64 Comments

1. Libertyhound:

It’s clear that Obama’s goal is to turn every person in America into a share-cropper for the DNC.

Aug 21, 2009 - 5:33 pm 2. Tony:

Well, that seals it then. We MUST pass the healthcare revolution because that is going to save all this money but quick!

Aug 21, 2009 - 5:37 pm 3. Yes We Did:

This is just another racist attack on our new Leader.

Aug 21, 2009 - 5:37 pm 4. Doug:

Indeed:
Ariana Huffington, like most of the left, is upset that BHO is all about compromise and pursuit of bipartisanship!
—
The field will be left wide open for conservatives to exploit and bring back sanity.
Sadly, the GOP in DC is still completely out of touch with that reality:

Warning: GOP Leadership Still Doesn’t Get it

You can give him credit for answering the question directly, I suppose, but that’s about it.
Here’s what I’m talking about:

I just came from a small meeting this afternoon with a very senior member of the GOP Congressional leadership, and I can tell you with certainty something which should dismay the rank-and-file Republican voter:
they do not have a clue why they lost the majority in 2006.
Here’s how it went down:

In response to another attendee’s question about where the GOP would head, this official flatly confirmed rumors I have been hearing for months, that Congressional GOP Leadership believes that the only reason they lost the majority in both houses was due to an unpopular war (Iraq) and an unpopular President (W). The ONLY reason.
—
The understanding in his mind is clear: us silly little fiscal conservatives out here aren’t going anywhere. So, I guess if you expect the NRSC to stop endorsing extreme moderates in GOP primaries or are hoping the House GOP will hear our pleas on spending restraint and abusive earmarks, you are going to be very disappointed.

Aug 21, 2009 - 5:38 pm 5. Mongoose:

goodness wretchard, what are you trying to do with this chain of depressing topics today, ruin our weekend or something?

Aug 21, 2009 - 5:43 pm 6. Amit Green:

Wretchard wrote Others argue that the US government will find increasing difficulty borrowing money at any affordable interest long before it needs to repudiate debt. One interesting point that is raised is that if the US public’s willingness to support the Federal Government has a ceiling of between 20-25% of GDP

The chart of Tax receipts from 1945 to 2009 shows that over the last 65 years tax receipts have average 17.9% of GDP, with a ceiling of 20.9%.

Sixty five years …. 20.9% maximum … Its a very very hard fact to fight & highly unlikely that anyone, Obama, or otherwise, can exceed that number.

I’ve kept this chart in mind the last 15 years, and have always thought the tax policy of Washington was way overblown, considering how little the changes really are to the tax percentage of GDP …

Aug 21, 2009 - 5:56 pm 7. qwerty1:

Currently, the US government budget for interest is 8.4 % of the total spent in 2008 fiscal year ($249B interest on $2979B total). According to the deficit clock, the US is now $11.7T in debt. That makes for an average interest rate of 2.1%. Now if they run a trillion dollar deficit each year, they need an additional $21B a year in interest. So as long as interest rates stay low, the US government can borrow money for a long time.

A quick internet look up of the New Zealand debt crisis in 1984, the interest consumed 20% of the government coffers before the bond holders pulled the plug. With the US dollar being the currency of last resort, I would guess the crisis would not hit until the interest consumed 25% of the budget. So as long as interest rate stays low, they can keep this game going on for another 20 years. But if short term interest rate shoot up, all bets are off.

I know this post is full of assumptions, but the key is in the magic of compound interest. It can work for you, it can work against you. Where is the next Ross Perot to warn us this time?

Aug 21, 2009 - 6:15 pm 8. hdgreene:

I recommend a nice International Monetary Fund Austerity Program. I think Argentina has a used one they will give us cheap.

As part of this program, we can lend ourselves IMF Special Drawing Rights (this is “the international community” creating money instead of the FED). In return for this new form of make-believe cash, we will abolish the Defense Department. This will be a requirement, I’m afraid (no, really, I’m afraid). Also, we can take advantage of a currency swap if we forgo road and bridge repairs for a decade. We’ll need to cap and trade Social Security. Social Security will be capped at five years but if you’re willing to die early you can trade some of your remaining years to your spouse.

The most grating requirement? Fed and Treasury officials will have to take a 3 day seminar from Jeffery Sachs on “Economic! Shock! Therapy!” Oh, the Horror.

Aug 21, 2009 - 6:22 pm 9. whiskey:

Inflation in the global economy makes the average person poor. It makes seniors very poor, and they are the largest group, and vote the most. They are also the backbone of most campaigns. Inflation also destroys middle class people, particularly in the tight-credit, moribund housing market of today, with people facing taxes rising and interest payments along with taxes.

It’s a tax without authorizing one, but a massive one and one that has in the US historically created HUGE populist outcries and Republicans in office.

What Obama risks by inflation is breathing life into a corpse — the Republican Party. And specifically, Sarah Palin. The only anti-Taxer in the bunch. [Yes, I love Palin. But young women HATE her. Even younger women can grow to love someone, however, who promises to increase their net take-home pay by about 40%. Particularly in tough times.]

There’s also a double-whammy. China depends on both US debt AND trade to keep it’s people happy and making money, instead of crashing down (with all those excess men without wives, about 30 million or so 18-34). So let’s get real here — inflating the way out of a budget crisis puts any nation, and fairly quickly given international connections, into Argentina like difficulties. Inflation makes Chinese goods expensive and US debt worth far less. Threatening Chinese internal stability. It also makes most Americans far poorer.

Make a man poor — he’s your enemy for life.

More evidence Obama and Dems are profoundly stupid. As usual.

Worst of all, we could have massive inflation, repudiation of debt, defacto if not dejure, by worthless dollars, and huge shortages of key imports including energy — people poor, suffering brownouts, sudden collapse into third world status.

THAT is not a recipe for Obama as Chavez. It’s a recipe for something else.

Aug 21, 2009 - 6:24 pm 10. wretchard:

I think the Left is in a very peculiar sort of crisis; the essence of which lies in the decline of their traditional means of influence. The key thing to grasp about the Town Hall events and to some extent the rise of alternative media is that it represents the emergence of a self-aware opposition to their traditional memes. The fall of the Berlin Wall represented the end of “external Communism”, but that was curiously interpreted as an affirmation of the social-democratic West. It was the EU, not the US that was psychologically going to inherit the post-Soviet World. The two Cold War enemies had killed each other, leaving the Third Way free to take possession of the new heaven and earth.

The first hint that this wasn’t going to be the case was 9/11 from which the “neo-cons” emerged. They emerged in large part because the Third Way couldn’t contemplate events like 9/11 except in terms of Western guilt. So we had the “neo-cons” who were, simply thought to be the rengade Left who, in their factionalism, had unwisely cast their lot with George W. Bush. The Left had not yet come to accept that the Masses could rise against them. Momentarily speaking, they still thought all their troubles came from Emmanuel Goldstein. And when they had discredited Bush, or at least helped him discredit himself, they thought they had the game in hand again.

