Thinking Outside the Economic Box

So where is this economy going? I've been saying for years now that the things we were doing in this American economy were unsustainable and wrong-headed. Everyone seemed to be on the take, and nobody was 'minding the store,' making sure that things were being done in a fiscally responsible way. There was a huge housing bubble developing that could only be a disaster down the road when it burst. Debt was accumulating at every level of society (personal, national, trade).

But I felt very alone in my thoughts and opinions, with very few people agreeing with me. Most economists were very upbeat about the economy up until last year, and even as recently as a few months ago (when they thought those government rebate checks were going to fix things). Of course, the average person has almost no clue how the larger economy works, so how could they know.

But I found myself agreeing with a group of 'contrarians', who you never see on the Main Stream Media (MSM) but only the internet. People like Bill Bonner, Doug Casey and others at Prudent Bear.com, and James Kunstler. The Paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan and the folks at the American Conservative. Plus the Libertarians over at the Cato Institute and Lew Rockwell, as well the folks on the Left at the Nation and Counterpunch. As you can see, there is no ideological rigidity here, just a willingness to look at anything but the mindlessly optimistic conventional wisdom of the Economic Establishment. Everyone else thought they were cranks and eccentrics, but their read on things economic and otherwise made sense to me. I have no formal economic training, but I do try to look at the world with an open mind, common sense (I like to believe), a sense of morality, and deep curiosity about the way things work.

(Incidentally, I tend to look at foreign policy issues in the same way, with a willingness to look at contrarian points of view, which is why I publicly came out again the American invasion of Iraq in the weeks before it happened in February of 2003. The reasons our government was disseminating, like WMD, didn't make any sense to me. Why would we send our troops into Iraq if they had WMD? Ergo, they probably didn't, and we knew that, I thought. The best source for contrarian foreign policy views is at Antiwar.com.)

So is this just a blip on the screen, that will soon disappear with things getting back to normal? Or are we on the edge of the huge economic 'blackhole' called a Depression? More in a future posting.