By Matthew Ehret for the Saker Blog
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Vice President of the World Bank Carmen Reinhardt recently warned on October 15 that a new financial disaster looms ominously over the horizon with a vast sovereign default and a corporate debt default. Just in the past 6 months of bailouts unleashed by the blowout of the system induced by the Coronavirus lockdown, Reinhardt noted that the U.S. Federal Reserve created $3.4 Trillion out of thin air while it took 40 years to create $14 Trillion. Meanwhile panicking economists are screaming in tandem that banks across Trans Atlantic must unleash ever more hyperinflationary quantitative easing which threatens to turn our money into toilet paper while at the same time acquiescing to infinite lockdowns in response to a disease which has the fatality levels of a common flu.
The fact of the oncoming collapse itself should not be a surprise- especially when one is reminded of the $1.5 quadrillion of derivatives which has taken over a world economy which generates a mere $80 trillion/year in measurable goods and trade. These nebulous bets on insurance on bets on collateralized debts known as derivatives didn’t even exist a few decades ago, and the fact is that no matter what the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank have attempted to do to stop a new rupture of this overextended casino bubble of an economy in recent months, nothing has worked. Zero to negative percent interest rates haven’t worked, opening overnight repo loans of $100 billion/night to failing banks hasn’t worked- nor has $4.5 trillion of bailout unleashed since March 2020. No matter what these financial wizards try to do, things just keep getting worse. Rather than acknowledge what is actually happening, scapegoats have been selected to shift the blame away from reality to the point that the current crisis is actually being blamed on the Coronavirus!
This Goes Far Beyond COVID-19
Let me just state outright: That while the coronavirus may in fact be the catalyzer for the oncoming financial blowout, it is the height of stupidity to believe that it is the cause, as the seeds of the crisis goes deeper and originated much earlier than most people are prepared to admit.
To start getting at a more truthful diagnostic, it is useful to think of an economy in real (vs purely financial) terms – That is: Simply think of the economy as total system in which the body of humanity (all cultures, nations and families of the world) exist.
This co-existence is predicated on certain necessary powers of production of food, clothing, capital goods (hard and soft infrastructure), transportation and energy production. After raw materials are transformed into finished goods, these physical goods and services move from points A to B and are consumed. This is very much akin to the metabolism that maintains a living body.
Now since populations tend to grow geometrically, while resources deplete arithmetically, constant demands on new creative discoveries and technological application are also needed to meet and improve upon the needs of a growing humanity. This last factor is actually the most important because it touches on the principled element that distinguishes humanity from all other forms of life in the ecosystem which Lincoln identified wonderfully in his 1859 Discoveries and Inventions Speech:
“All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various “leads” from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny… Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions.”
In a 2016 speech by President Xi Jinping, the principles of Lincoln’s understanding were laid out by the Chinese statesman who said:
“We must consider innovation as the primary driving force of growth and the core in this whole undertaking, and human resources as the primary source to support development. We should promote innovation in theory, systems, science and technology, and culture, and make innovation the dominant theme in the work of the Party, and government, and everyday activity in society… In the 16th century, human society entered an unprecedented period of active innovation. Achievements in scientific innovation over the past five centuries have exceeded the sum total of several previous millennia. . . . Each and every scientific and industrial revolution has profoundly changed the outlook and pattern of world development… Since the second Industrial Revolution, the U.S. has maintained global hegemony because it has always been the leader and the largest beneficiary of scientific and industrial progress.”
What Lincoln and Xi laid 150 years apart are not mere hypotheses, but elementary facts of life which even the most ardent money-worshipper cannot get around.
Of course money is a perfectly useful tool to facilitate trade and get around the awkward problem of lugging bartered goods around on your back all day, but it really is just that: a supporting element to a physical process of maintenance and improvement of trans-generational existence. When fools allow themselves to loose sight of that fact and elevate money to the status of a cause of all value (simply because everyone wants it), then we find ourselves far outside the sphere of reality and in the Alice in Wonderland world of Alan Greenspan’s fantasy world where up is down, good is evil, and humans are little more than vicious monkeys.
So with that in mind, let’s take this concept and look back upon today’s crisis.
London’s ‘Big Bang’
The great “liberalization” of world commerce began with a series of waves through the 1970s, and moved into high gear with the interest rate hikes of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker in 1980-82, the effects of which both annihilated much of the small and medium sized entrepreneurs, opened the speculative gates into the “Savings and Loan” debacle and also helped cartelize mineral, food, and financial institutions into ever greater behemoths. Volcker himself described this process as the “controlled disintegration of the US economy” upon becoming Fed Chairman in 1978. The raising of interest rates to 20-21% not only shut down the life blood of much of the US economic base, but also threw the third world into greater debt slavery, as nations now had to pay usurious interest on US loans.
In 1986, the City of London announced the beginning of a new era of economic irrationalism with Margaret Thatcher’s “Big Bang” deregulation. This wave of liberalization took the world by storm as it swept aside the separation of commercial, deposit and investment banking which had been the post-world war cornerstone in ensuring that the will of private finance would never again hold more sway than the power of sovereign nation-states. For those who are confused about London’s guiding hand in this process, I encourage you to read Cynthia Chung’s impeccable essay “Sugar and Spice, and Everything Vice: The Empire’s Sin City of London”.
