The next recession will sweep the Socialists into power

 

What I’m about to say may sound totally crazy at first. But keep reading, because I think you’ll agree that it’s dead-on accurate.

There’s a recession coming.

No, that’s not some Chicken Little “The Sky is Falling” statement. Far from it. It’s just a fact: economies and financial markets always go through boom and bust cycles.

There are good years and lean years, up years and down years.

War On Cash Escalates: China Readies Digital Currency, IMF Says “Extremely Beneficial”

Remember when Bitcoin and its digital currency cohorts were slammed by authorities and written off by the elite as worthless? Well now, as the war on cash escalates, officials from The IMF to China are seeing the opportunity to control the world’s money through virtual (cash-less) currencies. Just as we warned most recently here, state wealth control is the goal and, as Bloomberg reports, The PBOC is targeting an early rollout of China’s own digital currency to “boost control of money” and none other than The IMF’s Christine Lagarde added that “virtual currencies are extremely beneficial.”

By way of background, as we explained previously, What exactly does a “war on cash” mean?

It means governments are limiting the use of cash and a variety of official-mouthpiece economists are calling for the outright abolition of cash. Authorities are both restricting the amount of cash that can be withdrawn from banks, and limiting what can be purchased with cash.

These limits are broadly called “capital controls.”

Why Now?

The Loss of All Liberty Is Coming Faster Than You Imagined

UK Prime Minister David Cameron reflects the serious problem we have with politicians. Politicians have ZERO respect for our human rights for they only think about how they are going to raid our wealth to pay for their families and retirements at our expense. Cameron actually asked, “In our country, do we want to allow a means of communication we cannot read? My answer to that question is: ‘No, we must not’.”

The FDIC’s Plan to Raid Bank Accounts During the Next Crisis

The financial system is predominantly comprised of digital money. Actual physical Dollars bills and coins only amount to $1.36 trillion. This is only a little over 10% of the $10 trillion sitting in bank accounts. And it’s a tiny fraction of the $20 trillion in stocks, $38 trillion in bonds and $58 trillion in credit instruments floating around the system.

Suffice to say, if a significant percentage of people ever actually moved their money into physical cash, it could very quickly become a systemic problem.

Indeed, this is precisely what caused the 2008 meltdown, when nearly 24% of the assets in Money Market funds were liquidated in the course of four weeks. The ensuing liquidity crush nearly imploded the system.

The Detroitification of America

A 2010 article that couldn’t be more relevant today:

 

Like a forgotten downtown billboard, Detroit proclaims a warning about the rest of America for any who will stop and look.



If ever an American city was a warning for the nation, it is Detroit. Its crumbling mansions, overgrown boulevards and abandoned factories drive a message home to those who will pay attention. We cannot afford to ignore this once-great city. Why? What killed Detroit is killing America.

Detroit used to be synonymous with wealth and prosperity. It was a city humming with big-finned cars and Motown rhythms. Factories churned out products that ended up on store shelves around the world. Full employment empowered high salaries, flourishing schools and manicured storefronts, with flashy neon lights lining the boulevards. Multiple generations of families shared the same streets and barbecues.

Governments Are Broke. Now they Are Turning People Against People

 

New York City (NYC) is turning man against his brother all for money writing their own epitaph. NYC telling people to video tape cars just idling in town who they will then fine and the rats will be rewarded. This is precisely how Rome was torn apart and it is amazing to watch how history repeats because these politicians will NEVER reform so we must watch how they will destroy society leading to the inevitable crash and burn – the end of NYC as was the case for Rome.

…

Now New York City is now adopting the very same policies as North Korea and East Germany. It is government’s self-interest that matters, not the welfare of the people. We already have this rating out of others in taxes and it has been greatly used scaring the public to the point of insanity. When a man recently got up on a plane to go to the lavatory, another passenger called the stewardess to say he thought he was a Muslim. He was dressed normally and had passed all the checks. Nevertheless, we have people monitoring others now in a state of paranoia.

The woman who called police because a young black man was buying a BB gun in Walmart has blood on her hands. Her paranoia led to police shooting and killing the family of a man at an Ohio Walmart shooting him dead John Crawford III gunned down inside Walmart because government has turned civilization into a state of paranoia.

China Moving to Replace USA as Financial Capitol of World

A vital step in the shift of the Financial Capitol of the World moving from the West to the East, is becoming visible if you pay attention. Our model has revealed that the Financial Capitol of the World moves with the rise and fall of nations. China on the verge of becoming a net exporter of capital, it has already overtaken its Western counterparts as a primary source of credit for the developing world. And from this financial prominence, China will gradually exercise political influence that will shadow the United States in the decades ahead. We are at the dawn of a new era – the rise of Asia.

Central banks fight ‘vultures’ in global currency war

A global war of currency depreciation has begun. Although the weapons are not killing anyone, the slow damage will be no less devastating than nuclear, chemical or biological warfare. In a worst-case scenario, there will be a substantial redistribution of the income and wealth of all nations and an even wider gap between the rich and poor.

The war has now spread to Denmark, Singapore, the EU, Switzerland, Japan and even South Korea and Taiwan. The weapons used include banknotes, central bank control of foreign exchange and interest rates, and vultures (hedge funds) in the financial markets defending and speculating on the currencies.

