Things To Come

Many of us can see it coming. Some see it and remain in denial. Some see it and are making plans for the inevitable. Some see it and fit it into the known events of prophecy. Either way, it is coming and it is coming rapidly. In brief, once again we see the road being paved for the arrival of the antichrist, which is the bottom line for all of this:

The Financial Collapse Of America

“The United States is in very deep trouble. First, the concept of repaying $16.7 trillion in debt is not even a remote possibility over the next 100 years, even if the government had small surpluses

Then, because the country is running such large deficits, the national debt is increasing and getting worse…much worse. In addition, the government is approximately $70 trillion in unfunded liabilities that have to be resolved.”

“Pray that the market for the national debt remains open so that the United States can keep borrowing to repay the money is previously borrowed and then will have to re-borrow to repay the money it just borrowed. 

That’s Murray Holland’s conclusion in his book, “A Nation in the Red: The Government Debt Crisis and What We Can Do About it” ($28.00, McGraw Hill). As a longtime book reviewer, I have read a growing stack of books warning about a financial collapse, but Holland’s book is not only based in the actual debt, but is written in a manner that even a person who has no knowledge of this issue can understand.

The “market” Holland refers to is the market for America’s treasury notes and bonds, issued to cover our on-going budget and the interest needed to pay prior borrowing. In sum, the nation is spending more and borrowing more than it can afford. It has been doing this for a long time and the warning signs are places like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and other European nations that, following World War Two, embraced socialism. America did so even earlier during The Great Depression and the decades since the 1930s.

Holland calls it a Debt Trap and conservatives know instinctively that the U.S. government is too large and too based in socialism to survive. “There are over 500 agencies and departments on the list and it does not even include all the agencies and departments created in the states under grant programs from the federal government.”

They came about as the result of a Keynesian view that government spending would lift the economy out of its doldrums, but government spending does nothing to improve the economy. It sucks money out of the economy and, more specifically, out of the pockets of individual citizens and the business community.

Despite nearly fifty years of a Cold War with the former Soviet Union (1945-1991), Americans have been blissfully ignored its intention of the communist intention to destroy capitalism and have accepted a vast matrix of social programs that now represent $70 trillion in unfunded financial liabilities. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, their plan “to overwhelm America with debt, welfare, and entitlements—in other words, to bankrupt America has continued unabated.

“This will cause the collapse of America and the government could then turn to pure socialism,” says Holland, noting that “Their scheme has been so well researched it has its own name: the Cloward-Piven strategy,”
It’s worth noting that, in addition to the socialist nations of the European Union, communism is still alive and well in Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba to name just a few nations. And yet, even Russia and China have adopted some capitalistic measures, while ensuring strong, totalitarian central governments.

Yet Another Massive Nail In The Dollar's Coffin

Bottom line – finance executives in Asia see the writing on the wall. They can see that the dollar is in a period of terminal decline, and it’s clear that the Chinese renminbi is going to take tremendous market share away from the dollar. They want a big piece of the action.

The renminbi has already surpassed the euro to become the #2 most-used currency in the world when it comes to trade settlement, according to a report released yesterday by the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

Right now the renminbi has about an 8.6% share of the global market for trade settlement. Granted, the dollar has the lion’s share of trade settlement at more than 80%.

But just look at how quickly the renminbi has grown; in January 2012, its share of the global market was just 1.9%. So it’s grown by nearly a factor of 5x in less than two years.

With today’s agreement between Hong Kong’s and Singapore’s financial exchanges, that growth will likely accelerate.

As we’ve discussed before, the dollar is in a unique position simply because it is the world’s dominant reserve currency.

This means that when a rice distributor in Vietnam does business with a Brazilian merchant, they’ll close the deal by trading US dollars with each other… even though neither nation actually uses the dollar.

It’s been this way since World War II, simply because there has been such a long tradition of trust in the United States, and a steady supply of dollars throughout the world.

But this confidence is fading rapidly as merchants and banks around the world have been seeking alternatives, primarily the Chinese renminbi.

As the dollar’s market share in international trade decreases, it will mean the end of US financial privilege. No longer will the US be able to print money without repercussions.

And as so many other nations have learned the hard way, when you print money with wanton abandon and indebt your nation to the hilt, there are severe consequences to pay.