Greenspan and the Controlled Disintegration of the Economy
When Alan Greenspan confronted the financial crisis of October1987, markets had collapsed by 28.5% and the American economy was already suffering from a decay begun 16 years earlier when the dollar was removed from the fixed exchange rate and was “floated” into a world of speculation. This departure from the 1938-1971 Industrial growth model ushered in a new paradigm of “post-industrialism” (aka: nation stripping) under the new logic of “globalization”. This foolish decision was celebrated as the consumer-driven, “white collar society” which would no longer worry about “intangible things” like “the future”, infrastructure maintenance, or “growth”. Under this new paradigm, if something couldn’t generate a monetary profit within 3 years, it wasn’t worth doing.
Paul Volcker (Greenspan’s predecessor at the Federal Reserve) exemplified this detachment from reality when he called for the “controlled disintegration of society” in 1977, and acted accordingly by keeping interest rates above 20% for two years which destroyed small and medium agro-industrial enterprises across America (and the world). Greenspan confronted the 1987 crisis with all the gusto of a black magician, and rather than re-connect the economy to physical reality and rebuild the decaying industrial base, he chose instead to normalize “creative financial instruments” in the form of derivatives (aka: “creative financial instruments”), which quickly grew from several billion in 1988 to $2 trillion in 1992 to $70 trillion in 1999.
“Creative financial instruments” was the Orwellian name given to the new financial asset popularized by Greenspan, but otherwise known as “derivatives”. New supercomputing technologies were increasingly used in this new venture, not as the support for higher nation building practices, and space exploration programs as their NASA origins intended, but would rather become perverted to accommodate the creation of new complex formulas which could associate values to price differentials on securities and insured debts that could then be “hedged” on those very spot and futures markets made possible via the destruction of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. So while an exponentially self-generating monster was created that could end nowhere but in a meltdown, “market confidence” rallied back in force with the new flux of easy money. The physical potential to sustain human life continued to plummet.
NAFTA, the Euro and the End of History
It is no coincidence that within this period, another deadly treaty was passed called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). With this Agreement made law, protective programs that had kept North American factories in the U.S and Canada were struck down, allowing for the export of the lifeblood of highly skilled industrial workforce to Mexico where skills were low, technologies lower, and salaries lower still. With a stripping of its productive assets, North America became increasingly reliant on exporting cheap resources and services for its means of existence. Again, the physically productive powers of society would collapse, yet monetary profits in the ephemeral “now” would skyrocket. This was replicated in Europe with the creation of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 establishing the Euro by 1994 while the “liberalization” process of Perestroika replicated this agenda in the former Soviet Union. While some personalities gave this agenda the name “End of History” and others “the New World Order”, the effect was the same.
Universal Banking, NAFTA, Euro integration and the creation of the derivative economy in a space of just several years would induce a cartelization of finance through newly legalized mergers and acquisitions at a rate never before seen. The multitude of financial institutions that had existed in the early 1980s were absorbed into each other at great speed through the 1990s in true “survival of the fittest” fashion. No matter what level of regulation were attempted under this new structure, the degree of conflict of interest, and private political power was uncontrollable, as evidenced in the United States, by the shutdown of any attempt by Securities and Exchange Commission head Brooksley Born to fight the derivative cancer at its early stages.
When Bill Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall bank separation of commercial and investment banks as his last act in office in 1999, speculators had un-bounded access to savings and pensions which they used with relish and went to town gambling with other people’s money. This new bubble continued for a few more years until the $700 trillion derivatives time bomb found a new trigger and the subprime mortgage market nearly burned the system down. Just like in 1987, and the collapse of the Y2K bubble in 2001, the Mammon worshipping wizards in the ECB and Fed solved this crisis by creating a new system of “bailout” which continued for another decade.
The 2000-2008 Frenzy
With Glass-Steagall now removed, legitimate capital such as pension funds could be used to start a hedge to end all hedges. Billions were now poured into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), a market which had been artificially plunged to record-breaking interest rate lows of 1-2% for over a year by the US Federal Reserve making borrowing easy, and the returns on the investments into the MBSs obscene. The obscenity swelled as the values of the houses skyrocketed far beyond the real values to the tune of one hundred thousand dollar homes selling for 5-6 times that price within the span of several years. As long as no one assumed this growth was ab-normal, and the un-payable nature of the capital underlying the leveraged assets locked up in the now infamous “sub-primes” and other illegitimate debt obligations was ignored, then profits were supposed to just continue infinitely. Anyone who questioned this logic was considered a heretic by the latter-day priesthood.
The stunning “success” of securitizing housing debts immediately induced a wave of sovereign wealth funds to come into prominence applying the same model that had been used in the case of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO) to the debts of entire nations. The securitizing of bundled packages of sovereign debts that could then be infinitely leveraged on the de-regulated world markets would no longer be considered an act of national treason, but the key to easy money.
The Ugly Truth of Today’s Crisis
New “sub-prime” bubbles have been created in the Corporate Debt sector which has risen to over $13.8 trillion (up 16% from the year earlier). A quarter of which is considered junk, and another half graded at BB by Moodies (a step above junk).
Household debt, student and auto debt has skyrocketed and since wages have not kept up with inflation causing even more unpayable debts have been incurred in desperation. Industrial jobs have collapsed consistently since 1971, and low paying service jobs have taken over like a plague.
The last report from the American Society of Civil Engineers concluded that America desperately needs to spend $4.5 trillion just to bring its decayed infrastructure up to safety levels. Roads, bridges, rail, dams, airports, schools all received near failing grades with the average age of Dams clocking in at 56 years, and many water pipes over 100 years old, and transmission/distribution lines are well over 60 years. The factories which once supplied those infrastructure needs are long outsourced, and much of the productive workforce that had that living knowledge to build a nation are retired or dead leaving a deadly generation knowledge gap in its place filled with millennials who never knew what a productive economy looked like.
