– Four key lessons from 2013 (Sovereign Man, Jan 2, 2014):
1) Politicians believe there are no consequences for destroying our liberty…
Stimulus and response. That’s the easiest way of summing this up. When politicians steal, and there are no consequences, they’re going to keep stealing.
Cyprus proved this point handily. The government froze bank accounts for everyone in the country (of course, the big bosses got their money out in time). And yet, there was no violent revolution in the streets. People just accepted it.
Poland nationalized pensions. Argentina imposed severe capital controls. The French are taxing everything under the sun. The US government was caught red-handed spying on… everyone.
And yet, there have been ZERO consequences. Citizens have been trained like caged animals to simply roll over and acquiesce. I imagine the politicians are thinking, “Holy Cow! I can’t believe we just got away with that…”
It only reinforces their behavior. With each destructive act, they become more bold, more brazen in dismantling our liberties, confident that they can continue to act with total impunity.
2) …Central bankers and economists believe there are no consequences to printing money…
The Fed expanded its balance sheet by $1.1 TRILLION in 2013, a whopping 38.5%. Nobody seems to mind. The stock market surged to all-time highs, the bond market remained stable, and everyone pronounced the ‘recovery’ was in.
I attended a dinner a few months ago where Ben Bernanke himself touted how much his quantitative had helped US economic conditions.
They really believe in what they are doing. They really believe that conjuring endless quantities of money out of thin air is the path to prosperity.
Not to mention, our modern society awards its most esteemed prizes for intellectual achievement to the likes of idiot savants like Paul Krugman who tell us that the Fed should be printing even MORE money. And people listen to him.
So we can only expect Ben “I can raise interest rates in 15 minutes” Bernanke, and his heir apparent Janet Yellen, to give us more of the same.
3) …Investors think there are no consequences to deficits, or debasement…
In 2013, headlines like “the US deficit is -only- $700 billion” were actually considered good news.
And markets have given all of these fiascos a pass– from the government shutdown to record-shattering debt levels to downgrades by the rating agencies. AA became the new AAA in 2013.
Nobody cares that the US government ‘borrowed’ a record amount of money from the Social Security Trust Fund. Or that they spent a record amount just to pay interest on the debt at a time when interest rates are at all-time lows.
Rather, they just keep investing… without a single thought to the possible risks. The fear of missing the big boom is greater than the fear of losing money. But then again, it’s not their money at risk. It’s yours.
4) …But Joe Six-Pack knows this is all crap.
In 2013, the collective net worth of the 300 richest people in the world grew to $3.7 trillion, 16.5% higher than 2012. Corporate profits were also at record levels.
Fortune 500s, the super-rich, rich, and even upper middle class have largely been beneficiaries of the central bank induced asset bubble.
But everyone else is getting hammered by inflation… watching their savings and livelihoods melt away before their very eyes.
A report from the US Census Bureau this year showed that median household income has declined for five straight years. And those living in poverty, using food stamps, or receiving unemployment benefits remained at record high levels in 2013.
Meanwhile, the wealth gap has grown to its largest since 1929– the year of that fateful financial collapse.
It’s time for a reality check: something is wrong with this picture.
We’ve become desensitized to everything. “Unprecedented” monetary policy. Record debts. Massive wealth gap. Government surveillance. Theft. Deceit. Inflation.
We’ve become so accustomed to getting screwed, it’s just par for the course now. We sit quietly and wait for the next round of beatings, shrugging it all off as the new normal.
This isn’t normal. This is not how a free society is supposed to function.
A free society does not spy on its own people, threaten them with drone assassination, and award an unelected banking elite with supreme authority to rob purchasing power from the masses in favor of a bubbly stock market.
And despite the conventional wisdom, this is not a consequence-free environment.
History is full of examples of entire nations that reached their breaking points… shouting from the rooftops “I’m mad as hell! And I’m not going to take it anymore!”
2013 already saw violent unrest in some of the most stable countries in the world like Singapore and Sweden, all underpinned by absolute disgust for the status quo.
Whether today or tomorrow, this year or next, there will be a reckoning. The system is far too broken to repair, it must be reset.
It’s simply absurd to look at the situation objectively and presume this status quo can continue indefinitely… that this time is different… that we’re somehow special and immune to universal principles.
This is not some prediction for doom and gloom. Far from it.
It’s actually a message of optimism. For the sooner these crackpot criminal politicians and their central banking ilk are stricken from power, the better off we’ll all be.
Unfortunately there’s going to be quite a bit of turmoil to get there.
Here’s to 2014. It’s going to be a hell of a year.
They have total control of the media. With that, they steal the people blind, but the story is buried under endless worthless information about a dozen wedge issues. Keeping the people divided and fighting with each other keeps them from going after the real criminals, the leaders.
US media makes PRAVDA look like a joke. It is highly polished and full of lies and obfuscation issues.
Napoleon once said Louis XVI would never have lost his throne had he control of the media. This proves it.
The propaganda media is no longer just the US, the rest of the world is embracing the same sort of “news that isn’t”, and filling their pages with political stories and junk. The UK Guardian was a beacon of truth until recently when they got rid of Glenn Greenwold………now, it is like reading a US site……..no truth is discussed. It isn’t as bad as the US sites yet, but give it a few months.
In this information age, it is hard to comprehend why it is so difficult to find any truth………but truth is buried with political lies, and the people sleep on.
However, that said, there are factors that awaken the most stupid and obtuse……..hunger, homelessness and poverty. All three are growing at rapid rates never seen before. Even during the Great Depression when unemployment was at 30% plus, the nation was growing, not contracting as it is now. There are no good jobs or opportunities. Globalization has gutted this economy.
I did a survey of food prices from Jan, 2010 and now. Chicken has gone up 4:1, Beef 3:1, Apples 3:1……it was difficult to find accurate numbers to do any form of intelligent comparison. I managed to find some old food ads from 2010, and was able to compare them with today’s prices.
Rents are through the roof, and there is nothing available to rent that isn’t very expensive, often taking the total of a person’s income to keep a roof over their head. The greedy guts are cleaning up. Food is becoming harder to find because it is so expensive, so there is a lot of hunger today. Hunger breeds revolution, so the greedy guts had better look out. They have militarized the police to quell uprisings, but with the outsourcing of police services to greedy corporations, not all of them are on the side of the oppressors.
I have never seen a nation fall so fast as the US.
Perhaps this is why they do nothing about Fukushima, a dead population cannot rise up. Using the estimates of scientists, and some of my own numbers, those of us on the west coast have two years or less before we are destroyed by radioactive poisoning.
I cannot find any reasoning in our leadership, just greed. Greed is like any addiction, it will destroy the addict in the end. I’d like to see their days of reckoning, but I won’t live long enough……the fact it will happen will have to suffice.