I’ve been going on about the end of life as we know it for many years now. Mostly I have been regarded as a tin-foil-mitten wanking conspiracist. However, I’ve been right so far…
Since two years back (since the crisis emerged in the public consciousness) I have sort of been vindicated and watching libertarians (sort off) making movies about the next upcoming disaster or write rambling about our big problems on their blogs after reading my stuff kind of tickles the nerves. I’m not saying my tedious thrown out there views are in any way the primary reason for such outburst of sanity, but I do feel like I have had a part in the revival of some peoples intellect.
The problem with such newly awakened or the ones that are (or have been) waving warning flags is that they don’t see the whole picture or fail to understand how deeply imbedded in shit we really are. Even loudmouthed insanoes like Alex Jones and Max Keiser are actually very conservative in their predictions.
And no, I am not one of those that see reptilians in the British royal family or think that Illuminati’s are puffing on fat cigars while going Moha ha ha in dark rooms. Neither am I sold on the NWO conspiracy theory or have seen too many movies about 2012. I just look at the facts, the basic fundaments and the economic numbers and see that never before in human history have so many countries been so absolutely screwed like they are right now.
Thankfully (or sadly according to me) we’ve also never been so rich. This is mainly what is keeping the scam rolling along. The general thought among libertarians and free market advocates is that globalization (the good capitalist one) and the spread of ideas across the globe have lifted billions up from poverty during the last 50 or so years and for a while we could almost believe that we had actually learned something from history. Not that things were perfect. We still had mad central banks and as a consequence inflation, we still had socialist planning and horrible government schemes like minimum wage, but mostly people seemed to understand that free markets and at least some capitalism was necessary to bring prosperity and peace to our lands.
This is almost true.
A couple of things are missing.
Firstly during the course of time inflation and mad lending practices has eaten up all economic advances. In some countries they are poorer today than 50y ago. You hardly ever hear this fact from libertarian economists. They don’t see it. They see the stuff. We have more stuff, better stuff, more shiny stuff. Cars are better, faster, and safer and we hardly need to mention things like computers and cell phones. That we are in debt is secondary…
Our entire system is built on debt. Everything around you comes with one, two or more IOU’s. 50y ago people in general put a down payment and had paid off their homes within a decade or two. Can you imagine anyone outside the elite structure managing this today? 50y ago a house cost about 3-4 times people annual salary. Today a house cost 9-10 times the average annual salary. Is it the extra stuff? Hardly.
I could go on and on but the rambling is secondary, the point is that our entire society and our way of life is built upon, with, around and contingent on debt. 99.99% of all economists say that there’s nothing wrong with this and partly I agree. Debt in itself isn’t the problem.
The problem comes into light when you see debt together with inflation and our producing capacity. The “stuff” I talk about need to be produced and seeing that we have more stuff than ever one could assume that we produce a lot. We don’t. We consume it.
You see there’s a difference between first producing and then buying versus buying on credit. The more we tap out our credit cards, the more we borrow to buy stuff - the less is over for investments and actual production. It may sound contrary and for an economist reading this he’ll never be as confused as he is right now. But the fact is that we have, since many years back, gone over the line of healthy producing-buying over to the borrowing-spend side. There’s a huge gap formed and this abyss is painted over with debt. As long as we continue to borrow to spend (exponentially) we have no problem. Central banks, inflation and a so so free market have made this idiocy possible.
No more money available for consumers to borrow so they can buy that very necessary third car? Easy. Government can print lots of new piles of cash, or (funny enough) they borrow it so the consumer can borrow it. Debt upon debt. Governments and economists love this hilarious little game. They can play Santa and make the spending binge go on and on and….
…Nooo.. they can’t. This is the problem. There is an end to it. Somewhere the limit is reached. Debt cannot be piled up indefinitely. There’s a limit.
And this is where we are today.
As said, debt in itself isn’t so bad. It can be paid back, but in steps inflation and our low producing capacity.
Inflation, which in reality is both a hidden tax and the way they fool us to think we’re getting richer, is also built into the system. This is our master’s holy cow. Inflation is good for us, at least some of it. Most likely you’ve probably heard economists try to explain how 2-3-4% inflation is a good thing? Of course 5% is slightly bad for some reason. But worst of all is deflation! Oh, the horror with lower prices and the murderess madness that comes when you can buy more for each coin. Prices need to go up, how else do we feel the need to borrow and spend more in that divine exponential way?
