In Part 1 of this article I discussed the catalyst spark which ignited this Fourth Turning and the seemingly delayed regeneracy. In Part 2 I will ponder possible Grey Champion prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy.
The nearly seven year reign of Barack Obama has resulted in furthering wealth inequality, in spite of his socialistic rhetoric. Notwithstanding his Nobel Peace Prize, military spending is at all-time highs and we are engaged in actual and proxy wars across the Middle East and in the Ukraine. Race relations have never been worse. Poverty levels have never been worse. Real median household income is lower than it was in 1989. Real hourly wages are at 50 year lows. Home ownership has plunged to 50 year lows, as middle class workers have been kicked out of their homes and young people are saddled with so much student loan debt and bleak job opportunities they will never have an opportunity to own. The ownership society pushed by Clinton and Bush, with the proliferation of Wall Street created “exotic” subprime mortgages, peddled to people incapable of paying their mortgages, blew up the world in 2008, and the fall out will last for decades.
Meanwhile, Wall Street banks have reaped $700 billion of ill-gotten profits since 2010 as the Federal Reserve has handed them trillions of interest free funds to gamble with, while rigging the financial markets, and paying their executives obscene bonuses. The hubris and arrogance of the Wall Street titans is appalling, as they buy politicians, write toothless financial regulations (Dodd Frank) for their bought off politicians to pass, report fraudulent financial results with the stamp of approval from the FASB, blatantly rig interest rate, currency, stock and commodities markets, and use deception and propaganda to distract and mislead the public through their corporate media mouthpieces – dependent upon Wall Street advertising revenue to thrive.
And still, Obama has not prosecuted one banker for the largest control fraud in world history, as he assumed the role of useful puppet to the vested financial interests. I’m sure he will be paid handsomely after he leaves office in 2017, just as Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, and Ben Bernanke have been richly rewarded by their Deep State benefactors for a job well done.
Illegal immigrants are pouring over our borders with encouragement from the Obama administration. Obamacare has proven to be a giveaway to health insurance conglomerates, hospital corporations, and drug companies, as insurance costs are driven higher, care deteriorates, and deficits soar ever higher. The welfare state has grown to immense proportions, with 46 million Americans remaining on food stamps, proving the reported unemployment rate of 5.1% to be a fraud. The labor participation rate of 62.6% is at levels last seen in 1977 and far below the 67.1% rate achieved from 1997 through 2000. The politicians and corporate media applaud $600 billion deficits as an achievement, while 10,000 Boomers turning 65 per day is guaranteed to drive future deficits back over $1 trillion per year.
Laurence Kotlikoff, economics professor at Boston University, reveals the truth about our true fiscal mess. Our unfunded liabilities are too damn big and our current deficits are a lie:
“I told them the real (2014) deficit was $5 trillion, not the $500 billion or $300 billion or whatever it was announced to be this year. Almost all the liabilities of the government are being kept off the books by bogus accounting. The government is 58% underfinanced. Social Security is 33% underfinanced. So, the entire government enterprise is in worse fiscal shape than Social Security is, but they are both in terrible shape. So, how much is America on the hook for in the future? If you take all the expenditures that the government is expected to make, as projected by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), all the spending on defense, repairing the roads, paying for the Supreme Court Justices’ salaries, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, everything and take all those expenditures into the future and compare that to all the taxes that are projected to come in, and the difference is $210 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap. That’s our true debt.”
We now know for sure Barack Obama is not the Grey Champion of this Fourth Turning. He has only worsened the three core elements of this Crisis – debt, civic decay, and global disorder. Since his ascension to power, U.S. and global debt has expanded at an astounding rate never seen in world history. Class, race, political and cultural divides have grown to vast proportions. The world is exploding in violence, refugees flooding over borders, civil wars, proxy wars, riots, currency wars and economic depressions caused by U.S. military interventions and monetary policies.
The world is becoming increasingly chaotic and the American people are seeking a leader who can bring order, make tough decisions, and capture the zeitgeist of this moment in history. They are in search of a prophet generation (Boomer) Grey Champion, whose arrival marks the moment of darkness, adversity and peril as the Fourth Turning careens towards its climax. The Grey Champion doesn’t necessarily have to be a good person, but they must lead and display tremendous confidence in their cause and path. Franklin, Lincoln, and FDR have many detractors, but during their Fourth Turnings, they most certainly led, casting aside obstacles (sometimes illegally) and enduring dark days and bleak prospects for success. Is there someone of that stature ready to lead the American people now?
Gray Champion?
“Americans have always been blind to the next turning until after it fully arrives.
Most of today’s adult Americans grew up in a society whose citizens dreamed of perpetually improving outcomes: better jobs, fatter wallets, stronger government, finer culture, nicer families, smarter kids, all the usual fruits of progress. Today, deep into the Third Turning, these goals feel like they are slipping away. Many of us wish we could rewind time, but we know we can’t – and we fear for our children and grandchildren.
Many Americans wish that, somehow, they could bring back a saecular spring now. But seasons don’t work that way. As in nature, a saecular autumn can be warm or cool, long or short, but the leaves will surely fall. The saecular winter can hurry or wait, but history warns that it will surely be upon us.
We may not wish the Grey Champion to come again – but come he must, and come he will.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe – 1997
When Strauss and Howe wrote these words eighteen years ago, halfway through the Unraveling, the American Dream was already turning into a nightmare. Perpetually improving outcomes have turned into a perpetually declining standard of living for most Americans. Fear for the futures of our children and grandchildren were warranted. Millennials have been lured into and enslaved by $1.3 trillion of student loan debt, left with limited job opportunities and low pay, priced out of the housing market, and handed a $200 trillion bill by their elders. Despite factual data showing that default rates on for-profit student loans were even three times as high as subprime mortgages in the early 2000s, the government took over the student loan market in 2009 and proceeded to dole out $500 billion (taxpayer money) in new debt over the next six years to anyone that could fog a mirror and scribble an X on a loan document.
The criminal enterprises known as for profit colleges such as: University of Phoenix, Corinthian, ITT Tech, Strayer, and Devry, have absconded with the money, provided dreadful education, graduated about 20% of enrollees, and left millions of suckers with billions of debt. With default rates now exceeding 50%, students are angry, demanding relief from their own stupidity. Hard working taxpayers who have struggled to put themselves and their kids through college are angry they will foot the bill for defaults that anyone with a high school diploma could see would happen. Trust in the government’s decision making process and motives have been rightfully shattered.
