Posted on 01/11/2003 4:58:41 AM PST by arete
"...Something is afoot, and whatever in the hell it is, I guarantee that it will end badly. Monetary idiocy always ends badly. Always. And with the current level of irresponsible Fed excess it will not only end badly, but very, very badly. Don't believe me, eh? Well, keep looking out of your window for the proof. But if you are so economically-illiterate that you have any doubts whatsoever, then you are certainly not going to believe what you see with your own eyes. So sit back down in your chair and turn on the TV. Oh! Look! There is somebody from the government saying that everything is going to be just fine! Feel better now?..."
The Mogambo Guru
- Fed Credit expanded again, although by only three billion bucks. This number does not do justice to the literal explosion of money by the Fed and the Treasury.
I shall pause for a moment while you buckle up your seat belt. You'll see why in a moment. Ready? Okay, let's continue.
In one month, December 2002, the monetary assassins at the Fed expanded credit by, I know you are not going to believe this but it is true, I swear, by $38 billion. "Why are you getting so upset over a lousy $38 billion?" you ask. Well, aside from the fact that there is no such thing as "a lousy $38 billion," this ain't no ordinary money. If you had been more attentive, you might have surmised as much from the comical way that my hair is standing on end. This is the Original High Powered Money of story and song.
This is the radioactive stuff that gets multiplied by the fractional reserve ratio. This is currently running about, oh, I figure, right around 99. So when you finish rooting around on your messy desk and finally locate that damn calculator, you can quickly verify that, yes, when you multiply 99 times $38 billion, it equals $3.762 trillion odllars! I mean, dollars! Well, they might as well be odllars, because they sure as hell ain't a-gonna be money much longer!
Not one trillion. Not two trillion. Not even three trillion, but three and a three-quarter TRILLION FREAKING DOLLARS!
And, as a little tip, there is no need to constantly re-enter those two numbers into your calculator in stunned disbelief, desperately looking for a different answer, as your brain refuses to comprehend the enormity of it. I tried that approach. I may end up with Repetitive Stress Syndrome from the attempt. Ouch!
Not only that, but the explosion in credit-creation is going asymptotic, meaning the graph is rising almost straight up. This is stunningly unbelievable! I search for a phrase to convey the appropriate level of panic, and the best I can possibly come up with is, "The living will envy the dead."
Now, admittedly, not all that potential money has made it out of the banks yet. But the money is there, ready to go.
Something is afoot, and whatever in the hell it is, and I dare not venture too far down the path of surmising, I guarantee that it will end badly. This is because one of the stark lessons of history, with the guarantee that stems from having a probability of 100%, that monetary idiocy always ends badly. Always. And with the current level of irresponsible Fed excess it will not only end badly, but very, very badly.
Don't believe me, eh? Well, keep looking out of your window for the proof. But if you are so economically-illiterate that you have any doubts whatsoever, then you are certainly not going to believe what you see with your own eyes. So sit back down in your chair and turn on the TV. Oh! Look! There is somebody from the government saying that everything is going to be just fine! Feel better now?
- The Treasury has now exceeded the statutory debt limit again. The original estimate from, oh, a couple of weeks ago, was that the limit would be exceeded in February. As it turned out, we didn't get through the first week of the year, and in grubby dollars and cents, the total stands at six trillion, four hundred and six billion. Dollars.
Of course, we are still treated to the announcements in the WSJ that the Treasury plans to pay down some fraction of the national debt with another issuance of debt. They even did it again today! Paying down debt by issuing more debt! Hahahaha! This is your government revealed in all it's glory, too abysmally stupid to understand that you are not paying off debt by going farther into debt. Morons.
- The New Year started off with a bang. Prices went up and more people are out of work, but the stock market went up. Manufacturers lowered prices and increased their losses per unit so much that somebody finally took the bait, and so the stock market went up.
Grandma and Grampa are getting so little from their bank CD's that they can't afford to buy anything, so the stock market went up.
The auto manufacturers decided that they would lose money on every car (bringing to mind the old joke about how they'll make it up on volume) by offering zero percent financing and actual money back! The idea that car makers would lose more money caused such a joyous reaction that the stock market went up.
Oil remains high-priced. Since everybody and every company is going to be using a bigger fraction of their incomes to merely buy energy, meaning that expenses are going up, then that made everyone happy beyond belief, and the stock market went up.
People are buying houses to the point where they are spending half of their incomes just to make mortgage payments, leaving roughly zero for anything else. This lack of buying power was so intoxicating that the stock market went up.
