The Federal Reserve is making noises about cutting interest rates for the first time in several years. The reason is the trade dispute with China and now Mexico is potentially having an impact on the global economy. Even though it is only a signal of an intention, markets rallied on the news. Global investors and their robot traders love cheap credit from the Federal Reserve, so anytime there is the promise of more cheap credit, there is a rush into equities. It is a reminder of what actually drives stock indices.
It used to be that recessions were seen as a correctives for the system, as they eliminated unproductive and parasitic elements from the economy. In good times, all sorts of inefficiencies are tolerated, as everyone is making money. When times get tight, everyone gets serious again. Inefficient businesses and industries fail, thus putting those resources into more productive areas. The recession was the economy’s way of policing itself, so it was considered a necessary, if unpleasant, feature.
No one thinks like that today. Any sign of a downturn produces panic, especially among office holders. Part of it is no one has any respect for office holders, so voters will look for any reason to throw the bums out. For people who live off the public, losing an election is worse than death. Another part of it seems to be the sense among the ruling classes that they have only a tenuous grip on power. This is a bread and circus world now and they better make sure both are in ample supply.
That’s all speculation, of course, but it’s also a reminder of the long running problem that no one can figure out how to remedy. That is the interest rate trap. Lowering rates to address a slowing economy or a financial crisis is easy. Raising the rates back up again appears to be impossible. It has been over a decade since the mortgage crisis and the Federal Reserve is still trying to unwind its position and bring rates back up to historic norms. This news suggests they will never pull it off.
One reason the Federal Reserve is trapped in a world of ultra-low interest rates is the world economy is based on credit. The foundation of the credit system is U.S. treasuries. When the government borrows money, it is also creating an asset to be used in the financial system. Stable and predictable interest rates make treasuries valuable collateral, as their value will never decline. In fact, the market has an insatiable appetite for American sovereign debt. Those super-low rates are a big part of it.
Of course, the flip side of this is the U.S. government can only exists as it does with super-low borrowing rates. Current debt stands at $22 trillion and goes up by a trillion per year, give or take. Even if the so-called fiscal conservatives got all the items on their wish list, the cost of the great Baby Boomer retirement guarantees massive borrowing for the next several decades. That is only possible in a world of cheap credit, so both sides of the debt transaction need super-low interest rates.
Then there is the retail side. Whole industries have become hooked on super-low borrowing rates. Imagine what happens to housing if mortgage rates return to historic norms, in terms of interest rates and terms. Imagine what happens to the car business when car makers cannot offer 84-month terms and low interest rates. The answer is these industries shrink considerably and take the economy into a depression from which it would unlikely recover. These industries need low rates to survive now.
Now, there is an argument that borrowing rates are normal for a highly efficient modern economy. Historic averages are not useful, as the world where men paid debts with gold coin, or mortgages were processed by hand, is nothing like today’s world of automation and complex financial instruments. There is a lot of truth to this. Automation has not just made transaction processing faster, it has made it more reliable, thus reducing systemic risk and friction. Cheap rates are a reflection of cheaper costs in the system.
There’s also the fact that central banks have greater control of the global economy than at any time in human history. The microprocessor has had no greater impact on the world than in the financial system. Not only do central banks have more information about the state of the economy, they have tools that allow them to see trends before they get going, thus allowing them to anticipate problems before they reach crisis level. It’s not perfect, but managed capitalism is more efficient and predictable.
That said, the main tool central banks have in fighting a financial crisis is lowering borrowing rates. The reason they could soften the blow of the mortgage crisis is they could spread the cost of remedying it across the following decades. In the simplest terms, the Federal Reserve used a payment plan to cover the cost of fixing the mortgage crisis in 2008. That was only possible with the room to lower rates and borrow heavily from the private economy to soak up bad debt and warehouse it at the Fed.
Inevitably, this topic leads to questions about whether the current credit based economy is sustainable in the long run. The old joke about “in the long run, we’re all dead” is true here as well. The current monetary system has been in place since the Louvre Accords in the 1980’s. While there have been recessions, there have been no depressions that threaten the political order. The ability to borrow has never been stronger, which means the West should be able to manage the great demographic change over.
Still, there is that haunting sense that this credit regime is a slow-motion bust-out where social capital is turned into cash and used to perpetuate the current order. At some point, when the West is nothing but a shopping mall full of strangers, with no connection to one another, what happens then? The West is haunted by the sense that the true cost of cheap credit makes the credit based economy unsustainable. In the end, the cultural capital will have been exhausted and there will be nothing left to borrow.
To contribute to my Escape From Lagos Fund
Or, You can send money to me at:
P.O. Box 432
Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432
“…One reason the Federal Reserve is trapped in a world of ultra-low interest rates is the world economy is based on credit….:
“…Current debt stands at $22 trillion and goes up by a trillion per year…”
This needs to be more plainly stated. ALL currency in the USA is based on debt. I know this sounds absurd and unbelievable but if you look this up it’s true. If we get rid of the debt we will have NO currency. This includes all loans, bonds, all money is based on debt. It’s a system designed to siphon money from citizens to the banks.
It doesn’t take much imagination to conclude that if all money is debt over time the compounding interest will consume all money and you will have to increase the indebtedness rapidly to stay ahead of the interest. This is what is happening right now.
The FED, in return for our indebtedness to them, gives us…nothing. Not a single thing.
We don’t need them. We could tax the private FED to confiscate all their debt and profits from the debt and issue our own currency.
The fear expressed at the end of the article is driven by a residual belief that “money” is ultimately some real, tangible thing that must be used to settle accounts at some end point.
That belief is understandable as it was largely real throughout most of human history, ultimately based on silver or gold monetism.
It’s hard for people to accept and come to terms with the reality that money in the modern world is entirely intangible – imaginary. The federal debt is not a problem and there will be no debt apocalypse because it will never be repaid. Ever. Worse case it will be fully monetized resulting in a burst of high inflation. Which is one of the real threats of the current monetary paradigm, serious deflation being the other. Total systemic collapse is a third, non serious threat.
The integrity of any nation’s currency is a surrogate measure of social trust. And you can’t have civilization without social trust. The collapse of the mega financial institutions will occur when the currency becomes valueless, at which point social trust becomes first-person again. What happens when there is no longer enough money to feed the federal government beast? What will the beast do in order to eat? The answer to that question should be of interest to everyone.
I believe Von Mises wrote extensively about the credit trap. 🙂
Stinky MacFarland’s observations on the credit trap are sadly overlooked, to our impending woe.
Thank you for the PO.
Now I can send hard cash, in unmarked bills, to an obscure PO box. I love this whole dissidence thing we’ve got going here. It’s kind of neat, when you think about it. We’re effectively criminals now, if not by what we do, but how we think.
Z man, when you get your dough from me, let me know by a +1 or some nonsense like that that the package has been delivered.
“I love this whole dissidence thing we’ve got going here. It’s kind of neat, when you think about it.” Until recently I sort of felt that way too. But now that I’m a few episodes into The Man in the High Castle. And with doxing on the mind. Well, to put it as manly as I can. I’ve got some serious trepidation going.
