Then there's the issue of "crisis for whom ?". For those who lose their jobs , become impoverished, the fact that an economic crisis doesn't bring down the capitalists doesn't make much difference. They suffer 100%. The sky _has_ fallen for them. The wolf _is_ at their door, like the little boy cried it was going to be. The system's lack of emergency economic relief in the face of the accurate prediction is "total" for them that suffers.
The difference between humans and spiders or bees is that we plan ahead in our imaginations, have a conception "future" at all. It is not all a sign of psychosis or neurosis, but of typical human mentation, that we use our imaginations to anticipate problems.
CB
Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Doug:
> I'm highly allergic to crisis talk. Yes, things could fall apart
> someday, and that someday might just be around the corner. But a lot
> of people, from folks on the street to hardcore Trotskyist
> revolutionaries, amplify concerns about a problem into a crisis. I
> think the entire US recovery/expansion that began in 2001 has been
> troubled - despite massive fiscal and monetary stimulus it's been
> able to generate the weakest GDP growth of any of the 10 post-WW II
> expansion, and the worst employment growth by far. GM and other firms
> in the auto industry are in terrible shape, and workers and
> pensioners could get hit hard. With energy prices and interest rates
> rising, we may have a recession next year, and it could be deeper and
> longer than the ones of the early 1990s and early 2000s. But that's
> different from "collapse."
I am fully with you on the predictive aspect of the crisis talk, but you seem to forget your own advice to look into what makes people "tick." Doom saying is a bunch of hogwash if you take it as an advice to build your future on it, but it tells you something about the state of mind of the doom sayers. Like their idealism or religious mind-frame that is eager to substitute wishful thinking for a rational analysis of material reality. Or willingness to obtain instant gratification or relief from their frustrations by saying magic words.
For many people words and symbols are far more important than reality - some consider themselves "middle class" while other believe that "the end is near." These words and the delusions they involve make them tick.
Wojtek