Economic pressures

[Danny B]

China manipulated their currency to gain market advantage. Since it is manipulated, it can never be internationalized.
This means that China must continually attract foreign capital.
As the government goes broke in China, the communist claws are unsheathed to raid capital from the producers.
This drives out private foreign investment.
China desperately needs foreign capital inflows.
China created far more liquidity that Japan, America and the Eurozone.
Much of this capital flowed to the West. Any crash of China would drastically reduce world capital flows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbH_8Nj51HU

Meanwhile in America, they are pumping in megatons of liquidity as stimulus.
This lifts all boats.
The price inflation that it creates SINKS all boats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEgpPJgaJng

Stocks Slammed After Kabul Blast, VIX Spikes
Is this the beginning of the "instability cascade" that BofA warned about?

A Historical Deviation Extreme - Will The Fed Fade The Delta Variant?
This time is truly different...

German Media Giant Buys Politico For $1 Billion In Latest Blockbuster Deal
"$1 billion is approximately equal to the amount of damage Politico does to American society per day..."

Q2 GDP Revised To 6.6%, Missing Expectations; Core Inflation Hits Highest Since 1983

How To Identify A Bubble: Wall Street Says It's Not A Bubble

New Rules From Treasury Department: Free Rent If You Attest You Need It

[Danny B]

Beijing Moves To Halt Foreign IPOs For Chinese Tech Firms As SEC Demands More Transparency
At a certain point, Beijing is starting to sound like it's telling the SEC 'you can't fire me because I quit'.

Beijing Claims Its Plans To "Redistribute Wealth" Won't Involve "Killing The Rich"
China is planning to do a lot of wealth redistribution. This drives out investment,

Fed's Favorite Inflation Measure Surges At Fastest Pace In 30 Years As Spending, Incomes Rise
Yeah right,,, spending incomes.
They claim to only creating $ 1.7 billion an hour of new liquidity. NONE of this flows into wages.

Fed Up With The Fed's Abuse Of Power
One phrase describes the Fed's pillaging of the nation to benefit the few at the expense of the many: abuse of power

https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/s...2Fmistake-2%2F

All Of A Sudden It's Obvious To Everyone That The Fed Should Have Been Tapering A Long Time Ago
The PTB have elected to destroy the currency rather that ending the credit bubble.

China to Sell 150,000 Tons of Metals From Reserves on Sept. 1
China needs to raise cash.

New Report Finds US Has Spent Over $2.3 Trillion On Afghanistan War
LOTS of money for the war& security business.

[Danny B]

Obama Defense Secretary Already Calling For Fresh Military Occupation Of Afghanistan
Save the poppies.

The Structural Changes Taking Place In The Economy Are "Very Dangerous"

"It Feels As If Nobody Knows Anything": A "Mystery" Market Meltup
"The absolutely impossible is literally commonplace now.” Hint: it's the Central Banks, stupid!
The meltups will continue until the currency is dead.


Russia Announces Plan To "Routinely Deploy" Hypersonic Missiles On Warship
Pentagon weeks ago warned that US "current terrestrial and space-based sensor architecture may not be sufficient to detect and track these hypersonic missiles."
CCP's Anti-Satellite Weapons Present Complex Challenge For US: Experts

Dovish Powell Sparks "Most Painful" Meltup To 52nd Record High In 2021
Today was the 52nd all-time high for the S&P500 in 2021.

"A Meltup From Here Would Be Most Painful": Goldman's Sentiment Indicator Hits Lowest Level In 63 Weeks

8/27 Fed up with the Fed’s abuse of power – Charles Hugh Smith

8/27 Taliban opens chain of U.S. army surplus stores – Babylon Bee

[BroMikey]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56359861

Million in USA without a ride. Low paying jobs drop off and money for transport is second place.

60 million lose their family car.

[Danny B]

The fallout from the mad rush to automation and outsourcing.
Americans Are 'More & More Dependent' On Big Govt - Things Are Never Going Back To 'Normal'
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-f...ng-back-normal


This Won't End Well – Gen Z'ers Take On Debt To Invest
Following the “Dot.com crash,” many individuals learned the perils of "risk" and "leverage"... Unfortunately, for Gen-Z’ers, such is a lesson that is still waiting to get learned.

