Tag Archives: Depression

The First US Onslaught to “Weaken” Post-Cold War Russia, by John V. Walsh

Posted on January 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

The U.S. was well on its way to turning Russia into a U.S. vassal after the fall of the U.S.S.R until Vladimir Putin came along. Which explains the continuing antipathy. From John V. Walsh at unz.com:

The first post-cold war assault on Russia by the West began in the early 1990s well before the expansion of NATO. It took the form of a U.S.-induced economic depression in Russia that was deeper and more disastrous than the Great Depression that devastated the U.S. in the 1930s. And it came at a time when Russians were naively talking of a “Common European Home” and a common European security structure that would include Russia.

The Disastrous Russian Depression Resulting from Western supervised “Shock Therapy.”

The magnitude of this economic catastrophe was spelled out tersely in a recent essay by Paul Krugman who wondered whether many Americans are aware of the enormous disaster it was for Russia. Krugman is quite accurate in describing it – but not in identifying its cause.

The graph below shows what happened to Russia beginning in the early 1990s as a result of the economic policies that were put in place under the guidance of U.S. advisors, the economist Jeffrey Sachs, perhaps the foremost among them. Sachs describes his contribution here. These policies drive an economy abruptly from a centrally planned economy with price controls to an economy where prices are determined by the market. This process is often described as “shock therapy.”

The plot shown above is from the World Bank (The link is here.) in accord with the standards set by the World Bank under the policies of Creative Commons.
The plot shown above is from the World Bank (The link is here.) in accord with the standards set by the World Bank under the policies of Creative Commons.

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The Loneliest Generation, by Jennifer Sey

Posted on January 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

There are a lot of lost young souls out there, staring at their screens and trying to suppress their fears. From Jennifer Sey at brownstone.org:

By all accounts, Americans are lonelier, more anxious, more depressed and more suicidal than ever. The Pew Research Center reports that at least 40 percent of adults faced high levels of psychological distress during covid. Alarmingly, young people are leading this trend, as they do with most trends; though with this one, their “trendiness” is a cause for serious concern.

  • The suicide rate in the United States is the highest of all wealthy nations. One in 5 young women and 1 in 10 young men experience major clinical depression before age 25.
  • Suicide rates among children 10 and older are the second leading cause of death among 10-24-year-olds, behind unintentional injuries and accidents.
  • Close to 10 percent of kids 13-17 years-old have received an ADHD diagnosis and over 60 percent of those kids have been placed on medication. And 60 percent of them have been diagnosed with a second emotional or behavioral disorder. Thirty percent of those diagnosed with ADHD were also diagnosed with anxiety.
  • Among teen girls who report suicidal thoughts, 6 percent of them traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram. What’s worse is, Instagram — owned by Facebook parent company, Meta — knew their platform was adversely impacting teen girls and did nothing to stop it, presumably because that would interfere with the ever-increasing screen time for these young girls. In 2019, one Meta internal company slide in a presentation read: “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.” But more screen time = more data to mine = more profits for social media companies.

Of note, these alarming numbers are all likely underestimates vs the current state of affairs, as they are all from BEFORE isolating covid policies took hold.

In March 2020 our kids were thrust onto screens for hours and hours each day, and were left with their only means of “socialization” to be on-line or “virtual.” They were forced to Zoom and DM and Twitch and TikTok all day every day, if they didn’t just give up altogether and hole up in their rooms under the covers, with absolutely zero interaction at all.

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Major Economic Contraction Coming In 2023 – Followed By Even More Inflation, by Brandon Smith

Posted on December 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

We are looking at a very hard landing in 2023. From Brandon Smith at alt-market.us:

 

This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group

The signs are already present and obvious, but the overall economic picture probably won’t be acknowledged in the mainstream until the situation becomes much worse (as if it’s not bad enough). It’s a problem that arises at the onset of every historic financial crisis – Mainstream economists and commentators lie to the public about the chances of recovery, constantly giving false reassurances and lulling people back to sleep. Even now with price inflation pummeling the average consumer they tell us that there is nothing to worry about. The Federal Reserve’s “soft landing” is on the way.

