I follow a lot of news from a diverse set of sources and one of my personal rules for assessing 'truthiness' for a particular subject is when it gets reported from sources that are not connected to each other.
Sometimes I will make assessments based on seemingly disparate bits of information.
Like when COVID-19 was being dismissed in the mainstream media as a racist delusion of Donald Trump in the period of December 2019 to as late as early March of 2020. There was information getting out of China about how bad things were and that information was adamantly denied by leftists in both government and media. At the time I was not so sure of the scope of what was happening. I even had my doubts when people started getting sick in retirement homes because retirement homes are actually perfect environments for diseases like norovirus.
But then I read the seemingly innocuous world shipping report for January 2020 and found that shipping from China was down by 30% while orders were up. This did not make sense. But when I dug into it I found out that many Chinese container ships will sail with as few as ten crew onboard. And sometimes half of these crews were getting sick due to being in close proximity to each other and the ships were turning around due to safety concerns.
A check of some live ship information on the web showed me disturbing images of literally hundreds of ships at anchor off of Chinese ports and also at Singapore.
Then the Diamond Princess had a COVID outbreak and it eventually docked at the Port of Oakland, California. One of the world's busiest container ports.
Pictures of that ship showed that the reason the port had room for it was because there were few if any container ships docked there.
This to me confirmed that COVID was real and despite the denials from the leftists in government and the media my family prepared for problems. We stocked up on everything and prepared for what we expected would be a few weeks of relative isolation.
You know the rest.
Okay, so I wanted to explain my thought process in how I assess and corroborate potential events in the world.
Now then.
While the topic of the wars in Ukraine and Israel are fascinating there has been another development that has gotten my attention. I believe there is enough independent and disparate information for me to say that the development has reached my level of confidence that I want to put it on the record.
I believe the world economies are right now either in a depression or we are about to enter a very severe depression.
Inflation and rising interest rates have increased prices for consumers and the cost of borrowing for governments. These two factors mean that the era of cheap money is over and government spending must either be curtailed (which was a campaign issue in Argentina) and that inflation must also be curtailed (which was also a campaign issue in Argentina). In short, governments around the world are not going to be able to borrow and spend their way out of the hole they got into in 2020. Chickens are coming home to roost as the saying goes. The crazy spending that created inflation during COVID is now bursting the economic bubble of the 2010's and the false 'boom' time of 2020-2022.
Reports coming out of China this past week include:
Corroborating these reports are these recent stories:
The sum of these reports is that we are in deep economic trouble. And it is going to get worse before it can get better.
I believe with confidence that we are either in a depression and economic momentum is carrying us along for the moment, or we are about to enter a depression. This may happen suddenly and without any warning aside from what I am seeing already.
My advice, take it or leave it, is to make the same kind of preparations you made at the outset of the pandemic.
And buy at least some gold and silver if you can. Not saying to sell everything and buy gold and silver but to buy enough that you have something for groceries and etc. just in case it's needed.
That's all.
Sometimes I will make assessments based on seemingly disparate bits of information.
Like when COVID-19 was being dismissed in the mainstream media as a racist delusion of Donald Trump in the period of December 2019 to as late as early March of 2020. There was information getting out of China about how bad things were and that information was adamantly denied by leftists in both government and media. At the time I was not so sure of the scope of what was happening. I even had my doubts when people started getting sick in retirement homes because retirement homes are actually perfect environments for diseases like norovirus.
But then I read the seemingly innocuous world shipping report for January 2020 and found that shipping from China was down by 30% while orders were up. This did not make sense. But when I dug into it I found out that many Chinese container ships will sail with as few as ten crew onboard. And sometimes half of these crews were getting sick due to being in close proximity to each other and the ships were turning around due to safety concerns.
A check of some live ship information on the web showed me disturbing images of literally hundreds of ships at anchor off of Chinese ports and also at Singapore.
