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Leaving The Eye Of The Hurricane
Submitted by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
In the early 2000’s, there were those economists and investors who believed that the U.S. was headed for an economic fall - that the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 would allow the financial institutions to enter into widespread reckless loan practices that would lead to a housing crash. And that that crash would lead to a stock market crash that would herald in The Great Unravelling - The Greater Depression.
Most of us who made these predictions hypothesized that the initial collapse would be significant, but not severe - that the governments of the world would come to the rescue with bailout programmes that would stave off the symptoms of the problem, but would do nothing to cure the disease itself - that of massive debt.
We suggested that there would be a false recovery, resulting in the easing of symptoms. There would be repeated claims by both governments and the media that “recovery is nigh.” However, underneath all the folderol, the disease would worsen considerably, eventually reaching the point at which the patient (the economy) could not be saved. At some point, public confidence in the leaders’ abilities to resuscitate the body would fade. This would be triggered by some event or events, such as a crash in the stock or bond market, a dumping of debt back into the U.S. by creditor nations, debt default by Greece or some other nation, commodity price spikes, backlash from sanctioned nations, the imposition of protective tariffs - any one of a dozen possible triggers would do the trick. From that point on, each of the other triggers would eventually occur, as toppling dominoes, fulfilling the prediction of Depression.
Only in this latter period would the dreaded “D-word” be acknowledged by the governments and media.
Most prognosticators (myself included) went on the general assumption that the initial collapse would last two to three years and that the following “suspension” period of bailouts and other attempts to paper over the problem might last another three years or so. During this period, conditions would not be good, but they would be better than the conditions during the initial crash and far better than the conditions that would follow the suspension period. Not surprisingly, many of us came to refer to this period as “the eye of the hurricane,” an apt term, as the eye of a hurricane is a period of relative calm after the first onslaught of the storm and just prior to the inevitable and often more devastating second half.
The second half of the economic storm will prove to be far more devastating than the first, since the fact that its onset will mean that the governments of the world have already thrown everything they have at the problem and will be out of ammunition in the second half.
In a sense, we could suggest that governments have done a good job in staving off the inevitable, since the eye of the hurricane has lasted more than five years (longer than most of us had expected). Unfortunately, the level of debt created in the attempt to postpone the inevitable assured that every month of postponement meant that the eventual crash would be that much worse, and that the recovery would be that much more prolonged.
But, if the assumption is correct that there will be a second, more devastating, half of the storm, when will it be? Well, an actual date would be impossible to predict with accuracy, but we can look at the possible triggers and ask ourselves if we’re getting closer. Recently, we’ve observed a very near miss on debt default by Greece. We’ve witnessed a crash in the Chinese stock market, coupled with several downgradings of the yuan, causing a significant drop in the U.S. stock market. Further, although it hasn’t received the media attention it should receive, China has been dumping U.S. Treasuries back into the U.S. in a significant way. One prominent candidate in the U.S. presidential elections is calling for the imposition of protective tariffs and has received cheers from voters for his “courageous” position. (The reader might study the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 if he is uncertain of just how disastrous protective tariffs can prove to be.)
Readers of this column will already be aware of what may be heading their way, economically, politically, and socially, as we once again enter the hurricane. (Others may check the International Man archive to learn more.)
In past generations, when folks observed warning signs of an approaching storm, they would often ask Grandpa if his arthritis was giving him trouble, as any dramatic change in barometer pressure is both an irritation to arthritis and a warning of dramatic change in weather.
Today, in questioning whether we’re reaching the far side of the hurricane, we might do much the same. There are a number of old-timers out there who have tracked economic trends for decades. Those who have developed a reputation for successful prediction tend to go as much by “feel” as by analysis.
For several months, in communicating with the economic “Grandpas” around the world, the reaction I’ve received from them has been as though they’re all sitting in their rockers on the same porch together. Every one of them is saying the same thing - “It’s really beginning to ‘feel’ close. The first major event could happen anytime now.”
But, rather than be alarmist, it can also be said that the magicians who run the world’s governments may yet come up with another delay or two. The question for the reader is whether he wishes to put off dealing with the coming hurricane until it’s on his doorstep or whether he’d rather be prepared when the time comes. As it is, the palm fronds are blowing and Grandpa’s joints are getting stiff.
This might be a good time to get the lawn furniture in and to close up the shutters.
