Money Minus Value, No Limit

Guest Post by Jim Kunstler

You understand, there will be no meaningful resuscitation of the dear, departed, so-called greatest boom in history. Ponzi schemes don ‘t “bounce back,” they collapse for the simple reason that the pieces holding them up were not really there. Such are the unanticipated consequences of a media over-saturated culture that we were so easily deceived by appearances.

The emotions entrained by this implacable disaster have barely expressed themselves in the social arena. The public is still too shell-shocked by the prospect of losing everything ­– jobs, incomes, status, chattels, a future – to commence what the shrinks call “acting out.” Anyway, half the country is still acting out over the election of Mr. Trump three years ago.

But, for the moment, an interesting debate rages internationally as to whether the Covid-19 virus was some kind of engineered event designed to bring about various political outcomes. One thread declares that the Democratic Party, its media handmaidens, and a helpful Chinese leadership used the virus to blow up the US economy and finally, after several botched attempts, get rid of the vexing Mr. Trump. It’s a tidy story, but I don’t buy it, for the simple reason that the entire global economy has blown up, including China’s, so you can file that meme in the Wile E. Coyote folder.

A gloss on that one is the idea that NIAID director Anthony Fauci and other medical experts are wicked conspirators bent on destroying American morale by overstating the threat of Covid-19. This includes the phrase that the novel corona virus is “just another seasonal flu,” and so ordering people to stay away from work and business was unnecessary. Again, you’d have to ask yourself why medical experts and other plausibly intelligent people in so many other countries would do exactly the same thing. They can’t all be orcs.

Then there’s the one that has Bill Gates so worked up about climate change that he’s using his foundation’s deep resources to reduce the world’s population by sowing maximum disorder onto the scene with Covid-19 hysteria. This one casts Mr. Gates as something like a villain from a James Bond movie, deep in his Seattle mega-fortress petting a Persian cat as millions perish. Sounds like another case of Americans confusing movies with real life.

Another story has a shadowy gang of “globalists” using the disorder spawned by the virus to impose a centralized global uber-government run by international financiers. First of all, that one smacks of the hoary conspiracy theory that Bilderberger bankers (Jews especially) are scheming to take over the world – yet these supposedly hyper-clever “puppet-masters” are proving that they can’t even run the banks and their own financial ops, which are now crashing down around their ears along with everybody else’s. Thirdly, if there is trend anywhere in this collapse scenario, it is for the devolution of power downward, away from floundering centralized power structures and institutions. As they flounder, the faith of their subject peoples ebbs away and the trust horizon shrinks so that the people are no longer willing to depend on distant authorities for anything.

That floundering of centralized authorities is exactly what’s in process here in the USA. Mr. Trump surely has enough problems attempting to manage this crisis, not the least of which is his own unfortunate habit of jumbled impromptu speech that often sounds like sheer blather. Some observers like to call it “plain speech,” but in my experience even the common folk of America, the plumbers, truck drivers, and waitresses, express themselves more coherently. It’s just not very reassuring. Believe me, I don’t want to see the president fail, but I would advise him to stick to the teleprompter.

Of course, then, there is Joe Biden, the implausible nominee-presumptive of the opposition. Who are they kidding with this emperor’s new clothes scam? It’s obvious now to anyone over twelve in this land that Joe Biden is missing a few transistors on the old motherboard – not to mention the slime-trail of grift and money-laundering that he laid down in his adventures abroad as vice-president. His manner of speech, while different than Mrs. Trump’s, is even more pathetically incoherent. The Democrats’ pretense that he is a viable candidate is the ultimate falsehood in a long train of barefaced falsehoods they’ve so earnestly retailed since 2016, making them utterly untrustworthy to run the nation’s affairs.

We don’t know whether anyone, or any faction, will be able to run the nation’s affairs in the months upcoming. The least credible cohort these days are the folks presiding over the financial side of things. There is plenty of debate as to whether the mega bailouts and backstops will bring on inflation or deflation, both ruinous at the grand scale. There’s abundant evidence that this flood of money-from-thin-air will do nothing to arrest the unwind of a system so rotten that it casts an odor across the boundaries of history. Wall Street has screwed America’s pooch so completely that the poor pooch can’t even squeal for mercy anymore. The Federal Reserve crew and their allied banksters have barely a few weeks before an immiserated public comes after them with the modern equivalent of pitchforks. Wait for the breaking news on the cable networks: The Hamptons are burning!