American farmers have probably been the most devastated in all this with dramatic population losses across the entire farm belt of America and the average age of farmers now 60 years. It was recently reported that 82% of U.S. Agricultural family income comes from off farms, as mega cartels have taken over all aspects of farming (from equipment/supplies, packaging and the even the actual farming in between).
Combined with the controlled destruction of global food supplies internationally, COVID has ensured that strategic food chain supplies are being ripped to shreds with the UN reporting the worst food crisis in over 50 years (and that is not accounting for the oncoming blowout of the bubble economy).
Why was this permitted to happen? Well besides the obvious intention to induce “a controlled disintegration of the economy” as Volcker so coldly stated, the idea was always to create the conditions described by the late Maurice Strong (sociopath and Rothschild cut-out extraordinaire) in 1992 when he rhetorically asked:
“What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group’s conclusion is ‘no’. The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
How do we get back to health?
Like any addict who wakes up one morning at rock bottom with the sudden terror that his death is nigh, the first step is admitting we have a problem. This means simply: acknowledging the true nature of the current economic calamity instead of trying to blame “coronavirus” or China, or some other scapegoat.
The next step is begin to act on reality instead of continuing to take heroine (a fine metaphor for the addiction to derivatives speculation).
An obvious first step to this recovery involves restoring Glass-Steagall in order to 1) break up the Too Big to Fail banks and 2) impose a standard of judging “false” value from “legitimate” value which is currently absent from the modern psycho that lost all sense of needs vs wants. This would allow nations to re-create a purge of the unpayable fictitious debt and other claims from the system while preserving whatever is tied to the real economy (whatever is directly connected to life). This process is sort of akin to cutting a cancer.
This act would look very similar to what Franklin Roosevelt did in 1933 which I outlined in my recent paper Hyperinflation, Fascism and War: How the New World Order May be Defeated Once More.
At this point nation states will have re-asserted their true authority over the pirates of private finance controlling the Trans-Atlantic financial system like would-be gods of Olympus (unbounded perverted vices and all).
It should be obvious to all that the United States must get its head out of its proverbial ass before it is too late by imposing these reforms onto the murderous sociopaths on Wall Street and London who would rather promote a “Great Reset” onto the world economy under the fog of COVD in order to control the terms of the blowout and also the rules of the new post-nation state operating system which they wish to see brought online as a (final) “solution”.
Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , a BRI Expert on Tactical talk, and has authored 3 volumes of ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation. He can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com
The economy will continue to collapse because of two factors, 1. It is no more self-regulating and 2. there is no more relatedness between the independent factors of it’s elements. I am not an economist but anyone who has studied systematics can see this. The dynamism of the triad is no longer there.
All we can do is watch and prepare. As far as the bankers go they are no longer in control of the economy. They are in binary mode which is pre-economy. Their fiat money can sustain a fake and rigged stock market but this has nothing connected to the economy as everyone is starting to realize.
I think the reason why the congress is not passing another stimulus package is because they can see it won’t turn the economy around so it is debt spent down a rat hole. For example take the airlines. All 25 billion is going to do is prolong the pain. Instead if they think they can do anything why not provide stimulus for productive people to start smaller airlines with smaller planes and open up the routes for competition instead of supporting these monopolies running airborne cattle cars. The current pattern of flying is gone. Doesn’t anyone think creatively anymore?
As the saying goes; the days of wine and roses are over for this economy. It has to crash and it will crash. I am not being negative here. I am just pointing out that a new system will come out of this when we get the people with creative abilities in the drivers seat and keep government out of it. And that just may happen because when the money runs out government will run out of other people’s money to spend. So two choices will be available for government: Either support capitalism or communism. If people think socialism is the answer I have a thought for them to consider. The socialism we see now exists on the back of a failing economic system. Any effort to expand socialism will only end up speeding up the demise of the current system.
All we can do now is get ready for the collapse and expand our skill sets.
A group of systems analysts and financiers a little while agom based in Ireland, predicted that the “crash” this time would start in Australia. I think the previous one was actually Thailand [but could have mis-remembered that point].
The point is, if they are correct, Australia, in the most draconian, insane shutdown of its population has so collapsed it’s overstretched economy, already at a mere $0.65 v US $1.00, and has shrunk by 10%, the worst in it’s History, worse than the Great Depression of the 1930’s, and is predicted to shrunk by 20% over the coming quarter.
If the Irish based guys are correct, it seems the Mighty Crash of All time is just around the corner.
And it will be as a result of the slavish adherence of the Aus govt to the “China Bad” doctrine of the AngloZionist twits. Australia has had a dream run as china’s mine, farm and seafood supplier along with providing university education to it’s richer students. That has come to a shuddering halt in response to intemperate and insulting attitudes and insults from our politicians.
Covid will be blamed, but make no mistake, the die was cast years ago.
Totally agree.
Australia is still in the 50’s — still a little boy to its wonderful big brother, the US.
Its embarrassing, its stupid, & its totally unshakable. Australia is so locked into the US alliance, that to question it is not only unspeakable, its unthinkable. An utterly entrenched ideology.
Totally missed the point. The con-vid19 is there to allow the West to realign themselves to become more competitive, and keep ahead of China.
The Empire will survive, altho some of her citizens will be thrown under the bus.