But the unpopularity of Bush to some extent masked the real weakness of the Left. While still enormously powerful from a political, economic and cultural standpoint, their racket had become irremediably transparent and nowhere was this manifested more clearly than in the rejection of the mainstream media, which, last we checked, had a credibility about equal to that of used car salesmen. The loss of authority was irreversible and not even the election of Barack Obama could alter that.

Obama after Bush was therefore a “false dawn”. The evidence for this lies precisely in the unseemly haste of the Left and collaterally conveyed by the precipitous drop in Obama’s popularity. It turns out that there was nothing underneath him and therefore nothing underneath them. And they realize this, so theirs is not the behavior of those in comfortable authority; who have all the time in the world. Theirs is the attitude of people who fear this is their last chance; that the sands are running out. And they are right. The sands are running out on their traditional powers of persuasion and has made them desperate to find another. And I think what we are witnessing is an attempt to substitute economic and bureaucratic authority for the declining cultural authority they used to enjoy. The shrillness is the result of the fact that the old soothing whispers no longer work. To the question: “why does Obama keep doubling down?” the answer is ‘because he has no choice.’

This is not to say that the Left’s dominance of the academe and the cultural institutions is somehow at an end. It is not. But it is no longer invisible and it is being openly challenged. The problem that they face is that economic and bureaucratic control cannot be substituted for the old authority because it is resource limited. It is not information based, but resource and even coercion based. It needs ever larger amounts of government solutions to fix ever large government problems. Eventually the last bill in the wallet is extracted. And there is no more. It’s like a Ponzi scheme which must grow to the ends of the earth — and come to an abrupt stop.

What I am curious to discover is what happens when it runs out of lift. Because it will. Like Fannie and Freddie, it isn’t too big to fail. There’s no such thing. I think that one of the challenges of statecraft is to prepare for the Fall of the Inner Berlin Wall; what to do when the fantasy shatters. I think on the day after we’ll be confronted with many shattered institutions, completely bankrupted, mere Potemkin shells; out of money, out of ideas, and out of excuses. I am not optimistic about society’s ability to handle it because even conservatives, I think, will have difficulty anticipating the thoroughness of it and its probable shocking suddeness.

Aug 21, 2009 - 6:29 pm 11. Tony:

The Revolution will be televised.

1,000 Recess Rallies planned for tomorrow

Aug 21, 2009 - 6:39 pm 12. elby:

Yes indeed Wretchard. The left is coming up hard against reality. For a long time they could partially implement their dreams and the American economic engine kept humming along. We have had partially socialized medicine (Medicare and medicaid, VA and now SChip) for decades now. We have had the lefts ideas and programs implemented in many states and cities (California and Detroit). And still, even in these places, things went along ok for years.

A system can take a certain amount of poison, as long as the level is kept low. It may hurt the body, and slow it down. It may make the body vulnerable, but still the body goes on. However, the left is now proposing to overdose us on the poison at the precise time that the body, sickened and weakened by decades of low level poisoning, is in mortal danger.

I agree that the prospects of sudden and complete economic failure are huge. We don’t, as a nation, seem to be able to stop taking the highly addictive poison.

Here is another take on what we face, and why, by Karl Denninger who writes the Market Ticker blog. He has been sounding the alarm bell over the credit bubble for years. The politicians cannot and will not stop the massive spending and borrowing, nor will they face up to the banks that lent out too much money at too high a risk. Instead of forcing the bad loans out into the public and taking their losses, they are engaging in massive ‘extend and pretend.’ This cannot go on. Eventually it will all blow up, in all of our faces.

Here, Denninger explains it better than I can: http://market-ticker.denninger.net/

I agree that t

Aug 21, 2009 - 6:49 pm 13. Marcus Aurelius:

Whiskey,

Problem being with your notion is try to describe the dangers of inflation to people and their eyes glaze over.

Populist demagogues realize this and will rail on policies designed to protect the integrity of the currency/monetary system.

I was having lunch and the two I was dining with was condemning the Fed for raising rates and putting a damper on lending & the activity that follows from loose credit. It seemed he didn’t realize that inflation the fed was working to throttle eats up his lifetime savings (He was close to retirement).

What really scares me is Obama and the Dems are going to borrow and spend so much — the default conservative position will be to raise taxes in order to preserve the currency.

Aug 21, 2009 - 7:01 pm 14. bob:

“Yes, I love Palin. But young women HATE her”

That simply doesn’t compute with my experience here. My daughter, for instance, loves her. She looks up to her.

‘Let’s go to Alaska, Dad’

‘Buy me a 30.06′

‘I want to catch salmon’

That sort of thing.

My wife loves her too.

I’ve never met anybody yet that hates Sarah.

Aug 21, 2009 - 7:06 pm 15. Mongoose:

Wretchard: A flaw in your reasoning is the fact that the “old authority” or their “cultural ascendancy” was financed to a great degree either indirectly or directly though the government purse. So it is not so much a matter of switching “domains” as openly trying to “man the walls” of their sources of cash. (BTW, they do not care if it anything is “resource limited” or not, they are not the forward thinking or patriotic. They literally cannot make a living in a free market system were they would have to earn their own way.)

I think a great many people, by the way, are aware that those institutions are bankrupt. The clients of those institutions have been mostly the left anyway. I think it will not be that rough.

The bizarre contempt for Bush, who actually was not that bad of a president, all things considered, is testament to this. It can be seen as a psychological displacement or projection phenomena, and this just might account for its strange intentity, and its aspect of a “group psychosis”.

At some level people have already internally acknowledged it all.

The biggest problem is what to do with all those unemployed==and unemployable–liberal “knowledge workers”.

It is the best thing that could happen.

Aug 21, 2009 - 7:07 pm 16. IowaDoug:

I see the Cloward-Piven strategy at work on many fronts in this administration. Cloward and Piven devised strategies to overload systems to the point of crises and eventual collapse after which a socialist utopia would magically arise from the ashes.

Overloading with ever increasing bailouts, health care “reform”, and cap and trade, etc., all point in the same direction – a debt load so massive that the evil capitalist USA collapses under the weight. The red diaper baby at the helm knows where he is taking us. There is a method to his seeming madness.

My greatest concern is that Russia will see the opportunity presented by extreme weakness of the US and launch a final blow to defeat us. How? By launching from the hold of a freighter off the east or west coast a single high altitude EMP bomb which, in a matter of minutes would destroy the electrical grid and send us back to the turn of the 19th century. The freighter would then be sunk to destroy the evidence. Do I recall accurately a story in which Putin explained to W. Bush how this could happen to the US and we would never know who did it?

Wrechard, have you contemplated the EMP possibility?

IowaDoug

Aug 21, 2009 - 7:13 pm 17. Greifer:

–But young women HATE [Palin].

