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Guest Post: When Things Fall Apart
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
When Things Fall Apart
Financialization and centrally planned speculative credit bubbles have undermined the real economy: that's why things are falling apart.
There is no pleasure in "I told you so" when things fall apart. Many of us recognized the artifice and folly of the credit-housing bubble "Bull market" as early as 2004, but few cared to listen because they were deeply complicit in the Status Quo's legerdemaine: their home was rising in value, their pension fund was being fattened, their sales were rising on the onrushing tide of abundant, cheap credit, their tax revenues were soaring, and their benefits/perquisites were notching higher with every tick up of the stock and housing markets.
Faith in a centrally planned economy operating under the flimsy guise of cartel-State "capitalism" was supreme, as were greed, self-absorption and an overweening sense of entitlement to consumerist "prosperity."
Both corrupt political parties enthusiastically embraced the bubble-culture of fraud and speculative excess, for they too benefited from the illusory glow of "permanent economic growth" and the ever-richer contributions from the fiefdoms, cartels and Financial Elites who gained the most from the credit-based frenzy.
The "prosperity," "growth" and "wealth" were all illusory, but the pain is real. Hardworking, dedicated, smart, experienced people are being laid off into an economy with few prospects. Young people are graduating from university into the same bleak atmosphere of a paper-thin facade of magical thinking and propaganda finally crumbling.
Things are falling apart because the economy has been undermined by financialization and the extreme concentrations of capital and State power. I think these charts tell the story rather well:
Here we see the Federal Reserve-engineered credit-based speculative financialization bubbles and busts reflected in the stock market. All that cheap credit sloshing around created asset bubbles which sucked in capital and borrowed funds seeking extraordinary returns. Then when the bubble inevitably popped, the players were left with the debt, which remained real, while their illusory wealth vanished.
Here is the dynamic: cheap abundant credit fuels malinvestments and speculation, the acme of financialization. Real production can't match the enormous profits generated by financial leverage and legerdemaine, so real production atrophies as capital and talent migrate to financialization.
Financialization rewards concentrations of capital that can off-load speculative risks onto the Central State while keeping profits private. Thus financial capital comes to dominate the entire economy and mechanisms of governance.
Empoyees no longer share in the gains from rising productivity: those gains flow to capital/global corporations who influence or control the political machinery.
Corporate profits have skyrocketed as Cartel/Monopoly Capital captures an ever larger share of thenational income and buys political power with that cash flow that enables Capital to offload risk on the State and insure a steady supply of cheap/free credit from the central bank (the Fed) to fund its speculations.
This concentration of wealth leads to extremes of income inequality. The gini coefficient for the U.S. is .47; researchers have identified .4 as the triggering threshold for social unrest. (0 is perfect equality, 1 is total inequality.)
The substitution of money-printing/credit creation for actual wealth creation has led to an explosion of debt across private and public sectors. This debt will soon require crushing interest payments; once again, Capital that owns the debt will profit at the expense of real production.
The cost structure of the real economy has exploded higher as the tide of cheap abundant credit has created vast imbalances. As long as the Sovereign State can borrow trillions of dollars every year to paper over inefficiencies and fraud that could not otherwise endure, then costs can rise forever. Sickcare (operated by cartel-State partnerships) is a prime example:
With tax revenues climbing along with the speculative gains, government costs also lack any limiting factors. Now that the speculative cycle of ever-greater imbalances and financialization is reaching the endgame, tax revenues are plummeting even as costs ("we were promised," etc.) continue rising.
I have often addressed the theme of things falling apart:
The Unique Benefits of When Things Fall Apart (March 15, 2010)
Things Fall Apart: But Not Just Yet (July 26, 2010)
China's Towers and U.S. McMansions: When Things Fall Apart (Literally) (April 14, 2010)
It is a phrase drawn from THE SECOND COMING by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Though the poem was penned in 1919, just after the Great War destroyed all the illusions that trade and interdependent prosperity spelled the end of war, it speaks presciently to our era. The falconer circling ever farther away from the voice of its master could be interpreted as a spiritual metaphor for a culture lost in self-absorption, complicity, Empire, greed and resentful entitlement, or politically as a metaphor for a populace slipping away from the Founding Fathers' principles of liberty and limited government and their distrust of central banks' potential for financial destruction.
