Trump Presidency - Economic Recovery or Collapse?

Well President elect Donald Trump gets sworn in a week or so, and the world is still asking ‘what the hell happened?’ A college of mine, Crispin Rovere, who predicted Trump’s rise accurately and early, is in the process of publishing a book The Trump Phenomenon which will explain things in some detail. This post provides a wider context.

It is now inevitable that the United States will experience a financial collapse. The structural causes of this are well documented and well understood by both the left and right. (I mean the real left, not the minority rights obsessed middle class white latte left). Everyone who knows anything about international finance, geopolitics, security or defence, knows this. This Chinese know it. The Russians know it. The banks know it. The secret services know it. Trump knows it. Obama knows it. The ‘alt right’ and Noam Chomsky are in violent agreement as to the cause of the problem. I will not bother providing a slew of references. You can do your own reading.

There are two ways of having a collapse. It is either uncontrolled and chaotic, or it is managed. The collapse of the Soviet Union was uncontrolled and chaotic. The former countries of the USSR were devastated. Thousands of factories closed. The majority were plunged into poverty. Public assets were asset stripped and a tiny faction of obscenely wealth people ran the country as a fiefdom. That only stopped with Putin, which is why the Russians love him and the Western oligarchs hate him. The economic collapse in Europe in 2008 was managed. That is a relatively complex story but the EU is still shakily holding together and Europe still has an economy unlike Russia in the 90’s.

In the United States one faction within the one tenth of one percent of the population that run the country realised that the parasite was killing the host. They want a controlled collapse. They also believe in and want a thing called ‘Amerika’. That is a country with a defined territory, constitution, cultural and legal norms, historical reference, and ethnic identity. That faction conducted a hostile take-over bid within the Republican party and is represented by Trump. It includes patriotic elements within the defence and security sector, and a handful of republicans. They want the host to live. Trump’s job is to manage the collapse and cushion the landing, while ensuring that the peasants don’t revolt too much – which is why he wants to bring jobs back.

The other faction are happy for the host to die because they are true globalists and they don’t care. They despise ‘Amerika’ and the ‘deplorables’ but are happy to mobilise the latte left as ‘useful idiots’ for their own purposes. This faction is represented by the Gulen/Soros/CIA/Clinton/Obama cabal.

Of course there are other issues – largely cultural. Clinton is a hardened culture warrior with conservative Christians clearly in the cross hairs. Many people voted for Trump out of well-founded fear of what Clinton planned to do to them and their kids. Many minorities voted for Clinton out of genuine concerns for what a conservative back-lash might mean for them. It serves the interests of both elite factions to turn the peasants against one another and blame the Russians, Mexicans, or anyone really except themselves.

Whether there is a master plan for the collapse I don’t know. What can be observed empirically is the preparation. Over the last eight years the Obama administration:

• Systematically removed legal and constitutional rights and safeguards

• Armed police forces with counter insurgency weapons transferred from use in Iraq

• Militarised police forces in terms of their training and mentality

• Militarised the civil society

• Created a network of mass internment (FEMA) camps

• Role played scenarios that involved martial law

• Created a total surveillance State

• Transferred the national wealth to the speculative financial sector

• Fostered a culture of extra-judicial killings, and warrantless police raids and wire-taps

• Attempted to disarm the population

Of course, you will not read about any of that in the Washington Post of other fake media outlets. Meanwhile the Russians and the Chinese are trying to prop up the West while shielding their own populations from the fall-out of the collapse. Google “Chinese silk roads project OBOR” and start reading. Russia and China are creating an alternative economic architecture and integrating their economies and militaries in preparation for Western economic chaos followed by war. Big topic…no time…very interesting though… Since both Trump, the Russians and the Chinese want a soft landing they will talk…which is why fake news outlets like the Washington Post, Fox news etc are apoplectic about rapport with Russia because they are owned by the globalist faction.

So what does all this mean for Australia?

A managed collapse will be much much better than a chaotic one. It will hurt, but from our side a modest amount of fiscal rectitude could put us in a position for recovery. That would include for example:

• Scrapping the Joint Strike Fighter purchase in preference for a real plane saving circa AUS$30 billion

• Purchasing the new submarine ‘off the shelf’ rather than attempting to modify and half build them here, saving billions in cost blow outs

•  Fixing the loopholes in Superannuation saving billions

• Requiring profits made in the country to be taxed in the country returning tens of billions

• Taxing mineral exports properly reaping hundreds of billions over time

• Nationalising key assets

• Creating a gold reserve

• Telling the banks plainly that they WILL be allowed to fail and there will be no bail-out

• Replacing them with a publicly owned ‘Australia’ bank when they fail

• Banning all financial derivatives except some futures contracts for some commodities

We could in fact collapse the housing bubble and bounce back better than ever. That’s the best scenario. 

The worst scenario is a bank run, liquidity freeze, hyperinflation, collapse in confidence, sell-off of all public assets, tearing up of the social contract (privatise medicare etc), and serfdom to foreign owned companies. Actually that’s too kind. The worst scenario is invasion and/or economic blockade by one or more Asian nations to our North following a chaotic collapse and global contagion. Unlikely but possible. More probably we will muddle along in pain and confusion somewhere in the middle.

The timing and proximate cause of the collapse is unknown and the consequences are impossible to predict but we need to prepare now. At an individual level invest in real things, pay down debt, and keep enough cash-at-bank to pay for essentials for six months to one year. Watch carefully and pull out physical cash early. Collapse could be ten years away or it could be within the first term of the Trump Presidency. Time will tell.

BTW you can find and read the US Intelligence (sic) report on Russian hacking here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByibNV3SiUooTlVMV2hnS0UzY2M/view

The report correctly notes that the Russian's don't like Hillary and that's about it. If you can find a single example of actual proof (not merely assertion) of Russian hacking in this report please quote in full in the comments pages of this blog.