AUTHOR: Scott Thill at Alternet
THESIS: Economic recovery is a myth. The world is in a Great Depression that will coincide with climate threats and an oil crisis, possibly wiping humanity from the face of the earth
NUMBER OF WORDS NEEDED TO SAY 'WE ARE DOOMED': 2,070
OUR CURRENT STATE: "[N]eck-deep in another Great Depression, which is unfurling into a devaluation nightmare of everything from our lives and currency to, given curve balls like catastrophic climate change and peak oil and water, our very existence"
THE TERM 'THE GREAT RECESSION': A "shifty legerdemain designed to keep the stock market alive"
THE RESULT: "Score one for the linguistic and financial relativists"
WHOM WE SHOULD REALLY LISTEN TO: Margaret Atwood, "award-winning speculative fiction author"
BEST SENTENCE: "If you think that earnings report and the Federal Reserve's historical changes in borrowing aren't related, then I have a McMansion to sell you in Detroit"
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T DO: "Pop the champagne on a lame Dow Jones lap around 10,000 and keep telling yourself that it's going to be fine"
WHERE WE'RE GOING TO END UP: "[I]n the fetal position, aghast at the power of words to reshape reality"
MORE SUNSHINE:

The human race has experienced this devaluation of empire many times before, and it has usually failed to wake up when it mattered most. The American people have lived on a steady diet of hyperreal debt securitization, excessive consumption and currency devaluation for decades now, and they've yet to snap out of their American Idol fantasy. (Or is that American Idle?)

When they finally do, they could find that the America they knew has come and gone, and that a new world economic order has sprung up around them in red shoots instead of green.

By the time their blurred eyes read U.K. economist Sir Nicholas Stern's 2006 report asserting that climate change will downsize the global economy by 20 percent more--or perhaps wipe us out altogether, others worry--they'll be ready to go right back to sleep.

This time, in the fetal position, aghast at the power of words to reshape reality.

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Heather Horn