Worldwide Guy: The COVID hysteria and the shutdowns have caused supply chain interruptions. Central bankers and the media fasted to pin the blame for soaring inflation on these disruptions.
It appears like sophistry– a fallacious argument with the objective of deceiving. What is really going on here?
Doug Casey: Government officials constantly want to be seen as clever and action-oriented. Whenever anything unfortunate takes place, they like to step up and pretend to be rescuers.
Today’s public believes that the federal government not just can but should run the world. The COVID hysteria is a personalized excuse for them to do so. Unlike individuals who produce actual goods and services, nevertheless, civil servant can just take other people’s residential or commercial property and tell them what to do.
Since the essence of government is browbeating, they can solve issues only by developing more problems, and brand-new issues offer excuses for more intervention, making the federal government appearance a lot more essential.
COVID will go down in history as more than simply another mass hysteria. It’s most likely to be classed as an episode of mass psychosis. It’s the Salem witch trials times a million. It is even bigger than the Great Cultural Revolution in China. The general public has been persuaded that a harmful– but relatively minor– virus is going to erase the world, and now, on top of the infection, we need to deal with experimental vaccines, which are likely to be made obligatory, either straight or indirectly.
Vaccine mandates total up to lighting a stick of dynamite in a nitroglycerine factory. That’s true politically, financially, and possibly medically.
International Male: In her recent remarks about the state of the US economy, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said:
“There are also bottlenecks in particular supply chains, and mismatches in between supply and demand have caused rate boosts. And yet, the data shows that these mismatches will solve with time as more companies are able to stay up to date with demand.”
What do you think about the US government’s explanation for greater prices and the economic situation?
Doug Casey: Higher costs in today’s context are essentially a matter of financial inflation– cash printing. The Fed is printing up 120 billion dollars monthly to fund the federal government’s deficits.
If you increase the number of dollars in flow, of course costs are going to increase. And it’s not a so-called transitory phenomenon.
It’s interesting how “the narrative” works. A cool brand-new word shows up and quickly ends up being a popular meme. All the talking heads duplicate it, reassuring each other. However this isn’t transitory; it’s growing and will get totally out of control. If they slow money-printing, they risk a wholesale deflationary credit collapse.
As far as the traffic jams are concerned, the COVID hysteria produced them. We still have about 9 million out of work able-bodied individuals. The majority of were producing items and services 18 months ago, and now they can stay at home, watch TELEVISION, and use their stimmy checks to gamble on RobinHood because they don’t have to pay lease. Something like 7.5 million families have not needed to pay lease, and perhaps 2 million have not needed to pay their mortgages. Landlords are stated to be out like $60 billion– they can take legal action against, I guess, however that cash has been frittered by deadbeat tenants, a lot of whom will quickly be residing on the street. However that’s another story …
In any event, less is being produced and more’s being required because of all the money being printed. However it worsens. Modern economies have long and intricate supply chains, where whatever is anticipated “just in time” to cut inventories and improve performance. An issue arises if a force majeure gets rid of a critical element. For example, take a microchip for an automobile; cars and trucks have countless them, and if some are missing, the whole production line stalls. If Hamburger King can’t work with cooks because of COVID, meat-packers have to close assembly line, cattlemen are stuck with cows, their feed manufacturers do not make money, and ripples spread. “For want of a nail,” as Shakespeare kept in mind in Richard III.
Requireds to be vaccinated– apart from producing antagonism– ensure lots of employees will quit, creating more traffic jams.
In a free-market world, whatever would straighten quickly. If the State got rid of required dangers, the stimulus, and unemployment insurance, and if individuals had to pay their lease and return to work, the marketplace would adjust. However, that’s not the world we reside in. Your individual health decisions are no longer in between you and your physician but depend on politicos and bureaucrats. This will have economic consequences.
It’s very tough for business people to prepare when prices change significantly, and supply chains are unreliable. It’s possible that the federal government will enforce wage and cost controls eventually if costs seem like they’re getting out of control and rationing if there are consistent shortages. That, obviously, would significantly compound the issue. But it is necessary to “do something”, no matter how stupid.
For instance, I don’t know how many people are aware that, for years, lumber was approximately $300 per thousand feet of lumber. It was a very non-volatile commodity. Then, a couple of months earlier, it took off from $300 to $1,700 nearly overnight. It’s now about $500. Who understands what the rate will be next? Choice premiums are gigantic, nevertheless, which is terrific for knowledgeable speculators but terrible for business people.
