The Economic Crash So Far: A Look At The Real Numbers

From Brandon Smith

economy crash

There are many problems when attempting to track a faltering economy. For one, the people in government generally do not want the public to know when the system is in decline because this looks bad for them. They prefer to rig statistical indicators as much as possible and hope that no one notices. When the crash occurs, they then claim that “no one saw it coming” and the disaster “came out of nowhere”, so how could they be to blame?

I have even heard it argued that political leaders, including the president, have a “duty” to lie about the state of the economy because once they admit to the decline they will cause a panic and perpetuate the crisis. This is stupidity. If an economic system is in disrepair and is built on a faulty foundation, then the problems should be identified and fixed immediately. The weak businesses should be culled, not bailed out. The wasteful government spending should be cut, not increased. The downturn should not be hidden and prolonged for years or decades. In most cases, this only makes the inevitable crash far worse and more damaging.

Another factor, which some people might call “conspiracy theory” – but it has been proven time and time again in history – is that the money elites have a tendency to engineer economic disasters while deliberately hiding the real statistics from the public. Why? Well, if the real data was widely disseminated, then a crash would not be much of a surprise and the populace could be prepared for it. I suspect the elites hide the data because they WANT the crash to be a surprise. The bigger the shock, the bigger the psychological effect on the masses. This fear and confusion allows them to make changes in the power structure of a nation or of the entire world that they would not be able to accomplish otherwise.

The most rigged statistics tend to be the least important overall in analysis, but this does not stop the mainstream media and investors from hyper focusing on them. How many times have you told friends and family about the collapse in manufacturing or the explosion in consumer and corporate debt, only to hear them say, “But the stock market is at all-time highs!” Yes, even though stock markets are a meaningless trailing indicator, even though GDP stats are a complete fallacy, and even though jobless numbers do not include tens of millions of people out of work, these are the stats that the average person takes mental note of when consuming their standard 15 minutes of news per day.

While the issue of rigged statistics makes analysis of a crash difficult, a willfully ignorant citizenry makes reporting on the real data almost impossible. It’s sad to say, but a large number of people do not want to hear about negative information. They want to believe that all is well, and will delude themselves with fantasies of blind optimism and endless summers. Like the tale of “The Ant And The Grasshopper”, they are grasshoppers and they see anyone who focuses on the negative as “chicken littles” and “doom mongers”. In their minds they have all the time in the world, until they freeze and starve when winter comes.

When I encounter people who actually believe the manipulated numbers or buy into the stock market farce or simply don’t want to accept that a crash could happen in their lifetime, I always ask them to consider these questions: If the global economy is not on the verge of collapse, then why did central banks keep propping it up for the past ten years? And if central banks have been propping up the system, how much longer do you think they can do this? How much longer do you think they want to do it? What if one day they decide to let the entire house of cards tumble? What if such an event actually benefits them?

We’ve seen that a broken economy can be technically held together for a decade, but under the surface, the structure continues to rot. The bottom line is that even if the elites wanted to keep the system going for another ten years, and even if politicians continued to help them by pumping out false statistics, there is no way to hide the effects of crumbling fundamentals. We saw this during the crash of 2008, and now we’re seeing it again.

After nearly ten years of stimulus inflated the largest financial bubble in history (the Everything Bubble), the Federal Reserve and other central banks halted stimulus measures and tightened global liquidity. By the end of 2018, a new crash began, the implosion of the Everything Bubble had been triggered. All of this is still just an extension of the crash of 2008, which never really subsided; it was only slowed down through tens of trillions of dollars in central bank intervention. Now, the central banks have started an avalanche that cannot be stopped. But the fact of the matter is, they don’t really want to stop it.

Here are the indicators so far that prove a crash is happening in the U.S. while a majority of the public is oblivious:

GDP numbers are completely manipulated. Government spending of taxpayer dollars on a number of inflated programs, including continued spending on Obamacare, is added to GDP calculations. Without this fancy accounting, U.S. GDP growth would actually be negative, according to ShadowStats. But even with the juiced data, official GDP growth is still in decline, falling to 1.9% and well below the 3% growth we were supposed to see this year.

