of great-power war scenarios.

There are a lot of conventional grand strategists who are simply lost in this world.

Comments

[Dan]

My fear is that we are ALL lost in this world. Nearly everyone out there is saying that there will be no Great Depression II because we have learned so much from the first one that we know how to prevent the second one. Well I just wish someone would tell me each step of the way in this downslide what it is that we know from the first one that is being applied so well to the possibly impending second one because I sure as hell don't see it. I feel like I am on a downward roller coaster ride and I don't have any trust at all in those who built and are running the roller coaster.....

It ain't gonna be over for me until it is truly over....

[Louis Heberlein]

Most New World Order dialogue involves global bureaucratic management relationships, and speculation on who is exploiting the change for power and wealth.

A question not often asked is what the coming economic (investment and job types) and lifestyle changes are like?

We say FDR failed to bring back our economy before WWII by just measuring the $ value of GNP, average salaries, deceased jobs. Little is noted on how during the same period Gov't and investor cooperation created major changes involving national commercial radio networks, commercial aviation, the oil industry and a host of little noticed transformations ... until those networks, technologies and skills were expanded and exploited to support America, England and Russia in a huge global war.

Today hardly any media or political source evaluates the details of, and global economic & lifestyle implications, that will come with transformations like the Obama energy plan.