Posted on 05/09/2016 11:25:00 PM PDT by TheWriterTX
Contrary to the narrative proposed by the administration and the media, what happened in 2008 was not the "great recession." It was, indeed, a depression, a long-wave deleveraging cycle.
Customarily, a long-wave cycle will play out over a decade. As individuals find their wealth contracting and shed their debt, the amount of money moving through the system ebbs and flows, with sharp peaks and deep valleys. In an unmanaged collapse, whole sectors of the economy evaporate and the depression becomes evident, rather quickly, to everyone. In a managed collapse, the government (through deficit spending) and the FED (through quantitative easing) paper over the valleys, hoping to achieve a soft landing.
One of the best research papers on the course of the economic crisis and how it will play out was written by Salient Capital Partners in 2011; their 3rd Q Macroeconomic Report pegged the situation, and future events, perfectly.
While papering over the low points works, it only works for so long. Even former FED Chairman Bernake said in March of this year that they can't keep it going forever. Honestly, the only reason it's gone on so long is that the EU has been doing the same thing!
In 2010 and 2011, Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital was the keynote speaker at Americatalyst, a consortium of real estate experts and global investors. In one of his keynotes (available on youtube), he mentions speaking to members of both sides of the aisle concerning the tremendous danger of ever-increasing federally-held debt. He was shocked when they expressed the consensus that they could keep the illusion going until, at least, 2018.
It appears, based on recent events, that we may be reaching end-game. The FED are still calling the economy shaky, job growth is nominal, productivity is slowing, the ZIRP is still in effect, and our debt burden is so high we can't move off ZIRP without a huge tax increase just to pay the interest on our debt.
So what does this have to do with Trump? Quite simply, the GOP doesn't care about losing the White House because they know that the economy is going to tank again during the next term. Since the deleveraging cycle was impaired and we managed only to reinflate the debt bubble, when this one pops is going to be truly ugly. They don't want that hung around their necks, the way the MSM falsely placed the blame for the start of the depression around Bush's neck. They want this financial disaster to be hung around the Democrats' neck like a huge, pest-infested albatross.
Look, folks, I'll be honest; the future is going to get worse, not better, regardless of who is in the White House. I think it's ridiculously short-sighted to vote against Trump. He's got a lot of great ideas, but he's going to have to cut social programs and that will require a whole lot of guts (something the GOPe doesn't have).
Just don't be surprised if he can't pull us back from the brink. Our financial mess is a lot bigger than any President. Bush didn't start it; Obama couldn't stop it; neither will Trump. What the next President CAN do is set us on the right path and help us clean up the aftermath. Who do you want doing that? The answer is obvious: Trump.
He can tell the Fed it’s our money and we owe you nothing for creating debt out of thin air.
Didn’t work well for JFK though...
I hope Trump understands this.
I’ve been saying the same thing since 2008.
Didn’t work well for JFK though...”
Where’s my tinfoil hat....JFK had absolutely no concern about American monetary policy.
Great post. I think about this issue every single day.
I'm amazed that it hasn't happened yet.
Investment banks then had the ability to hold the US economy hostage without fear of going bankrupt.
God only knows what Hillary Clinton has for marching orders.
Yeah, I’m an expert, too! Buy my book!
I would, instead, state that Obola didn’t TRY to “stop it” - but instead, deliberately USED IT, ADDED to it, and CONTINUED the policies that created the recession of 2007-2016.
Without that recession, he could not have gotten in.
Everyone was trying to stop it. Congress had voted special spending packages in, before the wave hit, but it didn’t work.
If no one has coimed the term “taxslave”, I would like to coin it here. That’s all we are to the DC establishment
The GOPe doesn’t care but it has nothing to do with anything so complicated. The only significant policy difference between the nevertrumps and Trump is open borders, amnesty and trade. The Chamber types want amnesty more than anything else. The elected officials are fine with Hillary because they can use her to scare people into keeping Congress Republican. If Trump wins they aren’t in charge anymore, they don’t get amnesty, and people might just decide a Democrat congress wouldn’t be so bad and vote them out.
Hillary represents the status quo, and they like the status quo.
I remember the so called pundits here at FR telling us over and over that a second term of O would be a good thing because after eight years of his disastrous policies people would be ready for a ‘true conservative’.
Seems to me they were dead wrong
They were completely wrong. I think that was Ted Cruz’s play, which explains why he went to great lengths to depict himself as the true Constitutional convervative in the 2016 primary.
He probably figured that after eight years of Obama, the country would be hungry for a true conservative to right the course of the ship of state. He was wrong. Not even Republicans are hungry for a self identified conservative, preferring to back a non-ideological pragmatist, instead.
I think this also explains why Cruz became so unhinged towards the end. Not only was his plan for 2016 going up in smoke, but if his act didn’t play in 2016, he knows it probably won’t play at any time in the future during his lifetime.
Precisely
Do some quick research on “JFK and the Federal Reserve”. Astounding stuff.
It wasn’t conservative principles that did Cruz in. It was the “do what it takes to win” campaign and his lack of clarity on issues of trade and cheap foreign labor. Then there was the maddening talking down to folks when they disagreed with him. And, oh yeah, lots of folks aren’t convinced about his natural born citizen status.
Trump stakes out a few leftist positions but he is far more conservative than the average Republican in the House and Senate and this is good enough for me. Trump is the reliable and true conservative on my top issues which are trade and immigration.
Ted Cruz could not be trusted on these. Cruz was highly effective in the Senate and should have been content to do more there. But got a swollen ego and figured he could pull an Obama and catapult himself from freshman Senator to the Republican Presidential nomination to President. He was so ego-driven that he allied himself with GOPe skullduggery the last few months. Trump was very hard on Cruz and drove him to it. Trump made Cruz go crazy.
If a “do what it takes campaign” was his problem, Trump’s vicious “do what it takes campaign” would have done him in... so that’s obviously not the problem.
The problem is that we have an electorate that is too busy, too tired and too well-entertained to think their way through the shiess-storm of information, so they simply went with their emotions, as did the folks who gave us Obama, and voted for the funniest guy.
Folks who support Trump....it's for issues where Cruz is weak. For the fist time maybe since 1968, voters are AWAKE and LISTENING, and don't like what's happening in the world. That's why Cruz didn't get away with his inconsistencies and tactics.
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