Is 2016 The Year Of The Dollar Collapse?
Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
On September 4, 1993, President Bill Clinton spoke about the American Dream in a weekly radio address.
He told his audience that “in America, the idea is that if you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll be rewarded with a good life for yourself and a better chance for your children.”
That’s what America used to stand for, and indeed much of the Western world. Freedom. Truth. Hard work and fair play. Building a better life.
But those ideals have all but faded now, displaced by a new normal of war, debt, government surveillance, freedom-killing bureaucracy, and a monetary policy that decimates responsible, hard-working people for the benefit of a tiny elite.
In his end-of-year commentary in the Washington Post, writer George Will summed up 2015 citing example after example of government overreach and excess–
- The value of property seized by the US federal government through Civil Asset Forfeiture exceeded the value of property stolen by burglars and thieves
- Florida police raided a Mahjong game played by four women aged 87 through 95 because they were *gasp* betting with their own money
- New Jersey police arrested a 72-year old retired schoolteacher for illegally carrying a firearm– a 300-year old flintlock pistol he had purchased from an antique dealer
- A 9-year old in Florida was threatened with sexual harassment charges for writing love notes to a girl saying that her eyes sparkled like diamonds
George Will’s list, of course, barely scratched the surface of the tip of the iceberg.
2015 was the year that the middle class was officially vanquished in the Land of the Free, with its share of the population falling to just 50%.
US federal debt reached nearly $19 trillion in 2015, an increase of almost $750 billion during the calendar year.
The US government published over 80,000 pages of new regulations, making it nearly impossible to understand ‘the rules’, let alone play by them.
2015 also saw the passing of incomprehensibly terrible laws, including the USA Freedom Act, which restored many of the worst parts of the PATRIOT Act that were set to expire.
Then there was the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, passed at the end of the year, which officially turns the Land of the Free into a gigantic information-sharing surveillance state.
And of course the 2015 spending bill, which as of 3 days ago, allows the US government to strip you of your passport if they believe in their sole discretion that you owe them money.
These are hardly the actions of a solvent, trustworthy government, or a nation that’s on the right track.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this story doesn’t have a happy ending.
We can pretend that this time is different, that this country is different, that there is some special sauce that allows this government to run massive imbalances forever.
But deep down we all know the truth… and where this is headed.
I’ve read no shortage of apocalyptic predictions suggesting that 2016 is the year of the dollar collapse. Or the global economic collapse.
Or something else that invariably ends in the word ‘collapse.’
I don’t believe that. First, no one can credibly answer the question “when?”
Governments have surprised us all with their uncanny ability to kick the can down the road and delay the repercussions of their folly.
But I don’t really think the question of ‘when’ is relevant.
Nearly every major western government is insolvent. Entire monetary and financial systems are insolvent.
Governments have destroyed their own middle classes, giving rise to the greatest wealth gap that has existed since the Great Depression.
The risks are obvious. And you either stick your head in the sand and ignore them, or you take steps to reduce their impact on your life.
It’s like anything else - if you live in a wildfire zone, you get fire insurance. And you’ll never be worse off for having good coverage on your home to protect your family.
Having a Plan B just makes sense, regardless of whether a major disaster occurs in 2016, next year, or never.
We can’t see the future, we can only see the risks today. Develop a Plan B that addresses those risks, and you’ll never have to worry about the future again.
(13 votes)
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My 2011-2014 answer: "Yes, headed for collapse. But PM, buy CAD." My ZH training told me so.
My 2015-2016 answer: "No. Other currencies are collapsing, getting flushed down the tubes." Reality check tells me so.
p.s. It pains me that every time I send a ZH article to my filthy rich father-in-law, he tells me to relax, because "ZH is sensationalist yellow journalism, like the National Enquirer of Finance". Ouch at his comment, and mega-Ouch for him having made like a bandit (via his Merrly Lynch guys) the last 4 years, where his millions just keep growing. Fucker!
\word
People who have never experienced a true bear market pay a heavy price for their greed. Your father in law will end up giving back all he's made the last 4 and 5 years because in addition to listening to himself, he'll be listening to a broker who's never been in a genuine bear market either. Nothing that is going on right now is normal or even rational and people have been severely brainwashed. There are few independent thinkers out there who are capable of rising above the din to see and understand what is really going on.
Sorry, but it appears that you are projecting....
Looks like 90% here think the dollar will rise?
