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The Handling of the Economic Crisis May Lead to Civil Unrest
CNN's Jack Cafferty notes that a number of voices are saying that - if our economy continues to deteriorate (which it very well might) - we are likely headed for violence, and civil unrest is a growing certainty.
Watch the must-see CNN viewer comments on this issue:
Newsweek wrote two weeks ago:
Reality
is beginning to break through. Gas and grocery prices are on the rise,
home values are down, and vast majorities think the country is on the
wrong track. The result is sadness and frustration, but also an
inchoate rage more profound than the sign-waving political fury
documented during the elections last fall.
***
In
search of the earthly toll of this outrage, NEWSWEEK conducted a poll
of 600 people, finding vastly more unquiet minds than not. Three out of
four people believe the economy is stagnant or getting worse. One in
three is uneasy about getting married, starting a family, or being able
to buy a home. Most say their relationships have been damaged by
economic woes or, perhaps more accurately, the dread and nervousness
that accompany them.Could these emotions escalate into revolt?
Why Are People So Angry?
Why are people so angry?
Well, as the Newsweek article points out:
Corporate
earnings have soared to an all-time high. Wall Street is gaudy and
confident again. But the heyday hasn’t come for millions of Americans.
Unemployment hovers near 9 percent, and the only jobs that truly
abound, according to Labor Department data, come with name tags,
hairnets, and funny hats (rather than high wages, great benefits, and
long-term security). The American Dream is about having the means to
build a better life for the next generation. But as President Obama
acknowledged at a town-hall meeting in May, “a lot of folks aren’t
feeling that [possibility] anymore.”
By way of background,
America - like most nations around the world - decided to bail out their
big banks instead of taking the necessary steps to stabilize their
economies (see this, this and this).
As such, they all transferred massive debts (from fraudulent and
stupid gambling activities) from the balance sheets of the banks to the
balance sheets of the country.
The nations have then run their
printing presses nonstop in an effort to inflate their way out of their
debt crises, even though that effort is doomed to failure from the get-go.
Quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve is obviously causing food prices to skyrocket worldwide (and see this, this and this).
But the fact is that every country in the world that can print money - i.e. which is not locked into a multi-country currency agreement like the Euro - has been printing massive quantities of money. See these charts.
Moreover,
the austerity measures which governments worldwide are imposing to try
to plug their gaping deficits (created by throwing trillions at their
banks) are causing people world-wide to push back.
As I warned in February 2009 and again in December of that year:
Numerous
high-level officials and experts warn that the economic crisis could
lead to unrest world-wide - even in developed countries:
- Today, Moody's warned
that future tax rises and spending cuts could trigger social unrest
in a range of countries from the developing to the developed world,
that in the coming years, evidence of social unrest and public tension
may become just as important signs of whether a country will be
able to adapt as traditional economic metrics, that a fiscal crisis
remains a possibility for a leading economy, and that 2010 would be a
“tumultuous year for sovereign debt issuers”.
- The U.S. Army War College warned in 2008 November warned in a monograph
[click on Policypointers’ pdf link to see the report] titled “Known
Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy
Development” of crash-induced unrest:
The
military must be prepared, the document warned, for a “violent,
strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked
by “unforeseen economic collapse,”
“purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health
emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The
“widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the
defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend
basic domestic order and human security.” “An American government and
defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic
order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security
commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at
home,” it went on. “Under the most extreme circumstances, this might
include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United
States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity,
an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in
a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance,” the
document read.
- Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said:
"The global economic crisis ... already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries ... Economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they are prolonged for a one- or two-year period," said Blair. "And instability
can loosen the fragile hold that many developing countries have on law
and order, which can spill out in dangerous ways into the
international community."***"Statistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one-to-two-year period."***
“The
crisis has been ongoing for over a year, and economists are divided
over whether and when we could hit bottom. Some even fear that the
recession could further deepen and reach the level of the Great
Depression. Of course, all of us recall the dramatic political
consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in
Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.”Blair
made it clear that - while unrest was currently only happening in
Europe - he was worried this could happen within the United States.[See also this].
- Former national security director Zbigniew Brzezinski warned
"there’s going to be growing conflict between the classes and if
people are unemployed and really hurting, hell, there could be even
riots."