But Whiskey, that will likely change when those young women stop being single. They hate her for all the reasons they currently lack a family. But that hate isn’t rational. Women have to be taught to hate what Sarah Palin is; you can’t reason your way there by living in the world. They are taught it in college–to hate real men, to hate having children, to hate being part of a family, to be at home caretaking the family. In terrible inflation or real economic pain, college will go away, and single women will want the security not of the State but of a man. As soon as they want that man, that family, that child, or recognize they want to be home with that family, they will adore Palin.

There’s certainly concern of demographic change here, but it just isn’t a demographic death like Europe or Japan. Still, will that change happen before or after the more likely college bubble bursting, leading women back to having and wanting families sooner again.

Aug 21, 2009 - 7:14 pm 18. filbert:

I keep thinking about Strauss & Howe’s book–The Fourth Turning.

“The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regeme decays.

“The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime.

“The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants.

“The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.”

IMHO the “old civic order” is the multicultural, welfare-state leftist philosophy towards which we have been drifting ever since the end of World War II. There have been interludes when the drift has slowed–notably the Reagan years–but overall the direction has been towards at least a kind of European social-democracy which is little more than socialism with a velvet glove rather than with the fascist iron fist. Most of our social institutions–the media, higher education, politicians of both parties, religion, big business, Wall Street–are all now corrupt to a greater or lesser extent, and almost everyone now begins to realize the extent of the corruption.

It may be that we have at last entered the Strauss & Howe Crisis period for American civilization for which a lot of people thought 9/11 was the trigger. It may be that instead, Obama’s election is the trigger–the spark that finally sets off the powder keg. I’m not sure if that will be the trigger, or if something else–a Kristallnacht, perhaps?–will set off the real, honest-to-God-things-are-totally-out-of-control Crisis period.

There is definitely a sense now–widespread almost to the point of being universal–that we can no longer go back to what we once had, and what we once were. The uncertain future awaits. I personally hope that what will emerge from this crisis will be some kind of renewal of the original American classical liberalism, but that’s definitely not a sure thing. When things really start to break down (and by that I mean a real breakdown of civic order–riots and, possibly, worse), it’s anybody’s guess what will emerge out the other side of this Crisis.

Aug 21, 2009 - 7:35 pm 19. bob:

The answer is simple.

Some way or other, you got to row your own canoe.

Try and get a good wife in the canoe.

That helps.

Aug 21, 2009 - 7:43 pm 20. Interest Rates » Belmont Club » The nine trillion:

[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]

Aug 21, 2009 - 7:45 pm 21. E. Nigma:

I think that, perhaps on a deeper psychological level it is the result of an inversion of morality.

Hatred of the good for being the good.

Elevation of the banal and ridiculous (for example, the death and surrounding circus of Michael Jackson), and the riducule of virtue (doctors do tonsilectomies and amputations just for the money).

As the fantasy construct becomes more detached from reality, more self-delusional, the more it will vociferously pursue the moral inversion. Soon (years yet away) the call for self-sacrifice and self-imolation will be the highest call of the new ‘virtue’.
We haven’t reached bottom yet, and are frankly nowhere near the bottom. It will get a lot worse before it gets better. Either people will finally, consciously reject the lies and illuisions of the collectivists and looters, or they (the collectivists) will continue to wield the power to confiscate and destroy the wealth of the country, all in the name of a perverted ‘public virtue’.
The debt will continue to grow as long as people are foolish enough to purchase Treasury notes, and supply the cannibals with another meal.

Wretchard, I think you are correct in your overall analysis (long term), but we are a long way yet from the philosophical “inner wall” collapse that you foresee. Even if the Democrats suffer a reverse in 2010 Congreswsional elections, I doubt that the Republicans will muster a majority in the House, and the reduced Democrat majority will be even more militant than it is now. All the moderate Democrats (so-called blue dogs) are generally the ones most vulnerable to defeat. As their influence is likely reduced after 2010, the more radical wing of the Democratic party will have relatively more power than now.

Reality will become even more Orwellian than now in America, the muddled middle will be more confused than ever. Despite the likely low growth and long term unemployment increases, the re-election of Obama in 2012 is not unthinkable, depending who the Republicans put out as a candidate on a ticket. I see no strong candidate that might emerge in 2012.
The Democrats and the Media are unlikely to repeat the mistakes of 1994 that gave the Congressional Majorities back to the Republicans. They will mount a full scale propaganda attack against the opposition in the next year, unlike anything Americans have ever seen in the Modern Era.

Aug 21, 2009 - 7:57 pm 22. Chet Richards:

16 IowaDoug:

Don’t be in a panic about EMP. Unless there is something I don’t know, it is a non issue. It is true that the Starfish experiment temporarily knocked out the power in Hawaii. (Starfish was a very high altitude nuclear explosion. The physics involved a very rapid expansion of a plasma ball which brushed aside the Earth’s magnetic field.) However, by far most of the energy of interest was in the form of long wavelength electromagnetic waves. These long waves coupled into the very long power lines which acted as very long wavelength antennas. The coupled pulse temporarily knocked out some of the electric grid’s infrastructure.

I don’t recall that damage was done to any other electrical apparatus, including the few transistor radios that were then available. In order to create damage to modern electronics it will be necessary to generate a truly stupendous electric field. My guess is that ordinary surge protecting power strips will provide adequate protection.

If you are really worried, you might do a couple of things: 1) invest in a backup gas powered generator; 2) get some backup electronics and put them in a metal box.

However, missile carried nuclear weapons are enormously expensive (hundreds of millions of dollars). Anyone who has them also has competent physicists who can calculate Poynting Vectors. I believe it is very unlikely that such folks would waste a such a valuable resource on the odd chance of blowing out part of our electronic infrastructure – particularly since making big bangs near the ground would be much more effective.

Finally, I note that the internet was designed specifically (by DARPA) to survive all types of nuclear attack.

P.S. I was given this very problem as the final exam (it was the whole take-home exam) in my Graduate School Electricity & Magnetism course.

Aug 21, 2009 - 8:02 pm 23. wretchard:

we are a long way yet from the philosophical “inner wall” collapse that you foresee

Maybe it’s not imminent, but I will argue it is far closer than people think for two reasons: the first is that events are taking place at the heart of the global operating system; and second the system at its heart is complex enough to create emergent events.

One of the reasons that Communism collapsed gracefully is because there was an external source of free energy to cushion it. That source of free energy came from the outside world. Consider North Korea. What keeps it from starving is that it can blackmail the outside world. Without external free energy, North Korea would literally either change or starve.

Further, the ability to adapt gradually relies on a core stability that is over the necessary ranges, linear in behavior. If the core of the system is substantially linear then the peripherals can go bonkers without globally crashing things. But the crisis we are watching unfold is taking place at the heart of the operating system. Legitimacy, finance, and the ultimate security guarantees that keeps the world turning on its axis. Obama’s fiddling with all of them. Other people have pulled levers frenziedly before; but nobody has been in a position to yank the handles he’s pulling. And like some terrible nuclear reactor, humming with vast power that must remain in balance to stay in control, things are being thrown out of kilter. If it goes into a degenerate cycle then the linearity we have always supposed to exist will stop.