Maybe you are right, Frip. I have no idea what ‘The Man in the High Castle’ is – some kind of TV serial or comic strip, at a guess. So I have decided to send Z man nothing. Can’t be too careful in dangerous times.
I am always sensitive to reason. Thank you.
Good post. I understand the financial efficiencies via technology and algorithms. But, the begged question: What’s the unprofessed worldview and motivation of the algorithm writers? Algorithm writers and programmers are human, with human ambitions. A lot of folks think an algorithm is mere arithmetic and wholly neutral, when in fact it’s loaded with a myriad of assumptions. And there’s the fly in the ointment … whose assumptions, and to whose end? Which seemingly leaves us with the Bolshevik question, Who, whom? Or put into capitalist terms, Who is manipulating Whom? As I see official reports of a great economy, low inflation, and the common assumption that our $22 trillion debt isn’t “real” money, and as I meet the true believers of this statistical bunk who are completely unprepared for the perfect financial storm that is brewing, I think I know who’s coming out on the wrong end of the Ponzi scheme.
” the West is nothing but a shopping mall full of strangers” no actually ” a chineese owned shopping mall full of broke unemployed deeply indebted strangers who hate each other ” . . what could possibly go wrong.
You forgot “with the most heavily armed civilian population on planet Earth.” eek.
I see the Woodpile is burnt.
I’ll miss Remus
Nooooo!
What! woodpile is gone?
The other side never sleeps. Smoke ‘em while you got ‘em.
One by one, we watch our shipmates being drug under by the monsters of the deep.
I’ve no idea what you guys are talking about. Is this inside humor for Goldberg having left NR?
He’s back. For a little while the site for sale splash screen was showing.
Frip go to
http://www.woodpilereport.com/
You’re welcome.
One of the true masters, Frip
Its up and fine, I was there a minute ago. He’s self hosting anyway and not subject to SJW whims to much a degree.
Cheap credit will inevitably be replaced by “debt forgiveness”…outright cash payouts. This protects the Progressive Project’s farm team from much-needed cost-reductions, scores an easy “W” for the vote-buyers, is the perfect emotional manipulative tool to use on our feminine culture, and is the only thing cheaper than free credit.
The last big recession, the so-called “banking crisis”, was mainly the by product of lending money to people who never should have been lended to combined with a few thousand Wall Street investment bankers who were playing the market on leverage (borrowed money). In both cases, when things went south, neither could pay their bills…and boom.
Forcing investment banks to separate from traditional commercial banking won’t prevent the next round of stupidity, but it should mitigate it a bit. There’s greater care given to mortgages now. If you haven’t bought a house since 2008…brace yourself for the rubber glove treatment. This, because people outright lied on mortgage applications to inflate income and conceal debt.
I think those two changes probably make it tougher for the system to outright crash. Rates will stay low to protect government borrowing. The Fed also has an unwritten 3rd charter:
1. maintain the dollar as a storehouse of value
2. Control unemployment
3. Protect the ruling class from lynchings
Breaking China is key to our future prosperity. We’re in a trade war that enjoys remarkable bipartisan support. (Except when used as a weapon against immigration…the GOP promises to fight that, of course.) China has an almost unlimited supply of labor, for now, but it is fairly resource-poor. Obviously, immigration here is a huge problem both in terms of the social welfare demands and the collapse of institutions.
China wouldn’t blink to kill 100M-200M Americans to purify the world.
Everyone looks at Japan, and says, “See, you can borrow money forever without consequences.”
Problem is, despite sky-high levels of government debt, Japan still remains the biggest creditor nation on earth:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/23/reuters-america-japan-keeps-top-creditor-nation-status-as-external-assets-grow.html
The US is the largest debtor nation on earth, by contrast, at least among 1st world countries. Plus, Japan is dependent on the US for its security and a big chunk of its export market (trade surplus).
The US can probably stay out of trouble so long as the dollar is the reserve currency. When, if, or how that will change is anyone’s guess.
Dissidents waiting for the “big crash” to make their move will be waiting a very long time indeed. The U.S. economy has a lot of problems, but it’ll keep on chugging along for a long while. Don’t wait for some dramatic collapse.
I agree. It’s fragile in many way that people like Matt Bracken have laid out – Just-in-time logistics means that inventory levels are incredibly low. So a real war or massive natural disaster could bring the whole thing done. But without that kind of outside event, it’ll run for quite some time even with an abusive idiot like Obama calling the shots.
Incessantly low interest rates are a mechanism for maintaining the financial and economic status quo. The culling of the economic herd is always put off until another day—until that day comes. Big business loves the maintenance of the status quo, as they shave costs (jobs and wages) and pump the stock price, and gobble up smaller competitors with all that inflated stock and with financing at zero rates. Part of the game is getting the public to buy into all of this with their investment dollars, and using the central banks to help push things along.
The end game is that the paper wealth rises to the top few, the rest of us get by, and when things go “pop”, everyone ducks for cover.
Automation in finance takes the wiggle room out of the system, as do the cashless transactions. The IA programs optimize things, until the situation on the ground exceeds the limits of their programming. Which will happen, sooner or later. Minsky says stability leads to instability, IA will have trouble with that.
Despite the technological innovations of the last few decades, certain truths remain. One truth is that no one person, entity, or government can borrow themselves into prosperity. A lot of people think that inflation will take off just around the corner. Yes, in the long run inflation will be wildly out of control, but in the short run, the next few years, we’re going to see a deflationary crash. Inflation happens at the time of credit expansion. All of that QE went into asset prices, housing, stocks, etc. Even a cheap, 1960s built condo with aluminum windows in my neighborhood is over 500k. That’s not normal. It’s great for the owners of these assets. It’s terrible for people building a nest egg.
When the correction hits, it was circumvented by the Fed in December, and again, for a short time yesterday, the inflated asset markets, stocks, bonds, real estate, etc., will implode. As they implode in value, money is destroyed, and it will be in the trillions. An implosion of this magnitude will be a deflationary experience, and there’s nothing worse for the modern banking system than deflation. The Fed cutting its meager rates back to zero will do nothing.
As this implosion happens, expect Quantitive Easing 4 and TARP 2. Thy won’t call them that. They’ll have new names for them. These programs will be, in my opinion, looking at where we are, more than triple the size of the last programs. All kinds of pension funds will be in danger. The Fed will work in concert with the government to inflate our way out of this crisis. And that’s when the real trouble will begin. A panic driven overshoot that causes a currency crisis.
Bottom feeders paradise in 2021. Literally once in a lifetime, or three lifetimes. And a far left President taking office will drive it down another 10%.
Many companies these days act like they are in a recession and are constantly trying to eliminate some of their inefficiencies. They seem more cost disciplined than the binge and purge style company leadership of decades ago.