What Is a Pain Trade?
Pain trade is the tendency of markets to deliver the maximum amount of punishment to the most investors from time to time. A pain trade occurs when a popular asset class or widely followed investing strategy takes an unexpected turn that catches most investors flat-footed.

UK Car Production Just Posted The Worst July Since 1956

"Rapidly Becoming Untenable" - Eurozone Finances Have Deteriorated

The principal aspect which negative interest rates has boosted is government debt, which in the Eurozone at the end of 2020 had risen to 98% of GDP overall for Eurozone members.
GOV would never cut back on spending. They forced the banks to buy State debt.
Not only is the starting point negative interest rates, but so is an average level of government debt to GDP of 103%. Averages conceal extremes, and with Greece’s debt to GDP officially at 217%, Italy at 151% and Portugal at 137% (they are likely to be higher once off-balance sheet debt for nationalised industries etc. are considered)
Germany and Luxembourg between them are owed a net €1.4 trillion. Italy and Spain between them owe the system €1,024bn. And the ECB owes the national central banks €353bn.
We see banks such as Société Generale and Deutsche having an implied leverage for shareholders of over 60 times.

The end result is that the obvious, emerging collapse of the european banks has caused capital to flow to out
of the Euro and, into the dollar.
"According to US Treasury TIC data, Eurozone holdings of US financial assets totalled $5,339bn and there is a further $1,158bn in dollar bank deposits and money instruments.

Meanwhile, US exposure to liquid Eurozone financial assets and bank balances is far less. Therefore, the rush to liquidity typically seen in a financial crisis is likely to initially favour the euro against the dollar."
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/...e-deteriorated
Ok, in a pinch, the State will default on it's debt. The European banks are LOADED up with government debt.


The Bear Case In 12 "Charts Of Darkness"
"it’s no coincidence that since the outbreak of COVID-19 global central banks have bought $834mn of financial assets every 60 minutes…and every 60 minutes the market cap of global tech stocks has risen $780mn."


When there is no reward for hard work except more hard work, and no penalty for laziness except more free benefits, workers would be fools to make slaves of themselves. A system which rewards malingering and fraud with ever more "rights" is guaranteed to lead to general opt-out on work. Many of the most dysfunctional governments in Europe have birthed the most vibrant and productive underground economies, personal and social lives. People work hard and live well in Spain, in Greece, and in Italy -- but they don't do it on the books, they don't make fat profits for the banks and bosses, and they don't pay taxes on it. Remember, they have 1500 years of experience in outwitting those who would live off their suffering.

"The reality is that the euro is the glue that holds Eurozone members together, and without it the European project is effectively dead." I and many others think it is opposite: The Euro and its' impact as single currency is breaking down EU. The support for EU and its' original purpose is strong and it would do better if local currencies and no-bail-out rules would be taken back into use."

"Europe has been held back by policymakers that have no idea what they are doing.
The Euro was designed in the good old days before the problems of neoliberalism had come home to roost.

They got the real fanatics in from the University of Chicago.

“The putative “father of the Euro”, economist Robert Mundell is reported to have explained to one of his university of Chicago students, Greg Palast: “the Euro is the easy way in which Congresses and Parliaments can be stripped of all power over monetary and fiscal policy. Bothersome democracy is removed from the economic system” Michael Hudson “Killing the Host”

This was one of those all important design criteria for neoliberal fanatics.

Everything would be controlled by perfect markets.

Governments and the electorate were the only things they really had to worry about.

Everyone cheered as periphery economies boomed on borrowed money, e.g. the Irish Celtic Tiger economy.

No one realized Wall Street was flooding the world with toxic assets.

"It’s nearly $14 trillion pyramid of super leveraged toxic assets was built on the back of $1.4 trillion of US sub-prime loans, and dispersed throughout the world" All the Presidents Bankers, Nomi Prins.

The periphery nations boomed on money borrowed mainly from the banks at the core.

The big European banks loaded up on Wall Street’s toxic assets.
The Titanic was heading straight for the iceberg.

The neoliberal designers of the Euro-zone had expected perfect markets to ensure none of these things happened.

Nations didn’t have their own central banks to backstop national financial systems when a financial crisis hit as this wasn’t seen as necessary.

The Titanic hit the iceberg and there weren’t enough life boats.

