My Thoughts Exactly

It wouldn't be Monday without James Kunstler's dose of gloom:

The wishes of the "green shoots and mustard seed" crowd really hinge on
whether the various organs of the suburban economy can be jump-started back to
life -- the production home-builders, the granite countertop outfitters, the
mall and strip-mall gang, the national chain discount retailers, all the people
who make Happy Motoring possible from the factory to the showroom, and, of
course, the banks who shovel money into these
enterprises.

All these organs of our now-former economy are gravely impaired, and a
realistic appraisal of them would have to conclude that they've entered the zone
of congestive failure. The choice we face really comes down to this: do we put
our dwindling resources and "hopes" into resuscitating those dying systems, or
do we move forward to the next chapter of American life, cut our losses, and
make new arrangements more consistent with the realities on offer from the
universe? To take it a step further, can we remain one nation, a common culture,
without such a conscious re-purposing of our collective spirit?

At this point, Kunstler gives kudos to Obama on his speech:

The bizarre spectacle being played out right now by President Obama and his
team only adds layers of mystery and mystification to this big question. On the
one hand, you have Mr. Obama giving a graceful, thoughtful speech on a very
difficult issue (abortion) at a very tough venue (the country's leading Catholic
university), and presenting an excellent case for common ground. It was a bold
deed, unshirking, even brave considering what have come to be the standard modes
of pander or evasion in presidential politics. I suspect that Mr. Obama did it
as much to demonstrate his willingness to face tough questions in general as to
address abortion per se.

Only to turn around and castigate the Obama team for their handling of the economy:

All this is to say why it is so dispiriting to see Mr. Obama's White House
mount a campaign to sustain the unsustainable in the economic realm. Everything
they've done for four months involving money management and enterprise policy --
from backstopping hopeless banks, to gaming the bankruptcies of the big car
companies, to the bungled efforts to prop up artificially-high house prices --
amounts to a gigantic exercise in futility. Worse, it gives off odors of
dishonesty or stupidity, since the ominous tendings of our system are so starkly
self-evident.

Not least of the problems entailed in all this are the scary political
consequences. It's one thing for a business such as a bank to fail; its another
thing for the public to lose confidence in banking, or their own currency, or
the credibility of all the people who work in banking, or the authority of those
charged to regulate these activities, or the courts and their officers who are
supposed to adjudicate misconduct in them. When faith in all these things starts
to go, all bets are off for even larger social constructs like democracy,
justice, and the destiny of a federal republic.