And we thought irrational exuberance was dead.
- Part of the rise in the stock market may be attributed to the Bush plan to cut taxes and stimulate the economy. Oooh! How exciting. Well, it would have been exciting in the old days, before Greenspan lost his marbles. Nowadays however, the government doesn't need any stinking taxes from proletariat trash like you or me. The currency-murdering jackasses at the Fed will gladly print up as much as they need. They are on record as having explicitly promised to do exactly that.
So here's a tip to GWB: if you want a sure-fire stimulus plan, merely eliminate all taxes right now! That's right; drop all taxes to zero! Scrap the entire tax code, since it is so "old school," and just throw it into the garbage. It is just another "barbarous relic." Now when you need money to spend, just put in a call in to the Fed and tell them how much you want. The monetary-halfwits at the Fed will merely push a few buttons, and it will be in government accounts before you even hang up the phone.
Nonetheless, the Bush administration is proposing huge stimulus programs to get the U.S. economy on an inflationary trajectory, as they lead us wearily down the same tired Keynesian deficit-spending stimulus path. One of them is the supposed huge benefit of not taxing dividends twice. The fact is that only the U.S. is so damn greedy that they do it in the first place.
And let's take a look at how much dividends there are. Hmm. Looks like about twenty bucks all told. I don't see much stimulus there. So, now let's look at everywhere else in the world that does not tax dividends twice. Hmmm. It doesn't seem to have done much for them.
Not to be outdone, the Democrats always love to rise up to remind everyone that even the tragically stupid among us have a political party to belong to. And sure enough, there they were Monday with the new lead idiot, Nancy Pelosi, and her gang of halfwits telling us that the wonderful new Democrat stimulus program is even much, much better because it proposes MORE spending than that piker Bush.
So what does this add up to, anyway? Scratching my head in a thoughtful way, I opine that it seems impossible to estimate, but it is somewhere between, oh, a minimum of $300 billion and a billion jillion gazillion dollars per year.
The part that nobody tells you is that there will be a price to be paid. You can't get something for nothing.
The unpleasant fact is that these programs will end up not only failing, but will fail spectacularly, and just end up making things much, much worse in the end. The reason is that spending is still going up and the dimwits at the Fed are creating money at a record clip. Either of these things alone is bad news, but when combined, they have a synergistic effect, and it is all to the downside. The only way this could work, from a long-term perspective, is if the government reduced spending, slashed programs, got it's big, fat nose out of the lives of Americans, and let Adam Smith's Invisible Hand of the private economy work it's magic. There is, and you can quote me on this, nothing else that will ever work, because there is nothing else that has ever worked. And the proof is contained in the factoid that, and you can look it up if you want, all large government programs have always ended up as tragic, bankrupting failures.
To even imagine that more such jackass plans by socialist/communist/fascist pinheads in Congress could actually work, in the face of demonstrable, overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is to believe in fairy tales. Because only in fairy tales is it possible to violate the Prime Iron Law of Economics, namely that There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. And both of these stimulus plans are proposing a gigantic free lunch. And since there is no such thing as a free lunch, the stimulus programs as proposed will exact a huge, devastating price that will completely overwhelm that paltry little bit of temporary stimulus.
- Kevin O'Halloran, MD, a savvy guy who reads this column and who is among the few that has not sent me actual hate mail or death threats, opines that, "The Fed and fellow elitists are purposefully, systematically and without a shred of guilt destroying this country so that they can further their own world socialist Big Brother agenda."
While I am not quite convinced that what we have today stems from a purposeful plan, the result is exactly that. Since what Congress does is pass laws, they will enact more and more laws and programs in response to the unfolding mess that their previous enactment of more and more laws and programs has produced, hoping to ameliorate the pain they have inflicted. That they will fail, as they have failed at everything else they have ever touched, is guaranteed.
In that light, I have to assume that the elitists of the world are NOT trying to install Big Brother. If they had hatched such a plan, it would have surely failed, too, since Congress and the Federal Reserve are the most inept bunch of dimwitted, ignorant and mal-educated losers ever assembled in one place.
- Citigroup has taken a stake in Pudong, a Chinese bank. They are providing credit-card services to Chinese citizens. This is the beginning of the Chinese ascendance to economic superpowerdom, as the one fabulous, time-tested way to bring future consumption into the present is to provide credit. Admittedly, they already have $500 billion in bad loans on the books, so the story goes. But that is still $500 billion of goods and services that have been consumed that otherwise would not have been consumed. And that $500 billion will surely be recouped from charging the high interest rates to those more credit-worthy Chinese nationals who pay their bills. Just like here.
