Skating Away on the thin ice of a new day
Our brittle economic and political system is in deep trouble, but if we support each other we will make it
Don’t know if there are any fans of Jethro Tull among my readership. Probably not many, as their heyday was half a century ago and they didn’t even have that many fans in their heyday. I am pretty sure they utilized the flute more than any other rock band in history, which made for some odd music. But they did have some good songs, my favorite of which was Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day.
I think this phrase exactly fits the scary moment American politics and economics are in right now. Between the chaos and open fascism and corruption of the Trump administration, the rapidly evolving brave new world of social media and AI, and the crushing weight of global corporations and billionaires who dominate our economy, it is most assuredly a new world we live in. And with the brittleness of an economy built by those global corporations to serve only their money and power, our economy is on very thin ice, brittle as can be.
What do I mean by brittle? Massive global corporations more and more have decided that the best way to maximize their profits is to put most or all their factories in the same places, usually in low wage Asian countries. That means when there are economic problems – like, say, oil shortages and sudden price hikes now being caused by the Iran war – it can cause severe problems both with those factories and the supply chain, as shipping and air freight costs suddenly also go through the roof. Remember all the supply side problems during the pandemic? Get ready for Round 2.
Then there is the world of speculative financial markets. Crypto and AI are two of the most obvious examples, with hundreds of billions of dollars sloshing around with no steady anchor or ways to generate actual profit-making products yet. The only way to profit right now is to keep speculating and hope it doesn’t crash down on you at the wrong time. In fact, many of the biggest companies with the highest stock prices have massive outlays in ventures with highly uncertain futures, based on – again – speculative spread sheets.
Here’s another domino that could fall: lots of the investment capital these companies have raised is from what’s called “private capital”, as opposed to actual banks which are regulated and backed by real deposits and FDIC. If private capital companies start getting shaky, which is already happening in some areas, it could create a wave of financial waves that could topple key businesses.
I am not the only one worried about all of this. This article is by one of several people who predicted the 2008 financial collapse who is concerned about another one.
Into this fragile, brittle, creaky economy, with the regulators Trump has appointed letting the financial and tech industry run wild, inject the uncertainties and high stresses of the Iran war.
So what do Democrats and progressive minded folks do with this knowledge in mind?
Number one, we have to do what we have done as Trump is unleashing all his threats against us: we have to stick together in hard times. Help each other weather the storm by showing the kind of mutual aid and solidarity that the people of Minneapolis showed us. As the economy gets worse, we need to step up and give help to our neighbors in trouble.
Second, we need to sound the alarm. It is not enough to attack Trump and say the word “affordability” over and over again. Democrats and their progressive allies need to be warning people about the economic dangers of monopolies, corporate concentration, and the lack of effective oversight on the financial, tech/AI, and crypto industries. We need to be doing more than telling about the problem of high prices; we need to talk about the reasons prices are going up and talk abut the villains of the story. And we need to show we are fighting for solutions: stopping price gouging, tough enforcement of antitrust laws, raising wages, and empowering working people and consumers.
If we sound the alarm and talk about solutions now, when this crash comes we will have far more credibility to deal with it then.