I remember in 2007 right before the epic derivatives collapse when media pundits were applauding the US housing market and predicting even greater highs in sales and in valuations. I had only been writing economic analysis for about a year, but I remember thinking that the overt display of optimism felt like compensation for something. It seemed as if they were trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public in the hopes that if people just believed hard enough that all was well then the fantasy could be manifested into reality. Unfortunately, that’s not how economics works.

Supply and demand, debt and deficit, money velocity and inflation; these things cannot be ignored. If the system is out of balance, collapse will set its ugly foot down somewhere and there’s nothing anyone including central banks can do about it. In fact, there are times when they deliberately ENGINEER collapse.

This is the situation we are currently in today as 2022 comes to a close. The Fed is in the midst of a rather aggressive rate hike program in a “fight” against the stagflationary crisis that they created through years of fiat stimulus measures. The problem is that the higher interest rates are not bringing prices down, nor are they really slowing stock market speculation. Easy money has been too entrenched for far too long, which means a hard landing is the most likely scenario.

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Imploding credit — the consequences, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on October 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

Keynesian economics says you can’t have inflation and recession (or depression) simultaneously. The real world says different. Alasdair Macleod explains. From Macleod at goldmoney.com:

There is a growing realisation that the world faces a combination of persistent inflation of prices and a recession at the same time. The factors driving both are visibly intensifying. Those of us versed in the cycle of bank credit are aware that it is the contraction of bank balance sheets which is driving the recession, while it is continuing currency debasement driving inflation.

Neo-Keynesians in the establishment think the current position is contradictory, that current rates of price inflation will decline back to their 2% target in a recession, and interest rates can then be reduced to stimulate economic activity. 

The key to understanding why prices can continue to rise in a recession requires a fuller understanding of the role of credit in an economy and what it represents. Its role is far greater than commonly thought, with considerably more than several quadrillions of dollar equivalents outstanding. All economic activity and wealth are credit. This article sketches out the various types of credit, and how credit equates to our collective wealth.

It also requires us to differentiate between a currency which is anchored to gold specie and one without a specie anchor. The former imposes a discipline on the state of non-intervention, while the latter encourages intervention. It is that intervention which leads to fiat currencies and all credit based upon it finally collapsing.

The importance of credit

That the monetary authorities do not understand credit might seem unbelievable. But evidenced by their actions, it is the only explanation for their mistakes. Clearly, as well as credit they don’t understand the importance of money, having banished gold from its role of anchoring the purchasing power of credit. The vested interest of replacing gold with currency, to obtain for governments the benefit of unfettered debasement, is ignored or forgotten by today’s state-educated economists and commentators. Disregarding what drove the dollar off the Bretton Woods standard in the first place, the establishment in the broadest sense can no longer distinguish between credit and legal money.

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Posted in Banking, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Governments, Investing, Money

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The Lockdowns Kicked Off this Depression, by Jeffrey A. Tucker

Posted on August 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

Depressions are always caused by governments, and the government mandated lockdowns helped get this one rolling. From Jeffrey A. Tucker at brownstone.org:

Lockdown Depression

If you were on vacation last week, good for you. You missed one of Congress’s greatest-ever scams. They just approved some $750 billion (do these numbers even mean anything anymore?) to “transition” us from fossil fuels and coal over to reliance on the wind and sun, and also to subsidize a bunch of chip manufacturers because American companies screwed up their inventory control two years ago. 

The worst of the two bills is called the Inflation Reduction Act. Shameless! 

The details of this don’t matter as much as the big picture. What you have in Congress and the presidency right now is exactly what one might expect from an empire in decline. Special interests are tapping the petty racketeers in political power to pillage as much of American prosperity as possible before they are swept out of office in November. 

Think of a criminal band that has entered a majestic home. They are grabbing as much as they can before the owners come home. If it is not nailed down, it is going straight into the satchels and put on the truck to be carted away. 