The flip-side is – corporate leadership is more myopic than ever. The SVP’s I work with on corporate strategy care only about this year and next. Anything beyond that is meaningless to them because if they don’t meet objectives this year, they won’t be here. If they do and make themselves look good enough, they’ll probably get a better job somewhere else. It drives our COO nuts because he really does want to improve our quality and competitive position, but the CEO and CFO have pretty well shutdown long-term investments.
Z, “Rightwing Progressives”. Good term from yesterday. I was watching TV the other day and discovered that the original king of rightwing progressives, George Will, now works for MSNBC as a roundtable guy doing his WiseCon thing. I’ve been watching this toe-head since I was a little kid. Seems he fades away. Comes back. Fades. I’ll assume he’s dead. But he always pops back up on my TV somehow, never looking older than 64. He’s never going to die is he. We’re stuck with this android forever. I can’t imagine beating up an old man. But I honestly would have no problem bashing his face in. I enjoy thinking about it. I picture being on top of him landing blow after blow and him still talking to me in that unflappable tone of his, “This will not do, Sir. Entirely unbecoming. Unacceptable really. To paraphrase Burke…”
I used to actually like George Will until I realized it was all a big con. Just saw him interviewed by Ted Koppel. This “staunch conservative” was advising us to vote for anyone but Trump in 2020 as a way to save conservatism. Huh? If I recall he did the same in 2016. Yeah, conservatism would be better with Hillary in charge of everything. Pressed on his view of the two new Supreme Court justices, he said any Republican president would have given us similar judges. First, no other Republican could have won in 2016, so hello RBG 2.0 and 3.0. Second, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, and John Roberts could not be reached for comment. Let me know if you catch him, and I will hold him down for you.
DLS: “I used to actually like George Will until I realized it was all a big con.” Same, back in the early days. Though I always knew he was a major moral hypocrite even back then for his Zionism. Israel could’ve poisoned the Palestinian baby water supply and Will would have found some elegant way of excusing it. He really is a slippery little wordsmith. The only way to deal with him is to suddenly slap him in the face mid-sentence and kick his skinny ass out the exit door. I’ve still kept all his ‘collected columns’ books because depending on the topic he’s a fine writer and thinker.
“I’ve still kept all his ‘collected columns’ books because depending on the topic he’s a fine writer and thinker.”
Yes, that’s what’s so frustrating. His writing is stylish, he wears his learning lightly, he’s enjoyable to read — and it’s all in the service of the Republican establishment.
All in service of the establishment, you mean.
Will’s writing struck me as good, even impressive, back in the 1980s when I lived in DC and worked my way through the WP every morning. It was the Reagan imperium, and Will was down with the Reagan vibe. Of course he would have been into the Ford vibe, or the GB I vibe, had things gone differently. In those halcyon days – it is fair to say – he would have gone into the ‘loyal opposition’ vibe so important to ‘principled conservatives,’ had one of the Dem blockheads succeeded in grabbing the purple.
Will’s principled conservatism led him to prefer a corrupt and drunken murderer to a brash, uncouth, NYC billionaire. Dude, we don’t live in Europe where there are twenty parties to vote for; we have an evil murderer in slot 1, we have a possibly demented lunatic – but saying things that make sense to us – in slot 2.
Oh lordy? How to choose?
Good old Krauthammer, the other ‘house-conservative’ at the Post – liberated by impending death to get real before the end – abandoned the NeverTrump fever that keeps Will well-salaried, I assume.
Pimp: “Dude, we don’t live in Europe where there are twenty parties to vote for…” Funny. Hadn’t thought about that. Good point to use when someone is trying to slam you solely for voting for Trump.
Re. Krauthammer. Psycho-but-not-psycho-Jew. If you support Israel he’d go to bat for you. May even kill for you. Mean like black venom. Whatever support he gave Trump was assuredly driven by Trump’s pro Jew stance. Not his impending death.
Will and Kraut are similar LibCons. You can hate Kraut but respect him as a man. You can’t do that with Will.
If you meet George Will socially, beat him.
He will know why.
I liked George Will when I was a teenager and read his books and columns. Then I read “The Suicide of the West” by James Burnham. That was my first step towards the dissident right.
Well said. Why are we stuck forever with people like George Will and David Gergen? Who are these people and do they even exist? Are they holograms? At times my will to live is sustained ONLY by the hope that I can read the obituaries of such people. It’s like the world stopped rotating in 1990, and people on TV stopped getting old.
“Who is George Will” should be a Jeopardy answer in a “1980s pundits’ column. For example: Alex Trebek – “This influential conservative columnist long associated with the Washington Post wrote a surprisingly dull book about baseball called ‘Men at Work’.”
Pimp: “Why are we stuck forever with people like George Will and David Gergen? Who are these people and do they even exist?” Z used the term ‘logrolling”. I think yesterday. I’d heard the word before but finally looked it up. Con.Inc. just won’t call each other out on stuff. One hopeful byproduct of that much-discussed David French hit-piece in Human Events is that Con writers saw how much attention they can get by naming names on their own side. Punching right. Not just making abstract arguments. Hope to see more pieces like that against their own. They may start doing it out of sheer boredom and self-disgust with themselves. Might be the start of Con.Inc. infighting and real fracturing.
The dropping of interest rates has been great for U.S. stock investors and, to a degree, bond holders, but they’re now staring down the barrel of a decade of expected low returns in both asset classes. Bonds are expected to basically nothing over inflation, while U.S. stocks – which were pushed up by lowering interest rates and the flood of credit – are liking to earn 2% to 4% annual above inflation, possibly less if you get reversion to the mean.
The CAPE is extremely high as are pretty much all other valuation indicators. In addition, corporate profits as a % of GDP (one of the most mean reverting statistics) is extremely high. Odds are pretty good that investors will see very low returns over the next decade.
This will cause a lot of problems. First, the boomers will need even more help. Second, many pension funds will not be able to meet all of their obligations. Third, tax receipts will be hurt as cap gains are lower.
The very solid returns in the S&P and bonds over the past decade were really the returns for both last decade and the coming decade, in the same way that taking a loan gives you a good or service now in exchange for less consumption in the future.
Prepare yourself for low portfolio returns.
The Boomer retirement is an event without precedent. Japan is just now making the turn, but they don’t have open borders. The next three decades will be interesting.
We haven’t even hit the real costs of the Boomer retirement. Over the next three decades, they’ll drain massive amounts of money via Medicare and Medicaid (long-term care). Instead of preparing for that by reducing the overall debt, the government has been pushing up deficits and the debt – during an economic expansion no less.
The next recession will push up government debt to ~150% of GDP. Granted, Japan’s debt to GDP is ~250% so it’s not a death sentence, but their debt is internally owned. Regardless, starting with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 150% right before major structural deficits push that significantly higher each year isn’t the best idea.
The government better hope that it can keep a lid on real interest rates, or we’ve got a serious issue. Of course, they can always raise taxes on whitey.
All so they can listen to their stupid Doobie Brothers songs for the 5,000th time, and say “I was at Woodstock mannnnnnnn……”
Sorry to be more off-topic than usual, but it’s election day in Denmark, so I thought I’d give you guys a quick run-down.
