Thank You

To My Readers and Kind Fans,

I started this blog this past June as a lark: A place where I could make sense of my crazy ideas, without any expectation that they would be read by anyone except me—and that’s how it was for the first couple of months. A day where I got 40 pageviews was a big day for me.

But then out of the blue, I got an audience—you. In the past four months, my blog has received well over a million hits—and it’s been an exhilarating experience. Addictive. The rush I get from reading comments is hard to describe—especially because the comments I get are smart, even when they completely disagree with what I’ve written.

I feel I owe you, my audience, for this wonderful feeling.

The Trooper: Installment II (Pages 24–53)

In this second installment of The Trooper, our eponymous hero/antihero/bogeyman has a run-in with the Speeder—unforseen consequences will ensue. 

The Trooper is ignorant of these consequences, as he goes looking for entertainment on Saturday, then to Church on Sunday. 

Enjoy!

GL

Gonzalo Lira Online

Gonzalo Lira (born February 29, 1968) is an American novelist and filmmaker born in Burbank, California

He is the son of Gonzalo Lira Valdés and María Isabel López Hess; he is a descendant of José Miguel Carrera,.[1] He grew up in the San Fernando Valley, New York City, and Miami, as well as Guayaquil, Ecuador. He completed high school at St. George’s College in Santiago, Chile, in 1985. He attended Dartmouth College in 1991, graduating with honors in 1995, with a degree in history and philosophy.

Gonzalo Lira is a novelist and economic analyst

His first novel was Counterparts, a commercial thriller published in 1997. His first Spanish language novel was Tomáh Errázurih, a highly experimental coming-of-age story published in 1998.

After moving to lower Manhattan in 1998, Lira wrote, produced and directed a comic short film, So Kinky. He worked developing video games such as Soldier of Fortune.[2] He wrote his next novel, Acrobat, in 2002. The novel was subsequently purchased by Miramax to be turned into a motion picture. In 2002, he moved to Chile. He began writing and producing Spanish language feature films. He co-wrote, produced and directed the film Catalina’s Kidnapping, a Spanish language thriller in 2006.[3]

Gonzalo Lira: A Thought Experiment – Iran

By Gonzalo Lira Online, a novelist and filmmaker (and economist) currently living in Chile and writing at Gonzalo Lira

A whole bunch of American ships are headed to Iran, including one aircraft carrier. Some claim this deployment is “normal”, while others think it might be the first move in a U.S. offensive against Iran, either actual or diplomatic.

From the Iranians’ point of view, there’s only one way to look at this deployment: As another provocation.

American leadership—educated at the best schools and colleges, multi-cultural up the wazoo—don’t have a clue why Iranians feel beseiged. They have no idea why Iran acts the way it does. They don’t even realize that they don’t understand Iran’s motivations.

There has been a complete lack of imagination, in America’s dealings with Iran—and that failure of imagination is why things are so fucked up in the Middle East. (Is there any other way to characterize the whole mess? False politesse does not capture the sheer fucked-up-edness of the situation.)

Iran: The failure of imagination has been Iran.

So perhaps a thought experiment is in order—for once, let’s try looking at the world from the Iranians’ point of view:

To begin: Let’s imagine some obscure Brazilian terrorist attacks China, way on the other side of the earth, literally. This Brazilian and his minions blow up the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, in one fairly spectacular terrorist attack.

We’re in America—this shouldn’t involve us. But as a consequence of these terrorist attacks, the Chinese—screaming for vengeance—deploy their sophisticated weapons and their millions of soldiers, and invade Canada. Supposedly, this Brazilian terrorist who attacked China is hiding out in the Great White North—which is why the Chinese are invading Canada.

We Americans express genuine sympathy for the Chinese’ loss. We decide to actually help the Chinese find the Brazilian terrorist! We even decide to help the Chinese with their conquest of Canada! That’s how much we repudiate this cowardly terrorist attack.

But then, out of the blue, the Chinese leader—in a carefully choreographed official speech—declares our country part of an “axis of evil”. And with no provocation on our part—indeed, after we have helped the Chinese conquer Canada—they vow to wipe us out at the slightest provocation, presumably with nuclear weapons.

Correction below, 12/30/10.

This week—what with Christmas on one end and the new year’s celebration on the other, and everthing in between covered in snow—nothing much is gonna happen: It’s a week that’s about as dead as Dillinger. So I figured I should take stock of where we are—and more importantly, where we’re going.