The markets hadn’t batted an eyelid while all this was happening, and they got no signals from the markets that anything was going wrong.

Market participants are really hot on public debt, though.

Once Governments had patched up their banks as best they could, and suffered from falling tax receipts after the crisis, Government debt ballooned.

The markets reacted, and drove bond yields up at the periphery making things worse.
Market forces were intent on destroying the Euro-zone.
It looked as though the Euro project was doomed until Mario stepped in to save the day.

TBTF only works for big banks when nations have their own central banks to backstop the financial system.

n 2008, the Euro-zone discovered their banks were too big to bail as the usual mechanisms to do this had not been incorporated into the design of the Euro-zone.
Governments could not get the money from their own central bank to backstop the financial system.
Neoliberals used to believe in everything being controlled by perfect markets, and so they didn’t need to worry about financial crises as they would never happen.
Neoliberals hate Government spending, and never realised a day would come when Governments had to spend to bail out the financial system, but it did, and they couldn’t.

They then copied Japan’s solution to a financial crisis.
Japan had discovered how to avoid a Great Depression and deliver Japanification instead
Japan could study the Great Depression to avoid this fate.

ACATIS Konferenz 2016, Mr. Koo, Surviving in the Intellectually Bankrupt Monetary Policy Environment

What that lot tells me is there's gonna be an almighty fincial crises in the foreseeable future.
The scenario I see happening is that Klaus Schwab's predicted massive hack-attack will occur
and this will "force" them to shut down the Internet and the banking system "to protect us".
During the shutdown, peoples' savings and pension funds will evaporate and all alt-media
websites will be taken off the air including Zerohedge. Dissenting voices will be blocked.
When the system is brought up again, people will be told their money was stolen by the hackers.
In actuality it will have been used to carry-out bank bail-ins to avoid them crashing. Sovereign
debts will be wiped out.

To quote Schwab: "You will own nothing and be happy"
A new IMF digital currency will be imposed during this period to replace the USD as major reserve
currency used for international trade. The US economy will collapse and civil unrest will break out,
so Martial Law will be introduced which explains why Biden wants US boots brought home from
Afghanistan and Iraq. Guns will be confiscated (or they'll try!).
With a much smaller economy in the US and elsewhere with fewer jobs, welfare payments will be
introduced for those who have taken all the jabs. No jabs = no welfare.
A Western version of the Chinese Social Score system will be introduced to control people.
Welcome to The New World Order Great Reset

A Western version of the Chinese Social Score system will be introduced to control people."
Already here: No-Fly Lists, No-Passport Lists, Debtor Prisons for non-payment of alimony and maintenance, vaccine passports, cancel culture, shame labeling, Political Enemy Lists, FBI and CIA Lists of Enemies of the State, Constitutional Safeguards ignored by Courts and governments, Big Pharma Immunity, Police Qualified Immunity, Banning from Social Media, IRS audits as political weapons, government oversight on bank deposits, War on Drugs, Censorship by Social Media companies, Concentrated corporate control of news media, CIA and FBI influence on news media, Greenmail, Family courts, Drivers' Licence Points System, etc., etc.
WEF and Great Reset: "You will own nothing and you will be happy".

[Danny B]

Armstrong expects all States to default on GOV debt. Who gets left holing the bag?
"How the Federal Reserve gets the money to fund the U.S. national debt has abruptly changed in the last few weeks. The Fed has effectively "pawned" more than a trillion dollars of its most valuable assets - its ownership of U.S. Treasury obligations - through its use of reverse repurchase agreements, pledging the Treasuries as collateral to get the cash to continue to fund the federal government."
https://www.gold-eagle.com/article/f...ebt-raise-cash


Brazilian President Tells Supporters "Buy A Gun, Damn It" Amid Impending Chaos
"The armed people will never be enslaved."


Here's a list of the top 100 companies whose debt the Fed is buying, in hopes of keeping the stock market elevated. Not every company, just the top 100.
https://www.investopedia.com/the-fed...tfolio-5069989

[BroMikey]

America has been abused for 40 yrs and is near or beyond burnout working 2-3 jobs never having a life with their families. The Jig is up. And at retirement age the majority on middle class workers only get $700 at age 62yrs and at age 66yrs retirement goes up to a whopping $1000 dollar. Only enough to die on, not enough to live on. Now I know that higher paid people make $2000 per month to $8000 per month but that is only one here and one there. The rest of us get $1000 MAX

This is abuse. The parents are telling their children where the dead end is taking them. We need to plant some corn and buy a cow and get off the system as much as possible as a collective, then a new exchange can occur.


