It speaks volumes of our grifter society that today's market pundits are solely fixated on asset inflation while ignoring the morbid state of the underlying economy. Today's borrowed "GDP" is 20% Federally borrowed money, hence it's 100% fraud. And yet, today's economists make no adjustment for the magnitude of the deficit. It can grow to infinity as far they are concerned at a rate 10x the growth in the "economy". All of which points to Japanification, which is something they will all vehemently deny. After all, they've been predicting a "return to normal" continuously since 2008 amid 1000 year low interest rates.
What they all don't realize is that Japanification implies ZERO long-term inflation. Meaning that this spike in inflation we are now seeing is partly due to COVID supply bottlenecks but mostly due to the buying frenzy that it has unleashed. In other words a speculative demand side frenzy has temporarily cornered the market for various commodities, which will be resolved by inevitable crash.
What's the difference between pushing a fraudulent Ponzi crypto and pushing a false economic recovery narrative? The difference is the second one is going to wipe out millions of people economically and financially. Nevertheless those involved in these two types of scams both have the same agenda - to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
This is capacity utilization in the U.S. economy. It has been falling for forty years straight - during the entire ascendancy of the Reagan revolution and its widely ignored underemployment crisis. Each cycle seeing more lives destroyed by mass layoffs.
Conservatives STILL to this day believe that free trade is the key to prosperity. But which country has benefited by far the most from U.S. free trade? China. Because they don't believe in free trade. Now they have the jobs, the factories, and the intellectual property that was eagerly handed to them by U.S. companies.
U.S. free trade policy created a global hegemon that is now challenging the U.S. for global dominance. It's no wonder Trump easily took over the Republican party. He repudiated the entire disaster.
One of the gifts that keeps on giving from "free trade" is the importation of deflation from the Third World. Which means that when THEY decide this inflation scam is over, it will be over. And those who are oblivious to the working people doing the heavy lifting in these squalid and oppressive global conditions, are the ones who don't see this coming.
And that's the way it should be.
At the end of this fiasco, even the dumbest morons will realize that the low prices at Walmart are totally unaffordable.
And after that the non-economists will get it too.
