Re: Coronavirus
First, you lost me a bit when you said, “ You have a fascist state in the US ...”. I can’t join you in that opinion. Second, I read the two articles you offered up and, though I don’t pretend to be smart enough to have understood everything in them, they did give me pause. The JP Morgan article makes me think the Fed should have put in a rule that banks servicing PPP loans should have to match them dollar for dollar (or something like that ) with other non-PPP SME loans. It seems the guardrail should have been put in to prevent banks from simply chasing the easy margins and leaving small business owners out in the cold.
I’ll also say I am optimistic that the US economy will absolutely rebound though not necessarily in the next 6 to 12 months. Our economy has seen numerous significant negative events and has always managed to come back. There are always new investors, new companies formed, new revenues generated that will again drive the economy.
Well, it's not really an opinion, it's a fact.
Fascism is characterized by a couple of things. One, is an authoritarian police state. Think no further back than the scam that was September 11/01. The "Patriot" Act followed immediately afterwards so quickly that made one marvel at the speed. Well, that was because most of it was already laying in the wings and had been for years waiting to be deployed. Bought with a bill of goods it sold to the American people who bought it hook, line and sinker. Department of Homeland Security. Constant and ever increasing surveillance of Americans' activities...emails, phone calls, text messages. "Constitution? We don't need no stinkin' constitution."
The response to the Covid-19 issue is the same..."Constitution, we don't need no stinkin' constitution...we're in charge...not you." Stay home and off the streets and no you don't have a right to assemble (regardless of what the reasons are).
Snowden, Assange, Manning...same thing. Do what we say, not what we do. Blatantly despicable criminal activity with the sheeple uttering hardly a bleat.
The other main characteristic of a Fascist state is private ownership of the means of production but with state control. Think Facebook, Google, Apple, etc.. as obvious examples. In bed with government to spy on and censure their own customers...sometimes voluntarily, sometimes pressured into doing so by government.
As a matter of fact the US government arrogantly attempts to extend that thinking to cover the rest of the planet telling everyone else that they have jurisdiction over the rest of the planet..."and we don't care about your opinions to the contrary."
That's just the tip of the iceberg.
So, it's not an opinion.
I think what some of you guys are missing in your well meant optimism is that you unconsciously assume something that isn't so and that is that you will more or less be able to get by, never mind get ahead, with those pieces of paper that you carry around in your wallets that almost all people have been conditioned to think is money. It never was money. It was never intended to be money.
The US was a bankrupt country before Covid-19 provided the much needed nudge to the festering financial system. All this financial recklessness by governments around the planet, but primarily the US government, was given the green light on Aug.15/71 when Nixon closed the gold window. In effect, the US defaulted on its obligations...for a second time.
The pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on them immediately became "IOU Nothings" because they ceased to be backed by anything of tangible value. They represented nothing. They were, and still are, a receipt for nothing. (The system only functions on the fragile/flimsy faith that someone will accept them from you just as you accepted them from someone else). It's really a Ponzi scheme perpetrated by the government and the Federal Reserve.
As such, it freed politicians to begin unlimited reckless and irresponsible monetary practices because there was nothing that the currency was backed by or tied to that would act as a cap on such irresponsibility. (This is why governments and their politicians hate gold and silver because they represent accountability. They are real money...gold, somewhat more so than silver. They are the only money that is not simultaneously someone else's liability. Because there is no debt attached to them. If you own them, you own them, there is no explanation required. Currency is part of a debt/credit system. Gold and silver are not).
The US has been living beyond its means for decades by virtue of having the reserve currency of the planet. They got their currency to stick its nose into everyone else's business where it has no business being (just like the rest of its foreign policy) at Bretton Woods and furthered the scam with the Petro dollar scheme in the '70's.
As I was discussing with Choker a few years ago (he since seems to have found his way out of the corral and has wandered out into the pasture somewhere, not to be seen or heard from since) the US financial system (and the entire global system) is a house of cards built on quicksand that has been teetering for years. I mentioned at the time that more and more nations are wanting nothing to do with US dollars in their affairs.
Any idea why the US "had" to invade Iraq and then later, Libya? That's the reason. The US didn't want any foreign sheep to start jumping over the fence (which both countries were making loud public noises about doing) because you know what happens when one or two make it over the fence...the rest follow.
That movement is even further along now and is picking up steam.
With the unconscionable amount of currency that the US is "printing" to throw at this Covid-19 problem, (which is just a desperate attempt to prevent the house of cards from collapsing...and consequently, the country), more people and nations are waking up to the concept of the value of such plentiful pieces of paper. When enough people/nations divest themselves of US dollars, in conjunction with this unprecedented, massive creation of new currency units the whole house of cards will come crashing down. Economics 101, as they say...supply and demand.
What that really means is that the purchasing power of those currency units will start plummeting towards their intrinsic value...which is zero.
Rampant price inflation, and quite possibly a hyper inflation is in the cards for the US (as well as most other nations) but the US standard of living will fall the furthest because they have been living beyond their means for decades via this global arrangement where everyone else has been footing their bill and that charade is in the process of ending. Other nations are not in this position.
Bank runs are common in these situations. Bank of America has already started to limit withdrawals and has apparently been harassing customers to not tap out the maximum on their lines of credit. Is this a harbinger of things to come?
Ultimately, in the very long run, it's all positive, like having to amputate a limb filled with gangrene in order to save the patient. The poison gets cleaned out of the system, some people who deserve to get lynched maybe do, and the sun starts shining again...eventually. But it is not a stretch to say that that process could take years and maybe even decades.
And then the process will start all over again and centuries into the future the same irresponsible mistakes will get made again slowly but surely creating mountains of avoidable problems all over again.
This is the repeated and predictable history of money and human stupidity/greed/corruption.
So, it is the drastic reduction in the purchasing power of the currency units that you possess that you need to pay attention to and get out in front of...and, as such, there is no objective reason for optimism in the short or medium term or perhaps even longer, especially if you are an American.
It's not pretty, millions upon millions will be wiped out, an unimaginable amount of money will go to money heaven...but it is a mathematical certainty.