In a nation increasingly diverging into hackneyed, hardened ideological camps whose sole goal behind their soaring rhetoric is defense of their own preferred cartel-State fiefdoms, clearly the center (common ground, common sense) is not holding.
Things are falling apart because artifice, fraud and facsimiles have purchased complicity, and engineered concentrations of financial power that inevitably over-reach and implode.
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Does this mean there will not be a virtuous circle ala The Bernank?
The more this cycle carries on the more I find myself interested in what people like CHM, Dmitry Orlov and other Big Picture thinkers have to say.
Their distance from wall street is a plus.
They provide original thought and Everyone else just talks their book.
Whatever happened to the happy little trees? Oh yeah, we chopped them down, Easter Island style.
No just an invertuous circle jerk by the bernanke of his elite buddies.
Junked for shredding Bernanke...gotta' love it.
i have two words, total oxymoron, that explain it all:
Financial Innovation!
Once that genie was out of the bag, we were lost, in this paradigm anyways. Race from reality...FTW!
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/axis-trembles/
everything's planned. don't you get it?
It's funny how "planned" centrally managed economies never work out. I have read several articles now on how the financial sector grows and dwarfs all others in a planned inflationary economy. All of the economies of the world are primarily inflationary as it benefits net debtors. We are all net debtors because we support large welfare states, which includes not just your basic welfare recipient and anyone who can tap into the government teat. Government becomes a government of favors, i.e., subsidies, protection, fat contracts, favorable legislation, tariff protection, and so on. All of it is corrupt but the final accounting is that we actually don't want to pay the true cost of what we demand and the monster we create. That is called the deficit. The illusory financial system allows us to make it foggy and put off the true accounting. A friend of mine has a nice website: http://austrianenginomics.com/index.html where he differentiates the "real" economy versus the "financial" economy. It is essentially the same thrust as this article and I have come to believe it over the years as it seems to accurately predict events.
I personally believe that we will show why democracies do not last. Somehow the treasury has to be separated from the populist process. A Constitution would be a wonderful idea...but only if people actually follow it.
Oh, I don't know...I think things are working out EXACTLY as planned.
Thanks for the link. I will make some of the depression sugar cookies Carla shared
http://www.entendance.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=791&p=15962#p15962
Reality in your Face! Bitchez!
charts charts, every where. m e n love charts†
I'm sorry velo did you type something...I was distracted by your avatar
Can I have some of your DMT while I ride my Cervelo?
If you want to guage the state of Modern Amerika, watch American Idol. It shows you all you need to know.
We should bring back a PSA like the crying Indian except this time George Washington would be sobbing.
I like it. Or maybe the constitution being raped by a bunch of congress people while Uncle Sam cries, helpless? And then just when you think Obama is going to bust in and dispense justice, he unzips his fly and gets in line. Sam finally decides to bend over and take it for her. He screams out in agony as, oh never mind. Sorry to bother you.
Or visit your local Wal Mart about 11:00 on a Friday night.
Kinda like the Star Wars bar.
http://guerillatics.com
So a bunch of 14 year old girls slobbering over musicians is a guage of modern America? Give me a break. I don't know why American Idol gets bashed on this site so much. Take it at it's face value ... a music competition. Youtube Casey Abrams, they do find unbelievable talent.
How bout Jersey Shore. Can we bash that?
Watch the global phenomenon of bald monkeys singing for fame and fortune. You will see people willing to take risks to achieve a personal goal or what not. You can see people from every region on Earth at play and take pleasure from it, like when you watch a puppy play with a toy.
Simple pleasure is not the evil you are looking for.
Anybody hear Prince Whatshisface al Saud on CNBC? He says the Day of Rage is really a Day of Allegiance to the King of Saudi Arabia and people are just getting out on the street and mingling among themselves. Like a block party, I guess. He's talking so fast, he sounds absolutely terrified.
I thought my kids could lie when young, the Arabs, have the title hands down.
It's ALWAYS The Mother of ALL _ _ _ _ _ _
You fill in the blank.
It's like throwing rocks at M1A1's.
Tax corporations, require them to hire domestically, cut entitlements and get tough with everyone. We need a benevolent dictator....democracy does not work....it just feeds the ponzi.
A democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.
A republic, which is what the USA is supposed to be, is when you give the sheep a gun!
