Catastrophe on All Fronts: There Is No Recovery

The Federal Reserve didn’t pull the trigger on a 0.25% rate hike again today, making my prediction, seven years ago, that the Fed would never raise rates again, still in play.

The markets rallied on the news after a brief drop… but the markets are almost completely professional fund managers and computerized systems now. And if you speak with most fund managers they will tell you that they HAVE to buy or hold because if they sell and the markets continue to go up they will lose their job/clients.

Your average person isn’t really in the market. And the younger generations are staying away in droves.

A new survey from BlackRock found that nearly 1/3rd of people said investing money felt risky. And a full 72% said they did not see investing as a way to help them reach their financial goals.

Millennials were especially concerned. Nearly half of people ages 25 to 34 agreed that “what you might earn investing isn’t worth the risk of losing your money,” the most of any other generation. Although, to be fair, millennials don’t have any money anyway, thanks to being born into debt slavery.

Most younger people today know how bad it is out there. They may not know that the US’s monetary and fiscal problems are incurable and verging on the catastrophic, but they know it isn’t good.

ZeroHedge described what is going on well:

It appears the ‘trap’ that central planners have set for themselves – by enabling massive financial asset inflation in the face of what is now the longest streak of economic weakness and data disappointment on record – now looks set to prove their impotence and/or Enisteinian insanity.

In the US, corporate profits are down and economic growth remains non-existent no matter what the government numbers say.

Another article, “Housing Recovery Horror: New Home Sales Crash Most Since 2013,” posted at ZeroHedge shows how this important sector is an ongoing disaster.

This is one of the sectors that the Fed counted on to lead the way to prosperity and 2015 was to be the year that would find the economy generating momentum. The stock market was doing well, unemployment seemed to have ticked down (although it is almost all temporary or service industry jobs) and real estate sales looked solid. And then, as the article points out …

Homebuilders were exuberant, The Fed was confident, and stock markets have recovered… so why did New Home Sales collapse 11.5% in September (missing a 0.6% drop expectation by a proverbial mile)? … One possible culprit: the raging housing bubble, as the median new home sales price rises to the highest in 2015 and just shy of its all time high at $296,900.

This is bad enough, but there is worse to come. Despite its own plan to move rates higher, the Fed has been pressuring banks to move interest rates lower to counteract the twin US disasters of slumping growth and deflating real estate.

From Phoenix Capital Research:

The Fed had hoped that by enacting its policies, it would force investors to move their money out of cash and into stocks and other risk assets. But investors aren’t playing ball. And it’s possible the Fed’s worst nightmare might hit. What’s the Fed’s worst nightmare? A significant percentage of investors move their money into physical cash.

This is something Fed bankers emphatically do not want. In fact, there are rumblings that the Fed and the US’s biggest banks may support a tax on cash to force it into what the Fed sees as more beneficial uses – real estate, stocks, etc.

This war on cash is not just going on in the US but overseas as well. It is perhaps one reason why alternative money is becoming more popular. Barcelona just announced plans to create a regional money that would be exchangeable with the euro. Madrid is said to be furious, but Barcelona plans to move ahead.

Barcelona is not alone in seeking the independence and issuing power that a non-traditional currency provides. There are now, it is estimated, some 3,000 local currencies around the world and the more that traditional fiat seems to fail, the more receptive communities are to alternatives.

Not to mention, bitcoin has been on a tear, closing above $300 today.

Unfortunately what people don’t understand is that the same banking cabal that created the current monetary system have seen the need to change it – mostly because people have found out too much about it thanks to the internet.

The UN for instance supports many alternative currency schemes. And on the internet there are numerous websites devoted to the idea of government run central banks that should print money “for the people.”

These alternative money formulations are probably just another form of psyop. When the main monetary engines finally implode these artificial alternative creations will crash too.

The world is being prepared for a major catastrophe and fears of such a catastrophe are fueling further authoritarian economic formulations. For instance, Scandinavian countries are aggressively beginning to move toward “cashless” societies that will include negative interest rates.

Since it is challenging to move toward a cashless society while paper money still exists, cash will be increasingly demonized. And even government bonds will be issued with negative rates. Just this week, Italy sold a tranche of bonds that investors had to pay to lend. The rate was -0.023% and investors were apparently convinced to make the purchases for fear that other tranches in other countries would be even worse.

This is, therefore, a global phenomenon – as is the Great Recession itself. Vast numbers are out of work around the world and asset bubbles dominate modern markets. In anticipation of the coming catastrophe, military activity has expanded markedly. War is always a preferred solution to preserve the remnants of the system.

And that is what some of our (mis)leaders intend to promote. First war, then economic dystopia and finally out of the rubble a new global monetary and political system. It will be run by multinationals empowered by corporate courts (enabled by the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other corporatist takeovers) and its handmaidens will be technocrats graduating from so-called elite schools throughout the West.

There will be little room for independent thinking or culture. The ones who have survived will be treated as a kind of cattle. Or that is what “they” have in mind.

Fortunately, this will not take place. There are too many who already understand these plans and will oppose them to death. But there WILL be chaos. Count on it.

Originally Appeared At The Dollar Vigilante