It is clear the Obama administration purposely enslaved young people in debt to artificially lower the unemployment rate for political purposes. The issuance of colossal amounts of subprime auto loan debt (begun by Ally Financial when it was owned by the Federal government) has also been politically motivated to artificially increase GDP figures and pump up the financial results of the US automakers (GM, Chrysler) saved with taxpayer funds in 2009. There are no free markets left. Everything is manipulated for a political reason or to benefit a particular constituent. The average American pays the price, while the connected .1% are further enriched.
When young people protested against the true enemies of the people on Wall Street in 2011, they were maced, beaten, tear gassed, trampled by horses and imprisoned by the enforcers of the surveillance police state. The working middle class has seen their real wages stagnate for the last 50 years, as the dollar was unpegged from gold, politicians were free to run up the national debt with no short term consequences, and citizens were turned into consumers through media propaganda, the peddling of debt by Wall Street, and the complete and utter failure of our educational system.
While working class Americans have seen no advancement in their real wages in almost a half century, the cost of their food, energy, education, healthcare, housing, and taxes have risen astronomically. It is no coincidence the Wall Street bankers stepped in to offer prodigious levels of consumer debt in the form of credit card, mortgage and auto loans to allow Americans to pretend their standard of living hasn’t fallen. Excessive levels of debt leads to excessive profits for the moneyed interests. The last 35 years have been a grand national delusion.
Trust in the economic system, financial markets, political parties, mainstream media, and generational social contract has been destroyed. Rampant irresponsible fraud, abuse, deception, and deceit by the moneyed interests, lackey politicians, their government apparatchiks, media mouthpieces, and legal system have shattered the illusion the establishment is looking out for your best interests. The revelations by Edward Snowden of illegal mass surveillance, militarization of local police forces, military exercises in US cities, attempts to roll back the 2nd Amendment, and trying to control the internet has revealed the true nature of the corporate fascist state. The disintegration of trust began slowly after 9/11 but accelerated rapidly over the last three years. Our leaders have done the exact opposite of what needed to be done after 2008. Everything they have implemented has failed. The average American is worse off than they were in 2009 at the depths of the recession.
The highly educated, white collar, sociopath masters of the universe have captured the levers of power in this country. The world is enthralled and mesmerized by a gray haired academic troll-like figure who will ascend her monetary throne and pronounce whether her and her fellow central bank lackeys will raise an obscure inconsequential interest rate from 0% to .25%. This is nothing but a meaningless diversion as her owners (Wall Street banks), their corporate brethren, captured politicians, pliable judiciary, and media mouthpieces rig the financial markets to enrich themselves while impoverishing the masses and drowning current and future generations in un-payable debt. Harry Markopolos, who uncovered Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, while the SEC and criminal co-conspirator Wall Street bankers willfully ignored the blatant easily identifiable fraud, captures the essence of why trust in our economic, financial, regulatory, political, judicial and journalistic systems has collapsed:
“Government has coddled, accepted, and ignored white collar crime for too long. It is time the nation woke up and realized that it’s not the armed robbers or drug dealers who cause the most economic harm, it’s the white collar criminals living in the most expensive homes who have the most impressive resumes who harm us the most. They steal our pensions, bankrupt our companies, and destroy thousands of jobs, ruining countless lives.” – Harry Markopolos, Congressional Testimony
The men who retain the levers of power are the same men who were in command when the Crisis struck in 2008. They are even more powerful and rich today than prior to the financial collapse provoked by their unbridled greed and avarice. They believed they could engineer a recovery by promoting confidence in the Wall Street banks through the issuance of prodigious amounts of debt to solve a crisis caused by too much debt. Total debt outstanding in the U.S. rose from $52 trillion in 2009 to $59 trillion today, at the behest of the government and their Federal Reserve cohorts.
While rational thinking Americans have continued to pay down their mortgage debt and reduce credit card usage, the Federal government through their insolvent (if using mark to market accounting) entities Fannie and Freddie, along with their monopoly on student loan issuance, and their massive deficit spending, have accounted for more than 100% of the $7 trillion increase. Total global debt approaches $230 trillion, up approximately $70 trillion since the crisis began.
The mood change in the country is palpable as economic misery besets the middle class; race wars break out in urban ghettos across the land; push back against the police state intensifies; distrust of a rigged financial system keeps people out of the market; young people are priced out of the housing market by Wall Street price manipulation; productive good paying jobs dwindle; government bureaucrats prove themselves inept at everything they attempt; illegal immigrants pour over the southern border overwhelming the social safety net when it is already stretched thin; and faith in both political parties is close to zero. The regeneracy has been delayed, but this has allowed the anger, bitterness, and dismay with the government to grow to staggering proportions. The country is growing desperate for someone to lead. Ignoring the debt, civic decay and global disorder is no longer acceptable. It’s time for someone to step forward and tell the people the truth.
“Soon after the catalyst, a national election will produce a sweeping political realignment, as one faction or coalition capitalizes on a new public demand for decisive action. Republicans, Democrats, or perhaps a new party will decisively win the long partisan tug of war. This new regime will enthrone itself for the duration of the Crisis. Regardless of its ideology, that new leadership will assert public authority and demand private sacrifice. Where leaders had once been inclined to alleviate societal pressures, they will now aggravate them to command the nation’s attention. The regeneracy will be solidly under way.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe – 1997
The Grey Champion is likely to be elevated through an election, but it isn’t a requirement. Ben Franklin and Samuel Adams were the intellectual and firebrand Grey Champions of the American Revolution. They inspired the revolutionaries through writings and oratory. Lincoln and FDR were elected Grey Champions, but Lincoln only won 40% of the popular vote in a four way race, while FDR won in a landslide with 57% of the vote over Hoover. It was clear Lincoln didn’t have a mandate, as Southern states began seceding after his election. No one can argue Franklin, Adams, Lincoln or FDR united everyone in a common cause. They actually aggravated the societal pressures that had been ignored or deferred by their predecessors. Compromise was not an option for these men. They were going to lead based upon their own criteria. You were either with them or against them. And many were against them.
It is widely believed only 20% of colonial Americans were strong supporters of the American Revolution, with 20% Loyalists, and the rest sitting on the fence. Franklin’s own son remained a Loyalist throughout the fight. Half the country departed the Union upon Lincoln’s election and his support in the North was lukewarm at best. Lincoln captured 55% of the vote in the 1864 election, with only northern states voting. Even though FDR won landslide popular vote victories in 1932 and 1936, his detractors and enemies were many. FDR’s confiscation of gold and antagonism toward big business convinced a number of wealthy businessmen to approach General Smedley Butler to lead a coup against FDR and install a fascist regime to run the country. So, it is clear Grey Champions are not universally loved or supported. They have the ability to ignore the complexity of life and focus on one simple imperative: society must prevail.
