...Abrupt climate change may be normal in the planet's history, or, to state it differently, that the earth's [sic] climate is inherently very unstab… - James Howard Kunstler

Banking also regained respectability after the calamities of the 1930s. Federal deposit insurance, which had been instituted in the depths of the Great Depression, and only for deposits under $2,500, was raised to $10,000 in 1950, and the middle class was induced to feel confident about keeping its money in banks again. Interest rates remained modest, but so did inflation. The influx of savings made money available in capital markets to invest in new ventures. It was real money derived from work already done, pay already earned, true capital. Before the great orgy of mergers and consolidation that began in the 1970s, retail banking was… local and community-centered. Bankers made loan decisions based on firsthand knowledge of projects going on in their communities—not, as today, based on bundling and selling clumps of mortgages for generic suburban developments they have never laid eyes on.

Even if we can’t get all the tools and the products we currently enjoy, we will retain a lot of basic knowledge that the people of Jefferson’s day just didn’t have. For instance, we will still understand that infections and many diseases are caused by microorganisms, not bad air, phases of the moon, or evil spells, and that knowledge alone confers powerful advantages in daily living.

In a world that had become a salvage operation, the general supply evolved into Union Grove's leading industry. When every… useful thing in town had been stripped from the Kmart and the United Auto, the CVS drugstore, and other trading establishments of the bygone national chain-store economy, daily life became a perpetual flea market centered on the old town dump.