Anon
“The Empire will survive, altho some of her citizens will be thrown under the bus”. And which empire ever survived ? The US empire is controlled from the City of London via Wall Street. It exists to gratify the bankers. The US empire will collapse, while the City of London bankers will live a little bit longer.
@Anon
The Great Reset Architects do not exist. I explained why via the analogy of systematics.
Thunderbird: “The Great Reset Architects do not exist.”
Never heard of the:
– Bilderberg Group – at which the media is excluded (NYTimes & WaPo are admitted on the basis of Chatham House rules)?
– Trilateral Commission set up by Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski?
– Chatham House?
– International Monetary Fund?
– World Bank?
– Bank for International Settlements, HQ’d in Basel Switz. (where was the 1st World Zionist Congress held again?)
just to name a few.
All of these events – stockmarket crashes, financial market crises, targeted assassinations, wars of invasion & occupation, false flag attacks – are planned well in advance – whereas you seem to be suffering from the beautiful naïveté that world events happen organically.
Think about it!
What happens in an economic recession/depression?
Holders of wealth who are cashed up can buy up the remainder of the economy – at bargain basement prices – that they dont already own. The rest of the population (workers) sell what little that they have just to make ends meet.
Can I suggest you go to YouTube and do a search for “All Wars are Bankers Wars”. A retiring Chairman of the Bank of England, whose name I forget – Joseph X – stated “the world should get rid of people like me; if the people knew what the Bankers of the world do to them, they would destroy us overnight, as they should” {or words to that effect}.
Every war, every ‘”Global event”; every action that affects the wealth of the nations, in one way or another, has been manipulated purely for their won benefit, by the top 0.1%, and most of those are the International Bankers.
They are the people who, in the end, Vladimir Xi Jipeng are fighting against, not the bobbleheaded dolls of Europe, Macron, Merkel, Haas. And they are ones who will try to wage a “hot bombing” war as opposed to the hybrid war they have been waging since 1945, against Russia and any nation which stands against them.
Only if the nations of the world come together and stop being such a load of yellow bellied jellied frogs can the world hope to defeat them.
And that is why I feel concern for our future – for Russia and China will not bow to them. There will no “Global Reset” because Russia, China, will not accept it. And thus the Bankers sitting pretty in warm bunkers, may decide to use hot war.
A couple of sites to keep one’s eyes on to monitor the banksters’ crimes and almost complete immunity from the consequences:
General site:
https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
Specific site on banksters’ crimes with scathing commentary:
https://wallstreetonparade.com/
The author states: “It should be obvious to all that the United States must get its head out of its proverbial ass before it is too late by imposing these reforms onto the murderous sociopaths on Wall Street and London …”
With all due respect, does Matthew Ehret actually understand how the world works? That the “United States” corporation is in reality a massively criminal, globe-spanning Mafia? That Satanists, Luciferians, depraved Secret Societies, et al. are running the show — in London, on Wall Street and in Washington, DC.
In what imaginary universe of puppy dogs and kittens, cinnamon and spice and all that’s nice, and butterflies and daffodils does Matthew Ehret live???
Can he really be as naive as his last paragraph seems to want us to believe that he is, especially after detailing several decades worth of high, economic crimes by agents of the “United States”?
Matthew Ehret, listen carefully: what comes next will be very violent, very chaotic, very satanic, very bloody.
The “United States” is a demonic octopus strangling humanity and the Earth in its deadly grasp. It is one of many: The World Economic Forum, the Vatican, the Communist Chinese Party, the Rothschilds’ central banking cartel, satanic initiatic societies, etc.
The “United States” is not a benign, benevolent or enlightened project in any way. The next few weeks, months and years will be harrowing — and all by sinister design.
Richard, do you think the United States project was benevolent early on? If yes, when did that change, and why?
Never was benevolent, not ever. The beginnings of the corporate “United States” were rooted in the Jamestown settlement in Virginia in 1607, founded by the Virginia Company.
The Virginia Company was a for profit, joint-stock company chartered out of the City of London by the British Crown. It didn’t initially make a profit, but the aim was financial from the beginning, to colonize North America as a profit-making venture chartered out of the City of London. The Plymouth Company was also chartered out of the City of London in 1606 by the British Crown in 1606, with the same objective of colonizing North America which resulted in Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrims, Boston and the modern region of New England. So both the Virginia Company and the Plymouth Company were successful extensions of the City of London and the British Crown, with the passage of time. The close ties with the City of London are stronger than ever — thick as thieves, and all that.
The “United States” project has been a criminally corrupt, corporate endeavor from the first minute. It’s all about the money, always has been: war, plunder, environmental destruction, slavery, genocide, conquest, etc., all in the service of financial profit.
Mammon, in short.
Richard : “That Satanists, Luciferians, depraved Secret Societies, et al. are running the show — in London, on Wall Street and in Washington, DC.”
… and The Vatican!!!