Actually, it is worse than that. What Congress is doing today with its out-of-control trillions in spending is robbing generations hence of a chance for prosperity. We will be left holding almost nothing to hand on to our kids and grandkids. Most of all, what’s being stolen is hope for the future. 

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The Teen Girls Aren’t Going to Forget, by Suzy Weiss

Posted on April 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

The horribly inept response to Covid-19 messed with teenagers’ heads in lasting, tragic ways. From Suzy Weiss at bariweiss.substack.com:

‘It’s like a sci-fi show where people went to sleep and woke up two years later.’ Lockdown is over, but the scars of isolation aren’t going away.
Cheerleaders at high school football game, Melrose, Massachusetts, 1969. (Photo by Spencer Grant/Getty Images)

Lily May Holland, 16, remembers the long, lonely days during lockdown when her parents, both doctors, were at work. She’d watch “Gilmore Girls” and “Gossip Girl” and “Grey’s Anatomy” over and over. She stopped eating and started doing Chloe Ting workouts. “I’d have gum and a smoothie all day,” she said. They lived in the sticks north of Charlottesville, Virginia, on a dirt road between farms and trailer parks and the occasional Baptist church, and she didn’t have a license, so she couldn’t go anywhere or meet any friends. Teachers would post assignments online, but it was like—who cared? Everything happened in isolation, like they were atoms. “I would’ve gone to parties, and me and my friends were planning to go to concerts, and homecoming,” Lily said. “I had crushes freshman year. But all that fell away.”

Teenagers need a social life. Every single study and report and piece of data tells us so. But we don’t need studies to tell us what we all already know. Ask yourself: What would it have been like if you had spent your thirteenth year in solitude?

It was more than a year, actually. Millions of American kids had gone a year-and-a-half mostly alone. And every single girl I spoke to said the same thing about the experience: They felt like they were sinking, or being swallowed up.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Education, Governments, Horseshit, Medicine, Politics, Psychology, Science, Tyranny

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The High Price of COVID-19 Lockdowns, by Bill Bonner

Posted on October 1, 2020 | Leave a comment

We may be repeating ourselves here, but the cure for Covid-19 has been far, far worse than the disease. From Bill Bonner at rogueeconomics.com:

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – We begin today with a new study by the RAND Corporation.

It tallies a little more of the hidden cost of House Arrest.

ABC News reports:

Now, new data shows that during the COVID-19 crisis, American adults have sharply increased their consumption of alcohol, drinking on more days per month, and to greater excess. Heavy drinking among women especially has soared. […]

“The magnitude of these increases is striking,” Michael Pollard, lead author of the study and a sociologist at RAND, told ABC. “People’s depression increases, anxiety increases, [and] alcohol use is often a way to cope with these feelings. But depression and anxiety are also the outcome of drinking; it’s this feedback loop where it just exacerbates the problem that it’s trying to address.”

The bills will continue to trickle in for years. Jobs lost. Companies bankrupted. Careers and families stifled and stunted.

Job Cuts

Yesterday came more news of job cuts. Here’s Bloomberg:

American Airlines Group Inc. and United Airlines Holdings Inc. will start laying off thousands of employees as scheduled, spurning Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s appeal for a delay as he negotiates with Congress over an economic relief plan that includes payroll support for U.S. carriers.

American is furloughing 19,000, while United is laying off about 13,000.

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Dark Years and Fourth Turning, by Egon von Greyerz

Posted on September 24, 2020 | 1 comment

Hard times are here. From Egon von Greyerz  at goldswitzerland.com:

In an ephemeral world, few things survive. I am not talking about species or human beings whose existence on earth is also transitory. Instead I am referring to social and financial systems which are now coming to an end.

In July 2009 I wrote an article called The Dark Years Are Here. It was reprinted again in September 2018.

