Tag Archives: Economic Collapse

The Fed Has Triggered A Stagflationary Disaster That Will Hit Hard This Year

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By Brandon Smith

Source: Alt-Market.US

I don’t think I can overstate the danger that the U.S. economy is in right now as we enter 2022. While most people are caught up in the ongoing drama of Covid-19, a REAL threat looms over the nation in the form of a stagflationary tidal wave. The mainstream media is attempting to place the blame on “supply chain disruptions,” but this is a misrepresentation of the issue.

The two factors are indeed intertwined, but the reality is that inflation is the cause of supply chain disruptions, not the result of supply chain disruptions. If we look at the underlying stats for price rises in essential products we can get a clearer picture.

Before I get into my argument, I really want to stress that this is a precarious time and I suggest that people prepare accordingly. In just the past few months I have seen personal expenses rise at least 20% overall, and I’m sure it’s the same or worse for most of you. Stocking necessities and safe-haven investments with intrinsic value like physical precious metals are a good choice for protecting whatever buying power your dollars have left…

Higher prices everywhere

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is officially at the highest levels in 40 years. CPI measurements often diminish the scale of the problem because they do not include things like food, energy and housing which are core expenses for the public. CPI calculations have also been “adjusted” over the past few decades by the government to express a more positive view on inflation. If we look at the inflation numbers at Shadowstats, calculated according to the same methods they used in the 1980’s, we see a dramatic increase in CPI which paints a more dire (but more accurate) picture.

U.S. food prices have spiked to levels not seen since 2008 at the onset of the credit and derivatives collapse that brought about tens of trillions of dollars in Federal Reserve bailouts.

If we look beyond the 2008 crisis, food costs do not see a similar jump until the 1980s. Rising food prices in the US are often obscured by creative accounting and “shrinkflation” (shrinking packages and rising prices), but if we look at global food prices the average is a 30% jump in the past year.

Rental and home prices have also gone into the stratosphere. Rental costs went up around 18% in 2021, and this is an extension of a trend that has been prevalent for the past decade. Prices have been rising for a while, it’s just that now the avalanche has accelerated.

Home prices are currently out of the range of most new potential home buyers. Values jumped 16% in the past year alone, with the average property costing $408,000. Home sales continue to remain elevated compared to two years ago despite inflating prices for one reason and one reason only – the mass migration of Americans away from the draconian mandates and bureaucracy of blue states into more conservative states.

I live in Montana, a primary destination for people relocating, and from my experience the majority of these people are conservatives seeking to escape the vaccine and lockdown mandates in places like California, New York and Illinois. They see the writing on the wall and they are trying to get ahead of the economic and social calamity that will surely befall such states.

I would also note that home sales have finally begun to flatten in the past six months but prices are not dropping, which is a trend that I think needs to be explored further because it illustrates the larger issue of stagflation.

When inflation becomes stagflation

Understand that prices are not just rising because of increased demand (demand is starting to fall in many sectors), prices are rising because of increased money supply and dollar devaluation which is not yet being reflected in the Dollar Index.

Take a look at U.S. GDP and you will see that for the past several years it has tracked in tandem with price inflation. Obviously, if prices inflate then this means people are spending more, which then leads to higher U.S. GDP; it’s like magic, right? In other words, inflation makes it seem as though U.S. GDP is always improving.

However, this has not been the case in the past couple of years.

Official GDP has flattened despite the fact that U.S. money supply and inflation have rocketed higher. What does this mean? I believe it is a sign of stagflation and a reckoning in 2022. If we examine inflation adjusted GDP numbers from Shadowstats we see that GDP has declined rather aggressively in the past couple of years.

We can also see odd tendencies in oil and gasoline prices. While it’s true that gas prices have been higher in the past, this does not address the full context of the situation. U.S. travel spending has declined 12% since 2019 and airline travel has dropped at least 21% in the past year. Average gasoline usage dropped after 2019 and still has not recovered. Yet, gas prices continue to rise? In other words, travel demand is stagnant but prices are INCREASING – this is another signal of inflationary pressures and dollar devaluation. Oil is priced in dollars globally, and therefore any inflation in the dollar will be readily visible in oil. This would help explain why pandemic paranoia and reduced travel have not caused gas prices to drop.

If the current momentum continues the majority of necessities in the U.S. will not be affordable for most people by next year. We are looking at a fast-moving decline in production along with a swift explosion in prices. In other words, a stagflationary disaster.

This is the Federal Reserve’s fault

I and many other alternative economists have been warning about the inevitable inflation/stagflation crisis for years, but the most important factor to understand is WHO is responsible this event?

The mainstream financial media is going to protect the government and the Federal Reserve at all costs during this breakdown. They are going to blame Covid, the lockdowns here and overseas as well as the supply chain bottleneck.

The Fed is the true culprit, though.

While there have been many American Presidents and other politicians that have supported the Fed in its inflationary activities, the central bank itself needs to be held accountable for the downturn that is about to occur. This is a process that started back at the founding of the Fed, but spread like cancer after the crash of 2008 and the introduction of 12+ years of stimulus and bailout measures along with near-zero interest rates.

The inflationary end-game

The pandemic is the perfect cover for the inflationary end game. In 2008 the response to the crisis was to print and pump dollars into banks and corporations in the U.S. and around the globe. This money supply was held in corporate coffers and in central banks overseas, which slowed the effects of inflation. This set the precedent for subversive stimulus policies by giving the Fed a blank check to do whatever it wanted.

In 2020, the Fed created trillions more but this time the money was injected directly into the U.S. economy through Covid stimulus checks, PPP loans and other measures. In the alternative economic field we call this “helicopter money.” These dollars triggered a massive retail buying spree in 2020, but with more dollars in the economy chasing less goods prices are now spiking much higher.

The big discussion today is whether or not the Fed will taper their asset purchases, reduce their balance sheet and raise interest rates to counter inflation?