The Daily Bell: Globalism, Collectivism And 'Right Principles'

G. Edward Griffin: I think the American dollar is on the same road as all of the fiat currencies of history. Once the politicians and the bankers get a taste of that heady wine, of being able to create money out of nothing and to spend it into the economy and to charge interest on it as it goes in – because it all goes in as a loan – that's a heady wine and they get drunk on it and they just go all the way until finally there's so much money flooding through the system that the currency's debauched and it doesn't buy anything. Usually, that topples the whole country with it. I think we're on that road. I don't know that it's wise to try to put any year or month on it. All I can say is that we're on a one-way road and unless there's a major change in the policies of the people in charge we're going to continue on that road. Unfortunately, I do not see any major changes in policy because we basically have the same crowd, the same people, running the show now as we had when all of these bad decisions were made in the first place.

I don't think the elites are running scared. Whether the crisis was part of the plan is another issue but let's stick for a moment with this business of whether the elites are running scared. I think that they feel quite confident in the degree to which they control everything at the present time. They're very smart people. They look ahead. They knew that there would be crises coming. That's not to say that they planned them but it is to say that they planned for them, and that's quite a difference. I think that they're quite shrewd about this matter. They're cold and objective and if they have to take a step backward they will, if they have to take two steps backward they will, as long as they stay in power and stay in control, knowing that sooner or later they'll have an opportunity to move forward again and gain all the lost ground and gain new ground. So I don't think they're running scared. I think they're very cold, experienced players at this game and they're prepared for any kind of a contingency that comes along.

And, of course, one contingency that we know they're aware of, because they talk about it, is the fact that there is going to be civil disorder. As more and more people have been made dependent on government largesse and they think that the benefits from the government are their entitlement, then when the governments finally begin to crumble and they can't economically support all of these benefits, the people will naturally rebel against their government, thinking that they're being cheated, never realizing that they've been given impossible promises in the first place to get their vote. Then, when things start to crumble, the masses get very angry at their governments and so they flood into the streets. There's civil disobedience, there are riots and all that kind of thing. These people have known that was coming – not just those people but observers such as myself have known that, too. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. And so they plan for it. That's why they've been reinforcing their police forces with all kinds of equipment and training programs for crowd control and the military forces of the major countries are rapidly being converted from forces that are designed to fight in foreign wars against enemies from other countries into forces that are trained and equipped to combat their own citizens and control their own citizens, internal warfare. This has all been on the drawing boards for a long time.

Back to the main question of whether that means the crisis is being designed for this purpose or it means they're just anticipating it. I guess it doesn't make any difference either way. It looks to me like it's definitely in the future and we know what they're going to do. They're going to respond with crushing military force. One of the reasons I believe they're building FEMA camps across the United States, is that people will become rebellious against the government. So that's what we're headed for if we don't turn it around it's a very ugly picture. It's a picture I don't even want to think about. No one wants to talk about it or think about it but if we don't we're in even worse shape because we have to know what's on the drawing boards.

Cowardice Is Ruling And Ruining American Politics: Maoist Godzilla Theater

It is a simple fact of history that Communist regimes have given birth to some of the most audacious failures ever produced by mankind. Further, it is a virtual given that socialism and communism must produce failures as a natural result, for the most pedestrian of reasons. This is because socialism attracts to the highest levels persons untested by leadership because well-versed and successful leaders instinctively know these theories cannot work in practice. Further, since Marxism is all about the enlargement of power at the cost of every other outcome, efficiency and normal success do not even rate. Therefore, staying in power becomes the only metric of success by which socialist movements are measured. For example, after the Russian Revolution, only untrained political affiliates filled important positions, as explained by this author in the article, Vladimir Lenin: Russia’s Original Cold-Blooded Communist Revolutionary:

Of the leading Bolsheviks, none had the slightest outside leadership experience of any kind, or history of administering any organizations, nor any business experience. Yet this did not stop them from assuming posts of national leadership, or nationalizing all businesses. As Clarence Carson puts it in Basic Communism: Its Rise, Spread, and Debacle in the 20th Century, “The Bolsheviks knew no more about making an economy work than they did about rearranging the orbits of the heavenly bodies.” Given their intellectual background and doctrinaire Marxist ideology, this group believed all they needed to successively lead a country was a set of untested socialist theories stuck in their back pockets.

Following are a few epically failed Marxist leaders with some of their notable failures. The mention of these will certainly bring a knowing look and sigh to the countenance of even the most casual Obama critic.

A. Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) was the first leader of a country to implement Marxist theory. Since Marx himself outlined the problems with capitalism, but did not detail a communist system, Lenin was left to his own devices to interpret Marx’s writings. Lenin’s ideas were an important influence on subsequent Marxism. The results of Lenin’s ambitious yet untested Three Year Plan were catastrophic:

Lenin once said, “Any cook should be able to run the country.” Yet, after the civil war, the Bolshevik regime experienced an unmitigated chain of failure in every conceivable undertaking, in all sectors of government, and on each attempt at public policy. For example, by 1921 economic productivity had fallen to less than 20% of the 1913 level. In just three years, the Marxists ruined a functioning economy. One reason was the confiscation of land, factories, banks, etc. The economy was handed to inexperienced socialist functionaries. Workers commandeered factories then failed to manufacture anything. Big farms were run by peasants puzzled by large-scale agriculture. Money and other liquid assets were confiscated as fiat money was printed, causing spiraling inflation, debasing the currency. When the economy crashed, the government used the army for labor, and then turned the labor force into a wing of the army.

Five million peasants starved from the debacle. Fortunately, Vlad Lenin died an early death, probably from the results of syphilis, his brain strangely ossified almost into stone. Yet, the worst was yet to come in the form of the man of steel, Joe Stalin.

B. Joe Stalin

Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) murdered more of his own people than any other dictator, save Mao. His paranoia, ruthlessness and illogic were legendary. But he also killed the economy of his country while trying to apply Marx’s economic theories. Robert Conquest, in Stalin, Breaker of Nations, describes Stalin as absurdly egotistical:

Psychologically, it is astonishing. Once again Stalin is shown as—openly—exhibiting a manic, even on the face of it, self-defeating egotism. His conviction that he could judge a situation better than the professionals was to be with him all his life—not only as to military science, but in physics, biology, and other fields, and always to the detriment of his own plans.

Compare this to a strangely similar sentiment from Barack’s own stated, megalomaniacal self-analysis:

I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I’ll hire to do it. It’s hard to give up control when that’s all I’ve known. I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.

Given Stalin’s absurd level of confidence and pseudo-knowledge of fields he never studied or labored in, it comes as no surprise that he was a catastrophic failure as a leader. Unable to learn the lessons of failure from Lenin’s mistakes, Stalin launched his own 5 Year Plan in 1929, as described in Joseph Stalin: Memoirs of a Leftist Madman:

This put the entire economy under state control. The government promised if the people worked hard to meet the goal of tripling production, the outcome would be an increased standard of living for all. Neither took place. Instead, Alec Nove, a specialist in the early socialist Russian economy declared, “1933 was the culmination of the most precipitous peacetime decline in living standard known in recorded history.”

C. Chairman Mao Zedong

China’s Chairman Mao (1893-1976) was the most successful mass murderer in history, and the most spectacular example of a failed leader in world history, as his Great Leap Forward illustrates. Again, Mao failed to learn the lessons of the command economy from his failed predecessors Lenin and Stalin. His policy catastrophes are described in this author’s article Who was Chairman Mao, Lionized by Obama’s White House?

In 1958, Mao announced the Great Leap Forward to transform China into a modern state. In Mao’s mind, his plan to revolutionize China would then transfer to the rest of the globe. The Great Leap would occur when collectivized farms saw food production spike from new methods. A compliant press celebrated massive increases in harvests, such as 100-fold gains in productivity. Yet after 6 months, the program was exposed as a massive failure, and instead of swelling production, widespread food shortages resulted. When reported to Mao, he replied all people would eat less since it was healthier anyway. Up to 40 million Chinese died as a result of the Great Leap.
The Great Leap Forward reveals Mao’s unhinged approach to “industrialization.” Among many harebrained growth schemes, Mao ordered multiple canal and lake excavation projects, using primitive means, resulting in many peasant deaths. Yet, most either failed or were abandoned. Another dumb plan was ridding China of the “Four Pests,” being rats, sparrows, flies and mosquitoes. Unfortunately, when Chinese sparrows were wiped out by crowds of broom-waving peasants, it was discovered sparrow “pests” actually reduced real insect menaces. Many died when pestilence broke out.
Another astounding plan was the “Make Steel” program. Since Chinese steel mills couldn’t upgrade fast enough, Mao ordered private citizens to build foundries. These “backyard furnaces” were constructed by 90 million peasants encouraged to melt down any metal available, including farm implements. Mao bragged China’s steel output would excel Britain’s in three years, and America’s by ten. Instead, an absurd failure resulted, revealing Mao’s utter ignorance of scientific or economic principles.

All of Mao’s programs are reminiscent of Barack’s own failures. First, Mao didn’t know anything about the areas he was trying to change, just as Obama knows nothing about medicine, but still feels confident overhauling the industry. Second, Mao’s plans were undeniably stupid, much like Barack’s Cash for Clunkers, his Stimulus Bill, his discouraging US oil production with “We can’t drill our way out,” or his ObamaCare program, etc. In other words, Barack seems to have convinced himself he’s a natural genius who doesn’t need to study anything to know everything.

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