Until three months ago the 2016 presidential election was in control of the establishment. The Party was putting forth their chosen crony capitalist figureheads – Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. They are hand-picked known controllable entities who will not upset the existing corrupt system. They are equally acceptable to Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, the military industrial complex, the sickcare industry, mega-corporate America, the moneyed interests, and the never changing government apparatchiks. The one party system is designed to give the appearance of choice, while in reality there is no difference between the policies of the two heads of one party and their candidate products. But now Donald Trump has stormed onto the scene from the reality TV world to tell the establishment – You’re Fired!!!
As Hillary’s crimes and lies catch up to her and Jeb Bush drowns in a sea of irrelevance, low energy, and passionless rhetoric, Trump and Bernie Sanders have surged ahead in the polls. The country is tired of the Clinton and Bush dynasties. They are tired of the existing ruling authority. My initial reaction to Trump’s entering the presidential race was scorn. He’s a bloviating, egocentric, self-promoting, reality TV parody of himself. After seeing him in action for the last three months it has become apparent the country deserves a president like Trump.
He represents everything we’ve become as a nation. Sound bites, no substance, self-involved, boastful, and in constant attack mode are the qualities necessary to lead America today. Facebook twitter nation merits a president like Trump. Bill Clinton playing sax on Arsenio and Obama’s weekly guest appearances on the Daily Show or Jimmy Fallon Show has already tainted and made a mockery of the office of the president.
Trump was born in 1946 putting him in the Boomer Prophet generation, so he fits the mold of Grey Champion from a generational perspective. Hillary and Jeb are also Boomers, with Sanders from the Silent generation. Trump has struck a nerve with a wide swath of middle class America with his anti-illegal immigration rhetoric, disdain for the elitist mainstream media, unflinching assessment of his second string GOP opponents, and exuberant confidence in his own abilities.
Building a wall on our southern border, going after billionaire hedge fund managers, cutting government spending, and negotiating trade deals that don’t ship American jobs overseas, are resonating with fed up households across America. Some polls show Trump with significant support among blacks and Hispanics. The linear thinking supporters of the status quo are flabbergasted and outraged by Trump’s popularity. The ruling classes never anticipate the mood shift of the peasants as they look down on the masses from their gated estates and penthouse suites. The country is looking for someone who can tear down the entire fetid, corrupt, rotting structure.
The moneyed interests are still betting on Hillary or Jeb, but they are getting nervous. There is still time for them to pull the old Ross Perot play by threatening Trump or his family with harm or making him an offer he can’t refuse in financial terms. But, with the Middle East awash in blood, refugees flooding into Europe, China experiencing an epic meltdown, oil producing countries suffering depressions, emerging market economic systems collapsing under the weight of unpayable promises, the Federal Reserve panicked as recession approaches with interest rates at zero bound, and stock, bond and real estate bubbles approaching the inescapable pin, the stars are aligning for a 2nd crisis more perilous and catastrophic than the 2008 catalyst event. The onset of phase two of this Crisis in 2016 will produce a populace more desperate, less trusting of the establishment and likely to turn towards someone like Trump, in despair.
No matter who is elected in November 2016, there is no turning back. Winter is here and Spring is many years away. Grim times will befall the world. The potential for tragic consequences is growing by the day. The storm clouds are gathering on the horizon. There will certainly be famine, chaos, death, destruction, and war. Let’s pray our Grey Champion can lead us through the valley of death to a new High.
“The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
In Part 3 I will try to assess which channels of distress are likely to burst forth with the molten ingredients of this Fourth Turning, and lastly make some educated guesses about potential climaxes.
This morning the weather turned and it became an inescapable fact that Autumn was here. There will be a larg faction of people who will lament the passing of Summer, those who relocate to the south for the duration, and the ones who stay behind thinking about and dreaming of another Summer ahead.
Very few people are prepared for reality, hardly anyone ever deals with what is rather than what they wish it would be and it is that division between us- the ants vs the grasshoppers- that sets the stage for a successful future or a failed one.
I have given up trying to explain any of this to people.
You remind me of the guy filling sandbags against the flood- admirable, courageous, hopeless all at the same time. Great writing, really fluid and well designed, like blueprints in their simplicity and precision.
Perfect assessment. Absolutely perfect.
“He represents everything we’ve become as a nation. Sound bites, no substance, self-involved, boastful, and in constant attack mode are the qualities necessary to lead America today. Facebook twitter nation merits a president like Trump. Bill Clinton playing sax on Arsenio and Obama’s weekly guest appearances on the Daily Show or Jimmy Fallon Show has already tainted and made a mockery of the office of the president.”
In response to incremental and apparently unceasing threats to their pride, their position in life, their status or inability to either attain it or maintain it, or just their fundamental dignity, American culture has devolved into simmering rage. And rage leads to impulsive action – anger unleashed. Trump, and to lesser extent Sanders, are simply manifestations of this, symbols personified.
When people react impulsively, particularly in large groups, they can affect change, but history has shown time and again why the old adage, “Be careful what you wish for, you may just get it.” is so true. People often imply their willingness to sacrifice for change – but let’s be realistic: for the vast majority who claim this, it’s true.just so long as their own lives aren’t actually impacted.
Wow Mr. Quinn, you missed your true calling. Nancy Pelosi said that O’care (and SNAP) would make it so artists could follow their passion, too bad you are both eloquent, and a God loving family man that still believes that taking care of the family today, and in the future, has to come before artistic dreams. I so respect and admire your take on our Turning.
You state that, “..They believed they could engineer a recovery…” and it is the only thing I don’t agree with. I firmly believe that our Overlords are firm believers in the Agenda 21 type world. In that world we, the American and European middle class, MUST be eliminated to eliminate the opposition to their plans. This financial disaster is no more accidental, nor in spite of, their financial (and other) wranglings. They NEED this to happen, they WANT the little (comparative) wealth the small business middle class has. One or two trade deals, bailouts, H1-B visa deals, or changing of statistical data points and I’d agree that they were actually trying to “fix” our country. As the evidence mounts of disastrous financial fallouts, coupled with ever more Federal and State mandates and regulations, and fewer jobs, and it starts to look like this is totally on freaking purpose. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, well damn, it just might be a duck.
As I know you do your own edits, in the final Stauss & Howe excerpt/quote, there is one sentence repeated, “Regardless of its ideology, that new leadership will assert public authority and demand private sacrifice…” is there twice.
Thanks again Jim, you rock.