The fact is it won’t matter; inflation/stagflation will continue or even accelerate as the Fed tapers. With a taper comes the threat of a flattening yield curve in Treasury bonds as well as the danger of bonds and dollars being dumped by foreign investors and central banks. If the trillions upon trillions of dollars being held overseas come flooding back into the U.S., inflation will continue at its current pace or erupt even higher. In fact, the world’s ownership of dollars reached a 26-year low recently. The global transition away from the dollar, toward inflation-resistant investments, has already begun.

This is not a policy error

I explained this Catch-22 threat in my recent article The Fed’s Catch-22 Taper Is a Weapon, Not a Policy Error. In that essay I outline the Fed’s documented history of creating economic disasters that conveniently end up benefiting their friends in the international banks.

I also explained (with evidence) how the Federal Reserve actually takes its marching orders from the Bank for International Settlements, a globalist institution which along with the International Monetary Fund and World Economic Forum is openly seeking a one-world economic system and one-world currency system.

I do not believe that the Fed’s actions are a product of ignorance or stupidity or basic greed. I do not believe the Fed is scrambling to keep the U.S. economy afloat. I believe according to the evidence that the Fed knows exactly what it is doing. The pandemic offers a perfect scapegoat for an engineered crash of the U.S. economy which the Fed is trying to facilitate.

Why? Because the more desperate people are financially, the easier they are to buy off with false promises and a loaf of bread. They are easier to control. On top of that, with the U.S. economy reduced to second- or third-world status, it is easier to sell the public on the predetermined solution – total global centralization and far less freedom.

As the stagflationary crash plays out, never forget who was really the cause of the public’s suffering. In the fog of national crisis it is easy for the establishment to shift blame and responsibility and to cloud the truth. The inflation calamity is about to get much worse, and as it does we need to rally newly awakened people to take action against the central bankers and globalists behind it.

Totalitarian Paranoia Run Amok: Pandemics, Lockdowns & Martial Law

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By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“Totalitarian paranoia runs deep in American society, and it now inhabits the highest levels of government.”—Professor Henry Giroux

Once upon a time, there was a government so paranoid about its hold on power that it treated everyone and everything as a threat and a reason to expand its powers. Unfortunately, the citizens of this nation believed everything they were told by their government, and they suffered for it.

When terrorists attacked the country, and the government passed massive laws aimed at paving the way for a surveillance state, the people believed it was done merely to keep them safe. The few who disagreed were labeled traitors.

When the government waged costly preemptive wars on foreign countries, insisting it was necessary to protect the nation, the citizens believed it. And when the government brought the weapons and tactics of war home to use against the populace, claiming it was just a way to recycle old equipment, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were labeled unpatriotic.

When the government spied on its own citizens, claiming they were looking for terrorists hiding among them, the people believed it. And when the government began tracking the citizenry’s movements, monitoring their spending, snooping on their social media, and surveying them about their habits—supposedly in an effort to make their lives more efficient—the people believed that, too. The few who disagreed were labeled paranoid.

When the government allowed private companies to take over the prison industry and agreed to keep the jails full, justifying it as a cost-saving measure, the people believed them. And when the government started arresting and jailing people for minor infractions, claiming the only way to keep communities safe was to be tough on crime, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were labeled soft on crime.

When the government hired crisis actors to take part in disaster drills, never alerting the public to which “disasters” were staged, the people genuinely believed they were under attack. And when the government insisted it needed greater powers to prevent such attacks from happening again, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were told to shut up or leave the country.

When the government started carrying out covert military drills around the country, insisting it was necessary to train the troops for foreign combat, most of the people believed them. The few who disagreed, fearing that perhaps all was not what it seemed, were shouted down as conspiracy theorists and quacks.

When government leaders locked down the nation, claiming it was the only way to prevent an unknown virus from sickening the populace, the people believed them and complied with the mandates and quarantines. The few who resisted or voiced skepticism about the government’s edicts were denounced as selfish and dangerous and silenced on social media.

When the government expanded its war on terrorism to include domestic terrorists, the people believed that only violent extremists would be targeted. Little did they know that anyone who criticizes the government can be considered an extremist.

By the time the government began using nationalized police and the military to routinely lockdown the nation, the citizenry had become so acclimated to such states of emergency that they barely even noticed the prison walls that had grown up around them.

Now every fable has a moral, and the moral of this story is to beware of anyone who urges you to ignore your better instincts and blindly trust that the government has your best interests at heart.

In other words, if it looks like trouble and it smells like trouble, you can bet there’s trouble afoot.

Unfortunately, the government has fully succeeded in recalibrating our general distaste for anything that smacks too overtly of tyranny.

After all, like the proverbial boiling frogs, the government has been gradually acclimating us to the specter of a police state for years now: Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality.

This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls. Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out. Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities, and persuade them that only a militarized government can alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.

It’s happening already.

The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.

We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and  Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.

Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that called on the government to subject right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans to full-fledged, pre-crime surveillance.

Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons, including hollow point bullets, for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

And then there are the military drills that have been taking place on American soil in recent years.

In the latest “unconventional warfare exercise,” dubbed “Robin Sage,” special forces soldiers will battle seasoned “freedom fighters” in a “realistic” guerrilla war across two dozen North Carolina counties.

Robin Sage follows on the heels of other such military drills, including Jade Helm, which involved U.S. Army Special Operations Command, the Navy Seals, Air Force Special Operations, Marine Special Operations Command, Marine Expeditionary Units, the 82nd Airborne Division, and other interagency partners.

According to the government, these planned military exercises are supposed to test and practice unconventional warfare including, but not limited to, guerrilla warfare, subversion, sabotage, intelligence activities, and unconventional assisted recovery.

The training, known as Realistic Military Training (RMT) because it will be conducted outside of federal property, are carried out on both public and private land, with locations marked as “hostile territory,” permissive, uncertain (leaning friendly), or uncertain (leaning hostile).

This is psychological warfare at its most sophisticated.