- The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned
the the financial crisis is the highest national security concern for
the U.S., and warned that the fallout from the crisis could lead to of
"greater instability".Others warning of crash-induced unrest include:
- The head of the World Trade Organization
- The head of the International Monetary Fund (and see this)
- The head of the World Bank
- Senator Christopher Dodd
- Congressman Ron Paul (radio interview on March 6, 2009)
- Britian's MI5 security agency
- Leading economic historian Niall Ferguson
- Leading economist Marc Faber and billionaire investor Jim Rogers
- Leading economist Nouriel Roubini
- Leading economist John Williams
- Top trend researcher Gerald Calente
- European think tank Leap2020
Unemployment is soaring globally - especially among youth.
And the sense of outrage at the injustice of the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer is also a growing global trend.
Countries
worldwide told their people that bailout out the giant banks was
necessary to save the economy. But they haven't delivered, and the
"Main Streets" of the world have suffered.
As former American senator (and consummate insider) Chris Dodd said in 2008:
If
it turns out that [the banks] are hoarding, you’ll have a
revolution on your hands. People will be so livid and furious that
their tax money is going to line their pockets instead of doing the
right thing. There will be hell to pay.
Of course, the big banks are hoarding, and refusing to lend to Main Street. In fact, they admitted back in 2008 that they would. And the same is playing out globally.
As I noted in February:
Agence France-Press reports today:
The
International Monetary Fund stands ready to help riot-torn Egypt
rebuild its economy, the IMF chief said Tuesday as he warned governments
to tackle unemployment and income inequality or risk war.No wonder former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski ... warned the Council on Foreign Relations that:
For
the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically
activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. There are
only a few pockets of humanity left in the remotest corners of the
world that are not politically alert and engaged with the political
turmoil and stirrings that are so widespread today around the world.***
America
needs to face squarely a centrally important new global reality: that
the world's population is experiencing a political awakening
unprecedented in scope and intensity, with the result that the politics of populism are transforming the politics of power.
The need to respond to that massive phenomenon poses to the uniquely
sovereign America an historic dilemma: What should be the central
definition of America's global role?[T]he
central challenge of our time is posed not by global terrorism, but
rather by the intensifying turbulence caused by the phenomenon of global
political awakening. That awakening is socially massive and politically radicalizing.It is no overstatement to assert that now in the 21st century the
population of much of the developing world is politically stirring and
in many places seething with unrest. It is a population acutely
conscious of social injustice to an unprecedented degree, and often
resentful of its perceived lack of political dignity. The
nearly universal access to radio, television and increasingly the
Internet is creating a community of shared perceptions and envy that can
be galvanized and channeled by demagogic political or religious
passions. These energies transcend
sovereign borders and pose a challenge both to existing states as well
as to the existing global hierarchy, on top of which America still
perches.***
That turmoil
is the product of the political awakening, the fact that today vast
masses of the world are not politically neutered, as they have been
throughout history. They have political consciousness.***
Politically
awakened mankind craves political dignity, which democracy can
enhance, but political dignity also encompasses ethnic or national
self-determination, religious self-definition, and human and social
rights, all in a world now acutely aware of economic, racial and ethnic
inequities. The quest for political dignity, especially through
national self-determination and social transformation, is part of the
pulse of self-assertion by the world's underprivileged***
We
live in an age in which mankind writ large is becoming politically
conscious and politically activated to an unprecedented degree, and it is this condition which is producing a great deal of international turmoil.That
turmoil is the product of the political awakening, the fact that today
vast masses of the world are not politically neutered, as they have
been throughout history. They have political consciousness.Watch an excerpt:
Postscript: Violence Is Not the Answer
As
I've repeatedly noted, I am against violence for a number of reasons,
the most important being that people advocating violence have probably
not thought through George Orwell's analysis that:
Ages
in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will
tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap
and simple, the common people have a chance.
While
I agree on the urgency of fundamentally changing things so that our
nation (and world) aren't driven over a cliff, I believe that - instead
of violence - other methods must be found.
Take
that energy of being willing to die to protect your and your family's
freedoms, and put it into demanding change in an effective manner.
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So you end monetizing and start the tightening cycle.