Stocks are going higher for 1 reason...they are making a ton of money. Until Joe Schmoe gets a cut or the government takes a bigger cut or the profits evaporate again when Joe Schmoe can't buy anything.....the brainless money managers will push it higher (all the while denying their inner voice that tells them this is not sustainable). NOT ONE literate person I have spoken to believes this 'recovery'. But its 4 o'clock in New York and do you know where your money is??
Once NGO's amassed more FRN's than the gov that prints them it was game over.
Corporate taxes ultimately come from their customers, meaning us! Check your premises.
We don't need no stinking POMO (or is it a stealth POMO day?). This market is to the Moon Alice. Break down of the 55 DMA my ass. Start of a new 132 day run up.
I think that they have to let the air out of this thing so that the country (cramerica) will insist on qe3. Problem was the quake scared them so they had to take it up today. The market will go lower to accomodate easing.
We know it's centrally planned. We know it's fraud. We know it's propaganda. We know it can't last.
Choir here. But thanks, I've been passing it along. Good luck getting it past the MSM and Ministry of Truth.
Exactly. What the fuck can you do. Just live your life and think Thurman Munson.. " Im just happy to be here " .
Evil triumphs when good does nothing.
That's the problem, People don't think they can do anything. It's really easy to simply remove yourself from the pyramid raping. That's all people have to do to end it, remove themselves from it.
We (friends) have come to the conclusion that the "if" answer to the end game is decided, we will experience a catastrophic currency failure. There is virtually no way to avoid this calamity.
So the questions have now moved into when, what form and how does one prepare.
Those that believe the "if" question has been answered need to quickly move into the when and what questions. For my money:
When - 12 - 24 months
What - currency collapse (take your pick), what your neighborhood/community will look like is anyone's guess, be ready for most eventualities.
What you do - food, PMs, guns, shelter, water, friends and your Bible. And other items I am sure.
sschu
If history is any guide, catabolic collapse is more likely: austerity-collapse-more austerity-further collapse-etc
You'll also need those sunglasses that allow you to see the lizard people - but be careful as they will not reveal their human collaborators. Trust no one.
Question for all.
How much percentage wise of your total net CASH worth, do you still have in FRN's?.
We talk about how we're BTFD all the time,is it bluster, or bravado, or the real deal.?
Not another one. Reggie mark 2. Look at the markets all these "Deep thoughts" are worth BA. BTFD nothing else works.
The S&P 500 could not even dip 5% from the highs...with all the crap going on,,,ben is still fingering the major indexes...I think sector rotation is well underway. Still need to watch the 50 EMA IMHO
He's Got the WHOOOLE World... In his hands, he's got the whole wide world... IN HIS HANDS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guyrERfsCB8
He's got you and me, brother, in His hands!
Motherfuckers, repent because the End is nigh!!!!
lmao
The US has destroyed so many lives and so many countries with its evil elites and their thievery (oops, imperialism i mean) that it is about time the dragons came home to roost! I know most of you don't know the dirty details of what Im talking about but .... oops, you gonna pay for it too, bitches!
The ones i most look forward too seeing eat some serious shit are the cocksuckers who always try to cover up for their evil masters with: why do you hate Amerika? rofl
bitches, God hates Amerika for this country is an abomination to humanity!
die, bitches...DIE
lmao
When this dragon goes down its thrashing will trash whatever shithole backwater your wasting oxygen in..
Certainly obvious you do not even know who HE is.
baby_BLYTHE, please go back to the other place ;-)
Hes got a terminal hooked up to his Yacht.
Think Zimbabwe ...
DOW 360,000,000,000
USD - 0.00000000000001
Gold - infinity
Oh Well! More Charts! More Cheap Talk! No Action! We ALL Know Already About
Everything! When Are We Going To See Or Hear Someone(Many), Do Something
About It!
In the meantime "market" rallies, I have found no reason to, as I did not many times
it rallied, today maybe because it's Friday:)))!
So until we will fall apart please let us all at ZH KNOW about more short term things
intermediate things, things we can eventually use, we have gold and silver and
guns and ammo and food and more ammo, etc!
No word about the "rage":))) or any other more "market" related stuff! Give (U)s
something we don't know yet! :))) Happy Friday!
You have it in your power to do something about it trader.
Will you or must you be given a halter and pulled around like a donkey?
Actions start with 1. Can you be it? Do you have any thoughts outside the market? Are you willing to leave this market as an affront to your morality?