Add these military exercises onto the list of other troubling developments that have taken place over the past 30 years or more, and suddenly, the overall picture seems that much more sinister: the expansion of the military industrial complex and its influence in Washington DC, the rampant surveillance, the corporate-funded elections and revolving door between lobbyists and elected officials, the militarized police, the loss of our freedoms, the injustice of the courts, the privatized prisons, the school lockdowns, the roadside strip searches, the military drills on domestic soil, the fusion centers and the simultaneous fusing of every branch of law enforcement (federal, state and local), the stockpiling of ammunition by various government agencies, the active shooter drills that are indistinguishable from actual crises, the economy flirting with near collapse, the growing social unrest, the socio-psychological experiments being carried out by government agencies, etc.

And then you have the government’s Machiavellian schemes for unleashing all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace, then demanding additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threats. Almost every national security threat that the government has claimed greater powers in order to fight—all the while undermining the liberties of the American citizenry—has been manufactured in one way or another by the government.

What we’ve seen play out before us is more than mere totalitarian paranoia run amok.

What has unfolded over the past few years has been a test to see how well “we the people” have assimilated the government’s lessons in compliance, fear and police state tactics; a test to see how quickly “we the people” will march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, no questions asked; and a test to see how little resistance “we the people” will offer up to the government’s power grabs when made in the name of national security.

Most critically of all, this has been a test to see whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—could survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

We have failed the test abysmally.

We have also made it way too easy for a government that has been working hard to destabilize to lockdown the nation.

Mark my words, there’s trouble brewing.

Better yet, take a look at “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command.

The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.

Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.

The training video anticipates that all hell will break loose by 2030—that’s barely eight short years away—but we’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front.

The danger signs are screaming out a message

The government is anticipating trouble (read: civil unrest), which is code for anything that challenges the government’s authority, wealth and power.

According to the Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. government is grooming its armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems.

What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

The chilling five-minute training video, obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request and made available online, paints an ominous picture of the future—a future the military is preparing for—bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.

And then comes the kicker. Three-and-a-half minutes into the Pentagon’s dystopian vision of “a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes—brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers,” the ominous voice of the narrator speaks of a need to “drain the swamps.”

The government wants to use the military to drain the swamps of futuristic urban American cities of “noncombatants and engage the remaining adversaries in high intensity conflict within.” And who are these noncombatants, a military term that refers to civilians who are not engaged in fighting? They are, according to the Pentagon, “adversaries.” They are “threats.”

They are the “enemy.”

They are people who don’t support the government, people who live in fast-growing urban communities, people who may be less well-off economically than the government and corporate elite, people who engage in protests, people who are unemployed, people who engage in crime (in keeping with the government’s fast-growing, overly broad definition of what constitutes a crime).

In other words, in the eyes of the U.S. military, noncombatants are American citizens a.k.a. domestic extremists a.k.a. enemy combatants who must be identified, targeted, detained, contained and, if necessary, eliminated.

In the future imagined by the Pentagon, any walls and prisons that are built will be used to protect the societal elite—the haves—from the have-nots.

If you haven’t figured it out already, we the people are the have-nots.

Suddenly, the events of recent years begin to make sense: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers.

The government is systematically locking down the nation and shifting us into martial law.

This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

As Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering remarked during the Nuremberg trials:

It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

It does indeed work the same in every country.

It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived by government propaganda.

Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law. I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

Be warned: in the future envisioned by the government, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will all be enemies of the state.

The American Third World: We’ll Soon Be Living in It

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By Fabian Ommar

Source: Activist Post

It’s that time of the year, and instead of following tradition and making new predictions and forecasts (which we preppers do all the time anyways), I usually look back into the recent past, review my (and other’s) work and previous analyses, what transpired (or not), where my perspectives need adjustment and where, and so forth.

I decided to review and expand on a few topics addressed previously here and see where we are on those. In April, I wrote about the thirdworldization of the United States, as both it, and the rest of the First World, is gradually shifting towards the Third World.

It’s not only happening, but accelerating. And the entire world is going that way, too – or soon it will, judging by the signs. These things have a delay and don’t happen linearly, but in waves.

Thirdworldization 2.0 – When the First World becomes the Third World

Let’s see some more about how life can be in places constantly suffering with economic crises, political upheavals, moral degeneracy, authority demoralization, institutional failure and social decadence.

For anyone who’s never lived in such a context, understanding the dynamics of the system and societies in the Third World (or any place in which the order has changed drastically, yet not totally evaporated), can be a good way to prepare for what’s already underway.

The current crisis is global and unlike others seen in recent times

Notwithstanding the crap lining up just waiting to hit the fan – a pandemic, a debt time-bomb, geopolitical tensions, and lots more – the capacity to deal with all that is at an all-time low. Even wealthy nations look exhausted, depleted and lost like never before.

There’s zero willingness to cooperate and coordinate a solution, despite authorities’ constant and oddly similar declarations to the contrary. Speaking of the leadership currently in charge, it’s as mediocre, misguided, and uninspiring as it can possibly be.

And this is everywhere. We’re screwed.

It’s impossible to say for sure whether or not all that will end up in a full-blown SHTF of some kind, much less when. It can take a year, or ten. What’s certain is this: until things reach that catalyst point, degradation will force large swaths of populations worldwide, in most if not all countries, to take a few steps back in many fronts.

As I said before, it’s already happening.

The Third World will get much worse, and the First World will become a lot like the Third.

This is not SHTF as some might see it, but a middle-of-the-road-yet-still-gloomy scenario. Many in Preppersphere can’t conceive of anything less than the Apocalypse. Fine, to each their own. Besides, preparing for the worst means covering for everything less, so in principle it’s not a bad strategy, right?

I live in Brazil, but have visited the US, EU, and a few other countries and continents, even having lived abroad for a period during the 1990s. I’ve experienced both realities under different circumstances and gained some perspective on the contrasts between advanced societies, and ones with broken, inefficient, and corrupt institutions, and with weak social contracts.

