The Slow Decay of a Healthy Economy

Bill Bonner writes:

Today, we boldly announce a NEW THEORY about the way the world works....

Something is wrong...

We just had the biggest financial crack-up of all time. Even under ideal conditions, it will take people a long time to rebuild lost savings…to get rid of houses they can’t afford…and to restructure debt they can’t pay. While this restructuring and adjustment is going on, you’d expect the markets to be a little punky.

But instead of letting people get on with it, the zombies have moved in. At first, you hardly notice. An arm here. A leg there. Pretty soon, you’re dead!

The percentage of the economy controlled, guaranteed, or paid for by the government is increasing. Since the feds were already deeply in debt themselves, the only way they could spend more money was by borrowing more. You can’t cure a debt problem by borrowing more money. Net debt is going up. So, there’s something wrong. The economy isn’t recovering… It’s just not possible.

Which brings us back to our new theory…

Here we offer a new and improved theory with a dynamic of its own: the producers vs. the parasites...

A bigger illustration can be found on the front page of yesterday’s paper.

BP has agreed to provide the zombies with $20 billion dollars of raw meat:

“BP backs $20 billion spill fund,” says The Financial Times.

BP is a producer. It makes something valuable. In fact, it makes the thing that is the pentagon’s most valuable and most important resource – liquid energy. It does so at a profit, also rewarding all the little old ladies, lonely orphans and rich sons-of-a-gun who own its shares. BP normally pays dividends; those dividends are currently suspended, as BP diverts cash to the spill fund.

Yes, it also makes mistakes, for which it must pay.

But circling BP today is an army of parasites. Zombies who toil not. Neither do they spin. Instead, they file lawsuits and try to get something from the producers without paying for it. BP’s Gulf disaster is a godsend for them...

Remember the giant tobacco settlement? In 1998, the tobacco companies lay down and opened their veins. A quarter of a trillion dollars was paid out in a huge class action settlement. The money was supposed to go to redress the damage done by smoking. But $19 out of every $20 found its way, instead, into the pockets of the lawyers, the activists, and the bureaucrats. That is to say – the zombies got it.

Will the oil settlement be any different? Not likely. The zombies will take most of it. Much of the rest will be used to turn honest working people into zombies. Instead of finding new work in new areas, for example, Gulf-area residents will be encouraged to stay put and collect checks. If they take up new work, the measure of their ‘damages’ will go down!...

The zombies win. And then…there is collapse, war, revolution, bankruptcy… The zombies are killed off…new life begins.

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