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NtroP
NtroP

JHK’s final paragraph about the financiers is hopeful……

'Reality' Doug
'Reality' Doug

You find real-life value in his story arc? You should reread the Bible if you want some serious inspiration.

Dan
Dan

Awesome article. Always remember Hanlon’s razor: “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. Not that these assholes aren’t evil narcissistic psychopaths, but they aren’t the diabolically clever overlords people tend to think.

My only quibble is that inflation, by definition, means increasing the money supply. This is already ongoing and the source of all our economic woes. It leads to higher prices for both consumer goods and assets. Some people think this is a good thing because they can buy assets like stocks or real estate, wait for further monetary inflation to raise prices, then sell and make a “profit”.

Ultimately, this is unsustainable and leads to an economic crash, which we are now experiencing. This causes some asset classes to fall in price – that’s why the stock market is down so much right now from its February highs. This is what I’m assuming Jim meant by “deflation”. This is only ruinous to those assets that were artificially pumped up to begin with. That is, it’s not the bubble being popped that’s the real problem; it’s the bubble being blown up to begin with.

No less a person recognized we were in a bubble than Trump himself, when on September 26, 2016 he said we were in a “big, fat, ugly bubble”. The Dow closed at $18,308 (or thereabouts) on that day. The Dow is over $22,000 right now, meaning we’re still in even a bigger bubble than when Trump first mentioned it.

(Price) deflation is what you get with a fairly constant money supply (only gold has provided this in all of history). The cost of living actually falls – this scares the hell out of Keynesians, monetarists, and other morons but it’s what most of us would rather have.

Ivan
Ivan

“they aren’t the diabolically clever”

Exactly, they’re 9-5 petty bureaucrats.

“this is unsustainable and leads to an economic crash”

The “crash” started in September with the Fed’s repos.
Bat Soup Flu simply provides cover for that which already started and was inevitable.

Perspective
Perspective

I’m with you on this Ivan.
Kunstler is making excuses for his own failure to grasp what is happening.

it’s not a world made by hand,
it’s a world, owned by bankers, who are now calling in the loan, under cover of wu-flu.

if there was no cover story,
there would be bankers, dangling from poles, from here to wall st.

'Reality' Doug
'Reality' Doug

Newton’s Third Law. If they aren’t diabolically clever and they are whooping us easily for 50+ years, what does that say about how un-clever we are? Muh narrative buffet. We got ’em right where they want us, even the petty ones. Down vote, narrative denialists, down vote your way to utopia.

Dan
Dan

“Un-clever we are…” Well, yes apparently. Figure half the country is lefty Obama-Clinton worshippers and most of the rest think Republicans are conservative.

John Galt
John Galt

I believe 100% all govts in the world will outlaw cash and gold and have a basket of new reserves to which to peg dollar valuation to. They want a digital currency to tax all micro transactions in an effort to sustain their current system. History will show it was the last ditch effort to hold on to their power structure before world revolution and the dawn of a new age. Probably one that people thought would equal more freedoms and rights and opportunity but history shows it leads to psychopathic Leaders rising to tyranny instead….

Pequiste
Pequiste

Everything goes back to normal once Sportsball, The View and anaesthetic “news” is once again back live on the telly. Lumpen everywhere will be relieved, indeed tickled to be getting their newly approved .Gov supplied, once a month, U.B.I. cheques and those all-you-can-eat buffets are open again for ad libitum feeding.

Whether it’s Unkle Joe, DJT or even Andrew Cuomo, it doesn’t matter – although with Governor Cuomo in the Oval Office I can foresee a most liberal post-partum abortion policy being implemented nationwide along with other progressive innovations e.g. Drag Queen Story Time. The Deep State will retain their firm hand on the levers of control — count on it.

And as for The Evil Fuckers; well don’t fret about arson in the Hamptons or even Fire Island; they are safe and secure in their properties from Westchester and Liechtenstein to French Polynesia back to Argentina. They do not give a rat’s fuck about the coming hard times just because they caused it. They will profit handsomely from the pandemonium and pick up everything they want for 10 cents on the dollar.

