[quote=garysears]90% off is doomer fantasy. It is hard to conceive how the Detroit scenario could happen to the whole nation.
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It’s not noted but important to keep in mind that the woman who runs The Automatic Earth blog, Nicole Foss (“Stoneleigh”), also runs an organization called the Agri-Energy Producers’ Association of Ontario, which is focused on (and lobbies for) “farm-based bio-gas projects and grid connections for renewable energy.” So, her livelihood and career are tied to the adoption and success of renewable energy (and specifically farm-based bio-gas projects – her clients)… and the collapse of the financial system (and higher oil and natural gas prices, social disruption, etc.) is clearly in her best interests. The talk that she gives around the country in local libraries – “A Century of Challenges” – is basically about the demise of our economy based on fossil fuels and debt. Granted, she gives no date for such a demise, but it will be sometime this century (that is, far enough out that we’ll all be dead if such a demise doesn’t come to fruition until the end of the century). Now, if Vikram Pandit or Ben Bernanke or the CEO of Exxon Mobil gave a speech on the wonders of our economy, folks would rightly point out the inherent biases of the source. Likewise – albeit on the other end of the spectrum – Ms. Foss’s biases should be noted as well. Doesn’t mean that her views aren’t worth considering, but rather that they are inherently biased… and yet no one has bothered to point that out.
Also, just a quibble, but she uses the same incorrectly-constructed debt-to-GDP chart that shows total US debt at around 360% of GDP, when actually it’s at around 250% of GDP after you eliminate double-counting of certain financial debt (securitizations for example). Now that’s still WAY too high, but… let’s at least use the right numbers.