That’s what I’m here to share. I’ll continue to raise awareness to what society converts into long before TEOTWAWKI happens, and try to help others prepare and deal with that. I do this not only because this is where I have some degree of knowledge, but also because that is what I see happening.

It’s hard to make progress in a ‘quicksand environment.’

In developed countries, people frame their decisions and take action based on reasonable probabilities, and the assumption that certain basic conditions of the social contract won’t change radically or suddenly, depending on who’s in charge or some other spurious reason.

A functional checks-and-balances system warrants the stability of laws, regulations, the tax regime, while the political rules and institutions create a favorable environment for investment and risk taking by people, families, and businesses. That’s what promotes the development and advancement of a country.

That’s perhaps the most important thing to understand about (and consequently prepare for) thirdworldization: it’s not just that things change, but how they change. Thirdworldization is the present and constant possibility that things can get done, undone, and again, at any moment, in unpredictable ways, without debate or warning.

How do you make plans for the future in such context?

Instability and uncertainty make life in general much harder to navigate in the Third World.

If the goalposts are constantly moving, everyone will act short or near term as a way to adapt and survive. The harder and more unstable the context, the faster you must both adapt and act (what is SHTF if not chaos?). So, there’s a silver lining to living like this, but also a price: it’s riskier, more stressful, tiresome, and frustrating.

I won’t say it’s hell, because it’s not.

Most people don’t live 24/7 in fear or under serious risk, not even in severely hit places. It’s not a full-scale SHTF. Life’s just more fluid, more challenging, and not as predictable and calm as in more civilized nations. Actions and consequences don’t follow a linear, predictable path.

Look around and see the sweeping anxiety and depression everywhere. I’d argue it’s not being caused by the pandemic, or even the economy going kaput, but by the appetite of governments everywhere to change basic rules and destroy freedom and individual liberty in the name of an emergency. When you combine this with people’s willingness to forfeit their rights, privacy and liberties in the name of illusory safety you end up with our current world.

That’s what I mean by the world going the way of the Third World.

Observing and understanding the real nature of fluidity in everyday life of a dysfunctional society can be critical, because dysfunctional is exactly what the world is fast becoming.

I’ll give some examples to illustrate what I’m talking about…

What does the path to authoritarianism look like?

The executive, legislative, and judiciary overstepping each other is common in banana republics. Every country can have a bill of rights, but it’s the separation of powers that make the constitution effective. Without a checks-and-balances system, rights are just words on a piece of paper.

This creates both confusion and infighting while simultaneously eroding confidence in the government’s institutions. People lose reference, politicians tend to abuse this strategy more and more, and from there it’s only downhill. It’s the exact script dictators and populists everywhere follow every single time to not only take power but to try to keep it forever.

For a long time this was something unacceptable and unseen in advanced nations. Despite this, though, it’s still been happening for some time now only having escalated in the last couple decades. Since 2020 it’s exploded, and it’s now eroding political and social stability in various developed countries.

And this is not only about inflated presidents declaring wars and contracting treaties and other actions without congressional approval, but also the government ceding increasing powers to agencies – NGOs and others organizations of unprepared, unelected tyrants aligned with the elites, eager to interfere and micromanage both society and people’s lives, as they steal people’s inherent rights and freedoms.

We now have moral ambiguity from top to bottom.

As we go lower down the scale into a full-fledged Third World nation, everyday life begins to border on the bizarre. In developing countries, the public administration is a cesspool of incompetence, poor planning, lack of vision, populism and corruption which drains precious resources and wealth from what would otherwise be a productive population.

The bureaucracy can reach paralyzing levels. The tax regime is so complex and illogical that it’s almost impossible to comply, even if you want to. The regulations are unstable and mutating. Besides punishing the population, these regulations lower the appetite of people and businesses to invest and take risk. The economy becomes less dynamic, less competitive and, eventually, it crawls.

Finally, when the government, institutions, and other authorities begin to become ambiguous with their defining the rules they create and enforce, people start thinking “why should I follow any of that?”

And once this happens, then it’s only a matter of time for disorder to increase and morality to collapse. That’s what a slow-burning SHTF means, after all: a  semi-functional system where everything is fluid and the laws have little practical effect.

There’s little guns can do to solve bigger issues.

But let’s switch gears a little to explain something related: guns are important and can save us in some specific situations. But they can’t help with any of the stuff I’m talking about.

Who are we gonna shoot? The politicians? The corrupt cops? The lazy public workers? The stupid laws? That would solve nothing. All it would mean would be civil war, which only makes everything worse.

Things might get to that point, but it’s a completely different dynamic. When the system is up, shooting someone can land you in jail – even in the Third World.

“How’s that any different from anywhere else?” you might ask. In many ways, this starts with an ineffective investigation apparatus: here only about 6% of intentional homicides are solved, in comparison to an average of 65% in US, 80% in France, and 90% in UK.

Translating, it’s a lot more discouraging to commit a crime in the First World than in the Third. But then other distortions and inequalities come into play. The rich and/or connected almost never go to jail, no matter the crime.

And this leads to the second big difference: the slow and utterly unfair justice system that punishes the entire society, by not punishing the deserving, as it should.

And then there’s the infamous Third World penitentiary system…

These are true SHTF microcosms. No prison anywhere is paradise, obviously. But do you have any idea how bad and dangerous a Third World jail is? If having forty dangerous inmates in a small cubicle originally designed to hold four gives you chills, you understand why honest citizens (especially preppers) are so reluctant to brag about firearms and shooting others in developing countries.

In there, one can get raped, beat up, killed. Or co-opted by one of the many factions that command organized crime, to whom you’ll belong for protection, for the right to live, or even to keep your relatives from being abused, tortured, or killed outside.

Instead of rehabilitating prisoners, this system turns them into even better (that is, worse) criminals.