Just be sure to get your Bill Gates approved vaccination before you do anything, peasant.

Bill Gates
Bill Gates

I warned you to be nice to nerds. One day, all your asses are belong to me.

Mygirl...maybe

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Fleabaggs
Fleabaggs

MGM.
Yes. Iv’e done it almost daily but doesn’t get much traction.

(EC)
(EC)

What sucks is Bill Gates won’t allow you to own the software to your microchip. That is the problem and not the chip itself; Spain already has them. Bill and Melinda can turn you off at will and just like that, you will not be able to buy or sell. You will be a nonperson at that point. Dogs will have more rights than you.

BL- CURVE FLATTENED GOY
BL- CURVE FLATTENED GOY

EC- True dat, but the worse thing you have to fear from the RFID chip is the ability to terminate you at will. Dead, like the proverbial door nail.

Can you imagine if the sheep had that power to eliminate TPTB in that fashion?? They would not last a week.

(EC)
(EC)

I recall that Doc Pangloss said, whatever man can devise, man can destroy. No technology or weapon is foolproof. Lets not forget that there are people who have almost supernatural powers, one being the ability to escape from confinement.

My mom is getting a bit old. She forgets recent stuff but has a recall of older stories. One story she told that was fascinating is about an uncle or cousin of hers who had killed his wife. She said he got sent to Alcatraz. She said he returned to his family in Colorado several months later. She said nobody believed he had escaped from that prison and the authorities ignored him. I asked his name and there is no record of that person escaping from Alcatraz.

(EC)
(EC)

We’re going to have to learn to see things their way. Their’s is not a right to life morality. They see it as survival of the fittest. The beautiful people own this world and they mean to keep it for their progeny. The great unwashed masses are deluded if they think they are in the club by virtue of their hue and cries of patriotism.

They are useful idiots who do not understand the beautiful people take care of their own. There are lines you can’t cross. Walls you can’t climb. A dam tainted by a mutt is ruined forever as a breeding bitch. Pedigrees matter. You can’t get there from here.

BL- CURVE FLATTENED GOY
BL- CURVE FLATTENED GOY

El, thanks for the truthful response but at this point the Nazis are winning. If the RFID can terminate a person, JUST IMAGINE how many people would lay dead on the sidewalks of America and can’t you just guess TPTB will have the news reporting it was COVID 19 that was to blame?

Gates will make sure we all get quantum tattoos and chips at which point they will have the ability to inflict the selective massive death rates they have dreamed of one day coming to fruition.

(EC)
(EC)

I hate it when I get paranoid but Dr F. said it might become seasonal and it worries me that if Alexa is right and Billinda released this virus in their pandemic exercise, they can keep releasing it again and again. I put up the endless shampoo gag to show how they can trick you into manic hand washing while they keep applying the virus. Because a little bit of hope goes a long way to keep the thing going before the rioting breaks out.

David Erickson
David Erickson

“Another story has a shadowy gang of “globalists” using the disorder spawned by the virus to impose a centralized global uber-government run by international financiers.”

That is actually precisely what is happening. He dismisses that theory with the incredibly naïve “yet these supposedly hyper-clever “puppet-masters” are proving that they can’t even run the banks and their own financial ops, which are now crashing down around their ears along with everybody else’s.” How incredibly naïve. The bankers and insiders have already made trillions due to this situation, and are going to make trillions more as events progress.

It is increasingly obvious that Trump was selected in 2016 for precisely this event. A large portion of the Right would be literally up in arms by now if Hillary was president, but because they trust Trump and the Q-anon PSYOP “trust the plan” nonsense, the Right has been almost totally neutralized.

Perspective
Perspective

Plus 1 million

John Galt
John Galt

Be it known I was first on TBP to call Trump the Manchurian Candidate…

Fleabaggs
Fleabaggs

I never called him that but I called him a fraud before he won the nomination. My exact words were, Look at who his friends are and who his kids are married into. N.Y. Money Changers to the last. A leopard can’t change it’s spots. Made a lot of Trumpeters mad.