Remember the bailouts and stimulus packages? They printed and borrowed that money in order to encourage borrowing and spending. Inflation comes with as a bonus.
And now when some governments seem to realize their mistakes and are looking to save money and cut expenditures the entire system is in danger. So when Krugman and other hacks are saying that less spending may trigger another economic collapse they are correct. It will. But not in the way and for the reasons such idiots argue.
We have reached the end of the line. There is no more debt that can be sought up. If they print more money hyperinflation is the next thing around the corner. And the crash will happen. Nothing can stop our total financial collapse now. It is too late. If we were to borrow, spend and print even more all we would be doing is increase the flames and ensure our total demise.
We have reached the end of the line and this is where we are today.
Interesting enough this isn’t it. Even this we could manage. Inflation and sky-high debt mountains could be repaid and fixed. In a few years we could regain our producing capacity. Looking at only the mentioned problems we would still have a depression, but a minor one and not the earth shattering event now facing us.
You see there are a bunch of other factors needed to be added to the equation. The biggest is probably the derivatives scam. We have trillions upon trillions upon trillions of debt on NOTHING. Derivatives have no value. Nada. And they exist everywhere and they are seldom even mentioned. I’ve heard somewhere (don’t remember were or who said it) that the total air in derivatives can be counted up to 100 trillion dollars. If true only this little scam is enough to plunge us into total darkness.
To this we have several housing markets were banks are buying houses from themselves to hide both losses and to keep prices up. We have several commodity markets getting manipulated. We have protectionism on the rise. And the stale and stagnant government controlled societies we live in don’t help either. Needless to say the amounts, the scams and the problems are many, countless many seen globally. And these problems exists in practically every country on the planet.
To this point, despite what I wrote in the start, many of my fellow libertarians, gloomy forecasters and other thinking individuals can relate and be in agreement. They may dismiss one thing or complain about one or two numbers but in general I would say most of they are with me.
However there is one thing left. The worst thing of all. The very essence of all problems and the very entity we can trace every little disaster back to. You.
Free thinking individuals and libertarians in particular have faith in people. They believe that once the problems are obvious and the crash really starts we will suddenly become rational, see the light and bow down to the miracle that is capitalism. At least people won’t go back to worshiping funny little hysterical men with hysterical solutions who dream of world conquest. This much we have learned. Right?
Wrong.
You are an idiot and so is your mom, your neighbor and everyone around you. And when you get together in groups you even upgrade to the loony sycophant level with no concept of reality. People in general are so horrible amoebic that they believe in fairytales like welfare and cash for clunkers programs. The waste mass of anti-intellectual slugs will of course throw themselves at the feet of any well-spoken madman regardless of swastikas or red flags around him.
Why would the sheople that has voted for and cheered on the build-up of the collapse suddenly evolve synapses?
When the fierily economic inferno starts to blast its way into people’s lives they will start with the obvious targets such as sitting governments, the police and such. But then they will start to look for direction, guidance and leadership. And lord and behold, there they will be, those funny people that will welcome any cannon fodder.
This is the scenario that is most likely to occur. And with weapons of mass destruction available for any chemical student things can (and most likely will) turn very nasty and bloody.
If we have over 3 billion people on this planet 20y from now I’ll be very surprised.
So when will the fun start? My previous due-date (right now) predicted over ten years ago has actually passed, sort of. The crisis never left, they never fixed it as they want you to think. It has been here and is still here. We are actually living in a depression right now. Not according to the definition, but in all other thinkable way. The Tsunami likeness I’ve mentioned several times is very accurate. Out on the sea you can almost never see it. Even the biggest Tsunamis are hardly detectable in the middle of an ocean. But when reaching the shoreline you better watch out. The problem with this financial Tsunami is that it is not only already huge, it also increase in both speed and size for each day we allow the statism and Keynesianism to continue.
I recon we have about a year of decent normality left. Maybe two at the most. See? 2012? Uh…
Well…we have seen some gloomy sentences in the news lately and the stock markets (extremely overvalued!) have the hiccups so don’t be surprised if an increasing downward spiral spins out of control very soon.
