That’s how Neil Oliver opens his latest opinion piece. He’s writing from Britain, but the points he makes are just as valid here in the USA – just change the politicians’ names as needed. He points out that all the headlines in the news media are nothing but an attempt to disguise the reality underlying them all.
Ultimately this is all about wealth and power. Not money, remember. Money is to wealth as a menu is to a steak. One’s a worthless bit of paper, the other something that will keep you alive. This is about actual wealth and its acquisition. It’s about the already super-rich getting hold of even more of the real things. Land, buildings, natural resources, gold. While we are supposed to be frightened out of our wits, squabbling among ourselves, and just hoping that one day it will all be over, a relative handful of others are hoovering up all the wealth, as planned.
Whichever way you slice it, an economic and societal shock on a scale that has not happened in lifetimes, if ever, is on its way. The world we live in is built in its entirety upon unimaginable, and now unsustainable, levels of debt. Trillions … quadrillions of dollars worth. There is always much more debt in the world than money – so that it is never possible to settle the debt. Now that debt, all that created money, is about to come crashing down.
There’s more at the link. Highly recommended reading.
If you prefer to listen to him, here’s the video version.
I’ve been saying many of the same things for a long time. It’s nice to hear more and more mainstream figures saying them too – even if that won’t change the disaster bearing down on us. It’s too late for that now.
Peter
The rich want to return to a feudal society with themselves as the nobility, making them permanently in charge and allowing them to do anything they want, with the rest of us peons serving them…
While I don't know how it will turn out, I do know it won't turn out the way they want it to.
I don't have much in the way of precious metals. Prioritized redneck PM's instead. Brass and lead instead of gold and silver. We'll see which is more important soon, I'm thinking
What JH above said.
The 'elite' want fiefdoms carved out, from farming to manufacturing to service, and us 'peons' either tied permanently to the land and/or the position, whether by peasantry, serfdom, debt peonage or outright slavery.
As to precious metals, so many have staked their 'fallen times' programs on PMs. Which is nice, until you remember that the Dems (under FDR, hwack-sptooie) banned private ownership of PMs. Which is why PM jewelry took a big rise, but PM jewelry is never as cash-equitable as PM chunks.
Roosevelt outlawed gold instead of silver and did it because the Govt could take in gold at the official price of $20 an ounce and sell it on the open market in Europe for $35. US silver coinage is not the best investment but it may be the safest.
It sure looks like the guys who wrote about the coming 4th turning sure knew what they were talking about.
It’s not about money or “wealth”, it’s about power…. and power is the ability to get things done.
Wealth can help you in that regard, but as every country that has every had a revolution has shown, wealth is useless when the men with guns decide to take it from you . It is useless when the men with guns decide that you are going to the Gulag – or being put up against the wall, along with your family – if you do not do what they tell you.
The Nazis made it clear. They did not care who owned what, as long as the “owners” did as they were told.
So yeah, in our current state of quasi-civilisation, wealth does have a connection to power….. but only as long as the men with guns are content to take wages. When they don’t?
I'm thinking the financial side of things will get restrictive before anything else. The FED controls every aspect of banking in the US. With a keystroke, every account associated with an SSN can be frozen, or withdrawals limited, or cash withdrawals refused, allowing electronic transactions only. When TPTB start squeezing down on banking, what's the real world alternative?
I see that as the most likely pinch point at the beginning of the end, and I just don't see anybody working up a reasonable alternative. I really don't think Bitcoin is going to do it, because anyone who thinks the NSA can't throttle that doesn't know the NSA and their partners, Visa/MC.
I have said that there is so much debt that if we strip-mined the crust down to the mantle there's not enough wealth to repay it.
When it crashes and the debt unravels we're going to find that the real economy, not debt-driven one, is orders of magnitude smaller than we ever thought.
David
Neil used to be one of the BBC's favourite, favoured, safe, real scientists. A qualified archaeologist.
He could always be depended upon to follow the BBC playbook.
Especially on, doom, da doom doom, Global Warming, but also on any other BBC topic.
During the pandemic years he appears to have had a bit of a Damascene.
He also had nice flowing, glossy locks.
Now he has burned his Beeb bridges and he will be a non-person, like a few other very popular and well liked people who dared question the party line on the scientific consensus and pouff, gone, dissapeared.
I like him now and wish him well. He is brave.
And his mane and whiskers suit a rebel.
You might guess from my grammar that I am Scottish, but we are most critical of fellow Scots who get above them themselves.
And Thank You Mr. Bayou R. Man for all your posts. Amusing, informative, interesting. You give me an insight into an America we do not see enough of.