Residential housing will lose 10% at least. = unrest
So you continue monetizing and let rates stand as is.
Inflation ultimately = unrest.
You stop monetizing but let rates stand.
fin'l asset deflation and commodity inflation = unrest.
Or...
You can monetize whenever inflation pressures recede enough (commodities crash) to keep something of a bid under risk and then let off the gas when inflation threatens the recovery.
Here's a start:
Shut down the IRS.
Print enough fiat dollars to pay off all obligations to Social Security participants.
Default on the Treasury bond obligations (i.e. slavery futures).
Halt any enforcement of patent laws.
Auction off federal property to keep the government running.
Reduce FDIC insurance covering fractional bailment fraud to $0. Shut down the FDIC.
Bring all troops home.
Shut down the Fed.
Shut down 99% of the federal government. Leave only a tiny remnant left for sustaining a military alliance between the governors of the States.
Allow free circulation and minting of currencies - including US dollars or precious metals or scrip or whatever the markets choose.
But 2 is where Gutterdammerung lies. There really is no way to navigate Federal debt without unrest. It will be hard to hyperinflate it away. It is too big, and would resemble Hungary 1946-47, but our financial infrastructure makes this improbable/impossible. Default would be a worse nightmare, and would destroy the world economy in such a way as to make 2008 look mild by comparison in every respect.
You can't do 1. SSI is indexed to inflation. Seems the most likely path is to cut obligations and commitments in operating budgets and off-balance sheet overextension, and leave creditors less burned.
Beyond that, not bad IMHO. Throw in a blend of monetizing to hold it together during the inevitable meltdowns.
I hold conflicting viewpoints on this. On one hand, during the Great Depression people really pulled together as they realized they were all in it together. Unfortunately, society is a good deal less civil than it used to be. We celebrate "in your face" moments, when in years past, such things never occurred. Additionally, we have created an entire culture of entitlement that permeates society at a level that has never occurred before, which leads me to suspect that we will see really wild times if food becomes an issue.
Also, during the Great Depression, farming was prevalent, and city folk could fall back on their rural cousins for a time to avoid starving. No longer.
However, during the crisis of 2008 (before the crises of 2009, 2010, 2011, etc.), one of the threats used by those TBTF was that they would "crash the system" (presumably by pulling credit for shipping food and consumer goods) which would have led to rioting and general chaos. It makes me wonder if these stories are being whipped up by the media now in anticipation of TBTF institutions looking for another handout.
Keep threatening anarchy. Nothing scares sheep more.
I live in the country, have a large garden and fruittrees. My alcoholic neighbor has cows, he's too stupid and I have 10 cases of whiskey in storage so meat isn't a problem. Plus I have access to the sisinlaws land and im in good with the old guy that owns 300 acres. Free firewood.
Just one problem.......No one says all the fuks in town have to stay in town.
Meat won't be a problem... I like my bankster medium well with garlic butter.
I don't exactly think violence is that great, but then again it takes drastic measures to get drastic results. Therefore im in the camp burn this motherfucker down.
Violence will just give tptb the excuse to take away even more rights and stamp down harder. only non-violence revolution will succeed...
I wish I could agree with you, I abhor violence. But unless you can get a sit-in on April 15 where everyone agrees not to pay, it wont work. We've tried the ballot box, it doesn't work. Middle of the night December 24th 1913 the Federal Reserve was enacted - we haven't been represented for a long long time. The Vampire Squid has controlled our gov't for almost 100 years, maybe more.
The easy answers have all been tried and none have produced what we need. We're left now with only trying the hard answers.
Finally, we have to be realists. The current situation is untenable. We can't keep voting for A or B and then they keep voting for increased taxes, continuation or expansion of the unPatriot Act, reduced liberties and increased government size/control.
Wars: Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya and Yemen????? This is one insane monster.
Violence will just give tptb the excuse to take away even more rights and stamp down harder. only non-violence revolution will succeed...
They're taking away our rights anyway. 'Non-violent protest' is cordoned off in pens far away from the targets of their protestss - and kept out of the media. You had hundreds of thousands marching in DC against the War in Iraq with NO coverage in the MSM.