For those who wish to be the least impacted by the hurricane, this would be the time to (if possible) prepare an overseas bolthole, move funds away from any jurisdiction that’s likely to confiscate or impose capital controls, and move investments out of stocks and bonds and into real estate in a jurisdiction that’s at lesser risk, and into precious metals - to be stored in a jurisdiction where the government has a reputation for low taxation and non-invasiveness into private wealth.
The coming storm promises to be the largest of our lifetime. We shall all be affected by it. A few will profit from it. Some will be mildly negatively impacted; most will be hit hard, due to being unprepared.
Those who choose to distance themselves (and their wealth - however large or small) geographically from the centre of the hurricane will fare best.
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blah, blah, blah....wake me when it happens
Ive never seen a purple cow,and i never want to see one....
But ,I can tell you any how,I'd rather see one then be one!
So, did he predict that Jewish lightning from the Kosher Nostra (with the help of shabbos goys Bush and Cheney) would smite the World Trade Center? I think not.
LOL
“It’s really beginning to ‘feel’ close. The first major event could happen anytime now.”
Even a dead clock is right twice a day. It became very clear to me how nobody outside the inside knows jack shit about when this will happen after Max Keiser's March 2014 prediction went belly up.
No kidding ... OP's need to work harder on new similies (or metaphors or what ever the fuck they are called - I hated grammar) for the shit hitting the fan ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZdp46Jen_w&feature=youtu.be&t=7
Regards,
Cooter
How about : The Klingons are gonna invade Uranus.
Dot biz and their dot gov lackeys are gonna boot fuck you into the middle of next week.
Eat your paper - low calories, weight loss program, and it's all you got, motherfucker.
Last but not least, the All American drinking toast.
" Here's to you, and here's to me. And if by chance we disagree, then fuck you and here's to me ! "
Old Irish toast:
May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.
May Banksters see the horns before they know they're dead
I conjugated shit hitting the fan to just "shiting the fan"
How about "shit hitting the fan while you have your mouth wide open" for an ultra doom scenario.
Alas, Babylon
Damn it! There will be no economic catastrophies until the 2016 election show gets close to the season climax! Don't you dare put those richie political babies in a corner with your STAWKS and Baaaaahnnndddz.
I continue to maintain they're going with the old "Mexican Presidential Transition Kabuki Ploy"...flush out all the shit at election time, put the "new guy" in to placate the masses with the "hopium" that he'll clean it up. Worked in Mexico every 6 years like clockwork for the PRI...some 70+ years....no shit.
Except they got a pig-in-a-poke for 2008, with Choomboy, the glad-handing nigger fraudster. His CIA-handlers were enchanted by that charm...that poise...that obvious intelligence (& capability)...and that middle name!
As an added plus, Bath House was clean, well-dressed, and spoke good English. Just ask Shotgun Joe.
Obvious intelligence???
ROTFLMAO
October 20--November 7th, my SWAG guesstimate. Venus/Mars/Jupiter pretty tighly packed togther. Eerily reminiscent of 1st half of September 2008. But then again we need a geo-politico-military 'trigger mechanism' to set this puppy off. 2008's was Vlad's invasion of Georgia a few weeks earlier.
Hey, maybe the ChiComs will shoot down a C-17 over the Spratleys?
LONDON— Standard Chartered PLC said Friday it is cutting around 1,000 of its senior staff, the latest Europe-based bank to respond to pressure from investors to streamline its business and cut jobs.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/standard-chartered-to-cut-1-000-senior-staff...
We restructured some folks.
Yep exactly same old broken record on ZH, end of the world....get's old
it's coming...and it's coming fast....
If you are not prepared....then woe be unto you...
for the eye of the Storm.....hath passeth!!!!!!!!
bitchez
It's one thing to stand on the pulpit and predict that the sky is falling based on zero evidence and it's quite another when there are reams of evidence that this fucker should have fallen over a long, long time ago... The only thing holding this bitch together is the PPT and central bankers around the world manipulating every market they can via derivatives... Yeah, it's getting old, but so am I and my arthritis is telling me to be prepared...
Some of the "evidence:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ksc2WJoXpg
Banking Crisis: Bernanke Bust is Here - Mike Maloney
The trick is to prepare without living for it.
You awake now? It is currently happening. It is a bit like the earth spinning. Its moving pretty fast but you don't know it. One thing is certain tomorrow will come.
