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Financial Trend ForecasterThe following headings are from Financial Trend Forecaster. The subsequent comments are my own.
1) “Promise the poor ‘Bread and Circuses’.”
I.e., bribe the non-productive poor to reelect incumbent politicians by providing benefits, grants and entitlements to the great unwashed that are unearned. Convince the non-productive elements of society that they are “entitled” to receive “benefits” which they have not personally earned.
2) “Tax the ‘Rich’ to Pay for it.”
Not exactly. Taxing the “rich” is not necessary wrong. The wrong is in taxing, and thereby destroying, the productive. The “rich” may or may not be “productive”. We can get along without the rich-we can’t get along without the productive.
Who, primarily, are the productive people in our society? The middle class. They’re the mules that pull the plow.
There are exceptions but, generally speaking, the super-rich and the poor are parasites or predators who consume or acquire more than they produce. The poor prosper by voting for politicians who’ll give them something for nothing. The rich prosper by bribing legislators to pass laws to allow the rich to legally predate on the public. The rich, the poor and the government have this in common: They are all largely non-productive cannibals who feed off the productive middle class.
When taxes and government regulations rise high enough to destroy the productive middle class, the poor parasites and rich predators will have to learn to work to support themselves. They won’t like it. They’ll scream and protest. But if they can’t or won’t learn how to support themselves or at least learn to respect the middle class, they’ll perish. If they do, good riddance.
3) “When there aren’t enough rich, borrow money and inflate the currency to cover the shortfall.”
Again, I disagree. It’s not about the “rich”. It’s about the productive (primarily the middle class). As the government wipes out the productive middle class by: 1) sending industries and jobs overseas; 2) encouraging illegal aliens to enter this country and depress the wage scale; and 3) imposing ever-more regulations-the only way politicians can continue to be reelected is borrow money from foreign sources to support the poor parasites and the rich predators.
The National Debt’s size and rate of increase ultimately measure the destruction of the productive middle class.
What else can it be? The middle class is declining and no longer able to provide the tax revenues gov-co needs to pacify the poor and subsidize the rich. In the absence of a productive and taxable middle class, gov-co borrows money in order to support the poor parasites and rich predators.
The Obama administration has reportedly doubled the National Debt. That’s good evidence that the Obama administration has presided over massive destruction of the productive middle class.
But, without a viable, prosperous and taxable middle class, government has no prospect of ever being able to repay its debts except nominally with inflated/devalued dollars. When creditors realize that the middle class is gone and with it, their prospects of being repaid in full by the government debtor, creditors will stop lending to the government.
To some degree, private creditors have already realized that the US gov-co can no longer be relied on to repay its debts in full. That’s why the Federal Reserve has been purchasing government bonds over much of the past four years: almost no one else would buy our treasuries except at junk bond prices.
Under the guises of QE3, the Fed (which knows better than anyone that the gov-co will never pay even half of its current debts) has been buying gov-co bonds in order to sustain the illusion that those bonds aren’t junk and will surely be repaid in full. If US bonds had been sold only at whatever price private creditors were willing to pay over the past few years, it would be common knowledge that public confidence in gov-co’s ability to repay its debts was just about zero.
Unable to support itself with taxes paid by the productive middle class or loans advanced by fools, and unable to continue to rely on the Fed to sustain the illusion of US bond value, the gov-co will abandon the poor parasites, gov-co pensioners and then the rich predators. The economic decline will accelerate. The economy might collapse. In the extreme, the nation may even degenerate into violence of civil war.
If you think my warning about economic collapse and domestic violence rising to the level of civil war is nothing but hyperbolic fear-mongering, then answer me this: Why has our financially-stressed government ordered over two billion rounds of ammunition for use by domestic government agencies? Why have the police been militarized? Why is at least one government program reportedly placing 1,700 light tanks on American streets? Isn’t that evidence that government, itself, is also anticipating the possibility of a catastrophic economic collapse and subsequent political chaos?
Having betrayed and destroyed the middle class and then nearly exhausted its ability to borrow more money to placate the parasites and predators, our government is heading for a moment of insolvency. That moment will be followed by something much like the riots in Ferguson, Missouri-except those riots may be on a widespread or even national level.
4) “Add a bit of corruption and “skimming” as the money passes through the government’s hands.”
Government always predates on the productive elements of society.