I am shorting dollars and buying rmb!!!!
I have been to China 4 times since 2007 and I don't think they CAN be stopped!
Largest economy in the world and it grows at a mindboggling pace. Hedge accordingly!
Best of luck to you on that one. But I wouldn't take that chance.
The U.S. Dollar right now is perceived as a safe haven in times of trouble.If you think it's bad in the States,just travel (not to the MiddleEast),but all those people,the Chinese and everybody else wants in with their money and out of where they are.And that includes converting what's left of their currencies,like CAD which still have a lot farther to fall.Until that stops and it won't anytime soon,the demand for U.S. Dollars will continue.A lot of other currencies for better or worse are getting trashed.America will look after #1 first and get supplied with ultra cheap commodities and everything else.It's the way it works.
Jim Willie says the dollar rise is actually evidence of its impending collapse. Who the fuck knows anymore. Reality has been out to lunch since 2008; since CE 33; since BCE 12,000. All I know is that my gold and silver is heavy and my paper money doesn't weigh a thing, and I'm supposed to put total faith in it because some sneak wrote "In God We Trust" on its face. When God tells me the USD is halal then maybe I'll reëvaluate my life choices. Until then, I have more faith that I'll need the silver to dispatch werewolves than I believe anything uttered by our captured government.
Here's my plan B.
1. Keep my treasures safe in heaven. Any valuables stored anywhere else can and will be defaulted on or confiscated by whoever can outgun me---and rest assured, there's always someone who can outgun you.
2. Pray that I'm in a major urban centre when the Jonestown Option is applied, and that it please the Lord that I be one of the first to go. If you're wondering where Simon Black thinks he'll be shielded from the effects of nuclear winter, so am I.
We're all riding this tiger. If any of us get off alive, they'll have God's mercy to thank for it, not their own merit, real or imagined.
Anybody who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you crap you don't need.
I was out backpacking one day miles from the nearest shelter. But I had a shelter on my back if necessary. It started to rain so I went under a maple tree and sat down to eat some cheese and crackers and drink some energy mix. I think about if there were an emp set off I would not be able to get to a place to resupply before I ran out of food. We are all backpacking now right this second. Your home and the store and your income are all temporary convienences as far as you know. Plan B is to have something not temporary that will be useful when all else fails. Because it you just think you are on with what you find when the power goes out I feel sorry for you.
Well, with government at federal, state, and local levels, the largest employer in all 50 states, and then you add all those who depend on a government check like social security, or EBT, then all the business`s that depend on government contracts, it all adds up to government being over 50%, of the economy, if not more.....
And just like every socialist government in history, failure of the system leads to the government looking like a terminator flailing in molten metal to stay alive, by grabbing everything in site to preserve itself.......
Nothing collapses when people say it's going to collapse it does it out of nowhere.
It's pretty simple it's why being short on a macro basis can be so hard to time. Until a market starts heading in one or the other direction you can't really know exactly when just that it will go south but in this case at the first hint of true due south you could get a emmission of more QE or devaluation of the currency which will incinerate your shorts.
This is all by design you are playing in a casino where the house gets to print the dollars you cash you chips in for.
They can halve your payout at will.
It means nothing if you win a bet for 100k and get paid back less than you bet by the time you cash in.
They can crucify you with Theta at will.
They can screw with the VIX, they have most levers covered and unlimited printing machines to cover all bets.
What they can't do is make things actually better and they can't properly allocate capital, they can't make the right market choices and so as they do all this the underlying economy is getting DESTROYED.
ZH is good stuff. People getting pissed off is a good thing.
I've always been skeptical.
I remember clearly that as a very young..8-9? year old kid I observed some 'show' on the programming device (T.V) which provided a visual representation of Jewish families being essentially collected onto trains and then led to slaughter into concentration camps.
I was quite skeptical. I recall pondering this thought.. "Why would they just go along with it? Why wouldn't the parents at least try to protect the children"?
Of course that was way back then..
Even before bush, clinton, obama.
Slow Burn to 3rd world status I hate to say
Maybe we will get stuck in second world status
The term "3rd world" does not refer to economic or societal status.It was a phrase created by the US during the cold war.
1st world, captalism
2nd world,communism
3rd world,other.
"Is 2016 The Year Of The Dollar Collapse?"
I notice that everyone pushing this cult fantasy is also using it as the carrier wave to transmit their sales pitch for their services and products. This practice is known by several names, eg con job, bait & switch, propaganda, huckstering, etc. This method is most effective on those with the least intelligence.
