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The Death of the U.S. Consumer

The Occupation Regime that now afflicts America operates within a matrix of collectivism, vanity and depravity.

The consequence of operating in this matrix is the herding, plundering and intimidation of the middle class to support in imperial splendor and wanton waste a tiny but malevolent upper class and an increasingly brutal, ignorant and grasping lower class.
It is the quintessential model of a coercive, anti-capitalist, morally and intellectually corrupt, society that we seen many times in history.
Each time the model expresses itself differently because no historical circumstance is ever repeated precisely. What we are witnessing is the specific US expression of that ancient model and even more ancient matrix.

By their fruits,indeed, do we know the US Regime and the fruits are bitter and poisonous for ordinary people but sweet and sustaining for the bosses.

David Rosenberg: The U.S. Is in a Form of Depression

Main Street's depression is Wall Street's exultation and jubilation: bigger, better, brighter bonuses
Main Street's depression is WashDc's opportunity ("too good to waste") for collectivization and preening.
Main Street's poison is meat and drink for WashDc, Wall St and the MSM: profiting from misery is the creed of the ruling Troika.

For the middle class family with no jobs, no income, no credit and no home, relying on the kindness of family, friends and strangers for the essentials of life the "form" of the depression is "deep and dark".

U.S. Weekly Jobless Claims: Why You Can't Trust Them

1.It may be more useful to look at labor participation rates rather than jobless claims or continuing claims. These rates have been declining notably, suggesting that unemployment distress continues to increase.
There are no consistently good measures of underemployment but it seems widespread.
Finally there is the hidden issue of people finding replacement jobs but a substantially lower total compensation. Statistically an inferior replacement job is indistinguishable for a comparable replacement job.

2. What matters, of course, is after tax disposable income( from all sources, not just wages) and while this income is splendid for the top 5 % of Americans it is compressing visibly for the next 70%. For the bottom 25% income from real work is almost non-existent: it is income from non-work and non- economic contribution and negative value added-----transfer payments and assorted gifts-----that comprises most of the cash and kind intake and while this intake is rising its purchasing power is declining.
3. It is not difficult to believe that spending is up: when people stop paying mortgages and rent and slow pay or underpay utility bills they can find cash for consumer goods and services( utilities recognize revenue upon billing, not upon receipt of money from customers...a utility can report rising revenue, as billed, even though cash revenue, as received, is declining....the difference becomes a regulatory "asset" )...this "found" cash is, of course, just another form of theft.

The Case for Depression, Part 4: Dollar Collapse

The stable dollar was not the cause of America's growth and ascent to global hyperpower status. It was a consequence.
It was the manifestation of American exceptionalism based in liberty and a profound sense of mission...the mission of global inclusiveness into the blessings of freedom so abundantly bestowed on America. Free markets, free elections, free speech, free thought and the freedom to experiment and innovate and the freedom to succeed and fail.
A deeply Middle Class nation, America embodied traditional middle class virtues and values and the dollar was the projection of these virtues and values.

The dollar was a symbol of honor because during its great ascent America was an honorable Nation that believed in getting by giving, in working and producing, saving and investing. The dollar was sound because the middle class was strong and America was sound.
Now the middle class is enervated and weakening by the day. The occupation Regime that now rules the USA has contempt for American traditions and legacy values; it dishonors America's history and mocks its Constitution; it despises the productive middle class.

The dollar is now horribly disfigured and debased because America itself has been degraded by the Regime. As the middle class falls, so America falls. The dollar reflects this descent. The dollar is no longer sound because occupied America is no longer sound. The economic calamity that is impending and is prefigured by the dollar's descent into shame is the logical consequence of the moral and intellectual calamities that are already being inflicted on America.

When America is re-liberated and the occupation ends, then there will be a new America, a renewed and expanded middle class and a new dollar that will again be an honorable store of value and medium of exchange.

Will We See an Uncontrolled Decline in the Dollar?

The decline of the dollar is the manifestation of collapsing global confidence in the US Regime. The world, especially Asia is voting every day with increasing urgency using the one franchise it has to convey its opinion: the exchange rate of the dollar versus other less debased stores of value(other currencies) and against genuine stores of value( hard assets: gold,oil for example) that are beyond the ability of the US Regime to corrupt
.
The world is exposing the lying, cheating and stealing of the US Regime to all who have eyes to see. It is issuing repeated warnings that the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Ruling Troika in the US(WashDc, Wall St and MSM) is leading, with grim inevitability, to the Great Reckoning, which is the financial bankruptcy of the US, the end of the dollar's now totally villainous reign as a global currency and the extinction of the American middle class as a driver of global prosperity.