For those people who think the Roman Church is not a serious geopolitical player (think of the role of Catholic Poland in WWII for instance wedged between Protestant Germany and Orthodox Russia) are only deluding themselves
Regards
To Richard Sauder
Richard, I suggest that you stop traumatising yourself and others with this total ‘doom and gloom” scenario. Yes, the future for the West is not looking rosy at present but the world does not consists of just the West and it’s parasitic Cabal (although you can only blame yourselves for allowing this sucker to attach itself to your blood vein). There is more to our world that that. And there are also lots of Americans in USA that want to have a future for themselves and their families. Sometimes it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you are in it, but there is always that other end. Human race has survived centuries of the most depraved and most horrendous conditions (just think of the Dark Ages in Europe for an example) and came out enlightened. Right now we have this bloated parasite that has been feeding on the blood of the mostly western nations and is ready to explode. It doesn’t want to exit alone, it wants to take the “host” with it. This can be prevented, by removing it’s bloated body and then cauterising the remaining head that attached itself to the blood vessel. That’s how one deals with blood-sucking creatures. This parasitic Cabal thinks that is in total control, well, not really.. The host ‘s living, breathing body is still there, the functioning hands are still there – and can deal with this bloodsucker. The rest of the world would be absolutely ready and willing to help, assist and do what’s needed. We have to rid ourselves of this parasite for good and not allow it to ever come back!
It is not I who am traumatizing the world.
And by the way, taking the messenger to task for delivering an unpalatable tiding is an old and tired tactic.
With respect, these are tired platitudes:
-This can be prevented, by removing it’s bloated body and then cauterising the remaining head that attached itself to the blood vessel. That’s how one deals with blood-sucking creatures.
-We have to rid ourselves of this parasite for good and not allow it to ever come back!
An action plan is needed without the shoulds, coulds, the have tos; I have not seen any action plan or leaders to implement the action plans-and it has nothing to do with elections in a failed and rotten to the core political system.
Katerina noted: “And there are also lots of Americans in USA that want to have a future for themselves and their families. Sometimes it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you are in it, but there is always that other end.”
Tell us just how that works when The FED and the other Central Banks digitize your currency. When you do/or act inappropriately (as defined by The Masters) your money is turned off. That’s just ONE of the methods they have in mind for us.
And that simple act is part/parcel of “The Great Reset.” Covid being the prelude to this Master Plan.
We are in complete agreement with Richard Sauder’s very realistic portrait of these venomous, deadly Western Oligarchs, Big Banksters and Corporate-types such as Google, Bill Gates (after all, he helped with scripting The Great Reset) and so many others.
There’s only one way to remedy the situation: The Financial parasites in control of the Duopoly must be ousted, control of the federal government and the federal reserve system must be regained by the citizenry at large, and much of the Swamp/Bureaucracy given pink slips. Simultaneously, the National Security Act must be repealed and all related agencies terminated; same with the NSA and most other coercive agencies. All Wall Street companies must have their operations halted, records seized, assets frozen, and top officials arrested on RICO/Fraud charges. Then the offshore tax havens must be issued an ultimatum–Return all monies stashed or you’ll be invaded so the people can take it back. I’m sure I probably omitted something, but merely reinstating Glass-Stegall doesn’t fit the bill.
Agreed — but, the question is — how to do it ?
Until the 99% can gain a consciousness of itself, & organise & act decisively there will be little change. We are way beyond the utility of Fabian tactics. Way beyond “bits & pieces” reform.
My God — look at the 2020 US presidential election: mind bogglingly regressive & reactionary. Perhaps its one of those, “can’t go forward till you hit rock bottom situations”?
Agreed — but, the question is — how to do it ?
Absolutely!!!!
Quote: “International banking is beginning to show clear signs of bankruptcy as well as the rest of the system. Dr. Daniel Estulin explains the details of that process.
We have just entered the most turbulent period in the history of the world. We are referring to the 2020s that will be even more dangerous than the Great Depression of the 1930s or the 1940s when World War II began. This is because serious crises are brewing on multiple fronts. We are in the middle of a planetary economic reset. The impending financial volatility is going to be the largest since the founding of the United States. The vast majority of people in whatever country they are in are going to lose money in this systemic economic collapse.
We are facing the largest economic bubble in history. There is a stock bubble, a real estate bubble, a financial bond super bubble. That means to the common people that most of the investments you own are probably overvalued and high risk. How and why did this happen? This happened because in a desperate attempt to hide their problems, governments printed trillions of dollars, euros, pounds, yen, yuan … they cut interest rates to zero, and proceeded to bail out financial institutions broken and rotten.
Those old tricks have worn out, and are now useless. In the coming months there will be much less stability in any area, be it in the financial, economic, political, social, cultural and even military areas.
We will also have a recurring series of events, such as:
• Violent social unrest.
• A global pandemic of historic proportions.
• Financial instability and the collapse of the stock market.
• Unprecedented partisan attitudes and growing political turbulence.
• Tensions with China will be at a boiling point.
• There will be geopolitical clashes in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Latin America.
This crisis has already started, and its consequences are extremely serious. We are seeing the double whammy of a political crisis and a thunderous financial collapse happen at the same time. Never before has such a tense moment been recorded in history. It is a perfect storm that will seriously impact the personal freedom and financial security of everyone around the world.”
Alvin Toffler predicted in the 1980s that we were heading towards an industrial or technocratic feudalism. This system will face a new renewed communism. Resources are scarce, rationing will be the law.
Greeting !
