Comments on: Closing the Collapse Gap

By: David Brodbeck

David Brodbeck — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:20:09 +0000

@rhodeymark: I understand your points, but there are mitigating factors. The world largely decoupled from the Japanese recession, leaving them on their own. That has decidedly not happened with the U.S. recession. Our currency has remained relatively strong, mostly because no one else is doing very well either. Your argument would be stronger if, say, Europe were still growing while we fell into recession.
I think Americans may be more cohesive than you give them credit for. Time will tell. Japanese society is far more homogeneous but that and cohesiveness are not the same thing.

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:32:41 +0000

Thank you for thinking better of it. We’ll clean up for you.

By: rhodeymark

rhodeymark — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:21:17 +0000

Well well – I thought better and decided to snip that last line, but the Internet said NO

By: rhodeymark

rhodeymark — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:18:58 +0000

David Brodbeck: 1) The yen wasn’t reserve currency, and you obviously haven’t considered what the loss of that status might entail. 2) The Japanese had a savings rate that far exceeds ours. 3) Their trade imbalance was nothing like ours.
4) Their society still had cohesion in crisis.

By: David Brodbeck

David Brodbeck — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:45:24 +0000

I don't. Mind you, I do think it's kind of a shame that some people are being taken advantage of, for example by being talked into investing in gold. But I find the people who are stocking up for the collapse of civilization quite amusing. The future is going to look a lot more like Japan in the 1990s than like The Road Warrior. I knew one guy who was still using up his Y2K stock of toilet paper in 2004; there are going to be a lot of similarly embarrassed people in 2012. Especially the ones who thought the Mayans knew something we didn't.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:40:01 +0000

I used to think it was fun. Now it depresses me.

By: David Brodbeck

David Brodbeck — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:11:04 +0000

It’s been fun to watch the survivalists come out of the woodwork as the recession begins. Late-night radio hasn’t been this much fun since 1999, when they were all trying to convince us modern society would collapse on January 1, 2000.