How will we know if I am on the right track?

First, if we observe that the institutions and politicians begin to lag the popular sentiment; second, if the system begins to exhibit unprecedented behavior at an increasing rate. Those I think, are the keys. Signs to look for: increasingly frequent short term interventions, zigs and zags, the disappearance of the middle, confusion: in other words loss of the control surfaces and loss of flight information.

Aug 21, 2009 - 8:23 pm 24. programmer:

whiskey@9:

Great exposition, in my opinion.

Aug 21, 2009 - 8:25 pm 25. IowaDoug:

21.Chet Richards

I am far from being panicked about EMP possibilities. However, based on the EMP Commission’s 2008 report and other analysis the info you present may be incomplete.

A quick Google search on EMP Commission and William Graham, its chairman, will bring up a considerable amount of information on the threat. Try this for starters: http://www.heritage.org/research/homelandsecurity/bg2199.cfm

It is better to be personally prepared, however minimally, for economic and security risks.

IowaDoug

Aug 21, 2009 - 8:31 pm 26. Unsk:

Wretchard.

Great comment at 10. The haste of the Democrats does seem to reflect an awareness of their possible demise. The question is what happens when their demise is visibly imminent for all to see? What will Buraq do; will he go quietly?

That issue is unfolding side by side the unraveling of the economy. If you read Denninger and Shedlock, it would appear that the Fed is operating on thin air; it’s actions are no loner rooted on solid economic ground. There is no there there. It kinda like what Wily Coyote would do in the old cartoons when he would momentarily hang in the air after he ran out over a cliff. He would just hang there before he would plummet. The Fed and Buraq have us hanging over the cliff with only air below. When will we plummet to the rocks below?

Aug 21, 2009 - 8:34 pm 27. Lifeofthemind:

bob,
I’ve never met anybody yet that hates Sarah
Pauline Kael didn’t know anyone that voted for Nixon. They are out there.
Try and get a good wife in the canoe
I’m considering leaving a trail of M&Ms, but do you really think a paddle would help?

Aug 21, 2009 - 8:41 pm 28. Raoul Ortega:

By launching from the hold of a freighter off the east or west coast a single high altitude EMP bomb…

This sort of talk is why I can’t take the EMP folks and their fears seriously.

Inorder for the desired EMP effects, the weapon has to be detonated at a high altitude. I’ve heard on the range of 300 miles. Now the Space Shuttle can barely reach that height for Hubble servicing, and the Space Station orbits at a lower altitude. To get to that height and back isn’t such a big deal, but to send a payload several thousand miles inland will require a lot of velocity, practically orbital speeds.

Now no one, NO ONE, has the ability to launch to orbit large masses from mobile platforms to those altitudes. (Yes, I know about the Pegasus vehicle, but those payloads are small. And SeaLaunch is pretty obviously not an oil drilling platform) The Soyuz launcher was originally designed to loft 50s era nuclear weapons to the other side of the globe. A nuke developed by Iran or North Korea is probably not going to be miniaturize. Do you really believe it’s possible to launch a Soyuz sized missile from such a platform without it being known well it advance?

I’ll leave it up to others more knowledgeable about the technical details, but until they can address these concerns with more than handwaving about phantom freighers, I put the EMPers in the same category as those who worked up a panic over computer systems in 1999.

Aug 21, 2009 - 8:53 pm 29. Habu:

We are in a situation where no econommist (if they ever did) knows what to do…most of us will never have aclue what the FED will do, or the economy. Deflation, inflation? That question is still open for debate. We do know that we are spending huge amounts of money we simply print which would traditionally show up as inflation. The FED and others as I outlined earlier today have other plans…devalue the worlds currencies.

Let’s take a look at where we are in term sof what it would take using the old gold thing.

The Big Question: What Gold Price Will Be legislated to reflate The U.S. and Global Economy?
I can’t tell you what gold price the powers will agree to, but here’s what they will be looking at …
… To monetize 100% of the outstanding public and private sector debt in the U.S., the official government price of gold would have to be raised to more than $53,000 per ounce.

To monetize 50%, the price of gold would have to be raised to around $26,500 an ounce.

To monetize 20% would require a gold price a hair over $10,600 an ounce.

To monetize just 10%, gold would have to be priced just over $5,300 an ounce.

Those figures are just based on the U.S. debt structure and do not factor in global debts gone bad. But since the U.S. is the world’s largest debtor and the epicenter of the crisis, the final decision will likely be based mostly on the U.S. debt structure.

How much debt will be monetized via an executive order that raises the official price of gold? What kind of currency devaluation could we expect as a result?
I would not be surprised to see the monetizing of at least 20% of the U.S. debt markets.

Any way you dress this up it remains on Bowery Street with no end in sight except confication of your wealth by force of the world’s bankers and their jackbooted enforcers. Prepare to be much,much poorer in the coming decade and beyond.

Aug 21, 2009 - 8:54 pm 30. E. Nigma:

Habu

I think that is essentially correct. Before we see the sytemic collapse envisioned by Wretchard (which I think is the logical conclusion), we will see confiscatory actions by the government on behalf of others to maintain their wealth.
There is no major figure in either of the major political parties that will stand up and say what a disaster we are heading for. They would be ridiculed in a similar way as George Romney was in 1967 when he got back from a fact-finding tour of South Viet Nam and said he was “brainwashed”. It effectively ended his political career (he was a frontrunner for the 1968 Republican nomination). But in essence, he was correct. The war effort by LBJ forced MAC-V to present the situation in Viet Nam as being something other than what it was. Romney WAS brainwashed.

Economists are great at explaining what happened retrospectively, but not so good at actually predicting future events when the policies are so out of whack with reality.
The so-called “bail out” (creation and usage of the TARP fund) of the banks and other financial institutions may or may not have been the right policy last fall. But the ensuing policies by the Bush administration and moreso by the Obama Administration show a complete disconnect from what allegedly occurred last year.

Right now, the buzz is that the “recovery” is imminent. Stock prices up, home sales supposedly up, etc. Let’s see if this is sustained.
If Wretchard and Habu are both correct (and I see no reason why they aren’t), I would expect we will just about see the high for 2009 in the stock markets now, or within the next few weeks. By November, they should be down significantly.
And the propaganda war for the 2010 election will be the new “Yellow Jounalism”. The model already exists; it is the news media in Western Europe. CNN in America looks right wing compared to CNN Europe. Watching the news in Western Europe is an education; just not a pleasant one.

Aug 21, 2009 - 9:29 pm 31. aaron:

the truly uncertain economic variable will come from human action. what will people do?

Aug 21, 2009 - 9:52 pm 32. Subotai Bahadur:

#27 Raoul Ortega

I don’t know which data sources you are using. There are differences of opinions on the subject. Mine involve government publications and the writings of a number of physicists involved in the field. I tend to believe that the effects will be more damaging than some others do here, if only because almost none of our national civilian infrastructure is suitably hardened against EMP, and we have no stockpile of spares to replace certain critical parts that will be the first to get zapped. And the factories to make those parts will not be operational.

