Recession? What We Call It Is Irrelevant…
The comments below are an edited and abridged synopsis of an article by Rick Ackerman
The prosperity of the past is not coming back. Thinking expansively about the economy is no longer part of the US mindset since the Fed’s easy-credit hoax can do little but inflate asset values to the point of collapse. We are nearly there now, even though the US stock market, afflicted by mass psychosis, will remain capable of staging one last hurrah to make certain everyone is aboard for the crash that ends two generations of economic madness.
The statistics pushed by Biden and his predecessors do not mean better times ahead. Least meaningful of all are employment figures that suggest the economy is producing lots of jobs. Charles Hugh Smith tells it like it is: The picture is quite despairing. He has a rigorous plan to be as self-sufficient as possible when an energy-dependent food network has made it difficult for people living in urban areas to feed themselves and keep warm.
All those jobs the economy has been creating will have no effect on debts that have piled up, ensuring ruinous deflation rather than the CPI kind that are playing havoc with household budgets. These massive debts have hollowed out the standard of living and now there is a counterforce overwhelming the pittance that working folk have clawed back from an unyielding economic decline. The work ethic is dying among young people, who are the only hope for dealing with a debt trap. Nearly costless capital has allowed multinational corporate giants to seek labour wherever it is cheapest. As a result, more than $50 trillion has been siphoned from workers since 1975.
Millennials and Gen X-ers won’t be able to pay the benefits of Baby Boomers expected to live into their 80s and 90s. The demographic destiny is grim: There won’t be a younger generation with the means or interest in buying Boomers’ overvalued assets; those inheriting their Boomer parents’ assets will be shocked at the decline in value once the massive supply overhang hits the market; younger generations with little interest in trying to make money to sock away for a distant retirement will not be funneling earnings into stocks, bonds, real estate investment trusts, etc.