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Guest Post: We Just Enjoyed the Last Christmas In America
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
The end of rising wages = the end of mass affluence: we just enjoyed the Last Christmas in America (TLCIA).
As unemployment topped 10%, the January 1975 cover of Ramparts magazine blared: The End of Affluence: The Last Christmas in America. (TLCIA)
The government responded to the high unemployment, rampant inflation and rising budget deficits by manipulating data to mask the politically inconvenient realities of inflation, unemployment and deficits by playing with Social Security Trust Funds, inflation data, etc.--games it continues to play to cloak reality from the media-numbed public.
The economic stagnation, despite various stock market rallies and false starts, essentially lasted 10 years, from 1973 to 1982.
The malaise had a happy ending: huge new oil fields were discovered in Alaska, the North Sea, West Africa and elsewhere, ushering in a renewed era of cheap, abundant petroleum. President Reagan re-set Social Security for a generation and introduced a lower taxes, higher permanent deficits ideology that is now accepted as the only possible way to sustain the Status Quo: deficits don't matter, even when they reach the trillions, because our good friends the Gulf Oil Exporters and Asian exporters will buy all our debt forever and ever, keeping interest low forever and ever.
(And if they drop the ball, then the Federal Reserve prints money and buys trillions of dollars of Treasury bonds. Sweet! We don't need any external buyers, just the Federal Reserve creating money out of thin air.)
Then the U.S. created and launched two revolutionary technologies which both created new wealth around the globe: the personal computer (microprocessor and cheap RAM) and the Internet (TCP/IP, Ethernet, and the commercialization of Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web with free browsers) spawning the generation-long boom of the 1980s and 90s.
Those "saves from stagnation" were one-offs; there will be no more supergiant energy finds, nor any equivalents of the Internet expansion cycle.
When the wheels inevitably fell off the Internet/tech boom in 2000, the U.S. did not create a new engine of wealth: it opted instead for a devilishly insidious simulacrum of wealth: debt which rose at an exponential rate throughout the economy.
Borrowed money and phony financial legerdemain (mortgage-backed securities, derivatives based on the MBS, etc. etc.) from 2000-2007 created what I have termed a "bogus prosperity": no actual new productive wealth was created, only a brief and self-liquidating bubble of debt-based housing and stock valuations.
Compare the rate of GDP growth (another unreliable indicator, but all we have) with the astonishing rise in debt:
Meanwhile, wages adjusted for inflation have stagnated for 15 years while asset prices for stores of value such as housing in desirable areas have skyrocketed in terms of median household income:
Real household income has declined in the Bubble Era across the entire income spectrum:
Here is real median household income and labor's share of the economy: both are in structural decline, and inflating asset bubbles has done nothing to reverse either trend.
Why will Christmas 2014 be the last Christmas in America? It's simple: declining wages cannot support an ever-expanding mountain of debt.
The Federal Reserve has played a game for six long years of lowering the cost of debt (i.e. the rate of interest borrowers must pay), which has enabled stagnating wages to support ever heavier debt loads.
There is an endgame in sight to this financial trickery, a point of diminishing returns to lower interest rates: the Fed can't drop rates lower than 0%. Borrowers simply can't qualify for more debt, regardless of interest rates.
The extreme fragility of an economy based on ever-expanding mountains of debt piled on declining incomes is apparent: if the Fed can't raise interest rates even a tiny quarter point without threatening to collapse the unstable pyramid of debt-based affluence/ consumption, what does that say about the fragility of the "growth" (supposedly running at a hot 5% annually) and "prosperity"?
Claiming that a few hundred dollars in lower gasoline costs per household will enable a desert of declining income to bloom is the equivalent of claiming that an inch of rain in Death Valley will transform the desert into a lush tropical rain forest.
Remember the lackluster Christmas of 2014 well; the endgame of expanding debt will play out as every endgame does: furious moves by central bankers will prolong checkmate but not transform the inevitable loss into a win. Media sound and fury are no substitute for rising real household wages and incomes.
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It dies in 2015
It's been dead... The real pain starts in 2015. We just had our last thanksgiving feast, and last Christmas for a very long time. Got GOLD BITCHEZZZZ?
Copper jacketed lead is the real precious metal.
Christmas was originally a religious holiday and remains so to most people. Its sad that the author doesn't recognize the religious element at all and just sees it as an excuse to buy stuff.
Your theory is in doubt. Go ask the author if he meant it as the excuse to buy shit..... Maybe he meant the religious element what it's for. Why jump to conclusions about the author obie kenobie?