Just imagine what would happen to a modern day version of the Bonus Marchers today..... maybe the right wingers are right to be worried about all those detention camps built for?????? You've already got the laws forbidding the deployment of US troops against citizens repealed and the Pentagon testing all kinds of new 'non-leathal' weaponry against mock protestors.
And 'non-violent' protest is often infiltrated by agent provocateurs (shades of the 60's) so those protests can be portrayed as the work of 'extremists' - see G8 and WTO protests...... You think the self-immolation of a Korean Farmer might get some coverage (like the Vietnamese Buddist Monks) - but no.......
The Republic is dead and the Empire is collapsing... and Empires do whatever they can do to hold onto power..... (it's moot which party is in power - they're both bought and paid for... at least in Parlimentary Systems with more than 2 parties you have a chace for the peoples' voice to be heard)
i think you may be right, judging from the sixties. but maybe a little this and a little that. if tptb always know there is no violence they are more intransigent. there was certainly violence from the poor in the thirties. what we need most is better politicians. that may be an oxymoron.
rsnoble said: "Therefore im in the camp burn this motherfucker down."
And while where in camp, let's throw a few bankers on the fire to warm our hearts. I bet Turbo Timmy would burn like a mother fucker!
However if some of you so-called smart types around
here have a workable plan im all ears.
Just one problem---if it involves helping the average
joe you can throw it in the fucking trashcan because
the likes of goldman sux dick will never allow it.
They need those 10,000lb assorted fruitbowls in every
room, gold plated toilets and while we're at it you
will to pay your taxes.
Forget appealing your property tax they'll just raise
it on everyone else till it backfires. That's one group
of jackasses that just refuse to join the depression.
And if you think this post was bad, wait till I finish
the next 12 pack. lmfao. Fortunately for you ill be
busy watching the last season of Trueblood which i just
got on dvd. If you haven't watched that show you need
to. If nothing else for the hot bitches. Oh Sookie!
Here's a plan:
Get to know your neighbors well, buy local, hoard stuff. No heroics till after the hyperinflation and the bloody crackdown. That shitstorm will awaken more of the sheeple and peel off some of the cops and bureaucratic drones, because it will be clear that their pensions are already gone. Also, wait until a large number of protestors are slaughtered or a large number of people end up in FEMA camps. Need to get more cops and military on our side, so I suspect that he who fires the first shot will lose the revolution. Let them fire the first shot.
Need to get them to waste time or turn on each other where possible. Leave empty bags around. If you know someone who works for the Beast, plant some reefer on his property where it will eventually be kinda visible from a road. This will encourage narcs and civil forfeiture. Crank-call a rent-a-cop at an elite university and tell him he must have really enjoyed busting up your frat party last week because his dick is so small. Tell him you know this because his sister is a Craigslist call girl and she compared your huge dinosaur dick to his little pecker. Tell him he will have to work all year busting parties to match the booze money you took out of Daddy's trust fund for just that one party.
Go to a donut shop with a friend and talk about this silver bug who was talking about a monster box at the bottom of one of the outhouse pits in the national park but you don't know which outhouse. Know your local pigmen and dream up devious ways to exploit their paranoia and greed. Conversely, try not to fall for it when the elites use this tactic on us. They would very much love for this to turn into a race war or a mutual narc-fest.
Tie the bureaucracy in knots by swamping it, turning it against itself, or forcing it into absurd positions. If you work for them, even indirectly, quit your job but keep showing up for "work". Insist on doing things by the book. Have lots of irrelevant meetings with lots of buzzwords and academic nonsense. If anyone questions you about this, tell them they lack cooperative spirit/patriotism/respect for diversity/watever. If you get snickers and scowls from trustworthy people, take them aside later, tell them what your are doing and keep them as contacts for when the shit really hits the fan. Go on the dole and max out your CCs and encourage your family to do likewise- but plow the money into PMs and supplies instead of mortgages and consumer crap.
Stay mobile and stay away from cities. Get a pickup truck with supplies, and keep up with your rural contacts and survival skills. You and a few buddies could last quite a while on BLM land if you need to.
