It’s time to start drinking heavily.

For a long time, I had a reputation of being a “chicken little”, warning of what I saw as dangerous instability in the world’s financial systems, and outright delusional behavior by the American electorate/consumer. It was vaguely reassuring to see a recognized expert downplay my concerns, even if the answers sometimes seemed a little optimistic.

Three years ago, I predicted a 15% downturn in nationwide real estate prices, with more severe impact in regions populated by boomers watching too much Mortgage Porn.

Sadly, I was underestimating the impact of the over-leveraged consumer, and not nearly cynical enough about the absolute fraud in the world financial system. Where I expected marginal value, I’ve instead found outright theft and classic Ponzi schemes.

Today, George Soros glumly noted that the state of our finances is worse than the great depression, and should more accurately be compared to the complete collapse of the USSR.

(I don’t follow the talk radio types, so if Rush Limbaugh has denounced Soros, I apologize in advance. Limbaugh’s show makes a lot of money running ads from various get-rich-quick schemes and commodity-trading boiler rooms, so clearly he’s an expert.)

Then there’s Paul Volcker, quoted as saying

“I don’t remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world”

Speaking as someone who pored over the stats in the Wall St. Journal, and did very nicely in the dot-com runup, that’s fucking terrifying.

America’s largest brokerage houses have been effectively shut down, and our banks are referred to as “zombies”, a term last used on a few Japanese banks that were insolvent, but had their public identity maintained through cash infusions, to avoid a national panic.

This strategy worked in Japan – somewhat – because the country had a large, profitable manufacturing base, a high personal savings rate, an educated workforce, and virtually no military or foreign obligations.

In comparison, the US is coming off a spending binge to make the “roaring 20’s” blush with embarrassment, our manufacturing base is near collapse, and we’re committed to military expenditures comparable to D-Day. We all know that almost 5,000 young Americans have been killed in Mission Accomplished, but the terrifying figure is the number of injured, disabled, and mentally traumatized. Many of these people will not only be unable to support themselves, they will require complex and expensive care for decades.

Our spending on education lags behind many other third-world countries, with occasional surges to pay religious law specialists to make sure none of that evolution nonsense gets into poor Britney’s head.

This is usually the point in my rant where I lighten up and point to the bright side of the story.

There isn’t a bright side.

We’ve emptied our wallets, our bank accounts, and cashed in the blue-chips for tulip bulbs. A lot of people who were expecting a decade of polo shirts and golf are in for a few years of squalor and thrift-shop used clothing.

In short, we’re fucked. Might as well drink up.