Even I tire of my pessimism. It wears me down a bit. I wanted to get that up front before indulging in some less than optimistic thoughts about what lies ahead beyond Election Day.
The problems that will confront the new cast of characters in Congress and state houses and legislatures across the nation come January are many and mighty in importance.
We're broke. The economic model that has driven the credit-saturated boom we so enjoyed is busted beyond repair. Almost everyone who has eyes and a brain knows that's the case.
Generations of legislators have given away the store in pension obligations to the public employee unions. The promises will soon be repudiated. Political firestorms will result.
For all his ballyhooed brilliance, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke seems as lost as everyone else when it comes to charting a way out of the mess we're in. Keynesian stimulus, which has grown the government 30 percent (imagine that) in two years, hasn't worked. People are saving and paying down debt. They're stimulus resistant.
MIT economist Simon Johnson put it bluntly: "A financial oligarchy has purchased the government." As we've seen, this partnership has pushed us into an economic disaster. The next Congress, ideally, would begin the painful process of reconstituting the economy. But politicians are averse to inflicting pain on the people on whom they count to vote for them.
The way the polling and prognosticating has it, the Republicans look likely to recapture control of the House and make significant inroads in the Senate. This would likely lead to most GOP initiatives being vetoed by President Barack Obama and the bulk of White House proposals being voted down by the Republicans.
Gridlock is better than being rolled down the left of the path to oblivion by the Obama White House, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, but much more than that is needed.
This week, I talked with financial analyst and entrepreneur Eric Janszen, who has written "The Postcatastrophe Economy," a book about rebuilding America and avoiding the next bubble.
He says we have to move away from the credit-fueled financialization of our economy and back to our roots as the "world's leading creative inventor, saver and investor."
The government subsidization of the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) economy led us to this dead end, and Mr. Janszen believes this crumbled structure must be replaced with a new one based on a TECI (transportation, energy and communications infrastructure) economy.
Propping up dying industries won't do the trick. What's needed, he says, is a productive economy with investment in high-margin businesses that can afford to pay high wages.
To even begin such a task will require the dismantling of what has been constructed by legions of financial lobbyists and their purchased politicians. Will the newcomers change the system, or will the system swallow them up as it has in the past?
Humanity is at a crisis point. Free-market globalism has been regarded as the permanent state of things, even though it has been made possible only by cheap oil and a historically anomalous period of relative peace.
We have run through approximately half of the ultimate mother lode — the oil deposited beneath the Earth's crust over millions of years — and it will become ever more expensive as the passing of peak oil becomes undeniable.
Nations are retreating into a protectionist mode. The global economy we thought so permanent is unraveling after only a quarter of a century or so. More than a hundred years ago, the psychologist/philosopher William James observed, "The most significant characteristic of modern civilization is the sacrifice of the future for the present, and all the power of science has been perverted to this purpose."
We've travelled a selfish road in the Age of Oil.
Most of the people I talk to seem to have bottomless faith that technology will get us out of the current grim situation. Maybe they're right. Maybe we'll get lucky.
Ron Smith can be heard weekdays, 9 a.m. to noon, on 1090 WBAL-AM and WBAL.com. His column appears Fridays in The Baltimore Sun. His e-mail is rsmith@wbal.com.