In an age of instant gratification and casino finance, being right too early is the same as being wrong. But when it's your life and those you love at stake, it's always good to be right too early.
The US dollar is counterfeit anyway - Of course it will collapse - by DESIGN - The world population has doubled since 1970 - It will double again by 2060 - This is a REAL problem for the Zionist/Globalists - They don't FUCKING want you HERE !!!
I would say it has already collapsed. The monetary system has been seen for what it is, a scam. Living in theh UK, only the rich can buy houses. The incentive to work hard and buy a place of your own has long gone, and with it, the work ethic. The population is bored, and I feel, just hoping for something to happen, whatever it is. Things need to change, and that will only come from breaking the current paradigms. The whole system needs to be looked at again, like a business plan that has gone completely off track, it needs jump starting in a whole new way. Ideally one that doesn't have some form of slavery in it. One that means hard work by the poor is rewarded, rather than just taxed. I had a dream ... but it was regulated against.
"The population is bored...hoping for something to happen, whatever it is."
I have also noticed a strange kind of tension, a 'waiting' feeling, in people these days. I think we are experiencing a major psychological phenomenon where many feel dislocated, cast adrift...lost their anchor. Technology has brought benefits, but made us all suspicious and peevish with each other. Things are changing everywhere, too fast to adjust to, the rug is continually being pulled out from under you, and you feel like you're just waiting for the hammer to drop on you and yours.
When enough people start to feel that way, and you combine that with a bad economy and global tensions, you get a population that starts to look for a saviour.
Depending on the historical context, you can end up with a Hitler, or a new religious movement...and I think we are ripe for a new, worldwide-type of religion. The last big one was Islam, so we are due historically.
But when people feel 'adrift', and have no sense of continuity or meaning to their lives, when they begin to question everything they based their lives on, then they become receptive to other messages. We all know someone who has that profound inner shift and ends up quitting a lucrative job and going overseas to volunteer at some tropical toe-fungus clinic, or joins a cult or something. We see what this does to an individual...now imagine something like this nation or worldwide scale.
I can actually envision an anti-consumerist mindset that takes on a religious fervor, and a VERY different economy as a result...people deriving meaning from LESS instead of MORE, with the belief as impossible to fight as the notion that some guy once walked on water and spoke with God in the desert...debt and derivatives would be the equivalent of kiddie-porn. Usury would be the new abortion, and jobs in finance would be filled by Mexican illegals because no American wants those jobs.
I wonder what CNBC would be like in such a world?
An economy based on money printing cannot be sustained - simple.
the statement: An economy based on money printing cannot be sustained - simple.
is wrong
short answer: No
explanation: too much debt is nominated in dollars and still needs to be repaid in dollars
the statement: An economy based on money printing cannot be sustained - simple.
is wrong
Is false.
As the renowned economist Ludwig von Mises warned us decades ago: "There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." [Human Action, Regnery, 1966, p. 572.]
The only reason it hasn't collapsed already is that everything other dollar is fucking worthless. The U.S. isn't the only ones overdebted. I'm going to throw an idea out that will turn global garbage currencies around. My booty lovin', fried chicken eatin' swan 'predictioin' for fun:
Mexico backs peso with silver.
While our out of control govt continues to do their best to run the USD into the dirt, it's still holding up well in relation to others. The peso, yen, yuan, euro, etc have all fallen faster and the pound is also weakening, yet here we are saying it's the US dollar that's going to devalue overnite. Otherwise I'd have felt we're in for a dollar collapse but believe it's all become relative. Every country that can is also printing, under a deluded belief that they can create everlasting market highs with increasing amounts of stimilus. So it seems (as Peter Shiff put it) everyone's in a race to the bottom. While a fair porton of ZH commenters like to indulge in apocalyptic scenerios that arise within months or a year, I think a serious dollar devaluation (beyond just high inflation or cyclic market consequences) is still at least 15 years out. Look at the 2008 housing bubble for example...most don't realize that it started back in the early '90's and went largely unnoticed for most of that time.
Geopolitics will determine the life of the US dollar - The Chinese intend to collapse it - They know it is the only way to stop the financing of the WARS - Everything else is a guess or speculation !
Clever, very clever...
Why didn't I think that devaluing your currency against the dollar would bring about the dollars collapse...
\facepalm...