Official unemployment stats remain at all-time lows, which is commonly cited by the mainstream media, Donald Trump (he used to argue the opposite three years ago), and even the Federal Reserve in reference to the health and stability of the economy. What they do not mention much is the 95 million people not in the labor force and not counted because they have been unemployed for so long. When the media does mention this fact, they claim the number is “misleading”, that most of these people are students or retired, that the retirement age is decreasing and Baby Boomers are leaving the workforce sooner, and that the people who don’t have jobs are simply “not interested” in working. None of this is true.

The retirement age is increasing in the U.S., not decreasing, according the SS Administration. Current average retirement age is now 67, up from 65, almost the same as it was during the Great Depression.

Baby Boomers are not retiring at rates similar to ten years ago, and are in fact attempting to stay in the workforce due to the poor economy. Many of them are trying to come OUT of retirement just to make ends meet.

The labor participation rate remains near record lows.

Interestingly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) house survey that is used to determine if people “want a job” assumes that if you are near retirement age and do not have a job, you are simply not interested in a job, and they count you as “non-participating”. However, if you DO have a job and you are near retirement age, they count you as participating. It’s a rather convenient assumption on the government’s part to claim that just because an unemployed person is near retirement age, that means they “don’t want a job”.

While there is surely a small percentage of the 95 million people not counted in the labor force that do not want a job, if unemployment stats counted U-6 measurements as they used to, the unemployment rate would be closer to 20%.

Another problem is the quality of jobs being created. U.S. manufacturing jobs, as well as higher wage jobs, are in steep decline. They have been replaced with low paying jobs in the service sector.

Real wages in the U.S. have not kept up with inflation. The average worker is now losing money overall as prices rise beyond the pace of their incomes.

As more and more Millennials say they cannot afford to buy a home, rental prices have skyrocketed in the past several years. The home ownership rate plunged starting in 2006 and has not recovered since.

U.S. manufacturing has fallen to levels not seen since the crash of 2008. U.S. factory orders have slumped in 2019.

U.S. Services PMI continues to falter since spring of this year. Job growth is now slowing and over 8,500 retail stores have been closed down already in 2019. Web-based retail is not picking up the slack, as online sellers like Amazon are suffering from falling profits.

Corporate profits overall have tumbled this year and projected future profits have been drastically adjusted to the downside.

Corporate debt, consumer debt and national debt are all at historic highs. Corporate cash flow is so tight that Federal Reserve repo purchases continue to run into high demand. This debt signal is one we saw in 2007, just before the credit crisis.

U.S. trucking and railroad freight continue to log steep declines in traffic and goods. This tells us what we already know: Even though consumer spending has increased recently, this does not mean people are buying more stuff or have more disposable income. What is really happening is inflation, or stagflation. Cost of living is going up. Debt payments are going up. Consumers are spending more on the same amount of stuff, or less stuff, and have less expendable income. U.S. consumers are being bled dry.

All of these factors and more show an economy in recession or depression (depending on what historic standards you use). In the darker corners of the investment world, the great hope is that the central banks will return to pumping trillions into the banking sector ($16 trillion during the TARP bailout dwarfs the $250 billion the Fed has recently pumped out in their repo markets). They hope that this will free up even more credit. Meaning, they believe only more debt will save the system from suffering.

I say, time is up on the debt party. More stimulus will not stall the crash that is already happening, and the Fed does not appear poised to print anywhere near what it did during the credit crisis, at least not in time to change the trend. The can has been kicked for the last time. The grasshopper mentality will not save people from the clear reality. Only preparation and planning will.

After 8 long years of ultra-loose monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, it’s no secret that inflation is primed to soar. If your IRA or 401(k) is exposed to this threat, it’s critical to act now! That’s why thousands of Americans are moving their retirement into a Gold IRA. Learn how you can too with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals the little-known IRS Tax Law to move your IRA or 401(k) into gold. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.

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Solutions Are Obvious
Solutions Are Obvious

This is doom porn, but it also happens to be true!

22winmag - w/o tagline

Then it’s doom porn first and foremost.

Anonymous
Anonymous

comment image

Plato_plubius
Plato_plubius

Brandon said,

I suspect the elites hide the data because they WANT the crash to be a surprise. The bigger the shock, the bigger the psychological effect on the masses.