However, that is a discussion of the amplitude of the effects. EMP of the type we are talking about for a strike is generated by a nuclear explosion at the level where the ionosphere begins or higher. Say 19-20 miles. The EMP suitable for an attack is generated not by the initial explosion [There are several types of EMP pulses associated with any nuclear detonation in the troposphere, but none of a range to concern us here.], but rather by a phenomenon known as Compton Scattering that takes place in the ionosphere. Even if I understood it all in detail, I’m pretty sure that I could not convince this box to accept all the math symbols necessary, so I will leave it to anyone who is interested to look up the math. It is not directly proportional to size of the initial blast, meaning that an effect on the ground does not require a warhead in the MT range. A Hiroshima size device will do nicely.

The higher altitudes mentioned probably come from another aspect. The area affected is that inside a circle defined by the visual [line of sight]horizon to the point of blast. The higher the blast, the larger the area affected. I have not seen a discussion of a ‘h’ figure to plug into the equation of 300 miles. 100 miles properly placed would cover most of the continental US, and that is discussed frequently.

I will note that we have already watched some unusual tests of Iranian Shaheed missiles [Russian SCUD's, modified by the Chinese, Pakistanis, and North Koreans, built in Iran] where instead of a flight profile optimized for range with a given warhead weight, they were optimized for an apogee of 20 miles with range as a secondary characteristic. Kind of like what would be used in the notational “SCUD IN A BUCKET” scenario. And yes, the TEL/missile could be concealed in a freighter without too much difficulty. The critical technological breakthrough necessary is not the ability to launch to space station altitudes; but rather the ability to miniaturize and ruggedize an Iranian/Pakistani/whatever nuclear warhead to the point where it can be carried by a Shaheed on such a mission profile [20 mile apogee]. A secondary breakthrough needed would be to convince their guidance systems to launch from a moving platform that is also undergoing pitch, roll, and yaw simultaneously without something unpleasant and counterproductive occuring. The second is available commercially.

I note that there is one other advantage of an EMP attack. Assume a SCUD IN A BUCKET and an EMP detonation. The BUCKET would of course be sanitized and scuttled immediately. There would be no blast, no smoking city, no mountains of dead bodies. And there would be no sure target to retaliate against. If we lose a city to a nuclear blast, even Buraq might be forced to nuke somebody in retaliation or swing from a lamp post. If for a huge part of the country, it just went dark, for years; the outcry for retaliation would not be as immediate and forceful, and with certain people at the levers of power may not be listened to at all.

That said, EMP, via SIAB or otherwise, is only one among several modalities that I consider likely candidates for the inevitable nuclear attack that will come our way in the next couple of years. In another thread I discussed my beliefs as to the specific targets.

For the next few years, we are going to be focusing our national attention on internal matters ranging from starvation to the fight for the Constitution. It does not mean that the external world, which has many nations and groups which hate us and wish us dead, will cease to exist while we are necessarily preoccupied. Nor that they will not take their opportunity to make use of our preoccupation.

Subotai Bahadur

Aug 21, 2009 - 10:16 pm 33. Robohobo:

Yuck, the EMP thing again. Better worry about something like this – December 7, 2008 – rather than an EMP weapon. None of the minor players could carry it out. Like Chet, I know something of it and actually worked to quantify the problem for the DoD years ago.

The real issues are what and where those swans are going to show up as many have written here. Is it that the current regime is just stupid or are they actually working to hobble the system so it collapses? Those are the real issues. Me, I vote to the evil side = working to collapse the system and replace it with some socialist utopia. That utopia would be as close to hell on Earth as you could get.

Aug 21, 2009 - 10:32 pm 34. ledger:

Ah, come on Wretchard, 0bama can fix this financial mess with a new cash 4 clunkers type of program.

Just think of the US Treasury bond as a clunker – useless and inefficient. Shariah bonds are the new thing – a never ending source of borrowing.

Sure, most of New York State and DC will be owned by the Saudis by the end of the 0bama Administration – but that is a small price to pay.

The new 0bama slogan will be: ‘Shariah cash For US Coupon Clunker trash’

or

‘Trade in your old US Bonds 4 Shariah Bonds. Buy Three get one Free!’

[Shariah Finance Watch]

Dow Jones Indexes is set to launch four new indexes for the Middle East and North Africa region, giving investors access to both conventional and Shariah compliant indexes.

http://tinyurl.com/my2uo4

Cash 4 Clunker’s demise.

[Humor from Scott Ott]:

Uncle Sam’s Cash-for-Clunkers program has already spent its allotted $3 billion, making it by government standards an instant success, and forcing Democrats look for alternative ways to compensate auto retailers for the deeply-discounted deals they’ve made on some 457,000 vehicles.

Many car dealers have yet to receive a nickel…However, President Barack Obama today told dealers not to “worry about reimbursement because if cash runs out, we have warehouses across the land stacked high…

http://tinyurl.com/llr2pj

Aug 21, 2009 - 10:35 pm 35. Beverly:

I keep thinking of that quote, “there is a lot of ruin in a nation.” Especially ours. We seem to be almost crazily resilient, like Flubber. So many scenarios have been posited as our impending doom, but somehow we keep on trucking.

I do hope that my dear country, with her ideals restored, can outlast the assault by the international Left. I also hope that the blame, for once, goes to the proper party. And that our people can see the enemy for who they are. Doesn’t happen all that often in history, at least not until a few centuries have passed.

Aug 21, 2009 - 10:42 pm 36. Neil:

@filbert, 18:

Using Strauss & Howe’s terminology, the Fourth Turning most likely began on 9/11/2001. Each “Turning” is about 17 to 18 years, and starting in 1950 puts the turning points at 1967, 1984, and 2001. Remember, WWII didn’t start until 10 years after the 1929 stock market crash. We’re due for another 9 or 10 years of this…

@wretchard, 22:

if we observe that the institutions and politicians begin to lag the popular sentiment; second, if the system begins to exhibit unprecedented behavior at an increasing rate….

I think we’re seeing the beginnings of such behavior now. I detest protests, having grown up with a chummy, deliberative, citizen-led, small-town version of politics and warm memories of hanging around with my father at the county clerk’s office during election night. But I have been to protests from time to time, to sample the various cultures for my own information. On that principle I attended one of the tea parties, and can say that they’re quite genuine. They’ve got a real 1774 feel to them that I found terrifying, in a don’t-stand-between-mama-bear-and-cub sort of way. The Democrat response of attempting to marginalize them with crude insults is precisely wrong, from a public relations point of view. It’s the kind of thing that might have worked even two years ago, but now it’s like trying to shoot that mama bear with a 9mm pistol. I am deep in establishment “blue” territory here, and they are behaving as though they are unaware of the danger. They are way behind the curve.