HSF: ” Great writing, really fluid and well designed, like blueprints in their simplicity and precision.” Thank you! You’ve stated my take on this piece perfectly.
I moved south for the duration, but I’m entering the winter of my own life and have never been enamored of my generation’s “prophets”. Politically, I share Pat Buchanan’s views for the most part, culturally as well, making me something of a throwback to the “silents”, although Bernie is very much a sixties throwback in spite of his age. If there is to be a “gray champion”, I suspect he (yes, that’s right, “he”) will be someone who is still beneath the radar, whose rise to prominence will occur if and when there is a serious collapse, a likely but not foreordained event. If it does, I am not optimistic as to its outcome: all too often in history, emotion trumps reason in times of crisis. Where is Cincinnatus when we need him?
I haven’t forwarded anything in a while – but I’ll forward this.
One quibble …..
Everything they have implemented has failed.
“Where leaders had once been inclined to alleviate societal pressures, they will now aggravate them to command the nation’s attention.”
Have they failed?
Kunstler, in his article today, thinks the financial crisis that hits in 2016 will be so bad that there won’t be a 2016 election. He’s pondered a military overthrow for a couple years now. I’d say it’s unlikely, but who knows.
Could the Grey Champion be a General?
Humans have known for eons that they were not capable of governing themselves, and thus the invention of Gods and Angels to try and help them make sense of our animal natures.
Governments are run by humans, so we need to stop blaming “The Government”. Lets start calling a spade a spade and point out those in the human population that cannot be trusted to be altruistic in their nature, and govern responsibly.
If a supposed “Expert” convinces our elected officials to act in such a manner that the outcome is disastrous, then that expert needs to also be brought up on charges of Fraud.
If the American people adopted this approach those idiot Phds Professors and their ilk will soon stop meddling in affairs of which they are not in command. Just because some loud mouth college educated idiot professes to know something, it is still just conjecture regardless of their protestations that they have the answer to our problems.
Our problems are very simple really. Our Animal natures still rule the world and everything used to try and manipulate and control that nature has come up against a brick wall.
Sooo….. Apparently all the control mechanisms are still in the experimental stage where trial and error are considered part of the learning curve. Also, apparently we would give over our responsibilities to anyone who professes to know something with an authority that seems God-Like. And like those supposed Gods, have the power to back their ignorance. Think – America’s Foreign Policy to start with……
James Quinn for Grey Prophet, 2016
Vote James Quinn! A vote for James Quinn is a vote to go fuck yourself!
(Technically not a Boomer by S&H definition, but probably close enough to be considered an outlier Prophet.)
“Neo-feudalism (literally new feudalism – the terms are used interchangeably in the literature refers to a theorized contemporary rebirth of policies of governance, economy and public life reminiscent of those present in many feudal societies, such as unequal rights and legal protections for common people and for nobility.
The concept of “neofeudalism” largely focuses on economics. Among the issues claimed to be associated with the idea of neofeudalism in contemporary society are class stratification, globalization, mass immigration/illegal immigration, open borders policies, multinational corporations, and neo-corporatism.”
Donald Trump the Gray Champion? He may just be a bit too orange.
The chill in the air is most welcome here on our little piece of the Ozarks. Like HSF, we know it means Autumn is here and Winter is coming, but also like him, we have been planning for this season for many years. Now that it is closing in, we are racing like ants to get everything ready.
We prepare not necessarily for ourselves, but as some great-thinking men (whom we were once allowed to think of with great pride as our forefathers) said, but for our children and for our posterity if they manage to salvage anything worthwhile from the rubble. Unfortunately, we know now that we should be ashamed of every single one of those white sexist men who penned those words and set out upon what was the greatest social experiment attempted based on the idea that an individual’s worth was not defined by parentage or societal status, but by how much of his own energy, time and sheer willpower he was willing to devote to improving his lot in life. And, of course, we also have to cringe that I, a woman, would use the term “he” without apology or clarification.
Well, I refuse to clarify. If you don’t understand or accept the idea that family with a man as the head of household, providing for and protecting his progeny was believed to be the cornerstone on which the foundation of a strong and lasting society could be formed, then you don’t understand that the great melting pot this country became because of the opportunities available to the individual was made possible because the foundation of the structure was solid and VALID. Even a house of cards will stand for a time on a solid foundation. Nothing will stand on shifting sand.
So now that the foundation has been weakened by multiple attacks on the family unit as the basic building block on which civil society exists, our society wobbles and sways. What will be the great event that topples our house of cards? At this point, it doesn’t really matter… it only matters that you know it is falling soon.
So, yes, we watch the election circus with disgusted interest. Quite often, Nick and I talk about whether the admiration we feel for the “great leaders” we learned about when we were in the military is the result of propaganda or if such a thing as courage and loyalty really did at one time exist in the upper echelon of our political establishment. Because, we know without a doubt it is not there now.
Your article was most welcome and did not disappoint. I had not read about The Four Turnings until I happened upon TBP. Now that I have, I find myself looking to history to see if the patterns are always similar. So often we hear the decline of our great nation compare to that of Rome. I have been reading excerpts from The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, by Peter Heather (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). This in particular strikes me as intriguing —
A horde of Gothic immigrants was given amnesty and allowed to cross the Danube River on the west in 375 A.D. Because the Romans were fighting the Persian empire on the East, they were short on manpower in the Balkans, so the Emperor admitted the Gothic refugees. However, once the refugees ran out of food supplies, they began their own assault on the Empire from within.
Hmmm… it does seem hauntingly familiar.
Shiller called the 2000 bubble and the 2007 bubble. He’s now calling out the 2015 bubble.
Shiller: Investors haven’t been this worried about a stock-market bubble since 2000
By Barbara Kollmeyer
Published: Sept 14, 2015 6:04 a.m. ET
But don’t expect big market reaction from any Fed hike
Investor fears that the stock market is overvalued have hit their highest level since the dot-com bubble’s peak in 2000, and that could lead to a bear market, warns Nobel-winning economist Robert Shiller.
“It looks to me a bit like a bubble again with essentially a tripling of stock prices since 2009 in just six years and at the same time people losing confidence in the valuation of the market,” the Yale University professor told the Financial Times in an story published Sunday. “When we see a correction and an increase in the VIX, the problem is the short-run thing of when will it turn?”
Shiller said those investor fears are showing up in his valuation confidence indexes, which are based on his surveys of investor sentiment. These indexes indicate that worries are at their greatest level since 2000. Shiller expressed concerns around a valuation confidence index in an interview with MarketWatch in the spring, when he noted confidence had been dropping for the past year.
