Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
Can’t we just all get along? No, apparently. Branding everyone to the right of Woke a “terrorist” and an “insurrectionist,” as is the style these days with the sore winner party, will probably not warm a whole lot of hearts and minds among the politically disenchanted. It comes with an odor of desperation, too, as if Joe Biden’s consolidated Deep State is so lacking in confidence, even in victory, that it can’t distinguish policy from punishment — and so the beatings will continue until morale improves.
Outside the razor-wired DC perimeter, with its bomb-proof bureaucracy, the economy is in freefall. This has not quite come to the attention of a new regime aroused over systemic racism and the pressing need to expand athletic opportunity for transsexuals. But an inferno is racing across the land like a prairie fire and the remaining American buffalo out there may be inclined to stampede before long. Can Ol’ White Joe hear their distant hoofbeats from the Oval office? Maybe not with Nancy Pelosi and AOC screaming in his ears.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 779,000 people filed for first-time unemployment the week ended January 30. The news media called that “a beat” because it was under the 830,000 expected. It’s been that way week-after-week this year of Covid-19. Nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased 4.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020, the largest quarterly decline in the measure since the second quarter of 1981. Yes, forty years ago, when the US population was 226 million (it’s now 330 million). The stock market responded by smashing new all-time- highs. Bad “optics?”
How do you think the value of shares manages to go up, up, up, and away, day-after-day, while the value of the economic activity goes down, down, down day-after-day? Must be Modern Monetary Magic, like the Federal Reserve purchasing $80-billion a month in US Treasury bond issues and another $40-billion in mortgage-backed securities for a grand total of $140-billion a month. The real monetary magic, of course, is that it’s possible to have a Wall Street boom while the economy collapses. The nation’s assets have already been stripped, so where is all this “value” actually coming from? Answer: from the false expectation of enormous future American productivity. It’s false because it’s based on the creation of debt that can’t possibly be paid back…ever. It’s not based on investment in future productive enterprise.
The economy won’t be fixed by policy because the things that have to happen to fix it will be resisted to the death by the parasitical entities feeding on what little remains. For instance, Walmart. Do you think it’s unhealthy that all the profit in American commerce is funneled into Bentonville, Arkansas? It used to be distributed in hundreds of thousands of small businesses in tens of thousands of US towns and cities. What do you think will die first: Walmart or the organism its feeding on?
Since the dynamic at work is emergent and non-linear, other forces can come between these relationships and change things. We are already in conflict with China, the land that supplies most of the merchandise in Walmart. The conflict right now is mostly playing out in the capture of US corporate and cultural enterprise, and in cyberwarfare, and it’s liable to hotten up around the continued sovereignty of Taiwan (America’s China). It’s difficult to assign intentions to another country but it appears that China’s China wishes to cancel the USA as the fading hegemon on the world stage, at least neutralize us, and perhaps dominate us. Mr. Trump is no longer in place to resist that, and the country might be forced to consider all those deals that our new president, “China Joe” enjoyed from the Biden family’s business ventures there over the years.
Emergently, then, the Big Box business model could fail, and in fairly short order, which would at least give Americans a chance to self-reorganize the production and distribution of goods in our own country. It sure won’t be like 1957 again, but it would give an awful lot of idle people more to do when they get up in the morning. Wait for it, and plan accordingly.
In the meantime, we are treated to the sordid spectacle of Democratic Wokesters endeavoring to destroy what remains of American cultural life. It’s an incomparably stupid and malign distraction from the imperatives of this historical moment. They will not succeed in cancelling those who object to the systematic disassembly of our national language, myth, and meaning, even if we have to go back to the mimeograph machine to keep these things alive. They will not turn a republic into a psychopathic despotism. Politics, they say, is downstream from culture. Truth is the antidote to a culture of lies. The upcoming impeachment trial of former president Trump will be a showcase for that, and it may prove to be a hoax too far.
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I really don’t think we are at war with China. It’s just that our overlords know that the sentiment of the public is anti-China for now and they need time to produce the propaganda countering this particular sentiment. The propaganda won’t work but they already bought their own propaganda multiple times so now they are producing something that will make them feel better.
The big box stores are already “too big to fail” and have paid the politicians to rescue them if there’s a need.
I think we are heading into the hyperinflationary period of history and if the Weimar Republic is ever relevant, it’s today. We all know how this ended.
In 1933 the government came for the precious metals of the population. To anyone trying to hedge their bets I would advise to buy 10% worth of savings of silver and if one has a lot of savings then platinum or gold.
The hyperinflation won’t bankrupt the banks, big box stores or any government backed business. It will be an opportunity for people who spend their government checks on the things that will be worth much more than the dollar,like the precious metals. Land may be worst investment monetary-wise but moving on 5 acres after selling your suburb house will allow for you to produce the food that will cost insane amount of money at the big box store.
Be prepared that a government that is desperate will try to nationalize all big chunks of land and resettle some POC or illegal aliens just because the housing become so expensive and you don’t need that much land. So buying 5 acres and designating it as farmland (which, again, the government may still try to nationalize because reasons, that’s why) is a smart play. Check the voting trends in the area you move to for sure.
If the government tries to nationalize any land, they will go after the bigger players first.
The most important thing: never, ever give your guns away. We aren’t ready for any kind of uprising but when we do, these will be paramount. Do not register them as well. Do not brag over the internet and try to buy guns for cash, from the people you know.
I also advise people to try the cash out refinance option on your house. As long as the mortgage payments don’t change in a hyperinflationary period you win, if this period won’t happen now then spend your money wisely and enjoy the loan that you will have to repay slowly over 30 years.