The Danish parliament is – with a few footnotes – elected proportionally. There are presently nine parties in parliament, traditionally divided into two loose coalitions, ‘blocks’ – Red Block and Blue Block. (With red being the Commies.) Look at it as if the two blocks correspond to the Dems/Reps, with the factions within these, formalized as autonomous, but allied parties.
After an election, the queen orders the leader of the biggest party to build her a government. This guy then starts negotiating a coalition with the other parties in his block, usually (but not always) ending with him as the PM, with ministries distributed according to each coalition party’s strength. This is the most salient difference between parliamentary and presidential systems: in the former, the head of government is not elected by the people, but by the parliament.
A PM can usually build a coalition without the wing parties in the parliament, he can throw them a few bones in return for them voting with the government, so your average Danish government consists of about 2,5 parties, with one or two support parties.
At the last election in 2015, the Danish People’s Party had been wingman for a center-right government since 2003. It is the oldest and most successful nationalist-populist party in Europe. They have been running on an anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-EU, pro-welfare ticket for the last 25 years and slowly, slowly, they have managed to push the Overton Window towards nationalism, slowly extend their parliamentary base, all the way fighting a tsunami of brownwashing and low-level violence from the usual suspects.
This incessant hammering has annealed the party, weeded out the cranks, the incompetents, the opportunists and the wimps, making it hands-down the most professionally run party in Denmark, with a lot of savvy people manning the battle stations. It is largely to the DPP’s credit that Denmark has one of the lowest percentages of enrichment in Western Europe.
So, in 2015, they won by a landslide, getting 21% of the vote which made them the biggest party in Blue Block, this despite the fact that the establishment parties had pilfered a lot of DPP immigration policies in an effort to stem the bleeding of voters to DPP. This gained them a position that, as described above, traditionally nets you the prime minister’s office (PMO).
Only, DPP did not demand the PMO. They handed the PMO to next-largest party in the Blue Block, which could be understandable, since DPP never had held any government office, hence they had no-one with government experience. A good strategy would’ve been to trade off the PMO for more cabinet seats, allowing the DPP cadre to garner some governing experience, so they’d be ready to take the PMO by the next election, i.e. today.
But they didn’t do that either. They – unfathomably, shockingly – elected to stay out of government entirely. In theory, you can wield a lot of power outside government, but only if you’re a center party so you can play one block against the other. Being (considered) the extreme right in the Danish parliament, this was not an avenue open to the DPP, the Commies would never play ball. They had effectively disenfranchised themselves.
A couple of weeks after the election, Angela Merkel invited half the Middle East and Africa to come live in Europe, and we got hit by the so-called “refugee” “crisis”. Hordes of wandering welfare jihadis started crossing into Denmark, and the PM who ran on a “crash stop” for immigration, what does he do? Why, he closes off the motorways to taxpayers, so the Danish police can escort them safely to Copenhagen, making for some wonderful snapshots of Denmark’s Finest playing pattycake with the adorable jihadi children.
Now, it’s an important feature of Danish parliamentarism that there are no fixed election cycles: the PM can call an election any time he wishes, and likewise, the parliament can call for his resignation by a vote-of-no-confidence. This means, that while the DPP had no cabinet seats, they could force an election almost at will, they could simply vote against some important government bill.
So if the DPP were even half-serious, this is where they’d go to the (“Crash Stop”) PM and tell him to defend the Fatherland or face a new election – and election that would inevitably be immigration-themed; the PM and his cronies would run as the enablers of the trespassing locust swarm, and the DPP would be the defenders of the realm. This is where you shit or get off the pot, the moment of truth.
If you’ve read this far, it will probably not surprise you that the DPP did nothing. Nada. Zilch. They clung to the pot, emitted a lot of hot air and insisted it was the shit. It is the worst voter-betrayal in Danish history. To spell it out, at this moment, there’s not one nationalist member of the Danish parliament. Not. One.
So since 2015, two new anti-immigration parties have made it onto the ballot: The New Right and Hardline. The New Right was established when it became apparent to Normie that the DPP had failed, and you’ll have to take my gut feeling for this, but I’m pretty sure they’re managed opposition, they look like a Procter & Gamble-commercial, only without the diversity, and they get plenty of glad-handing airplay in the Commie media. Their job is to hoover up the voters that abscond the DPP, string them along with patriotic slogans, until they have enough seats in parliament to do what the DPP did, and sell out their voters for a ticket to the globalist gravy circuit.
This leaves Hardline, which is not an actual political party, rather than a one-man dog-and-pony show owned by Rasmus Paludan, an ugly-as-sin, creepy-ass, crass-even-by-Danish-standards, suspected-nose-affiliate, failed-political-careerist lawyer who has made some waves with his bacon/Koran/blowtorch-roadshow touring the Danish ghettos, instigating a few minor riots and exposing to Normie exactly how commited our Mahometan brethren and their political enablers in the establishment parties are to free speech.
He recently called some crusty Commie grifter a “Nazi swine” on primetime MSM. His plan is to eradicate Islam from the surface of the planet and repatriate each and every POC in Denmark, he’s pro concentration camps: he’s the Fuck You-option today, and the only reason I bother. The MSM keep sliming him with his social media history, but they don’t understand that the slimier he is, the bigger the FU. I wish he would rape someone in broad daylight, that would make voting for him all the sweeter. Next interview, he should whip it out for the Commie host: “Eat my Danish, bitch!”*
Hm. Probably not.
So what happens now? I’m afraid the Commies are going to win. They have pilfered a lot of the Danish People’s Party’s immigration policies, gotten a lot of those voters back who went DPP in the noughties. Our new PM will be a strong, independent woman, rather than the gregarious, Yeltsin-type drunk we’re currently blessed with.
The DPP is polling at about ten percent, rightfully halving their parliamentary presence. Hardline is polling at about 3% – I’m on the record in this forum for predicting 10% – perhaps a bit optimistic: he’s a charmless SOB, he looks like Pepe, only not green and cute, but I figure a lot of people are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, so let’s say 5-10%.
The polling stations are closing at 2100 GMT, the result should be in four-five hours later.
* That’s “slug mit wienerbrød, slavetøs!”, in case you should find yourself in Denmark and in embarrassment of a pickup line. (Damn, I’m going to hell!)
That’s horribly. Controlled opposition is everywhere it seems. Thanks for posting that
Same thing happened with Nigel Farage. You win a triumphant, glorious victory, and then you decide to drop the ball when it’s time to reap the rewards?
That’s chapter one in “Shit That Never Happens in Politics.”
Oh, no-no-no no way Jose! We have it from our humble host that Farage is super smart for throwing away his UKIP organization, the original Brexit victory, and the political capital from that victory.
Obviously you are missing something. Like Spinal Tap, your DPP just chose to be more selective in their fan base..
And two anecdotes from the Danish election season:
A globalist party – the party that ran on a “Crash Stop” in 2015 and is the incumbent holder of the PMO – released a video about how real Moslems lived. We meet a nubile Muslima running around in scarf, yoga pants and a sweater that is short enough for a good, clean ass-shot. We see her doing a lot of totally normal Danish stuff, like flirting with an anaemic, pale, nerdy-looking boyscout, or marrying a suave, not-overtly-gay POC, we see her in the shower and so forth.
