Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (May 1, 2020)
The subject of this month’s update is a follow-up to last month’s topic analyzing the emerging economic collapse and fallout from the global pandemic. Much of the world’s economy remains intentionally shut down in an effort to slow the growth of the pandemic, and repercussions remain huge. At least 100 countries have asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a financial bailout. In the USA, the annual federal government budget deficit exceeds USD $4 TRILLION and the official national debt has surpassed USD $25 TRILLION. Keep in mind that the US national debt does not include “off balance sheet” unfunded liability items such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which in sum surpass the rest of debt. The massive USD $2 TRILLION stimulus package has already been spent in the sense that so many people remain without gainful employment. Business Insider estimates that fewer than half of Americans will have a paycheck in the month of May. One in six Americans have already filed for unemployment benefits, and 40 percent of families have trouble putting food on the table. In much of the rest of the world, especially in the very populous developing world, the situation is worse than this.
These massive sums of money can never and should not be paid back for the simple reason that most of the world’s debt has been “created” out of thin air by the central banks of the world, which are owned by the world’s commercial banks, which in turn are owned by the most powerful families in recorded history. The sum of money “printed” to date is astronomical, and a number of indebted entities are even deeper in the hole than the US federal government. Who are they?
European Union (EU) pension liabilities exceed USD $29 TRILLION. Total US Dollar-denominated debt exceeds USD $250 TRILLION (think not merely of US federal government debt, but of US municipal debt, corporate debt, junk bonds, mortgage debt, auto loans, student loans, credit card debt and now even the horror of medical debt). US unfunded liabilities exceed USD $111 TRILLION (think of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the value of all unpaid pensions both in public and private sector). Unfunded pension liabilities in countries including the likes of Mainland China, India, Japan, Canada and Australia exceed USD $400 TRILLION (their combined population exceeds 3 BILLION people, so this makes perfect sense). On top of this, the money center banks of the world are sitting upon USD $4 QUADRILLION in financial derivatives, largely financial “bets” on the foreign exchange markets of the world. These vast sums of money equal an amazing USD $670,000 for every man, woman and child on earth.
The so-called and self-styled leadership of our world has become profoundly dysfunctional to say the very least. The central banks of the world must be nationalized in the short term, if only to write off this massive (and unpayable) debt and to help the peoples of the world move beyond this global crisis. It is not merely the American population in dire need of temporary financial “stimulus,” but the population of all of the world’s countries put together. The corrupt central bankers who have created money out of thin air (which they then want paid back to them – this defies all logic and all morality), who have destroyed the real value of money, and who have created worthless fiat paper money, should and must not be paid back for something which they never should have been allowed to create in the first place.
Once the world moves beyond this pandemic, the entire global economy and all financial currencies worldwide need to be reset to real honest value in our modern age. We need digital currencies (to eliminate criminal and physically unsanitary use of paper money) backed by real assets such as minerals and natural resources which will not be exploited, but preserved to back the real value of this new money.
Dysfunctional “leadership” has devalued the stock market by an incredible 70 percent (priced in gold bullion) since 1999. Most of the monies invested in the stock markets of the world back people’s retirement savings – their hard-earned pensions. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky recently said that public entities (specifically US states, counties and cities) should be allowed to declare bankruptcy so that they can default on their pensions. His public stance is both wrong and immoral. As we have seen, it is not merely American government entities which are in a financial bind, but all entities worldwide – be they public sector government, nonprofit healthcare or private sector industrial. The central banks of the world have created this problem, so it is they (and their powerful owners) who should foot the bill to move this world past the horrific effects of this pandemic.
