Economic Prediction with a Timeline

[Thailandnotes]

"The pound sterling’s share of currency reserves among international central banks fell from around 60 percent in the early 1950s to less than 5 percent by the 1970s. Its value declined from more than 4 dollars per pound at the end of WWII to near-parity with the dollar. The British economy went into a tailspin. And that economic jolt marked for the British, as it will for us, the end of an empire."

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/go...to-the-dollar/

[jk]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

much as i dislike him, i don't think trump deserves all the credit for triggering the ultimate demise of the dollar as THE global reserve asset. the chinese, after all, said in q4 2013, long before trump went into politics, that they'd accumulated quite enough dollar reserves, and the process was contributed to by presidents at least as far back as lbj.

[touchring]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

much as i dislike him, i don't think trump deserves all the credit for triggering the ultimate demise of the dollar as THE global reserve asset. the chinese, after all, said in q4 2013, long before trump went into politics, that they'd accumulated quite enough dollar reserves, and the process was contributed to by presidents at least as far back as lbj.

The US is already bankrupt. Trump is merely restructuring America in preparation for bankruptcy and the eventual inflation. America is lucky to have Trump.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

I don't think Hedges is blaming just Trump. He's warning that this will accelerate, and probably happen in the next few years. And what does one do, sell treasury bills, buy more gold, diversify into other currencies?

Hedges interviews McCoy...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QgwwBAj8Ow

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

Trump is merely restructuring America in preparation for bankruptcy and the eventual inflation

huh?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

huh?

Yeah, this one seems off/odd to me too. Don't anyone remember the old J. Paul Getty quote? "If you owe the bank $100 dollars, that's your problem; if you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."

Say the US does go "bankrupt." So what? Who's coming to collect if they say no? It'd be like the bookie pressing the mob boss for his vig. You'd get laughed out of the room if you didn't get a kick in the ass along the way.

In the entirety of human history, no Hegemonic nation has failed like Venezuela. That only happens when you're small and you get pressed by guys bigger than you. The biggest empire in the world only falls by corruption. The wealthiest get greedy enough to topple the system for themselves, or the poor get pressed enough to open the gates for the Vandals, or the several groups of the empire's own people they've wronged in the past break free at about the same time in a moment of weakness.

I can't think of any good reason why the USA's turn as the fat man on this chart would end any different than anyone else's. I think too many people drank the kool-aid about the idea that the USSR went bankrupt or something. It didn't. Old Gorby thought loosening things up would be good for business. But all it did was let non-Russians in the USSR organize against Russia. Then he basically declared a booze prohibition in 1985. The result was the Russian Mafia. Finally all those little eastern bloc countries fell out of the union. But don't forget, their economy grew and was largely doing fine until 1990. It was the crack-up of the union that broke them, not bankruptcy.

[shiny!]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

Sorry to go off-topic, but dcarrigg... where DO you find all this stuff? You're amazing.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

Sorry to go off-topic, but dcarrigg... where DO you find all this stuff? You're amazing.

John B. Sparks did a bunch of these first editions back in the 30s and 40s. So they're a bit dated. But he did them for everything for biology to religion to politics. Rand McNally bought them all.

[gnk]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

Lots of interesting comments here.

I don't think most here realize just how unstable, dysfunctional, and corrupt most of the rest of the world is, and always has been (especially the USSR, dcarrig)

It's all relative. And as an American Expat living abroad, I'll tell you all this, as I chuckle.

I used to think like many here. But seeing how things are abroad, and meeting many people from abroad, and hearing their stories, I'll say this:

Don't worry about the US. In most of the world's countries, an extremely corrupt form of the keystone cops are in charge.

Believe me.

[GRG55]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

Lots of interesting comments here.

I don't think most here realize just how unstable, dysfunctional, and corrupt most of the rest of the world is, and always has been (especially the USSR, dcarrig)

It's all relative. And as an American Expat living abroad, I'll tell you all this, as I chuckle.

I used to think like many here. But seeing how things are abroad, and meeting many people from abroad, and hearing their stories, I'll say this:

Don't worry about the US. In most of the world's countries, an extremely corrupt form of the keystone cops are in charge.

