More on Kunstler

I got an email last week, from a reader of this blog. He couldn't figure out how to comment (note: you need to create a user account, because I was getting flooded by spam). Anyhow, I asked if I could post his comments here, and he agreed. So, to follow up on the Kunstler stuff from earlier.... here are his comments.
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I have had a long-standing interest in New Urbanism, so I am very familiar with the writing of James Howard Kunstler.  Thus, I found your posts about him interesting, to say the least, and I felt the same way about peak oil and the coming "Long Emergency" for some time.  Therefore, I wanted to drop you a note and say:  if there is one thing that can be said about Jim Kunstler:  "a soothsayer he ain't."  It can't be put any more succinctly than that. 

Your friends and collegues are right to be skeptical about Kunstler's doomsday scenarios, particularly in regards to Y2K, though his misfires go well (well!) beyond that major one.  Some time ago, in fact, when I was feeling a bit down about all the coming catastrophes of which Kunstler prophesizes with almost orgasmic glee, I took a lunch hour and actually combed his blog archive and made a list of his predictions.  I have enclosed this list below, for your perusal and enjoyment. 

Since the day I compiled it, I have not wasted one moment worrying about whether to bring children into the world (my wife and I are expecting #2 in June!). Yes, I think peak oil is real, and yes, I think suburbs were/are a really bad idea and quite destructive, but that doesn't mean socio-political events are going to conveniently coelesce into a bizarre personal revenge fantasy, where all the "clueless" are punished in amazingly "poetically just" fashion.  It's staggering, actually, just how muck Kunster's outlook echoes fundamental evangelicalism--a world outlook he regularly mocks!

So, Sarah--keep doing your yoga and keep enjoying your life and your friends, and everytime a doomsayer puts too much of a shackle on your buzz, read ol' Jim's list of failed predictions below and have a good ol' chortle.

Warmest regards,

Tom
Pennsylvania (USA)

PS--His predictions of a war between India and Pakistan a few years ago is one of my faves--right up there with "the great flu outbreak of 2002"!!

Here goes:

December 16, 2001:
“After Christmas (2001), we are going to see a retail work-out that will make your heads spin, including (Kunstler predicts) the tanking of some major national chains. Duck and cover.”
December 21, 2001
“It seems to me that the imminent collapse of the Argentine government and financial infrastructure will likely be the event that accelerates the American unwinding.”
“It's hard to escape the dogged feeling that this holiday season may be the last merry interlude in America for quite a ways ahead.”
January 2, 2002
“First they [ big box retailers ] will practically give merchandise away. Then there will come a time when even drastic 70 % off sales will not draw the shoppers in.  Then it's desperate retrenchment, closing of stores, bankruptcy, and finally the abandonment of suburban property.  I think we'll see a lot of this in '02.”
“As the US economy melts down in a goo of "consumer" non-performance, Mexico's economy will slip into desperation and disorder, meaining [ sic ] possibly revolution.”
“We are also, incidentally, overdue for a major influenza event of the type that started on a Kansas pig farm in 1918 and ended up killing half a million people in the US alone before 1920.”
“The price we pay for this wilfull ignorance may be political disorder so intense that the nation could dissolve into faction-driven regional conflict. And sooner rather than later.”
February 20, 2002
“My guess is that the Dow has commenced a luge run that will take it to the 7000 range before the middle of the summer, with the Nasdaq bobsledding to under 1000 . . . a tough month lies ahead.”
April 8, 2002
“My own sense is that a unified sentiment for an oil boycott [ ie, from both Iran & Iraq ] will take shape because 1.) it is the most potent non-military weapon of the last resort that they have, and 2.) there is an historic inevitability to it (I admit the latter may be tautological).”
June 6, 2002
“I believe India will begin operations against its neighbor in a week at most.”
“Before the height of summer we could see both the end of Globalism as it has been known for a generation, and the commencement of Great Depression II. After that, all politics are local for a long long time.”
June 11, 2002
“My conclusion: I expect another terrorist attack on India within a month, to which India will respond immediately with massive conventional air strikes followed by ground troops.”
July 10, 2002
“It seems to me that the next week or so could be a turning point in US (and global) economic circumstances. Yesterday, with confidence sagging in American economic leadership, the dollar fell to near parity with the euro. When it reaches parity (1 dollar = 1 euro), and then passes it (1 dollar = 1+x euros) then the outflow of foreign investment in US securities turns into a hemmorhagic fever, and the world heads into a terra incognita of extreme financial and economic turbulence. Global trade relations fall into disorder, a tidal wave of defaults flushes through the sewer of bad loans (especially in the cloaca of home mortgages), more companies evaporate, pension funds go up in a vapor, standards of living crumple, institutions and governments totter. This is all apart from the potential aggravations of our War Against Terrorism (and Terrorism's War Upon US).
August 8, 2002
“There are dependable cycles and seasons on this earth, and historic convulsions customarily get underway in the fall of the year. World War One's Guns of August were an overture for the military acts of September. Hitler stomped through Poland in September, 1939. The stock market debacles of 1929 and 1987 were both October affairs. The derivatives-and-currency meltdown of 1998 occured in late summer and fall. So here we are in late summer with all the elements lining up for an epoch-changing tipping point.”

