Posted on September 18, 2016 by The Amateur Society
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In the past I’ve written about how our economic and governmental institutions are currently maintained because of a perception of confidence. In A Collapse in Credibility I anticipated a hastening erosion of confidence in the Federal Reserve. Fast forward three months and even mainstream media outlets are questioning the effectiveness of the ongoing emergency monetary policy at the Fed in light of their lies concerning data dependence and their lack of direction. Some are even openly declaring that the unprecedented monetary policy pursued over the last decade has failed. While this was by no means a difficult forecast, to this day it remains opaque to those who hold on to the beliefs that the Fed has their best interests in mind, is focused only on its stated objectives, has the power to achieve its stated objectives, and provides accurate forecasts.
If you are reading this, then you are most likely not in that camp. You understand that our current system is by constructed by design to be fundamentally fragile and unstable. You know that it requires an exponential increase in deception and artificial stimulus to continue operating. It is also clear to you that something that can’t go on forever simply won’t. We may not be able to pin down an exact time for the house of cards to implode, but we know that it must.
The trigger will be an event or a series of events that leads a critical mass of people to lose confidence in the system. We are swiftly nearing that time if we aren’t in it already: We Have Entered The Economic Endgame.
With the Fed and the Bank of Japan making major policy announcements this coming week and Deutsche Bank resuming its epic slide into system risk territory, it’s worth considering reality from a cruising altitude to see that – even with statistics made to look as rosy as possible – the cracks in the foundation are now beyond the point of perception management. Demographics alone imply a sharp downcycle in the coming years, but I believe we will find ourselves in a crisis situation far sooner, and in a hyperbolic Ponzi scheme any crisis is systemic.
All of these charts are from the 2016 Harvard Business School surveys on US competitiveness. Their cover art alone is telling:
Well amateurs, it looks like we have some fiction peddlers on our hands. These must be bona fide alt-right deplorables with the tinniest tin foil hats that they’ll legally sell to nationalist extremists in our always-to-blame-yet-somehow-currently-perfect-except-for-those-fifty-million-racists country!
But let’s not judge a book by its cover. Here at The Amateur Society we should at least look at some fancy graphs and draw some conclusions…
Looks like the 21st century hasn’t been good to household income, unless we’re talking about oil money or the DC government services sprawl that is. But don’t worry about those pesky income numbers. We have the Silicon Valley geniuses to save us with endless gadgets and genius inventions to improve our productivity and get us out of this rut! After all, technology will always bail us out…
Looks like the smartphone age – still extremely recent despite our apparent impossibility to imagine life without these ubiquitous devices – hasn’t delivered the productivity boost that we’re going to need to maintain our current standard of living in light of an aging population. But let’s not worry about that data. Even if we’re in a bit of a slump surely our institutions are always improving and the people in charge know how to get us back to more prosperous times. Don’t forget about our educational, political, and healthcare systems that are the envy of the world…
Looks like our current state of affairs – as perceived in general – is actually deteriorating on both an absolute and a relative basis. This can’t be going how we want it to, right? Note that political system data point on the bottom left. We are well behind other advanced economies in terms of competitiveness and we are continuing to plummet. Who are we putting our trust in to right the ship?…
Looks like the only thing that could boost trust would be an economic boom or another 9/11. If economic times were good, then trust would be easier to come by. The real mystery here is that 20% of the US public still trusts the federal government always or most of the time. Perhaps no revelation, no matter how dramatic and overt, would ever change the minds of that group…
What about selling important political offices to the highest bidder? Even though there is precedent for this in America – thanks Rod Blagojevich – surely systemic pay for play schemes are a level of criminal influence peddling and treasonous corruption that is only done in dictatorships, banana republics, and third world nations…
Take a look at that date: 11.28.2008. It strains credibility to think that such a trend did not continue afterward. If you can’t see what’s going on here, then you are willfully blind. On a lighter note, I do find it amusing that the folks at DNC can’t format a spreadsheet or handle data entry properly (where’s New Zealaand?).
You can find a more in depth summary as well as the source documents released by Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0 by following the links.
Oh, I’m sorry…
Hang on…
I’ve just received word in my earpiece that this is all a Russian plot, Putin and Trump poisoned Hillary, and I’m a conspiracy theorist. Everything is fine. Turn on your television. Go back to sleep. No cracks in the foundation here. You’re a crazy racist if you think so.
Can you smell the desperation? Make no mistake, fellow amateurs: the deep state is not omnipotent. They are not God even though they believe themselves to be. We are on the verge of a global two minute drill with stakes higher than we dare to contemplate. Watch out for trick plays.