It Won’t Be Mad-Max, But It Will Be Mad
January 16, 2012, Submitted by: Ken Tweet
The collapse. Blogs talk about it all the time. Some portray a future resembling the 1979 movie, Mad Max starring Mel Gibson depicting an apocalyptic future of gangs and individuals killing each other for the world’s last resources. In today’s reality, a more likely scenario of apocalypse will be one of economic meltdown, which may occur rapidly or may occur in slow motion – but will occur nonetheless, and will cause pain, hardship, and a given amount of social chaos for a period of years.
Like much of the Eurozone, the U.S. is broke. Although increasing numbers of people are realizing this, the fact remains that many people are not fully aware of the magnitude of the situation and are not aware of the fact that this has been cleverly hidden from them, albeit temporarily.
The consequences of years of over-the-top debt spending and promised financial obligations are catching up with most of the subsidiaries of the U.S. government. What do I mean by that? The cities and towns, counties and sates are running large deficits with mostly zero chance to balance without severely cutting benefits and programs or severely taxing the businesses and citizenry even more than they already are.
Either way, it will only increase the downward spiral as fewer dollars will be available for people and businesses to spend. Politicians absolutely do not have the guts to pull the plug (self preservation) and will absolutely continue to kick-the-can down the road – that is, continue to borrow more money from the FED to keep the government running at current levels of spending.
The thing is, and the the thing that’s going to ultimately cause the implosion, is that the U.S. government can continue to borrow newly printed money from the FED, at will… whereas the U.S. states, counties, cities and towns cannot print their own money to back-fill their deficits. The ONLY way that they can ever hope to resolve their debts is to drastically cut off their spending (they will still owe and have to pay their existing debt) and/or they will have to drastically increase their tax revenues. That’s it. No other way.
When the ratings of these various entities begin to be downgraded due to their excessive debt-to-income on their balance sheets, their cost of borrowing more money goes much higher – which only makes the problem worse. This is happening all over Europe right now, and will certainly happen in the U.S. in the not too distant future. When it does, very painful choices will have to be made, and the middle class will suffer greatly.
The middle class will suffer the most because either way, they will get slammed more than they already have been slammed. Many will have their pensions drastically cut. Taxes will go higher. The spending power of their dollar will continue to diminish as the Federal Reserve loans more money to the U.S. government. More jobs will be lost as fewer people spend a diminishing amount of money. Those who have jobs will continue to slip further behind as ‘real’ inflation far out-paces their wage.
There is NO EASY WAY OUT of this looming mega disaster. NONE.
We can only hope that their is a crash landing rather than an all out nose dive into the ground at cruise speed. The point is, the future may not be Mad Max (except perhaps in pockets), but it will be ‘mad’. There will be those that are going to be entirely stunned when the depression catches up with them, caught entirely unaware. These folks will probably suffer the most since they will have done nothing to prepare or to change their ways now in order to soften the blow later.
So, I’m warning you now, IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. The magnitude and duration is unknown, but the net amount of pain will be severe – either very long and moderately painful or shorter and mind-numbingly painful. My bet is the long version because the government doesn’t want a massive social meltdown which would surely occur given a short and severe outcome.
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The guberments of the world are trying their level best to cook our financial frog slowly enough so’s not to cause panic and mass civil unrest. A great way to wrap your head around the magnitude of what Ken says here is to watch, “The hundred million dollar penny”, here. http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/85108/One_Hundred_Million_Dollar_Penny/
Guberments are furiously printing money in an attempt to bring us into a form of depression gradually as they already know there is no growth in sight and won’t be for a long time.
To have a Mad Max world it would have to be where 90-95% of world’s population was gone. I can see this occurring from a super plague that came out of one of the countries where there is no sanitation, it is very moist and hot most of the year. India, Bangladesh, equatorial Africa, even parts of Pakistan or other southern Asia countries would be where it starts naturally. Manmade plague would be start in North Korea or some radical nut’s laboratory that has discovered how to mutate some virus into some nightmare.
