Tag: Defibrillating the US Economy Back to Life

Can Powell and Yellen Thread the Needle?

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Trying to disguise the US economy’s virulent case of stagflation by alternately increasing interest rates and printing multi-trillions of dollars of phony money seems to be a very difficult balancing act.  Lately it has resulted in a string of large banks failing as the depositors pull out their cash to find interest bearing government bonds.

Now I hear they’re talking again about minting some “trillion-dollar coins” to get around a battle with the Republican House leadership about balancing the budget.

Will Biden and company be able to blame the crash of the economy on the Republicans?  Well, it wouldn’t surprise me too much.  Do I care?  No, not really.  There doesn’t seem to be any limit to how much damage the Democrats do to this country without any noticeable consequences to their re-election chances.

But it is interesting to speculate on exactly when the economy may collapse catastrophically.  Banks collapsing, even somewhat large ones doesn’t seem to worry the Masters of the Universe.  Apparently, we only need five or fewer ludicrously large banks to handle all the corrupt financial operations needed to facilitate wealth being sucked out of the rest of the country and into the coffers of the obscenely rich.

So, if it’s not collapsing banks, what will signal the final chapter of the country’s death spiral?  I suspect it will occur when the last of the middle-class disappears into poverty.  After all that was always this county’s strength.  And in fact, all the way back to 5th century BC Athens a large flourishing middle class was the engine of a healthy democracy.  Now that we’re no longer a democracy it makes sense that the priorities of the aristocracy will sooner or later kill off the golden goose that created their wealth.

And when that happens, I expect the aristocracy to start reducing their ranks to make their shrinking rents from the serfs stretch a little farther.  That’s going to be a rude shock for the bugmen who have groveled and scraped to remain in the various concentric circles of the outer hive.  Being forced out of the hive as winter sets in will be truly sad.  But the death by freezing of drones is a fact of life.

Of course, it’s likely the House Republicans will fold before much damage is done and give Biden his trillions out of fear but I have an almost morbid fascination with guessing when the death blow will fall.  Maybe the day is close now when the rot to the commercial sector becomes so pervasive that even the major banks like Morgan Stanley and Bank of America just can’t make the math work any longer.

At that point will the “people” finally revolt and beyond the scope of even ballot harvesting norms could the Democrats be hurled out of power?  I guess it could happen.  At that point probably the ultra-rich will gather up their assets in the form of tons of gold and platinum ingots and fly off to New Zealand to ride out the cannibal zombie apocalypse and plan their return to a pristine continent swept clean by the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Well anyway, let’s just enjoy the spectacle of “experts” explaining how bank runs are really a sign of strength in the banking sector.  And someone please put Jim Cramer out of his misery.

How Many Trillions Will It Take to Defibrillate the US Economy Back to Life?

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Returning the country to prosperity is the most important thing President Trump can do to ensure his re-election.  But it is also a herculean task on a scale that’s hard to even imagine.  Think of all the mom and pop businesses like restaurants and beauty parlors that have been shut down, all the bars and dollar stores that have had to lay off their workers and are quickly eating up their cash reserves on overhead while revenues have dropped to zero.  It’s going to take the wisdom of a Solomon combined with the strategic skills of Napoleon to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  It’s going to require cash infusions on a scale that hasn’t been seen since the Second World War.  We’ve been getting used to the word trillion because of idiots like Bernie Sanders and AOC tossing it around in their Green New Deal but unfortunately, we’re about to find out what that word really means.  We’re about to find out how many trillions of dollars it takes to defibrillate the US economy back to life.  But it has to be done.

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are going to drag their heels and try to poison pill the whole thing with their liberal wish list.  Luckily the President can call them out on it and use the bully pulpit to paint them as villains starving the American people when they’re in need of a crust of bread to get them on their feet again.  And that’s exactly what he will do.  He’ll need to use all his skills to battle both the Democrats and the medical bureaucrats who think the country can last until the 22nd century without a paycheck.  But he’ll do it.  He’s aware that this is the fight of his life and one he has to win both for himself and for the country.  Letting the Democrats kill the small businesses of the United States would effectively change this into a third world nation.  And that’s exactly what they want.

I think the President realizes that he is going to have to bail out just about everybody but the billionaires.  And he’ll have to be shrewd enough to recognize how the billionaires are going to try to game this thing to their advantage.  Corporations that try to use the handouts to feather their nests while throwing their employees onto the bread lines need to be given a taste of the stick instead of the carrot.  Small businesses will be the hardest hit.  They will need hefty grants and basically interest free loans to restart.  And some businesses whose profitability was already marginal before this catastrophe are just not going to make it at all.  And so that means providing public works projects that will soak up a lot of the unemployed who worked for companies that aren’t coming back.  But it also means the government is going to have to encourage big business to expand domestic employment.  The only way to do that is to force industrial production back to the United States.  But you can’t start something like that on a dime.  That won’t be ramped all the way up for a year or two.  For now, the Federal government will be the money supply that funds corporations to employ the masses.  What an awful mess that’s going to be.  But that’s what’s going to happen.  A full court press to save the victims of this crazy lockdown from ending up on welfare.

My guess is when all is said and done it will cost ten trillion dollars basically half of the GDP of the United States for 2019.  That’s $10,000,000,000,000.  That’s a ridiculous number.  But shutting down a country of three hundred and thirty million people is a ridiculous thing to do.  So here we go.  This will be D-Day, the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Program, the Marshall Plan and the Civilian Conservation Corps all rolled up into one and accelerated into a couple of months.  What an awful mess it’s going to be.  Well, I’ve always enjoyed a good action adventure story.  Let’s hope this one is a happily ever after story.  Ten years ago, we saw the one that didn’t end well.  Luckily the hero of the story is different this time.