[The stock market did very well in 2Q 2020, but the] economy, on the other hand, was severely scorched. Decades of debt had built up like dead wood amongst a forest understory. Then, at the worst possible time, government lockdown orders sparked a match and set it ablaze.And for some really depressing news, Mr. or Ms. Gordon writes:The results were predictable to everyone but the experts. Supply chain disruptions followed by retail disruptions, followed by declining sales, followed by disappearing cash flow, followed by layoffs, followed by business closures, followed by shrinking tax receipts, followed by unserviceable public and private debt, followed by mass bankruptcies, followed by riots, followed by full societal breakdown. The economic wildfire raged through so fast most people don’t comprehend what has happened.
The interim solutions from Washington, in concert with the Federal Reserve, have been to add more fuel. That is, the solutions have centered around mega efforts to paper over the economic depression with massive amounts of fake money.[1]
Indeed, the systematic destruction of the dollar, as a matter of policy, has grave consequences. Something big and ugly is coming.[2]As one recovering alcoholic put it after recounting the utter disaster his life had become when he was an active alcoholic, "And my best thinking got me there." It is tempting to think that all of this is mere misjudgment, a series of honest judgment calls that went sideways. But that kind of thinking is for naifs and the addle-brained. This was avoidable a long time ago but every last opportunity that presented itself along the way to reverse course and re-embrace sanity was firmly declined like an invitation to a Nancy Pelosi pole dance.
Returning to sobriety left town on a rail to cries of "neo-liberalism!!!" and "austerity!!!"
We are so screwed with, inter alia, a corrupt Supreme Court, a hollow shell of a Constitution, vote fraud as astra, a predatory and hostile political elite, stifling monopolies, lunatic feminists, homosexuals and their corrosive agenda, a corrupt press, and half the population determined to recreate the Bolshevik catastrophe and turn the country over to millions of parasitic, hostile, non-assimilating foreigners and minorities in the process until their usefulness evaporates and firing squads can be organized. "Thank you for your service."
Notes
[1]
"'Something Big & Ugly Is Coming' - Game Over Spending." By M.N. Gordon, ZeroHedge, 7/10/20 (emphasis removed and added).
[2] Id. (Emphasis removed.)
"... a Nancy Pelosi pole dance."
ReplyDeletePlease Dear God, pass the Brain Bleach. Over the years I've witnessed some terrible things but nothing as terrible as that mental picture.
"...every last opportunity that presented itself along the way to reverse course and re-embrace sanity was firmly declined..."
ReplyDeleteI expect people in the future will read about these days the way we read about the Bolshevik Revolution or the French Revolution. One thing that's always struck me when reading about those disasters is how many chances there were to do something different, and yet somehow, the people in charge invariably made the wrong decision. It wasn't just one wrong turn, it was turn after turn after turn, always the wrong way, always making things worse.
It's like when an airplane crashes - the investigation shows that it's rarely ONE thing going wrong, someone pushing the wrong button and the plane falling out of the sky. It's a chain of events, one bad decision after another, leading to catastrophe.
Now I know that the people who lived through those earlier revolutions weren't completely taken by surprise - well, not all of them, anyway. There are people today who can see quite clearly where this obsessive wrong-headedness will lead, and they talk about it all the time, but I feel it's already too late. Too many wrong turns have been taken, a lot of them the ones that led to utter mediocrities gaining control of government and society. Now these "leaders" are like people in a dream, forcing the machine in a plummet toward the ground, and fighting off anyone trying to correct the descent. I don't know if they want to die, or if they're so lost in fantasy that they think they have super powers and can defy the laws of nature.
I know what you mean, Old Fart. She used to model in a bikini for a garage, if memory serves me. Then her career took a turn for the worst!
ReplyDeleteDr. M, that's an astute description of some antecedents to our situation. I read recently a commenter's take on chaos, namely, that people in times past had an appreciation of it and the danger of its reoccurence. The more comfortable people are and the more secure they feel the less they internalize that danger. I've done a little reading about 16th- and 17th-c. England and the crowned heads seemed to have a healthy appreciation of treason. Now treason, subversion, and sedition is the stuff of late night comedy, as is the notion of "the established order." Thus, at every turn, we slide further down the slope towards idiocracy and insurrection.
ReplyDeleteI think we need to bring back the medieval English concept of the outlaw. Step off the straight and narrow and it's life in Sherwood Forest for you, mate. To be killed without penalty if it comes to that. I view the idea that a convicted criminal has "paid his debt to society" merely by serving time in prison is wrong. The prisoner's sentence is served and liberty awaits but there should be many years of civil disabilities and adverse criminal legal presumptions, such that if your shot on somebody's front lawn it's conclusively presumed that your intent was to commit a violent act. Ditto, violence in defense of property. The present rule is that it's impermissible, property being much less important than human life. However, that changes if you are still within your 10- or 20-year period of civil and criminal disability. Touch my car and if you end up dead for some good or bad reason it's not on me but you, the "outlaw." Sort of an "outlawry per the point system."
Ditto, being a welfare recipient. Automatic disenfranchisement and death or injury within 300 yards of any act of arson, looting, or property destruction and you or your surviving relatives have no recourse against anyone.
Anyone who asserts a defense of self defense against such a person wins. Period.
Modern western civilization insists on dropping its defenses and ends up being hostage to the worst of the worst.
The takeaway for anyone with a record of conviction of a serious crime is to stay away from riots and the property of others.
The connecting thread here is the actual legal structure we have where we will NOT do anything that even hints at the notion that our society is excellent in many ways. Thus, non-action, non-decision as the impunity of Antifa filth demonstrates.