The US Regime responds with complete contempt for the opinion of the world and redoubles its lying, cheating and stealing. A majority of Americans seem oblivious to the warnings of the world.

The world will not long endure the current trajectory: either the US Regime will begin to heed the world or the world will marginalize this Regime and with it that symbol of dishonor and dishonesty: the fake dollar.
Unfortunately and tragically , the manifold sins of the US Regime will soon be visited on the sacrificial sheep known as the American Middle class

U.S. Economic Recovery and the Housing Sector Mirage

Yet again people are being bribed to buy houses with no net financial outlay: the tax credit even applies to people who pay NO taxes. As such it is not a credit but an outright gift, a blatant transfer payment. People who pay no taxes obviously have little income. They are now buying houses with zero financial exposure from the very outset.

This creates an incentive to make mortgage payments for 3 to 4 months, then default for a few months; then make part payments for several more months to maintain the lie that the mortgage is current or being "worked out"; then stop making payments altogether(no property taxes are paid, of course when this happens) and live cost free for many months until being evicted.

The result is that people who could not afford the house in the first place live at very low effective cost in that house for a couple of years until foreclosure. Then, more bank write offs and a swelling inventory of unsold homes, yet again.

Rising existing home sales based on bribes, lies and fraud......and Wall St applauds while WashDC trumpets this as proof of a "V" recovery.

U.S. Running Out of Ways to Cheaply Finance Debt

After the economic acorns are consumed and all the credit oak trees have been felled the US Regime will resort to what it has always craved anyway: economic cannibalism, with the Middle class as its prey.

Bull Trip? Q3 GDP Report Shows Most of Gains Were Government Sponsored

Consumer spending and real estate were once major drivers of economic growth. Now consumers must be bribed to buy things they cannot afford with money they do not have and real estate has to subsidized in extravagant amounts so a few can benefit at the expense of the many.

This tells you about all you need to know about both the quality and sustainability of the Statistical Recovery.
From Market Economy to Statistical Economy to Vapor Economy...These are the stages of our national descent.

Gold Bears Stop Sector from Overheating

Big Media, Big Money and Big Govt fear and loathe gold for 2 compelling reasons:

1. It has become a metric of truth that daily exposes the lies of the US Regime, its extravagant false debt and its fantastic fake scrip. As the Big Lie ,that is the US Regime inflates so gold rises( in terms of dollars, not necessarily in terms of other real stores of value) to document and quantify the Big Lie

2. Gold and other monetary assets( i.e.. assets that the US Regime cannot control, manipulate and degrade) are a fortified harbor to which investors and even nations can flee as they strive to escape the economic pirates and social barbarians that now pillage and occupy America.

Gold as truth and gold as haven are more than sufficient for the US Regime to label investors in gold "recidivist reactionaries". That is what its fellow travelers in history,the communists and fascists ,did as well.

Bailout Nation: Have We Learned Nothing?

The fake economy based on the fake dollar and fake debt becomes a bigger falsehood by the day. The US Regime must now resort to bribing consumers to buy homes, cars and appliances(via those tentacles of the State known as regulated energy utilities) , using revenues it does not have to induce people to spend money on things they cannot afford.

Dishonest debt, unearned consumption and unaffordable imports financed by debased scrip are the reigning policy Idols of the current regime together with the other false gods of malicious regulations and vindictive penalties on work, savings and innovation.

The US Regime has learned all it needs to learn. Its policies work and work well to:
concentrate wealth and power
pillage and enslave the middle class and small business
institutionalize lying( Big Media), cheating(Big Money) and stealing( Big Govt)

What more is there for the Regime to learn?

Deficit Spending: The Emperor's Children Also Have No Clothes

It is not only the dollar that is being debased and public debt that is being abused and tortured by the US Regime: freedom itself is under sustained assault.
With liberty, America can ,with heroic effort and a resetting of culture and priorities, recognize, face, address and begin to resolve its myriad economic problems and social pathologies.
Liberty has been America's foundational resource and the asset that increases with use. Liberty gave birth to this most improbable of Nations and bestowed on it blessings and greatness unknown in human history. It is the source of both economic and moral wealth.
As liberty is dishonored and persecuted , it is starting to flee America. As liberty flees, so does talent and risk capital. Without talent and risk capital America cannot resolve its deep and darkening pathologies. Without liberty America loses its very reason for being.

