Crisis, like pregnancy, never just happens. There’s always a precipitating factor.
Of course, as with the causes of pregnancy, those precipitating factors are all fun and games in the moment, when no one is really thinking about later down the line.
But that’s humans for you: Don’t harsh my high in the present by telling me what might happen tomorrow.
So, we miss the warning signs that a bad moon is rising.
Which is what Queen Elizabeth was getting at when she stopped by an event at the London School of Economics back in 2008, amid the height of the Global Financial Crisis, and asked, “Why did nobody notice it?”
Though that sounds like a question, the tone was more admonishment… like: You economists and bankers and whatnot, you’re all morons. You went too far with your greed, your laissez-faire approach to rules and regulations, and you destroyed parts of the world.
On the movie projector in my mind, I always see the scene from The Hunt for Red October, when the Soviet submarine commander, in a fit of arrogance, removes the safety procedures on his torpedoes and ends up torpedoing his own submarine.
That’s the US today.
The safety procedures have been removed. Arrogance is steering the ship. And no one in power seems to recognize the looming disaster… or if they do, they don’t want to bring it up now and harsh everyone’s happiness about the supposedly robust American economy and the upbeat stock market.
American exceptionalism is on full display, so get over yourself!
Right—but how exceptional is the display, really, when it’s all fake?
Lance Armstrong was a great cyclist… until we all learned he was doping.
Enron was a Wall Street darling… until we all learned it was financial scam.
The signs of trouble with American debt are so obvious that you can’t help but notice it.
The International Monetary Fund is the latest to notice the pending collapse.
In its recent annual report, the agency concludes with this: “Something will have to give” in the American monetary system.
The agency doesn’t add a “but” or an “unless” to soften the reprimand. It simply states the fact that something will have to give and that America’s fiscal stance “is out of line with long-term fiscal sustainability.”
In other words, America cannot continue keeping up appearances and pretending all is copasetic fiscally. You can’t continue racking up $100 trillion in additional debt every 100 days and expect everything will be just fine.
Uncle Sam’s collection of clowns is at the point all junkies hit, when they’re absolutely certain they do not have a problem, even as their demand for the next high grows increasingly desperate.
All junkies at that stage ultimately face two paths to the end game: Recognize how far gone they are and race into rehab.
Or don’t… and wind up dead in a dank, back-alley crack den, needle still stuck in the vein.
There is no third option.
Which path will America choose?
I’m not convinced it’s the former.
The Biden Administration is run by advisors who clearly have the financial acumen of a goldfish that has slammed its head on the fishbowl too many times. They spend money like a teenager with their first credit card, just assuming everything they buy is free since no money leaves their pocket.
Of course, the advisors to Trump are just as clueless. They want to impose tariffs on every product coming into America, thinking that will rebuild the US manufacturing base. They don’t seem to grasp how insanely inflationary that is. They seem to think producers from China to Chile to all over the European Union and beyond will just suck up the added cost out of the goodness of their heart.
Tariffs will cause import prices to rise, which will then give cover to American producers of the same or similar products to raise their prices. We get high inflation, and a global trade war just like the one started by the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act—which exacerbated the Great Depression.
So, no, I am not convinced that anyone in American government has any clue. Or, probably they do, but they just don’t care because thinking about tomorrow takes away the fun of getting someone pregnant today.
Which means… we’re screwed.
Buy gold.
Buy bitcoin.
Buy Swiss francs.
When America births the hell-spawn to come, lots of people in the media will ask, “Why did nobody notice it?”
Some of us are noticing it.
And we’re warning those who will listen.