I would be the biggest liar on the planet if I said I know how all this madness ends. The masters of the universe running the show in Washington and on Wall Street may think they do or maybe they’re just making it up as they go but even if the geniuses think they know how all of this turns out there have been some developments in the world. Things have changed.
A lot of the latest developments haven’t gone very smoothly. The COVID mess cost trillions and has unleashed high inflation on a system that was running flat for more than a decade. So, the Fed has been raising the prime rate by a quarter of a percentage point at a time for the last year and that has started to destroy the liquidity of the smaller and weaker banks. Two of them folded this week and Biden had to guarantee all of the big accounts that weren’t already covered by the FDIC limits. And now the Fed will have to back off the rate increases and that will re-ignite inflation.
And now the Ukraine war is disrupting the energy supply for the whole western world and rearranging the balance of power between the West and the rest of the world. And just to make sure no domino is left standing Biden starts a war of words over Taiwan.
Now it may be that some tremendous super computer has worked out all the moves of a five-dimensional chess game that includes all the financial and geo-political variables. All these moving parts are completely accounted for. And all of this ends with Joe Biden getting his face added onto Mount Rushmore.
But then again maybe not.
Starting with COVID and moving through the George Floyd riots, the breakdown of law and order in the cities and now the economic and financial disruptions, people have heard from Joe Biden and his minions how everything is getting better and nothing is unusual. The Ukrainian war is going very well and there is nothing unusual about us engaging in brinksmanship with a nuclear superpower. The plummeting stock market is just another sign of how dynamic the US economy is. Empty store shelves and double digit increases in food prices are nothing to worry about. Crime was much higher in the 1970s so what’s all the commotion about a few murders and the fact that Walmart and some drug stores have closed down in some cities? What’s to worry about a few Mexican drug cartels taking up residence in Long Island and Washington? Why shouldn’t the government increase taxes by six trillion dollars? How could that go wrong? It’s only billionaires being soaked, right?
Everything is hunky dory. Nothing to worry about, nothing to see here.
I don’t know. It’s usually wrong to bet against the ability of the American people to believe the unbelievable. But we may be getting close to the tipping point.
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe that the people in charge would let a little thing like popular sentiment get in the way of winning the federal elections. Far from it. But we may reach a point where our country resembles the situation that existed in the Soviet Union right before the fall. People will be told about the glorious conditions all around them but all they’ll see is incompetence, injustice, plundering and poverty. They will understand that everything they are told is a lie and their entire loyalty will be to whoever can help them survive in an irrational world.
So, we’re going to find out just how smart our rulers really are. Maybe they really are super geniuses and their plans to get rid of the majority of us through attrition will succeed. They’ll control the temperature of the pot and slowly boil the frog without any fuss or muss. And once we’re all gone they can get back to returning the planet to a pristine eco-paradise where transgender elves frolic through the fields while the few necessary serfs harvest the organic crops and enjoy their cricket based diet.
But I kind of think the wheels are beginning to fall off the cart. Maybe the plan isn’t quite as perfect as advertised. Maybe Big Brother won’t win. What do you think?