You people are so silly...This is why this is the last Christmas.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-15/wednesday-humor-iran-has-incont...
None of this is about what we thik it's about. I'm well on record about that. Someday you can buy my book on the subject.
Yeah, but Rome (at least in the form of Byzantium) soldiered on a millenia or so beyond its best-before date. Reports of America's demise are greatly exaggerated.
Rome didn't have digital money, nor paper money. Their networks were made of aqueous and roads and sailing/rowing vessels. Their supply chains were simple. The ratio of people to arable land was radically different than today and most lived close to it. Contrast to the modern world. One EMP attack would kill 80-90% of the U.S. population inside of eight months. It would destroy us in a flash.
Religion used to be a used to control the masses.
Now we have banksters and their controlled pols.
Churches at least only demanded 10% (tithes) but they used the threat of eternal damnation.
Gov & banks use the 'legal' system and paid thugs.
No real difference.
<--- That's 10% Net
<--- That's 10% Gross
I got a rock.
I use gross, that way I'm covered.
At least in church, they tell of great fairy tales of a zombie prophet, sky daddy, talking snakes, etc. We have .gov and the Fed giving us bogus statistics, ZIRP and giving us resounding confidence in a corrupt system.
Ill take people who believe in the myth of Christianity over people who believe in the myth of the benevolent government anyday. I have no hope for those who believe in government and Christianity.
0b1knob
Sorry!
The evidence to both are equally fraud.
Christmas is an religious holiday like McDonald's is organic food. It may taste good at first, but it's full of crap.
I guess you didn’t know that when you are desperate you take (eat) …….. Whatever?
WRONG! Christmas was originally a pagan holiday: http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Christmas_TheRealStory.htm
Ya, sadly no one cares. Xmas is an opportunity to get off work buy crap you don't need and drink a lot of alcohol. Whether it is or ISN'T Jesus b-day matters little to most people today.
WRONG! Christmas was originally a pagan holiday:
Yay, let's hear it for the Pagans....! That's the trouble with the world these days...not enough Paga
"That's the trouble with the world these days...not enough Paga"
What's wrong is that EVERYONE IS PAGAN!
I hate religion as much as anyone, but I love the Creator of the Universe. He has told us to serve only him and follow his instructions. But the nation people who were tasked to teach this failed. Then Rome co-opted the entire concept and surrounded it woth so much paganism that you can barely see his plan. Peace in this world is locked up with the most hated people in the world and the book that no one will read, both are openly vilified or secretly loathed with very little knowledge of the truth in either one.
We all have one thing that we can change in this world, OURSELVES. Yehovah (God of the Old Testament) gave us the model for how that works, but we ignore it for a pantheon of gods and a doomed cylce of laws made by men to enslave other men. When will we learn?
I remember a song ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6S-Q_qNWE
CCR - Pagan Baby ;)
WRONG! Christmas was originally a pagan holiday: http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Christmas_TheRealStory.htm
Yes. It is Pagan...
But Christmas is still a RELIGIOUS HOLIDAY as Paganism IS RELIGION.
The Roman Catholics are paganist.
you shouldn't be disrespecting other peoples' beliefs.
just because you don't like pagans, doesn't mean that you have to besmirch their good name by saying roman catholics are pagans.
So sorry, Christmas was originally a pagan celebration celebrated at the winter solstice. The early Christian Church, finding people unwilling to give up this celebration grafted the birth of Christ onto it to turn it into a religious rather than secular entertainment. The Church has always been pragmatic that way.
Paganism is religion.
The Roman Catholic Church is far removed from the early Christians form of worship. It has been far removed ever since Constantine established Roman Catholicism.
Economics was the point of the article, not religion. Sheesh.
Christmas is a RELIGIOUS HOLIDAY, as, PAGANISM IS RELIGION.
The article had something to do with that RELIGIOUS HOLIDAY, didn't it? Did it not declare that it was the last one? (Should I be so blessed???)
The problem is that you believe that you can differentiate topics when they are so throughly integrated. That is the underlying reason behind your fragmented thought disorder.
Tell me about it! That 50 cent Turkish 7.62x51 that Walmart is selling below cost is a steal of a deal.
It isn't quite 308 though....
The collar is different, but it can definitely be adjusted to fit ...
Just wait till the ACA goes live, it was tested against the uninsured and small business.
EBT cards are the eternal Christmas gift from the Nanny State to the mentally numb consumer masses.