I’ll post the video for the documentary based off the Best Seller “Shock Doctrine” once again. Especially since the LLpoh thread is behaving slowly and oddly for me.

Theses “shocks” Brandon refer to are indeed engineered by disaster capitalists, NeoConservatives and Neoliberals who push deregulation, privatization and austerity as a means to open up new markets for their buddies’ businesses so they can buy them up on the cheap and steal the wealth from the indigenous people there!

A MUST VIEW!

Fleabaggs
Fleabaggs

Plato..
Designer Scares.
Thanks to computing power we have a custom scare for ever person in the country to keep them from being able to reason.
I’m waiting for a toy scare to get the kiddies accustomed to living in fear. Toys are plastic, plastic kills, Mommy is killing you(They don’t have Daddies anymore). Come to Auntie Nanny State and she’ll protect you.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Kids scare is climate change. They will all die in 12 years they are told

22winmag - w/o tagline

Flea- the kids aren’t nearly as scared as you might suspect.

They are not kids from your generation.

They see right though this shit and are rejecting it at light speed.

Fleabaggs
Fleabaggs

.22.
That was said mostly in jest. Lighten up.

Plato_plubius
Plato_plubius

BTW this is also where the phrase “Never let a good crisis goes to waste” originates from! The “Chicago Boys” school of economics and economic shock doctrine the CIA and corporate interests have used on the rest of the world and with the 9-11 attacks on the United STates and its reserve currency status.

22winmag - w/o tagline

That old shit don’t work no more.

And there is no new shit on the shelf.

Why the sudden crash narrative today?

Plato_Plubius
Plato_Plubius

@ 22

What old shit don’t work no more?

22winmag - w/o tagline

I stopped watching at .ca in the intro.

Plato_Plubius
Plato_Plubius

Doesn’t surprise me that you would not even watch it and discourage others from watching it.

More people will probably watch the video now since you are attacking it, and that was anons.ca who posted the video to YouTube….naomi Klein is an author and who produced the documentary from the book she wrote.

Prof. Mandelbrot
Prof. Mandelbrot

Omg Plato this video triple dosed my red pill intake. Much of what I felt and thought in the past has been so altered I am nearly catatonic. You have forever changed me more so than when I first red pilled in 2005. Maybe I am a slow learner but this expedited my wokeness. Thank you.

War = profit we all know. After seeing Friedman tactics globally I foresee the takedown of usa assets by these same oligarchs. It will use the tech in self driving cars, tolls, gps, end of privacy and revolutionary means. They will sell all our national assets and lock down travel to wealthy only and nobody will have any privacy in any shape or form. Land ownership like Sri Lanka after the tsunami will end in the usa. I just cannot figure out the shock crisis outside of major bio, pandemic or nuclear they will use to ensure their narrative. Nuclear is too permanent for them so I figure bio pandemic as it is a sightless enemy and is a great boogeyman for the govt to spread fear and usher in dictatorial power and use force on us.

This everything bubble is ensuring all wealth will deteriorate at the same time for 99% of Americans. They must have a digital currency to ensure their position I have determined along with removal of the second amendment. Once these two things happen it is over. These can happen after the shock crisis and need not be prior is my full belief now. But my opinion on precious metals is forever changed now. Seems lead is where to invest now.

Plato_Plubius
Plato_Plubius

Prof.,

There are a few videos and books that do that.

A few books: None Dare Call it Conspiracy , Confessions of an Economic Hit man, Behold a Pale Horse…

Videos like: The corporation, Shock Doctrine, Secrets Hidden in Plain Sight, and The Money Masters along with Damon Vrabels Debunking Money series to name a few.

And blogs and writers like Jim Quinn, Brandon Smith, Charles Hugh Smith, Shadow Stats and many others.

Ingsoc
Ingsoc

Official unemployment stats remain at all-time lows, which is commonly cited by the mainstream media, Donald Trump (he used to argue the opposite three years ago), and even the Federal Reserve in reference to the health and stability of the economy.