Mass escapes are also commonplace in Third World prisons. So are violent riots and rebellions in which enemy factions fight, torture, kill and literally rip apart their rivals, as a way to display ruthlessness and inflict fear into opponents. Sure, these things also happen in First World prisons, but not with nearly the same frequency, brutality, or impunity.

There are many ways to get unwillingly involved in this mess of a system, too.

As the situation worsens, so does the entire system. If you do everything right, lay low and get lucky, you may be well. It’s not guaranteed though. Something crazy can happen by pure chance or opportunity, and you’re suddenly involved in something you didn’t ask for, but can’t avoid or escape anymore.

For instance, one day the cops or some government agent – inspection, fiscal, whatever – pay a visit to your small shop or business and ask for a “collaboration”, for… reasons. You pay, of course. It’s extortion, but you don’t want to upset the “law” – and the system can’t protect you from itself.

Now you’re a cash cow.

You go for a jog in the streets and 99% of the time nothing happens. One day you get mugged, or your wife or daughter get groped while riding a bicycle, and there’s little you can do (if you thought “guns!”, go back a couple paragraphs and read what I said about those again).

And then, there’s the organized crime…

I could talk about organized crime for forever, discussing how it grows and spreads based on the same principles and practices that high-profile corporations use to grow and spread. How it infiltrates all levels of society, by corruption, intimidation, lobbying, or even by financing people to occupy strategic positions. How it gets involved with politicians, legitimate businesses, the media – until it’s just one big thing with tentacles everywhere.

Instead, I’ll do you all a big favor and just point to a couple of movies that not only show in true, raw, vivid colors how this whole mechanism works, but do it in a very entertaining and thrilling way. Elite Squad (1997) and its sequel, The Enemy Within (2010) are two of most brilliant and well-made Brazilian movies ever (both rated 8.0 on IMDB).

Apart from superb action flicks, they’re blunt, brutal, realistic portraits of crime, drug fighting/trafficking, institutional corruption, and overall social and moral decadence. They explain how crime evolves and takes over the system – how it gets “institutionalized”. It’s shocking, revealing, and educational.

There’s a reason I keep returning to the topic of crime.

Crime and violence are insidious and pervasive – the first evidence of collapse – while at the same time both the cause and consequence of deeper issues. Crime is the antecedent to (serious) shortages, and skyrockets when the grid goes down. It becomes both a collective and an individual problem. It affects us directly, and indirectly, physically and mentally – an itch no one can scratch.

Look how fast crime has grown in the US and around the world just in the past few months. I’m not talking about a 2% increment, but something in the two or even three figures in some places – and again, in months. For many, especially the part of society living in safe and civilized regions, crime may seem like something distant, numbers and statistics presented in the news.

That all changes when it comes to our door, and then the cat is definitely out of the bag.

To conclude, there’s been a lot of talk about the possibility of civil war in the United States. I think that it can happen, but not necessarily like 1871. It could be a mix of guerrilla warfare and crime, for instance. Or we could witness a steep, sudden, and widespread rise in crime and violence. In Haiti, gangs rule the country and casualties are high. It affects everyday life and impacts the whole population, the economy, everything. It may not be declared, but its de facto a civil war.

Abandoning innocence

When everything is good and there’s a surplus, collaboration happens easily and even spontaneously. With all the challenges and hardships we’re facing, people are entering survival mode everywhere. Becoming more knowledgeable about the dynamics of living in a dysfunctional society can build psychological preparations to live in a fluid and unstable world.

I acknowledge none of what I talked about here is prerogative of Third World or collapsed countries. Disorder, corruption and malfeasance are part of human nature and exist everywhere. But again, it’s certainly more widespread and violent where it’s not contained, and – this is critical – not punished.

And that’s precisely in proportion to the level of institutional efficiency, solidity and civil cohesion. Once these decay, the doors to social maladies are held wide open. And wherever this happens, a similar scenario unfolds.

It’s happening everywhere.

The Long Cycles Have All Turned: Look Out Below

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Long cycles operate at such a glacial pace they’re easily dismissed as either figments of fevered imagination or this time it’s different.

But since Nature and human nature remain stubbornly grounded by the same old dynamics, cycles eventually turn and the world changes dramatically. Nobody thinks the cyclical turn is possible until it’s already well underway.

Multiple long cycles are turning in unison:

1. The cycle of interest rates: down for 40+ years (last turn, 1981), now up for an unknown but consequential period of time.

2. The cycle of inflation / deflation: the 40-year period of low real-world inflation and rip-roaring speculative debt-asset inflation has ended and now an era of scarcity, real-world inflation and speculative debt-asset deflation begins.

3. The cycle of capital-labor balance: capital has dominated labor for 40+ years, siphoning $50 trillion from labor. This cycle has now turned and the rebalancing is underway: it’s capital’s turn to surrender gains and power.

4. The cycle of social order-disorder: as documented by historian Peter Turchin and others, social order (in Turchin’s phrase, the integrative phase) holds sway for about 50 years and then it gives way to an era of social disorder (the disintegrative phase). This phase doesn’t end with mild reforms nobody even notices, it ends with a rebalancing of social, political and economic power.

5. The cycle of wealth/power inequality: wealth–and the political power it buys–becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. This feeds economic and political dysfunction and exploitation that must be remedied by reducing extremes of wealth-power inequality.

6. The cycle of speculative excess: those in power protect their wealth and the wealth of their cronies by instituting moral hazard, the disconnect of risk and consequence: the central state and central bank backstop and bail out the most egregious big speculators, who keep all their gains and transfer their losses to the public.

The public concludes the only way to get ahead in such a rigged financial system is to belly up to the gaming tables and gamble that the next bubble will never pop because those in power won’t ever let it pop.

But alas, humans do not possess god-like powers, they only possess hubris, and so all bubbles pop: the more extreme the bubble, the more devastating the pop. The faint cries that fade to silence are: but this time it’s different! and the Fed will save us! That’s not how cycles work: all the god-like powers are revealed as hubris, which arouses the fatal ire of Nemesis.