Get ready for EBT to die in a few months as well. Then every man is on his own.
Three days after the death of EBT you will see the death of the United States.
People only revolt when they become HUNGRY.
It won't be just the poor minorities who revolt, when they are not able to buy sustainence; the working class, and middle America will revolt, too, when the price of food skyrockets, due to rapid inflation, after rapid deflation, after the collapse of our economy. Sweet Jahova, even I can tell this economy is limping along, atrophied from lack of growth.
Food riots will spread across the country. Not even the gov't, with the militarized police state, can squelch dissent everywhere.
Hope not. I'm not ready yet.
“Once we squeeze all we can out of the United States, it can dry up and blow away.” Benjamin Netanyahu, 2002
keep your common core history and your white guilt I'll have none of it
"The peoples of the Allied nations have not been divided, and had their land, culture and heritage stolen. Nor have they been forced to pay reparations to the Germans for this “Unholicaust”. No one has ever been jailed for spreading “false news” and “inciting hatred” toward the German people, though it is committed daily in the mass media; in books, films, TV shows, newspaper articles, schools, and in everyday average conversation amongst people everywhere."
Most of the linguini spined mongoloids are too afraid of the PC police to even begin questioning mainstream dogma like WW2 revisionsim, the Israeli hand in the 9/11 attacks etc.
Speaking the truth the last few years hasn't made me a lot of friends, but it has made me the right ones..
charlie's got the holiday blues-
"Those "saves from stagnation" were one-offs; there will be no more supergiant energy finds, nor any equivalents of the Internet expansion cycle."
the BIGGEST "one-off" of all human history folks, is right around the corner.
The harbinger is the debt load-and the disintegration of dystopian, centralized, hierarchical control structures, with the establishment of networking cultural constraints in their place is what transpires when the financial derivative bomb detonates.
Which in the absence of the equivalent of "free energy" is imminent, regardless of the war-meme propaganda spewing from the West.
the prospects terrify the triple-alphabet control freak puppets and their DC-NY-London handlers
REEEEEEEALLY?
13.3 million Jews have won out against 7 Billion goyim?!!!! What excatly have they won? They can't even simply live with their families in peace because the world always comes looking for them no matter where they go.
By the way, "goyim" is not a perjorative in Hebrew, though some Jews and some non-Jews try to use it as such. The Bible calls the Jews "goyim Yisrael" or nation of Israel. It is not a bad word, but like all words it can be used for bad.
I was looking for the source of Hugh's quote, and may have found it (or the closest thing to it) here:
(link to a 5 page .pdf) http://mail.blockyourid.com/~gbpprorg/obama/nytimes_ww2/09-21-05_Madsen.pdf
The quote is at the end of the article.
Oh fuck. Seriously if I start a "this year is the year it ends" blog can I get it linked here?
Somewhere along the line these fuckheads have to get it - we're in uncharted waters now and their predictions are for shit. It's as likely to go on another decade as it is to crash tomorrow.
There's still plenty of Dancing with the Stars and Powerball to keep everyone distracted. After what I've seen I'm expecting another decade.
If there were a binary market on whether the crash would begin tomorrow or in 10 years, the former would be 1/100 (or lower).
Such nonsense in these first few posts. Nothing is dying in 2015. Fed and Central Banks will continue printing and pumping, Wall Street Bankers and the .01%ers will continue to reap huge financial rewards, Free money for ALL (Bankers) The sheeple will continue watching the new Survivor and Kardashian season, Football season will be in full bloom....nothing but blue skies and Unicorns Shitting Skittles ahead for the masses. As for EBT...lmfao...you are totally clueless if you think EBT will die. Give me a break. It has been proven without a doubt that this new financial reality CAN and DOES WORK! Anyone betting against the bankers and refusing to join the party will be sorely disappointed. Happy Fucking New Year.
Student loan debt forgiveness is next....along with bailing out all the soon to blow up Alphabet Soup Shit. Dow 2oK and S&P 2.5 by April 15. Guaranteed!
You may be right about 2015, but it's gotta end sometime in the near future. Our whole society is a complete farce.
This goes on until finance directly butts heads with physics and geology. Then it won't matter what the bankers do as they will be up against not a mountain of debt, but the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Either oil goes up in price, or that butting of heads occurs as soon as oil companies' hedges expire, which is in 2015.
Thank you.