It is not only nakedness you should fear but enslavement.

The Emperor has no clothes because he is losing his soul.
The US Regime is well on its way to selling the National soul for mess of pottage. Unless there is a change of national will and priorities, person by person, household by household, the soul will be gone and soon so will the pottage.

Will the Price of Gold Soon Have a Meaningful Impact on Our Monetary Policy?

Gold will neither shame nor scare the current US Regime from changing its depraved and malevolent policies.

The essential precondition to change is dissonance: a recognition of reality and the divergence between reality and present behavior and circumstances.
A Regime that believes it has transcended the laws of economics and morality itself is completely self -referencing. It has contempt for objective reality and mocks external truth.

The elevated and elevating dollar price of gold(and other monetary assets such as oil, silver, platinum) is metric of dollar debasement and a quantification of the global loss of confidence in both the US Regime and its fake scrip: the dishonored dollar.
To the Regime this metric means nothing; it is as irrelevant as rising middle class unemployment or small business financial distress.
The Regime believes that gold(and the Middle class itself....) is a barbarous relic. The world is coming to believe that the dollar is the new barbarous relic. That is the real and growing disconnect and dissonance in the global economy today.

The US Regime will not acknowledge the dissonance but the world is already beginning to act on it. The US Regime will not change its monetary policy but investors and other nations will soon route around it.

Artificial Economy? Yes. Artificial Inflation? No

1. When every debt is guaranteed then no debt is secure because no systen can guarantee itself.

2. The biggest bubble in the world today is the dollar. The essence of any bubble is a small truth enveloped by a Big Lie. The small truth is that, once, the sound dollar was a symbol of honor. The Big Lie is that the fiat dollar is an honest store of value. The bigger the bubble the more massive its inflation and the more devastating the destruction when it implodes.
A star ,before it dies,often expands to many times its usual size, and then......implodes into a small, dead, remnant. So the fiat dollar. First it is expanding to consume the substance of the American economy. Then, after swelling to astronomical multiples of its ratio of debt to wealth creating capacity, it will implode and with it will go America, the hyperpower , America, the idea and America , the middle class nation.

Pay Extra Close Attention to the Dollar

If you are going to closely watch the price of the dollar then, I suggest, you also closely observe its risk.
This means closely monitoring the dollar denominated prices of monetary metals, rare earths, oil, copper and aluminum in their role as alternative stores of real value. These prices indicate that many believe dollar risk is high and growing.

If the dollar does rise then it could easily be the "last flame before death" rather than a restoration of health.
The glow of health and the flush of fever ought not to be confused.
The dollar may well be the most manipulated and fraudulent major asset in the world today.
Price and risk are decoupled. This aberrant state can last for a while,of course, but not for months. Either dollar risk must abate or dollar price must fall further to reflect this risk.

Preview of the U.S.'s Future: Debt Burdened Nation?

The debt problem will endure as long as the current US Regime endures. When the "problem" becomes a catastrophe then either the US Regime will fall and there will be a tremendous positive resetting of American society, values and the basis of wealth creation or the Regime will persist and America will fall.

America's fall will be accompanied by the repudiation of much of US Govt and agency debt,ferocious flight of risk capital and talent from America to places where innovation and entrepreneurship are welcome, the ruin and virtual collapse of of the Middle Class and of course, the end of the dollar as even a superregional currency much less a world currency.

Unredeemable debt is a reality that can be denied for decades until it becomes so large a part of national, community and personal life that it can be denied no longer.
Today, the US Regime believes that it controls debt and its more rabid and intellectually bankrupt propagandists say that debt does not matter. Millions of Americans believe this because the alternatives require too much moral and mental heavy lifting.
They prefer and the US Regime encourages them, every day, all day, to live in the land of the lotus eaters, where tomorrow never comes; but, of course tomorrow will come and it will not arrive as a friend.

Tomorrow, debt will control the US Regime and it will exact a fearful price from all Americans:
pay and suffer a great compression in the material quality of life for a generation but at the end emerge with honor and strength or....... fail to pay and lose almost all personal and property rights and enter into the long dark night of enslavement, humiliated and enervated.

The tipping point-- the Great Reckoning--- may come when the interest on National , state and local debt equals about a third of all local, state and federal tax revenues. This is closer than many of our fellow citizens realize as exploding debt collides with imploding tax revenues.