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Page added on December 14, 2015
Kunstler: Fedpocalypse Now?
“Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into….”
— Oliver Hardy
If ever such a thing was, the stage is set this Monday and Tuesday for a rush to the exits in financial markets as the world prepares for the US central bank to take one baby step out of the corner it’s in. Everybody can see Janet Yellen standing naked in that corner — more like a box canyon — and it’s not a pretty sight. Despite her well-broadcasted insistence that the economic skies are blue, storm clouds scud through every realm and quarter. Equities barfed nearly four percent just last week, credit is crumbling (nobody wants to lend), junk bonds are tanking (as defaults loom), currencies all around the world are crashing, hedge funds can’t give investors their money back, “liquidity” is AWOL (no buyers for janky securities), commodities are in freefall, oil is going so deep into the sub-basement of value that the industry may never recover, international trade is evaporating, the president is doing everything possible in Syria to start World War Three, and the monster called globalism is lying in its coffin with a stake pointed over its heart.
Folks who didn’t go to cash a month ago must be hyperventilating today.
But the mundane truth probably is that events have finally caught up with the structural distortions of a financial world running on illusion. To everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn, and economic winter is finally upon us. All the world ‘round, people borrowed too much to buy stuff and now they’re all borrowed out and stuffed up. Welcome to the successor to the global economy: the yard sale economy, with all the previously-bought stuff going back into circulation on its way to the dump.
A generous view of the American predicament might suppose that the unfortunate empire of lies constructed over the last several decades was no more than a desperate attempt to preserve our manifold mis-investments and bad choices. The odious Trump has made such a splash by pointing to a few of them, for instance, gifting US industrial production to the slave-labor nations, at the expense of American workers not fortunate enough to work in Goldman Sachs’s CDO boiler rooms. Readers know I don’t relish the prospect of Trump in the White House. What I don’t hear anyone asking: is he the best we can come up with under the circumstances? Is there not one decent, capable, eligible adult out there in America who can string two coherent thoughts together that comport with reality? Apparently not.
The class of people who formerly trafficked in political ideas have been too busy celebrating the wondrous valor of transgender. Well, now the wheels are going to come off the things that actually matter, such as being able to get food and pay the rent, and might perforce shove aside the neurotic preoccupations with race, gender, privilege, and artificial grievance that have bamboozled vast swathes of citizens wasting a generation of political capital on phantoms and figments. Contrary to current appearances, the election year is hardly over. There is still time for events to steer history in another direction.
Mrs. Yellen and her cortege of necromancers may just lose their nerve and twiddle their thumbs come Wednesday. If they actually make the bold leap to raise the fed funds rate one measly quarter of a percent, they might finally succeed in blowing up a banking system that deserves all the carnage that comes its way. There is something in the air like a gigantic static charge, longing for release.
22 Comments on "Kunstler: Fedpocalypse Now?"
Rodster on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 10:11 am
Good summation of our problems. This is the result of our money system known as fractional reserve banking. Then they piled on top of the problem by bailing out the banks and lowering interest rates to zero and that’s where it’s been since 2009.
There is no solution other than resetting EVERYTHING which means you reset the global economy. Good luck keeping 7.2 pissed off serfs from revolting.
JHK, still thinks the system is still fixable, including the political system hence why he’s still trying to find a good candidate. Hate to break it to him but the political system has failed a long long time ago. That’s how we got Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr, and Obama and soon to be the next POS-POTUS, Hitlery Clinton.
The tl;dr version is prepare and stock up while you can because one day the shit will hit the fan.
GregT on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 11:08 am
“This is the result of our money system known as fractional reserve banking.”
And that monetary system will be protected at any cost, up to and including global thermonuclear war, or global mass extinction.
The psychopaths have gained control over the asylum.
Rodster on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 11:26 am
“And that monetary system will be protected at any cost, up to and including global thermonuclear war, or global mass extinction.”
Yup, totally agree! In fact the Chinese have joined the Western banking cabal.
onlooker on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 11:29 am
I think they were always part of the Western banking cabal. What allowed them some years back to jump start their economy to such a streak of growth. I would say loans.
DMMZ on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 12:14 pm
Let’s hear it now, “Kunstler for president”.
ipissonyou on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 1:20 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHLcrfhwPtc
ipissonyou on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 1:48 pm
Some news about immigration in Europe. Lamestreet media is useless, so we have to find another source of news
Feminist protects rapists and pedophiles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkDMtYRs_Rw
Apneaman on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 2:16 pm
pissonyourself
Doing a webcast while driving does not strike me as something a responsible and trustworthy person would do. It’s also illegal (distracted driving) and puts others at risk. Why would I believe such a person? He mine as well be drinking and talking on his smart phone too since they are all about equal now in how many driving deaths they cause. Actually, the smart phone talking and texting has surpassed drunk driving deaths. Watching the video will only enable him and people like him should not be encouraged. I’m all about the public safety you see.
Distracted driving caused more 2013 deaths than impaired driving: OPP
http://www.citynews.ca/2014/03/04/distracted-driving-caused-more-2013-deaths-than-impaired-driving-opp/
ipissonyou on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 2:44 pm
Sweden a matriarchal society where women are always right and man always wrong.
Same with the province of Ontario that is in a total mess and government by a woman too. Same with brazil too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKXEUalVsWc
ipissonyou on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 2:50 pm
Kunster said :Well, now the wheels are going to come off the things that actually matter, such as being able to get food and pay the rent, and might perforce shove aside the neurotic preoccupations with race, gender, privilege, and artificial grievance that have bamboozled vast swathes of citizens wasting a generation of political capital on phantoms and figments.
What you wont see in the media about matriarch society and how bad women are at governing.
