I pay attention to people who have a track record of accurate predictions. Michael Panzner, author of Financial Amegeddon and When Giant Fall, has been correct in predicting most of the causes and effects of the financial crisis.
The excerpt below illustrates his foresight – it was written in 2005.
Link: THE COMING DISASTER IN THE DERIVATIVES MARKET, by Michael J. Panzner, November 9, 2005
We weathered earlier storms in our financial system, too, though no doubt the cost has often been considerable. The risk this time, however, is that conditions are, and will be, more complicated and dangerous than before. While New Orleans was a relatively self-contained locale, whose citizens and government officials could potentially reach outside the area for assistance, a firestorm set in motion by a derivatives debacle is unlikely to leave many parts of the global financial system unscathed.
It doesn’t help that there are unsustainable imbalances in the global economy, either. America faces record trade and budget deficits. Many economically advanced countries around the world have aging populations and underfunded pension systems. Real estate seems to have taken the bubble baton from the stock market, though there are signs that the top is already in. And the world is awash in debt and a vast sea of open-ended obligations and contingent liabilities.
Moreover, if history is any guide, the period of monetary tightening that began in June 2004 will likely blow the cover off at least some shaky operations that had been kept alive by cheap money in the wake of the post-1990s new-era collapse. Odds are, in fact, that one of those will be the match that lights the fuse that ultimately triggers widespread financial turmoil. [click to continue…]
Here’s Richard Heinberg’s view of of the events that will lead to the Unwinding (written in April 2009). He emphasises that the window for crisis prevention is closing and crisis management will be the only rational response remaining.
Link: MuseLetter #204 / April 2009: Timing and the Post Carbon Manifesto
Maybe Geithner and Bernanke can pull off a miracle and stabilize the economy. In that case, with energy demand having fallen so far below its level of just a year ago, it might take as long as five years from no—who knows, maybe even seven—for depletion and decline to cause oil prices to spike again, giving the economy the coup de grace. At that point, there can indeed be no recovery, only adaptation. That’s the best-case scenario I can imagine (in terms of preserving the status quo).
But I have a hard time picturing that. A much more likely scenario, in my view: We will see a few months of fairly gradual economic deterioration (slowed by the mighty efforts of the Bailout Brigade), followed by a truly ugly global economic meltdown. The result will be a general level of economic activity much lower than the world is accustomed to. Efforts to right the ship will include protectionist legislation (that will provoke international confrontations), the convening of world leaders to create a new global currency and financial system (which probably won’t succeed, at least not the first time around), and various populist uprisings that will lead to political instability around the globe. Energy demand will remain low, but energy production will fall dramatically due to lack of investment. Carbon emissions will therefore fall too, so the world’s attention will be diverted from tackling the greenhouse gas issue, even though climate impacts from previous carbon emissions will continue to worsen.
But here’s the crux of the matter: unlike the situation the world faced in the 1970s, there is no prospect for another cheap-energy bounce this time. It’s too late to muddle. We have run out the clock on proactive adaptation. From now on, collective survival will hinge on the strategies we adopt for emergency response. Some strategies will make matters worse, while others will lay the groundwork for better times to come. This is what it has come to. One doesn’t wish to sound shrill, but there it is.
The closer we have gotten to the crunch, the smaller the margin of error in predicting it. There really isn’t that much difference between Porritt’s most pessimistic date for catastrophe (2020) and my most wide-eyed optimistic one (2016). But perhaps the closer we get to the event horizon, the less discussions over timing really matter, because the whole conversation makes sense only as a way of motivating coordinated action prior to the crunch. Once the unwinding has begun, no more preparation is possible. Our strategy must change from crisis prevention to crisis management.
That’s where we are right now, in my view.
So what we desperately need to be talking about are ways to manage crisis that will minimize human suffering while preserving the environment and laying the groundwork for a sustainable way of life for future generations.
It’s a new conversation, so it will take a while to re-orient ourselves to it. But let’s not take too long. One thing we can say about the timing that I think just about everyone would agree with: it’s speeding up.
