Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
This is the week-of-weeks when the official grand viziers of finance gather at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to confab and interpret the lay of animal neck-bones and other auguries scattered in the sand, with the hope of steering the awesome powers of the universe this was or that as they affect the operations of money. The exercise is hardly different in function from the sort of rude ceremonials that took place on top of Sumerian ziggurats and Aztec temples — to reassure the masses that effective spells for favor of the Gods have been cast — except that in our civilization money is God.
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Or “money,” we should say, because the old definitions don’t fit so well anymore. It used to have a straightforward relationship with the work required to produce actual things of value, but those days are gone. “Money” nowadays is a byproduct of wishful analytics and computer legerdemain seasoned with generous measures of fraud and larceny. This is a big problem when everything is measured in money and it becomes quite impossible to state with assurance what the value of money actually is. Obviously, you end up not knowing the value of anything.
That’s the perilous situation the world faces. And since the USA is the straw the stirs the world’s drink — at least for now — the utterances emanating from Jackson Hole may determine which way that situation turns. We should suppose that the officers of the Federal Reserve are upright, well-intentioned, patriotic people. No doubt they think they are. But the perilous situation is largely one of their own making, and seems to be veering out of their control, and reputations are at stake. Their task at this year’s Jackson Hole confab is to maintain the appearance of confidence in their own rituals. But with a kicker.
That kicker is named T-r-u-m-p. This modern Balaam, riding the ass of the Deep State into wickedness, must be stopped, perhaps at all costs. On his way to the oval office last fall, Trump prophesied that the stock markets represented “one big, fat, ugly bubble.” That was an offense to the grand viziers, for whom the elevated stock market valuations stood as the main testament to their power and wisdom. In fact, it was the only testament, and a rather flimsy one. More recently, though, the wicked Trump changed his tune and declared that the tower of stock market exaltation was his own doing, setting himself up for the revenge of the grand viziers.
Since nothing else has worked so far to dislodge Trump from the White House, a tumbling tower of stocks might seal his fate. The tower has to fall anyway, lest the moiling masses of flyover America think about besetting Wall Street with pitchforks and torches. A controlled demolition might be just the thing to appease these suffering holders of three part-time jobs (if they are so lucky) who have stood by in wonder and nausea while a tiny fraction of the elite gather unto themselves all the dwindling riches of the realm — at least in paper securities denominated in US dollars — while the wicked Trump will be left to the jackals of the Deep State, to be torn apart with the 25th Amenedment.
Trouble is, the “controlled” part of the demolition. Janet Yellen and the rest of the crew in their conical hats might want the markets to fall by a manageable ten or maybe even twenty percent. After all, they probably believe they can tweak them back up in another six months, like the last couple of times. But they can only pretend to calibrate that tumble, just as they pretend to regulate the employment numbers that supposedly represent the real economy of thing, activities, and people. What if the demolition gets out of hand? What if the markets sink fifty percent, seventy? What if the bond market, which is way bigger than the stock markets, catches the infection and goes kerblooey? What if congress, in its raging idiocy, shoots the credibility of the nation in the head by failing to raise the debt ceiling?
Things could get mighty complicated. The viziers know that the powers of the universe have a mysterious will of their own. Mostly, they have a will to re-balance the things of this world that have strayed from the accounting sheets of reality, namely the true prices of everything. And from that point the value of things may become visible again. Won’t that be a mighty moment?
So mind what these characters say in the hours ahead at Jackson Hole, and mind what they set into motion as they do.
Good article. The money trap is a catch 22. Damned if they don’t and damned if they do.
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Since Nov2016 and Trump, every NWO Plan to bring in Chaos and Martial Law has been shifted to high gear. A Jackson Hole Hot Topic (except with the Controlled MSM) will be the planned Economic (Dollar) Collapse and the Sola Digital Finance System (ie the replacement of the Dollar system: the Cashless Society with the Mark of the Beast). What do you think of their proposal to digitally collateralize every house and place the appraised value into the owners bank account to stimulate the global economy (of course the Fed would become the National Landlord). It reminds me of the Progressive Farm Program in the Ukraine (ref Collectivization and Holodomor) and the French Assignats and Mandats (currency backed by Church properties seized by the government) which provided a huge stimulus for about 6 years until hyperinflation struck (like in Weimar Germany 100 years later).
Wow, good article from Kuntsler. Agree totally with rhs jr. The servants of yaldaboath rub their hands in glee.
Happy Freya’s day.
Take Trump down and there is no telling who might take his place. Might be someone who doesn’t boast about being able to shoot someone on 5th ave and get away with it but someone who goes into Georgetown mansions and starts really shooting people!