Whereas Wimpy of Popeye fame would merely promise to pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today, the modern credit-scenario equivalent is to put it on a credit card. And then Tuesday pay the fraction of a cent interest charge on the hamburger today. For example, suppose burgers are a dollar apiece, but Wimpy doesn't have a dollar. Bummer. But he has a credit card. The interest rate is, let's say, 12% a year. So, the interest charge on that one-dollar burger is a penny a month. In the short run, then, and from a cash-basis accounting standpoint, Wimpy can consume hamburgers at a penny each! And, this miracle of modern financing will work for you, too! So, are you are going to go hungry for one lousy cent? How about that family of yours? You gonna let them go hungry for a few stinking pennies? Ha!
In short, the provision of expanding credit for personal consumption, if used, leads inexorably to expanding consumption. And Say's Law says that increasing aggregate demand will be matched by increasing aggregate supply. So the expansion in China will continue apace until every borrower has used up every scrap of credit. Just like here.
And expanded industry will spring up to meet that expanded final demand. And the credit industry will also expand to meet the expanded production as a result of the expanded demand! And that will cause a further expansion of credit! And then it feeds on itself, going round and round, with everyone going deeper and deeper into debt, consuming more and more credit, building and building, GDP booming, until one day when, well, for a continuation of the flip side of this approaching boom in China, let's now turn our attention to what happens AFTER the debt has been accumulated.
- This whole credit thing will soon caricatured in the editorial-page cartoons as a devouring monster, just like the old days. The way it works is that the credit issuer charges a lot of interest, they write off a lot of debt, and at the end of the day there is a profit. And it works like a champ, at first, at creating powerful economic booms. How can it not? How can buying without paying not lead to economic activity? For proof, look at the USA! The massive amount of borrowing that we have done to finance grubby consumption has actually supported the economy of the entire freaking globe, lo these many years! We Americans, in the aggregate, have consumed at least a decade's worth of our future stream of consumables. Probably more.
And the whole thing resulted in higher and higher tax revenue streams to the multitude of layers of government, which happily spent every last, stinking dime that came in.
And then the eight years under the loathsome and corrupt Clinton gang kicked the whole thing into the highest gear, and the government spent money, and taxed money, and created money, and created permanent government programs, and agencies, and commissions, and panels, and departments, and bureaus, and offices, and spending and hiring and hiring and spending with both hands. And doling out more benefits, and more payments, and more recipients, and always more laws, laws, laws. Whew! It makes me quite giddy just to write that.
Now, how can we keep this whole misbegotten mess going, long-term? Meaning, of course, until after I am long dead and no longer at risk of being inflicted with government help of any kind. Well, we have a few alternatives. One is for incomes to always rise faster than the additional interest expense associated with accumulating more debt to buy more stuff. Nice work if you can get it.
Another is for the currency underlying the debt to degrade to worthlessness. "Hey! You say I owe you a billion dollars? Well, hold it right there a minute, and I'll pop down to the basement and print you up some! Fresh! And still slightly warm and not quite dry in spots, so look out." This works for governments only, and they administer severe penalties when YOU try that crap, unfortunately for you. But it IS legal for the government to pull that crap, again, unfortunately for you.
Moving along with this tasteless waste of time for both you and me, another way to make this thing work is bankruptcy, of course.
But a better way, a much better way, in fact the best way of all, is to charge everything to your children on their credit cards. I tell them, "Hey! It's just like Social Security and trans-generational Keynesian deficit-spending, so what are you so freaking testy about?"
- Speaking of debts and bankruptcy, I have to ponder the remarkable patience of our creditors. Foreigners own a pot-load of US equities, government debt, municipal and state debt, private debt, corporate debt, on and on and on. But these last few months, they have lost about twelve percent just in currency losses alone! Hahaha! Suckers! Add that to their losses on equities, and pretty soon you're talking big money, more than most of us make in a week!
Let's say they own, as some ridiculous minimum, only five trillion in US assets. What's the currency translation loss? Well, twelve percent of five trillion is - gulp - $600 billion! See? What did I tell you? I don't make anything NEAR that much money per week!
