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Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Phase 2 of the 'Great Recession' about to begin.

More rhetoric, more debt, more implosions.

by StFerdIII

As predicted some time ago Phase 2 of the Great Recession is likely to begin in 2013 if not before. Next year the Zeuro zone will have to roll-over a lot of its debt. The failure to do so will initiate a large decline in the Euro, fiscal derangement in every Zeuro zone country, a financial contraction, and an economic constriction which will be worse than that experienced in 2008. Gold, commodities and the savaged US dollar, debilitated by corrupt monetary policy, will revalue upwards. The US generates about a Trillion dollars per annum from seigniorage, the profits accrued from owning the world's reserve currency. The US is teetering on bankruptcy, but that $1 Trillion is surely useful money for the Republicrats to waste and buy votes with and remarkably, the dollar will revalue upwards as the Euro fades into a Zeuro. There is no saving Europe, just as there is no point in keeping junk in your garage or in betting against the future rise of the US$.

The Daily Mail, paints a 'bleak' but entirely realistic assessment:

  • Financial markets face a rerun of the Great Panic of 2008.

  • It’s ‘far from clear that eurozone leaders have steeled themselves’ for the looming catastrophe amid fears of a Greek exit from the single currency and meltdown in Spain.

  • Events in Greece could trigger financial fright in Spain, Italy and across the eurozone. The summer of 2012 offers an eerie echo of 2008…. ‘If Greece leaves the eurozone, the contagion is impossible to predict, just as Lehman had unexpected consequences.’

  • There will not be time for meetings of finance ministers to discuss the outlook and debate the politics…. ‘In panicked markets, investors flee to safe assets, sparking other flames.’

In other words get ready to watch your investments, savings and retirement plans crash. The 'markets' will be blamed [or maybe the Jew]; 'banksters' will be arraigned before pious congressmen, and the mainstream media will scream that bailouts, printed monies, and government action 'now' are vital. Children's future and all that. Yawn. The madness of 2008 and 2009 will repeat itself.

Governments caused the last crisis, but have been rewarded with more power, more taxes, more spend, more tearful rhetoric [Globaloneywarming; children's future; safety; forward together! etc]. As a coterie of unionized elitists, governments have done very well out of the crisis. In Europe and North America there are far more highly paid swivelling union workers pretending to be 'public' employees than in 2008. In the US government union workers have increased by 10%, in Canada by 15% and in Europe by only 20%. Tough times call for more well-paid pensioned 'heroes' it seems. Emergencies call out for more state power it appears. God forbid that individuals should actually be responsible in any fashion. That idea is 'fascistic'.

Since 2008 all modern governments have markedly increased their power and ability to spend debt, printed paper pieces that some call money, or appropriated assets that the big-brains call 'progressive' taxation. Government debt to GDP [a bad measure to be sure] is well over 150% in Europe if one adds in the various hundreds of billions of solemn and never-to-be-kept promises of funding for a sundry of Euro-stabilization programs. This excludes off-the-balance-sheet liabilities of some 3-5 times GDP. Governments spend now more than ever, the biggest joke going is anything connected with 'austerity'. What austerity when governments have been spending 10-15% more money each year for the past 5 years ? Are you serious in calling anything 'austere' when your base has gone up by 30-50% and you cut maybe 5% of that increased profligacy? Inane.

North America is hardly better than the Zeuro-zone, with real debts at the national and state/provincial levels totalling well over 100% of GDP and much more if one was to amortize off-the-balance-sheet debts which are similar in size to those of Europe. All modern states have real debts that are 2 times their economic size. Braudel's analysis that when real debts are over 200% of GDP, the state goes bankrupt and witnesses social and political dislocation if not violence will again be revisited.

Bush, the non-conservative doubled US debt levels and his successor the 'God' or 'The One' has ensured another doubling within 2 years to some $18 Trillion or 120% of the US economy. I don't see much difference between Bush-Bama, just as there is little real difference between Germany and Greece. Bankruptcy and state corruption are simply that. There is no puffery or poetry to hide the ugliness.

Untethered state power leads to the dissolution of civilization. A simple point that is well borne out by historical fact. Phase 2 of this government-created crisis will confirm this observation.