Recent increases in the CBOE Volatility Index VIX, +5.95% and market volatility also indicate that people are thinking “worried thoughts… and it suggests to me that many people are re-evaluating their exposure to the stock market. And we could see aftershocks of the correction,” though he said that may not happen right away.
However, Shiller downplayed any potential market fallout if the Federal Reserve goes ahead with an interest-rate increase at its meeting this week. Markets are divided over whether the central bank go ahead with a hike.
“It has been talked about for so long, everyone knows that it’s coming. It’s just not that much of a big deal,” he said.
Read: Fed clarity won’t help to ease stock market volatility
He also discussed his much-debated valuation measure, the cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio or CAPE. It’s the ratio of the S&P 500 SPX, -0.20% to trailing 10-year average earnings. Shiller and others say the CAPE ratio shows stocks are overvalued, but that’s been the case for years while stock prices have been going up.
Among the criticisms, some say CAPE isn’t reliable as it was distorted by a drop in earnings after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008. Shiller said that fall in earnings came from a deep recession, and that normally companies take write-offs early during a recession, giving earnings time to recover. “If I average over 10 years I don’t see that as a problem,” he told the FT.
And yet another maga-wealthy ‘champion’ takes over, and this one is a limousine lliberal:
“Australia is facing the prospect of its fifth leader in eight years after Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Monday was challenged by his popular communications minister after months of speculation and poor showings in opinion polls.
Malcolm Turnbull, a multi-millionaire former tech entrepreneur, said he would seek the leadership of the ruling Liberal Party after being urged “by many people over a long period of time” to run amid criticism of Abbott’s performance.
“Ultimately, the prime minister has not been capable of providing the economic leadership our nation needs,” Turnbull told reporters at parliament house in Canberra.
“We need a different style of leadership.”
Turnbull was Chairman of Goldman Sachs Australia from 1997-2001.”
I was finally able to talk my mom into reading some of your articles. She says you’re either real smart or a fool pretending to be real smart. She hasn’t made up her mind.
She said she thought Stucky was funny.Anyway looking forward to the third part.
bb
I’m a fool pretending to be smart. She nailed it.
I think the US will mirror Oz with our next election, the Bernmeister will be voted in, and he will FDR the shit out of everything, destroying whats left of American manufacturing and crippling the middle class as he gives everything he can find away to the poor.
Such a shame, we know how to fix this problem, but people have been enamored of the “Broken Window Fallacy” for too long, and thats not going to change now.
Wealth is gained through production first and foremost. Emptying the pockets of the producers to fill buy out the consumers is a one-way ticket to a Chinese Democracy.
Rumplestiltskin’s post reminded me of this line from Firefly.
“A government is a body of people usually—notably—ungoverned.”
-Shepard Book
It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. Yogi Berra. I’m sure glad I left part 1 alone, a lot more red meat here. A lot more everything here.Tough to argue with any of your facts, Jim, but there’s lots of other stuff here that runs contrary to my basic thinking. Gonna have to let this soak in a little. You are far more fatalistic than I am. To be continued.
A lot of opinions up today from people I admire and respect, yourself, hussman, kunstler, and schiller, and yet I’m not convinced at all. Am I missing something? That’s a hell of a lot of current to swim against. Hmmm.
Clinton Crash Continues: Hillary Loses Majority Support For First Time
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/14/2015 13:55 -0400
The massively-funded Hillary Clinton campaign to run for President goes from worse to worserer. As The Hill reports, Clinton’s support has fallen 21 points since July, from 63 to 42%, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Monday, dropping below 50% for the first time.
As The Hill reports, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is faltering in her bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, a new national poll of Democratic-leaning voters shows.
Clinton’s support has fallen 21 points since July, from 63 to 42 percent, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Monday, dropping below 50 percent for the first time.
Support for Clinton has particularly eroded among women, an integral demographic for her campaign, falling from 71 percent two months ago to 42 percent now.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who gained 10 percentage points since July, now stands at 24 percent support in the poll, while Vice President Joe Biden has gained 9 points amid increasing interest in a potential White House bid, putting him at 21 percent now.
Should Biden opt not to run, Clinton leads Sanders, 56 percent to 28 percent.
A majority of Americans, 55 percent, said they disapproved of the way Clinton has handled questions about her use of private email while serving as secretary of State. That includes a third of Democrats, 58 percent of independents and 83 percent of Republicans.
Fifty-one percent of Americans think Clinton broke government rules regarding private email, while nearly a third, 32 percent, say she didn’t. Nearly half of Americans, 49 percent, don’t consider her use of private email as a legitimate issue, while 44 percent do.
I’m just ready to get this show on the road. I’ve been ready for years, I’ve actually gotten lackadaisical, nothing breaks. I’m ready for the bottom to fall out and see the herd thinned out. To many dead beats leaching off the productive population. I am in top physical shape at 53 years old, I need to get this crisis kicked off now. I don’t want to see a continued slow decline over another decade, bring on the overnight collapse while I can still kick ass if need be.
I really don’t think anything is going to happen in the short run except another round of QE. I’ve said it a million times, War will come before the dollar collapse’s. Obama is not going to kick off a war so we should continue to drift along until the next President is in office.
Put in liberal women and Negroes (both considered 2nd class citizens) and all they want is revenge on the white man.
As long as the Fed can keep pumping money in the back door of the banks and the stock market, the lying / manipulation can go on for a long time. The corps will amass huge alleged wealth, and the banks will have a great balance sheet. This will keep enough of us serfs employed, and pay for all the entitlements.
However, some day, some day there will be a need for something more than money. Then all the billion and trillion dollar corps will be SOL.
The One-Man Roadshow of Donald Trump
By Monica Langley
NEW YORK— Donald Trump skipped breakfast one recent morning, blow-dried his hair in his Trump Tower penthouse and headed out to his personal Boeing 757 jet, dubbed “Trump Force One” since he emerged as the Republican presidential front-runner.
Seated in his plane’s living room, with its pearlwood and 24-carat gold trim, Mr. Trump worked alone, watching the big-screen TV and reading the day’s political news, mostly about him, with no binders of policy positions or talking points in sight. Upon landing, he waded alone into a throbbing mob desperate for his autograph at a packed Nashville rally.
It all fit the rule for staffers scrawled on a white board at campaign headquarters: “Let Trump Be Trump.”
The 69-year-old billionaire has soared to the top of the Republican field flying solo—a man and his plane, propelled forward by a gust of free media attention and virtually devoid of the staff, position papers, opposition researchers and ad budgets of modern campaigns. Now, though, with the time for summer flings ending and more serious voter examination just ahead, the Trump effort has reached an inflection point, at which he must decide whether he can continue to prosper as this kind of one-man show or whether the time for that is running out.
