James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is perhaps best known for The Long Emergency, which predicted the financial meltdown and the implications of the peak oil problem. The Geography of Nowhere , about the fiasco of suburbia, is a campus cult classic among the architecture and urban planning students. It was followed by a sequel, Home From Nowhere and The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition . Mr. Kunstler has also authored 10 novels including World Made By Hand, a story set in America’s post-oil future. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone and The Atlantic Monthly.

SPECIAL REPORT: The Endless PAYCHECK PORTFOLIO: In three simple steps, unleash a steady flow of work-free income… starting with up to 75 automatic “paychecks” deposited directly into your account.

View articles by James Howard Kunstler

Iran Fidgets in the Middle East: World War III Anybody?

Oct 6th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, International, Politics

When Alan Greenspan predicted three percent economic growth showing up in the reported figures for the third quarter of 2009, did he mean executive compensation packages? Maybe the lesson here is: don't ask a crackhead to predict the future supply of crack. Greenspan's greatest success may be to drive economics ...read more

Tags: Energy, Middle East, World War III
Posted in Featured, International, Politics | 4 comments

Inflation, Deflation, Peak Oil and Complex Systems

Sep 29th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

In my father's house are many mansions. Surely one of them has a room with no elephants in it.... Not to crunch too many metaphors right here at the top, but a consensus seems to be firming up in the animate jello of the Internet that we have entered the Season ...read more

Tags: deflation, Gold, great depression, inflation
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 5 comments

Ruinous Debt to Create Futureless Suburbia

Sep 25th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

In our history, the American nation committed obvious sins against select groups of people, and we've paid bitterly for some of that. But now it's our sins against the land itself that threaten to sink the USA as a viable enterprise. It's odd, that in his otherwise excellent blow-by-blow account ("Eight ...read more

Tags: car-dependence, debt, Oil, suburbia
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 11 comments

Reality Receding Across America

Sep 17th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

Now that everybody in the USA, from the janitors in their man-caves to the president addressing congress, has declared the "recession" over, is exactly the moment when what's left of the so-called economy is most likely to implode. If there were still shoeshine boys on Wall Street, they'd be starting ...read more

Tags: America, civilization, economy
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 19 comments

Cars, Wishes and the Apocalypse

Sep 9th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

In my larval, pre-blogging days, I always faced the back-to-school moment with abject dread. It meant returning to a program of the most severe, mind-numbing regimentation in the ghastly New York City public schools after a summer of idyllic unreality in the New Hampshire woods, where I went to a ...read more

Tags: American life, apocalypse, cars
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 3 comments

Debt and the Fog of Numbers

Aug 11th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

One of main reasons behind the vast confusion now reigning in the USA, our failure to construct a coherent consensus about what is happening to us (or what to do about it), is our foolish obsession with econometrics -- viewing the world solely through the "lens" of mathematical models. We ...read more

Tags: debt, econometrics, suburbia
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 16 comments

Monumentally Tragic Disappointment on the Horizon

Aug 4th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

Whenever the herd mentality lines up along a compass point leading to "permanent prosperity," or a yellow brick road lined with green shoots, or something like that, I tend to see the edge of a cliff up ahead. We are now completely in the grips of the deadly diminishing returns ...read more

Tags: easy credit, unsustainable
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 16 comments

Contraction and Electric Car Whimsy

Jul 16th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

The cat coming out of the bag this week -- a frazzled, flaming, rabid, death-dealing cat -- is the news that Goldman Sachs will announce impressive second-quarter profits, and set aside $18 billion or so for employee bonuses averaging $600,000 per head (though, of course, not evenly distributed among them). ...read more

Tags: America, economic contraction, suburbs
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 6 comments

The High-Speed Rail Cart Before the Horse

Jun 16th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Energy, Featured, Technology

Coming home from the annual meet-up of the New Urbanists, I was already agitated from the shenanigans of United Airlines -- two-hour delay, blown connection -- when I waded into this week's New York Times Sunday Magazine for further evidence that our ruling elites are too stupid to survive (and ...read more

Tags: california, high-speed rail, urbanists
Posted in Energy, Featured, Technology | 11 comments

Revolving Debt Cheap Energy Economy on Its Knees

Jun 8th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Energy, Featured, Macro Economics

Through the tangle of green shoots and sprouting mustard seeds, a certain nervous view persists that the arc of events is taking us to places unimaginable. The collapse of General Motors and Chrysler signifies more than the collapse of US car manufacturing. It spells the end of the motoring era ...read more

Tags: cars, debt, Energy, highways
Posted in Energy, Featured, Macro Economics | 4 comments