US, Canada and most of Europe are matriarchal society where women needs comes before man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBmeOffXxkA&index=7&list=PLvLgAyYV3BmUcCJu8KDFzPUteq-NZquSm
joe on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 3:11 pm
War would have come and gone by now in previous, less nuclear armed times. They don’t know what to do now because for the first time since the start of WW2, war cant be the answer, and the elites are going to struggle to find an answer. Time was, when business was bad and some countries couldn’t come up with the money, you’d invade em, now though, THEY fight back! There are just no rules anymore, its not civilised!
Apneaman on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 3:16 pm
pissonyourself, so if we just had only men making all the decisions all would be well in the world? Cause those women folks is always starting wars of aggression while the men folk only want to share and be peaceful eh? You sound like so many other retards who have dropped by with your one trick pony reason/blame for the world’s ills. Look in the mirror. That’s the problem. I find that many men who hate/blame women, biggest problem is they can’t get laid – must be the ladies fault. I hear plenty of guys bitch about the feminization of society over the last few generations and it is true that society, in the west, has become so. Why blame the women? If the society was formerly and mostly patriarchal what happened? Either the women always had the power and had, for reasons unknown, have chosen not to exercise it, or the men with power let them have some. If the women always had the power, then there is nothing to be angry about since that would be the natural order of things. On the other hand, if it was powerful men who gave it to them (what I believe), shouldn’t they be the ones who are responsible and thus the target of your anger? What I see is men who are angry that they have no power and influence and are looking to take it out on someone they perceive as weaker. Women, the poor, drug addicts, minorities all round – the other. Rarely do they go after the real power that is pulling the strings. Often, the string pullers are directing their anger towards these others. Taking on the string pullers would take balls and sacrifice. One might get hurt. Better to play it safe and blame some group with even less power.
jjhman on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 4:00 pm
I dunno how many years ago I first found Kunstler and thought “Wow, this guy really understands the situation and tells it like it is”.
Now I think he is just a professional Oscar-the-grouch. In his world the apocalypse is always next Thursday. Thursday keeps coming and so does the next grouch-o-gram.
My latest theory of everything pretty much agrees with the Arch Druid: BAU is stupidly resiliant. The powers that be will pull out all the stops to keep things going. And things will keep going. Unfortunately keeping-going means that the environment will continue to degrade and Americans with jobs will continue to buy brand new big trucks when gas prices decline. When gas prices go up people without jobs will buy them used at hugh discounts.
Decline seems imperceptable to those with jobs. Terror, hunger and dying coral are so far away. As it all creeps closer will there be upheaval or just passive accptance as everyone focuses on the Kardashians and their candidate Trump.
When will enough people see that things are degrading to begin to deal with the underlying problems? If a majority decide to make changes will they choose a Trump or a Rooseveldt to lead them?
I don’t know and neither does Kunstler.
Welch on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 5:09 pm
Im with you jjhman….Poor kunstler is going to piss his pants if the global apocalypse doesn’t start yesterday.
ghung on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 5:15 pm
Gosh, Welch, maybe Kunstler isn’t a binary thinker like some here. He, like I, sees it as “The Long Emergency”, not some apocalyptic moment in time (though that is a possibility for many, like the folks in Homs). It’s happening all around you, in real time.
Kristen on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 5:51 pm
JJH man and Welch, a cheers for you for realizing many flaws in Kunstler’s narrative. The truth is the USA is guilty of having unrealistic expectations and instead of grieving the murder of our once great ideals, avoidance is at hand.
Davy on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 5:55 pm
Where is it written a collapse process ought to be logical. This status quo happiness will go on until it won’t. There are old trees that have survived hundreds of years then one year they are dead for no reason. Most of the time there is a reason but we have not sat in their branches and watched their lives.
I imagine there will be some real surprises when shit stops working. A hugely complex self organizing process at multiple levels of abstraction I believe is more than even our finest minds with the best supercomputers can decipher. I imagine in the end tea leaves and entrails would do just as good with many unanswerable questions.
makati1 on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 8:07 pm
Rodster, at this point, ~11 months before the election, I think Trump has the advantage. He cannot be bought off like previous candidates as he has all he wants and needs already, except the Presidency and power. He also resonates with a large percentage of the voters because he is saying what they are thinking. A real exception to the rule of presidential candidates.
I have not followed the circus as I no longer bother to vote for one of two heads of the same gorgon, but I occasionally read an article about Trumps effect on the voters and TPTB.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/its-too-late-to-turn-off-trump-20151209?page=2
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/its-too-late-to-turn-off-trump-20151209?page=2
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/10/white-supremacists-for-donald-trump-the-positions-made-me-a-convert.html
and the dumbing down goes on…
makati1 on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 8:09 pm
Oops! double ref… meant:
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/11/donald_trumps_racism_is_as_american_as_apple_pie/?google_editors_picks=true
marmico on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 8:54 pm
Kunstler is good copy.
He couldn’t make it in the Pulitzer Prize tribe but he is a tatted slam dunk artist in the Nutter Doomer tribe.
Backcast to January 5, 2015:
At Christmas 2015, the DJA sits at 13,500, the S & P is at 1200. Gold is at 1750, silver at 42.
Newfie on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 9:15 pm
For the umpteenth time Kunstler predicts imminent collapse and it almost certainly won’t happen. Not next week anyway. And probably not anytime soon. There might be a stock market correction and maybe another financial crisis but the powers that be will keep the system propped up and you’ll still be able to buy a loaf of bread and cigarettes at the corner grocery. The system is not that fragile.
joe on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 11:11 am
What happened last week was the doomers saying ‘high yield, gotta sell!’, but that market will bottom out. The real issue is the middle parts, when they can’t borrow to grow anymore, then they gotta loose weight. That means jobs lost