(EC)
(EC)

I-S called Trump a troll and I told BB that our time had come. Like FDR said, if it happens in politics it was planned that way. They were going to install Trump but the hoi-polloi didn’t follow the script and absent some hopping yuppies, they pointed to the electoral college. Trump’s election made a pope selection seem transparent by ‘orders of magnitude’ as Billy would say.

Jdog
Jdog

As I see it, government will incompetently launch some very expensive programs that will quickly drain their coffers and put them in financial distress. They will fail to stop the deflation and depression, and soon have little choice but to begin cutting their own budgets and begin some drastic downsizing. Between their irresponsible spending, their incompetence, and the drastic drop in tax revenues, they will have little choice but to raise tax rates on the higher tax brackets. This tax hike is likely to be severe, due to both the fiscal need, and the political pressure that will come from the anger of the masses who will be impoverished by this financial crisis.
Even raising tax rates on the rich will not begin to replace the lost tax revenues as the economy deteriorates. During this same time, the Federal Government will be under great pressure to financially support failing States and Municipalities who will quickly fall into bankruptcy as their tax revenues decline. State sponsored pension systems being both underfunded and based on unrealistic growth projections will also be in line for Federal bail outs, but it is doubtful the Federal Government will have the ability to save them.
In the end, government both Federal and local will have to be greatly reduced in both size and scale, and will become less relevant in our lives as people realize government is more of the problem than the solution. Unfortunately, people are going to have to learn that lesson in a very hard way…..

John Galt
John Galt

State and Fed govt are the largest employers in the usa. If they reduced their staff it would cause an economic depression by itself. That is why they need to keep growing. Like a person deep in credit card debt. If they actually tried to stop getting new cards it would implode asap. The goal here is to pre position power in places when it does collapse. And you ain’t in power….or a position

Jdog
Jdog

It is you who do not understand. If you want a blueprint of what is going to happen, look to the great depression. Government, believe it or not, does have to balance their books. They do have to service their massive debt. That debt service now amounts to 20% of all tax receipts. That debt is on track to double. Those tax receipts are on track to be reduced by at least 25%. Now you do the math.

If you are under the mistaken impression that the government can simply print money, you need to educate yourself because the government does not print money, it borrows it.
Our government is only as strong as its tax receipts, and those tax receipts are about to go into the toilet and not recover for the foreseeable future.

The massive give away programs you are seeing is the same thing that happened during the great depression, and if it were not for WW2 we would have never had the prosperity of the 50’s – 80’s and we would still be paying off those debts.

Apple
Apple

Normalcy bias is strong in mr kuntsler. He sees what backs his long existing opinion. This country will be in ashes before it decentralizes to a world made by hand. You’ll have cannibalism first. No world made by hand until all the bullets run out.

Ivan
Ivan

“the common folk of America, the plumbers, truck drivers, and waitresses, express themselves more coherently”

Normal people speak Trump. The elite do not.

The “common folk of America” have been listening to Trump long enough to know exactly what he’s talking about.

Media and elite interpretation is unnecessary.

Biden is irrelevant.

They’re going to run fratello de Fredo. A New York wop has as much chance of winning as a New York jew.

nkit
nkit
Ivan
Ivan

exactly

Pequiste
Pequiste

“… science doesn’t matter and that the only real virus is racism.”
– Daniel Greenfield

Goes along nicely with JHK’s dictum: “Anything goes and nothing matters.”

I’m surprised the NYC Health Department hasn’t turned to using Obeah and Voodoo to combat the CoVid-19 pandemic and avoid any hateful, oppressive, and raysiss White Privilege medical protocols and technologies.

Mygirl...maybe

Using Obeah and Voodoo? Who says they aren’t? There’s even talk of digging mass graves in Central Park, which is jumping the shark to the extent that they are jumping sharks the size of whales….

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Saami Jim
Saami Jim

It would be hard to understate how little I care what happens to New York City.
On the other hand, out here in (very) rural Wisconsin, we are affected by the asshats in New York, because our no good libtard governor has been trying to lock our state down because he foolishly thinks we are just as at risk as New York City.
Sure would like to see this Greenfield blog on TBP.
Thanks for the link nkit.