Only, it’s a Danish actress. The party defended itself by saying that they couldn’t use Mohammadan actors out of fear of repercussions.
The other is an economic libertarian and former Olympic shot putter putting ads on PornHub: “When you’re done jerking, vote for Jokke”. (It rhymes better in Danish.)
“When you’re done jerking, vote for Jokke”.
He lost his seat.
Sounds like the DPP was controlled opposition, blatantly so. Thats horrible. Somebody needs to wake Holger Danske, his people need him!
The thing is, they weren’t managed opposition from the start. They had fought long and valiantly for Denmark, (almost) up until the moment they sold out.
The Progress Party in Norway – who’ve been in government for almost a decade – did the same as the DPP, and the Sweden Democrats are showing tendencies as well. Marine ousted her father because he offended the nose – go figure.
Farage is a different creature. I think he was bent from the get-go. He has successfully destroyed UKIP and substituted a one-issue movement for a party with a real political program.
All this is good news if you’re a Dane, of course. We let the big boys fight the revolutions so we don’t have to.
Holger Danske would be nice but Denmark is going OK (from Vox Day’s blog)
For the last two decades the anti-immigrant party has supported successive right-wing governments in exchange for the implementation of their restrictive immigration policies. But as those policies have now been broadly adopted by almost all Danish parties, the Danish People’s Party has lost its unique appeal with voters.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7106581/Denmark-election-Centre-left-Social-Democrats-expected-win.html
It also appears that the policy adoption is being carried through
I for one am glad of this, if European nation wish to be Leftist and most appear to prefer it for a lot of good reasons, so long as they are nationalist , they’ll be fine
That is sort of true: the establishment parties have begun talking tough, but the only real measure of their efficacy is the net number of permanent residency permits handed out, and while the rate of growth is lower than in other West European countries, it’s still rising.
The right-wing PM before the outgoing one, Anders “Fogh of War” Rasmussen, shut down some family reunification options, but he simultaneously opened up for foreign ‘students’, travelling all the way from Pakistan to study Islam in Denmark, producing government grants to our madrassas.
What this election has demonstrated to our political classes, is that you can roar loudly and carry a wet noodle, the voters only care about the roar.
And thanks for the link, there’s a great photo of the outgoing and incoming PMs.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/06/05/08/14349804-7106581-Lars_L_kke_Rasmussen_the_Prime_Minister_and_leader_of_the_outgoi-a-1_1559720718600.jpg
Too bad Roissy is out of business, that photo is begging to be physiognomy-splained.
Does the fate of Noa Pothoven have any traction there?
Noa Pothoved.
Dutch dude. Never heard of him.
When I get to be the chairman of the European Commission, I’ll decree that people from the Netherlands are Hollandic Hollanders from Holland and speak Hollandish. None of this Dutch-business anymore.
Damn, it’s bad enough to be confused with a Swede.
Sorry, thought she was a Dane.
17 year old girl who was raped when she was 14.
Never got over the depression and just committed ‘assisted suicide’.
I see.
I find assisted suicide rather tasteless, but it’s a free country. You want to blow your brains out, go ahead. You want to pay a nurse give you a hot shot because you’re too chicken stick yourself with a needle, god bless you.
Yes, we know you regret that comment. Poor, poor girl- our home lands, our beloved people, I want to murder half the fucking world sometimes.
I, too, am guilty of often confusing Dutch with Danish – but only as adjectives! I used to work with a Dutch guy when I was posted overseas and I know that Geert Wilders (nationalist but in a nose-approved, anti-muslim only way) is not Scandinavian.
No worries, everybody’s used to it, and to be fair, Denmark and the Netherlands are amazingly similar: small, flat countries with proud naval traditions, tall, blond people, a language that sounds like you’re having a brain aneurysm, bikes everywhere and a relaxed attitude to sex and drugs.
Jutes, Angles, Saxons, I can’t tell one goddam Northman from another.
Felix, very best of luck with your FU to the political establishment. Hope Rasmus Paludan proves to have more testicular fortitude than Trump. Back in the heady days of the 2016 campaign I bought a “Trump, because F U” t shirt. Today you could not pay me to wear it. Probably make a decent dust cloth.
Totally off topic – my favorite workout music is from the Danish band Volbeat. They’re supposed to finally be in the DFW area in the fall, but with bands I don’t care for and ticket prices beyond my budget.
I’m sorry to report that Paludan, with a most disappointing 1,8%, didn’t even make it into parliament, and New Right only just made it with 2,4%. It seems all the disillusioned Danish People’s Party-voters went back to the establishment parties, especially the parties most responsible for the immigration disaster in the fist place.
So unless they fuck up, we’re facing four years of Commie rule, with a cabinet full of strong, empowered wahmen of both genders. (No offense to all the fine, upstanding ladies in here.)
Fuck my life, I hate democracy. The only upside is that the Danish People’s Party got clobbered, and so did the Libertarians, who also sold their voters down the river.
Felix – sorry for the disappointing results. Yes, democracy (or rule by MPAI) sucks.
Felix,you are where we were in 2016. Very harsh.
Never,ever give up,nor let these worthless,prickless dykes get you down.
Their “New World Order” is not going according to plan.
What % did the Hardline politician get?
I would posit a question: what are you guys’ thoughts on bitcoin and crypto currencies? I wouldn’t mind reading a post on that.
General;
For sure it depends on why you’d be using it. One thing to bear in mind about bitcoin, etc. is crypto-currencies’ utter dependence on steady electric supply, well protected servers and high bandwidth com links. If SHTF time comes, all such assumptions become questionable.
Likewise there is vulnerability to scam. Hard to enforce a contract against someone you only deal with over the inter webs. Since crypto-bucks exist in competition with national currencies, it’s hard to imagine some country or other’s secret service*/financial police riding to the rescue in case of a dispute.
I seem to recall that something like 20 megabucks of crypto-bucks went poof last year when the only guy with the server password unexpectedly assumed room temp. somewhere in the tropics. At least that’s the story the investors (and possible chumps) got about why the cyber-cupboard was suddenly empty.
____________________________
* Combatting counterfeiting was the original (and only) mandate of the US Secret Service when it was founded.
Yes, nice change of pace. I would like more like this.
Were you deplatformed from subscribestar or something?
The significant point is that despite historically low interest rates we also have very low inflation, below about 2%. This suggests the world’s economy is in a deflationary period and that the historically low interest rate are preventing across the board price collapse.
I would not believe the “2% inflation rate.” The cost of things a family requires to keep above water (food, education, real estate, transportation, health care) have not increased by a mere 2% a year, but by some multiple.
Sure, LCD teevees are cheaper. As are PCs per unit processing power. But decreased teevee/PC cost is not what will have an impact on how many kids a married couple decides to raise.