Debt based slavery is no picnic

[Danny B]

China Blacklists Billionaire Actress, Cracks Down On 'Unruly' Internet Fan Culture
Beijing abruptly blacklisted one of China's most popular (and wealthiest) actresses, Zhao Wei. Her entire internet presence was scrubbed for unknown reasons on Thursday evening...

8/29 China blacklists billionaire actress, cracks down on ‘unruly’ internet culture – ZH
8/29 China to cleanse online content that ‘bad-mouths’ its economy – Yahoo
The Chinese economy is falling apart from mis-management.

China Is "Cleansing" Online Content Of Anyone Critical Of The Country's Economy
And to think we were only joking with all of those "send the short sellers to the gulag" jokes...

China’s Regulatory Crackdown Is Already Hurting the Economy
Bloomberg News

The communist claws have been unsheathed and, it is scaring away investment.

8/29 Fed prints money or the whole thing blows up – Craig Hemke
8/29 Harry Dent: crack-addicted markets at a major pivot point – Market Sanity
This is true worldwide.

China Has a Grand Strategy to Displace US: China Expert
“If there are two paths to hegemony - a regional one and a global one - China is now pursuing both,”
Their currency is not an international currency.
They can't project power beyond the South China Sea
They have the worlds fastest falling population
They are fast running their aquifers dry

[Danny B]

China's "Lehman Moment" Approaching: Evergrande Warns Of Default Risk From Cash Crunch

China Divorce From Capitalism Steals Joy From Stocks

Stocks End Seven Straight Months Of Gains With A Whimper

The "ultimate" catch up trade

China had a flawed business model. The absolutely needed perpetual expansion. Their population was the fastest shrinking group in the world.
They needed their export markets to grow without pause. They exported unemployment to their best customers.
They stole water from <2 billion> of their neighbors.
They sent out many thousands of subsidized fishing boats to steal fish from national fisheries.

Their attempt at creating a hybrid communist-capitalist economic system is failing.
They are falling back on communism. They are punishing the rich & successful like Jack Ma.
Their economy is shrinking BUT, they need to attract foreign capital inflows.
Beijing's Big Tech Crackdown Causes Private Deal Flow To Dry Up In August

The downturn in China is partially responsible for the market turn in stocks.
Speculators are trying to figure out how to keep momentum going in some kind of catch-up trade.

George Soros And China: What A Difference A Decade Makes
2010: China has 'better functioning govt' than US
2021: Xi Jinping is "the most dangerous enemy of open societies in the world."
China Introduces "Xi Jinping Thought" Into School Curriculum For All Age Groups

"Absolute Shocker": China's Service Economy Unexpectedly Implodes With 2nd Worst Non-Mfg PMI Print On Record
Non-manufacturing was an absolute shocker at 47.5. This is more than 5 standard deviations below Bloomberg consensus, outside the entire forecast range

Beijing Claims Its Plans To "Redistribute Wealth" Won't Involve "Killing The Rich"

Capital flows to where it is treated the best.
By falling back on authoritarian communism, China is admitting that it's sysetm does not work.
This may very well be the force that pushes the West into depression.

[Danny B]

So, do you care what happens to the economy in China?
"Oh, and by the way, the erstwhile engine of global economic growth (China) is now blown. China’s huge stimulus package in the wake of the Great Recession helped pull the global economy out of its malaise. This debt-disabled nation is now unable to repeat that same trick again."
https://www.dollarcollapse.com/pento...eflation-2022/
Good article.

America has had enormous deflation of wages.
The PTB are printing gazillions of dollars to prevent deflation of prices.
The growth of debt has climbed exponentially.
Don't forget that neo-classical economics does NOT consider private debt to be of any consequence.
"The total outstanding U.S. consumer debt balance grew $800 billion to a record high of $14.88 trillion, according to Experian data, an increase of 6%—the highest annual growth recorded in over a decade. Since 2010, consumer debt has increased a whopping 31%, or $3.56 trillion"
"U.S. National Debt Expected To Approach $89 Trillion By 2029"

European banks are close to meltdown.
China is melting before our eyes.
Buy more popcorn.