Travels and extensive conversations with Mr. Trump in recent weeks show that, while he is slowly beginning to bend to some candidate norms—opening state offices, readying ballot-access drives and preparing a tax plan—he continues to resist the experts’ view that he needs a conventional campaign apparatus.
“A lot of what I’m doing is by instinct,” Mr. Trump said in one of several interviews. “I assimilate a lot of information…and I believe in being strategic.” Instead of surrounding himself with what he called “political hacks,” Mr. Trump said, “I don’t need an inner circle.” His rationale: In an “age of specialization, I am tapping phenomenal people in every field.”
His tax plan, likely to come in the next couple of weeks, will reflect this approach. Figuring that “no candidate ever has known the tax code better than I do,” the longtime businessman issued directives: Simplify and cut taxes, help the middle class, solve the problem of corporate “inversions” in which companies move headquarters abroad, and “tax the paper-pushing hedge-fund guys.”
Without much staff, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has worked with outside advisers to flesh out the details of the tax plan, particularly to end up with a revenue-neutral result that neither raises nor lowers overall receipts. “We’re running an efficient organization with a business mind-set,” Mr. Lewandowski said. “We don’t need high-priced staff or consultants when leading authorities are volunteering to help Mr. Trump.”
Regarding his own tax rate, Mr. Trump said, “I would be happy to pay a lot more if it would help solve our country’s many problems.” He hasn’t released his tax returns but said he definitely would, without specifying when or the number of tax years.
Despite the bare-bones framework he has in place, Mr. Trump vows: “I will build a successful campaign for the long haul…I’ve never lost in my life.”
Republican strategist Kevin Madden said Mr. Trump faces new and serious threats. “One big question is whether he can turn momentum from celebrity fandom into an actual infrastructure to organize voters in cold gymnasiums in the dead of winter in Iowa…Trump hasn’t seen a full-on assault, which is just beginning, with millions of dollars in paid advertising and their relentless attacks.”
Criticism by his opponents is intensifying, calls for him to spell out what policies he believes in are growing, and Mr. Trump is entering the phase of the campaign cycle in which previous early GOP sensations have either faded or crashed.
Mr. Trump is reacting with characteristic bravado. “I hope they attack me, because everybody who attacks me is doomed.”
Surprise success
When he stood in Trump Tower’s marble-and-bronze lobby on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to announce his long-shot bid in June, few predicted the success Mr. Trump has had, not even him. “I had no idea I would do this well this fast,” he said, particularly after he was pummeled for calling some Mexican illegal immigrants “rapists” and “murderers,” which led Macy’s to drop his clothing line and Univision to end the Spanish broadcast of his Miss Universe pageant.
“The first two weeks were very bad for my brand,” said Mr. Trump, whose Trump Organization line of luxury properties includes hotels, golf courses and both residential and commercial high-rise buildings. In his office on Trump Tower’s 26th floor, the walls, tables and floors brim with testaments to his success—his best-selling books such as “Trump: the Art of the Deal,” magazine covers, the chair from which he told contestants “You’re fired!” on the hit reality-TV show “The Apprentice.”
After that rocky start, his poll numbers rose all summer, shaking up the GOP race and drowning out coverage of other contenders. The presidential bid is turning out to be “very good for the brand,” Mr. Trump said. “I’m No. 1.”
Jenny Beth Martin, chairman of the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, said the appeal is simple: “A lot of what Trump is saying is what many outside of D.C. are thinking.”
With fall arriving, Mr. Lewandowski is building what he calls an “atypical bottom-up model” of a campaign structure that has as many staff members in Iowa as in Trump Tower. “We get zero votes in headquarters,” said Mr. Lewandowski, from the sparse campaign office on the unfinished fifth floor in Trump Tower.
National political director Michael Glassner, who along with Mr. Lewandowski is among the few seasoned campaign operatives on the staff, said he has been Skyping with potential hires and renting space in states based on the electoral map. He is overseeing the nitty-gritty of ballot access in all 50 states and petition drives in the 11 that require voter signatures.
Press secretary Hope Hicks, a onetime Ralph Lauren model who was communications director in the Trump Organization’s real-estate and hotel division, juggles a demanding national press corps and a boss with a penchant for doing his own media. Daniel Scavino, who started as Mr. Trump’s caddie in high school and rose to operate one of his golf clubs, is running social media, in which he has been flooded with résumés and 98,000 messages in a month.
Donald Trump at his campaign headquarters in the Trump Tower in Manhattan, where his staff remains small. ENLARGE
Donald Trump at his campaign headquarters in the Trump Tower in Manhattan, where his staff remains small. Photo: Chris Buck for The Wall Street Journal
When a court overturned the NFL suspension of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady over “deflategate,” Mr. Lewandowski reminded his boss, a friend of the football star, “Don’t forget to tweet how happy you are that Brady is vindicated.” When Mr. Brady gave his first press remarks, a red Trump “Make America Great Again” hat was visible in his locker.
So far, the campaign website holds exactly one position paper, on the candidate’s now-well-known ideas for stopping illegal immigration. Besides a tax plan, Mr. Trump said he would begin releasing proposals on trade, health care and military and veterans issues.
But he added, “People don’t care about seeing plans. They have confidence in me.” There is little sign his is turning into anything like a conventional campaign.
Over Labor Day weekend, Mr. Trump stayed out of sight while other candidates paraded and picnicked in early-primary states, “That’s the exact opposite of what works for you,” Mr. Lewandowski advised Mr. Trump. “We want you where massive numbers of people can hear you and your messages, not a few watching you walk down a street.”
Instead, Mr. Trump huddled with advisers who volunteered to prep him for Wednesday’s debate on military and foreign-policy issues. Mr. Trump said he wasn’t cramming, though: “I’ve been prepping for 30 years.”
He limits his appearances largely to those before big crowds to ensure maximum media coverage. He will speak to about 20,000 in Dallas Monday night and then fly to Los Angeles to address veterans in front of the USS Iowa battleship. After Wednesday’s debate at the Reagan Library, he plans to fly overnight to New Hampshire for a rally in the first primary state.
Mr. Trump’s penchant for mocking opponents in his own party, as well as media figures, shows little sign of abating. Asked about a report of his disparaging former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina with the line “Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?” Mr. Trump said: “She’s got the wrong persona. I’m not talking about her looks. She failed miserably at HP and in her Senate race.” Ms. Fiorina later said she didn’t worry about what he meant but suggested she was getting under his skin.