I swear I've become more jaded and preoccupied with this shit in the last 4 years since coming to ZH - reading this shit daily fucks you up and drains you
Agreed, the unrelenting end-of-the-world-is-neigh tone and focus on evil leaves you in perpetual fight-or-flight mode filled with nothing but bitterness and cynicism.
Being in this state constantly is not healthy. It does not permit constructing a fulfilling life. Calm and optimism are a required foundation for any achievement and happiness. Even amidst a storm.
It would be cool if ZH articles could as often feature silver linings as they feature clouds. Take more delight in finding the profit opportunities created by these crises rather than only taking delight in the vivisection of the horrors.
We are paying attention and as such are acutely aware of the possibilities, and yes, it is a burden sometimes, especially for those of us trying to keep a business together. The thing is, that while most do not dig into the details of it like many here do, there is still a base understanding that we ARE fucked, and they simply have no idea what to do about it. Their survival instincts just tell them to ignore it. Something many of us could do a little more of. But regardless, I think this dark cloud has done much to depress our economy even more than the fundamentals are contributing. A depression IS depressing,which makes it really hard to escape, even under lesser pressures.
"The world's not going to end my dear.
It's just going to get a lot more difficult to live In, that's all."
Let's git it on!
Globalization is the hurricane, hence nowhere is safe. A better idea would be to grow some balls and rid the world of psychopaths wherever they may be found; However since that is not likely to happen go ahead and kid yourself that offshoring your money will stave off impending financial doom; head safely tucked away up ass, dreaming of rainbows, unicorns and happily ever after.........
Especially when they have the ability to recall your passport.
The only problem with this article is that this asshole didn't predict ANY of the shit he's now claiming he did. What a fucking tool!
Prepare for unforeseen consequnces Mr. Freeman.
I predicted ALL of this shit years ago.
I may not have had the specifics right....but I distinctly remember saying...
"this shit is going to blow" and
"the end is near".
I think I still have the sandwich boards somewhere.
I still have my real estate open house giant hand.
Timbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
"Hurricane!", you say?
I say "Show me the Hurricane Spaghetti Diagrams".
So let me take off during this hurricane so I can fly across the world only to land in some other fucking hurricane. Insane !!!
There will be no "distance" when this happens. While the idea of sitting in a bungalow on Bora bora might sound appealing, when the system goes down I think sitting in the basement of a farmhouse with a AR-15 in hand is going to be far more comfortable two weeks in. Especially when stomachs start growling and supply ships (or semi trailers) become more of a wishful idea than calendar entry.
In the country, no one can hear you scream. (Read up on what has happened to isolated white farmers in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and South Africa.)
Forward (over the cliff)!
Yeah! In a big city they don't care if you scream, even if they see you being mugged or murdered. And that is during normalcy. Wait for the whirlwind ye shall reap.
This is why expatriation is a bad idea. Rich gringo with the beautiful daughter and we can all share.
I do think its a good idea to have a very isolated rally point with six months of everything. You hunker down TOTALLY and let the manly men of action and adventure kill each other off until common sense and a need for trade reappears.
Right on both points!
Let's say we don't go full Mad Max....
It sure would be easier to provide for your family in a rural location in a country with a tropical climate with a year-round growing season and abundant water.
I think it's gonna be more like what is in Ferfal's book on Argentina and the guy who blogs from the former Yugoslavia.
But that's just me, I wanna be optimistic.
I agree that's optimistic, but I think it's interesting that they both are in locations where they're not full ex-pats, but rather have some claim to citizenship.
This is one of the few things I don't have an issue with Simon Black as far as hawking his wares: if you're going to do the ex-pat thing, you're way better off having dual (or more) citizenship, hopefully both where you're escaping and where you're escaping to. That would go a long way towards preventing you from getting labeled a refugee, which might work for people from Syria right now, but sure as hell isn't going to work for when the global economy implodes.
In spite of the trials in south africa -- looking like you're poor and living in a single-wide in an unpopulated county in the US will likely take you far. So one says it can't be a single wide is sitting on top of a palatial bunker filled with hookers and blow. Optics and population density is what's going to matter. So, look poor and be seen by as few other poor people as you can manage.
Depends entriely on whether the volcano god gets angry or not.
Friends will ask, "where's the best place to be? Where do we go?"