No, then the mirror is right over there.
Are you willing to speak to others off this board of the scams and need to bust this game up?
Postings of this sort need to be made lest you and/or others convince others that it is only bankers or unions or terrorists that have caused the problems.
YU are the problem.
Shhh. You might wake someone. Inside voices, please.
If we're lucky, a Thomas Paine type figure will come along soon enough and focus the masses on the rot that must be purged. For now it's wise to do as you are. In addition to what you list, I'd add a garden and reaching out to your neighbors. Rebuilding local business and community is a necessary defense.
...and if we're unlucky an Adolf Hitler-type figure will come along. I agree w/ everything else you said.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Some bad people with passionate intensity will surely come on the scene. That won't help.
I'm hoping for the best, while trying to prepare for the worst, all the same. I'm sad to see what's happening:
Well, at least a few robins flitted in and out of my apple trees this morning. That gave me a boost. I plan on trying my hand at beekeeping this summer. That'll bring me a bit of solace.
Finally convinced my parents to start a garden with the heirloom seeds I supplied. Believe it or not I did actually try to convince the condo association to allocate the (unused) top level of the parking garage for a community garden, but they looked at me like I was batshit insane. I figure give them a year...
Junked for what, coward?
Is there an echo in here? I said junked for what you fucking coward?
You know everything yourself already. If SHTF you won't have energy 24/7, you won'thave access to really safe water source, you'll spend a lot of time to get food (the one you like), you'll have problems with all kinds of supplies (toilette paper, tooth paste,soap, everything), gas will be available only at certain times and at selected points. Your gold and silver will be usefull but in later stages. Cigarettes and alcohol are the best money. You want more info from guy who went through it? But don't worry you'll survive it and adjust to it. If you have guns, live in the country and know your area for sure it will be much easier for you than for guys from big cities. THE REST TAKES TIME!!!
The final piece in this fraud of a market will be making sure no individual can profit from a market collapse. All triple and double inverse etf's will be closed and margin requirements will be raised on everything.
It's already happening.
Too true for most.
not on zh, but face it we are not most yet.
Now brace for the incoming rethug and demon plants to rush in with the junks.
It kills them to have to see any truth or deviation from their farcical media constructs.
May they ride their politics into the gutter where they belong.
Take your left/right bullshit and shove it up your ass!
Partagas Serie D No.4....tumbler of Knob Creek Whiskey...It's Friday biotchez...go party before the next e-quake or i-tsunami hits.
Drinking is fun!
Jersey Shore had an episode titled "The Great Depression".
http://www.tvfanatic.com/2011/02/jersey-shore-review-the-great-depression/
What> hell < it is there in New Jersey!
good thing they got a Governor taking out the mess!
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2010/10/nj_gov_chris_christie_says_his....
(^^^ Although he thinks guns and medical-marijuana should be illegal for us slaves ^^^)
Market is green anyways... YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS SH*T UP!
Disclosure: I didn't junk you. I'm operating under the impression that you are actually a real person, but damn, you come across as a multiple-IP type. Your backstories are paper-thin and you rarely back them up. No offense if you are real, I got an early start on Friday w/ the liquid lunch...
Sure enough, you are correct.
I use about 6 different IP addresses.
At my home IP, two accounts. My older brother and myself. He was the one that got my hooked on ZH- had been a fan from the early days.
Cool, are you still looking to sell the gold you obtained from your summer job? I'm down to buy.
you should try more outlets one can never tell...find a spare bf..like a spare wheel on your car...
"Market is green anyways... YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS SH*T UP!"
Probably the reason I drink too much.
I stay away from NJ..too crowded, the beaches are cemented in place and it gets too cold.
have a good one!
news from michigan and the new gov.
http://nakedempire.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/msnbcs-maddow-michigan-gov-snyder-a-pawn-in-corporate-conspiracy-to-overturn-democracy/
Imbalances correct violently when it is not allowed to correct peacefully-- it is inevitable. We can either choose to embrace it and welcome it or be lost, broke, enslaved, and sold.
We are ever ill-prepared for what the future brings us as a society and it is because of these imbalances that prevent us from doing what's needed.
When Things Fall Apart.
Banksters avoid jail like Obama avoids change and Benny prints $100s of Billions/month while congress sweats cutting a few $10s of Billions/year. Markets are up today, again.