Well, that would be Pence, most likely. A deep state, neocon, Israel first type of guy.
I do disagree with the notion that not raising the debt ceiling is shooting our credibility in the head. How does a nation thats so far in debt and keeps having to do this have any credibility left? And how, exactly, is raising the debt ceiling over and over any kind of ‘solution’?
Good for you JHK,
Color full language to herald a bloody red revolution.
The “unbanked” cash crime spree will take a hit.
No property to seize and collateralize? The necessary
credit freeze, so “they” can redo the “books?”
Some folks are going to get angry.
Watch what they do, not what they say.
Watch the “us” part – Col Slade
Hello, Hello, think McFly, THINK.
Jackson Hole. hmm
— Jackson; President who killed the Central Bank
— Hole; a place to throw dead bankers
I sure wish Jackson Hole, WY would live up to its name!
The Jackson Hole gang better be mindful of the last remaining pillar of finance standing, which simply states Time = Money.
/sarc on/
If that falls – well I guess we don’t have to pay bills on time anymore. Your employer doesn’t have to pay you on schedule either. Yup chaos will strike! “Sorry no paycheck this month, as we didn’t sell any widgets!” EBT cards go to zero. The system imploded because the FED has NO idea what they are doing!!
The debt ceiling HAS to be raised otherwise the Dindo’s will riot!
/sarc off/
Ya we are definitely in the final throes of a fiat collapse……
Richard Fisher said that the market was fed crack cocaine and heroin and now it was ritalin . Like any drug addict eventually your favorite drug kills you . I think it’ll be an over-night event. Not a long slow overdose . A slow collapse allows folks to prepare . A fast one catches 90% without a single prep .
You people should pl your money from stocks and put it in government bonds.
Which primmary asset is the ability to tax those self same stock companies!
I think I get what your saying but, damn those were 2 shittily written sentences. Must have been on a celly.
Good article except gold and silver are money. FRNs, Bitcoin, &T C are currency.
I’m not sure that an intangible like Bitcoin can be called currency. Points of credits, maybe.
El- $hitcoin is an electronic currency, but you are also right. Mostly it is just more money magic here in the matrix.
SDS(?)…..Students for a Democratic Society
My stalker SemiDailyStorms would be appalled at some homophobic shit I wrote today. If I took inventory of my offenses against PC, SDS says I would fall into their camp. I have seen the overlay of Republican and Democrats where their beliefs are the same and the voters could go either way with no guilt. SDS says I could tip to the raciss camp and not notice any change in my life. Except that I’d be helping the fuckers. I hate this AltWorld, nothing I ever knew was right is right anymore, shit.
As Kunstler mentions, the debt ceiling is approaching us again. The media is attempting to manipulate us by reinforcing the concept of why we should avoid a fiasco and just raise it and get on with it. We should continue living on “Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island”.
Every couple of years we come to the same crossroad and America always chooses the easy way out….the path on Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island. Why not have your cake and eat it too? Beside, the people think adding no new debt is cost free. The people don’t think they are giving up anything when they choose the easy way out. This however, is false.
The real cost is paid for with American jobs and more importantly the American work ethic and the degeneration of personal values. The reality is that we can live on Uncle Sam’s credit card and fool the gullible Chinese and the rest of the world to take more of our “paper” and digital credits in exchange for “stuff”. Our citizens live the life of leisure on Social Security disability and Welfare, all paid for by the overvalued “paper” American dollar. America is, after all, the best manufacturer of “dollars” in the world. We make the best dollars and are constantly tweaking the recipe to keep the World’s appetite up for them.
By always advancing the debt ceiling, we are getting “something for nothing” from the rest of the world. In the big scheme of things “getting something for nothing” is not playing by the unwritten rules of the game of civilization and society. There is blow back now after 50 years of continuous deficits. People are out of work, have time on their hands and are dividing the country into Nazis and Communist camps, just like in Germany when they had a debt problem in the 20’s.
If you want to destroy a society’s faith in the future, then just dilute and destroy the money. Money is the sacred bond that makes society function. It is fundamentally “trust”. “Trust”… that you will get approximately the value, or scarcity, out of a trade as you put into it. It was to provide a stable mean of value storage to improve upon physical barter. It is the bridge between generations. It is the embodiment of the concept of a future. Why save if you know what you get in the future will be less than when you have now?
Negative interest rates are surly the best way to promote eating your seed corn and live for the now. Manipulated interest rates are another problem. They are saying the future will be worse than today, so sacrifice for the future is futile. I would like to see that psychology experiment played with the kids and marshmallows with new rules. “You get to consume 2 now, or wait 10 minutes and you will get 1”. You will not see sacrifice for the future with that model.
