The parabolic move in the stock market, housing prices and the U.S. dollar, while touted by the media and Wall Street as evidence that “all is well and getting better,” is perhaps the most visible signals that the U.S. financial and economic system is “melting up” before it collapses.
Yes, I know the truthseeking community has been playing “Chicken Little” since the internet stock bubble days, and admittedly the powers that be have been able to extend and pretend for a lot longer than I would have bet on 15 years ago.
James Kunstler has written an epic year-end essay that is a must-read. He discusses why 2017 may be the year of reckoning for the U.S. – here’s an appetizer:
When mortgage rates go up, house prices go down, because fewer people are in a position to buy a house at higher mortgage rates, and rents go up (more competition among people who can’t buy a house). Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), in force for ten years, has driven house prices back to stratospheric levels. They are now primed to fall, perhaps severely, leaving many homeowners “underwater,” with houses worth way less on the market than the amount of mortgage left to pay off.
You can read his entire piece here: Forecast 2017: The Wheels Finally Come Off
In addition, take seven minutes and watch this video put together by Crush The Street (I’ll be a podcast guess this week and next week). It’s an engaging seven minuted encapsulation of the fate that awaits the U.S.:
One can only hope 2017 is the year the ” Big One ” finally does arrive.
It’s going to arrive regardless so the sooner the better.
The Obama administration is getting stranger by the day, in fact to outside, oversea observers like myself, their far fetched stories simply are acts of desperation, so the collapse must be close.
A seminal year end piece by Kuntsler, especially pointing out what happens when the runaway bus finally crashes into the highly polarized masses. This is the part that scares me most – what humans will do when their ignorance, denial and misplaced reality hits their families smack in the face. Anger will burst violently onto the streets..
Outside and overseas, in remote and insulated jurisdictions, with privately owned and operated simple systems that will survive the “collapse of modernity”, will be the wealth of the future.