The folks on Easter Island thought themselves exceptional too.
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
- Percy Shelley
Despite all the MSM spin about exceptionalism, consumer confidence, comfort and all that propaganda, the Empire of the Debt's longevity can be more accurately predicted by the 43 million US citizens condemned to living on food stamps. Like most, this Empire is dying from inner decay not conquest. The world economic system based on central banking and floating fiat currencies is crumbling. For the plutocrats and kleptocrats the jig is up...and they know it.
Every MSM news shows the 'market' numbers but never what they mean. There's two economies now, the real, undrenched in newly printed fiat largrese, the Main St. economy and the 'market' where banker and billionaires toss around the free dollars the QE gods have bestowed on them. Keep in mind that those gods said the money was to be loaned out to help Main St. but, surprise, the assholes used the free money to buy assets like stocks or agricultural land or other bundled securities, then bundle those up and start selling off those bundle's future prospects - derivatives.
The Fed has pumped at least $3.7 trillion of fiat currency into securities either directly or through the bank bailouts since 2008 bringing the total to $11 trillion in stimulus by the world's central banks. A lotta dough, a lotta hot air. If no major bubbles burst, China is about to become, again, the number one global economic power, a position it enjoyed for 18 of the past 20 centuries - another bit of history those who believe that U.S. hegemony will last forever seem to step around like fresh pile of dog shit.
Lost temporarily in the dervish like bankers and billionaires frantic spin are the consequences of all easy money but they’re coming come home to roost now in what the spinners are calling “demand destruction' - the process by which those who can no longer afford goods or services stop buying them.
Whether it all goes KABOOM or slowly fizzles out matters to us all, but end it all will. This video by Jim Rickards is today's hottest dire warning for investors of a huge multi-decade depression on our doorstep. Of course Jim wants to 'help' you find a better horse to jump onto for the ride through this dangerous river [gold probably]. It's worth watching because Jim's stats and details are impressive and well researched
Jim is an expert long schooled in what can and can't be spoken of by analysts and experts, even goldbug doom guys. The unspeakable truth is that the current deflation is driven by slow degrowth in demand for needless crap - discretionary spending in dervish, resulting from the pressure of personal debt on the members of the consumer class who live nearest the financial brink which in turn opens their eyes to the reality, the freeality if used well, that they've got enough crap already.
All current signs show the Empire of Debt slowly deflating. Good News in a world populated by billions of self-serving rogue primates incapable of voluntarily powering down, maybe there is a way to win at the carnival after all, because 'the mechanism' of degrowth driven by slow deflation needs no altruistic choices to made by even one consumer choosing to 'want less' for success.