When Everything Is Artifice and PR, Collapse Beckons

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

The notion that consequence can be as easily managed as PR is the ultimate artifice and the ultimate delusion.

The consequences of the drip-drip-drip of moral decay is difficult to discern in day-to-day life. It’s easy to dismiss the ubiquity of artifice, PR, spin, corruption, racketeering, fraud, collusion and narrative manipulation (a.k.a. propaganda) as nothing more than human nature, but this dismissal of moral decay is nothing more than rationalizing the rot to protect insiders from the sobering reality that the entire system is unraveling and heading for its final reckoning: collapse.

We’ve become so accustomed to the excesses of marketing that we’ve lost the ability to recognize the difference between “science” that’s been carefully designed to reach a pre-planned conclusion and science that accepts the outcome, even if it harms well-funded interests.

The vast expanses of ignorance greatly aid this artifice. Even though high school physics, chemistry and biology are sufficient to tease apart the vast majority of rigged experiments, trials and studies, few Americans have the interest or fortitude to read Phase III trial results, etc. critically, and so the corporate media can trumpet bogus results without fear of exposure: all the statistical tricks and gimmicks are passed off as “science” to the distracted and gullible.

And if someone dares to examine the results critically, then those benefiting from the ignorance make the results “secret” until the year 2929. And that’s the entire game in a nutshell: maximizing private gain from artifice, PR, spin, corruption, racketeering, fraud, collusion and narrative manipulation, all masked by an putrid spew of virtue-signaling and PR.

Every institution that was once trustworthy has been debauched to maximize private gain: higher education, science, medicine, national defense–the list includes virtually every sector and industry in America. Nothing can be trusted because somebody behind the scenes is spinning the story and data to mask their self-interest, their immense gains and the carefully contrived structure of diverting investigation and eliminating transparency, competition and accountability.

Our technocratic obsession denies the existence of the moral universe, reducing the world to techno-gimmicks (electric air taxis for everyone!), techno-fantasies (fusion reactors on every corner!) and techno-distractions (which billionaire will be the first on Mars?), as if a nation and society hurtling toward moral, social, civic and economic collapse can be saved by some “innovation” that beneath the surface is nothing more than another profiteering monopoly or cartel.

Many people fear collapse, but quality, service and reliability have already collapsed. The washing machine that two generations ago was designed and built to last 25 years now breaks down after a few years–so sorry, the motherboard failed. That will cost you almost as much as new washer, and so the manufacturer, bank and retailer win because the weary, clueless consumer will do the easy thing and buy a new, expensive appliance on credit. The “old” appliance (brand-new by previous standards) is hauled off to the landfill, the ultimate destination of everything in our Landfill Economy of poorly made junk.

Service would be hauled to the landfill as well if it was tangible. Alas, it is simply maddening, as nothing works and Kafkaesque bureaucracies have so much power that they are immune to transparency, competition and accountability. their websites don’t work, they botch the most basic transactions and they perpetuate incorrect information, but too bad–there is no recourse.

Big Tech is equally impervious to transparency, competition and accountability. Your “crime” is never explained, and there is no recourse, for the Machine has no judiciary or human contact: you query the Machine knowing full well that you will never extract anything remotely fair or just from its algorithmic monstrosity.

Technology doesn’t extinguish moral decay or eliminate the stench of self-serving artifice, PR, spin, corruption, racketeering, fraud, collusion and narrative manipulation. Technology only enhances the potential for profiteering under the tissue-thin guise of “innovation,” “technological advance” and the threadbare delusions of a populace that has watched too many contrived narratives in which technology saves the day.

The moral buffers have already thinned; there is nothing left to tap. There is nothing left in what actually matters: social cohesion, moral legitimacy, civic virtue–all stripped, depleted, gone.

Drones and robots won’t save us from collapse. Neither will fusion reactors, electric air taxis, billionaires in space, missions to Mars, algae-based meat or any of the other thousand “innovations” those profiting from moral rot promote in the hopes that the banquet of consequences being served can be swept away by more gimmicks, more artifice, more delusions, more fantasies, more PR, more spin and more narrative control.

Collapse can’t be gimmicked away. The notion that consequence can be as easily managed as PR is the ultimate artifice and the ultimate delusion.

Another Housing Crisis in America Is Coming

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By Tim Kirby

Source: Covert Geopolitics

There is now an unprecedented spike in housing costs while COVID-19 has driven down the wealth of the average American.

Let’s begin our discussion of the next Housing Crisis with a relevant personal anecdote, that is a microcosm of what is happening all over the United States right now.

Some of my relatives made the wise decision to live within their means and build a smaller (by American standards) house in the early 2000s. They live in the Midwest which means there is generally plenty of space for a big house even within city limits. Mortgages and loans were super easy to get for even fantastically large sums of money at that time. So my kin were definitely in the minority in terms of choosing something smaller and affordable rather than a giant debt pit with a huge kitchen. In a region of America known for having a shockingly low average income of $20,000-$30,000 per year in the 2020s, the banks two decades ago were just throwing $300,000 worth of credit for McMansions to all-comers with seemingly little discretion.

When the 2008 Financial Crisis hit it was the McMansions that got seized first and foremost, whereas my relatives got through it relatively unscathed. It looks like across America some 10,000,000 homes were lost (or perhaps it would be better to say “transferred” to the banks) due to this crisis. Again, because of choosing to have low square footage my family members did just fine with their more reasonable payments, however something recently happened that should sound some alarm bells that a second crisis is nigh.

Image: It costs over a quarter of a million dollars to live in a relatively small stick-frame house in the absolutely most dangerous neighborhood in a city with no significant employment opportunities. Something is not right here.