At this very minute, I sit in a dealer show room waiting for my truck to have the oil changed. The new trucks run $54k sticker! The old one I bought new in 2002 about $25k. OK, bigger, more electronics, etc. But that ain’t no 2% yearly inflation.
There is deflation but its masked by the USG for example borrowing or minting around 3.5% of the GDP every single year and a vast cheap credit resulting in a finance driven economy
This has resulted in vast stock buybacks hurting useful investments and huge real estate price increases, lousy parts of So Cal, Mexico El Norte where I live, prices are twice what they should be do to bankers , investors and Chinese carpetbaggers
The effect of this is, more or less is high housing costs and with the labor surplus driven constant wage arbitrage combined with easy divorce makes the US fertility rate and the general developed average of 1.8, its 1.6 among Whites and Asians
New immigrants get one generation max of high fertility and than rapid decline,
As automation increases, no need for A.I whatsoever, the economy will continue to be more finance based and fertility to contract further,
The lower bound is BTW well below 1 child per couple, 0,7 in Germany o.4 in parts of China
The societal effects are basically slow rot which is endemic where I live, public bathrooms all have to be locked, theft is skyhigh , roads falling apart , crazy drugged people everywhere
I’d be hard pressed to notice a Z-Poc
Long term, any society like this will just gradually go 3rd world though the US long long term may go Amish or something as the TFR among the ultra devout is really high
No change though and its a goner.
As for a US solution, it will either go on till it can’t or till the Right embraces authority used for a good purpose
Anyone fighting for more freedom is a moron, we have huge amounts of freedom to exploit, to migrate , to behave like morons and to consume.
A society that can’t do something as basic as have order that will deter much less punish single motherhood is toast
What people need is responsibility and order jammed down their throat
If White people who BTW are the only people capable of a Western order decide to do this , are willing to take the casualties to take power and do the unthinkable along the way , they can have it
The cost is high and the long term changes i.e. no grifting or exploiting any longer will be jarring but the reward is peace, safety and a measure of prosperity , i.e. a great place to have a family
The US will never be Modern Scandinavia, we were founded by (H/T to WRSA) tax evaders, traitors, and cop killers after all but we can be something like 1963 USA with boots on enough necks
A.B., I hear ya, but…1963 American morf’d into 2019 American. 1963 American produced the current immigration and civil rights laws. Something more than simply taking power has got to happen, least the cycle come around again.
There has got to be a sea change in the basic philosophy of the country codified into statute. Some here say, that comes with a return to a 90% White majority. But 1963 had a 90% White majority and we couldn’t keep what we had. Not sure we will be smarter next time around.
Any sign of a downturn produces panic, especially among office holders.
Andrew Yang writes in “The War On Normal People”, that the next recession is the Zombie Apocalypse. Granted, a lot of people say that every time, but he gives a pretty compelling argument that this one is really The Big One. Essentially that at the moment, cheap labor is holding back capital investments in disruptionary tech, mainly AI.
But next time a recession hits, argues Yang, we’ll see The Great Displacement, with mass unemployment and robots flipping burgers, driving trucks, doing surgery, dentistry and diagnostics: already today, an AI is much better at reading X-rays than a 20-year expert. Paralegals and (sweet, holy Jesus, could this really be true?) even lawyers would be out in the street panhandling. And as a Euro, I could add the agricultural sector: California peons are doing jobs that’s been done by robots in Europe for the last twenty years.
There’s a long way to go to get there with a decreasing IQ and diversity standards that keep out the smart people. It’s not going to happen.
Felix, this makes a lot of sense. We’re probably not at the point yet, technologically speaking, of replacing doctors and lawyers, etc. But a lot of low wage jobs could probably be eliminated with existing technology.
Automation is being held back by a glut of low wage workers, particularly in light of immigration. Does Yang say why cheap labor will end, though? Or do you have a theory? It seems that even with a major recession, there would still be more than enough low wage workers to go around.
Does Yang say why cheap labor will end, though?
He doesn’t think cheap labor will end, he thinks that when the next recession effects mass layoffs, tens of millions of jobs will be replaced by even cheaper robots. I’ve not finish his book yet, so I haven’t gotten to the bit about UBI, only the gloom and doom.
Interestingly, he writes that a lot of his rich friends are building prepper bunkers – “escape hatches” overseas. The Cloud People think there’s a reckoning coming.
Felix;
See if Yang tells how those rich folks plan to get to their bunkers and how they’ll hold them against hungry locals.
Under conditions of general disorder the roads will be quite possibly unusable. For some idea of how this might go down look up some video of hurricane evacuation and remember that those traffic jams were ‘orderly’ (done under orders along announced and pre-planned routes by folks with clear common interests).
Even if they have private jets, they will still need to get to them over those same roads. And this assumes no turmoil at the destination airport. Or being held to ransom once they get there.
Re hungry locals, unless they do like the Bronze Age kings and kill all the workmen who built them, locals will know about their bunkers existence and location. When they get hungry enough a few possible casualties will not slow them down.
Perversely, they depend on domestic order to get to their bunkers. And if there is domestic order they don’t need to go there.
See if Yang tells how those rich folks plan to get to their bunkers and how they’ll hold them against hungry locals.
He doesn’t go into specifics. I agree with you entirely, and I suspect Yang does too.
Mega Yachts and Helicopters are the
preferred “bug out” tools of the super rich
From what I hear, the bunkers are primarily out of the country. Smallish States that are isolated by ocean.
the bunkers are primarily out of the country.
Yes, he didn’t say where. I’ve heard that Patagonia is a popular retreat.
They’re delusional. We’ll have them delivered to us by their hosts, tortured, trussed up and hooded, ready for the show trials.
The problem with AI and robotic replacement is the same as it ever was. When the robots take over, who buys the crap they produce—services and products. The unemployed?
Yang’s $12k UBI won’t cut it and it won’t buy the rich “security” nor society stability. It will simply produce more recruits for the inevitable rebellion.
Yang’s book is 250 pages and well written. Lots of sections with statistics you can skip, if you’re familiar with the basics of income distribution.
Singh pointed out a machine in the grapevines and told me his former human crew of 100 braceros is now down to 5.
A Nevada hay farmer showed me his involuntarily new $250, 000 bailer and said he had had to reduce his longtime crew of 11 down to 3, as E-verify refused to verify.
These are Mexican families that have been with these farms back to great-grandpa. I’ve heard the same from farmers from Nebraska to Maryland, and in Mexico.
Whole Mexican farm towns are simply being seized by Cartel- and they have 200 young women with no chance of husbands, as all the men have sailed off to the U.S., living in old motels bought up by Latino drug baron slumlords.
Meanwhile, workers near the border are forced to damn near run after giant machines in billowing clouds of hot dust, in an inhumane hellscape.
Z is right to point out automation as the great unnoticed. When AI comes for the upper middle….
I don’t feel sorry for the hay farmer who had to buy a baler when his illegal labor stream dried up. He should look on the bright side: Had he violated tax laws instead of labor statutes, he’d be in jail instead of in debt for a piece of capital equipment.
