The Economics of National Demoralization

A New Era of Disillusionment Were you forwarded this email? [Sign-up to The Daily Reckoning here.]( [Unsubscribe]( [Daily Reckoning] The Economics of National Demoralization - The U.S. is entering a new era of disillusionment with government and elites... - It feels like 1976... - Another perfect storm... Recommended Link [Is Trump’s Prediction Finally Coming True?]( Trump warned America that if Joe Biden was elected that the stock market would “disintegrate”. But still, millions of people chose to help get Biden and the Do-Nothing-Democrats “elected”... Now we ALL might have to pay the price. Because according to [this information]( we may be just days away from [one of the biggest stock market sell-offs in history.]( There is nothing left for the rest of us to do but prepare… Because once this crisis hits there will only be two kinds of people… Those who survived and those who didn’t… [Click Here If You Want to See How to Be One of the Survivors]( Somewhere in the Lower 48 States August 20, 2021 Editor’s note: Is the U.S. entering a new era of general disillusionment with government, media and “experts” like Dr. Fauci? Today, libertarian writer Jeffrey Tucker argues it is. [Jeffrey Tucker] Dear Reader, Retail spending dropped hard in July, fully 1.1%, following several months in which economic hopes were buoyed by public spending on everything from cars and clothing to homes. The latest data signals a reversal in every area. And it’s not just in retail sales; it’s a reversal in hope for recovery generally. This news stunned nearly all prevailing forecasters, who only last month had predicted continued progress, not regress. The prevailing theory here comes down to the media’s new favorite word: Delta. The new variant, the new demand for booster shots (with little compelling data!), new restrictions, and a new generally bad mood are dragging everything down, they say. Even trillions in stimulus cannot stimulate people who are afraid, depressed,and avoiding risk. There is a reason the University of Michigan’s early-August report shows consumer sentiment plunged to a ten-year low. This news of the retail drop comes a day after Americans were forced to process a terrible reality. Recommended Link [Strange “White Cubes” 125 Feet From YOUR house?]( [Read more here...]( From Southern California to New York City… Strange “white cubes” are popping up all across the country. They were even spotted 125 feet from a suburban neighborhood in southeast Texas. Have you seen them? It’s not a 5G device… Or a “mysterious” alien technology… But according to our research… These strange “white cubes” are coming to a neighborhood near YOU… [Go here now to see the wild story on these strange “white cubes” BEFORE they land in YOUR backyard.]( A New Era of Disillusionment Twenty years of war in Afghanistan was a waste. They were lying the whole time. There was no chance that our chosen new government could lead the country without continued, total military occupation by American troops. The U.S. stepped away, and the Taliban came back as if following spring break. There is no question that as a nation, we are entering into a new era of general disillusionment with everything from political leadership to foreign policy leadership to media experts to all experts generally. It’s hard to name even one area of public life in the U.S. today that seems to count as a success in which people can feel some measure of pride. To be sure, Americans have been good sports for the last couple of years, taking all the bad news on the chin, ready to give it another go the next day. Not even the lockdowns could drain people of their optimism. The change of leadership in Washington offered some hope. That hope has now turned to realism: Biden’s general popularity is sinking ever lower, and on specifics from economics to the chaos in Afghanistan to immigration, it is falling faster than retail spending. Where are we headed? For those old enough to remember the pre-Regan days, this feels oddly 1976ish. Deliberate Sabotage Both the stagflation and malaise of the 1970s were a result of deeply ignorant economic policies. It swept through the country in ways that shocked the ruling class -- as if they had no idea what the results of their actions would be. Had they known better, they surely would have avoided this mess. Or so we believe. When, for example, Nixon shut the gold window, he imagined that he was shepherding in the greatest monetary system in history, a complete fiat system with flexible exchange rates between countries that could be managed beautifully by technocrats. The end result was exactly what the economists at the time said would be impossible: an inflationary economy stuck in recession with high unemployment. The aggregates did not behave the way the Keynesian theorists had promised for many decades. Economic forces presented something entirely new and unexpected, even if the dissidents had predicted it all along. A generation watched and learned. Less than a decade later, a corrective regime came along to stabilize money, deregulate enterprise, and reduce taxes to inspire entrepreneurship. What’s happening to the United States today is similar but different. Recommended Link [Prepare for America’s Trojan Horse…]( [Read more here...]