Given government’s inherently predatory nature, why would anyone be surprised by government corruption? Perhaps government corruption becomes more obvious or even intolerable as the productive middle class disappears, but government corruption is always present.
5) “Restrict foreign exchange to the ‘official’ exchange rate to prevent “evil capitalists” from profiting from the Country’s misery.”
Pass laws like FATCA which seek to prevent US citizens who are productive or rich from moving their savings into foreign banks where they are less likely to be seized by the financially rapacious US government.
6) “Institute price controls to ‘protect’ the poor from the disastrous effects of government policies.”
We haven’t yet seen price controls in the US in relation to food, drugs or petroleum products. But we have seen “price controls” insofar as the government, Federal Reserve and/or Wall Street financial institutions have conspired to suppress the prices of gold and silver and artificially support and increase the stock market indexes. What we call gov-co manipulation of commodity and equity markets is “price controls”.
7) “Lie, fudge government statistics, punish journalists . . . do whatever is necessary to hide the truth about the actual state of the economy.”
Does anyone really believe the numbers provided by government for economic indicators like unemployment rate, housing starts, Consumer Price Index (a measure for inflation), National Debt, GDP, stock market prices, and money supply changes? Isn’t it common knowledge that government routinely lies,lies, lies about the economy?
8) “Default on government debt when it becomes obvious to even those stupid enough to lend you money in the first place, that there is no way you can pay them back.”
The US has been defaulting on government debt ever since we went completely off the gold standard in A.D. 1971. Since then, as compared to gold, the value (purchasing power) of the fiat dollar has fallen over 95%. That averages out to over 2% per year. If you put $1,000 in the bank or pension fund in A.D. 2000, by A.D. 2010, the value of your $1,000 principal was reduced to less than $800.
Because this loss took place over a decade, you may not have noticed-but you were robbed. By your own government. Acting in collusion with the Federal Reserve and major banking institutions.
The US government is the biggest debtor in the world and therefore wants inflation so as to repay its creditors with “cheaper” dollars. Your government has already been defaulting on its debts by an average of over 2% per year, every year for the past 43 years.
Debt default has been standard government policy for over 40 years. That policy can’t be revoked without collapsing the debt-based monetary system. You can expect the US government’s debt default policy to accelerate in the future by means of higher inflation rates and/or outright repudiation of existing debts due to bond holders, pension fund recipients, and So-So Security beneficiaries.
9) “Hope that they quickly forget their losses so you can borrow from them again in a few years.”
And there’s the punch line.
The gov-co hopes that, after the next depression, the people will forget that they were robbed and impoverished primarily by government. Once that robbery is forgotten, people will again lend their work, their lives and their wealth to government in return for promises to repay, someday, that will never be kept in full.
What fools these mortals be, hmm?
We’ve all heard that, “Those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it”-but who’s bothered to take that principle to heart?
Government will rob. We’ll be mad. That robbery will be punctuated with an economic depression and perhaps another World War.
Our economy will eventually be restored to some semblance of health. We will again trust government-and government will inevitably rob us again.
Most of us absolutely refuse to learn that government can’t be trusted because most of us are crooks in our hearts. We all want the free lunch that government always promises to provide. We don’t know and we don’t want to know who’s going to pay for our free lunch. Maybe it’ll be our kids. Maybe it’ll be our grand-kids.
But let’s not dwell on who will ultimately have to pay. Let’s just savor all the free lunches we can grab while we can, hmm?
In the end, economies don’t collapse simply because their national government is stupid, corrupt or treasonous.
Economies collapse because their people are stupid, ignorant, covetous, corrupt and/or cowardly.
I doubt that you can ever expect any nation’s government to be any better than that nation’s people. Instead, governments inevitably fall to the moral level of the dumbest common denominator. If the people become ignorant, immoral and/or corrupt, the government won’t teach them to live better lives but will instead exploit their economic ignorance and depravity.
We inevitably get the government we deserve.
That’s a bitter truth for most people-but I like it. Every three or four generations, one generation is forced to pay their debts or suffer the economic depression that comes from not paying. We’d be better off if every generation had to pay its own debts, but one out of four is better than nothing.
There’s no long-term solution to any nation’s economic problems other than to rebuild, respect and protect the productive middle class. That means high tariffs, low taxes, no illegal aliens, no Global Free Trade, reduced welfare for the poor, no subsidies for the rich, limited government and no New World Order.
If you can’t do all of that, get ready to live in a third world economy.