When costs vary extremely, producers can’t plan properly. My view is that we’re visiting much greater prices unless the federal government stops costs and the Fed stops printing– which they will not. Likewise, more supply chain scarcities occur until the ridiculous COVID meme and vaccine requireds go away– which I question. We’ll also see millions more laid off as their companies fail and 10s of countless consumers who can no longer manage the products.
There’s going to be a lot more to the Greater Depression than simply higher prices and erratic lacks.
International Male: By concentrating on supply chain disruptions, the government and media seem to be dealing with only the signs– as if they appeared out of thin air– and ignoring the much larger issue of government intervention that caused them in the very first place.
What’s your take?
Doug Casey: As I stated in the past, they’re concurrently limiting the labor supply and developing synthetic need by giving everybody lots of funny money.
One major trend is that companies are going to replace workers with computer systems or robotics wherever possible. You can see it now. You no longer order with a clerk at a fast-food joint; you position your order on a computer or tablet. Amazon is working to change local drivers with drones and cross-country chauffeurs with AI-guided trucks.
Employers are wise to get rid of their human staff. “Human resources”– an awful PC term, by the way– are liabilities disguised as assets, beginning with the HR department itself. They’re unreliable. They get sick. They pilfer. They’re increasingly entitled and surly. In the Age of Woke, thousands of regulations make them claims in waiting. Entry-level tasks are going to be changed wholesale across the economy. Similar to in the industrial transformation of the 19th century, millions will be thrown out of work.
Naturally, from a macro viewpoint, it’s fantastic when low-productivity employees lose their jobs and after that head out and find some high-productivity work. Nevertheless, in today’s world of guaranteed yearly incomes, if somebody loses their job or can’t get an entry-level job, it will develop significant social distortions and unpleasantness. It’s going to occur all over.
IBM used to have a motto: Machines should work; people ought to think. That’s fantastic. Except many low-level employees doing canine work aren’t excellent thinkers. And in today’s world, a lot of them will not even want to work. We’ll have a significantly a great deal of what the communists call “worthless mouths,” which can be easily transformed into what they call “useful morons.” It amounts to a sociological time bomb.
International Male: What does it say about society that a big part of the population not only accepts the federal government’s blatant lies and progressively totalitarian controls, but forcefully supporters for them to do a lot more?
Doug Casey: Half of the population are currently net tax recipients. And with the gigantic quantity of brand-new federal spending that’s coming out of Washington, there are going to be lots of millions more Americans used directly or indirectly by the federal government. Combine that with a nasty financial reality and the decades of brainwashing that Americans have actually gotten in school, the media, films, and TV. The pattern is plainly in movement for what those awful people in Davos call a Terrific Reset. A real crisis will, in truth, reset whatever.
Naturally, I ‘d like to see a reset where the federal government generally disappears. The elite, like Klaus Schwab, wish to see greatly more control.
The average individual today has actually been taught that the government is his buddy, however. So the “elite” are likely to win. The hoi polloi have actually been taught that the State is the source of health, education, welfare, work, and stability.
International Man: What do you think follows? What can the average individual do about it?
Doug Casey: If you lived in the world that George Orwell predicted in 1984, or Aldous Huxley explained in Brave New World, there would not be much you might do about it, quite honestly. Luckily, we’re not quite there yet. However in numerous methods, we’re getting a combination of both Orwell’s and Huxley’s dystopias. They’re being married together with the worst elements of both.
Keep in mind, nevertheless, that there was a third dystopian novel from that age, which projected a positive result for humanity. That was Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. That story has a delighted ending since although everything collapses, the good guys produce Galt’s Gulch, enabling civilization to recuperate. I’m not totally sure it’s going to work out that way, however, because once we’re truly immersed in an Orwellian or Huxleyite dystopia, it will be very, extremely hard to get out of it. It’s difficult to revolt in a world where you’ll own absolutely nothing, as Klaus and good friends guarantee, and they attempt to make you delighted.
In the future, whatever you do, every location you go, and every currency system you invest will be closely kept an eye on. What’s to be done?
One thing you can do is attempt not to be an employee. Look for products and services that you can create as an entrepreneur. Your long-term savings need to be in rare-earth elements and some cryptocurrencies. Other than that, discover to speculate in the markets because they’re going to be fluctuating like an elevator with a lunatic at the controls.
Editor’s Note: The causal sequences of the worldwide pandemic are just starting to take shape.
The effects of closing down the economy, and printing unprecedented amounts of cash, could be crippling to the typical person– particularly savers, senior citizens, and investors.
If you wish to endure this unstable environment with your cost savings undamaged, then you require to see this recently released video from legendary financier Doug Casey and his team.