Any actor, at any level: buy bitcoin
Simples!
what would the capitalists do to protect themselves systematically from the revolution at the final collapse of capitalist economy. and here we have it, Covid 19 and social distancing.
arrest the bankers, financiers, corporatists, shut down the off shore financial havens with ultimatums to return their hoards of cash or be invaded…etc., etc., etc. only the ordinary people can do that, in their full revolutionary tide out in the streets tossing the government and the entire oppressive capitalist system and creating as they go ways or organizing society in the popular interest..
that is the real and true great reset that ought to happen but has been addressed by the elites with Covid. the people cant get together for any purpose at all. It would be breaking the law if two people got within 6 feet of each other, masked or not
the basic and most important aspect of, and purpose of Covid, is anti revolutionary policy…directly, physically anti revolutionary, at this time of utter and total capitalist failure… when the people should be, must be, out in the streets changing society.
the ordinary people must revolutionize society or we are all toast. the people everywhere should ignore Covid and go revolutionize society
in which case I am sure the elites have more up their sleeves which in probability includes a real cold-blooded. chilling, killing, Corona virus, ready to release if things get out of hand
I don’t see how humanity can get over and out of this final capitalist stage and crisis… get out alive and live on. I mean things are so bad, so scary even the Christian god has run for cover. I cant see that Imp anywhere for Christ sakes. Jesus too is gone, seemingly disappeared just like that. Jesus wont come back to this anyway. Pheeeeeew!
and the Muslim god has degenerated to murder, beheadings and sundry criminality. and the Hindu gods as usual are after the money, inflated or not. those gods don’t care. declining value does not matter to them. ‘give us more! don’t worry we have place to store it in vast quantities’
I don’t think Jesus will come back to this either. I would not, were I Him. the last time Jesus was here we lynched him. imagine what we would do to him currently with our technologized tortures.
the last possibility of indefinite human survival on planet Earth resides in the collective interest of the ordinary working people of the world in full, total, comprehensive revolutionary action the world over, putting an end to capitalism… and at the same time, to all forms of minority organized and led exploitative social organization forever
that is the stage we are at. it is a class struggle and nothing but a class struggle – rich against working class period! are the ordinary folk up to it, up to revolutionizing society?
I don’t know but we will see. if the people cannot pull out the human fat frying in the capitalist fire, its all over. break out the fat lady with the big voice
BTC depends on a counter party for value. That its singular flaw. Great for trading, terrible as a store of value.
I think Ehret does not owe anyone a cure. You wouldn’t agree with it anyhow. He does a good job pointing to the obvious past, which was the very subject of early doom and gloom books, as being culprit here.
That stuff about Greenspan and derivatives should shock people if they were not already made numb by the enormity of the malinvestment they are calling an economy today. Most have a vested interest in looking the other way while currencies of the world hyper inflate… Unless you think adding three trillion dollars to any money supply every six months can end in anything other than a train wreck, what I think Ehret is getting at is the urgency a new adaptation should be adopted.
Or we can just keep telling ourselves “this is the greatest economy the world has ever seen” as we rid ourselves of the last of any cash we might have buying up today’s goods before tomorrow’s price increases define our lives.
Please note: This is part of a book review of Michael Hudson’s ‘Killing The Host’
There is a particular type of parasite which preys on humans – dracunculus – which can reach a metre in length. Care must be taken extracting these creatures since when one simply pulls off the protruding head of the worm, the worm will break and leak high levels of foreign antigen which can lead to anaphylactic shock and fast death of the host. Professor Hudson compares this sort of biological parasitism with the financial parasitism which is now sucking dry the world economy, the host has been invaded and is killing the bearer.
”The rise of the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (F.I.R.E) sector – banks, credit agencies, investment companies, brokers and dealers of commodities and securities, security and commodity exchanges, insurance agents, buyers, sellers, lessors, lessees and so forth – has now reached such a level that it has become larger, more ubiquitous, and profitable than productive industry. Prior to the ascent of financialised capital and the deregulation and privatisation mania, the role of finance was usually restricted to greasing the wheels of the productive (value-creating) economy. Commercial banks took the publics’ deposits and funnelled it as credit into manufacturing and commercial enterprises. In this regulated environment commercial banks and other financial institutions were legally circumscribed in the level of credit they could extend.
Then came the Big Bang: finance was off the leash. Instead of producing real value as embodied in goods and services, selling of ownership titles was to become the chosen field of investment.
A good example of this has been share buy-backs. Most of the rise in global stock market valuations has been due to companies borrowing at very low interest rates and buying back and retiring their own shares. This means that those shares remaining in circulation go up in price since the book value of the company remains the same while its volume floating shares (this is called market capitalisation) have contracted. On paper the firm has become more profitable since its share valuations have increased. This means an upward revaluation for the shareholders and the CEOs who now hold their hands out for a bonus.
Notice that no new value has been created. The whole thing was just an exercise in moving pieces of paper around.”
In short the financial sector is parasitic upon the productive sector. ‘Rent seeking’ has replaced the production of value and profit which is a characteristic of industrial societies. Moreover the production of value itself was running into a long-run decline in the rate of profit (Marx) or the decline in the marginal investment of capital (Keynes)’
In shorter terms still – The Great Anglo-American Ponzi scheme where growth was debt based, and existing debt structures were kept afloat by more debt, was a system which it was thought would last to infinity. Sorry chaps, It can’t and it won’t.
”Now since populations tend to grow geometrically, while resources deplete arithmetically, constant demands on new creative discoveries and technological application are also needed to meet and improve upon the needs of a growing humanity. ”
Hmmm, sounds a bit like Malthus and Ricardo. The ‘Law’ of Diminishing Returns.
So the collapse of the West was engineered, for environmental reasons. All that was done was that the environmental problems caused by industrial, manufacturing and production in the West was transferred to a certain country in the East, that’s all.
Rather, the collapse of the West was engineered because “for the New World Order to arise, the Old World Order has got to go”. The cornerstone of the Old World Order is the USA, so the USA has to go, which basically means bye-bye AngloSphere.