We have the false opinion that we can beat the laws of “economic thermodynamics” and get more output then we put in it. We are trying to create an “economic perpetual motion machine” and “get something for nothing” but we are destroying ourselves in the process. The king surely has no clothes when we believe more paper money will replace toil, hard work and innovation.
With our “printed dollars”, we are not giving up something of equal scarcity for the goods we are trading. The real scary thought is, what if all those dollars flow back, and instead of buying goods, they buy the assets of America itself. That, is in fact, what is happening now. Why are real estate prices rising so much? The currency is flowing back and bidding up hard assets.
A natural law of society is that society cannot consume more that it produces. It is much more inflexible on the individual level than on a government level, since the governments have the ability to modify the rules as the game goes on. Governments exist in another dimension, which is less sensitive to reality than individuals. Eventually though, they must both live by the the same rules of the game, lest the responsible stop playing the game because they see it as rigged and futile to play.
A good analogy would be the first law of Thermodynamics. “Energy is neither created or destroyed, it is only converted”. With economics, “Nothing can be consumed unless it is first produced”. A debt only means you have consumed the personal product of someone else. Hopefully you have invested that in a machine that spits out even more goods so it can pay itself off. Lest the loaned out personal product was actually consumed and can only be paid off by by sacrificing consumption in the future or by default. Today’s debt is slowing being defaulted on by inflation. There is no planned payback.
What happens when you spend more than you make? You have to sell off stuff to redeem your debt. America has posted itself on eBay and is slowing selling itself off to raise some cash by selling its businesses and real estate. When you spend more than you earn you are actually eating through your “seed corn”. Sooner or later there will be nothing left for next year’s planting. America is eating its seed corn with continuous deficit spending.
This is allowed to happen since the currency unit is not really based on an item of limited physical scarcity. Limited physical scarcity is similar to Ronald Reagan’s “Trust yet verify” phrase. It should have enforced discipline, when one lacks it. The currency can be reproduced at will be either the banking system or the Government. Maybe I can trust it, but I want verification and the ability to swap my inherently non-scarce items used as money for something representing actual scarcity.
In my opinion, you have to have “no way out” to make mature decisions and face your problems. If you have a way out of the situation, you will take the easiest route to get out of it. It will not cause you to face your problems and grow. Generals who leave a backdoor to retreat might use it, and their soldiers may not flight as hard as they could. Marriage is built now with a back door. Instead of making people solve their problems, they can just take the easy way out and get a divorce. The blow back of that however is significant with broken families and people not learning to work through their problems.
Countries can fight wars and not discuss their issues since there are no fiscal limits anymore. War is only possible because the money is “corruptible” and you can finance the insane stupidity it brings. If you could not easily finance it, you would not do it.
The debt limit is the symbolic fork in the road just like what Pinocchio faced on Pleasure Island. If he stays longer he will turn into a braying jackass, if he escapes now he might grow up mature and change his life and become a “real person”.
America’s inherent dishonesty with itself is it’s annual budget deficits and inability to act socially with other players in the game of life. It is analogous to a school bully stealing the other kids’ lunches. Bullies haven’t been properly socialized and neither have the leaders of America. They lack the maturity to make the hard decisions. The adage “What doesn’t kill you, will make you stronger” is so true.
Either America will continue to take the easy road or will it mature and act like an adult and face its problems head on. The cost of not acting like an adult will destroy America. It will turn us all into braying jackasses and eventual enslavement like in Pinocchio.
Flying Monkey , I’ve already said that about 25 times.You must have ADD or something similar but I like my comment anyway .Carry on.
Hi BB,
I don’t recall ever reading that or even what you have written before. I came to the conclusions on my own after a little though and listening to Jordan Peterson.
Given that, I quite don’t understand the underlying tone of your reply. “Big deal” if you have written about it. I have never seen it before in print before or on the Internet.
At least you could have taken the stance that somebody else might have made the same conclusions as you, and see that as positive. I take your statements as a power play to proclaim some type of superior knowledge rather than just to acknowledge someone came up with similar conclusions you have had at one time made.
I only have my limited filter system as Jordan Peterson highlights in his series. but based upon those filters I could take the rely personal, but since I really do not know where you are coming from, I will just brush it off.
Great comment.
“Don’t Be a Sucker! is a short educational film produced by the U.S. War Department in 1943 and re-released in 1947….This film is not propaganda. To the contrary, it teaches how to recognize and reject propaganda”
“Since nothing else has worked so far to dislodge Trump from the White House, a tumbling tower of stocks might seal his fate.”
How many theories of how Trump will be “dislodged” have been floated? And every one has sunk.
Another Kuntsler fail.
Yawn…