Retirement in the Time of Cholera

I reached my sabbath decade a couple of years ago. Even before that, my long work history in federal service allowed me to take retirement. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, so I work away at things that I believe will be helpful, trying to emulate our Father in Heaven who rests and enjoys the fruits of his labor, while keeping everything on an even keel.

During the final decade of my life-cycle, maintaining an even keel looks like it will require battening down the hatches. Financial collapse looms. Best to turn liquid assets into something more permanent. The Social Security Administration tells me that if I live another 3 years, I have a better than average chance of making it to 83 years. That fails to include the life-threatening risks that accompany hard times and ecological collapse, not to mention the prospects of Social Security insolvency. I think I'll take that bird in my hand.

Financial planning should include short-, medium-, and long-term goals. Those time frames compress in the sunset years. Right now, I see them as 1, 5, and 10 years. These days, financial assets for the medium- and long-term time frames should be kept in gems or precious metals. These should be put to use as the occasion arises to purchase durable goods and property that will have near-term, as well as lasting, value in production or trade.

Working for pay should be low priority. Managing and reducing assets already acquired, i.e. having one's affairs in order, should be emphasized.

Aside from survival, the sabbath decade should be one of enjoyment. Rewards should come from diligent saving. Vacations and hobbies should be undertaken more earnestly, pets and spouses given more time and attention. Luxuries have no place in my budget, but there are some things that money can buy that could make life a bit more enjoyable. Following Ralph Nader's advice, I subscribe to Consumer Reports to know what could be worth buying, though living with less is my m.o.

I've come to put the pleasure of good cooking nearly on par with life itself.  Everything around me can go to Hell, but tasty, wholesome food is my bottom line. When that basic pleasure is gone, I don't think I will last much longer. Could that be why people who lose their sense of smell die within 5 years? Smell and taste are mutual senses.

Nap time is also hugely rewarding. Sleep comes so much easier in the middle of the day, especially when I've been doing physical labor. Many days, a 10- or 15-minute nap brings wonderful relief from the tiredness that comes with age.

Naps and night sleep fill the mind with dreams, which for me have little waking value, but are valuable in and of themselves. Perhaps if food fails, I can find a way to alter my mental state to allow me to endure by consuming raw foods and pharmaceuticals, living out my remaining days with nightdreams and daydreams as a refuge from the waking nightmare of civilization's collapse.

Death Spiral

This week, the British medical journal, The Lancet, put out their annual assessment on the impact of climate change on human health. The report examines a small number of human health indicators and a much larger slate of human climate intervention measures to arrive at the conclusion that:

Many of the trends show positive change with time, most notably in global investment in zero-carbon energy supply, energy efficiency, new coal-fired electricity capacity, employment in the renewable energy sector, and divestment in fossil fuels. However, the change is relatively slow and must accelerate rapidly to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

Just how slow the change has been and how rapidly it must be accelerated is the subject of a report, also issued this week, by financial gurus from Stanford and the Hoover Institute. Both of these reports are a bit too opaque for the general reader, but the Energy 202 clarifies one salient point from the latter, i.e. that 2/3 of all private investment capital would have to go to clean energy projects in order for the world to meet the 2 C upper limit set by the Paris agreement.  Right now, the proportion of investment in this sector is less than 1/5 out of the total $3.4 trillion invested by pension, mutual, and sovereign wealth funds, alongside billionaires. So much for The Lancet report's saving grace, huh?

As we would expect in a report about human health effects, mortality due to weather-related disasters and diseases is reported by The Lancet. The figures appear to be fairly steady over the past ten years - nothing to get excited about. For that, one needs to look at forecasts, rather than statistics.

From Albert Bates at The Great Change

One forecast that includes global death rates is The Limits to Growth. The notional curve portrayed in this World 3 result shows deaths beginning to climb within the next few years as food scarcity kicks in and industry output declines. Sometime before 2050, deaths begin to skyrocket. A forecast curve showing climate-related deaths only, by Sam Carana, shows a similar steep rise in the next few years after being lulled by such steady, predictable death rates over the past half century. 

Point being, that we can't expect to keep seeing a stable death rate, whether due to climate factors or in general. Life is going to become much more precarious. The Lancet understates the severity of our predicament, but deserves the last word for prompting this look at how close we might be to human extinction.

We found that the symptoms of climate change have been clear for a number of years, with the health impacts far worse than previously understood... Climate change has serious implications for our health, wellbeing, livelihoods, and the structure of organised society. Its direct effects result from rising temperatures and changes in the frequency and strength of storms, floods, droughts, and heatwaves—with physical and mental health consequences. The impacts of climate change will also be mediated through less direct pathways, including changes in crop yields, the burden and distribution of infectious disease, and in climate-induced population displacement and violent conflict.

Coming Apart at the Seams

The financial system is commonly seen as the point of origin in scenarios that postulate societal breakdown. Its precarious condition is one of the big causes of our ongoing long emergency. If the wrong thread is pulled in the financial system, the whole fabric of civilization could come unraveled pretty quickly.

When one of those threads was pulled out in 2007, the U.S. and other governments went into crisis mode in order to patch up and reinforce damaged areas. One of the reinforcements was a 2,300-page law known as Dodd-Frank which bankers have wheedled and whined against for the past six years and now have a so-called President who is willing to accommodate them in reforming it. In doing so, tRump could loosen the binding behind the crazy quilt of the financial system. After eliminating safeguards, Congress will try to pass a watered-down version of Dodd-Frank or a new manifestation of Glass-Steagall, but as with the ACA, tRump appears to be mainly in demolition mode. The question is, how far can the financial industry stretch a weakened fabric before splitting the seams?

Splitting of those seams along national boundaries may contribute to fulfilling tRump's isolationist ideals, but, even if the financial fabric remains intact, the likely result of gutting Dodd-Frank is more oligopolization of the financial industry. Lip service is being paid to improving the lot of communities and consumers, (and tRump's friends with "nice businesses") but the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau looks like it will be weakened by the reforms. The argument that Dodd-Frank is disproportionately hurting community banks is weak since that sector has been dwindling ever since 1984, probably due to the same oligopolistic environment that this change would magnify.

Rolling back Dodd-Frank requirements for bank liquidity increases the chances that another bail-out will be necessary to prevent a total meltdown. Strengthening Wall Street banks is the opposite of the direction taken in the Green Party platform. The Green Party solution for banking reform wouldn't merely dismantle a set of rules and replace them with other more or less constraining rules. It would break up the big banks and create a more competitive environment, leveling the playing field for community banks and credit unions.The Green platform has this to say about bail-outs:

Oppose the federal government being the final guarantor of speculative investments. During a financial crisis, if the federal government and/or a central bank must provide relief, it should be given in an equal manner and at the most local level possible, so that benefits are equitably dispersed and burdens are equitably borne. So rather than pouring trillions of dollars into the banking system, they should have provided direct mortgage relief to homeowners suffering the most from the housing bubble and negotiated with lenders to provide partial loan forgiveness.

That would not be possible in the current environment because the global financial system is rife with derivatives making the failure of a major bank unthinkable. The tRumpist reforms would aggravate this further by eliminating the Volcker Rule that limits speculation using a bank's capital. As with Obamacare, the Republicans vow that their replacement version will do a better job at what Dodd-Frank promised, but such promises strain credibility.

Photo by Beverly

Thanks to tRump and the Republicans, it looks like America will suffer an even greater economic divide before people wake up to the better way offered by the Green Party. Instead of playing along by trying to regulate TBTF banks, we should try to break them up before they hurt people again. If we don't dismantle these financial behemoths first, capitalists, in an orgy of greed, will cause it to all come crashing down.