The Hyperreal Economy

UPDATE: The Huffington Post is down with the Hyperhighway to Hell. Read this post there and comment if you dare.

I have bad news for you. American currency is not what it used to be. And we are no longer a beacon of freedom to the oppressed of Earth, no matter what Bush and Cheney are selling. Disaster capitalism. Hostile takeovers. Terminology hiding the same authoritarian impulse. We're now a people under a spell, and there's nothing that the Federal Reserve can do about it.

In what may be the most poetic of timings, the Fed is set to publicize their secretive assessment of the state of the American economy on Halloween. Think the living dead meets the dying dollar, and you're there. It should make for compelling cinema.

In short, the stock market rises and falls on the Fed's mere words, proving that it is indeed language not liquidity that is the currency fueling our capitalist engine. And while the focus is on the cash and bling of hedge funders and hip-hoppers, the truth is that money is a lie. It's simply information, exchanged in symbols. Paper, gold, silver, whatever. We used to trade in ochre and livestock. What matters is the matter at hand: How our consensually established value enhances the world-at-large. If it doesn't, it ceases to be currency. It becomes oppression.

I wrote about this fucked up condition for AlterNet recently, calling it the hyperreal economy. But those are just buzzwords, built in hopes of attracting attention to what is becoming a very serious problem. From the dominance of electronic stock transactions and worthless IOUs called naked shorts to craps, misinformation and the impending loss of American nationhood, the new millennium's globalized economy might as well be The Matrix. A loosely managed game theory, coming apart at the seams.

Having researched the game above our heads and talked with economists and CEOs on either side of the political divide for the last year or so, I have come to realize that economics is just another game of chance, which like all games need language to breathe them into being. And so when the Fed comes out this Halloween offering dull wonk talk and a quarter-point rate cut, it's almost a certainty that stocks will rise as more and more rich people cash out of the faltering American empire. Like I wrote for AlterNet, all of them know that a recession like few we've experienced is coming. The only question now is whether or not it will occur during a Bush administration or a Clinton administration. The chess pieces have all been placed. The battle is on, and we're all just pawns in the cash grab.

Here's the short version: By the time the Iraqmire ends, we'll be trillions in the hole. The end of oil will throw our once Great Society into chaos. American dollars, already on a decline more than slightly resembling the Titanic crashing into an iceberg, will tumble from respected to reviled. Throw some global warming into that mashup and you have hell on Earth.

The only question left is what we plan to do about it.

We are on the cusp of both disaster and greatness, defining the double-edged sword with every step we take. The Bush administration has broken our mirror of wholeness, illustrating the narcissistic horror an empire at wane can wreak on the world that once considered it the pinnacle of social achievement. We can either absorb that tragedy and evolve, or dig deeper holes in which to hide. Regardless of what the Fed decides on Halloween or which party wins the White House in 2008, we are in danger as a people. In the decades to come, it's not Iran or China or Russia or anyone else who will screw our futures.

No, our planet is going to become our worst enemy, if we keep treating it like shit. The science is in. The rest is propaganda or diversion. We need to pull it together. We need to innovate like our lives depend on it.

Because they do.