Is The World Falling Apart??? Or Am I Collapsing the Universe??? Part 2: Iceland Meltdown and Boobquakes

(I intended to post this earlier but got caught up in theory and science, quantum physics and metaphysics, which will appear in a following blog.)

Jeez Louise, maybe the world is cracking apart … Haiti, Chile, Baja California, another catastrophic almost 7.0 earthquake, this time in China, killing thousands. Not to mention the more minor rumblings in less populated areas which fail to make the headlines … Oceans away, volcanic eruptions in Iceland melt glaciers and blanket the skies with black ash, interrupting flights to and from Europe for days, maybe weeks, or, if the past is prologue, even longer (the last eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull, in 1820, lasted nearly 2 years!) … Business and vacation travelers stuck in airports scrambling to get a flight, a train, a hotel room, a cot; diplomats and politicians stuck as well, unable to attend summits and meetings, even state funerals; Europe-bound shipments of farm fresh food stuck in Africa, rotting in its packaging, potentially roiling economies; military personnel stuck in transit, yearning to go home or to a hospital …

Interesting, isn’t it? How one part of the world shifts and shakes apart, and another explodes with new earth. How a volcano passing gas – a minor geological hiccup on a small island nation in the middle of the North Atlantic - has crippled, and may continue to cripple for weeks or months to come, commerce, travel, diplomacy all over Europe and a goodly portion of the globe. How easy to upset life as we know it, our control over our environment, and turn our cozy best-laid plans upside down -

Coincidence or connection?

“We’re all connected.” Once a cheesy ad campaign jingle, now a scientific and spiritual precept. I mean, if all this isn’t evidence of the interconnected, interdependent nature of the universe and everything in it, including us, I don’t know what is! It does seem that yes, the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings in Mexico may indeed cause a typhoon in Malaysia! (Hmmm, maybe Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, who says "women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which consequently increases earthquakes" is right? I mean, who knew??? All this time I thought the shifting of tectonic plates and volcanoes caused earthquakes! And it was really women! One has to wonder: his declaration inspired feminist blogger Jennifer McCreight to call for her own fatwa of sorts by asking women everywhere to wear their most cleavage-baring clothing. Which may or may not have caused Monday’s 6.9 Taiwanese tremor. But I digress … )

One earthquake sets off another and another, which triggers an eruption which produces gas which blankets the sky which grounds planes which interrupts travelers which cancels not only vacations but meetings and deliveries and all measure of commerce which may soon upset entire economies, topple nations … We are actually living what once might have sounded like a movie script -

Which brings us back to Iceland.

Just look at Iceland. Poor Iceland. In 2008, the tiny but affluent island nation suffered from another form of meltdown (or explosion, or implosion, whichever you prefer), financial in nature, nearly bankrupting its traditionally thriving economy. According to Economist.com by way of Wikipedia, “relative to the size of its economy, Iceland’s banking collapse is the largest suffered by any country in economic history.” Ouch. That must hurt. The crisis, which probably originated in the US (long story involving the real estate sector which overheated and imploded thanks to overspeculation inspired in part by lax government regulation allowing for bad mortgages to be sold by overleveraged, underfinanced banks and institutions to people unable to repay them, which then bundled the toxic loans into exotic, arcane “synthetic derivatives” or some such with inaccurate risk ratings which they sold to overzealous and/or ill-informed investors everywhere, yadda yadda yadda), and rippled its way around the world seemingly overnight.

When foreclosures on these bad mortgages mushroomed, the securities soured; families not only lost homes, jobs seemed to evaporate, “wealth” disappeared, credit dried up, emptying the coffers of municipalities, businesses, pension plans, you name it, very nearly precipitating a global financial disaster of never-seen-before proportions. The US government comes to the rescue, pulling select big banks from the edge with taxpayer money; the bankers give themselves multi-million dollar bonuses while middle income households pick up the tab and lower income families struggle to keep their homes. (We won’t even get into these lovely allegations of widespread fraud perpetrated by financial institutions who designed and sold what they knew to be toxic waste to trusting clients while shorting, or betting against, it on their end … and the “impartial” credit rating agencies who gave AAA scores to “instruments” and “investments” they knew to be substandard junk to please the banks that hired them … Per Nobel Peace Prize winning NY Times columnist and Princeton professor Paul Krugman, 93% - yes – 93%! of the AAA-rated subprime mortgage-backed securities from 2006 have been downgraded to junk …)

Two years later, business continues to suffer, people are still out of work, entire countries remain on the brink of default. Two years later, Greece’s economy has faltered, Portugal and maybe Spain are on the brink with Ireland and Italy not far behind, while Iceland continues to try to dig itself out of its financial rubble. And now this – covered once again, by lava, ash, and the muddy waters of melting glaciers.

I know I sound like a madwoman - but, yeah. There would appear to be some connection.

Next time, I’ll try to present some theories re what that connection might be, where it comes from and what we can do about it … it’s complicated.

© 2010 Theresa Quadrozzi - A Muse In Manhattan