While the American stock markets seem to be in the early stages of recovery from "the worst recession since the Great Depression" (as it is frequently referred to), their counterparts in Europe are showing signs of near panic at the "horror" of the American Fed even considering the timing of a slowing of the "Quantitative Easing" of America's economy, which some prefer to call the hyperinflation of the economy. The thought that we might actually have to pay for all that profligate money printing has got the Socialists in Europe positively hyperventilating. If we start tightening the flow of money here because our economy is improving, the prices of American products sold in Europe will increase at a time when Europeans are struggling with their own pathetic attempts at belt tightening. Apparently, it's easier to get a heroin addict to quit "cold turkey" then it is to teach a Socialist how to live within their means. Socialists prefer to borrow endlessly on credit, until they can't any more, and then expect someone else to pay off their debts. Clearly the European nations are desperately holding out hope that America's Fed will be their "Bail-Out of Last Resort", and we will simply tire of all their foot-dragging at really tightening their profligate inflationary spending, and will simply pay off their debts for them. This may well happen; I believe the Fed would just love to, if they could do it without the people realizing it. But that would necessitate such a jump in our inflation that it would probably destroy our economy. However, the truth of this realization just might not stop them from doing it.
But, not to worry...the fed is probably not serious about replacing money printing with cash- burning any time soon, if ever. If my suspicions are correct, this last recession may soon resume , and perhaps be extended for a couple decades, or so. This is another of my outlandish statements, at least from an economist's point of view (and I certainly am not one). But the scale of world-wide indebtedness today, both public and private, is so massive that I can't see it being significantly reduced by a brief spurt of Fed-stimulated economic resurgence, here in America.
The economy is not inflating, it's deflating. We just don't realize it because of all the Fed's "Q.E." spending which has hidden it fairly well. But as soon as interest rates start rising, and the Fed's bond purchasing starts to pinch, then the natural deflationary principles will take over, and the Fed won't be able to stand that, so they'll change course and try to print our way out of the inevitable, once again. And each subsequent inflationary stimulus must be exponentially larger than the previous one in order to have even a noticeable effect, until eventually our currency is worthless, and no one will accept it as payment for anything.
My unapologetic arrogance in challenging the wisdom of the brilliant economists who got us all into this mess in the first place is based upon two Biblically-based presumptions. One, that we are drawing close to the return of Jesus Christ--which we refer to as the "End Times", or the "Last Days"-- and two, the Bible prophecies tell us that before He returns the geo-political, and especially the economic power of the world will be centered briefly in a confederation of European nations, controlled by the Antichrist and his One-World government. Since we have today a European confederation that is struggling to hold itself together, it seems that all it needs is a "brilliant" and "charismatic" leader to rise from comparative obscurity, just as Hitler did during the 1920's when their hyperinflationary economy was in a shambles, to take charge and "restore order" to their lives. The price that they will pay for this "new order" will be a totalitarian state that would have left Hitler green with envy, if he could have seen it.
What I see happening to the world's economy over the next decade, or two, is a gradual shifting of the economic power base away from America, and towards Europe. I have described this before as a kind of perversion of John the Baptist's statement that Jesus, "must increase, but I must decrease", in order for Christ's ministry to spread. Similarly, though for evil ends, America's prosperity must decrease along with our economic influence, so that the Antichrist's power can increase. I'm convinced that this must happen for the prophecies to be fulfilled, therefore it is indirectly God's will in the last days. He will give all this power to the Antichrist, for a little while, and therefore we must surrender it. It cannot be that America will remain the economic Superpower, while the Antichrist runs roughshod over the whole world.
The problem for the Antichrist is we don't want to give it up, so he must steal it from us. And the best way to do that without our realizing it is with years, or even decades of slow, exponentially increasing hyperinflation, until our currency is worthless to the point where it is no longer acceptable in exchange for goods and services. If another currency becomes more stable in the mean time, then everyone else will demand that as a replacement currency.
The thing is that if interest rates rise, that means that the economy is rebounding, and therefor there is no need for massive "Q.E.", or hyperinflationary spending. So, the Fed will need some other excuse to keep printing massive amounts of worthless dollars, such as ... oh... I dunno... how about quietly "loaning" European governments the money to pay off their massive debts, and when they can't re-pay the loans we'll simply "forgive" the loans, and eat the inflationary dollars ourselves, until our own currency becomes worthless. This will help the Euro to stabilize and then they can attach it's value to the Gold Standard, through Gold-denominated computer banking ( that perhaps will not even need the actual purchasing of gold to back it up, because transactions by computer are much more convenient than actually converting electronic "cash" into gold first). Of course this will all necessitate the eventual receiving of the "Mark of the Beast" in one's right hand, or forehead to complete transactions. But I don't foresee this as happening before the "Rapture", as it must be brought on slowly, and quietly in order to be accepted world-wide, and the body of Christ would raise too much of an objection to that. Since the world-wide slaughter of hundreds of millions of uncooperative Christians would be bad publicity, and would certainly be God's vehicle for causing millions more to receive Christ in their place, I think that the Antichrist would prefer to simply wait for the Rapture to rid him of all those pesky Christians ( he'll be able to read the Bible too, in a "know your enemy" sort of way), while explaining that the martians came and spirited us away for their food supply. Then he can make refusing the "Mark" a capital offense, without much objection.
No comments:
Post a Comment