Comments for Nausea - Kunstler at http://atlanticfreepress.com , comment 1 to 2 out of 2 comments http://atlanticfreepress.com Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:48:40 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/1171-nausea-kunstler.html#comment-1655 It is the practice in some locations to burn a forest down and farm the cleared land until the nutrients are exhausted. When this happens, one can always move a short distance away and start again. If enough forest land is involved, the first plot of land will have recovered by the time it is put to torch again. The practice is not sustainable if the cycle is accelerated, and so Malthusian forces will check the local population with famine. If the incentive to burn forest for farm is disconnected with survival in the forest, then forest can be burned in its entirety and converted to portable assets. These assets can then be carried away, leaving a burned wasteland behind. This is the key to a Ponzi scheme's payoff. By extracting assets and leaving, one can be insulated from the crash while making a good profit. Similarly, a deregulated financial industry can extract portable assets from high-risk loans before they burn out. The profits can be converted to some other form and absconded. When the industry begins to crash from its unsustainable practices, it will be bailed out by the taxpayers or simply leave behind the ashes and stumps of its losers. Whether slash and burn is practiced in a tropical forest, home loans, Ponzi pyramid or power politics, the ones who escape have no real incentive to show restraint and long-term thinking. It is this insulation from the ultimate consequences that makes such practices appealing. The question then is how to circumvent this insulation and make long-term sustainable thinking important. - a guest Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:00:27 +0100 http://atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/1171-nausea-kunstler.html#comment-1654 Once all the good-credit prospects are tied to their mortgages, where else would you look — not only for sustained sales, but growth? The sub-prime lenders took a gamble, and it looks like they're going bust, but what alternative did they have to stay in business? (putting aside the question of whether they [i]should[/i] have been in business in the first place) As far as your trip upstate goes: I can't imagine anyone paying 300K for a fixer-upper, unless the going price for similar nearby houses was 450K or better. Have people forgotten that the best way to sell a house is to make it look its best first? Fix those rotting sills and replace that warped siding, and they might get 300K. Or they might decide the house is now too nice to sell, and take it off the market. - a guest Wed, 14 Mar 2007 19:30:39 +0100