Any global hit from a comet or large enough asteroid could cause a Mad Max world. The sudden discovery that the oil fields in the world are nearly dried up and these countries all along were vastly over stating how much oil reserves they actually had. Without energy those living in areas that cannot grow food have had it. Even in areas that can grow food there is the issue of water, it takes energy to irrigate fields. Mass starvation can lead to this. Global war can do this, as Mad Max is sort of like some of these post nuclear war movies. I know it has been over 30 years, but Mel Gibson sure has aged. You look at someone like Goldie Hawn that has 11 years on him and she looks better than he does now.
You would hope that people had grown spiritually and intellectually to try to rebuild a world devastated by whatever, including total economic collapse and implosion of civilization. I am rather cynical though about this because of the patterns of indifference and self absorption of so many that seems to have become the normal. There are going to be your criminal thugs that have no souls like those that torture homeless people, kicking someone at their lowest. There are these wonderful people that continue to help victims of painful events, like those that continue to try to help those in Haiti. The real focus though is the middle common person that will determine how a post-apocalyptic world plays out, and unless there is shift away from the path most everyone seems to be following now, the likelihood of a Mad Max world is quite possible.
While it’s true that the governments are precipitating certain disaster by their economic policies, (which could be just a way to milk every last drop of value from the populace) they are certainly prepared for massive social unrest at least in the USA. The NDAA is just a final touch, a little frosting on the cake, if you will.
Perhaps the PTB are afraid their policies might get out of control and the masses revolt, or perhaps the PTB do know something is going to occur that is beyond their control, i.e., Solar ejections, polar shift, alien contact, etc., etc., Whatever happens, they are preparing for us to be really pissed off about something.
I think it will affect a lot of people all at once, so the PTB have no chance to white wash it or alter it to suit. The economic collapse is just a planned way to introduce a global currency and taxes while reinforcing the new social structure. The end of the Middle class,,,,,
If they want a revolution, trying to introduce a global currency while watching the Euro disintegrate will bring on just that. This is proof positive you can’t financially join a small group of countries let alone all of them.
Concur with MSB….the economic collapse is coming and depending on how it eventually shapes us, may have already begun. Look to Europe for clues, they are dealing with the same issues we have, namely insolvency. Insolvent = unable to satisfy creditors or discharge liabilities, either because liabilities exceed assets or because of inability to pay debts as they mature. Also, the world economies are so intertwined, i.e. we own European debt and vice versa, that it will continue to spread. I do think that the decline will continue to be a slow painful burn, as our elected officials don’t have the “gonadinal fortitude” (phrase introduced by TripodXL) to make the tough decisions that would make the pain more intense but ultimately much shorter in duration. In layman’s terms, our elected officials don’t have the guts to cut the promised entitlement spending until the decision is literally made for them….i.e. no more money. Which is a very real future possibility.
I don’t remember which author/study (Stansberry, Weis, Aftershock or one of the other big name economic collapse studies/authors) it was that discusses the possibility of the US dollar losing its reserve currency status and oil stop being traded in US dollars. If that happens, which means we lose our fail safe of being able to print our way out of debt, we are really screwed. And make no mistake, holders of our current debt, namely China, are not happy we are devaluing our currency so much. Why? Because we are paying them back with dollars that are worth a lot less than what they loaned us…i.e. they are losing hundreds of billions. They will not do that for long, and one of the above mentioned researchers has shown that they are already backing away from lending (a.k.a. buyin US treasuries) to us.
Prepare for higher crime rates, more expensive food / gas, unreliable electricity, poorer water quality and a stock market that loses 20% – 50% from current levels if not more. Unfortunately, I do not think the government will be the friend of the citizen as the politicians will squeeze us for more money but call it patriotism and continue to strip our freedoms in the name of protection. The NDAA is an insane joke for our great country, but sadly, it is real and implies that US citizens no longer are guaranteed a trial before being indefinitely detained.
Thanks to MSB for keeping us up on current events,
God Bless our country, its leaders, its citizens and its military.