Notes from the Megamachine

As this goes to press, I just finished listening to an episode of the “Planet Money” podcast, an impromptu daily show that NPR has cooked up in the past few weeks solely to offer in depth coverage of the financial crisis.  And also, one of my few remaining “guilty pleasures” from the broadcast media, This American Life, has also turned itself, evidently “for the duration”, into This Global Economic Bust (or something that might as well be called that).  It’s all kind of reminiscent of the period right after 9/11 and the Anthrax Attacks, but at least that period of intensity ended with the cornering and capture “loss of relevance” of Bin Laden at Tora Bora.   This looks like it could go on in some some form for many months or even years.  The way the financial has captured people’s attention must be closer to the reaction people had to the long-forgotten “real” wars the US fought (as opposed to any war against Iraq or Panama), or perhaps even to the Great Depression itself.  Also as in wars, we have our Generals, both field and armchair, offering commentary on the unfolding crisis and having every word they say hung on and analyzed–in this case such luminaries of various levels of true sagacity, as Warren Buffet, George Soros, Nouriel Roubini, Robert Rubin, and on and on…The financial crisis has even pushed the increasingly slapstick and irrelevant Presidential campaign out of the headlines.

And, on balance, this is probably a good thing.  Here at megamachine.org we’ve often said things that, admittedly, sounded a bit harsh, or scathing at Americas expense.  While I showed (ahem!) a certain amount of prescience about the way events would unfold, for example here and here, it gives me little pleasure to gloat over that foresight, when the whole structure of society teeters and threatens to take me and everyone I care about down with it.  I genuinely hope that the US views this incident, which I don’t believe in and of itself will be fatal to a satisfying way of life, as a wake-up call to get its head out of its a** and start the long delayed projects of building a decent transit infrastructure, and making arrangements for a less energy-intensive future.  With the political turnover about to take place on Nov. 4, there is a slim chance–slim but not nil–that will start to happen.  Well enough soft-hearted sentiment for the time being–back to making catcalls at our “leaders” from the peanut gallery!