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Now that the bubble has burst, the hope is that removing the pin will magically restore the burst bubble. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Here’s the fantasy: if we stop the shutdowns, the economy will naturally bounce back to its oh-so wunnerful perfection of Q3 2019.

Realism must precede optimism or the optimism will collapse as the tsunami of reality comes ashore. It’s time to prepare materially and psychologically for a winter unlike any other in our lifetimes.

Put another way: the elites have cannibalized the system so thoroughly that there’s nothing left to steal, exploit or cannibalize. The global elites’ techno-fantasy of a completely centralized future, The Great Reset, is addressed as a future project. Too bad it already happened in 2008-09.

In such a highly polarized, politicized environment, is such a scrupulously objective study even possible?

Concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many and you guarantee collapse. Very few are willing to face the reality that the U.S. economy was on life support long before Covid came on the scene.

Asset inflation benefits the super-rich more than anyone else because they own the vast majority of these assets. With the reflation euphoria running full blast, maybe central banks will finally get all that inflation they’ve been pining for. So let’s ask –who will benefit from inflation?

So enjoy the GBOAT (greatest bubble of all time) but watch the clock. Sports fans debate who qualifies as GOAT–the greatest of all time in hoops, Kobe, Jordan, Kareem, Magic; in boxing, Ali, and so forth. What we have today is GBOAT–the greatest bubble of all time. That it’s GOAT is beyond doubt, as the charts below reveal.

The core dynamic is ultimately the loss of social cohesion within the ruling elites and in the social order at large. There’s a definite feeling to the euphoria that the world didn’t end on November 3. And what better way to celebrate the victory of what passes for normalcy with a manic stock market rally?

We’re Number One in wealth, income and power inequality, yea for the Fed and the Empire! If we avert our eyes from the electoral battle on the blood-soaked sand of the Coliseum and look behind the screen, we find the powers that matter are not elected: are owned by a few big banks Federal Reserve, run by a handful of technocrats, and the immense National Security State, a.k.a. the Permanent Government.

Regardless of who holds the office, America’s Imperial Project and its Imperial Presidency are due for a grand reckoning. While elections and party politics generate the emotions and headlines, the truly consequential change in American governance has been the ascendancy of the Imperial Presidency over the past 75 years, since the end of World War II.

Wake up, America, and see the Fed for what it really is: a totalitarian tool of kleptocracy. You know what happens when fire suppression policies limit forest fires: deadwood piles up and all the trees killed by bark beetles are awaiting a spark to ignite.

This “capitalism” is only attractive to parasites, predators, kleptocrats, legalized looters, embezzlers, fraudsters and all those insiders whose palms get greased along the way.

What the political class and the Financial Nobility don’t yet grasp is that ALICE will never go back to her insecure, low-wage job, ever. Meet ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, at least she was employed until the pandemic presented impossible choices between taking care of her children and their education, and her aging parents, and keeping her demanding, low-wage job.

For all these reasons, the risks of systemic collapse are much higher than commonly anticipated. There’s an irony in discussing since we all have an instinctive reaction to visible risk, we think we understand it. But alas, we don’t, especially when the risk is invisible and systemic.

Don’t expect healthcare or any other hollowed-out, heavily optimized system to function as it once did. A great many Americans will be shocked when our healthcare systems start failing because they believed the PR that “we have the finest healthcare system in the world.”

The belief that central banks printing currency can “buy/fix” everything that’s broken, lost or scarce is the ultimate in denial, fantasy and magical thinking. Let’s revisit the pandemic projection chart I prepared on February 2, 2020, nine days after authorities publicly acknowledged the Covid virus outbreak in China.

Masking the rot and fragility is not the same thing as strength or permanence. The great irony of the past 75 years of expanding consumption is the belief that all these decades of success prove the system is rock-solid and future success is thus guaranteed.