“Is this the last summer of Happy Motoring?”

August 20, 2002

“A word or two about the August stock markets . . . The eventual result of this delusional market splurge will be the fierce destruction of retirement accounts later in the year. It could be the kind of epochal event that provoke third parties to form in the US.”

September 30, 2002

“It is inconceivable to me that Saddam has not pre-rigged his oil wells to blow up at the first sight of a US soldier in a bio-hazard suit. Ditto, I'm convinced that he will greet US soldiers with every nasty weapon he does have on hand, and that could mean quite a bit of diverse nastiness -- disease, radiation, nerve gas, you name it. If nothing else, he's liable to leave enormous areas of contamination on the ground for the US to clean up in the aftermath.”
October 14, 2002
“I maintain that what we are actually seeing is a "speed wobble" as the "vehicle" approaches crash mode. I'm going so far, at 8:30 this morning, as to predict a classic black Monday on Wall Street today October 14. You heard it first here.”
October 17, 2002

“My prediction of a stock market debacle on Monday played out in reverse -- . . . , I apologize for the premature call . . . I hasten to add, though, that the days ahead are historically the prime ones in late October when misplaced financial hopes come to grief. When the bottom falls out of this latest suckers' rally, investor fear will be smelled from sea to shining sea and the herd will really start running.”
August 6, 2003
“We're heading into a winter natural gas crisis. We can't drill enough to meet the demand . . . it's liable to bring on astronomical home heating bills, electrical service disruptions, and shortages of chemical fertilizers.”
January 3, 2005
“If we have even a normal cooling season, it may also be one of electrical blackouts. 2005 will be the year that the public gets panicky about the global energy predicament.”
“Few Iraqis will venture to go to the polls, which become wholesale targets for rocket, morter, and suicide attacks. Interim President Iyad Allawi is declared the winner by default, since there is no other alternative. American policy will be to take the path of least resistence and let Allawi rule -- assuming he isn't assassinated -- and make it his responsibility both to organize another election and to impose basic civil security, which may be utterly beyond his government's abilities. US forces will withdraw from the Iraqi cities (and peacekeeping duties) to bases out in the desert where they will revert to the primary strategic mission (perhaps futile) of attempting to exert a modifying influence over Iran and Saudi Arabia.”
“Several friction points may develop between China and the US. A slacking off in "consumer" spending in the US as Americans choke on credit payments will prompt China to search desperately for a group of new customers for manufactured goods. China will find some in Brazil but few elsewhere and ultimately won't be able to replace its shredding US customer base. China will orchestrate a movement among adjacent former Soviet republics to terminate American military base leases there. If China is pissed off enough, it will turn the heat up on Taiwan, forcing the US to pretend that we would intervene on behalf of Taiwan -- a pretense the whole world would see through, and which would be a major sign of America's waning ability to project power around the world. Eventually, trouble in the US economy may lead to political turmoil in China as factory workers are laid off in enormous numbers and begin to make trouble in the streets.”
“The housing bubble pops like a zeppelin and a giant sale of distressed properties begins, with house prices plummeting. (Prices on other things, especially food, shoot up.)”