There seem to be no safe havens, anywhere, anymore. I guess if they repeal the 2nd A then going somewhere else becomes more of an option, I suppose, since self-defense will have been outlawed most everywhere.
If anyone has any good suggestions I'm all ears. Won't go to anywhere in Latin America, though, as I already lived there for four years.
No mas.
I think there are some small islands that might be safe especially if you have a skill that does not exist there. There might be a breakdown of established westernized social order when the world no longer drops by but if you are flexible and can deal with a closed revisionist tribal society you might live out your life healthy and sheltered.Yeah, tribal/family rivalries that are dormant will undoubtedly be awakened but no place is perfect.
I was thinking of French Polynesia once the French overlords are gone.
Don't forget to factor in local racial hatred, criminality, poverty, and total lack of reserves.
Im sure there must e some good boltholes in CONUS ...but my suggestion would be Annapolis valley in Nova Scotia. Good farmland, away from major cities and the USA east coast, fishing and hunting to supplement your food ....Canucks are still pretty sensible compared to the US ...
just a thought....
The Constitution has not been amended in what 20, 30 years? It will never happen again, no one has the political will to amend the Con anymore. Even if they did, just because they through out the 2A does not mean the state you live in would make firearms illegal. The various states will have there own laws regulating firearms just as they do know so you would need to move to the more firearm friendly states just as some do now.
I liked what I read, but this caught me right away:
"most will be hit hard, due to being unprepared"
Nope. I think being hit hard or not will depend on what industry you work in, where you live, your access to locally grown food, the stability of your immediate surrounds, the racial composition and balance of your city, accumulated regional wealth in money and materials, the level of sophistication of your local leaders, the proximity to trade routes, regional security, availability of industrial machinery.
Individuals can finesse a few things, but it's a really small list. When all the above are not working for you then it won't matter much how well you prepared yourself, the wave of everything broken will wash over you like a tsunami.
If there is one thing I have given more thought to since 2008 it is this. I wholehearted agree. It is very much a YMMV thing depending on a host of circumstances. And I accept that I am potentially in rough shape as a result of external variables.
No man is an island. Much like centerline, I too have given great thought since 2008 but I was also doing so well before 9/11/01. Here is what is going to happen, THEY WILL KEEP PRINTING MONEY UNTIL WE ARE ALL BROKE. If there is a central bank around there will be primary and secondary banks and they will all fuck you. They will own everything. They can outlast you and I unless something else happens.
"unless something else happens"
The universe doesn't care what we think, about anything. So you can just about count on something unexpected to happen every single time.
Depends on how bad and for how long and how prepared you are. Me, inching toward 70, if endurance is critical I'm borderline. Sick people that need meds and those too fat to walk a quarter mile without laying down from exhaustion will be the first to go. If you live in a city and the water shuts down, good luck. Heat goes off and you live in the north with no firewood or heavy clothing is not a good idea.
I've got water a 10th mile away and 2 years of stove wood in the yard. I also have a heavy duty treadle sewing machine to swap services or goods for sewing cloth or leather. Too bad one of my neighbors is a bat shit crazy Neanderthal ex cop. I'll have to shoot him if he tries to break in.
Tell you what, you might have to shoot him ahead of time just to not have to worry about him losing his shit some random day when you aren't ready for it.
I can't believe I even wrote that. But there you go, because there is no more slack in the system. In our new reality crazy fuckers take the dirt nap and nobody sheds a tear.
watching too much "walking dead"?
Probably not enough.
Nah, living in a major metroplex (DFW) and wouldn't want to miss the party. In my sixties and not much illusion of my physical possibilities. Besides, living rurally, you generally know your neighbors, which might prove to be a critical hesitation in that crisis situation. In the city, you don't know (or like) your neighbors. A target rich environment.
I anticipate it being something post nuclear, not much fun in the aftermath.
We've been talking about collapse for a long time, but we might be one key step closer.
The financial fraud pandemonium continues unabated but now a few countries with cpabale militaries are beginning to openly flout USSA. Without absolute military supremecy the money changers will have a hard time screwing everybody with things like QE.