I am, however, not quite ready to ascribe unlimited patience and ability to absorb intense pain to our creditors. So I figure that there are forces at work right now, even as we speak, with everyone trying to get their governments to take actions that will preserve their portfolios.
The question is, how do you move that kind of money around? The sheer total of it nearly swamps the market value of everything you can buy with it.
- When standing back for a rare, reflective moment, like after stealthily going outdoors to sneak a forbidden cigarette, you stand there feeling that nicotine revving up your brain, varoom varoom varoom, and you have the time to ponder things. Like, why aren't Americans buying gold as fast as they can? But they are buying and bidding-up overpriced houses? And buying and bidding up overpriced stocks? And buying and bidding up overpriced bonds? Especially bonds! It seems beyond silly to buy debt to lock in these absurdly-low, artificially-reduced, manipulated interest rates, in the face of rampant monetary and fiscal excesses. So what is beyond silly? Stupid? Suicidal?
But not only monetary and fiscal excesses, but coupled at the same juncture of space and time with record-setting levels of debt in every corner of the economic universe! And huge losses in the stock market! It boggles the mind! It is truly stupefying when one is confronted with the incontrovertible proof, the kind of bullet-proof evidence so strong and compelling that not even Perry Mason would even take your calls, that Americans are so abysmally ignorant that they do not possess even the rudiments of basic economics, or finance, or anything remotely connected with money.
I fear for America. And I blame the media. They were specifically given Second Amendment rights so they COULD be an independent watchdog on the government, rooting out corruption and rousing the huddled masses, we bent-back shlubs who too busy scratching out a living to be able to investigate political stupidity and take steps to right some wrongs.
The media failed miserably, and I can have no respect for them for their wanton, criminal dereliction of duty. The bastards.
But in the final analysis, it was all of us. Like Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and it is us." We let the newspapers degenerate into vacuous worthlessness. We let the schools not teach about money. We chose not to get an education on our own. We believe what government minions tell us. We are failures as thinking, rational beings.
We will soon get an eye-opening education about these things, and with a big knock to our wallets to remember it by. And that brings to mind a famous phrase, which I somehow mangle into, "The price of education is usually not cheap." And the education that we are about to receive will be appropriate to a nation of childishly-trusting, ignorant doofuses. And what was that other phrase about "A fool and his money are soon parted?" It seems, somehow, oddly appropriate right here.
- John Mauldin, one of the bright lights of the intellectual universe, opines that, "It is reasonable to assume that we will have several recessions over the next 15 years." This squares perfectly with others who say that returns will be in the modest 5% or so for a decade or more to come. If that.
But you know me, and of course I am way out there at the extreme end of the bell curve of opinion about matters economic and my forecast sees doom, doom, DOOOOOMMM! With scattered gloom.
- The government has announced that they will stop compiling information about mass layoffs. They cite budgetary reasons. But this is the same old government crapola, since I figure that the real reason is that they don't want to publish any information that will startle anybody. When there is no information to the contrary, anybody can parade around in front of a camera and say, with perfect conviction and a clear conscience, "Everything is fine!"
It's not. It won't be tomorrow, either.
But getting back to the point after I wandered aimlessly off on a tangent for no particular reason, let me quote Doug Noland, who writes, "We are living at an historical crossroads in 2003. Unstable financial markets and a vulnerable dollar are assured. The risk of expanding inflationary manifestations from a deranged U.S. Credit system is rising by the week, especially for commodities with inelastic supplies (gold and oil!).
"From my analytical framework, 2002 basically followed what I consider a worst-case scenario. Mortgage Credit excess when to unprecedented extremes, Credit market leveraged speculation appears to have gone to unprecedented extremes, trades deficits went to unprecedented extremes, and a highly imbalanced Bubble economy suffered only further debilitating distortions. The Fed used its bullets sustaining the Credit Bubble and, despite assurances to the contrary, has little ammunition remaining for when it's desperately needed."
But I say, with the usual hysterical hyperbole that has alarmed neighbors and small animals for decades, that the Fed acted like New Age jackasses, but without the ponytails. Filled to bursting with confidence in their computer models, they thought they had harnessed the business cycle, what with all that boom-and-bust unpleasantness. But they ended up only proving that you can take a theory, turn it into a computer model, and the computer will prove the theory. Wow, am I surprised.
Instead, I confidently predict that the Fed will accidentally prove an entire different list of principles.