Mr. Trump also has belittled former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s “low energy” style but now says he is losing interest because “Jeb is just single digits” in the polls. Instead, he now directs fire at former neurosurgeon Ben Carson : “Jeb looks like the Energizer bunny compared to him.” Mr. Carson declined to comment; Mr. Bush has said Mr. Trump can’t “insult [his] way to the nomination.”
Sometimes, Mr. Trump simply ignores the conventions. Before the first GOP debate, candidates were invited to go for a walk-through, microphone check and makeup stop. Mr. Trump skipped it all, getting off his plane in time to line up with his rivals right before walking on stage, a campaign aide said.
His circle of outside advisers is equally unorthodox. Mr. Trump recently dined with activist investor Carl Icahn to “energize Carl about dealing with China, Japan and Mexico,” he said. Mr. Icahn hosted the dinner on his apartment terrace and recalls telling Mr. Trump, “You’re striking a nerve with the people who are tired of getting screwed.”
But, Mr. Icahn added, “The rich guys in the Hamptons don’t like you too much.” Mr. Trump’s reply was, “Who cares? They are all giving money to Hillary and Jeb anyway.”
Mr. Trump said he is talking with some of America’s “biggest corporate names and finest negotiators” about renegotiating trade deals and making sure the U.S. isn’t disadvantaged. “I’ll give you each a country” to deal with if he wins, he said he has told them.
Another close adviser is his 33-year-old daughter Ivanka Trump, who oversees Trump Organization real estate and hotel development in addition to heading her apparel and accessories brand. She introduced her father when he announced his candidacy and talks to him several times a day. On Thursday, she stopped by to ask him to meet with a business client in the building.
In the meantime, Ms. Trump’s work leading the renovation of Washington, D.C.’s Old Post Office into a luxury Trump hotel is giving her dad an applause line on the stump: “I got it from the Obama administration—can you believe that? And it’s ahead of schedule and under budget!”
Irked by a sign
One of Mr. Trump’s themes has been his willingness to fund his own campaign while others “take money from lobbyists and special interests.” So when he swooped into Boston recently for an appearance hosted by a local auto magnate, he grew angry at a sign asking for $100 donations at the door to cover the event’s costs, and had his staff remove it. Even so, media reports called the gathering a fundraiser.
On on the flight back, Mr. Trump told his campaign manager, “I’ve turned down a $5 million donation, and then that stupid sign. My trip cost more than the $2,000 raised to cover their food.” Mr. Trump said he has spent around $2 million of his own money to date.
The next day, he headed to Nashville for a rally on his 757, which was largely empty as usual but for his four top campaign aides and five security guards sitting in back. There were no flight attendants or drinks served, but a binder of Miss Universe contestants was stacked in a corner with luxury magazines.
In Nashville, he told the audience, “I’m going to make this country rich again” and joked to them, “I need your friggin’ votes.”
Back home in New York, Mr. Trump said his real-estate business is evolving as he campaigns: “As the days go by, I give more and more to my children to run, and my executives.” His three older children with his first wife, Ivana, run divisions from the 25th floor. His fourth child, with ex-wife Marla Maples, is a student at the University of Pennsylvania, where Mr. Trump graduated from the Wharton School.
After work, he rode the elevator to the 68th floor to the penthouse home, decorated in Louis XIV style, that he shares with wife Melania and their 9-year-old son Barron. He emptied his pockets of germicidal hand wipes and $100 bills he sometimes hands to volunteers on the trail.
He caught up on news and the other candidates’ actions, as well as some of his own speeches recorded by his wife, who is more technologically adept. Mr. Trump doesn’t use a computer. He relies on his smartphone to tweet jabs and self-promotion, often late into the night, from a chaise longue in his bedroom suite in front of a flat-screen TV.
Later, in a rare moment of reflection, he likened being a candidate to the real-estate business and said he considers himself a better builder than marketer:
“Just as I’ve built great buildings that sell themselves, I believe in my product now. I’m prepared that if my truth doesn’t sell, the campaign won’t succeed. As in my buildings and my presidential campaign, the people will buy if they want the product. I don’t have to be the best salesman.”
What TE said.
Admin you’re a smart guy, now if we could only open your eyes to the truth about 9/11 and climate change.
your priint is toooo small to read
Sooooo. …Which Presidential candidate is against all of the Wall Street corruption and the disparity of incomes that has destroyed the Middle Class. Only one. Bernie. The rest are so bought off by Wall Street that they can not come out and state the obvious much less propose a solution to it.
things really aren’t that bad compared to the nihilism in this piece.
I just met a millennial that bought a house over here in Vegas. of course the real estate is dirt cheap out here.
I still see a lot of growth when I look around. There’s a Buffalo Wild Wings opening up down the street. I don’t see many empty buildings. A lot of construction being done. Plenty of tourists/gambling.
Even back in LA, things looked good. I can’t tell you how things look outside of the big cities though. I don’t think we will see a major collapse in our lifetime. We may see market crashes similar to 2008. But as far as a revolution or uprising of the people .. I doubt it.
procrastinator
Do you work for Fox Business Newz?
In three minutes we’re leaving for an all-you-can-eat $24.95 Japanese sushi joint. How many sushi fishies can old lard ass eat? Don’t know … never did a sushi buffet. I’ll count ’em, but I’m guessing 53.
See ya!!
I want some of what procrastinator is smoking and/or borrow his rose colored glasses.
Admin
We sure live in a fascinating era. Watching the Old Order fall apart and waiting with a mixture of dread and exhilaration to see what replaces it holds a morbid allure for the awake. This piece is an excellent and concise summation of the timbre of the times. A++
I haven’t been to Vegas in years, but when I was there in the AF days, we stayed at a dive hotel three blocks off the strip and it was on a street with dozens of pawn shops and buy/sell/trade auto dealers. The strip looked AWESOME…
Not saying there isn’t a lot of money being made by someone in Vegas. But there is a reason the real estate is cheap.
Don’t get down on procrastinator, because, after all, for some folks the economy has never been better.
“The richest 85 people in the world hold as much wealth as the bottom half of the global population, according to a January 2014 report by Oxfam International, a British humanitarian group, as reported in the Seattle Times.
About 3.5 billion people, the bottom half, account for about $1.7 trillion while the wealthy elite, a small part of the richest 1 percent, now hold about 46 percent of the world’s wealth — $110 trillion — the report said.
It also said the percentage of income of the richest 1 percent in America has grown almost 150 percent from 1980 through 2012 — and has received 95 percent of wealth created after the financial crisis in 2008.”
