Opportunity Squandered: We Blew It
by Charles Hugh Smith
OfTwoMinds.com
Previously
by Charles Hugh Smith: Do
Your Hiring Practices Make Sense? Google Thinks Not
We are about
to reap the consequences of tolerating the perfection of the Savior
State / cartel-crony capitalism's neofeudal debtocracy.
We as a
nation had an unparalleled, historic opportunity to set things right
in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown. Alas, we blew it.
Instead of tearing down what had failed spectacularly, we chose
to do more of what failed spectacularly: cartel-crony capitalism,
centralized wealth and power and an expansion of our financialized
debtocracy.
Gordon Long
and I discussed this epic miss in Window of Opportunity: Blown!
While it's
certainly easy to blame our corrupt, self-serving leadership, we
have tolerated their "more of the same." It's been said that
a people get the government they can tolerate (as well as the one
they deserve), and the American people have tolerated an expansion
of everything that is systemically destructive because we dared
not risk our share of the Savior State swag.
The joke
will be on us, because there won't be any swag when the rotten edifice
collapses in a heap. The entire Status Quo response can be summarized
thusly: save cartel-crony capitalism and increase central state
power by expanding credit and blowing borrowed trillions, i.e. paper
over structural flaws with tsunamis of free money and credit.
Let's check
in on the effectiveness of the Keynesian Cargo Cult's project of
borrowing and blowing trillions: Oops, diminishing returns.
Does this
trajectory of federal borrowing look remotely sustainable to you?
The Federal
Reserve's number 1 project of bailing out the parasitic financial
cartel with trillions of dollars in free credit has also failed
spectacularly, as the banks can't find any positive risk/return
in loans except those that are guaranteed by the Federal government
(FHA, Fannie Mae, etc.)
The Federal
Reserve's number 2 project of "saving" cartel-crony capitalism and
its captured political class of toadies, apparatchiks and factotums
by blowing asset bubbles has succeeded in setting up one violent
crash after another. You don't need Technical Analysis 101 to
see the megaphone pattern traced out by the three Fed-inflated asset
bubbles.
As you no
doubt recall, nobody in the Fed, Wall Street or the Savior State
saw the inevitable popping of the tech bubble or the housing bubble,
and so it is unsurprising that our "leadership" has once again failed
to anticipate the endgame of financial bubbles is not "to the moon"
but collapse.
"But that
can't possibly happen." Yes, we heard that in 1999 and 2006, too.
What must happen will happen, and we as a nation are about to reap
the consequences of tolerating the perfection of the Savior State
/ cartel-crony capitalism's neofeudal debtocracy.
July
5, 2013
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