My relatives were given an offer from a neighbor to buy their home at its value (the last time it was appraised before the Covid Pandemic) plus more than $100,000 on top of that. The explanation was that the offering party wanted to have their son or daughter move closer to them and they were willing to pay big bucks for any house on that particular street. My family members thought they had won the lottery. They ecstatically looked for smaller homes to buy, so they could sell theirs, pay off their current mortgage early and keep a hefty percentage of this seemingly massive overpayment living the rest of their lives debt free.

But to their surprise, besides double-wide trailers they couldn’t find anything to buy. Now even the price of a home, smaller than their already modest home, in the impoverished Rust Belt, now sells for the prices that the McMansions demanded before the 2008 Crisis. To be clear, a house at Pre-Covid value + $100,000 in that region, now cannot even buy a sanitary home that is one half its size.

Again, for foreign readers, the house in question is not a piece of real estate in Silicon Valley or Manhattan where insane sounding prices could be justified by elite salaries and the presence of successful entrepreneurs. No, this is in the part of America where making $15 an hour to sling pizzas is considered a “good” job, but this price hike is not isolated to my state of birth, this madness is happening across all of America, just take a look at the graph below.

It does not take an elite degree in economics to see that there is now an unprecedented spike in housing costs while at the same time, paradoxically, COVID-19 has driven down the wealth of the average American. It is true that building materials have become artificially expensive and that would reflect on housing prices, but in a nation that has so many homes, including abandoned ones, it is hard to believe that America is in a desperate shortage of housing, furiously building to catch up like the Soviets after WWII, who had all their villages bombed into the dirt by the Germans.

Panic is driving housing prices up in a few different ways. Americans are flipping out because of the supposed…

  • Lack of building materials, which means there must be a housing “shortage” because construction is mostly off the table, so they must buy now or be left outdoors.
  • Prices, that are just going to keep going up so they must buy now before the affordability train leaves the station forever.
  • “Historically low mortgage rates”, which are probably the most dangerous aspect of this situation that will turn it into the next economic fiasco.

One of the key reasons that the 2008 Financial Crisis happened was because of the low interest rates on mortgages and inflated values of homes in connection with a lack of regulation over the financial world as a whole – and these exact same things are happening again right now in front of our faces. Just look at these interest rates.

It is not hyperbolic to say that they are “historically low”, because they are. The only difference is that in the past people were suckered into a McMansion while making $20,000 a year, now they will be suckered into a tiny house, trailer or grungy hellhole for the same price, that they will probably end up losing anyways when the crisis hits. Ranch-style homes in Texas far from major cities are starting to reach the $600,000-$700,000 mark which is simply unsustainable unless there are vastly more cattle and oil tycoons down there than we are aware of.

It simply does not require a genius financial mind or the word “Harvard” on your resume to see where this is going. We are again heading towards a housing crisis, only this time the bar is lower as the average American is getting less house and is paying more for it. Of course, the banks will “win” because whenever homes are lost they do not vanish out of existence, but get transferred to them the real lords of the realm so this won’t be bad for everyone, just almost everyone. The normies are doomed.

In a political context this repeating madness seems only to underline my belief that the arguments for small government are correct, but the problem is when government is both small and weak. This situation would not happen if those we elect were completely in charge of how America works systemically as a reflection of the will of the masses. The power that banks have may at times be overexaggerated by the conspiratorial types, but as we can see the nation is again being pushed down the wrong path and no one can stop it, meaning the benefactors of the coming crisis, the bankers, must have vastly more influence and power over Washington than anyone else, who would not benefit from this housing catastrophe.

America’s Bottom 50% Have Nowhere To Go But Down

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

One might anticipate that the bottom 50%’s meager share of the nation’s exploding wealth would have increased as smartly as the wealth of the billionaires, but alas, no.

America’s economy has changed in ways few of the winners seem to notice, as they’re too busy cheerleading their own brilliance and success. In the view of the winners, who just so happen to occupy all the seats at the media-punditry-Federal Reserve, etc. table–the rising tide of stock, bond and real estate bubbles are raising all boats. What’s left unsaid is except for the 50% of boats with gaping holes below the waterline, i.e. stagnant wages and a fast-rising cost of living.

The truth the self-satisfied winners don’t include in their self-congratulatory rah-rah is there’s no place for the bottom 50% of American households to go but down. All the winnings flow to those who already owned assets back when they were affordable– the already-wealthy–whose wealth has soared as assets have shot to the moon while the the burdens of inflation and debt service hit the bottom 50% the hardest.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is whining that inflation isn’t high enough yet for their refined tastes. Boo-hoo, how sad for the Fed–inflation isn’t yet high enough. Oh wait–didn’t they each mint millions by front-running their own policies? No wonder they’re not worried about inflation.

The reality few acknowledge is that globalization and financialization have stripped the American economy of low-skilled jobs that don’t demand much of the employee. The reality is that a great many people don’t have what it takes to learn high-level skills and work at a demanding pace under constant pressure–the description of the average job in America.

There were once millions of low-skill, low-pay jobs for people who for whatever mix of reasons were unable to muster the wherewithal to fulfill the fantasy of working extra hard, going to night school, soaking up high-level skills, moving quickly up the ladder to higher pay, buying the starter home and then moving up the food chain to middle class security from there.

The cost of living was low enough that those working these low-skill, low-pay jobs could still have an independent life. There were still low-cost rentals, often derided by the wealthy, in nooks and crannies of even the costliest cities. (I once lived in a room stuffed with old tax records in a poolside shack in an upscale neighborhood. The room had been cleared for a single bed and a path to the decrepit bathroom. Its most important attribute was that I could afford it on my low earnings.)

Affordable housing has vanished, eliminated by the financialization of America’s economy. Once landlords pay double the price for the property, rents have to double to pay their higher expenses. The apartment didn’t double in size or amenities–the rent doubled without any increase in utility to the renter. You get nothing more for double the price–nice.

Yes, people could make better choices, and some do. The point here is the game is rigged against those in the lower tier of the economy who can no longer afford a house or other stake in the only winning game in town–speculative asset bubbles. Go ahead and work a second job and go to night school–you’ll still be left behind the already-rich.

