Thursday, November 29, 2007

knitta, please


Eric and I have been following a few theories for a while. Peak oil, which is mainly the idea that the majority of the world's oil supply has already been spent and we are at the beginning of a swift decline in supply. The housing bubble, which has been covered a bit in the news as the subprime mortage problem. The subprime thing is just the tip of the iceberg though as the news coverage doesn't even touch on what's to come as ARM loans reset, millions of people that bought homes beyond their means default, and banks that sold these loans all over the world falter. And the dollar dropping in value as the fed lowers interest rates to try and stave off a crisis. And we've also been watching the general problem of affluenza grow and grow.
Here are some sites to look at.
peak oil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
the housing bubble
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_bubble and here http://housingpanic.blogspot.com/
and affluenza
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluenza

If you're not familiar with these ideas it might be a good time to read up on it all. Watching the news lately it's hard not to feel like all these things are coming together to form a kind of perfect storm, financially speaking.

It's hard to know what you can do as an individual to change the flow of things or to even go against the tide. This year, besides going minimalist, we're going to try and do Xmas without buying anything from China. Since it's so hard to find things made in the US we might try and make our gifts this year. I, for one, have taught myself to knit. I'm sure all my friends and loved ones will really appreciate a hand made scarf.Now, I don't know how they're all going to manage to share it over the long distances, but that's not my problem. It's the thought that counts and my thoughts are worth more than the American dollar right now.

Despite the gloom and doom of what I see on the financial horizon, I'm actually in a pretty festive spirit. This song and the 5 cd box set I got from Sufjan has a lot to do with it. It's like a candy cane for my ears, but way less painful than that actually sounds.

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