The biggest beneficiary of this engineered collapse of the West, apart from the rich in the West just getting richer that is, is that country in the East to whom all the West’s industrial, manufacturing and production was transferred. That country is the cornerstone of the New World Order.
The New World Order calls for dramatic population reduction, no Middle Class, and a certain bunch of reprobates becoming “the Kings of this World”. The collapse of the West takes care of the Middle Class phenomena, the rest of the planet only really had the elite and peasant class anyway. The citizens of the West, its Middle Class, were too altruistic as well. Instead of letting the populations of Third World countries just die off in Malthusian calamities, they instead kept on with the vaccines and humanitarian aid which just increased the populations of Third World countries. So with the West gone, no more Middle Class, so no more altruism, so a dramatic decrease in the World’s population.
At the same time the West had a policy of keeping the Third World poor and underdeveloped, through means fair and foul, because no-one likes competition. The cornerstone of the New World Order will have no problem following suit.
So, most NWO order objectives achieved, the bulk of the population reduction, no Middle Class. Just to complete is the One World Government and the Kings of this World scenarios.
The Anglosphere x the New World Order?
Many would point out the Anglosphere is at the center of the NWO…
Pointing to China as the center of the NWO that wants to destroy the middle class, as China is about to eradicate extreme poverty and has an exploding middle class, makes absolutely no sense. Regards.
Twelve months ago, Martin Armstrong was warning on his blog about the collapse of the European bond market and the consequent repro crisis – when banks stopped trusting one another.
The fake pandemic is there to take the blame for the activities of the bankers and politicians.
“while the coronavirus may in fact be the catalyzer for the oncoming financial blowout, it is the height of stupidity to believe that it is the cause”
Obviously. But the Corona Hoax is a crucial, intrinsic progression of the global kabbalistic color revolution script. By the way, did you know that already on the next page of said Hollywood script, COVID-21 makes its first appearance on the matrix screen …
An excellent thought provoking analysis. It is however effectively yet anther warning, with practical solutions, that co exists with the myriad chaotic apocalyptic events that humanity will imminently “” enjoy”
There is always offered a window of opportunity to avoid the apocalyptic event IF WE ACT NOW!!
“It should be obvious to all that the United States must get its head out of its proverbial ass before it is too late by imposing these reforms onto the murderous sociopaths on Wall Street and London”
How is it possible to impose reforms (restrictions) upon financial demigods?
America dominated now and forever by its 11% financial elite is effectively an aristocracy equivalent to the social set up of 13th century feudal England. The peasant control tools of church, men at arms, knights and bailiffs supplanted by imagination challenging technical social control
We don,t Wannasee the implementation of this final solution but a chaotic society never won a battle, especially against demigods.
the rich are a small minority of people. the real power in the society are the ordinary people in collective and creative political movement. the people in such movement can and would sweep before them all in their process of reform and reset.
but such people have allowed the situation as it is develop in the first place when collectively they could have changed the situation long before we got to his stage
but what do we have here with this glorification of the rich and their disgusting power, not a proper dissecting of the power in the society, seeking to get the ordinary power organized and going to give our species a chance by taking this final opportunity to eliminate exploitative society
I don’t understand what I am seeing here on the Saker!?
do we all want social change to the positive? if so why the glorification of the rich and absolutely no examination of the potential or ordinary people and how we can get going at this crucial time in the world to correct the insanity we have allowed to live?
this is like a page out of the UNZ review under the byline of Unz himself, or Gilad Atzmon…total distraction and misdirection, on and on and on, and no way out!
the answer for the world in embed in the interest of ordinary people. the solution of the the existential problems of the ordinary people of the world, contains that which would save the planet and the human species.
there is no other answer, or interest consistent with human survival, or power that can bell the rich…which is contained in the collective power of the people. to hell with the rich and their total insanity! they are the most disgusting human beings who ever lived, they are anti-nature, anti life in their very nature and routine existence. they are savage, emotionally decrepit, sexually deviant to the most extreme degree. they have committed genocides aplenty and are ready to commit more. they cause two world wars and dropped atomic weapons on ordinary people. they have seeded diseases, caused pandemics, have a fake one going on currently, and are likely ready to start a real one soon.
indeed the rich appear ready to destroy the planet in one way or the other if they cannot get their way with the rest of the human species and the world.
there is absolutely no hope for any of us with the rich dominant. they are going to depopulate most if not all of us. of that we can be certain! why does this fact not underpin clearly the discussion above, and reflect itself in our development of the means and ways to get rid of the rich…before they get rid of us?
what are we afraid they will come for us? but they are coming for us already. they are right outside the bloody door already!
I am fed up with the discussion of the class relations of the world from the angle of the rich and what we describe as their social impregnability. that being the case then why don’t we give up already. sorry William Aristotle but you turn me off. start with what we can do to avoid their final solution by imposing one of our and I will read you again. if not I wont!
Well, @anon, what do YOU suggest “the people” should collectively do? You bemoan the glorification of the rich and declare that we must be rid of them. What do you propose?
Anxiously awaiting your action plan.
A major part of the problem that arises when money is viewed as more important than goods arises when the focus is on driving prices down (through futures, perhaps?) on the theory that we become richer when our money buys more goods. But lower prices is a signal to producers to reduce production, so that at the end of the day there is less to buy. But is wealth money? Or is it stuff?