Believe me.

+1

to "unstable, dysfunctional and corrupt" I would add "tribal".


Note: And all this time I thought you were Greek, not American?

[vt]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

+100

To parphrase Churchill: "Democracy is not a great form of government, but it's better than every other type in history"

America, of course, is not a pure democracy. We are a democratic republic.

[GRG55]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

The US is already bankrupt...

LOL.

Is there a major economy nation on this planet that isn't (using the conventional definition of that word)?
The exorbitant privilege lives on...

[dcarrigg]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

The thing is, there's kind of two USAs, right? There's the one the vast, vast majority know and interact with every day. Then there's the kids whose drivers bring them to fancy college classes in a Rolls where the grading system's rigged and even showing up doesn't matter; the few who are too big to fail, jail, or bring into line in any way. Any warning signs I'm seeing are not coming from anywhere that 99.99% or so of the population deals with or sees. My tailor's a friend. He was conscripted into the soviet army, as was standard. He has some stooge antics. I've got no doubt you've heard some better. Corruption's a notoriously hard thing to measure comparatively. Transparency puts out the corruption perceptions index which tries to do it. The trajectory the US has taken in recent years is not good, even if it's a long way to the bottom.

[FrankL]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

The thing is, there's kind of two USAs, right? There's the one the vast, vast majority know and interact with every day. Then there's the kids whose drivers bring them to fancy college classes in a Rolls where the grading system's rigged and even showing up doesn't matter; the few who are too big to fail, jail, or bring into line in any way. Any warning signs I'm seeing are not coming from anywhere that 99.99% or so of the population deals with or sees. My tailor's a friend. He was conscripted into the soviet army, as was standard. He has some stooge antics. I've got no doubt you've heard some better. Corruption's a notoriously hard thing to measure comparatively. Transparency puts out the corruption perceptions index which tries to do it. The trajectory the US has taken in recent years is not good, even if it's a long way to the bottom.

indeed, looking at the transparency index, the US can hardly be called better than all other countries in the world (i.e. least bad).
After spending substantial time in both the US and various European countries, I'm often amazed at how power is shifted towards corporations in the US at the expense of the average citizen, and how corporate lobbyism has created a semi-legalized corrupted status quo. Even more perplexing is how corporate propaganda makes a lot of people (in and outside of the US) believe the US citizen are better off than all other countries. Note that the UK has been doing its best to emulate the worst of the US corporatism...

[gnk]

Re: Economic Prediction with a Timeline

The thing is, there's kind of two USAs, right? There's the one the vast, vast majority know and interact with every day. Then there's the kids whose drivers bring them to fancy college classes in a Rolls where the grading system's rigged and even showing up doesn't matter; the few who are too big to fail, jail, or bring into line in any way. Any warning signs I'm seeing are not coming from anywhere that 99.99% or so of the population deals with or sees. My tailor's a friend. He was conscripted into the soviet army, as was standard. He has some stooge antics. I've got no doubt you've heard some better. Corruption's a notoriously hard thing to measure comparatively. Transparency puts out the corruption perceptions index which tries to do it. The trajectory the US has taken in recent years is not good, even if it's a long way to the bottom.

I agree that there is a lot that the US needs to address, and being the least worst among the larger nations shouldn't be a goal.

My hope is that the rise of left leaning populists such as Warren and Ocasio-Cortez, and the success of Trump, puts the elite establishment - both Democrat and Republicans of the government and business establishment - on a path to self correction.

It's happened before in the US - the guilded age turned into the progressive era, and the roaring twenties into the New Deal. They weren't peaceful transitions, but neither were they catastrophic on the scale of the French Revolution or Bolshevik uprising. Few countries in the world have that ability to self correct. It just takes time.

So yes, even though I say things aren't that bad in the US, comparatively speaking - they do need to change. And I'm actually glad that Trump won and that Ocasio-Cortez and Warren are rising. These are forces that push back the pendulum. They are warning signs - symptoms - that are always heeded by the US elite, historically speaking.

At least I hope so.