Required Reading

...right here, folks.

"A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.
'The Emperor is naked,' he said."
--Hans Christian Anderson, "The Emperor's New Clothes"

Every Monday morning, Mr. Kunstler delivers an inimitable dose of cheery pessimism. He's outdone himself this morning.

Only one question remains in my mind--perhaps he'll answer it next week: how long can they possibly spin out the denial? If your daily media intake consists of radio, television, and/or a cursory glance at a newspaper, you'd be excused for thinking everything is pretty much hunky-dory. The "newsertainment" services are going full bore with their usual Hollywoodies sticking out, distracting us from the real fun and games going on behind the curtain.
You get the occasional glimpse whenever the business reports come on. The Dow has dropped several thousand points on "credit concerns" over the past six or eight months...of course, that's in dribs and drabs, "corrected" the next day or even later the same day, the net effect being a stock market bobbing as if in a bathtub. Even those in charge seem to be unaware the plug's been pulled.
The late, great Robert Heinlein called it TANSTAAFL--"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." I'd dare to update the master's saying thusly: FLOGOSL..."Free Lunches Only Go On So Long". You can't deny there have been a great many executives in a great many corporations taking home an obscene amount of pay in perks, bonuses and stock options, with no regard to their companies' actual performance. In Japan, CEOs resign in disgrace if their companies don't meet expectations. Not so here: run your concern into the ground and walk away with a free lunch of millions of dollars.
This can't go on, but I'm honestly curious to what lengths they'll go to preserve the illusion that everything is fine, or at least correctable. I'm also curious at what point people will stop what they're doing and point and stare at the naked civilization around them.