I have trouble with the Prof’s distribution to other countries but he did make me think of a breakup for the very first time.

Imagine the worlwide repercussions if the US broke up in 3 new countries. I guess my thought was that if you do get social unrest spread out across the country, the army could have a hard time controlling it as the army is formed of biased individuals with affiliations to their own part of the country.

Take away the social net and create even more discrepancy between the haves and the have-nots and you’ve got a recipe for revolution. Right now the middle class does not realize it is poor… the debt is still backed by assets that make them feel wealthy. Take away this illusion and they’ll figure out that the emperor has no clothes.

This is far fetched but reality is usually stranger than fiction!

QOTD: I do not know which makes a man more conservative—to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past. —John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-faire (1926) Ch. 1

Mike,

w/this: “The idea of Southwestern U.S. states rejoining Mexico makes little sense. I don’t think even the Mexican-Americans would want to join an area where drug gangs are more powerful than government.”

you may care to read some of:

http://www.icerocket.com/search?tab=web&fr=h&q=Gary+Webb

No doubt the economic and social crises will be more severe than is widely believed now, but I don’t think disintegration is in the the cards for the US. People tend to reason from their own experience and the experience of Russian/Soviet experience has not been stability over the last century. I think an illustration in Hedrick Smith’s book The Russians made a good comparison between the two societies. American society was characterized as a ball in trough with a flat bottom and high sides. The ball could move freely inside the trough, but was unlikely to go past some pretty well-defined limits. Russian society was characterized by a peak with a narrow, shallow trough at the summit with the ball in it. It couldn’t move much, but once the ball got out of the trough, it could quickly run down the slope. I do think Russians think of their society this way and hence feel the need for such restrictions on freedom. They can’t understand that other societies that can be as chaotic as Western societies sometimes are can survive.

The main thing I think the article shows is how much the more things change, the more they stay the same: the Russian government is dominated by the old guard of the previous regime, a not unusual occurrence after a popular revolution which does not fulfill the promise of brotherhood and bread.

The idea of Southwestern U.S. states rejoining Mexico makes little sense. I don’t think even the Mexican-Americans would want to join an area where drug gangs are more powerful than government.

We can’t have it both ways i.e.the US will default on its financial obligations by the end of 2010 or it’s hyper-inflation and standard of living going down for 90% + of Americans.

I’ve heard rumors of Japan writing down US debt. I guess they are getting desperate enough for a reset

This is good for a laugh folks. The cartoonist should have used the Fed printing press though and not the SS fund

http://tinyurl.com/9a9zmc

Professor Predicts End of U.S.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html

“Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of the production and distribution of a given output under conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire.”

I do not know what makes a man more Keynesian–to claim certain knowledge of the future impact of his prescriptions, or absolute success in their prior implementations.

The Fox business network has filed a similar lawsuit against the Treasury department

http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/legal-services-litigation/11727667-1.html

In an article, Roger Farmer (economics professor, UCLA) argues that the Fed should buy stocks. Following is a quote:

“It is time for a greatly increased role for monetary policy through direct intervention of central banks in world stock markets to prevent bubbles and crashes. Central banks control interest rates by buying and selling securities on the open market. A logical extension of this idea is to pick an indexed basket of securities: one candidate in the US might be the S&P 500, and to control its price by buying and selling blocks of shares on the open market”.

http://blogs.ft.com/wolfforum/2008/12/how-to-prevent-the-great-depression-of-2009/

ps – on that wiretap subject – I wonder what was learned on:
Mattoon, IL $1.8billion FutureGen power plant
http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2007/dec/19/news/chi-futuregen_19dec19