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.

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View articles by James Howard Kunstler

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

Waking Up from the Happy Motoring Dream

May 26th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics, Oil

Something like a week remains before General Motors is reduced to lunchmeat on industrial-capital's All-You-Can-Eat buffet spread. The wish is that its deconstructed pieces will re-organize into a "lean, mean machine" for producing "cars that Americans want to buy," and that, by extension, the American Dream of a Happy Motoring ...read more

Tags: banks, Oil, stagnant incomes
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics, Oil | 5 comments

Shoveling Money into the Deceased Economy

May 19th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

The Great Wish across America is to resume the life of comfort-and-convenience that seemed so nirvana-like just a few short years ago, when the very constellations of the heavens might have been renamed after heroic Atlanta realtors and Connecticut hedge fund warriors, and the boomer portfolios groaned with earnings, and ...read more

Tags: banks, economy, money
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 7 comments

The Bottom for Credit Thanks to Peak Oil

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

Euphoria managed to out-run swine flu last week as the epidemic-du-jour, with "consumer" confidence jumping and the big bank stocks nudging up. The H1N1 virus fizzled for now, at least in terms of kill ratio, though we're warned it might boomerang in the fall with a vengeance. No one was ...read more

Tags: consumer economy, Peak Oil
Posted in Energy, Featured, Macro Economics, Oil | 7 comments

Hope Equals Truth About Our National Bankruptcy

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

People of good intentions and progressive predilection are scratching their heads wondering just how President Barack Obama managed to turn himself into George W. Bush Lite with sugar-on-top just twelve weeks after that fateful walk down the US Capitol's east stairway to the waiting helicopter. I'm hardly the first observer ...read more

Tags: economy, flu, Long Emergency, revolution
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics, Politics | 4 comments

No Recovery for America’s Economy

Apr 14th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

It's a curious symptom of the consensus trance zombifying the American public and its auditors in the media that something like a "recovery" is now deemed to be underway. And, as events compel me to repeat in this space, it begs the question: recovery to what? To Wall Street booking ...read more

Tags: economic recovery, Golman Sachs, Oil
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 6 comments

Strange Days of Debt, Peak Oil and Stock Rallies

Apr 7th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

Even while a wave of reflex nausea washed over America last week, and the unemployment rolls swelled by much more than another half million, the greatest stock market suckers' rally in seventy years pulled in the last of the credulous. These are strange days. The earth is heaving and the ...read more

Tags: debt, global economy, oil prices
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 4 comments

Reduced Standards of Living

Mar 31st, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics, Oil

Mr. Obama heads to Europe now where official hostility is rising against the Anglo-American method of pounding monetary sand down the rat-holes of “non-performing” debt, bankrupt enterprise, and bubble-levitated bonds. Our poised and charming Prez may escape personal obloquy from the quaint old-world street folk, but most of the other ...read more

Tags: depression, inflation, Peak Oil
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics, Oil | 2 comments

Side Trip to Soweto Sprawl

Mar 17th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, International, Politics

While evermore appalling shenanigans within the AIG corporation preoccupied the US media last week, I made a side trip to the Republic of South Africa. I was in Johannesburg to give some talks at the invitation of an architecture firm, Osmand Lange, who had designed an outstanding New Urbanist project ...read more

Tags: Johannesburg, South Africa, Soweto, urban sprawl
Posted in Featured, International, Politics | 1 Comment »