As Karl D. points out, the economic shit-show in America is amenable to all manner of creative tricks and disinformation, but at the basic level, such things as living standards are about thermodynamics, and math. And these cannot be avoided, tricked, or negotiated away. Either MAJOR scientific breakthroughs are made in the very near future, or the standard of living of the average Joe 'n' Jane is headed south, far and fast.
At least it will not be south of the South Pole....
(Felt compelled to throw that in...Humor..you know?)
dont quit your day job...
Well, the USA is not likely to die in 2015. Its has a few years left. How many? I don't have a clue. That said, 2014 may be the last "normal" or BAU christmas for many more of the middle class. Although this is continuous trend and Millions of Americans have already exited the middle class.
The one think that that Fed (or anyone else) can resolve is resource depletion and over population. Sooner or later these two elephants are going to collide and unleash a storm of chaos. I think either 2014 or 2015 will be Peak Oil. While it would be physically possible to increase production for a few more years, I think the collapse of Oil prices is going to have a significant impact in future investment. Much like there won't be another internet bubble or a housing bubble (to the extremes it was in the past) Oil drilling was in its own bubble that is popping as we speak. Its very unlikely that Investor will be eager to jump back when prices start rising again. Oil majors will likely delay expanding future CapEx which will prevent production for increasing beyond the 2014-2015 peak.
"The Fed can't drop rates lower than 0%." Who says?
Can you say "Bail-In?"
The American country is now caught between the Zionist bankster's rock, and the Chinese, and Russian, hard spot.
The Zionist, having plundered the American country, are now exiting and selling off the remainder as scrap to the Chinese, and Russians. What they do not want them to have, they will retain (NYC, New England) or destroy.
If you live on the west coast, better work on you Chinese, and if in Florida or Alaska, your Russian.
The banksters need to repay us.
You're kidding, right...Just Learn to say Hands Up, Don't shoot in Ebonics.
db51 that was not a nice comment. It's Hands up Assume the position, in pig latin.
Do they have a Redneck to Russian dictionary ?
Urdu was eaiser to learn.
I will build a new dog cell for you / sacr
They can have California, it's going to fall into the sea anyway.
A foreign military force (or domestic for that matter) would be ground into dust if they attempted to occupy the American south with all the country boys who could shoot the wings off a fly at 1,000 yards!
Well, that is problematic since Cali is significant in terms of food production for the rest of the nation. I guess we can be thankful Americans no longer eat vegetables and can live on fast food.
Miffed
In any significant invasion / occupation scenario, your "Foreign Military Force" would certainly eliminate ALL the civilian resistance, probably by biological, chemical, or both means.
Modern warfare is very far removed from the Normandy Landings, and by the time the Russians and / or Chinese decide to occupy what was the USA, they will have already seen first-hand what American military can (and will) do to others, so it will not be a far cry at all to think that their policy by then will be one of "maximum elimination for the least cost, economically and militarily".
Preemptive High Altitude EMP strike and then let the people starve is probably the optimal strategic method..
Not if yhe boys in the South were fighting on the same side as the invaders trying to overthrow the oligarchy.
>>>Not if yhe boys in the South were fighting on the same side as the invaders trying to overthrow the oligarchy.
I always think, when I'm reading secessionist-type opinion, that if these people are serious they will have to get into contact with a number of foreign governments, if only to run through what-if scenarios. The original Confederacy certainly sought outside assistance.
Perhaps the time is not now, but it some point it will be.
Whenever shit hits fan, they will say it was caused by we formerly irrelevant naysayers.
If only we had believed!
I will be ready when they try to punish me for knowing they are idiots.
Have a 4 year supply of food and converted many vessels into reverse osmosis water systems. Now I just need to stock up on moar ammo.
Last Christmas? Wasn't that by Taylor Swift? Or maybe I am thinking of Jonathan Swift who 'advocated' eating poor children. Must have been Taylor Swift, because if her songs don't exemplify our 'something from nothing' economy, nothing does.
I highly doubt it is the last Christmas and that people will suddenly stop buying shit even if they don't have much money. I also highly doubt that even if people can't buy stuff that they will just poof, stop celebrating with their families and friends.
Maybe I'm just taking the comment literally when it's not supposed to be.
I agree this far, total wages are heading down and total debt is heading up and that's a bad dynamic.
But the great Jubilee is coming, all (federal) debts will be forgiven, we just wait for Gozer the Traveler. He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the rectification of the Vuldrini, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!
I find some of that hard to believe.
Which part?
"the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants"??