Likewise the stimulus bill and the GM/Chrysler takeovers. Both of those actions were clearly payoffs to moneyed constituencies, with some small public good arguably accomplished in addition. In a private firm, it would have been called embezzlement. What is new now is that even deep-blue believers will admit as much, privately. They would never have done so during the Clinton years. The establishment arranged its payoffs the way they have always done, expecting no more protest than they have ever gotten, but this time everybody noticed the difference between their actions and the public good.

Institutions can survive for decades with the “secret” weakness that everybody knows about, but now the public is organizing with the intent of attacking the establishment at that weak point. The weak point between the establishment’s claims to legitimacy and its actions. They’ve already cracked it open a bit. The Northeastern elite that has held power in the U.S. since 1865 is about to lose the Mandate of Heaven.

The destruction of the existing establishment is all foreseeable and apparently inevitable. What terrifies me is the unknown that follows.

Aug 21, 2009 - 10:50 pm 37. Chet Richards:

EMP again:

The electric field strength for an ionization discharge at 1 atmosphere is about 30,000 volts per centimeter. This field strength will cause an arc discharge between parallel flat plates. Of course, a sharpened tip will provide a higher local field strength, so we can get a discharge at lower voltages with particular geometries.

A modern IC might have transistor densities on the order of 1 micron, and could sustain a voltage of perhaps 3 to 5 volts (ultra small devices run at lower voltages so as to prevent discharge breakdowns in the semiconductors – the sustainable field strength – volts per cm – is pretty much independent of size). Such a transistor can withstand field strengths on the order of 30,000 volts per centimeter.

In other words, the EMP would have to be just about strong enough to create a plasma in the atmosphere before it could destroy the transistor. In practice there can be mechanisms to “focus” the electric field so as to create local plasma discharges, or very high currents, at lower total electric field strengths. Oddly enough, such plasmas also act to provide a kind of shielding which dissipates the EM energy prematurely.

The basic message, here, is that it is not easy to wreck electronics with a distant EMP source. Open source literature emphasizes that non-nuclear explosive EMP weapons have to get very close to their targets (tens of meters) to do significant damage. Even though nucs release enormous energy, I find it hard to believe that they will do much damage to microelectronics at significant ranges through EMP. EMP does not seem to me to be an efficient use of nuclear weapons – particularly since the US is a very big place.

Note: All the nuclear effects that create EMP at high altitude also work just as well with surface blasts, but at closer range. Bomb testing in the atmosphere did not knock out much electronic stuff – except through blast effects.

There is, however, a different situation for exoatmospheric electronics, such as those on satellites. In space, where there is no atmospheric shielding, prompt radiation is extremely lethal out to a substantial distance. The actual keep-out distance is classified, but this is a real concern for satellite designers. Also, nuclear detonations pump up the Van Allen belts and that would then provide another significant damage mechanism. Our military is well aware of all this and precautions have been taken. I don’t know if civilian satellites have comparable protection.

Aug 21, 2009 - 11:48 pm 38. Fletcher Christian:

I don’t know about EMP and I am prepared to admit it. However, consider this scenario: Russia gets even more aggressive in foreign policy than it already is, and decides to help the jihadis with a hammerblow against America. Russia has already demonstrated a 100-megaton nuke design (although they reduced it for the test) and upscaling it would not be much of a problem.

1 gigaton in LEO would cause, at the right time of the year, firestorms over millions of square miles of forest and prairie. The EMP effect might not actually be all that important then.

Yet another reason for decreasing Western dependence on oil and gas.

Aug 22, 2009 - 2:56 am 39. Belmont Club » The nine trillion | Belmont live today:

[...] Club. August 21st, 2009 5:13 pm. Continued here: Belmont Club » The figure trillion Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: club-, club-august, nine-trillion-, president, president-obama, [...]

Aug 22, 2009 - 3:39 am 40. reg:

#10 wretchard
everybody left and right is basing their philosophies on the last 60 yrs.We’ve all been suffering as the Japanese once called it ‘victory disease’.the ripples from that event are finally fading out and we are all about to get a large dose of reality.our currencies are based on faith not gold these days,it will take time for doubt to erode that faith,but at the moment when the faith dies,the collapse will seem sudden.

All this EMP thing.Nobody sane with a home address will try this , because even in the most successful EMP attack(depends on your point of view) the US military will still have enough nukes to blow the tits off the world.it’s as likely they’ll go after suspects as the convicted.just in case.On the other hand if you are on a mission from God and the is how you signal the 12th imam that it’s time to return, wellll.

Aug 22, 2009 - 3:55 am 41. Paul off the beach.:

Why EMP a country that is committing suicide?

Aug 22, 2009 - 4:58 am 42. Don51:

When it collapses where do you turn?
What government institution still retains the trust and confidence of a broad stretch of the American population?
And isn’t that institution just now emerging from reconstructing another country that laid in ruin?

And we’re not Romans?

Aug 22, 2009 - 5:21 am 43. jWarrior:

The book One Second After (http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-After-William-Forstchen/dp/0765317583) gives a good account of the Many bad things that will happen in even a small town after a successful EMP strike. The real question for me is: Do the Iranians believe that 12th Iman stuff or is it just a crazy uncle act? History shows that the USA is slow to be roused but is a terror once it gets going.

Aug 22, 2009 - 5:37 am 44. Tarnsman:

Re: the midterms in 2010.

1994. Clinton watched his party lose 54 House seats and 9 Senators

1946. Truman watched his party lose 55 House seats and 12 Senators.

1938. FDR watched his party lose 71 House seats and 6 Senators.

1922. Harding watched his party lose 75 House seats and 8 Senators

1890. Harrison watched his party lose 85 House seats.

1874. Grant watched his party lose 96 House seats and 8 Senators.

1896. Cleveland watched his party lose 116 House seats and 5 Senators.

So the Democrats loses control on the House is very, very possible. The historical average is a loss of 3 Senate seats and 34 House seats for the President’s party in the midterms. But as those examples above shows, there can be “blow outs”. On! Bush’s loses in 2006: 28 House seats and six senators, well within historical norms.

Aug 22, 2009 - 5:44 am 45. joe buzz:

Tarnsman, do you envision Obama, Acorn and the unions sitting by and watching themselves lose power? Did the no. 1 lawyer in the land not just give club carrying voter intimidation a pass? In my less than humble opinion EMP bursts should not be our immediate concern unless you guys are referring to Egotistical Men in Power on both sides of the aisle. The privileged legislators that have forgotten that they serve the people are in dire need of a civics lesson.

Aug 22, 2009 - 6:29 am 46. elby:

On a thread about the impending economic collapse someone has to go and clutter it up with stupid speculation about EMP attacks. Please save that for another thread. EMP attacks are pure speculation. But the economic disaster is very real and is happening NOW. Fantasy vs. Reality.

Best economic senario: long term recession, like in Japan.

Worst economic scenario: currency collapse. Collapse of banking system.

We need to discuss this, what it means, and how that will affect this country. Not waste our time speculating on science fiction type doomsday scenarios. At least not in a thread about what the American economy is facing right here and right now.