To me, the biggest macro-economic story of 2010 was Europe: It’s falling apart, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that’s going to stop this collapse.

The second biggest macro-economic story of the year—though not by much—was the successful monetization of 75% of the U.S. Federal government deficit by Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve. I use the word “successful” in a morality-free, completely pragmatic sense: Bernanke achieved monetization with minimal market disruption. In fact, a lot of people would argue that QE-lite and QE-2 were not policies of debt monetization—that is how successful Bernanke has been. (Talk about “reality distortion field”! Steve Jobs ain’t got nuthin’ on Benny!)

This “success” has allowed the U.S. Federal government to continue to avoid making necessary, critical budgetary decisions—paradoxically accelerating the U.S.’s deteriorating fiscal situation.

The third biggest macro-economic story of 2010 has been the inexorable rise in commodity prices. Everyone’s been paying attention to silver and gold, but the real story has been industrial metals—especially copper—and agricultural commodities—especially grains—especially wheat—and corn, corn, corn!

To be sure, there were other important stories in 2010—the Mortgage Mess, Wikileaks, Wayne Rooney. But these three issues—auguries of EMU collapse, successful Fed monetization, and commodity price rises—are the ones that mattered on a macro-economic level this past year.

In 2011, every other financial story will be either a cause or consequence of one of these three issues: Guaranteed.

Now then—to specifics:

A Christmas Gift for My Readers: The Trooper

Dear Readers and Kind Fans, 

I’ve mentioned here and there that for the past several years, I’ve been writing a monster called The Green of the Republic—but I’ve also written other fiction. 

Back in July–September 2008, while taking a break from my monster, I wrote a highly experimental novel called The Trooper. 

It’s about a State Trooper, patrolling a suburb in a post-Crash, Millennial Depression wasteland. It’s a dark, scary, creepy book—a horror story for thinking people. 

Between its formal experimentation and its black-as-outer-space tone, mainstream publishers would never touch such a book, no matter how good it might be—not in a million years. 

But it is pretty good. I know it’s arrogant of me to say that about my own work, but, well, you all know that I’m an arrogant shit. More to the point, if I didn’t think it was good, I’d never mention it—I’d keep it locked away like an unloved adopted child. 

But I do love The Trooper. It seems such a shame that—because of publisher timidity—no one will get to read it—

—so I’ve decided to make it available to people via a blogspot site. 

Every Saturday, I’ll be posting a ten-to-twenty page chunk of the novel—today, for your Christmas pleasure, I’ve posted the first two such chunks, 

So without further ado, here it is—The Trooper. 

Enjoy!

GL

As Godzilla Says . . .

©Mary Wells

In my recent post, Falling Forward, I discussed the failure of the American economy to de-militarize once the Cold War ended in 1991. 

This is a major issue—major like a hole in the head: The United States spends over 6% of its GDP on the military—more, if you add the money spent on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (And by the way: The self-delusion that keeps those two wars “off the books”? Astonishing—but that’s for another time.) 

Since the U.S. is the largest economy in the world, that +6% means that America spends more on the military than the rest of the world combined—with room to spare.

Right there, you know something’s gone horribly wrong. 

In Falling Forward, I argued that this enormous military created the need to find a new enemy, now that the Soviet Union is no more, and the nations of the former Warsaw Pact are busy trying to join NATO, rather than fight it. 

But there’s another thing we should be looking at, when we examine this enormous military spending, especially over the last 20 years: Shouldn’t we really be thinking of it as an enormous stimulus program—a Keynesian stimulus program of the first order?

Military spending as a form of Keynesian stimulus is not an original argument—in fact, it’s been advocated, even by a few non-Keynesians:

Falling Forward: America’s Loss of Direction Since the End of the Cold War

You know how when you’re pushing against something heavy and unyielding—a heavy door, say, or maybe a car stuck in a ditch—and all of a sudden, the thing you were pushing against abruptly yields? What happens?

Why, you fall forward, of course.

Especially if you’ve been pushing for a good long while: You were so hell-bent on pushing at the thing—the car stuck in the ditch, the heavy door that wouldn’t budge—that when it finally does move, you over-balance. You fall forward. You might even trip up. You might ever fall on your face—and painfully, at that.

This is what’s happening to the United States: After the long struggle of the Cold War, America is falling forward.

And this falling forward is turning into an epic tragedy.