What fools we have running the nation. We haven’t had true capitalism in over a hundred years, and what everybody who has bought the flawed concept doesn’t understand is that the supposed “Great Economy” is a pure fabrication and manipulation that cannot and will not last, and it has been so constructed, that when it does implode upon itself, the results will be much more devastating than if the government and the Fed had kept their hands out of it.
But then again maybe I’m the fool. I do believe in a free market capitalist system 100%, and I also understand that the current over-regulated fascist system has picked winners and losers over the century and created a great deal of the current wealth inequality we now see. A correction must come about to close the gap between those who take the risks of starting businesses with their capital and those who provide the skills and labor to run those businesses. And with that said, I will also add there is nothing at all wrong with anyone making a fair profit from the sweat of their own brow, initiative and talent.
“We are living in a system of the banks, by the banks and for the banks, and that is the reality…” ~ G. Edward Griffin, author of ‘The Creature from Jekyll Island‘
“The Best Economy Evah” is the constant mantra we hear from the Trump economic experts and Larry Kudlow, President Trump’s Director of the National Economic Council, and yet, it is hard to ignore the warning signs that something isn’t quite right with this economy. Despite unemployment purportedly at an all-time low and the stock market riding high, the Federal Reserve Bank is still printing between $80 to $100 billion a day, after stating two months ago that this action was only going to be necessary for a few weeks, as they increase their own balance sheets by $200 billion since September, through Quantitative Easing on steroids, and more rapidly than they did at the height of the 2008 economic crisis when the amount of dollars in circulation doubled from $880 billion to $1.76 trillion.
The mainstream media and investors tend to focus on these statistics, despite the manner that allows them to be most usually and easily manipulated. If one points to the recent collapses in some sectors of manufacturing or the explosion in consumer and corporate debt, the ready retort is always “But the stock market is at an all-time high”. The average person ignores the fact that stock markets are meaningless trailing indicators, and they also ignore the fallacies surrounding the GDP numbers and the tens of millions of jobless people not included in the unemployment numbers, for any number of reasons.
The Federal Reserve repossession market purchases continue to run in high demand, and this in turn has tightened corporate cash flows to a near standstill. We saw something quite similar just before the credit crisis hit in 2008.
The recent increase in consumer spending is also deceptive, since it doesn’t necessarily indicate people are buying more goods or have more disposable income. If one views the steep declines in traffic and goods shipped via the trucking and railroad freight systems, it becomes more readily apparent that we are in the throes of inflation, as the cost of living increases and the people spend more on the same amount of goods, being bled dry along the way.
The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates three times this year, including the 0.25 percent cut at the end of October. Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell noted this move was made to “provide some insurance against ongoing risks”.
These are actions taken by a central bank when an economy is weak.
The Federal Reserve’s decisions directly affect the prices of everything on the planet, because the U.S. dollar is the world’s dominant reserve currency, dictating one’s salary, interest rates on loans, home values and all other assets, goods and services. They recently acknowledged they were in uncharted waters.
On November 13th 2019, Jerome Powell told Congress that economic conditions are totally unprecedented, and he added that his committee has “significant humility” because so many of their basic assumptions have been wrong. He also stated that the Fed was attempting measures that have never been previously attempted, in order to correct and balance the economy.
America’s most vulnerable people today are the fifty-three million workers, forty-four percent of the workforce between the ages of 18 and 64, considered low-wage and low-skilled workers. And according to a Brookings Institution report, most of these people make considerably less than $11.00 an hour, and they are stuck in an economy where short term contracts and freelance work are prevalent and permanent jobs are not as plentiful as advertised by political rhetoric, with median annual earnings of only $17,950.
An overwhelming number of these people currently find themselves unable to pay their loans, whether those are for cars, college tuition or credit card debt. They will be hit hardest during the next recession.
Looking at the “Big Picture”, the federal government’s October budget deficit has the U.S. on track to a one trillion dollar deficit, possibly larger, in fiscal 2020, largely due to the penchant Democrats and Republicans alike have for out-of-control spending. Our budget deficits began rising again in 2016 and have risen for four straight years, and a combination of tax cuts and spending is pushing the deficit to take five percent of our Gross Domestic Product, by next September, topping $1 trillion for the first time since 2012. For the first time in history, deficits topped $1 trillion each year from 2008 to 2012, in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
And this also ignores the manipulation of the GDP numbers. Fancy accounting omits taxpayer dollar expenditures on inflated programs and Obamacare, and according to many experts, the U.S. GDP is actually in the negative. However, even government figures show official GDP growth in decline at 1.9 percent and below the projected three percent growth for this year.
