Bear in mind just how big the U.S. economy is. Given sufficient demand for its output, America would produce more than $30 trillion worth of goods and services over the next two years. But with both consumer spending and business investment plunging, a huge gap is opening up between what the American economy can produce and what it’s able to sell.

I feel like a fucking parrot, but I can’t flame Krugman on the NYT website, so I’ll flame him here. NO ONE HAS ANY FUCKING MONEY PROFESSOR KRUGMAN! No one is spending anything, which is why we’re in a recession. There is no $30 trillion around the world awaiting to be spent on American goods over the next two years. That is why we are in a recession. There is no money. There is no money.

THERE IS NO MONEY! AND YOU CAN’T JUST MAKE IT UP. Zimbabwe is currently doing just that. Guess who has the most worthless currency in the world? Zimbabwe!

Professor Krugman, I respect your accomplishments. But you have to realize this: If the New York Times hadn’t decided to go whole-hog digital a number of years back, being one of the most forward thinking old-media outlets, YOU WOULD NOT HAVE A PLACE TO PUBLISH MUCH LONGER. That’s right, most newspapers are going the way of the dinosaurs and other extinct species? Why? It’s not the fucking recession, it’s the fact that wasting thousands and thousands of tons of trees (or hydrocarbons and other resources recycling the paper) a day to get your newspaper printed, uncounted gallons of ink, and then the resources needed to haul it around the city and to other nearby cities it pays some lip service to on page three, section B is utterly worthless in today’s networked world.

But wait, you say, what about the old people that don’t use computers? Well, my best friend’s 80 year old grandma learned to use her computer for email, and that’s after she’s been living with leukemia for years (chemo and drug free!).

The world changes, and either you change with it or get left behind. That is the hard, sad lesson many industries in America are finally learning after centuries of the .Gov protecting them from the big, bad world. Well guess what? If you shit on your neighbors long enough, they will stop helping you. Witness China, the biggest US foreign lender, starting to get sketchy about loaning us money. We will just start printing our own new money at some point, and start chasing the Zimbabwean dream (which is actually a nightmare).

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 10:01.