Not illegal. Lorenzo, his complaint was that he had filed and complied with every agency from local, state and fed, but that fed kept giving him the runaround.
His crew had been with him over 30 years, since taking over their roles from their dads, from their grandads, back about 120 years.
Not illegals, but regular green card guest workers. The settled systems of us and our neighbors are being torn apart.
Krull’s comment made me realize that nobody has noticed the death of European yeoman farmers and their long traditions.
Now I’ll never get to pick chestnuts in Denmark or grapes in France while backpacking thru euro hostels.
Well said, Alzaebo.
120 years of generations of green card guest workers. Makes total sense.
LOL.
Hay balers? that’s the best example of automation people can come up with?
Hay balers have been around since the late 1800’s. All that has happened since then is incremental improvements in efficiency.
Go look at the stats for how many people lived on farms in the late 1800’s vs now.
The great displacement of farm workers thru mechanization happened a LONG time ago.
Yep, and it was one of the causes of the Great Depression in the 30s that everyone ignores today.
Yes, thanks Dixie- when you’re not allowed enough humans to drive the tractor bailers and harrowbeds (as I did in high school), you have to buy their huge monstrocity and build a barn for it.
Doomsday prophets sell more books. 2007 wasn’t much worse than the ‘82 recession Reagan had to deal with (and which had worse unemployment). Both were bad recessions, but they did clean house economically. 2007 just took longer to climb out of because of the bailouts, “stimulus” and Obama/Obamacare.
China and immigration are huge problems that must be dealt with, but on the whole, we are in good shape economically-speaking. The $22T question is whether debt really matters. So far, it doesn’t, but there are thousands of politicians and bureaucrats who are like “hold my beer”…
Very nice post, and change of pace. My thoughts on the matter are: money/currency as a tool is useful to the extent that it provides a reliable proxy for wealth. Money is fungible, which physical goods are not, therefore we consider it a medium of financial exchange. The US remaining the world reserve currency is the ONLY thing keeping this Ponzi scheme treading water. When that is no longer the case, things will get very interesting, and frankly it will signal the end of the post WWII era.
I don’t think there will be a replacement, at least not any currently that exists now. Certainly not the rmb/yuan, as the books on that are cooked past well done. The euro might not exist in a decade, God willing. It could simply be a decentralization of trade in terms of medium of exchange.
The one place where the robot revolution is real is in finance. People still matter, but the global financial system has reached a level of complexity that can only be understood by algos. Human involvement is through interfaces. The next step is the removal of the humans in large swaths of the system. Insurance for example, could be handled with block chain technology. Whether or not that can work in the long run is impossible to know.
We may have built a doomsday machine.
Z: thinking optimistically, such a system is predicated on a continuous supply of cheap energy, which doesn’t exist in reality. There will be physical hard limits, and when those are reached a reckoning will happen whether we want it to or not.
When everything runs automatically we don’t need to fire on Ft. Sumter to start the revolution all we need is to pull the right plug.
There is, and will be implemented in due course
Money, in my view is really just a proxy for energy. Basically if you have enough energy you can get everything else you might need, even gold and precious metals. Don’t have enough on Earth but have a working nuclear fusion reactor? You build a fleet of mining ships and get all you need in the asteroid belt. Fusion is finally starting to make a lot of progress (seriously, it’s finally happening). They’ve got AIs working on it now. The thing about fusion is that unlike fossil fuels, and even fission power, the fuel is everywhere and costs essentially nothing. What does this have to do with money? Well, the US dollar can be seen as being backed, not by gold, but by the de-facto stranglehold the US and its allies have on the supply of oil. When you spend a USD you are spending oil. When anyone can make energy with water and technology, the value of oil plummets and with it, the value of the USD. I suspect this will be a positive feedback as well. As the oil dollar loses value the US will weaken militarily as well producing a crisis of global confidence in the dollar itself as people start to realize that the US isn’t capable of backing its diktats with force as much as it used to be. I agree with the other commentators here too that there isn’t really any obvious replacement currency. The renminbi is propped up by US consumer spending which in turn is based on oil wealth so that’s the next domino to fall.
Replace “may” with “have most likely”.
And who is this “we” you speak of?
Shopping, regular old shopping, has been crushed by robots. Robots help us browse, filter, and buy. Robots process the transactions. Robots fulfill the order, which may or may not be boxed by a human. Robots handle much of the shopping, other than loading and physical delivery. Robots send shipping updates and process returns. You can still drive to a store, buy something, drove home, and then drive back to return it if it doesn’t fit or whatever. But you don’t have to.
My wife ordered a small rug on Wayfair recently. It arrived with some manufacturing defects. I processed the return online and received the return instructions: “throw it away”. The bank account updated later that day. No humans, other than the buyer.
The person who figures out how to turn malls into urban gardens, literally agriculture complete with farmers markets, or replaces the stores with giant entertainment centers (restaurants, night clubs, movies, rides, etc). Probably rides the next wave pretty well.
A typical mall is 800,000 square feet…about 15-20 acres…and that’s just floor space, not vertical space/volume, which is easily 3-4x this.
Life may have once been about preparing for scarcity. It is increasingly about battling boredom. While some will get addicted to robots for gaming or sex, there will be a large market for something resembling nature.
What about the rise of the Renminbi as the rising coin of trade with the East Asian bloc? It’s already surpassed the Euro. Wouldn’t that make our cheap debt a lot more expensive? If China and Japan cooperate, stop buying so much of our debt and impose the Renminbi on more and more trading partners wouldn’t we be in even more of a pickle? A system driven by so much debt cannot be all that anti-fragile.
It doesn’t have to be replaced, just loose enough of its appeal to make things more difficult for our masters.
The dollar replaced the pound because of the Brit’s war debt…
Any nation foolhardy enough to try to withdraw from the oil dollar system will find the USMC knocking on their door. They are the enforcer for our banking system.
The US would be utterly destroyed in a war against China , Clown World USA doubly so. Also nukes.
Also China has a long standing grudge vs. Japan and so an alliance is going to be shaky.
If China and Russia cooperate…
It would cost everyone something in the short term but in the long run the rest of the world would be a lot better off.
Excluding our greatest ally, the entire world is sick of our constant beating if the war drums. They are eager to see us taken down several pegs. The only reason they haven’t yet stuck it to us is that we will drag a lot of them into the abyss with them.
At some point they will have had enough.
Yves: I guess you haven’t been to East Asia, but one of the defining characteristics is how much the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans hate each other. The Japanese are well aware of the fact that burgerland is the only thing standing in the way of China. If China were to destroy any country, it would undoubtedly be Japan.
I’ve traveled to East Asia a lot during the past few decades. A degree of economic cooperation has always gone on and has steadily increased. Conscious efforts are being made to smooth out their political differences. They have a ways to go yet but they have a lot of incentive to make it work…largely because they expect the US to continue to decay thanks to our obsession with diversity. They don’t want to be caught flat footed. They both see us as increasingly erratic and thus increasingly dangerous. They understand that we are not the master of our own house and that our increasing awareness of this makes us even for unpredictable.