I’m not advising anything that I myself am not doing right now. If your credit is bad and cash out is impossible for now, try to build it fast and take some “money down” credit cards.
Basically don’t count on anyone for any level of the government to help you. Only count on your family and friends. Always remember that a desperate government will try to do things that are unimaginable right jow and also that being a law abiding citizen is a hindrance now, not a virtue.
I think the idea that the elites in Peking, London or NY are actually Chinese, English or Americans in their behavior is a huge miscalculation. These people work together far more often and in greater harmony than any of these elites do with their own populations. There are simply the pigs in the farm house and the animals in the barn and everything else is a stage dressing to manipulate the masses in each geographic region by ginning up their feelings of patriotism. I do not think that you will ever see another WWI or WWII scale international conflict again, but rather an increasingly lockstep totalitarian warfare against the dissenters within each region by the domestic branches of of the Globalist State.
The daggers always come out at some point.
I was born in a country that once ceased to exist for over a 100 years, because the rootless elites sold it to the other elites. Why they succeeded in wiping the country of the map, they didn’t succeed in wiping it from the minds of the people and the country came back. I think that the patriotism is thus an anathema to the rootless globalists. They hate it. The countries allowing for patriotism now will not just meld into the global village, but will be left standing. I agree on everything else.
Your HELOC (home equity line of credit) idea is tantalizing. I had similar thoughts years ago. So unfortunately did Them and They. A decade or so back during the last shitshow following the “housing crisis” the various asshats were claiming they would be able to force you to pay in the “new money” or highly inflated “current money” so short term it will likely be possible to game it. If you have Weimar hyper inflation they will try to rule that you must pay by the wheelbarrow regardless of what the original Dollar amount was supposed to be.
In 1933 they seized Gold at great personal profit to the government inside info traders by the way. They also outlawed Silver “hoarding.” They published lists of Silver hoarders who were found out in the New York Times. Plan that anything of value will eventually be subject to theft by the “Looters.”
In terms of hiding or fleeing with assets. 1,000 Troy ounces of Silver is worth today with premium about $28-30,000 and weighs 70 pounds~. 1 kilo of Gold is 32.15 Troy ounces or 2.2 pounds and is worth about , with premium, $59,000. 10 kilos of Gold is worth over a half million.
A guy could carry a million in Gold in something like an AK magazine chest pouch web gear weighing little more than 45 pounds. The equivalent in Silver would require at least a 3/4 ton pickup.
Thats what I think. Using debt as a hedge works in theory until government changes the rules of the game mid stream. They will just adjust what you owe to the value of the new dollar or currency.
Agreed. I cannot foresee the time when the bank is going to let you pay your $1500, $2000 whatever, mortgage back with now hugely inflated dollars. They will change the rules as they did in 2009 when the big banks turned out to all be insolvent. One of the alphabet agencies just told them to “extend and pretend”.
I agree on a lot of what you said and I also think that a money hungry behemot of a government is something to be scared of.
I’m talking Silver because it’s easier to buy your everyday consumables with it, rather than the shavings of the gold coins but I think one should have both.
Also I don’t think I’m talking about the line of credit. I’m talking about taking another loan on your house and that’s called a cash out refinance. Basically if you owe 200k on your house but your house is worth 300k you take that 100k in a lump sum and sign a mortgage on 300k.
From my understanding HELOC is something a little different.
But it doesn’t matter and they will try to adjust your debt to the new dollars.
Now if you take that 100k and invest in Silver or gold then said Silver and gold will be worth more than 100k, many times more possibly.
But my thinking is even more short term. You simply buy a land, cash, not too much land, and then declare bankruptcy and let them take the house if they insist on you paying more than they agreed upon while signing the mortgage.
And at the end, when you do not have liquidity, as I don’t,now, you can invest a 100k lump sum better than let it sit in you house untouched.
And what you are risking is bankruptcy.
Of course what happened to the student loans is another cautionary tale and they simply can just remove the bankruptcy as an option. My grandparents never expected the government to settle strangers in their own home neither. But the socialist government simply declared that they didn’t need 3 rooms for them and their family and that each family can now have 3 rooms. This is how the money hungry totalitarian government “fixed” the housing problems. True Story.
Basically what we can do is just prepare as best as we can and with what we have.
This isn’t a 100% fool proof solution, because the evil isn’t stupid and will try to counteract for every action that we take.
One thing that is foolproof: never, ever give your guns away.
Looking forward to Texas leaving the Union. It will happen. And, I’ll be on the right side of that line.
The gaslighting will continue until reality itself collapses….
But as long as one knows it is gaslighting, just play along with the game as far as possible.
An example would be carbon credits. Think of a crop one could sell the carbon credits yet stil make money on. Sugar maple trees, blueberries, switch grass, that sort of thing.
Non-profits will boom.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/02/legal-insurrection-launches-critical-race-training-in-higher-education-website/
It is an odd dynamic. The Democrats actually need Trump to distract the public from their mendacious policies. As long as they can point to him and scream “bogeyman!”, they can keep the populous terrified and compliant.
Only it won’t work. Failing to border restrictions, interfering with the internal workings of foreign counties, military interventions, and failure to stand up to China and Iran are not only bad ideas, but they will have real world consequences that cannot be spun away. Likewise, the hypocrisy of global czar with a private jet, pretending that women can compete in sports with men who “identify as women”, and the endless printing of money are things that even the dullest voters will eventually look at as ill advised. There is a real world out there, and when things go south, people will look back at the relative sanity of Trump and wonder what was so bad with his policies.
Wait for the posters of a smiling Trump asking, “Miss me yet?”
And you don’t think Republicans need Nancy Pelosi for the reasons?