Then the Diamond Princess had a COVID outbreak and it eventually docked at the Port of Oakland, California. One of the world's busiest container ports.
Pictures of that ship showed that the reason the port had room for it was because there were few if any container ships docked there.
This to me confirmed that COVID was real and despite the denials from the leftists in government and the media my family prepared for problems. We stocked up on everything and prepared for what we expected would be a few weeks of relative isolation.
You know the rest.
Okay, so I wanted to explain my thought process in how I assess and corroborate potential events in the world.
Now then.
While the topic of the wars in Ukraine and Israel are fascinating there has been another development that has gotten my attention. I believe there is enough independent and disparate information for me to say that the development has reached my level of confidence that I want to put it on the record.
I believe the world economies are right now either in a depression or we are about to enter a very severe depression.
Inflation and rising interest rates have increased prices for consumers and the cost of borrowing for governments. These two factors mean that the era of cheap money is over and government spending must either be curtailed (which was a campaign issue in Argentina) and that inflation must also be curtailed (which was also a campaign issue in Argentina). In short, governments around the world are not going to be able to borrow and spend their way out of the hole they got into in 2020. Chickens are coming home to roost as the saying goes. The crazy spending that created inflation during COVID is now bursting the economic bubble of the 2010's and the false 'boom' time of 2020-2022.
Reports coming out of China this past week include:
- Taiwanese electronics firm Foxconn is looking to leave China and putting 750,000 Chinese employees and over two million vendor employees on the street. So far this year they've laid off at least 250,000 people.
- Chinese railroads are defaulting on their US$1 trillion high speed rail debt due to dismal ridership.
- Chinese banks are moving depositors funds to 'insurance' accounts or simply seizing the funds outright.
- Massive Chinese real estate firms are defaulting on nearly US$1 trillion in debt.
- Chinese electronic firms are shuttering due to declining orders from Europe and the US.
- Chinese cities are suddenly enforcing all manner of laws and placing fines on people to the point that several cities are emptying out.
Corroborating these reports are these recent stories:
- US retailers are hiring far fewer temporary seasonal workers right now than last year. Some firms are not hiring ANY seasonal staff.
- Despite realistic actual US inflation rates of 7% to maybe 9% the major retailers like Costco, Wal-Mart, Amazon, and etc. are advertising significantly lower (20% to 30%) prices on electronics and durable goods as compared to this same time last year.
- Despite these notably lower prices reported consumer purchases of durable goods continues to decline.
- US retirement accounts are posting heavy losses when the accounts are tied to stock market performance.
- Localities in the US are ramping up traffic and zoning enforcement in order to boost revenues.
- Municipalities and states are reporting declines in sales tax, property tax, and income tax revenues.
- Citizen tax revolts and enforcement revolts are being reported with a higher than usual frequency.
- China's Belt and Road projects around the world are not being finished due to lack of funds from Chinese banks and failed revenue projections on the projects.
- German courts cancelled €60 billion in budget expenditures ostensibly due to constitutional reasons but moreover the underlying issue is a shortfall in total government revenues as opposed to new debts. A similar problem as what is being seen in the US.
- Russian trade with China and Chinese trade with Russia is falling far short of either country's projections.
- Rising interest rates have caused the US to pay banks over $1 trillion in interest alone on the Federal debt. Total US debt when states, municipalities, and special districts are included then the total US debt is 741% of GDP. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/total-debt--of-gdp
The sum of these reports is that we are in deep economic trouble. And it is going to get worse before it can get better.
I believe with confidence that we are either in a depression and economic momentum is carrying us along for the moment, or we are about to enter a depression. This may happen suddenly and without any warning aside from what I am seeing already.
My advice, take it or leave it, is to make the same kind of preparations you made at the outset of the pandemic.
And buy at least some gold and silver if you can. Not saying to sell everything and buy gold and silver but to buy enough that you have something for groceries and etc. just in case it's needed.
That's all.