Slor, Torg, What is it good for? Uh-huh. War, huh, yeah. What is it good for?Absolutely nothing!
I will nominate thee for the "most entertaining post of the year" award once I stop laughing.
All religions are a LIE true faith is tied to no one text nor tome true faith does not lay in another mans stories nor words faith is a mere concept and an aversion to reallity. So yeah the last christmas was indeed actually the first.. chew on that for a while and try facing reallity and facts. I fyou really want a "last" anything it should be the last jew. then we all might have a better future and a chance at some better ideas and functioning reallities.
"sticking feathers up your ass doesn't make you a chicken"
Luckily I'm constipated. BAWK BAWK!
Build Your Own Super Chicken Tractor [Kindle Edition] $.0.00http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005CLRII4/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=17...
I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?"
Why did I cause so much pain?
Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?
Can't I see that we're all manifestations of love?
I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong.
We are not special.
We are not crap or trash either. We just are.
We just are, and what happens just happens.
And God says, "No, that's not right."
Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything.
0% financing + 0% interest into perpetuitity for all around the world!!! We all win!
"Why will Christmas 2014 be the last Christmas in America? It's simple: declining wages cannot support an ever-expanding mountain of debt."
If Charles Hugh-Smith understood money, this article of his would read differently. It would read that the American people continue to make trading promises and struggle to deliver.
The main reason for their struggle is overwhelming government runaway. Governments continue to grow and to leach the economy. They have exhausted their ability to survive on taxes long long ago. They have had to resort to inflation caused by the counterfeiting of the media of exchange. They don't keep their trading promises and that leaves the entire marketplace to mop up after them.
This mop is inflation. It's now taking a little hiatus as the public has exhausted their ability to make new trading promises because they know they can't keep them under the load of the government parasites. Once the government has killed a huge portion of their host, their continual counterfeiting will bring hyperinflation.
It's not rocket science folks. INFLATION = INTEREST - DEFAULT. All government spending is default because roll overs are defaults.
Dear central bank douchebags ! Idea ! End the income tax. Don't give me the government bullshit, you own and you are the government, make it happen and you may last a few more years.
The prescient observers here at ZH have predicted 238 of the last 2 crashes. Buy some gold bullion as a hedge, absolutely; go naked short, you might as well pile up your money and set it on fire. See you next Xmas.
There will be more Christmases. They will just hopefully be without the massive gluttonous consumption, as it was was intended.
The day will NEVER come when Janet holds a news conference and announces the Fed bank has done all it can do. They have no more tools; the economy will have to stand on its own. That day would be Dow -1,000 with much more to follow. The markets and economy are now 100% dependent upon the Fed’s ever increasing loose credit and debt. It can never stop. The pain stopping would cause, would be politically unacceptable. There is no path back to the ‘Old Normal’. The oligarchs will never risk major social unrest by letting the markets fall to their unassisted levels. Dow 7,000 would be the end of a peaceful, complacent society. New car sales would plunge as interest rates rose. GM would fail, this time for good. Home sales would collapse and homes would again lose 1/2 their “value”. Foreclosures, already rising, would explode. Entire subdivisions would be vacant and filled with illegals squatting, everything of value stripped and sold.
The bears would rejoice until the shooting started. Too big to fail!
Guess this guy has never seen How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
Out here in distant Whoville, we will continue to celebrate.
Stunning 2nd graph, debt vs. GDP. It seems our GDP growth is dependent on debt growth. What a system.
Hmmmm, I remember two-plus years ago with gold at 1900 per ounce and Tyler was predicting economic collapse, hyperinflation and immenent $5000 gold. So you will have to excuse me if I take a dim view of his historically awful predictive skills.
Have you listened to Tyler's real proposals? Have you shorted chinese caterers and gone long on belgian caterers?! If so, you should have made a pretty penny. Or do you mean you haven't? Well, in that case .... ;)
In the real economy productivity must rise and then wages and then all the good things we love in a healthy economy.
In the Keynesian alchemy economy wise men uttering magic words like "ZIRP forever!" can abrogate normal classic economics. Wages can drop while stock markets soar to new heights. Record debts and demands for money from government will correlate with money that is actually cheaper, not more expensive.
I believe that the single biggest impediment to real economic growth is government at all levels. It is siphoning off ever more money in a thousand ways. The ones we know best are taxes on most everything that moves (that is what got Eric Garner killed) followed by the indirect costs of government compliance. Even red light cameras are deployed to siphon off more money. The public gets taxed to buy the cameras that generate more taxes/revenue. Finally, there are the hard to measure economic wet blankets like Obamacare which cuts hours, benefits and raises costs all at the same time.