[Danny B]

"Rental Policy Shock": 750,000 Households Are About To Be Evicted - What Happens To The Economy

Amid Sanctions, Taliban Expected To Double Down On Drug Trafficking

Bill Gross Says Bonds Are ‘Investment Garbage’ Just Like Cash
“Intermediate to long-term bond funds are in that trash receptacle for sure, but will stocks follow? Earnings growth had better be double-digit-plus or else they could join the garbage truck.”
The Federal Reserve, which has been absorbing about 60% of net Treasury issuances through its quantitative-easing program, may soon start scaling back asset purchases

The Taliban Are About to Preside Over Economic Collapse

Huaxia joins Chinese banks halting forex services amid currency volatility concerns, but move leaves customers anxious

9/01 Around $11 billion in gold was smuggled into India last year – GATA


The goal of Norway's $1.3 trillion Oil Fund – the largest sovereign wealth fund – is to ensure the responsible and long-term management of Norway's oil and gas revenues in order to benefit both current and future generations.
Professor of Anthropology Thomas Hylland Eriksen of the University of Oslo has made a stir with his call to give away half of Norway's Oil Fund

He wants to give it to the U.N.
How very communist.

[Danny B]

All nations go off the gold standard when preparing for war.
The Bretton Woods Agreement locked all currencies to the dollar and, locked the dollar to gold.
This prevented major wars but, was unacceptable to the banking & war industries.
The Welfare-Warfare State was created.
This created the necessary currency inflation to break the dollar's peg to gold.

This allowed near unlimited printing of new dollars.
The budget for the Pentagon is about $1 trillion a year.
"According to Bloomberg’s Anthony Carpaccio, the Department of Defense made $35 trillion in “accounting adjustments” in 2019, easily surpassing the $30.7 trillion in such adjustments recorded in 2018.
Carpaccio notes that the number “dwarfs the $738 billion of defense-related funding in the latest U.S. budget, a spending plan that includes the most expensive weapons systems in the world including"

Clearly, something had to be done to stop what was essentially UNLIMITED finance for weapons & war.
The Reserve currency status of the U.S. dollar had to be broken.
The exorbitant privilege had to end.

The Great Reset has been talked about for many years.
The Great Reset is a dethroning of the dollar.
The American monetary authorities in the District of Corruption have been doing unlimited liquidity creation in an effort to bring an end to the dollar.
At the same time, monetary authorities in many other parts of the world are engaging in printing and negative interest rates to keep their respective States afloat.
The Euro sees enormous currency inflation to keep all the socialist programs alive.

I was in Mexico when they did one of their periodic currency devaluations.
They had the new currency all printed and ready to go.
The people with connections had all moved into hard currencies before the devaluation.
ALL currencies eventually fail.
The U.S. dollar currencies has never been cancelled.

They chip away at it's value but, it hasn't been cancelled.
America has too much debt to continue on it's present path.

The dollar must suffer an overnight devaluation to wash away as much debt as possible.
Since it is the reserve currency, this reset will bring turmoil to all markets.
There is no plan to introduce a new paper U.S. dollar, all ready to go.
When the dollar finally crashes, the replacement will be digital.
This has long been planned.

The Great Reset will try to get rid of all paper currencies.
Parkinson's Law states that the State bureaucracy will grow by 6% a year, regardless of work load.
It is obvious that the demands of the non-producing bureaucrats will slowly strangle the fiscal health of the rest of the economy.
Previously, the State had to rely on tax receipts to finance itself.
Lately, it has been able to create new liquidity to finance itself.
The creation of a digital currency will enable it to finance itself through the creation of TARGETED liquidity, rather than GENERAL currency inflation.

[Danny B]

The boss of a 'Black Swan' fund predicts an epic market crash, warns crypto isn't a safe haven, and blasts the Fed in a new interview. Here are the 12 best quotes.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/boss-...122549954.html

One Bank Spots A Bizarre Market Divergence: Stocks Are At All Time Highs Yet Investors Are Bracing For Crisis

The stupid Chinese government just can't understand that Communism chases away investment.
Alibaba Donates a Third of Its Cash to Chinese Initiatives. The Stock Is Falling.