The military arrangement between the USA and Japan has been one of convenience. The US got a rent free presence in East Asia, Japan got a pass on heavy military expenditure. But they have steadily built up their own military for decades. It is now one of the world’s largest. Lots of it with highly advanced tech that actually works.
Nukes: China has many on the launch pad, Japan?
The South African-Israeli bomb project was largely the work of their silent partner, the Japanese. They may not have anything sitting on a launch pad or loaded in a sub, but they more than likely have something that can be ready to go pronto.
Their boomers are beginning to die off as well so the old animosities are less intense among the young.
Those old animosities will never go away but they can still work out arrangements about how to deal with an increasingly volatile US. The Japanese don’t trust the Chinese but they understand that their long term interests lie with some sort of arrangement with China. The younger Chinese are very interested in the Japanese and use them as a model in how to move forward culturally. The older Chinese hate the Japanese but many understand that the growth and tech advance of China had lots of help from the Japanese.
As with our financial arrangements with the rest of the world, we aren’t the only ones with agency.
@yves – I’ve lived in Tokyo for going 25 years and my observations pretty much line up with yours. The Chinese will get pissy whenever a Nip PM visits Yasukuni, but it’s the same dog-and-pony show they always trot out for the Chinese public. Used to be, even just ten years ago, Chinese tourists were a general PITA, Koreans were even worse, and white Westerners were everything in between. Now, the Chinese are tolerable, the Koreans still the same, but more noticeably – the quality of the average white tourist has went down markedly.
Nm
We are in for an energy based economy. An energy denominated currency.
Wasn’t it Mises that said that a recession is when money is returned to it’s rightful owners? Something like that, but I guess corrections that mean anything are off the table now.
We really do need a painful correction or something worse will take care of this for us. Maybe it is already happening but only a slow arduous process , drip by drip. (insert boiling frog analogy here). As Pat Buchanan said, America was a greater country long before she became a prosperous own. Hell, what we have now is not prosperity but Bugman economy.
It was J. P. Morgan speaking about depressions.
It takes an awful lot of fake money to keep the empire alive and fund the globohomo elite’s reign over us.
Martin Armstrong writes extensively about this. Destroying the money supply has a long history in human civilizations and is one sure sign that the whole enterprise is going down the shitter.
In ancient times the rulers ruined money by gradually diluting the percentage of precious metals that were used to mint coins. In a healthy society and economy – the coins would have been pure gold or silver. As the rulers get more and more corrupt – the % of actual precious metal keeps going down.
Our current day monetary system does not really rely on coins minted from precious metals any more , but the effect is the same. When the Fed “prints” money – what it means that those who have that money pass thru their hands first get to take full advantage of what is essentially a “free” rise in value. Further down the line (where the dirt people live) – you get screwed.
You can follow the effect of this pretty clearly by looking at the Wiki for the US dollar – and checking out the Buying power of one U.S. dollar chart.
1774 value = $1.00
dollar value bounces around during the 19th century
1900 value = $0.96
1910 value = $0.86
Federal Reserve instituted in 1913
1920 value = $0.39
The trend since 1920 is pretty much all downward
2012 value = $0.03
Complain all you want about fluctuating dollar values in the 1800’s – but the fact remains that a grandson of the guy who put $100 in the bank in 1774 , would have been able to pull out $96.00 in 1900
If you put $96.00 into the bank in 1900 – your grandkids (absent interest) – would pull out $3.00 in 2012.
Somebody benefited from that – and it wasn’t you.
Cal, that’s right. Best to hedge with some commodity that retains some intrinsic value. Gold and silver will do. The rich of course do this instinctively and have such holdings in abundance, whether land, oil, or other commodities. I’m sure some here have other creative ideas. But US greenbacks—that’s a long term scam.
Here’s an example, taken from none other than the “reality” show, Pawn Stars. Simplified version: Some old guy comes in with a restored car, 1933 Packard or something. They elaborate on the history of the car. Built in the depression for rich folk, it sold for $3000. Princely sum for those days.
Rick bargains with the old guy and they agree on a price—but the old guy wants gold, not cash! The exchange ends when Rick counts out this guy something like 160 or so American Eagles (one oz pure gold) instead of $200k+ cash. The point here is that $3k in 1933 was 150 $20 gold pieces. So what retained its value best, fiat
paper or gold?
When I first went overseas in the 1980s, I found most other countries’ monetary coins unusual, but those from the Soviet Union in particular reminded me of play money – they were so lightweight and clearly of no intrinsic value. That’s how I now regard American coins – I wasn’t really aware, as a kid, that our dimes contained real silver or our pennies real copper, but today the coins are all featherweight and obviously hold no intrinsic value nor contain any real metal. We’re the monopoly economy with monopoly money.
Cockeysville!! That’s funny seems appropriate somehow
Anyway, I think we have to have a collapse, I think it’s the only way white people survive. If we continue on as it is and there is no collapse any fighting back against the anti white elements will just create more of them and eventually the levers of government are going to be completely out of our hands and used against us. White people are becoming the global scapegoat. That’s really bad for white people as long as there is a global order.
Finding a P.O. Box that was convenient was not all that easy. I travel that direction for work and it is right off the highway. I plan to move to PA next spring, so it will still be convenient.
I’ll miss your commentary on Lagos. Don’t lose your edge in PA!
Hey, hey! PA’s edgy. Not dull like everybody says, we’re edgy! (In my best Fredo Corleone voice).
I stand corrected. I’m not going to cross Hoagie.
The other option is West Virginia, but both of my legs are the same length, so I would never fit in.
And if you don’t like to play with rattlesnakes, how would you fit in?
A former close friend (with whom I parted ways after she became enamored with the Obamination and turned into a proto-SJW) grew up in Cockeysville. I spent Christmas with her family for a number of years in the ’80s and the area was lily-white. It is undoubtedly rather vibrant now, I suspect.
I used to live in COCKeysville. Sorry, I know it’s juvenile but who can resist the temptation to capitalize the first 4 letters of that name? That was the late 90s. The area was then in a state of what one might call mild decay. I recently read that they’ve extended the light rail to Hunt Valley Towne Center (the former notorious dead mall known as Hunt Valley Mall). In Baltimore the rule is “when the trains come the whites go.” so I imagine the area is more rapidly going to shit now.
The Hunt Valley Mall is alive and thrivingish.It’s 20 miles south of me and is my nearest Wegman’s.It’s somewhat vibrant- the nearest place where I can guarantee a sight of the swarthy, but the farmland surrounding it still hosts redcoated horse backed fox hunts.
Now there’s lily white for you.
It’s intriguing to me that the three best supermarket chains, Wegman’s, Aldi’s and Trader Joe’s are all privately owned,
It says something about corporatism.
(The story of the Albrech bro’s is interesting.)
Yes, I’m told it’s come back. When I last went there in the late 90s though it was a hilarious zombie mall with a few shady looking candy and kitsch stores and LOTS of empty storefronts.