( The left’s plan to push America into a socialist nation is finally coming to fruition right before our eyes… But what could happen “next” will have a tremendous impact on your everlasting wealth. [Click here to see why…]( Everything happening now is a deliberate choice. The Covid shutdowns were specifically designed to crush economic activity in the name of public health. The trillions in money/credit creation by the Fed were constructed to substitute for real economic activity. The limits on travel and trade were intended to do precisely that: limit travel and trade. In that sense, they worked perfectly. They also raised up a new class of public managers sporting public-health credentials, as if their schooling in a narrow area without any tested experience entitled them to have full control over people’s lives. They did their work, and then the opportunists at the Fed and the U.S. Congress seized the day, creating and spending trillions in a desperate attempt to paper over the egregious failings. Messes Everywhere The chasm that separates the news on TV from reality on the ground is growing by the day. The prices at the pump tell the real story. So do the prices at the grocery. The housing shortage is hitting many regions of the country, and it is not just affecting home-buying. Rental properties are also soaring in price, and many people cannot even get in the door due to the Biden administration’s moratorium on evictions. These days landlords are extremely cautious. A near-perfect credit score is a bare minimum for gaining approval for anything. No property owner can afford the risk that any tenant will take advantage of the now-legal ability to skip out on paying without consequence. The longer this moratorium continues, the more the rental sector is going to itself enter into crisis. Nor can the Supreme Court save us from this mess. The Court already ruled that the CDC’s moratorium does not pass legal muster but allowed it to continue anyway, on grounds that it is temporary. It turned out (of course) not to be temporary, and the Biden administration was happy to ignore the court decision. This is utter lawlessness practiced by the highest legal executives in the land. The willful ignoring of courts suggests rule by power and not law. Another Perfect Storm It’s quite amazing to witness the coming together of all these forces at once: total loss in foreign policy, rising inflation, shortages of essentials, economic dislocation across many sectors, an unprecedented explosion of public debt, and an immigration crisis at the border. It’s not all Biden’s fault, but the new administration has shown no willingness to understand what is happening, much less do anything positive in the direction of fixing this. The only hope at this point is a complete regime change in the U.S., but that is at least 14 months away to get started, another two years after that to consolidate. In the meantime, the economic mood will surely sink further as national demoralization sets in. That means less investment, restrained consumer spending, less business expansion due to the labor shortage, the growing strain on public budgets at all levels, and ever more pressure on the Federal Reserve to pump up the money to keep the illusion of prosperity alive. In such times, what can one really trust? Public channels of information stand discredited after so many months and years of propaganda. Thousands of petty emperors have been revealed to have no clothes and certainly cannot be trusted to say what’s true. The information you need to understand the world is being distributed as samizdat now that major social media companies and big media have signed up to be willful distributors of government-approved messaging. Access to truth is ever harder to come by. It takes some digging. Also in such times, people cling to institutions that are less subject to manipulation by public authorities. This explains the latest excitement over Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market. The timing of the renewed interest is also ironic: in the 1970s, people found a safe haven in hard assets. Crypto wasn’t around then, but it is now, and it is more exciting for many people than the hard assets of old. I avoid making price predictions, but I will tell you that my many friends in the industry have never been more exuberant about their decision to lean into this sector. Just as they expect worsening economic times, maybe far worse than we can imagine, they expect big moves by year’s end. Regards, Jeffrey Tucker for The Daily Reckoning Editor’s note: Nothing else in the world today generates such excitement, confusion and anxiety as cryptocurrencies. Maybe you’re feeling confused. Maybe you regret not making sense of what all this meant five years ago. Maybe you just think it’s all a bit of a scam. But ignoring what’s happening would be a mistake. In fact, understanding what this all means could be one of the most valuable things you ever do, according to America’s #1 futurist, George Gilder. George thinks we’re in the early stages of not just an alternative financial system emerging, but a whole new form of the internet itself. [And as George explains on camera here, he thinks what comes after bitcoin could be even more lucrative than anything we’ve seen so far.]( So don’t worry if you feel like you missed the boat on bitcoin or the other major cryptos. George says it’s absolutely not too late to profit from it. [Hit this link and see why ‘Life After Bitcoin’ is going to make some people a lot of money.]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading The Daily Reckoning! We greatly value your questions and comments. Please send all feedback to [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:dr@dailyreckoning.com) [Jeffrey Tucker]( is an independent editorial consultant who served as Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and eight books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. Add feedback@dailyreckoning.com to your address book: [Whitelist us]( Additional Articles & Commentary: [Daily Reckoning Website]( Join the conversation! Follow us on social media: [Facebook]( [LinkedIn]( [Twitter]( [RSS Feed]( [YouTube]( The Daily Reckoning is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We do not rent or share your email address. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press delivering daily email issues and advertisements. 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