Don't Expect An Easy Life And Be Ready To Struggle, China's Xi Warns Officials

‘Everybody has to buy a rifle, damn it!’ Brazilian President Bolsonaro tells his supporters

"Note that out of an index of 500 companies, these 10 alone account for nearly 30% of the market’s weight. So, in order for the market to crash, we need to see them breakdown badly."
"Put simply, out of the top FIVE companies in the S&P 500, which account for nearly a quarter of the market’s weight (22.8% to be exact), FOUR of them are in strong uptrends.
While the market is definitely in a bubble, until these companies break down, the odds of a crash remain small."
WRONG
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2021-...ing-crash-pt-3

9/04 Dems consider taxing CEO pay, stock buybacks for $3.5 trillion budget – CNBC

9/04 Chinese high-yield index dips to lowest since 2020 – Reuters
9/04 Hedge funds slash exposure to U.S. stocks that count on China – Yahoo

[Danny B]

Financialization is a shift in the way wealth is accumulated. Whereas in the past profits were mostly derived from the mass production and sale of goods, in our financialized era a large proportion of profits comes from the buying and selling of financial securities and the interest payments they accrue."

At one time, wages from productivity supported the working class.
Regulatory capture allowed the speculators to get favorable legislation.
"The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act passed in November 1999, repealing portions of the BHCA and the Glass–Steagall Act"
This act pushed by Clinton and Greenspan gave ALL of your money to the banks to speculate with. They bought up EVERYTHING.

Everything that you needed, you bought from a banker who used your savings.

"Furthermore, it failed to give to the SEC or any other financial regulatory agency the authority to regulate large investment bank holding companies"

OK, the banks were turned loose with all your money and, no real oversight. Accounts were swept, up to 27 times a month to gather up all idle money.
This caused great price inflation.

At the same time, great loads of this money was invested to build up low-wage competitors to the American worker. To further increase profits, China was given most favored nation trading status. The resulting lower tariff rates increased the profit margins of the speculators who used your money to create your job competitors.
China still has this status.

The result, wages haven't risen in about 40 years.
The speculators engineered great price inflation but, the worker couldn't find / produce any wage inflation.
Wages for the middle class were tied to their productivity. Productivity has increased greatly

"Starting in the late 1970s, policymakers began dismantling all the policy bulwarks helping to ensure that typical workers’ wages grew with productivity"

"From 1979 to 2020, net productivity rose 61.8%, while the hourly pay of typical workers grew far slower—increasing only 17.5% over four decades (after adjusting for inflation). "
Wages were the system that transmitted wealth to the productive class.
This transmission system was broken shortly after America abandoned the last of the gold standard.

"had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP—enough to more than double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year.

"Price and Edwards calculate that the cumulative tab for our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality had grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018. At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year, that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020. That’s $50 trillion that would have gone into the paychecks of working Americans had inequality held constant—$50 trillion that would have built a far larger and more prosperous economy"
Rand corporation

This so-called "experiment" (rape) is the reason that financialization grew from 15% of the economy to 40% of the economy.
As our effective wages went down, the bankers offered us longer and longer credit terms.

Global Banks’ $170 Billion Haul Marks Most Profitable Year Ever
"Dow Jones U.S. Banks Index up 59% over the past year and the Eurostoxx Banks Index up 56%.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. was the standout, earning the equivalent of $131 million a day."

Regulatory capture is the standard procedure for the wealthy corporations.
Top Arms Corporations Spent $1 Billion on Lobbying During Afghan War, Saw a $2 Trillion Return

You can buy a lot of politicians for $1 billion.

Douglas Macarthur,
"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster."

A few years ago, U.S. GOV spent 24% of the economy / money into circulation.
Due to the effects of shrinking purchasing power GOV found itself subsidizing more and more people. 4 years ago, 51% of Americans were receiving a check from GOV.
The middle class was hollowed out by the extraction of $50 trillion.

The bankers were able to cause great price & currency inflation.
The workers were blocked from gaining wage inflation.

It didn't help that America spent a reported $14 trillion on wars of choice.
In 2019, the Pentagon made $32 trillion in budget adjustments so, who really knows what the wars cost?