One of the principles that they will again prove is that monetary and credit excesses will destroy you. Another one is that big government projects always have unintended consequences and hidden flaws, and they result in the guarantee of failure. Another principle that they will prove is that the gold standard is the only possible defense against destruction of your own currency. Another, related, principle is that once your currency is destroyed, so are you, unless you change your evil ways.
That gives me an idea! In my off-time, if any does actually show up one day, I shall wear a sandwich board emblazoned with the words, "Repent thy monetary sins and change thy ways, else thy end is near!" And maybe form a nice, cozy, non-profit, untaxed religion centered on the Almighty Dollar, and then hit you up for a tidy donation. Remind me to tell you about our new, Gold Level Sponsor Program, or maybe you'd like an upgrade in your membership to our Platinum Level Sponsor! You would? Hey! Thanks a lot, dude!
- The results of monetary excesses will be roaring inflation, which is already rising considerably. But the clueless, laughably inept media, although they actually live to flap their lips because they love the sound of their own voices, cannot actually pick up on anything that is not laid out for them. It's a dry regurgitation of facts, with quotes from a few people the reporter could get through to on the phone and who would talk to them, and we find that we all concur that, yessir, this latest whiz-bang thing the government is a-doing is a-gonna be just peachy.
And who are these people handing out these accepted truths? Your usual suspects, namely get-along-until-pension government personnel on the one hand and securities salesmen in snappy suits on the other, which is so deliciously alliterative, with just that added touch of disdain and utter contempt that I was looking for.
- The most telling quote provided by Mr. Nolan was a piece of certified insanity by Pimco's Paul McCulley, who said "America needs to inflate the money stock, while devaluing it against gold, so as to keep private sector debt obligations from sinking into a deflationary abyss. And the world needs the same thing: a broad based, wholesale devaluation of all paper currencies versus a basket of globally-traded 'stuff.'"
In all of history, the devastation caused by inflation was universally viewed as catastrophic, only because of the catastrophes that resulted from inflation. Seems kinda cut and dried, not to mention circular reasoning. Nowadays, the shocking, abysmal stupidity of university-trained economists reigns supreme, and even that heretofore Law of Economics has been turned on it's head. Nowadays inflation is now viewed as beneficial! Rampant money-creation is viewed as beneficial! Rising prices are beneficial! Unbelievable!
In fact I am sure, without a shred of doubt, that my continual, shrieking advice to you to Buy More Gold, hereinafter referred to by the acronym BMG, will stand the test of time as "The Best Investment Tip You Ever Got From Anybody!" And now the good news is that Mr. McCulley has also provided us with a tip to make plenty big bucks, namely Buy More Gold, because he is actually advocating that the dollar be devalued against gold, which is exactly the play-book of the Fed! Ain't dat nice? Because the devaluation of currencies is epidemic and the production of gold isn't, then the rise in price is automatic. So if there is one Sure-Fire Investment Tip in the universe, and you can ask the Raelians to check with their UFO-alien buddies to verify that this is also correct on the other planets in this solar system, then BMG is it.
The good news is that neither our children nor grandchildren, nor anyone's children for countless generations hence, will have to listen to money-murderers like Bernanke, Greenspan or even McCulley. That they temporarily occupy positions of authority and power only serves to illustrate the Shakespeare line that goes something like, "Oh, proud man! What tricks he performs before heaven when blessed with a little temporary power."
And where are their detractors? How many graduates in economics do we have to have before more than a mere handful of them rises up from his fat, ignorant butt and says, "Hey! This is wrong! The entire literature of economic history says this cannot work! In fact, this is exactly opposite of what the textbooks say is supposed to be going on!"
Unfortunately for the children and grandchildren of Bernanke, Greenspan and McCulley, they will have to live with the taunts of their peers who will probably never tire of saying, "Jeez, your father and/or grandfather were really stupid guys! Does that mean that you are that stupid, too? Hahaha!"
- If I hear one more idiot say that 2.5% inflation is tame, I'm going to plotz right here. But I always say that, and I can hardly get through another breath before another moron opines that inflation at this rate leaves the Fed plenty of room to cut interest rates, and how inflation at less than a million percent a day is benign and somehow beneficial.
It is not, it never was, and never will be. Inflation at any rate above zero is like a cancer that is merely slow-growing. It will not cause you problems today, maybe, but one day it will, and then it will kill you. That's the implicit guarantee of inflation, and anybody who says differently is an idiot, and you can tell them I said so. And not only that I said so, but with a really snotty and disrespectful tone to my voice, too.