Yep, no question things are indeed falling apart. Only one question...for whom?
sunny
Replace the bracketed words with The Federal Reserve and I think it describes the present situation perfectly.
Fear and Loathing of Central Banks in America
Picture it
It all boils down just to three key developments:
that lead to debt accumulation by the rest of society.
That green-line Cali LAO revenue projection is pure, unadulterated bullshit.
Whoop there it is......well said!
Stephen King, The Stand, Chapters 17, 22, and 26
I love Steven King!
Samuel Clemens, however, is my favorite American author.
I plan on checking out this book (haven't read it).
Thank you for the suggestion!
Good to see you today.
It's a long book, but it is very powerful in my opinion. His best book, in my opinion.
One of the biggest themes in the book is good people (few of whom even are Christians) fighting bad people who serve The Devil's plan to take over the world after the collapse. I think you will like that aspect for sure, since you are Christian.
One of my favorites, and I never really cared for King...He just seemed to nail the line between good and evil and the motivations for how we choose between them...
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3183
One of the best by Samuel Clemens. Very short, too.
The other day while at the supermarket, I noticed a bumper sticker that said "the economy is recovering, are you?" and on another occasion at a gas station, one that read "jail the bankstas". In each case, I was fortunate enough to talk to the people and left feeling refreshed that we are starting to wake up. I was also surprised that both of these people had talked to dozens of others during the last few months as well as getting friendly aknowledgements from passing cars while driving. Yes, it is a simple, small step, but change comes slowly until a critical mass is reached and then lookout! I bet ZH could do quite well selling bumper stickers with some classic catch phrases courtesy of razor tongued ZHers.
put the bastards behind bars!
Don't worry! MarketWatch sez the quake is driving the market up in anticipation of the immense need for rebuilding! It is a (another) buying opportunity! The Bernank may not need QEIII if we can keep the disasters rolling. Is this conventional thinking today? Armaggedon may save the market!
There are plenty of good erudite market and socio-economic forecasters out there , and so much other important things to read (survival skills!) that i will not make time for someone whose first chart is that of the long term Dow in non-logarithmic format. This guy was published here just yesterday. What gives Tyler? ZH is the best financial blog bar none , it should be setting a high standard. This guy isnt saying anything new either, and ive seen it far better explained elsewhere.
This is a waste of bandwidth.
If you are talking about Ron Paul
you can get a far better explaination of his economic ideology by reading thousands of free articles and books at the Mises Institute
Tyler has it linked up on here already
ZH has a lot of content. More than most individuals can take in per day. No one is expected to look into or like all the content. You waste bandwidth posting this complaint here. Even if you couldn't find any other content at the moment on ZH that interests you, the rest of the internet is thattaway -->
Plenty of survial skills sites and advice out there. If you find any good ones, link 'em, I say.
>> Capital that owns the debt will profit at the expense of real production.
Gonna be a bitch to do that while you have bust outs and defaults left and right.
When Thomas Paine lived the country was united against an outside threat. The king of England. Now, the threat is from within. All we get now with a "Thomas Paine" is more polarization. People do their best co-operating when they have a common enemy. That is unfortunate for us right now. I expect we will find a common enemy soon tho.
I kinda wish aliens would show up.....
gh
"People do their best co-operating when they have a common enemy. That is unfortunate for us right now."
There is no "us". There is no "we".
That's part of the whole problem here.
Population wise, the two main groups in this country are those who work, and those who demand free shit and use the government to get it.
There are few if any common causes between them.
I count myself in the first group. When the second group starts talking about how "we" have to do this or that, what they're really saying is that "we" (I) have to do something, because "we" (they) want or need it.
Of course, they're not happy when I tell them that "they" can go fuck themselves.
Some of these people talk about how we need "cooperation" to fix our problems, when some of those problems are the fact that they're greedy bastards who simply want to steal from their neighbors. "Cooperation" in that context is a euphamism. At least someone who breaks into my home and robs me just takes what he wants and spares me the "cooperation" pep talk.
you have created the divide yourself. You consider one category beneath yourself. You have decreed they "do not work". "They want it all free". That is an erroneous assumption per se. I'm sure they do not feel that way. But they may be syndicated, or civil servants, therefore by definition according to you "on a free ride". Your prejudice creates the divide in your mind. That is where the real divide lies. Inside you.
Well stated
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