Difficult to present better our predicament than in the article below.
I believe that we will be at war sometimes in 2024. it is now unavoidable.
The catalyst is unknowable. Who will be our Archduke? Where will be our Sudetenland? Nobody knows. But conversely it is extremely predictable that they will emerge on schedule at the right or rather wrong time. It is unavoidable.
The debt in the US and Europe is about to explode, the dollar to implode and the real estate bubble in China to go pop. Soon enough war will look like a good, or rather less bad option to a lot of people.
Let's hope we still have some time before the cataclysm although the paroxysm of the crisis is now within sight. It is now that a brighter light-bulb in the White House would come handy!
Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,
We
are on the inevitable road to perdition for the world economy &
financial system, ending in a potential global conflict of
uncontrollable proportions.
Evil begets evil as The Cycle of Evil hits countries at the end of an uncontrollable debt expansion.
The
pattern throughout history has always been the same – countries and
empires, without fail, become victims of their own success -failure,
whether it was the Mongols, Ottomans or the British.
As real
growth ceases, a country starts to finance expansion with debt until it
cannot even afford the interest on the debt, never mind the capital
which it has no intention to repay.
At some point, the people,
fearing a war or terrorist attack will approve of the leader’s fear
mongering by supporting unlimited debt issuance. This is now happening
in the US with regard to Ukraine and Israel.
Neither the US nor
Europe is taking a single step to remedy the situation. Both are now in
the Cycle of Evil of more deficits, more debt, higher interest costs,
leading to more deficits, more debt higher interest costs, leading to
……………..
The Cycle of Evil is also accompanied by decadence
and moral decline where leaders invent problems that are not real such
as climate change, ESG (environmental, social and governance), forced
vaccines and incarcerations, 25 new genders and other woke issues etc.
Few Americans understand that the next stage of the Cycle of Evil is about to hit them.
And even fewer Europeans have a clue that they will be dragged down into the same debt collapse quagmire.
The
next stage will involve many banks failing, more than the FDIC or
government can afford to save without destroying both the Currency and
the Bond Market,
A collapsing currency and sovereign debt
paper that no investor wants to touch with a bargepole is hardly the
right climate for massive debt issuance.
Most sovereign investors have already realised that they don’t want US debt at any interest rate.
So
that means even higher interest rates, more debt issuance as the Cycle
of Evil eventually turns to a “Final Collapse” as von Mises described:
THE CYCLE OF EVIL CONTAINS MORE CATACLYSMIC COMPONENTS THAN ANY SIMILAR CYCLE IN HISTORY.
Let us summarise where the world is:
GLOBAL CONFLICT
We
have two wars both capable of leading to a major global conflict plus
high risk of terrorism and jihads in the West. Just as with most
global/world wars, there is no attempt at finding peace solutions.
To make things worse, there is not a single Statesman in the West capable of taking a lead in solving the conflicts.
DEBT COLLAPSE
We
have a global debt burden of $330 trillion plus derivatives totalling
$1.5-3 quadrillion with debt growing exponentially, especially in the
US. This will very soon develop into a debt crisis and collapse of a
heavily leveraged Western world plus Japan and China and also emerging
markets.
CIVIL UNREST and CIVIL WAR
The
downturn and eventual collapse in the global economy will lead to
poverty, famine and misery for a great number of people in the West and
Emerging Markets.
UKRAINE WAR
This
war started as a local conflict but with a US backed putsch in 2014,
throwing out the democratically elected Russian friendly leader, this
was the beginning of a war between Russia and the US and not a local
war.
The Minsk agreement brokered by Germany and France was
supposed to settle the matter but as Merkel recently admitted, the
intent was never to create peace but to give enough time for Ukraine to
arm with the help of the US.
The US forced Europe to take sides, in spite of Europe’s (especially Germany’s) dependence on Russian energy.
We can blame Russia for invading or we can blame the US for provoking Russia.
Rather
than to go into all the arguments who is right and who is wrong, best
to accept that we now have a global conflict stemming from the Ukraine
situation. The US has a reluctant Europe on its side – a Europe which is
militarily and economically weak. Russia has China, Iran, North Korea
and a few others, most probably a militarily superior group.
A bankrupt USA just sends more money and weapons but has zero intent to send peacekeepers.
Thus
there is no end in sight but the independent reporting tells us that
Ukraine is unlikely to have a chance against the superior Russian war
machine.
In the meantime an estimated 500,000 troops in total have died plus many more wounded and civilian casualties.
And still no peace attempt.
If
the warring country’s leaders led from the front, which has been common
in history, they would probably be less inclined to sacrifice more
lives including their own.
ISRAEL – PALESTINE WAR
This
region has had ongoing conflicts throughout history. It was insoluble
before 1948 and has become even more complex since 1948 when Israel was
created.
Again, we have major powers involved with primarily the
US and Europe supporting Israel and Iran, Turkey and major parts of the
Arab-Muslim world supporting Palestine and also Russia.
The US is
sending two aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean to assist Israel.
But as a military expert pointed out, these are in modern warfare just
two floating bathtubs which can be taken out easily by two missiles from
for example Iran.
In this conflict there are also many
casualties on both sides plus a massive number of Palestinians being
homeless with little food or even medical help.
What makes this
conflict even more serious is the major support in the West for the
plight of the Palestinians. Massive protests in many countries can
easily escalate to serious clashes or even civil war.
In
addition, we can be certain that the massive migration from Muslim
countries to the West will also contain many militant cells which could
easily create havoc in the US and in many European countries.
Both
Europe and the US basically has an open border policy for any migrant
who wants to enter. But neither continent has the ability to properly
take care of the migrants. This will risk both continents to be
destabilised with both migrants and the native population not accepting
the other side.
CHINA – TAIWAN
It is unlikely that China will abandon its claim that Taiwan rightfully belongs to them.
The
US is already busy with two wars, assisting with an array of military
equipment plus $100s of billions of financial aid. A third conflict with
major US military involvement would be extremely unwelcome to the US
government.
But that is exactly the right time to strike from China’s point of view.
China
knows of course that seizing Taiwan, is likely to involve major US
sanctions leading to reduced or no US imports from China leading to a
major fall or collapse of global trade. It is doubtful that Europe or
the rest of the world would comply with these sanctions.
It would
also lead to freezing of China’s assets in the US of $1.7 trillion,
including treasuries of $850 billion offset by US direct investments in
China.
But if China seizes Taiwan, they would control 60% of the
world’s semiconductor production and more importantly 90% of advanced
semiconductors. This would be a very serious blow to US strategic
industries including military equipment.
THE CYCLE OF EVIL HOLDS ALL COMPONENTS TO CREATE HELL ON EARTH
It
is intellectually fascinating but humanly depressing to watch how all
the pieces fall into place for a global conflict of a magnitude greater
than WW1 or WW2.
It is frightening to see how one component after the next falls into place in the Cycle of Evil.
Nobody realised that the shooting of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand in 1914 would be the catalyst for WW1.
Nor
did anyone understand that Germany’s invasion of Sudetenland in
Czechoslovakia in 1938-9 and of Poland on September 1, 1939 would lead
to WW2.
The two major conflicts in Ukraine and Israel-Palestine
today with Taiwan looming combined with no attempt of peacemaking plus a
likely collapse of the global financial system and world economy is
more than enough to create devastation for the world for the next decade
or more.
Let us sincerely hope that all these events in the
Cycle of Evil will not develop into global havoc.But even if that were
to be avoided, it is absolutely certain that global risk today is higher than at any time since the 1930s.