This is the Neo con-game; same as the old con-game.

Howard Kunstler, author of "The Long Emergency", in a speech in front of the Agora Financial investment symposium, was reported to have stated that: "The American suburb was the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world… Why? Because it has no future; because we’re not going to be able to run it…. We don’t have the resource base to run it."

This statement articulates the reason for both the enormity of the current financial crisis and the reason for its intractable nature, at least as measured by the actions the Fed has thus far taken to alleviate it. Because all the Fed has even attempted to do is to put markets back in operating condition while completely ignoring the underlying realities that engendered their dysfunctionality in the first place. The assumption with such a policy is that, once we balance the gyrating colossus, we can work on the underlying problems that are causing it to teeter so dizzyingly on the brink of collapse.

But this assumption is proving to be fatally flawed. Like the assumption that, after the U$ reached peak oil production in the early 70's, we could simply fuel the ever-thirsty behemoth of constantly-increasing U$ energy consumption with imported oil. Like the assumption that a society in which the major corporations, and the federal government collude to reassure the citizenry, via cooked up ideological Free-Market fervor, a la Milton "The Monster" Friedman, in which they pretend to believe that relieving the upper class of any responsibility for any of the rest of society, and then restructuring the tax system to flood them with money, simultaneously relieving them of their fiduciary responsibility to said system, that somehow, via "the wisdom of the marketplace" ( that's just been relieved of its "burden " of paying livable wages by colluding with a foreign Communistic Totalitarian regime to provide free labor from an impoverished, prostrate citizenry) can magically grow and prosper into a sustainable future.

But these outlandish assumptions weren’t believed by the ruling class. Unlike the rest of us, they were quite aware that peak oil production was reached in the US as far back as the early 70’s. So were the Saudis, who would have been completely incapable of an oil embargo if the production of US oil had not reached its peak, from which it would inevitably, inexorably decline. And it is from this point in time that one can easily follow the Upper Class plan to confiscate the productive capacity of the US, monetize it, and then export it to regimes in which it could constrain its costs, thereby silencing the clamoring of a middle class it could no longer control, and continue to reap the profits far into the future, long after the Youessay was destroyed; their profits safe in Swiss Bank accounts and goldbricks, surveying their work in smug comfort from Swiss chalets and basking in the sun at third world resorts where the local minions are happy, grateful even, for the opportunity of catering to their every whim.

Many consign such theses to the realm of conspiracy theories; however this plan is no conspiracy. A conspiracy, by its very definition, is secret. But the US population is so seduced by the illusive prosperity of the trinkets provided by the armed forces of the free market, enabled by its Demockracy, that they’ve failed to note that anything of real value or capable of producing real security via investment in future productivity, has been pawned or conned or cast away. So the rich are free to steal right in front of our eyes, to cavort in their splendor, pervert the justice system, undermine the constitution, plan the destruction of Social Security, disable the regulatory mechanisms of the federal government, leave the States’ Treasuries not just empty but in the red by billions, and build up their own privatized armies, using taxpayer monies (Blackwater armed forces were the first “help” the victims of Katrina saw), monopolize all organs of the media, and use public monies to privatize wealth on a breathtaking scale, all with impunity from, in fact with the blessing of, the public (barring those few “elites” who “read books” and stuff).

So this has been done, not in secret, but in public, right in front of your eyes, using keywords like “freedom”, “Democracy”, “security”, and “liberalism”, together with the same strategy used in the middle east of funding and arming religious fundamentalists to do their dirty work, the Republicans have systematically undermined the democratic voice of the population and replaced it with the intolerant hate-speech of people of “faith” who baptize themselves with the knowledge that they’re doing the work of the Supernatural when they bomb US embassies, murder abortion doctors by shooting them in the back, or bomb abortion clinics. (Once the “War on Terror” was declared by their leader in the US, their Commander in Chief, George W. Bush, the radical forces of Christian fundamentalism have been called off, and not a single outrage of this nature has occurred within the US).

Because just as both the World Wars of the 20’th century were won by the West “riding on a wave of oil”, so the prosperity following those wars was fueled by that same black gold. The major difference being that after WWI, there was no mechanism in place to wrest control of the resultant prosperity from the cold hands of the capitalists and place it under control of those whose blood was spilled and whose backs were broken to produce it. Instead, like now, it all flowed to the richest, who need it the least, but whose greed is insatiable, self-stoked, narcissistically stroked to the level of insanity, by a financial mania and Darwinian justification of their racial and intellectual superiority, even as they descended into Hobbesian tooth-and-nail economic debauchery.

So seeing their black gold running dry, and disdainfully dismissive of the consequences on the very economy that enables their ascendancy, they scramble to destroy each others' enterprises, using high-minded phrases such as “creative destruction” to justify an orgy of self-aggrandizement that would leave the very population that produces their ignoble obliquity destitute. In their back-to-the-future dream world, the subdued population resembles those in authoritarian regimes such as the Middle East and Communist China. All aspirations not consistent with the upper class mirage are crushed by “Homeland Security” forces, while only one “American Dream” is allowed. The all-too-apparent contradiction of there being but one dream for a population exceeding 300 million free people in pursuit of happiness is never questioned. Nor is the fact that in the most prosperous nation in the world, with a GDP larger than that of the next three economies in the world combined (Japan, Germany, and China), the most anyone can dream for is a place to live. That’s why homelessness in America isn’t a problem: it’s a solution.

Remember, "We don’t have the resource base to run it.", but we can generate HUGE profits building it and then tearing it down, using the taxation on the resultant profits to fund an Imperial War of aggression, which will suppress the supply of oil to the world markets, enrich our fellow Oilmen, as the inevitable squeeze in supply and stoking of demand that a War and the Marketing of Huge gas-guzzling, 3-ton, SUV’s and Hummers will engender (deficits don’t matter and conservation is for lily-livered wimps…LIES), and leaving the population in dire financial straits with no one to blame but themselves. This is the Neocon-game; same as the old con-game. Welcome to the Back-to-the-Future world.

And as we continue to relive the economic panic of 1907 in 2007 and beyond, just think, we soon get to relive WWI; 2014’s just a scant 6 years away. As they dust off the old slogans that worked so well then, and are working so well now, we can look forward to another War to end All Wars with renewed relish, because apparently that’s all we care about anymore, destroying other peoples and confiscating their resources in the name of “freedom”, so they can go to those who rightly deserve them …U$.

Suburbia's become part of California's prison system, We don’t have the resource base to run it, but if we build it, they will come. Although they can ill afford to. But such is the new science of behavioral economics, where the prisons are Home Sweet Home and are built by the very same population that then clamors to be let into them.