Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (August 1, 2025)

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Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (August 1, 2025) The peak of the global real estate market likely happened during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021.  This was an entirely unnatural and unhealthy situation from many standpoints, especially the way it was handled by governments around the world.  In hindsight, social distancing, face masks, remote work from home, vaccine mandates and “stimulus” (printed money which went mainly to those in the top tier of the population) were all terrible ideas.  The stimulus and the remote work from home mandates in particular made people do things they never should have done.  In the case of the real estate market, people moved to places they never should have moved to in the first place. The payback time for these bad decisions is now upon us.  Nicholas Gerli of the “Reventure Consulting” channel seen on YouTube says that the first phase of the crash is with us now and he is entirely correct.  The property markets I follow specifically in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, Arizona, New Mexico and California have already fallen by as much as 48 percent in value.  These markets include metro areas such as greater New York, Hampton Roads-Tidewater, Atlanta, Phoenix, Tucson, Santa Fe and the San Francisco Bay Area.  Keep in mind that we are merely in the first phase of this asset value collapse – we have yet to experience the second phase which will obliterate whatever happens to be left over.  Understand that the many real estate investment giants who “guestimate” values (such as Zillow, Realtor, Redfin, Xome, Trulia, etc.) already have so-called values over a very broad range – from pie-in-the-sky too high to rock bottom and below for cash on the barrel.  The current state of the economy (pretty much worldwide…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (July 1, 2025)

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Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (July 1, 2025) Like it or not, the entire global financial system is now in the midst of a major multi-generational reset.  The world’s financial weight or center of financial power has been and continues to shift toward Asia – Mainland China, India, the ASEAN nations of Southeast Asia, the Middle East / Persian Gulf and Russia / Central Asia / Siberia.  A multipolar world is in the process of replacing the historical US dominance which goes back to 1944 when the USA replaced the UK as the number one global financial center of power.  The global dominance of the UK endured from 1588 to 1944.  The Royal Navy’s defeat of the Spanish Armada (navy) is the generally accepted milestone for this event.  The Roman Catholic powers of the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of Portugal and the Frankish Kingdom (which eventually became the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation” which included much of modern day Central Europe) was the primary financial power (in the western world) before the British Empire.  This in no way minimizes the power or the accomplishments with great respect to the very advanced and even older civilizations / empires in Egypt and Mesopotamia / Iraq (the “Semites”), India, China (the great “Middle Kingdom”), the Inca Empire of South America and of course the great Aztec and Toltec Empires of Central America. One very positive sign amidst the debt, deficit, liquidity problems and fiat currency problems especially in the USA, Europe and Mainland China is the fact that gold bullion now represents an impressive 3.95 percent of all global financial assets.  This is happening in particular because gold reserves are being bolstered by Mainland China, Hong Kong (part of China), Dubai (part of the United Arab Emirates), Malaysia, Singapore,…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (June 1, 2025)

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Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (June 1, 2025) The tariffs on retail consumer goods from Mainland China for sale on Amazon have added 17.46 percent to the total purchase price compared to the end of March 2025 before any tariffs were in place.  The tariffs were a sky-high 70 percent for a few weeks in April and May before the “agreement” with China.  It looks like goods from Europe (the European Union) may now be subject to very high 50 percent tariffs – they have been postponed only until early July 2025 pending talks and negotiations. The bond markets tell us that interest rates will rise largely because the US federal budget deficit continues to rise into the stratosphere as it has done for the past quarter century.  Even the “balanced budget” of 25 years ago was not really balanced – it merely “removed” the major entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare from the official calculation which is not an honest representation of the truth.  The last true “balanced budget” would take us back more than 50 years in time.  In any case, we are in one hell of mess. The geopolitical shenanigans of the American empire over the past years, decades and even centuries have finally motivated most of the rest of the world to move away from using the US Dollar as the primary means of monetary trade and from using the currency as the primary reserve currency just as the British Pound Sterling lost its status toward the end of World War Two with Bretton Woods in July 1944.  The rest of the world led by the BRICS, the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) and the Chinese BRI (Belt Road Initiative) are already well underway in abandoning the American Dollar.  They represent about 86 percent…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (May 1, 2025)

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Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (May 1, 2025) The estimate for federal government layoffs from January 20 to February 28, 2025 = 331,780, for March 2025 = 280,000, for April 2025 and then US Army active duty reduction in force (RIF) = 90,000 = 701,780 job cuts thus far.  The pace of these cuts has slowed markedly during the month of April as they represent 27 percent of the full-time equivalent federal staff as of January 19, 2025.  Certain agencies with very intensive “retail customer” contact such as the US Post Office and the Social Security Administration should not be cut at all as they are so critical to so many people. About 75 percent of the federal budget is classified as “non-discretionary.”  Such items include interest on the federal debt, social security, Medicare, Medicaid and other “entitlement” programs such as disability, worker’s compensation, SNAP (“food stamps”), WIC and TANF.  The rest of the budget must come under scrutiny for massive reductions given the dire state of the finances of the USA – there is absolutely no room for “increase” in any other area. The current goal to cut the national defense budget by 40 percent in five (5) years is absolutely necessary and this should be increased to 50, 60, 70, 80 or even 90 percent to be cut.  America is broke and the American empire is falling – this is fact above any political party affiliation or preference.  All historical empires have risen and fallen and the USA is no exception.  At the end of the day, every empire should fall – they harm the interests of weaker and smaller peoples, cultures, ethnicities, races and countries worldwide (New world, Old world, Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere alike) and have done so for thousands of years of recorded…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (April 2, 2025)