Along the lines of major change coming is this story about Aussies using the new Chinese international settlement bank. As the Aussies are about our strongest fascist alliy, this bypassing use of the US dollar is getting serious.
http://www.afr.com/news/world/asia/bank-of-china-sydney-processes-first-renminbi-transaction-after-cips-launch-20151008-gk4lbd#ixzz3oI2IHyhE
The Bank of China in Sydney processed the first Chinese currency “Renminbi” transaction in Australia on Thursday morning following the China’s launch of the new China International Payment System (CIPS). The system will spearhead worldwide trade settlements in the renminbi and its launch marked a significant milestone in the internationalisation of the renminbi. Bank of China Sydney’s first transaction was a RMB37 million ($8 million) transfer to China for a local Australian company on Thursday morning. For the first phase of the CIPS, the China central bank has approved 11 domestic banks and eight foreign banks to participate in the new system.
So this guy is telling me he predicted the crashes in both 2000 and 2008 as well as the response of the Central Bankers and that the response would cause a temporary lull with the main collapse to follow. Yeah right, he predicted it all ahead of time. He's so full of shit you could unscrew his head and dip it out.
me personally, I know I am going to die, but I intend to fight to the last breathe. in fact, I'm going to fight like a mother f*cker.
I don't mind at all. I welcome it
Yep, any one who's done any serious traveling at all in the 80% of the world that's a shit hole...knows America really is the hill to die on and for.
For the most part, having been around the world 5 or 6 times, I would agree.
Course, if you are some Bedou out in the desert you won't even notice it, but who wants to sleep with a camel on those cold desert nights?
Anecdotally sculpting some hypothetiocal future, professing dead-reckoning-clairvoyance by remembering previous predictions that seem more true now than when these were made, is a common pasttime, one that festers as it prospers here in the alternative media. As bad as the main stream media is, the alternative media is just as bad, even worse. Human nature is indeed human nature.
One problem is, these all too common clairvoyants always forget their past predictions that failed, bringing a long series of floods, during their mightily predicted drought. The kudzu grew right over the barn!
Another problem is, reality is infinitely complex. And to make matters even worse, reality is a unidirectional phenomenon that is one-off every step of the way. If reality weren't always one-off like that, the progosticators' religion would be the truth. And really, the truth is as scare as hens teeth.
And then we get down to the nitty gritty of that which came to us as truth from other sources, sources we all know lie and fabricate false models, because, once again, it is human nature to lie, to stretch the truth, or to cover up the unsightly reality.
The best education one can get involves going back through the literature in any field, and reading the predictions of the past. Even what were once statements of rock-solid truth made and accepted in the past, are something from which we all can learn about what is being passed-off as the truth from the most erudite today.
An Eighteenth Century English bureaucrat of the highest rank, and far more learned than anyone alive today, who read, wrote and spoke all the European languages and Greek and Latin, and had read everthing available in his time, once made this statement to his only son in a letter, not once, but numerous times.
"I never met a woman who was rational."
God knows all men know this to be the blessed truth. But what Lord Livingston in the Eighteenth Century and almost every man alive since hasn't yet reckoned well enough, is this. What men think is rational is very far from it.
This is a very rich country, even during a depression. This is a country to which rich people, and rich families flee during a depression.
These comment posters that beckon the depression that is already upon us, are naysaying fools who have not yet begun to fathom how to seize the opportunity that abounds everywhere all around us.
Oh Bullshit! Your idea of wealth is an illusion based on debt and a constant plundering of the private citizens by government entitities who tax us to no end for what amounts to bullshit. Wealth, however you might define it is constantly misallocated into the pockets of those who make the rules. The current system is nothing but a system of wealth transfer and that is true everywhere in the world. The only reason people like you get away with this shit is that only about one out of every 100,000 people on the fucking planet knows exactly why they never have any money thanks to paying off the older generations with bribes.
Give up? Fuck you.
Give up??? You can send me all the Federal Reserve notes you don't want. LoL
Look sonny-boy... I've never had a loan or a credit card in my life, and neither has my wife. So, if you signed up for a student loan, flunked out due to all the dope you smoked, and cannot hold a job for the same reason, you're getting what you deserve.
LMAO! You'll end up either over-dosed or with your ass pinched in the slammer. And then middle-age will bring you the typically colloquial Homer Simpson-esque wisdom as your hair falls out, your teeth rot out of your head and your belly distends hideously over your belt. A lot of your friends are going to die well before they're fifty is my guess. Look around! See all those losers? They're your compadres!
Now hold your breath until your face turns beet red, and see if you don't just pass out.
