GLOOM AND DOOM?

A front page editorial from The Marston Chronicles

As we approach the new year, there are a lot of predictions about what 2009 will be like and the preponderant view seems to be that 2009 is not going to be a very pleasant year. Primarily this seems to be because of the economic woes we are facing which are very reluctantly dragging the rest of the world with us. A lot of Americans have the bad habit of paying no attention to what is going on in the rest of the world. Thus we are stunned when something like 9/11 comes along and we find out that what has been going on in a place most of us have never heard of has just bitten us in a very sensitive portion of our anatomy. Just peruse what is happening to our neighbors to the south under our foreign news section in the West Indies on a country by country basis to get a feel of how much worse things are down there.

Gerald Celente at The Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck, New York foresees a total economic collapse in 2009. We do not think things are that dire on the economic front. We cite as evidence the Communist economic system that was foisted on Russia in 1917 lasted 70 years in spite of being based on the unsustainable idea that government can run things better than private enterprise. The sheer size of the USSR allowed that economy to teeter along for that long before finally crashing and burning. The world economy is even bigger and will survive the current crisis although it will be a very painful period of readjustment.

A lot of Americans have the hope that our President-Elect Obama can somehow pull an economic rabbit out of his hat. That is a Pollyanna view with bells on. Most of the power of the President is theoretical and that is particularly true in economic matters. No matter how gifted Obama may be, there is nothing he can do to "fix" our economic woes. FDR tried to fix the mess of the Great Depression and only made things worse in the view of most economic historians. No matter what Obama does or does not do, we will get through this and it will not take a World War to do that like it did 70 years ago.

Another gloomy view comes from Russian academic Igor Panarin who predicts that the United States will disintegrate into six different countries in 2010. We suggest that the good professor is a bit premature in his prediction. One of two things is going to happen: either we will survive all of this or all of western civilization is going to totally collapse. If it collapses, it will be because the Western World sat idly by fiddling around with useless diplomacy in the face of religious fanatics who cannot be reasoned with because they believe God is on their side and need to hear nothing more than that. If we allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, then and only then is there reason for gloom and doom. Because when three mushroom clouds appear over Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, DC on the same day, it will then be too late to save western civilization.