When I was a graduate student in the wilds of Newfoundland, I rented a room from a landlady who had very little money, but was rich in stuff. The base of one wall in her basement storage area was lined with 5-gallon pails of salted moose–and there were smaller pails of caribou, and the rest of the wall was covered in vegetable and fruit preserves (I never saw where she kept the gold bars). She was generous too–one Sunday a month she prepared a full dinner for us lucky tenants (normally featuring the aforementioned moose, along with potatoes, cabbage, and root veggies)
Reminds me of Russia: poor in money, rich in stuff, and hiding the gold bars.
In Newfoundland the gold bars are the sealing rings for wide mouth mason jars filled with Newfie screech, where the real money is……………cheers.
Volker solved the terrible inflation problem caused by our new Fiat system which destroyed the American family by forcing mom’s to work full time. Consumerism followed this 2nd income and it extended more credit with the financialization of everything.
In 1987 traders knew it was too good to be true but they didn’t care. When it came crashing down they got bailed out and “Moral Hazard” has been cast upon society ever since.
Drug overdose deaths more than quadrupled. Suicides skyrocketed 50% and now Socialism is preferred by younger generations.
Both the Bible and Constitution require Gold and Silver not money printed from thin air that always rises to the top. Rich people could care less about $5 gas or $10lb meat when their investments increase by millions after the Fed rigs the markets for the 100th time.
Joe Biden’s family makes millions from our mortal enemies our joke of a country is so corrupt now we deserve what’s about to happen but sadly kids don’t.
And yet, while mentioning volker and greenspan raising rates and giving an approving nod to derivatives, the article does not mention the one key thing that MUST be done or all of this is altogether worthless.
And that is making the dollar sound and removing the federal reserve ability to trash and debase it.
If you don’t do that, everything else said in this article is just a bunch of whining and bitching about things that will not fix jack shit.
A post war baby grandma, I experienced an America where everyone still loved fishing and cooking and playing cards and going to church….followed in the 1950s with more and more born again luxury grabbers followed by credit cards and people who even today, think Starbucks is coffee. In the 90s some of our local priests became millionaires with online stock market speculation…kid you not. Talk about losing the narrative!!!
Though your general thesis may remain intact I must consider your data points somewhat dodgy.
“… Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker in 1980-82, the effects of which both annihilated much of the small and medium sized entrepreneurs, opened the speculative gates into the “Savings and Loan” debacle and also helped cartelize mineral, food, and financial institutions into ever greater behemoths. Volcker himself described this process as the “controlled disintegration of the US economy” upon becoming Fed Chairman in 1978. …”
One only need look at the SUSB tables to know that small firm formation has not been decimated (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/susb/data/tables.All.html) its increased. The interesting factor is in what they are doing, not the number. As to agriculture, total tillage is up, but the number of operators are down. But that belies the fact that innovation is the driver for fewer farms. More is being produced on less land (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/11/census-of-agriculture-shows-continued-decline-in-number-of-us-farms.html) than ever before, finanicalization being less of a factor. Milk production is an interesting proxy for what is going on. (https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Milk_Production_and_Milk_Cows/cowrates.php) Innovation is the reason that the dairy industry is in crisis.
Leaving the gold standard had little to do with the S&L mess. This was an outright corruption play within Congress that would have occurred regardless. The Garn–St. Germain Depository Act that loosened regulatory and depository requirements had as much to do with this than anything else. Offering ARM loans in the middle of a deep recession was fool hardy at best. The borrowers were to sure to default as the note was to roll and the land values were depressed, the note could not be paid, nor reissued without disaster. The loan portfolios at the various S&Ls cratered. The rest is history.
Which I guess leads me to note, you Sir write this missive as a historical artifact. I on the other hand lived through all of it. Who is the better judge?
The more interesting story is what is going on right now. All of which could occur with the gold standard in place (just reprice the trade) or the existence of Glass-Steagall. JP Morgan could have ran up trillions in derivative positions WITH that law in place for the simple fact that by the then existing law JPM ran it as two separate divisions of the same entity. However the effect would be pretty much the same. The institutional investors would be wiped out directly, the retail banking client indirectly through either the bank collapsing or the resulting calls on the dollar. The presumption that legal firestops save the day is but a fiction. In a scenario where in 4 years the Fed has rung up more funny money than in the previous 100 means nobody gets out alive.
‘Paul Volcker (Greenspan’s predecessor at the Federal Reserve) exemplified this detachment from reality when he called for the “controlled disintegration of society” in 1977, … ‘
Here is the actual quotation, from Paul Volcker’s Fred Hirsch Lecture, delivered at Warwick University in November 1978:
‘In view of this occasion, I spent some time in recent weeks reading and rereading Fred Hirsch, and of course came away with a renewed feeling for the strength and breadth of his thinking …
‘For a good many years, the world of international monetary affairs was Fred’s particular speciality. In an area where much commentary written only a few years ago seems stale and naive, his continue to stimulate.
‘Indeed, I was tempted to take as my text today one of Fred Hirsch’s last dicta: ‘A controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate objective for the 1980s. …’ The phrase captures what seems to me the prevailing attitudes and practices of most governments in this decade, as they struggle with two central issues that bedevil so much of our negotiations and our actions, not just with respect to money, but over the full range of international economics.’
Volcker then goes on to explain why he disagrees with Hirsch, and ends up calling for ‘managed integration’ and stronger international collaboration.
Read it for yourself:
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/quarterly_review/1978v3/v3n4article1.pdf
You need to correct this mistake in your essay.
Everything you say is true, but how can all this huge money supply be sterilized by imposing this lockdown?