Nobody comes to me, NR’s resident Eeyore, for rosy prognostications.

I do think, though, that all you shallow smilers out there should start paying attention. I posted a few days ago about Vox Day’s splendid new book on the coming catastrophe. Here, in the same genre, is a sleep-disturbing video from the National Inflation Association (an odd name for the outfit: they’re against inflation). Meltup is 50 minutes long but worth your time, though it gets distressingly pollyannaish at the end. I’m sending them a copy of WAD, so perhaps they’ll correct that.

Now here’s Paul Volcker saying the same thing:

“We better get started,” the 82-year-old former central banker said in a speech yesterday in Stanford, California. “Today’s concerns may soon become tomorrow’s existential crises.”

This is not some pajama-wearing blogger or Paulite gold bug talking, this is Paul Volcker. And what he’s saying is what I’ve been hearing from Wall Street acquaintances for a couple of years now.

Something very nasty is in the offing, something far beyond the ability of the imbeciles in the federal apparatus to deal with. The wolf is on the fold, the Hun is at the gate. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

We should do something. But of course we won’t.