Aug 22, 2009 - 6:41 am 47. Jay:

Chet, I presented a paper at a signal processing meeting. Most of the speakers and participants worked for military oriented technoloy firms. One participant told us during the break that when the Chernoble reactor glew all transitors radios for miles around were knocked out. Since the Russians still use minature tubes in radios and torpedos the Russian tube radios worked.
One of my friends is a physicist who works on electro-mechanical systems for the Army. When I asked him about the EMP threat he said that it was real. There are two specialists in this area working at UT who were the top advisors to the program managers in DOD who deal with EMP. It is a real threat to the three main grids in the US.

Aug 22, 2009 - 8:02 am 48. Steve J. Nelson:

I don’t mean to rain on the parade of the conservatives here talking about Obama’s spending mania, which is huge, but it doesn’t help matters when even the Heritage Foundation is in denial about foreign governments, particularly the Russians and Chinese, threatening to dump the dollar. God forbid that Heritage acknowledge that if we can’t afford trillions for Obamacare, we probably also can’t afford to borrow half a trillion or more to stay in Afghanistan and Iraq for ten more years while simultaneously promoting military bases/client states around Russia and perhaps winking and nodding at separatism inside China. At the end of the day, we’re all talking about the same pile of debt and the same inability to keep the course, whether the billions are for bases in 120 countries or kickbacks to ACORN.

Aug 22, 2009 - 8:03 am 49. Steve J. Nelson:

I don’t mean to rain on the parade of discussing The Left here, but when even the Heritage Foundation is in denial about the real desire of Chinese and Russian central banks to dump the dollar, it does not help matters. Heritage of course does not want any financial hinderance on U.S. foreign policy, but it’s already staring us in the face.

Ultimately it’s all the same unsustainable national debt whether it was acquired building military bases in 120 countries, including on Russia and China’s borders, or for Obamacare. There is no magic dross around defense spending, as Ike acknowledged but most Republicans have forgotten.

Aug 22, 2009 - 8:08 am 50. Tony:

Good news! The global recession is over! Just not here in the USA.

Here’s Mark “Mr. Witty” Steyn:

Meanwhile, in Brazil, India, China, Japan and much of Continental Europe the recession has ended. In the second quarter this year, both the French and German economies grew by 0.3 percent, while the U.S. economy shrank by 1 percent. How can that be? Unlike America, France and Germany had no government stimulus worth speaking of, the Germans declining to go the Obama route on the quaint grounds that they couldn’t afford it. They did not invest in the critical signage-in-front-of-holes-in-the-road sector. And yet their recession has gone away. Of the world’s biggest economies, only the U.S., Britain and Italy are still contracting. All three are big stimulators, though Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi can’t compete with Obama’s $800 billion porkapalooza. The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.

Actually, when I say “to less effect,” that’s not strictly true: Due to Obama, one of the least-indebted developed nations is now one of the most indebted – and getting ever more so. We’ve become the third most debt-ridden country, after Japan and Italy. According to last month’s IMF report, general government debt as a percentage of GDP will rise from 63 percent in 2007 to 88.8 percent this year and to 99.8 percent of GDP next year.

Of course, the president retains his formidable political skills, artfully distracting attention from his stimulus debacle with his health care debacle.

Aug 22, 2009 - 8:23 am 51. RWE:

Wretchard #22:

What we are talking about once more is “Design Margin.” When it comes to Capitalism, the Left is like the two guys on the golf course who are caught in a rainstorm. They get under a tree to stay dry and when the storm does not let up one of them asks what they will do when the tree gets soaked through. The other guy looks at him as if he were crazy and says ”You idiot! There are hundreds of trees on this golf course! We will just get under another one until it is soaked through and after that another one and so on. We have weeks before all of the trees get soaked through!” What the Left does not realize is that, like the rainstorm, their ceaseless efforts are soaking through ALL of the trees SIMULTANEOUSLY. The next tree they try will be soaked through, and any that are not will be defended by people who take their 2nd Amendment rights very seriously.

Raoul #27:

Nope, nope and nope. Many ICBMs are incapable of achieving orbital velocities without substituting upper stages for those heavy reentry vehicle and nukes. And they typically get up above 3000 miles on a point to point trajectory. They are Ballistic Missiles, right? So a general rule of thumb is that they go up about as high as they go horizontally. To get 4500 miles downrange they go about 4500 miles high. Altitude has nothing to do with orbital velocities. And you do not get to orbit by going straight up and then hanging a right turn. Space boosters actually fly less steep trajectories than do ICBMs because they are trying to get velocity rather than altitude. It is much, much easier to get nice and high and not stay there than it is to get to orbit. By the way, I work at Cape Canaveral.

Now, as for the effectiveness of EMP, I don’t know much and I won’t say everything I know. By the way, I collect and restore old WWII vacuum tube radios as a hobby.

Aug 22, 2009 - 8:43 am 52. elby:

I have heard all the arguments about the possibility of economic collapse. What I want to know, and hope the brighter minds here can help to flesh out, is what happens after that?

What happens when the dollar collapses? What happens if due to a steeply declining dollar, oil prices shoot to the moon? Last summer truckers were nearly put out of business due to skyrocketing diesel fuel costs. What happens if it puts them over the edge?

What happens when food is either scarce or hugely expensive? We already have vast swathes of the rich California central valley that will now lay fallow because the jackasses in charge there are more concerned about an insignificant fish than people.

What happens when people can no longer afford to heat their homes? Or can’t get to work due to high gas prices?

What happens if huge numbers of major banks collapse under the weight of their bad loans? What happens when credit tightens?

What happens if the government can no longer borrow money? How will it pay its obligations? What happens to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and a whole host of other entitlement and welfare programs? Do the checks simply stop, or get reduced or do some just simply get thrown off the system?

What happens when cities are forced to reduce their police forces? What happens to the crime rate, when an angry and spoiled populace no longer gets their checks? They have been trained for decades to feel that the world owes them, so what do you think they’re going to do?

But don’t mind me. Go ahead and discuss the non issue of EMP. I have to face reality. My kids are growing up into this and I have to find a way to survive with 5 kids still at home, one newly married daughter and a severely disabled husband who will require full time care. I am not interested in fantasy doomsday scenarios. There is a very real doomsday just around the corner.

Last summer and fall were only foreshadowing of the real crisis to come.

Aug 22, 2009 - 9:34 am 53. rhhardin:

Hummel gets wrong the effect of diminishing seignorage.

Paying interest on bank reserves just means that selling debt is automatic instead of open to bids. Inflation does not become unavailable; if anything, easier.

The government can always spend, and if it does not take money out of circulation to counter it, by taxing or borrowing, other things being equal, there will be inflation.

Aug 22, 2009 - 10:35 am 54. Robohobo:

elby – That is the crux is it not? But your questions reflect some of the mindset. What happens when the cities reduce their police forces? Well, I for one did not depend on the ‘local yokels’ for defense and they know it, BTW. As for some of your other questions, drag out that Google search engine and look up SHTF scenarios and web sites for some answers.

