Why Growth is Dead

Financial Sense ^ | 5/12/2011 | Chris Martenson

[Heuristic Hiker]

The numbers are crazy..."the Fed is still pumping an average of $89 billion per month into the markets."

Keynes said this well about a Nation's currency:

"There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million can diagnose."

Yet, the debauchery goes on unabated...

[P.O.E.]

Real wealth is the products and services that are made possible by an initial balance of high-quality resources that can be transformed by human effort and ingenuity.

Too many people are merely consumers - not creating wealth or even paying taxes. This mentality has become so contagious as to be close to all-consuming, while politicians fiddle to maintain their status quo.

[griswold3]

75 years of Keynes = 185k underlying debt per person. Crony capitism and bailouts for the connected. Entire classes and political structures who do little or no work or are over valued (public sector, university, government funded) and feed off the entire system.

[petercooper]

bttt

[depressed in 06]

...with losses of 20% to 50% by the end of October. The only thing that will arrest the plunge will be QE III...

The plunge in value is arrested by inflation. To the mass of Bolshecrat voters this will look good until they find that their welfare check won't cover their crack habit.

[BfloGuy]

Decades of the Fed’s inflation have also created our eternal trade deficit. How do you suppose advanced, industrialised nations like Japan and Germany remain net exporters year after year? Stable currencies, that’s how.

[sam_paine]

Ok this is a good article. But it’s a Part I hook to get your to buy Part II, “how to prepare in the meantime.”

Except that the executive summary doesn’t really say that that is what Part II talks about.

Has anyone looked at Part II? Is it worth whatever they’re pimping it for?

I have yet to see anyone give concrete predictions of the aftermath, and what you’ll want to have and why.

For me, I think the big gotcha will be erosion in bonds, including munis which will cause a double whammy of inflated prices/values of homes, and ‘starving’ municipal buraecracies which will blow property taxes through the roof.

So one undiscussed trick will be being able to pay exorbitant property taxes during the tumult and keeping the sheriff at bay in the meantime for the lucky few while everyone in the middle has their property confiscated and sold to Chinese/Euro cartels.

[VRW Conspirator]

The only thing that will arrest the plunge will be QE III, although we should remain alert to the likelihood that it will be named something else in an attempt to obscure what it really is.

And the gulag of the future will be named Re-Patriotizing Day Spa.

[Wildbill22]

Exactly. And too many people think we can pay for things like health care, social security and pork projects by just printing more money with no consequences. As if money will retain value in that scenario. That government Altruism requires priority over economic reality.

Too many people just have no concept of economics. They don’t understand that if you dilute the dollar the economy will eventually not function on the basis of voluntary participation in the -what was once- ‘free’ market economy. Black markets will flourish with alternative currency or direct trade between commodities, and the government will require “force on man” (as Ayn Rand said) to try to control it and keep the grand deception from collapse.

[Visceral]

Any chance of getting the executive summary to this article?

[sbark]

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

[screaminsunshine]

In the beginning this whole disaster was sold as to save the Housing Market. Looks like a big flop to me. It is just covering the bad bets of the Big Wigs in New York and Washington.

[bert]

The devaluation is the intent. The debt will be mitigated by compound devaluation.

[NRG1973]

With the world’s population adding 1 billion people every 10-12 years for the next 40-50 years, commodity prices will indeed skyrocket. Those who can wisely invest in commodities will do better than those who invest in stocks or bonds.

[library user]

Any chance of getting the executive summary to this article?

"We're f******"."

[Popman]

75 years of Keynes = 185k underlying debt per person. Crony capitism and bailouts for the connected. Entire classes and political structures who do little or no work or are over valued (public sector, university, government funded) and feed off the entire system.

Is that you Paul Krugman ? /s

I wonder if Krugman when the dollar finally crashes and it stops being the world reserve currency and all his economic fantasies come crashing down will he do the right thing and pull a Socrates

[killermosquito]

This chicanery has resulted in no one knowing what the value of anything is.

[yldstrk]

Ben Bernanke should be tried for treason

[M-cubed]

Greenspan diagnosed it back in 1966!!...pretty damned straightforward too... http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html

The shabby secret...

[Erik Latranyi]

Here is the dilemma:

A crash before 2012 ensures an Obama defeat and a chance at salvation for this nation.

A crash after January 2013 will allow Obama to collapse the system and recreate this nation as something else.