Reagan’s OMB head: Wealth inequality is a problem

But Stockman says blame lays not with the tax code (indeed, he pioneered a trickle-down approach to taxes under Reagan) but with the Fed.Obama “is talking about a symptom, but he’s clueless as to the cause. The cause is not capitalism. The cause is not some entrepreneur out there trying to invent something and improve the performance of his business. The problem is in the Eccles building [home to the main office of the Fed] and in the 12 people sitting there and thinking that interest rates are some magic elixir that’ll cause this very troubled and difficult economy to revive,” Stockman said.

“Russian Buyer Is A Thing Of The Past” – Oligarchs Rush To Sell US Real Estate

Instead of feeling a ‘pinch’ in their pocketbooks, perhaps they’re letting the tide recede before the tidal wave comes in. A forewarning, if you will, that Russia soon plans on somehow retaliating and killing the U.S. market in one way or another — something of which is very possible given the vulnerabilities and complacency of America today. Russia, unlike America very seldom issues warnings. Their thinking is entirely different from that of Americans, who tend to think this is another turn in the market and not that economic warfare could be in play.

 

For uber-wealthy Russians, “an apartment in Miami, even the most glorious beachfront apartment, is not a priority right now,” warns one real estate attorney, as The New York Observer reports Russian buyers no longer felt they had the liquid assets to carry on with the transaction and were looking to break closed real estate contracts. “Your average Russian buyer tends to be someone who works in the $5, $10, $15 million range. Obviously very wealthy people, but also people who are much more likely to feel a pinch given the economic situation and the exchange rate,” and with maintenance costs sky-high, the trophy apartments have shifted from ‘safe-deposit-boxes’ out of reach of sanctions to burdensome drains.

“We are all in a ponzi-world right now, hoping to get bailed-out by the next person”

One of the most important Zero Hedge posts of the last few years was “The “Muddle Through” Has Failed: BCG Says “There May Be Only Painful Ways Out Of The Crisis”” where The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) helped explain how the economic establishment is trying everything to move the system further with ever more cheap money and debt, why this will fail, and the inevitable wealth taxes that will be imposed to refloat the system from the ashes.

One of the authors of the infamous “Back to Mesopotamia” report (if 1984 is the instruction manual for political leaders, then this is the instruction manual for monetary leaders) was BCG senior partner Daniel Stetler, now blogger, and author “Debt In The 21st Century” who sees debt and leverage as the main factors driving wealth and inequality – a fact clearly overlooked by Piketty.

Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’: the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US

An eerie and well-laid out article from 2006 that warrants attention. What this article doesn’t take into account is that the USSR underwent a controlled and planned strategic collapse to dupe the West into thinking that it was going to become democratic and full of freedom, no longer a threat. As explained by Anatoliy Golitsyn, America has been sold New Lies for Old the entire time and fell for the Perestroika Deception. Slide 23 hints at it, but misses the mark. Over 92% of Golitsyn’s predictions came true, yet alarmingly received very little attention.

While the undertones of the article may seem pro-Soviet or Communist to some in an ‘America vs Russia’ framework, it remains objective in illustrating the final point(s) in principal of how the USSR panned out and how America might pan out. It doesn’t take into account

Most of the article will be posted here for documentation purposes, the remaining portions can be found on the source link.

 

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a message it is.

My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The rhetorical device I am going to use is the “Collapse Gap” – to go along with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War.

In the Year 2024

 

[Editor’s Note from Jim Rickards: The following article describes a fictional dystopia in the spirit of Brave New World or 1984. It is not a firm forecast or prediction in the usual analytic sense. Instead, it’s intended to provide warning, and encourage readers to be alert to dangerous trends in society, some of which are already in place. Thank you.]

As I awoke this morning, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, from restless dreams, I found the insect-sized sensor implanted in my arm was already awake. We call it a “bug.” U.S. citizens have been required to have them since 2022 to access government health care.

The bug knew from its biometric monitoring of my brain wave frequencies and rapid eye movement that I would awake momentarily. It was already at work launching systems, including the coffee maker. I could smell the coffee brewing in the kitchen. The information screens on the inside of my panopticon goggles were already flashing before my eyes.

How A Country Dies

Those living during the decline of Rome were likely unaware that anything was happening. The decline took over a couple of hundred years. Anyone living during the decline only saw a small part of what was happening and likely never noticed it as anything other than ordinary.

Countries don’t have genetically determined life spans. Nor do they die quickly, unless the cataclysm of some great war does them in. Even in such extreme cases, there are usually warning signs, which are more obvious in hindsight than at the time.

Few citizens of a dying nation recognize the signs. Most are too busy trying to live their lives, sometimes not an easy task.  If death occupies their mind, it is with respect to themselves, a relative or a friend. Most cannot conceive of the death of a nation.

The Asian oligarchs you’ve never heard of who bought up London – and knocked the Duke of Westminster off No1

The Duke of Westminster has been knocked off his perch after more than a decade as the richest investor in UK property.

He’s taken the top spot in the Estates Gazette Rich List since it began in 2002, comfortably surpassing billionaires such as the pharmaceuticals scion Ernesto Bertarelli and the Swiss-based investors and private equity players, David and Simon Reuben.

Notice anything about this list? Like the two Chinese men that came out of nowhere to occupy first and second place? Neither of them appeared in the top 250 UK property investors last year. The third Chinese member of the top 10, Joseph Lau, is £550m richer than he was last year. But the wealth of the top 250 is so much greater – up 60% on 2012 – that he has fallen three places.