How old do you think I am? I have no debt and I am not fat. You have not been here long and we have share of new trolls everyday. If it is your first time at fight club then you have to fight.
What is with the following statement?
"I've never had a loan or a credit card in my life, and neither has my wife."
If that is true that means that you were quite privileged and therefore of the elite class who have never done a day of actual work in their lives. What are you going to tell me next, that you saved every nickel you ever made and invested in stawks and now you live well? That is what you are going to try to tell me isn't it? Let me tell you something Captain Lexicon, I can read as well but I can read between the lines so to speak. Whatever it is that you are reading is not what I am reading.
Until you address the folks here with some degree of respect you can fuck off. If you think you are intellectually elite you will find out that there are ten people here who are more knowledgeable on any given subject, each, than you are. Go shove your braggadocious comments up your ass.
"How old do you think I am?" Too easy. You can read? LoL Don't write in the first person plural, "we". It makes you sound a bit cuckoo.
You're the one started in "FU." You sound to me like you're someone who exhibits the common sort of retromingent personality that trolls the comment boards trying to prove something what you must delusionally envision to be "fight club" manhood. Woo hoo! Homer. You're doubtless more than a thousand miles away from me. So stop beating your digital goon chest.
LoL You're too easy, Mr. "We."
The folks here generally don't deserve much respect. They're mostly like you, with nothing to add but belligerent "fight club" twaddle, libertarian screed, or bullion bluster.
You don't know squat. You just keep reading between the lines, Twaddle. It perfectly describes what is going on inside your head.
The article was about yet another prediction of a coming economic collaspe leading to economic depression. But you are much clearer evidence of the current intellectual depression evidenced by the endless trolling that goes on here and elsewhere online. Surprise everyone. Go read a book, and then come back and tell your "we" friends what was in it that you learned. You cannot generally have a running argument with a book. The experience will do you some good. It'll teach you to keep your mouth shut, if you don't want someone telling you when you are acting like a fool.
Paraphrasing Disraeli: Methinks you have become intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity.
That is possible.
However, he appears to simply be another troll with a lobotomy.
Damn it - I can feel it in my BONES!!!
Here...pull my finger
I can feel it in my Boner! Suck it bitch!
Better change yer name to "bent dick clinton"
The reader might study the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 if he is uncertain of just how disastrous protective tariffs can prove to be.
I no longer agree with the implication that tariffs would have a net disasterous effect on our economy, considering the gutting of our manufacturing / exporting base.
Absolutely agree with you. The Smoot Hawley had almost nothing to do with the Great Depression. It was a structural depression where the mechanization of farming resulted in reducing the number of farmers in America by 65%. Tractors farm a lot more land than mules.
As to today, since GDP is by definition the sum of consumption, investment, government spending and NET exports, raising tariffs would reduce imports, reduce the US's massive trade imbalance and INCREASE GDP. This is before even taking into account that corporations would be falling all over themselves to invest in plants AND hire workers in the US in order to sell to the most wasteful, consumers in the WORLD.
This article was written by an ignoramus posing as a four year old playing a lawn jockey for the Eccles building.
+10!
In today's situation, if we raise tariffs, we may get some industry back.
Take away Corp. Welfare!!
I'm sick of this lie that we cannot protect our jobs and industry without bringing the wrath of the world down on our heads. Every other country in the world has tariffed the living shit out of us while we politely bend over and take it up the ass. You cannot sell anything to Canada or Mexico (our two bordering neighbors) without paying a tariff or import fee, whereas the opposite is not true. We see one disastrous trade deal after another (not treaties as that would require a congressional approval and those fucks don't want THEIR fingerprints on this shit), each one the one that will save us. Every time tariffs are discussed, we are told that trade wars would break out and we would lose what trade we have. I ask....how is running a constant trade deficit better than no trade at all? This is only sustainable if we intend on NEVER paying our bills. We are seeing this starting to unwind now. They are not going to accept our funny money forever, and what dollars they do have will be spent buying up what remaining assets we still hold.
I have no doubt that every trade deal done is for the benefit of specific winners, not the American people, especially not for the American worker.
These guys need to work out the obvious implications of their stainless record of nebulously-dated predictions.
There is no safe bolthole, no benign government that is going to guard your foreign wealth, and no place that will not be visited by the hurricane. Nobody is going to take care of you any longer.
It's about to be the Fourth of July on a global scale.