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Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (April 2, 2025) The USA has been effectively bankrupt for some time now – in other words, before the time of the current administration, its immediate predecessors, before the time of Barack Obama, and before the time of both Bush Presidencies.  The national debt of the USA (USD $36.6 TRILLION) and especially the off-balance sheet items including unfunded liabilities for pensions, social security, healthcare, Medicare, Medicaid and the like (USD $281.5 TRILLION) cannot be paid off in any “normal” way.  This will be done through a form of bankruptcy which must necessarily involve payment in the form of physical assets to the holders of debt. Even financially healthy companies and entities “downsize” with short term staff reductions of 30 percent or so.  What the US Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) is doing is necessary and had to be done sooner or later – and better sooner rather than later.  Employment at the US Federal Government reached an all-time high in 1990 with a FTE (full time equivalent) civilian staff of 3.4 million employees.  The initial level of current reductions equal at least 331,780 individuals which include those not yet meeting one-year probation (200,000) and those accepting an early cash buyout – many of these people being already close to retirement (75,000 people).  Of the remaining 2,260,000 employees a reduction of 30 to 40 percent of this total will be “downsized” in the coming years  (this is the stated goal of D.O.G.E.).  The ripple effect in the general US economy due to government contracts paid outside of the government is a multiplier of 8.4 which equals a total sum of circa 8.5 million to 10.4 million jobs to be downsized in the public and “near public” sector of the economy. The entire US workforce of…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (March 1, 2025)

Posted in2025, Monthly Updates
Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (March 1, 2025) The remaining, left-over, rump, vestige, liberal left-wing socialist woke DEI alliance consists of the following national or autonomous territorial governments in the “lackey” west:  Canada, Germany, South Korea, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the Ukraine, Albania, Norway, Denmark, Slovenia, Estonia, Australia, Taiwan, Romania (the left wing annulled a Presidential election here in December 2024 because they did not like how the Romanian people voted), Belgium, Switzerland, Puerto Rico, Moldova, Montenegro, Malta, the UK, France and Iceland = 24 governments = legal jurisdiction over 6.51 percent of the global population.  44.24 percent of the reported votes in these 24 jurisdictions are center or right-of-center. And many of these countries are very small.  The bigger “keys” here which will make the façade collapse include Canada, Germany (the CDU/CSU need to wake up and cease forming coalitions with the destructive Social Democrats and the ultra-destructive Greens), the Ukraine (the money to the corrupt dictator Zelensky and his side must end 100 percent), Taiwan (the west needs to stop this issue entirely and allow Taiwan and mainland China to work together as they choose), the UK (Keir Starmer was installed by Barack Hussein Obama before the latter’s power structure collapsed to the ground, and if the election were held today Nigel Farage & his Reform Party may likely succeed) and of course France (Emmanuel Macron stands a good chance of losing to Marine LePen in an honest electoral contest).  Here is a good video released by George Galloway of the UK.  George is a socialist, and I would never vote for socialism – but he an honest man with some good common sense:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acl_VTtWTXA. If the radical left retains political power in these areas, the respective countries and jurisdictions will merely continue to fall to the ground…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (February 1, 2025)

Posted in2025, Monthly Updates
Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (February 1, 2025) The automotive industry has been one of the leading industries worldwide for almost 140 years.  It is now experiencing the biggest and most significant changes since then due to market over-saturation and excess production capacity (largely due to human demographic changes resulting in an ageing population and due to the over-use or abuse of credit financing) and due to the change into new technologies beyond the traditional internal combustion engine powered by crude oil products such as gasoline and diesel fuel. Companies based in mainland China and those selling their retail automotive products in China now comprise 35 percent of the global market with Chinese companies manufacturing and selling 80 percent of all electric vehicles in the world.  The entire global automotive market is forecast to contract (or shrink) by half in less than one decade or less than 10 years from today – perhaps as soon as just five (5) years from now.  A channel on YouTube which reports on this daily is called “the Electric Viking.” All of the so-called “legacy” automakers based in the USA, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France and Italy may not survive these changes.  The largest automakers in the UK (formerly MG-Rover) and in Sweden (Volvo Cars) are already owned by Chinese companies – by SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corporation) and by Geely, respectively. This alarming phenomenon is not limited to the automotive industry and is also affecting major motorcycle manufacturers such as Kawasaki of Japan (down 23 percent in annual unit sales volume since their record year of 2019).  Suzuki of Japan manufactures passenger cars & trucks plus motorcycles – they have also experienced a sales decline although not as severe (down 4 percent since 2018).  Even one very large Chinese automaker has experienced…