If you don’t read Jim Kunstler on a regular basis, you ought to. His book “The Long Emergency” predicts the end of peak oil and more importantly the end of suburban consumer life in America and around the world.

He sees a significant strategic shift – to put it mildly – in the coming years. His doubt about the stimulus package is caustic:

The attempt to restart “consumerism” will be equally disappointing. It was a manifestation of the short peak energy decades of history, and now that we’re past peak energy, it’s over. That seventy percent of the economy is over, especially the part that allowed people to buy stuff with no money. From now on people will have to buy stuff with money they earn and save, and they will be buying a lot less stuff. For a while, a lot of stuff will circulate through the yard sales and Craigslist, and some resourceful people will get busy fixing broken stuff that still has value. But the other infrastructure of shopping is toast, especially the malls, the strip malls, the real estate investment trusts that own it all, many of the banks that lent money to the REITs, the chain-stores and chain eateries, of course, and, alas, the non-chain mom-and-pop boutiques in these highway-oriented venues.

Here’s a huge question then: are we merely (!) at a major disruption in the economy that will eventually right itself, or in a complete shift away from old values, something that will require major restructuring of the global economic system?

Either way – is Keynesian economics going to work this time around?

Jump in the discussion at The Future Forum.