So, I think the price of leftist-statist government is what you see in declining wages. Manipulation and cornering investments is what you see on Wall Street. Who want to save at zero interest?
I'm just wondering, so I will honestly ask the audience: Is anyone aware that falling wages are strictly deflationary?! Think about it ...
Yep, Sounds right to me. Future Value of the USD is Deflating. US Wages have been Deflating.
Weekly and hourly earnings data from the Current Population Survey
Series Id: LEU0252881600
Series title: (unadj)- Constant (1982-84) dollar adjusted to CPI-U- Median usual weekly earnings, Employed full time, Wage and salary workers
Year Qtr1 Qtr2 Qtr3 Qtr4 Annual
1979 339 334 325 328 332
1980 324 314 315 317 318
1981 317 311 304 314 312
2012 337 335 329 336 335
2013 334 333 330 337 333
2014 339 328 332
Constant Dollars, Weekly Earning same in 1979 as 2014.
At issue is Obama’s support for the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would establish the world’s largest free-trade zone.
This is how Obama Avoids Impeachment from Boner.
The administration is moving aggressively in hopes of wrapping up negotiations by the middle of next year on a 12-nation free-trade pact in the Asia-Pacific region before the politics become even more daunting ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-hopes-to-enlist-gop-in-push...
The dynamic, as the White House plots strategy for the new year when the GOP has full control of Congress, has scrambled traditional political alliances. In recent weeks, Obama has rallied the business community behind his trade agenda, while leading Capitol Hill progressives, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have raised objections and labor and environmental groups have mounted a public relations campaign against it.
XMAS = Experiment into the gullibility of the proletariat, mostly the religious part. Yawn, night.......
The gullible proletariat
God bless them, Everyone.
Curiously, UPS and Fedex reports about daily shipping volume have not been reported in the press.
I recall every December there would be news about total package volume.
As for my Fedex and UPS drivers, they indicated that within their own route, volume seemed to be less than previous years.
I keep checking the media for stories about December 2014 Fedex and UPS numbers but can't find anything.
LENR(or Controlled Electron Electron Capture Reactions) will give us near free energy. It will make the Internet Revolution look like small potatoes. Then there is also robotics and AI. Whoever wrote this article sounds like he is completely ignorant of technology. Probably thought the internet was a fad when it first surfaced... LOL
As long as people are getting something for nothing, why change? Doesn't matter if it's an EBT card, health care, or bad paper. The Federal Reserve has done a great job at giving TPTB everything they wanted!
The last Christmas in America occurred in 1912.
It has only been Christmas in the DC US ever since.
The banksters need to repay us.
The last Christmas in America? I don't think so.
A few days ago I went to a Christmas Eve church service for the first time in over 50 years. My Christmases have changed over the last few years. Much less materialism; and back to the real meaning of the occasion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzRUZYI8XdU
People, I just want to say, can we all just get along?
If we can just continue to consume and buy each other things, we can make Black Friday black again.
I have a question...
Let's pretend sometime down the road inflation starts to take hold, and the government is totally forced to raise interest rates in order to curtail it. I am wondering is it possible that it can simply print money into existence just as it has over the last 5 years and use that printed money to pay the huge amount of interest as a result of the already printed and borrowed money?I believe it can, and it will get away with this so long as the public has faith and confidence in the currency it uses. Since there is no backing for our money, the only thing left is confidence. The belief that your currency is worth something simply makes it worth something. But there should be a point at which that one extra person loses faith and confidence in the currency and everything goes down the drain. Does anyone else feel the same way about this situation?
pretty much that's the premise of years' of zerohedge articles. Raise rates & default will happen. Print to match and it's default by hyperinflation. The planet can lose confidence in a global currency that way & resort to bi-lateral currency trades, balance in import/export without necessarily trading all the cash in bulk by any means, and gold as well as a reserve backup 'global' currency, which it always has been or the banks wouldn't have any. It's not like they keep stockpiles of silver for international banking reserves, nor oil nor diamonds. It's gold.
It's preshusssssss - but it's a barbarous relic no one really wants. So go on now & hand over the preshussssses
As long as there's still children to sell into debt slavery to collateralize loans, there's still money for Christmas!
All in the spirit of giving, of course!
HO HO HO, merry Corzine-mas!