Money flows from the bottom to the top, and while the bottom is getting much larger and much poorer, the top is getting smaller and far wealthier. So how we doing in this present economy? It all depends on who the “we” are.
Cheap sushi. Bad idea. Stuck is gonna need to be wormed afterward, and he will bring a case of the shits to Olympic qualifying standards.
It may be some time before we hear from Stuck again. Hope he stocked up on tp.
Nice article.
Are these Grey Prophets actually of value, or are they assholes like Lincoln and FDR?
Llpoh- Curious, what is a big buffet item in the outback? Do you even have buffets?
No way I could eat 53 pieces of sushi, that would cause a major blowout.
Bea – much the same as in the states, but fewer options. Frankly, the US has better regional food – bbq, ribs, etc.
Australia has really nice restaurant dining, but no good Mexican or southern cooking, which I dearly love. So I have every bbq and smoking device known to man, and make my own, and have a couple good mex dishes I make – my mom’s chilli verde is yummy. On my kamado I can make the best steak, chicken and Christmas turkey ever. My tip – get a good digital thermometer. No over or under cooked meat ever again.
Llpoh says: It may be some time before we hear from Stuck again. Hope he stocked up on tp.
Women make calls while in the stall, Stucky will be posting yet another article.
48
They came 12 to a plate per order. I was up to 4 plates … coulda done another plate, but I ran out of time …. 2 hour limit. Yelp customer ratings gave it pretty much 5 stars across the board, so I’m not too worried about the shits.
” I’m not too worried about the shits.”
Thanks for sharing. Good to know that you will still be able to live up to your screen name.
A lot to think about. Can’t comment now but I am really soaking it up. Very interesting.
If somehow the Trump train runs out of track and Bernie has a heart attack, and the old guard of Bush and Clinton end up on their respective tickets, the populace will go bananas with anger, methinks.
I need to buy more popcorn.
OK, I promised myself I wasn’t going to read this shit and now I have started. Being a new student in bullshit I need to get some basics. In the first paragraph and the first sentence we begin discussing regeneracy? And, in the second sentence of the first paragraph we will be discussing Grey Champion prophet generation.
Shit o dear, my first class and my first hour here at the university and I’m already behind all the other students?? This is not looking good!
Second paragraph second sentence. Finally I recognize something that has some familiarity. “Notwithstanding his Nobel Peace Prize”??? Seriously, the next 3 hours of reading this is going to see a relationship of content based on the relativity of Obama receiving the NPP?
I’ve got to stop right here professor.
You see, the Nobel has historically been given to some total shysters as of the last few decades. It is a meaningless sham that liberals, and I mean liberals in the sense that not only have their contributions to humanity been zero, nil, zilch, but as a community of intellectual elites such as you would find at the academy awards they are a circle jerk of self congratulating fools who are born into or travel in the right circles. Obama as an example of being given the award for “peace on earth” when in fact through the magic of electronic voting and mass hysteria because he represented a historical moment, the first black man to be yada yada in racist white America, had done nothing at all to merit or warrant receiving this sham award. Now as I head into the remaining 2hours and 58 minutes of the torture that I was expecting, given that I read part I of the fourth turning I am a little suspect of what is to come? If anyone can summarize this for me the information will be greatly appreciated.
-A D student in an F Class!
The N.P.P. is about the clearest form of a Title of Nobility, expressly forbidden by the Constitution by sitting officials of government, but no congresscritter would draft articles of impeachment on that because they all covet one themselves.
I think sensetti and dutch have this right. Liquidity is the new solvency. And nothing comes apart at the seams as long as things remain liquid/solvent. And they know how to do that. So you can take your fingers out of your ears. Ain’t gonna be no big event. 2008 was the big one. And TPTB got lucky, they got to replace a completely befuddled and demoralized bush with a dillatante with 7th grade math skills and no moral compass.
Bush got steamrolled in his second term. He turned out to be exactly what the liberal caricature of him was, a dumbass way in over his head. Obama was even less, a busboy level intellect captivated by all the failed ideologies of the the loser class. Obama is like a squirrel on a busy highway, everywhere he turns there are big fast deadly things zipping around he can’t quite comprehend.
The global economy is a farce, as currently constructed. Think of it as a collection of niggertowns, willing to spend lavishly on anything shiny, as long as the EBT cards get charged every month. It turns to detroit as soon as the spigots shut off. It is as self sustaining as jim’s 30 blocks of squalor. Right now, it’s mantua square, with granite countertops and shiny new everything, paid for by the miracle of free money.
When we stop funding this madness, america will be fine. Quickly. Forget strauss and howe. There is a cycle at work, but a much accelerated one. My analogy would be a gas tank. We have sucked it dry. Time to focus on refilling it. Forget the people of walmart, our country is full of people ready, willing and able to get their hands dirty with the hard work of refilling our national tank
Germany & Austria Close Borders — Schengen Agreement Under Pressure — Will War Emerge?
Posted on September 15, 2015 by Martin Armstrong
The Schengen Agreement was to be the cornerstone of the entire euro proposition. We just warned that this freedom of movement would begin to come under pressure with this turning point:“As the economy turns down very hard after 2015.75, we are more likely than not going to see the freedom of movement in Europe fragment and that will be the crack that signals the eventual risk of breaking up the EU idea of empire-building.”
Germany has closed its borders with Austria and in turn Austria has now closed its border with Hungary. We are starting to witness the turn. Obama praised Merkel for accepting so many refugees, but after Merkel boasted that there was no limit to the number of refugees Germany would accept, it set in motion a huge migrant crisis. All public buildings and stadiums are full. Germany cannot handle any more refugees and these people have to be fed. Besides that, the winter will be harsh and many could die from exposure. This is going to be a real crisis.
Then, the headlines in France yesterday declared in the latest polls that 56% of the French people are now in favor of war. We are looking at the economy turning down very hard and the blame will be directed at the immigrants fleeing because of ISIS. We will see war rise because of this issue, as they are blamed for the economic decline in Europe. With unemployment among the youth already at 50% on average in many areas, accepting this many migrants who will also be unemployed will topple the economic system in Europe. We are seeing the seeing for this turning point of 2015.75 unfold before our eyes. As always, domestic populations will blame the migrants for the economic decline.
The clinton/bush/obama years are like a backed up toilet to someone who doesn’t know how to fix it, an overwelming putrid mess of unsolvable horrors. Then daddy gets home, fixes the problem, one flush, and, why was that so hard? Normalcy returns, everyone is happy and goes back to their routine
Shengen could have worked just fine with a fiercely defended EU border, a policy of no welfare for immigrants and some sanity about who got to be in the club. Liberals will fuck up anything