Globalization opened every job in America to global competition via offshoring or the influx of undocumented workers so desperate to support their families back home that no pay was too low and no working condition too wretched to refuse.

Many overindulged pundits who never worked an honest day in their lives sneer about burger flippers without realizing how hard those burger flippers have to work. I doubt the well-dressed pundits, snobbish about their university degrees and general brilliance, could manage to work a single day in a demanding fast-food job.

As the price of housing and other assets have soared, enriching the already rich, they’re out of reach for the bottom 50% who struggle to pay their bills as wages have stagnated and the costs of essentials have skyrocketed.

The rising cost of parking tickets, junk fees, user fees, utilities and food don’t impact the well-paid top 5% technocrat class, whose stake in the Everything Bubble keeps expanding by tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. But for the bottom 50%, those incremental increases are, when added to higher rents, absolutely crushing.

As for getting high-quality healthcare that includes mental health support–those are reserved for the rich. But no worries, self-medication is always a “choice.”

Getting a boost in pay from $12 an hour to $15 an hour is welcome, but that doesn’t put the worker any closer to affording a house or equivalent stake in the Everything Bubble.

The new feudalism is masked by the glossy SillyCon Valley PR of a gig economy where (per the PR fantasy) bright, shiny and totally independent workers freely choose to serve the winners in the rigged sweepstakes for low pay and zero benefits.

In the SillyCon Valley PR, serfs freely choose to serve their noble masters for nothing but survival because they love the “freedom” and “choice” of kissing the nobility’s plump derrieres. (After all, there were “choices” even back in the good old days of feudalism–one could join the brigands in the forest, or enlist in a poorly paid mercenary army where the odds of dying were high–you know, “choices” of “gigs.”)

One might anticipate that the bottom 50%’s meager share of the nation’s exploding wealth would have increased as smartly as the wealth of the billionaires, but alas, no–the bottom 50%’s share of stocks (equities) actually plummeted in the the glorious decades of Federal Reserve free money for financiers, stock buy-backs and asset bubbles.

All this suits the billionaires and those collecting the crumbs of the Everything Bubble just fine. So what if the bottom 50% have nowhere to go but down? There’s plenty of room in the homeless encampment for another broken down station wagon or an old camper. There’s lots of “choices.”

And no consequences for the winners, of course, because The Fed has our backs.

America Is Now a Kleptocrapocracy

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

I’ve coined a new portmanteau word to describe America’s descent: kleptocrapocracy, a union of kleptocracy (a nation ruled by kleptocrats) and crapocracy, a nation drowning in a moral sewer of rampant self-interest in which the focus is cloaking all the skims, scams, rackets and bezzles in some virtuous-sounding garb, a nation choking on low-quality junk ceaselessly hawked by robocalls, spam, phishing and Big Tech manipulation.

It’s little wonder trust has collapsed in America: the only thing we can trust is whatever’s being pitched is deceptively packaged to mask the self-interest and profiteering of the perps.

The stench from the decomposing carcasses of once-trusted institutions is everywhere. Insiders and the marketers they pay to cloak their grifting are banking bennies at the expense of hapless debt-serfs who fell for the scam. You need these three costly medications, and then when the side-effects kick in, you need six more to counteract the first three, and so on. But trust us; your “health” (heh) is our only concern. Uh, sure.

Why do state universities need to market themselves like a roto-rooter service? Maybe because they’re both working the sewers: state universities are exploiting the student loan sewers, desperate to recruit another batch of debt-serfs who fell for the 3-card monte game in which a lifetime of debt is exchanged for a credential of dubious value.

The competition for the remaining pool of debt-serfs is heating up, so like everything else in America, the game is now all about marketing, virtue-signaling, exploiting Big Tech manipulation, and so on.

Doing something useful is now for chumps. The opportunities in America are all about getting rich by doing, well, nothing: skimming 20% “guaranteed” returns in DeFi, mining cryptos, trading stablecoins, selling volatility, etc.–getting rich and then living large on the sweat of the chumps who are still working (poor deluded fools!).

The obvious goal here is for everyone to get in on trading stablecoins, buying rentals with DeFi, churning meme stocks, etc. Why should anyone lower themselves to doing something useful anymore? Why bother?

Labor has been degraded for decades in speculative-frenzy America. Why work when the Fed has our backs and all those newly issued trillions are up for grabs? Doing something useful is for chumps.

Nobody seems to ask what happens when we’re all minting fortunes off speculative churn and there’s nobody filling potholes, stocking shelves or carrying bags of QuikCrete to customers’ trucks.

And while we’re on the subject of sewage: if America’s security services and Big Tech oligarchies track everything and everyone, why are we drowning in robocalls, spam, SMS-spam (smishing), etc.? Couldn’t the NSA/CIA track the spammers and robo-callers down and rendition them (warrantlessly, of course) to a hellhole camp in an unnamed country?

Of course they could. But the ruination of everyday life is of no concern to the kleptocrats (fly with me to the stars!) or our dysfunctional government, which has become nothing more than an invitation-only auction of favors that elevates the relentless pursuit of self-interest and profiteering to new kleptocratic heights.

Please don’t make the mistake of expecting anything to work properly in America. The components are garbage, the parts are on back-order, the people who knew how to make the kludgy mess function just quit in disgust, and we’ll have to get back to you about your request, as our service staff just left to launch an OnlyFans site.

I don’t want to work, I’m minting money speculating, but gol-darn it, I want everyone else to wait on me and meet my needs for low, low quality goods and services at not-so-low prices, and if I’m not treated well enough by everyone earning chump-change, then I’ll freak out, and if that doesn’t pan out, I’ll blame it all on my meds. Accountability is like work–only for chumps.

Trust me, everything’s going great and we’re all going to get wealthier and wealthier until we won’t be able to take it any more, it will be so great. I hope everyone here is hungry because the banquet of consequences is being served.