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June 12, 2008
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Do you think you have a clear picture
of the state of your nation? Do any of the TV, newspaper, or
radio people have it right?
Well let's start with a question for
you - when Japan's stock market had its downturn more than 20 years
ago, how long did it take for the market to get back to where it was
before the crash?
I ask this question because all reports
you see in the non-Moderate Independent media follow a basic
premise: that 'if' we have a recession (some still pretend
things aren't at least that bad) that it is simply a matter of
guessing how long the usual cycling out of a recession will take.
Will the economy be back up later this year? Maybe next year?
So let's get back to Japan. 20
years ago, the Japanese Nikkei index was up above 40,000. It
crashed because of things like overly inflated real estate prices in
Japan based on a bubble that had built during it's boom years in the
70's and 80's.
Let's not worry about how bad the crash
was, because past is past, right? As our media keeps telling
us, these things work themselves out within a year, two at the
worst.
Well, let's now insert actual reality
into the conversation: today, more than 20 years later, the
Japanese stock market sits at about 13,000.
Look at those numbers. 20 years
after the crash, not only hasn't the Japanese stock market rebounded
to its original level; in fact, it still sits at about 1/4 of what
it was 20 years ago.
And we can add to that that this is in
time-deteriorated Yen units, which of course lose value as inflation
occurs. So in reality, it's even worse than it sounds.
What top financial firms are saying
behind closed doors - but wouldn't dare say in the media, where
their role is to be commercial sales people so you keep giving your
money to their investments - is that the debt bubble that America
now has is beyond what it was before the Great Depression. In
fact, it is something unseen before in history. Forget the
mortgage situation for a moment. The debt of investors who
have been allowed to do things like borrow against hedge funds; the
credit card debt - which, I might add, never existed before in
history as credit cards only came into use as such around the early
1970's; and then, of course, the mortgage bubble. And, we can
not forget, a national debt unlike we've ever seen, which not only
eliminates the government's ability to provide any real stimulus,
but actually will continue to accelerate as a drain on all of the
above situations.
The long and short is that American's
have bought a "conservative" economic philosophy for decades now -
one that was so obviously nonsensical from the beginning that it was
dubbed "voodoo economics." And the reality has been that life
has not worked for Americans for decades. But, thanks to
credit cards, and then, just as that was about to bust, mortgage and
home-equity borrowing, Americans have sustained the unsustainable by
charging or borrowing it.
So the question of when will the system
get back working again as it had been is a false question, because
"as it had been" never was working. No one was making ends
meet.
To make things a little clearer about
both the economy and how bad the current collapse - yes, not
recession, but collapse - will be, let's look at something still
largely ignored but massive.
We hear things about a supposed "health
care crisis." But most people are ignoring the largest bubble
of all - the Human Bubble.
It is commonly mentioned, our "obesity
epidemic." People ignore the fact that, like credit card debt,
this is entirely new - not just to the American experience, but to
the human experience. Never before has there been a nation
which had 100 million - yes that is the number - fully obese people.
Never before has a full 2/3 of a nation - to put it in numbers so
you get the perspective, more than 200 million of us - been
dangerously overweight.
Now let's ignore the millions and
millions left who are just badly overweight and deal with these
numbers. More than 200 million of us dangerously overweight,
more than 100 million fully obese. We hear this and don't
really hear it. We see occasional reports about type-2
diabetes skyrocketing, but don't really even begin to get the scope
of the Human Bubble we have built that is now just beginning to
burst.
Obesity like this does not exist-
nor ever has existed without consequence. Again, this is new
both to America and the world. Some numbers showing the tip of
the iceberg should be sobering: there are currently 100,000
weight-caused cancer deaths a year in America. Osama bin Laden
could only dream of killing so many Americans, never mind a year,
never mind as only the beginning of things.
Here's another number: stroke
deaths - again, related to obesity - have increased among
middle-aged women. Now, by middle-aged, it doesn't mean 50's,
60's, etc. Stroke has increased among women between the ages
of 35 and 54. That's pretty young, no? Now are you ready
for by how much stroke has increase among 35-54 year old women?
No, not 25%. No, not 50%. Not even 100%. And to be
clear, this is only talking about over a 10 year period. Over
the most recent ten-year period for which there is data, stroke
among women between the ages of 35 and 54 has increased by
300%. Tripled, that is.
Here is a link to the
Newsweek
article on the subject, and just in case you wonder if weight is
really the cause, this from the article:
"After scrutinizing data from the National Health and Nutrition
Surveys conducted between 1988 and 1994 and again between 1999 and
2004, Towfighi and her former colleagues at the UCLA Stroke Center
were able to publish a series of studies. They confirmed that the
spike in strokes among middle-aged women is new and real, and they
were also able to hypothesize about the cause of the increase: the
expanding waistlines and rising body mass index (or BMI, a measure
of body fat based on weight and height) of midlife women."
If you don't see the beginning of a
Human Bubble bursting, you are either not paying attention or are in
massive denial.
Hospitalization for kidney disease -
also related to high-blood pressure and other weight-related issues
- has increased by 400%.
Now back to the economy for a second.
A little known fact is that the #1 reason for personal bankruptcies
at the moment - which have been setting new records basically every
year for more than a decade - is debt from unpayable medical
expenses.
So we have the stark financial reality
as explained above: a leveraged debt bubble beyond anything
seen even before the Great Depression. And now, on top of
this, we have a Human Bubble unlike anything mankind has ever seen
beginning to burst, just as the mortgage bubble is beginning to
burst, just as the credit card bubble is beginning to burst.
And, as luck - or God - would have it,
the fossil-fuel bubble we've known since the 1970's was going to
burst about now is, yes, beginning to burst.
So, talking into account all of this
information - none of which is working itself into the non-Moderate
Independent media's economic assessments, you tell me: how
will the economy perform in the near future? Will there be a
recession? Will it be small and short?
Simply looking at the facts is what
allowed me to predict exactly what would be happening years ago,
even as all others threw rosy nonsense at you. The reality is
the mortgage crisis is just beginning, the Human Bubble is just
beginning to pop, the credit card crisis is just beginning to come
home to roost, and investor borrowing against things like hedge
funds is just starting to play out - and we have done nothing
substantial to move toward alternative energy, as we should have
decades ago.
Let's end today's M/I report with the
questions I asked at the beginning of it: Do you think you
have a clear picture of the state of your nation? Do any of
the TV, newspaper, or radio people have it right?
Is your answer the same now as it was
when you started reading this article? Welcome to the Moderate
Independent, the only useful news and commentary source in America.
HERE'S A LINK TO
THE STORY OF THE JAPANESE STOCK MARKET CRASH, which fell more
than 30,000 yen, from over 40,000 to below 8,000, and is still only
back to about 13,000 20 years after the fall began
Next report: If you think the
Bushies are losing power and on the way out, you are not paying
attention..
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