Here is an extract from my original article:

“The Dark Years will be extremely severe for most countries both financially and socially. In many countries in the Western world there will be a severe depression and it will be the end of the welfare state. Most private and state pension schemes are also likely to collapse. It will be a worldwide depression but some countries may only have a deep recession. There will be famine, homelessness and misery resulting in social as well as political unrest. Different type of government leaders and regimes are likely to result from this.
How long will the Dark Years last? There is a book called ”The Fourth Turning” written by Neil Howe. He has identified a pattern that repeats itself every 80 years. The pattern has been extremely accurate in the Anglophile world. We have recently entered the Fourth Turning which is the final 20 years of the cycle. According to Howe we are in the early stages of a 20 year period of economic and institutional upheaval. This is a period of Crisis when the fabric of society will change dramatically. Previous Fourth Turnings have been the American Revolution, Great Depression and World War II. According to Howe the Crisis will be substantially worse before it is over and it will last for another circa 20 years.
All of this is not good news and we hope that we and Howe are wrong regarding the severity and length of this crisis. But we fear that we are both right. We must stress again that never previously has the whole world entered a downturn simultaneously in such a fragile state both financially and economically which is why the Dark Years are likely to be so devastating and long lasting.”

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Posted in Business, Collapse, Debt, Economy, Financial markets, Governments

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How to Tackle the Depression Head On, by MN Gordon

Posted on September 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

To tackle a depression head on, the first step is to admit its inevitability, and to pretend that government and central bank debt and spending will prevent one only makes the problem worse. From MN Gordon at economicprism.com:

I want to see people get money.” – Donald J. Trump, U.S. President, September 17, 2020

“Now is not the time to worry about shrinking the deficit or shrinking the Fed balance sheet.” – Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, September 14, 2020

Money for the People

The real viral contagion that has infected the American populace is not an illness of the body.  It’s something far worse than COVID-19.  The American populace is suffering from an illness of the mind.

The general malady, as we diagnose it, is the unwavering belief that the government has an endless supply of free money, and the expectation that everyone, except the stinking rich, has claim to it.  Why pursue self-reliance and independence when a series of stimulus acts promises the more abundant life?  This viral contagion’s really ripped through the population in 2020.

For example, just a year ago, the American populace thought they could all live off the forced philanthropy of their neighbors.  That to pay Paul you had to first rob Peter.  The CARES Act proved to Boobus americanus that, without a shadow of a doubt, there’s free ‘money for the people’ in Washington.  Sí se puede!

This week the Congress did its part to further the greatest show on earth.  The people want stimulus.  Congress intends to get to them, in good time.

Of course, the need to sprinkle the Country with printing press money was already a foregone conclusion.  There was no discussion of the wisdom of not having a stimulus bill.  The debate at hand was centered on how much.

Crazy Nancy wants $3.4 trillion.  Senate Republicans want $500 billion.  Something called the House Problem Solvers Caucus wants $2 trillion.

President Trump wants Republicans to “go for the much higher numbers.”  His rationale: “it all comes back to the USA anyway (one way or another!).”

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When Will We Admit Covid-19 Is Unstoppable and Global Depression Is Inevitable? by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on February 23, 2020 | 1 comment

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Charles Hugh Smith outlines the bleak coronavirus case. From Smith at oftwominds.com:

Given the exquisite precariousness of the global financial system and economy, hopes for a brief and mild downturn are wildly unrealistic.

If we asked a panel of epidemiologists to imagine a virus optimized for rapid spread globally and high lethality, they’d likely include these characteristics:

1. Highly contagious, with an R0 of 3 or higher.

2. A novel virus, so there’s no immunity via previous exposure.

3. Those carrying the pathogen can infect others while asymptomatic, i.e. having no symptoms, for a prolonged period of time, i.e. 14 to 24 days.

4. Some carriers never become ill and so they have no idea they are infecting others.

5. The virus is extremely lethal to vulnerable subpopulations but not so lethal to the entire populace that it kills its hosts before they can transmit the virus to others.

6. The virus can be spread by multiple pathways, including aerosols (droplets from sneezing/coughing), brief contact (with hotel desk clerks, taxi drivers, etc.) and contact with surfaces (credit cards, faucets, door handles, etc.). Ideally, the virus remains active on surfaces for prolonged periods, i.e. 7+ days.

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