Get some silver and BitCoins while you still can. BitCoins have the kleptocracy protection of PMs, and they are highly divisible and a lot easier to stuff through an ethernet cable. The number of coins is mathematically capped at 21 million. Figure in population increase and loss of coins due to shattered hard drives, etc. and this will be a deflationary currency. Good for saving, certainly much better than bonds. I wouldn't be shocked to see a $21 trillion Bitcoin market emerge if the kleptocracy gets really bad. That means an exchange rate of $1m per Bitcoin (currently $9 per BitCoin). So even though BitCoin is up 3000x since the first recorded PayPal trades in April 2010, it could easily run up by another multiple of 3000.
https://www.bitcoinmarket.com/market/tools/
There were many blocks of 10,000 that traded back in the good 'ol days. I have only a small fraction of that because I bought in last month, but there are probably hordes of crypto-anarchist geeks out there who will ultimately be worth billions of clownbux. The ones closest to the nerve center will be the richest and they will also hate the system the most.
Now, imagine what will happen after the inevitable hyperinflation, food riots and brutal crackdown. The government will have lost all legitimacy in the eyes of the people, and everyone will be looking around to see who throws the first Molotov. Enter BitCoin. It's just a matter of time until someone posts a YouTube video of a flaming cop car while holding a poster of their BitCoin address. Only shutting down the internet will stop the distributed anarchist horde from donating. Word will spread. Crimminals will target the powerful instead of the middle class. Eventually the going rate might be .01 BTC per flaming cop car, .1 BTC per flaming cop, 1 BTC per flaming federal building, 100 BTC for a Rothschild dosed with scopolamine and mindfucked into spilling all his dark secrets before he is eaten alive by maggots. Even this would only be a drop in the horde's ocean of buying power. I think we are going to have a lot of cypherpunks living in Dubai penthouses surrounded by hookers but wanking to the increasingly creative homebrew snuff porn they finance. Their combined mayhem fund might even exceed the Rothschilds' mayhem fund. Even without this level of funding, you can still use your BitCoins to buy liquid LSD from Silk Road, and have it shipped anywhere in the US. Go visit banks and county courthouses with a little bottle of breath spray, blessing keyboards and bathroom surfaces wherever Eris tells you to.
Project Mayhem is coming. This is the will of Eris, who always knows the one action which will turn any situation into a total clusterfuck. She is one of our most important allies, and with her help, the whole world will be in flames within two years.
I wish I could still get drunk on beer. The last year I have been drinking gin like water. I don't see any other option to violence, the sociopaths pulling the puppetstrings and robbing generations of wealth won't just go away.
Guillotines Bitchez!
Agreed - there IS a time and place for violence and its the only way to be rid of these blood-sucking vampires for, if only, a generation or 2.We have tried the ballot box and it hasn't worked - the DC dorks don't get it - we're taxed beyond capacity, inflation has taken chipped away at the slimmest dime left for paying for necessities, and still they want more - if they take one more ounce of blood I'll pass out.
Jefferson was a genius - he wrote "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants"
War is never pretty or pleasant but ............. I've said too much, and unlike you, gin or beer will get me in trouble........besides, the 2am knock at the door is coming soon enough.
kind of interesting how the MSM is now talking about civil unrest now........hmmmm
GW
the key to understand is that politicians do not solve a crisis... what they do is patch up a previous problem by throwing money at it (ie. good money after bad). That is the only solution these morons know and it is not from any angle a solution, it's a bailout of crap business to live and fail a little further down the road
what i'm trying to say is in effect politicians 'solve' nothing because the problem has already occured... they forsee nothing: just look at clueless midget Bernank, he has not forseen a single crisis coming once in his miserable crony life... he has only ever thrown money at problems like bankrupt bwankers and bankrupt politicians once they smack him in his big fat usless chops
The Fed and Washington aren't problem solvers, they're ambulance chasers ...and in the main of crashes of their own retarded making (see the fuking shambles of US housing)
GW is obviously a Hussen Mugabe Obam a*s boy. He constantly posts all the liberal media reference like CNN but all media and all TV are sh*t and support the elites even Fox.
Lots of dumb sheep like GW on ZH.
all media and all TV are sh*t and support the elites even Fox.
Freddie you are right on with this point. No one on television tells you the truth, they just present different sides of bullshit. Unfortunately most people are suckers for one side or other of the bullshit.
he has to say he didn't see it coming because he created it.
GW can we make the columns skinnier so I can't read this at all