Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog [8],
Propaganda, phony fixes and more debt can only cover the widening gap between fiscal reality and official fantasy for so long.
So what else besides the potential for another global financial meltdown bears watching in 2014? Here are a few worthy prospects. Continuing our end-of-the-year tradition of exploring themes that have disruptive potential in the coming year, Gordon Long and I discuss a half-dozen such topics in 2014 Themes: CHS with Gordon T. Long [9](28 minutes).
My short list is centered not on one-time crises or potential black swans but on long-festering systemic problems that cannot be fixed within the current status quo, and thus they are destined to continue eroding systemic resilience. Kicking the can down the road and phony accounting "solutions" fix nothing, and so these systemic problems will eventually explode into crises that cannot be tamped down with the usual fiscal and monetary tricks.
Student loans and the impossible-to-solve conflict between skyrocketing local government pension and healthcare costs and delivering services to taxpayers/residents are both prime examples. Something's got to give in both of these bubbling pressure cookers, and propaganda, phony fixes and more debt can only cover the widening gap between fiscal reality and official fantasy for so long.
Five years of phony fixes have gotten us to 2013; I doubt the same illusions and tricks will get the global economy through 2014-2015 unscathed.