Ugh. --- Mogambo Says: When the fools predictably rush in to buy already-overvalued equities in response to this ludicrous stimulus program idea, wait a little, then start selling them short. But better yet, BMG.
The Mogambo Guru Lives!
Richard Daughty is general partner and C.O.O. for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the writer/publisher of the Mogambo Guru economic newsletter, an avocational exercise the better to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it. The Mogambo Guru is quoted frequently in Barron's, The Daily Reckoning, and other fine publications.
The best most straight forward advise that I've heard recently.
Richard W.
Comments and opinions welcome
Richard W.
Richard W.
I've been yelling loud and clear about what that criminal Greenspan and his corrupt gang of FED lackeys have been doing to the average person. My elderly mother keeps calling me about the almost non-existent interest she is receiving on her savings at the bank. Two days ago she called me and said that the bank now wants to charge a .50/check fee on all checks over 10 that she writes. Nice, isn't it. The average citizen is taking it in the neck to support Greenspan's friends on Wall Street so they can keep pumping and dumping stocks. This is an outrage and people ought to be shouting it at the top of their lungs.
Richard W.
.....I don't know what this translates to on a per capita basis, but I do know that several years ago it was running about $19,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.....but there's another level of government debt that's rarely spoken of and that's per capita state, county and municipal debt..... local politicians, working in concert with so-called "business leaders" are no slouches themselves when it comes to racking up the red ink......back in the 80s and early 90s I lived in mid sized city that was on the make.....every time you turned around they were embarking on another big-ticket building program.....new convention center, new colesieum, new football stadium, new trade mart ect....they swiftly took the per capita debt from $200 to $600 in less than a decade.....and they were still thinking up more big ticket proposals when I left town!
Thanks for the article Richard and good luck to all!
Stonewalls the Ant
Once the inflationary spiral was kicked off in the late '70's and early '80's, there was no stopping the beast. They put the pedal to the metal in the '90's and this is where we find ourselves now.
How can it be stopped without catastrophic effects?
arete, thanks for this post. It took a few days to get to it as it is a valuable (and time-consuming) read. I get the sense that this author might be a freeper. It definitely seems more attached to what I learned in Economics courses in college in the late '60s than the current stuff coming from analysts.
My first thought. I've been looking for talk about inflation. It would be the next step in this cycle, with the government printing more money to cover debts. The thing that's weird this time round is that there is no shortage of consumer goods or food because of the global economy. In spite of inflation in some costs (fuel increases + heating-intensive winter, is the big one), there are a lot of cheap goods. My gosh, I just purchases a 20in TV for $100. People have bought so much cheap stuff that there is nowhere to put it.
So, logically, inflation will happen, and prices and salaries will rise to make current debt meainingless and tax collection higher from increased wages.
I'm not sure. There is a normal economic cycle (see the sine curve), but there are so many artificial inputs the government is doing to rig the natural results. There should be a shortage of labor to raise salaries...but those are going down and good jobs are disappearing. A demand for money should raise interest rates...but the government just keeps printing more. There should be a shortage of goods when prices go down...that isn't happening. Government spending should be down with less money. Yet, governments at all levels just keep implementing more programs...with printing press money to get them started.
There is just so much stuff going on. The lack of ethics in the Church and in business transactions, the huge percentage of un-assimilated residents of the country, the chunk of our personal lives that have been taken over by the government, and the "baby boomers" entering retirement are all new levels of things. I don't see how anyone's crystal ball is anything but foggy.
Obviously, no one should want to enter this crossroads with major debt. No one should be too sure their job will be there tomorrow. Will we have a stronger economy with more secure borders and a self-sufficient economy with the government giving US citizens back some of those controls over their lives? Or, will we become Argentina?
I'm struck by how many people don't care...hey, as long as their lives are okay, what can happen. (MONSTER by Steppenwolf in the '60s is a good song for expressing those sentiments.)
I'm also thinking either the cycle wins out, this globalization nonsense stops, or the economy and society as we know them collapse anyway...corruption, over-run borders, a lack of stable well paying jobs, bankruptcies, moral decay, too much dependence on others for surivival could do it. If things don't turn around, there's not much any of us can do. If they do turn around, I would suspect that some sanity will cause the shut-down of the printing presses and there will be some higher interest rates on savings.
So those are my thoughts. I just don't see how anyone can have any confidence in the future with so many variables and so many extremes in the mix. I do like this author.
Listen to the drums of war and you will find your answer. The louder the drums, the worse the economy is.
Richard W.
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