(3 years ago), welfare for the poor cost about $1.5 trillion.
(3 years ago) welfare for the rich cost about $15 trillion.
"Yesterday the U.S. Federal Reserve released a list of nearly 800 companies whose investment-grade (as of March 22) debt it plans to buy on the secondary market in order to support financial markets. "
The FEDs are buying up everything that is any danger of defaulting.

The productive class suffered effective wage deflation.
Just the same, the bankers were loathe to suffer any price deflation.
Lengthening our credit terms helped for a bit.
Bubble blowing helped a bit. When they crashed, the State could be counted on to rescue the system with massive liquidity injections.

Automation, outsourcing and wage deflation continued to reduce the purchasing power of the middle class.
The State responded by dropping helicopter money.
There is much talk of making this a regular thing by way of modern monetary theory.
In a working paper, the Cleveland FED proposes that each person has an account at the FED. Liquidity would be regularly deposited.
The FED acknowledges that the private banks would be "disintermediated"
When you wanted a loan, you would just apply at the FED.

MMT isn't the perfect answer but, neither is mass starvation.

Banks make their money on the "spread" between treasuries and, whatever they can charge on the market in the way of interest rates. The hollowed out middle class couldn't afford high interest rates. The bankers engineered zero percent interest rates. ZIRP allowed the bankers to continue to get some spread. The primary dealers (big banks) got free money
At treasury auctions.
ZIRP was a big part of the pressures that destroyed the pension funds.

The ZIRP that was used to save the banks has destroyed the pension funds.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/tag/pensions/
Nearly all pension funds are insolvent.

Kotlikoff reports that U.S. GOV has a $213 trillion shortfall in it's abilities to fund itself going forward.
MMT isn't the perfect answer but, mass starvation of the elderly would be pretty ugly.
There are no easy answers.
Regulatory capture by morally bankrupt legislators has resulted in bankruptcy of the federal government.

[Danny B]

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a semi-autobiographical book written by John Perkins, first published in 2004
Suggesting a system of corporatocracy and greed (rather than a unilateral conspiracy)

If You Look Behind Neoliberal Economists, You’ll Discover the Rich: How Economic Theories Serve Big Business
The road to serfdom – sponsored by big business

The fatal flaw of neoliberalism: it's bad economics

In the previous post. I showed that the current system is specifically designed to rob the working man.
It is completely institutionalized.

The problem; the working man is absolutely essential. The parasites are NOT.

In an article in 2019, Stiglitz writes: "Well, after 40 years (of neoliberalism)...growth has slowed and the fruits of that growth went overwhelmingly to very few at the top. As wages stagnated and the stock market soared, income and wealth flowed up, rather than trickling down. How can wage restraint - to attain or maintain competitiveness - and reduced government programmes possibly add up to higher standards of living?..."

In his 2019 book 'People, Power and Profits: Progressive capitalism in an age of discontent' he writes that "...over recent decades, markets have not done a good job of ensuring the basic requisites of a decent life for all..."
A 2014 book was titled "Economics of the 1%", popularising the idea. It was written by economist John F Weeks, professor emeritus at the University of London. This assertion is not disputed even by neoliberals.

Market needs state and the rest 99%

Markets or market players wouldn't be what they are without state's generous helpings.

Prof. Dirk Philipsen, an economic historian at the Duke University, bluntly drove home the point in April this year in an article, 'Private gain must no longer be allowed to elbow out the public good'.

The article reads: "...without massive public assistance, late-stage extractive capitalism, turbocharged by private interest and greed, would long be dead...Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Exxon - all would be bust without public bailouts and tax breaks and subsidies. Every time the private system works itself into a crisis, public funds bail it out - in the current crisis (following the pandemic), to the tune of trillions of dollars. As others have noted, for more than a century, it's a clever machine that privatises gains and socialises costs."

"In any case, market is set by public policy, the rules of which are set by state, and that there is no evidence to suggest that unfettered or unbridled market is fair, equitable, or efficient. Markets need to be regulated.
https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/...088-2020-06-24

Once the land, water and mineral rights are privatized, along with transportation, communications, lotteries and other monopolies, the next aim is to block governments from regulating their prices or taxing financial and rentier wealth. The neo-rentier objective is threefold: to reduce economies to debt dependency, to transfer public utilities into creditor hands, and then to create a rent-extracting tollbooth economy. The financial objective is to block governments from writing down debts when bankers and bondholders over-lend."