Massive U.S. consumer debt, both government and private, now totals over $14 trillion, with our national debt at $22 trillion, and this places tremendous pressure on the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low and even experiment with negative rates; however, the Federal Reserve can only keep the price of money artificially low for so long without serious consequences. And in the meantime, it is in a panic to prevent an economic crisis more severe and catastrophic than seen in 2008.
Very similar to the insider buying schemes that centered on the 1929 stock market crash, in recent history, the money elites are still prone to engineer economic disasters while deliberately hiding the real statistics from the public, in order to benefit from their insider knowledge and pick stocks up for pennies on the dollar, a federal crime by the way that they seem willing to commit with abandon. They also use economic crises, such as the one impending, to change the power structure in the nation, or the world, just as FDR did through the New Deal, something that may not have been created otherwise.
It’s either this, or some of them truly believe the answer lies in doing more of the same, by once again pumping trillions into the banking sector as was done in 2008 to 2012, freeing even more lines of credit. Essentially, it seems as though some may really believe in Keynesian economics and the notion that an economy can be grown and expanded through more debt, thus saving the system and America from suffering.
More often now, in an attempt to stave off the approaching catastrophe, America hears bankers advocating for universal incomes and making way for “green deal” investments and many different short and long term economic stimulus packages, while the global and U.S. economy are slowing and grinding to a halt. The Federal Reserve sees the only solution as doing more of the same by way of various forms of Quantitative Easing, in order to avoid riots in the street.
I’m no prophet of doom, but I do believe in taking a realistic look at all matters, including our economy. If our economy is not on the verge of collapse, why has the Federal Reserve, the central bank, been buttressing it for the past decade? How much longer can the Federal Reserve continue this practice and how much longer do they actually want to do so? What if allowing the entire house of cards to fall benefits them, just as it has in past similar situations?
Currently the top ten percent of Americans are living large, prospering greatly from the Federal Reserve’s government bubble scheme and President Trump’s stock market pumping on Twitter, and they have amassed hard assets in gold, silver, real estate, factories, tools and food supplies, with the certain knowledge that everything based on paper and debt will collapse soon. They will pick everything up for pennies on the dollar, just like 1929 all over again.
They know it’s on the way, the collapse. So, what is the Big Plan of the Bankers?
Our central bank and its owners see the U.S. financial system once again on the verge of collapse and a system of inflation that cannot be sustained forever, since all systems of exponential growth are always doomed to collapse. Our system entered the surreal whenever it started working with numbers in the trillions, just as Elizabeth Warren, Democratic Presidential candidate, easily and nonchalantly as though it were nothing, bandied about a $52 trillion number to front her agenda if elected, and America is at the breaking point as She is being purposefully pushed beyond reality.
The Federal Reserve Bank and its private concerns and board members understand the dynamics better than anybody, so they must believe the end to be near, along with those of us paying attention, who can very nearly see and touch the coming end. And on the last day, the Big Banker Bandits will grab all they can in their desire to safeguard their own financial situation and be secure, as hell unfolds for everyone else; so in the meantime, they are going for broke, because they know the system is broken and little remains to fix it.
The only real fix will come whenever America returns to a truly free capitalist economic system, unseen in America since 1913 and even less so after FDR’s New Deal hit the government. And, as our artificial economy continues to fail and the wealth inequality gap swells, America finds Herself at the 11th hour and an awakening that will ignite the auto-correction of our system and the wealth inequality imbalance, along with major protests in the streets of our largest cities, much like we now see in Chile and elsewhere, and a revolution focused on eradicating the Federal Reserve Bank and arresting and prosecuting those un-elected officials who have raped, pillaged and ruined the U.S. economy, enriching themselves at the expense of most of America.
~ The Author ~
Justin O. Smith has lived in Tennessee off and on most of his adult life, and graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, with a B.S. and a double major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – minors in Military Science and English, for what its worth. His real education started from that point on. Smith is a frequent contributor to the family of Kettle Moraine Publications.