'Reality' Doug
'Reality' Doug

The first paragraph is wrong: “Ponzi schemes don ‘t “bounce back,” they collapse for the simple reason that the pieces holding them up were not really there.” Oh, the pieces are there, suckers, liquidated loosers. The pool of potential suckers dries up. Does this oft featured author know shit?

The second paragraph is a psychoanalysis worthy of simpletons wearing rose-colored lenses. Plenty of Americans (and foreigners) support this regime because they are lifted up by the corruption. Cries of humanity demanding justice are facades that slay the gullible Christian. Oh, defend the right of your enemy to say things, to organize. Great plan.

Third paragraph: The fix is in, and evident because it’s global. Correct.

Fourth paragraph: “They can’t all be orcs.” And humans are basically good. Sorry, sunshine. Organisms are basically competitive over limited resources, and this is the breeding of uninterrupted bureaucracy. Queen of de Nile.

Fifth through seventh paragraphs: Denial of alt-right assertions, which is great. The views of the alt-right are big enough to be a threat. We are approaching the sonic boom. Smooth sailing is on the other side. Do the Christcucks turn us around or at least hold us back. The soy boys won’t be able to, but try, Little Jimmy.

Eight paragraph: Biden is prohibitively inept. Correct.

Ninth paragraph: Everyone but the people are clueless. Therefore, the people will inevitably rise up and take matters into their own hands. Americans are not basically good, or wise, or competent at much other than being useful idiots that push toward becoming useless eaters by running out of more opportune victims.

It’s bad enough to reread problem definitions that are correct, but to reread problem definitions that are wrong is torture. Hope is no strategy. Faith in others is capitulation. Civilization does not blossom by egalitarianism. It blossoms by savagely sure bigotry. It’s not bragging if it’s true. It’s confidence. Western white men are the dumbest fucks on the planet. What flexibility has the white man with his sanctimonious sympathy. How well trained is the Western man from the Roman decline and the medieval serfdom to praise God by praising his exogenous afflictions!

It is impossible to love thine enemy as thineself unless one’s love for self is so shallow as to be nonexistent. For a man cannot server two masters, he will hate himself and love his enemy, or he will hate his enemy and love himself. Only the degenerate case of the degenerate white man could square such a circle jerk and call it true.

SeeBee
SeeBee

First and Foremost, the Main Stream Media needs to be castrated and boiled. Carry-on.

'Reality' Doug
'Reality' Doug

The one thing we want to import from China, their traditional cannibalism recipes.

Glock-N-Load

Dow seems to be going up, up and up.

Mygirl...maybe

Zimbabwe had their stock market in the stratosphere while people were raiding dumpsters and succumbing to cholera. The stock market is a sham.

John Galt
John Galt

The American Dream and Economy are like a pet dog recently run over in the street. The carcass is there and memories fresh so one does not believe it is dead just yet. Just because we can see the remnants of a carcass, a monetary system of Ponzi pride, will take time for the sheeple to recognize it is gone. Over.

What happens in the next 1-10 years is one for history books to laugh at the stupidity of current man, just as we currently do when reading economic history. Any student of history can see how this ends and a path to obtain generational wealth in such times, as well as avoiding generational wealth demise. If you are stupid enough to believe things go right back to normal remember when you break a bone or a ceramic cup you can mend it but the fractures always remain and it is never as good as before to do the things you could before.

Rome ruled for over 800 years and took nearly 100 years to fully collapse. When reading of Romes collapse you can see cascading failure many times and the inevitable outcome. Our 2008 was one such cascading failure. There have been many more dating back to 1981 as so documented. Nearly all our monetary and econoMic failures are borne of legislation. Political quid pro qou if you will. The death of Sarbanes Oxley sealed our fate….

'Reality' Doug
'Reality' Doug

“a path to obtain generational wealth in such times”

I’m a student of history. I don’t see it. Life is always competitive. Not everyone can be the next Napoleon who knows when to stop in Germany. Joe Kennedy ran bootleg liquor. One will have to be man enough to take value and keep it. Won’t be easy. If we fall into a middle ages, what wealth to have generational wealth? I think you comment is insightful. Maybe you can spell out that one line.

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