19 times Trump trashed Obama’s jobs numbers as “fake”:

During the 2016 campaign, Trump ripped government reports of falling unemployment rates for falsely inflated numbers because so many Americans were not in the labor force. “Our real unemployment rate … is 42 percent,” Trump insanely told Time magazine in August 2016, “because you have 90 million people that aren’t working, 93 million to be exact.”

What happened when Trump took office to make the economic statistics and labor market statistics honest and not fraudulent as Trump and others said was the case under Obama?? Did Trump fire all of the workers responsible for analyzing the unemployment rate and other economic data? Did he drain any such swamp in these sectors? I can’t find ANYWHERE where he did this.

So that means that if the economic numbers were faked under Obama and Trump did not correct the problem of falsifying this information, then said information has to STILL BE FALSE!!

Trump = Obama 2.0

Plato_plubius
Plato_plubius

Ingsoc,

Like Brandon pointed out,

Official unemployment stats remain at all-time lows, which is commonly cited by the mainstream media, Donald Trump (he used to argue the opposite three years ago),

People have a hard time admitting that campaign Trump and President Trump don’t match up!

Anonymous
Anonymous

Numerous financial companies have documented the number of boomers retiring daily. Subtract this and the BLM stats from new jobs and unemployment is increasing. They all fake it to retain consumer confidence.

22winmag - w/o tagline

What would you expect form British subjects?

They are trying to signal us though, and everyone is missing it.

https://imgur.com/gallery/tXtkBoY

Jack Lovett

We thank the subhuman joo banksters with their paper fiat for the coming collapse. Also lots of death & destruction to follow.

22winmag - w/o tagline

If you put a bunch of non-joo banksters in, watch what happens.

It will only get worse.

Prof. Mandelbrot
Prof. Mandelbrot

Surely the dems will count those just wanting a job as employed when it is their turn to manipulate the data. The feds repo funding is stealth QE. Surprisingly the msm says nothing so I feel they know a crash is coming and want a catalyst like impeachment to kick it off to blame Trump. If it were helping trump they would be bitching. If it hurts him or they can spin it as his problem they remain stealthy. When this thing unfolds it will be the 4th turning of all turnings surely.

22winmag - w/o tagline

I don’t believe that.

I think it mostly just a bunch of sissy American Jewry and bumbling British agents having a hissy fit.

The sane ones know it’s better to go with the flow and stop it with the society wrecking. If you listen close, they are signaling surrender.

Life will go on.

wdg
wdg

The formation of the bankster-owned Fed was a seminal event in the history of the decline of the US. The Fed has to be destroyed and the architects of this system of massive plunder, control and destruction indicted for high treason and ultimately hung in the public square after the stolen loot is recovered. The US and all western nations must return to honest money which would destroy the Wall Street gangsters and gut the financial sector composed mostly of parasites. Folks…the fox has taken over the hen house which is why blood is now running in the streets.

grace country pastor

Couldn’t resist…

Llpoh
Llpoh

From the article: “ U.S. manufacturing has fallen to levels not seen since the crash of 2008. U.S. factory orders have slumped in 2019.”

Manufacturing as an employer is in a permanent death spiral. People keep squealing that millions of jobs went overseas. Some jobs did, but if they had not, they would have been automated out of existence anyway.

Jobs that went overseas did so because the labor costs and tax costs there were less than the costs of automation and tax costs in the US. US tax costs have dropped and so part of the equation has changed, making it overall more desirable to manufacture in the US than it was, but that does not mean there will jobs created.

Manufacturing that left might come back, but jobs will not, and any remaining jobs will continue to be eroded by around 2.5% a year as a percentage of US employees.

Thems the facts.

22winmag - w/o tagline

Facts don’t equal thought.

Thought does not equal good thought.

The debt has been canceled!

The mask is coming off.

First Chase Credit Cards in Canada and now Capital One in the U.S.

Forgiven!

Vaporized!

The jig is up and the world is not ending.

A lot of people and messages are suddenly losing all relevance in a flash! Thank goodness.

Anonymous
Anonymous

22winfag

give it a fuckin rest. no job, asshole? too much time and nothing to do? What a damn drain having to wade thru all your bullshit posts to try and read some meaningful comments…

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