Nouriel Roubini

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Thursday January 29, 2009 · 7:34 PM PST

2009/01/29 · 19:34

Years ago, I used to think mostly about how to link up my skills and experiences and passions with social justice activists and social movements to prevent the calamity of the next Depression from coming.

But at a certain point (also years ago) I reluctantly shifted focus to how social movements and activists could position communities to survive an unstoppable catastrophe headed down the pike. (Since then, I've focused on local community organizing for survival, and mostly written off the larger state and national potential for positive change.)

And although I know it's petty and useless at this late date, I still have bubbles of rage at the obscuring of reality done for so long by mainstream cultural articulators (news media, politicians, etc.) and the celebrity worship they're now bringing, sporadically, belatedly, to the people who saw it coming and actually did manage to get a little notice for their predictions...

...the people - and there always are a few - for whom foresight is 20/20, maybe because they've got no personal stake in maintaining illusions, so they can read the signs accurately.

Even as he wins plaudits for his prescience, Roubini, 50, says worse lies ahead. Banks face bigger credit losses than they realize, more financial companies will require state takeovers and the world economy will keep shrinking throughout 2009, he says.

"The consensus is catching up with me, but it’s still behind," Roubini said in an interview in Davos. "I don’t know what some people are smoking."

Bloomberg article.Bloomberg article

It hurts so bad to think about what might have been, had the voices of reason been heeded earlier, and what might still be, but probably won't, unless we can somehow break free of the continued illusions/shit sandwiches we're being fed, not just for ourselves as individuals trying to cope, but in a far broader, culture-wide way, as a collection of small communities of people working together to scrape together a survivable future - not a return to the ruinous "prosperity" we've been suckered into wanting - from the rubble of the present.

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