Self reliance is the key word here.

Aug 22, 2009 - 10:50 am 55. Salt Lick:

elby — There’s an Argentinian fellow goes by the name of ferfal who has written extensively on measures he took to “survive” his country’s complete economic collapse in 2001. Here’s a starting point for his blog and advertisement for his book. From what I gather, ferfal is an important voice among survivalists.

I offer no opinion on whether the American future holds an economic and societal collapse. The economic gurus over at Forbes, RealClearPolitics (Economy), MSN, Money, etc, are all over the place with predictions, and I don’t have the technical background to weed the wheat from the chaff. I have, however, taken a few precautions based on what this ferfal suggests and that bit of preparation at least eases my mind.

Good luck.

Aug 22, 2009 - 11:13 am 56. Chet Richards:

46. Jay:

Chernoble was not a nuclear bomb, it was a reactor melt-down. It is possible that a voltage transient over the power lines knocked out radios that were plugged in without surge protection.

In some circumstances the leads into electronic devices can accumulate enough potential difference to cause an electrical discharge across small components, but the free space electric field would have to be very large and that means that the power flux density must also be high. This effect makes it possible for certain types of radar transmitters to act as short range EMP weapons.

Let’s consider a scenario which is much worse than real. Suppose we have a 100 kT bomb exploding 100 km away. We assume that all the energy is converted to an EMP which lasts 1 millisecond. The energy of a 100 kT bomb is 4.2×10E14 joules. At 100 km range, the total energy flux (assuming no intermediate absorption) is 3.34×10E3 joules/m2, or 0.334 joules/cm2. Assuming a 1 millisecond pulse, the power density at 100 km is 334 watts/cm2. The instantaneous electric field is sqrt(334×377) = 355 volts/cm.

In the ideal case, this would do some damage to poorly designed free standing electronics. In practice the situation is not nearly so bad. One major reason is that relatively little of the blast energy is translated into EMP. The second is that any energy which creates a plasma (e.g. by ionizing the atmosphere) also creates a shield against prompt EMP (except for the moving plasma acting to squeeze the Earth’s magnetic field lines, which I mentioned above).

As you alluded to, the main effect is to couple energy into the power lines, which will create a voltage surge which can knock out unprotected devices which are plugged in.

Aug 22, 2009 - 11:20 am 57. aaron:

here’s a piece on argentina’s eltdown and the similarities to the usa.

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?p=106493

Aug 22, 2009 - 11:39 am 58. raven:

ELBY-
Survivalists used to be viewed as whack jobs.

At this juncture I submit anyone who is NOT a survivalist is a whack job.

Ferfal’s site is excellent.-Bear in mind it is written from the viewpoint of a city dweller.
Community is strength.

Aug 22, 2009 - 12:30 pm 59. Tony:

Chet, nice name and Welcome to the Belmont Club. Now you’re talking!

This effect makes it possible for certain types of radar transmitters to act as short range EMP weapons.

This would be the AESA radars on the F-22, especially, that can sneak in and lay a precise beam of disorganization on enemy weapons, like Cruise missiles and so forth.

EW has been going since radar was first deployed, and it has always worked on radar receivers. The new EW weapons make a much wider range of things “receivers.”

I remember meeting an old Israeli on an airline flight one time, and we got to talking about the Arab-Israeli War, and he told me the Israelis had a “switch that turned off the other airplanes.”

Nothing new under the sun, only now the F-22 is an “outmoded” “Cold War relic” I understand.

Aug 22, 2009 - 3:08 pm 60. » Daily Links II - 08/22/09 NoisyRoom.net: Where liberty dwells, there is my country…:

[...] The nine trillion [...]

Aug 22, 2009 - 5:03 pm 61. Robohobo:

Chet – From another life:

Rise time of waveform is 3-5ns
100ns FWHM (full width half max)
Wave form is a critically damped sine wave.

Plug that into the calcs.

Aug 22, 2009 - 6:39 pm 62. Willy:

Elby and others.

The scenarios of golbal economic collapse and global currency schemes are predicted in the Bible. That book suggests the only way to survive is to believe Jesus is your savior, make prayer a key part of your survival planning, and pass on the word. Jesus is comming back to take his friends to heaven. I know that sounds crazy compared to the reality of the comming collapse, but is really the only hope we have. Your guns will run out of bullets, your food storage will run out, and the mobs will overcome all efforts of resistance. Get out of the cities, find some land somewhere with running water, a well, and good soil for a garden. This should help lessen the burdens of the “time of trouble” before it is too late. Unfortunately I think that time has already passed for many.

My church has since the late 1800s consistently tought that time is short. Looking back at the history of the progressive march detailed in many posts here at BC it looks like they were right all along. Communisim has proven to be a satanic belief system, leading to death and distruction of millions (now the entire world). This is reality.

Aug 23, 2009 - 3:49 am 63. Mad Fiddler:

Protect yourself and your property from EMP:

1) Purchase several rolls of heavy Duty Aluminum Foil,
2) fashion a beanie for your cranium of at least three layers.
3) Create aluminum shields for the portions of all electronic appliances; place them with tape or rubber bands on the faces NEAREST to the SKY.
4) glue or tape triple-thick layers of foil to the bonnet of your autocar, taking care to protect the micro-chip components. Don’t be stingy with the foil.
5) If you are aesthetically-minded, you might consider applying an attractive coat of spray paint to match or coordinate to the existing paint pattern.

6) Do not head for the hills; that places you in a position that is both nearer to any EMP detonation AND above a large fraction of the protective atmosphere. You will be in additional danger from stochastic effects of ionizing radiation from daughter particles of cosmic ray/atmospheric molecule collisions. Doing so will additionally expose your retinas to six percent greater amounts of ultraviolet radiation for each 1000 feet you rise above your customary altitude of repose. Makes you go blind sooner, and also promotes melanoma and degradation of subcutaneous connective tissue, leading to premature wrinklediness.

Seriously, our satellite communications systems – upon which we depend for intercontinental phone, radio, TV, AND those little chips that tell the government where you is at every moment of the live-long day – are darned sensitive even to VISIBLE LIGHT, much less the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Maybe there are hidden blessings.

Aug 23, 2009 - 9:34 pm 64. Beth:

Elby:

EMP attacks might be a non-issue and discussing them might be pure speculation. Until one takes place. At which point, unlike the worsening economic situation, it will suddenly be way too late to do anything about it, including having a discussion here.

Keep in mind that although we’re all undoubtedly retroactive geniuses, if you had talked about a genuine economic catastrophe (as opposed to a possibly severe setback) the likes of which we’re discussing until quite recently, most people would have considered you to be engaging in stupid doomsday speculation. Heck, most still would consider this fantasy.

Or in short: the fact that we’re screwing ourselves doesn’t mean that we needn’t concern ourselves with our enemies screwing us too.

I take your point about trying to keep on topic, but you might want to consider dialing down the hostility and condescension.

Aug 23, 2009 - 9:34 pm

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