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And Suddenly Things Change
Kunstler.com ^ | 5 Aug, 2024 | James Howard Kunstler

Posted on 08/05/2024 8:52:48 AM PDT by MtnClimber

“The global economy is becoming unburdened by what has been.” — Jordan Schachtel on “X”.

That two-by-four upside our country’s head you’ve been waiting to get whomped with? Looks like it’s landing now. We got a banger in 2008, but it didn’t make a much of an impression. Maybe you don’t even remember these people, but then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke came in like a code blue squad and hooked up the banks to an IV-drip speedball of cocaine and heroin, i.e., “money” that didn’t actually exist (a.k.a. “liquidity,” hallucinated capital), and that crew kept it coming for years.

And then Janet Yellen and her posse kept it coming with never-ending zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) until the national debt canceled America’s future. And that left Jerome Powell pretending there was a way out of this doom-loop. Then came the repo market spasm in September 2019 that freaked out the blob so badly they shut down the whole world with Covid and locked-down economies. And everything since then has been a waiting game. The financial world was in hospice.

The wait is over. Everything that can break is breaking: stock markets, bond markets, the galaxy of derivatives — bets on this and that, which will never be honored. Banks are next. Gold and silver are hanging in there for dear life just now, because they’re actually worth something. (And because they are worth something, they‘ll eventually sell off some too, to cover margin calls on other stuff hemorrhaging value. But they will not go to zero like a lot of other stuff, and they’ll come back stronger.)

You understand this can’t play out like it did in 2008-9. The authorities are out of tricks and out of fake money. They can try the emergency interest rate cut, but it won’t change what is actually happening: the epic revaluation of everything humans make and own — with much of it losing value and quite a bit losing all value because it never really had any. The spooky catch is that there will be an attempt in this wild and terrifying process, for certain devious, unprincipled parties to take possession of many things shaking loose — what remains of collateral. . . real things. . . commodities. . . facilities. . . properties. . . chattels. . . artworks. . . and, of course, whatever securities still have a relationship to realities of production.

This brings a sharp end to the current political sitcom, especially the situation of the Democratic Party. They will get blamed for the economic carnage left behind by the shattered money system. They lied about everything for years, every number, every index, every supposed “policy”.

Kamala Harris won’t be cackling her way out of this. It’s hard to see how she might remain the party’s nominee. She can’t even speak to the massive catalog of prior failures to govern our country coherently and effectively. And it’s equally hard to figure how “Joe Biden,” still presiding emptily over this fiasco, can get Twenty-fifthed out of the way for his feckless veep. More likely, the coming convention will be a desperate, bloody mass cage fight and somebody else will stagger out of it to go through the motions of campaigning in a hopeless cause. Hillary might even decline the roll in this horror show.

Now, I began writing this post well before dawn, eastern time. The action in Asia, across the international date line, was a slaughter. Europe got smacked hard, but not catastrophically......


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: bidendestroyseconomy; bidenomics; bidenrecession; economy; stockmarket
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1 posted on 08/05/2024 8:52:48 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

How is all of that deficit spending working out? How can we be spending so much on illegal immigration when our own house is in such a mess? We are being ruled by “The Joker” playing puppet master to our so-called leaders.


2 posted on 08/05/2024 8:53:14 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
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To: MtnClimber
“The global economy is becoming unburdened by what has been.”

lol.

3 posted on 08/05/2024 8:54:01 AM PDT by xoxox
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To: MtnClimber

4 posted on 08/05/2024 8:54:10 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
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To: MtnClimber
It’s hard to see how she might remain the party’s nominee.

I look forward to the Democrat Convention.

5 posted on 08/05/2024 8:56:42 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (I think women should get out of women's sports before they get hurt.)
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To: xoxox

unburdened by what has be’d.


6 posted on 08/05/2024 8:57:42 AM PDT by xoxox
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To: ClearCase_guy
I look forward to the Democrat Convention.

I expect to see Hillary fly in on her broom. "Hee, hee, hee.....I'll get you my Trumpee, and your little MAGA friends too!"

7 posted on 08/05/2024 9:02:14 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
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To: MtnClimber

Yeppers


8 posted on 08/05/2024 9:04:28 AM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold ......)
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To: MtnClimber
The "ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been, ..."

Allow me to translate:

"The ability to implement communism, unburdened by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights".

We are truly looking at counter-revolutionaries a quarter of a millenium after the American Revolution.

9 posted on 08/05/2024 9:08:03 AM PDT by William Tell
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To: William Tell

That is EXACTLY what that means.


10 posted on 08/05/2024 9:10:03 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
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To: MtnClimber

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

— Yeats


11 posted on 08/05/2024 9:14:56 AM PDT by vikingd00d (chown -R us ~you/base)
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To: MtnClimber

Oh, come on now, we need to move into the 21st century. She upgraded to a vacuum cleaner.


12 posted on 08/05/2024 9:22:28 AM PDT by Indy Pendance (Jesus can't get here soon enough!)
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To: vikingd00d

Very good!

Title: The Second Coming


13 posted on 08/05/2024 9:25:30 AM PDT by Indy Pendance (Jesus can't get here soon enough!)
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To: MtnClimber

I used to hold gold and silver. I finally figured out when the SHTF, I can’t eat or drink it and if I try to trade it for food or water who would want it just because it’s pretty. I sold everything and bought real estate and a well.


14 posted on 08/05/2024 9:26:56 AM PDT by waredbird
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To: MtnClimber

Great comment section!


15 posted on 08/05/2024 9:27:31 AM PDT by Bellflower (Who dares believe Jesus? He says absolutely amazing things, which few dare consider.)
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To: MtnClimber

But, but, but, wait just a minute!
- We are ALL super-duper wealthy!

Just look at all of the Trillions and Trillions of dollars!

We are Rich beyond all measure, right?
Snap our fingers - and POW - infinite money.
Surely we can exchange these green and gray pieces of paper for EVERYTHING OF VALUE in the world!

No?

What a Bummer, man….. it’s problematic….


16 posted on 08/05/2024 9:33:09 AM PDT by GaltAdonis
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To: waredbird

Ammunition might be a better investment than gold or silver.


17 posted on 08/05/2024 9:35:59 AM PDT by Empire_of_Liberty
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To: MtnClimber

Will they try to keep it propped up and rolling just long enough to let Trump in and accuse him for it, and give him the headache of it all?


18 posted on 08/05/2024 9:39:08 AM PDT by Bellflower (Who dares believe Jesus? He says absolutely amazing things, which few dare consider.)
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To: MtnClimber

Is the rapture any day now. Rescue time just might have come sooner than later.


19 posted on 08/05/2024 9:41:47 AM PDT by Bellflower (Who dares believe Jesus? He says absolutely amazing things, which few dare consider.)
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To: MtnClimber

For the Dems is isn’t quite a lose-lose if they can manage to hold out until Trump is in office and then blame him for the mess.


20 posted on 08/05/2024 9:41:48 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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