Summary:
While systemic failures are beyond our control, we must recognize that most personal successes and failures are within our control. This understanding empowers us to survive and thrive in the economic landscape, offering a beacon of hope even in challenging times.
With its built-in exploitive weaknesses, our economic system is designed to cause us to fail, keep us on an economic survival treadmill, and extract any benefits from our successes.
We have the immense power to shape our personal and financial future, empowering us to navigate the turbulent economic system confidently and with control and understanding.
However, understanding these built-in weaknesses is not a hurdle but the first step to navigating the system and empowering us with knowledge and preparedness.
Everything is tightly controlled through licensing, regulations, liability, litigation, surveillance, propaganda, gaslighting, cancellation, persecution, prosecution, and the continuous expansion of the administrative state.
The U.S. has a 110-year history of financial manipulation by the bankster oligarchs that have screwed over everyday folks since the creation of the federal reserve system in 1913
Issuing fiat currency, which means creating money out of thin air with nothing backing it up, causes inflation and the corresponding dollar debasement. Cumulative inflation has exceeded 3,000% since 1913.
Financial elites benefit the most because they use super high-leveraged investments that make money from inflation.
Article:
With recent increases in interest rates and the downward forces of market dynamics, the need for personal reinvention has become more pressing than ever. This is not a time for despair but for action and transformation. The call for personal reinvention should inspire us to adapt and thrive in the face of economic challenges.
Economies and stock markets flourished to incredible highs that no one ever dreamed possible. Stock pickers and real estate investors were jubilant. Low or zero-interest borrowing, while properties more than 40-50% of their disposable incomes appeared to make geniuses out of average investors, simultaneously creating enslavement and debt serfdom out of residential and commercial tenants. Those days are gone. A reality check has set in equal to the school of hard knocks.
The real suckers were those sophisticated purchasers who purchased hundreds of thousands of single-family residences, thinking that values would continue to skyrocket. Suckers included some of the most innovative financial folks in the world, such as Wall Street, Invitations Homes, Inc., and Zillow. 25% of the institutional purchasers felt extremely anxious until the market crashed because the Federal Reserve began increasing interest rates on an upward trajectory back to something close to normal. Correspondingly, the volume of home purchases hit back to earth. The speculative property purchasing cycle stopped dead in its tracks. A new problem has arisen.
Governments always promote delusional rhetoric that the hopeful, gullible masses will accept. Deposit money in a savings account and get one percent interest, or borrow on a credit card and pay 20-27% interest, as the rigged market allows. Central banks and giant mega-banks make most of their profits this way.
Everything was and continues to be about money, power, access, and influence.
As far as tech and media (giant) industries are concerned, they hold the keys to the world. The government juices them with massive monetary payments and preferential benefits to manipulate data, spread official propaganda, and serve as the executioner, which ensures their membership in the establishment club. Corporate lobbyists, public relations representatives, and their lawyers enjoy preferences.
Besides surveilling, monitoring, swaying public opinion, and conveying propaganda, they report objectors and perceived advisories to the establishment. The U.S. hires Spy tech firms like Palantir, Amazon, and Microsoft to extract personal data without consent. They serve as hatchet persons for the establishment.
What appears to be a free-market democracy has quickly become an idealistic surveillance-based socialist utopia. For the great well-being of the masses, one must expend maximum energy unselfishly; this has become a national mantra. Of course, inserting for the greater good means benefiting the parasites, establishment, and the oligarchs, as it historically has been for the last 100 years.
Even internationally, organizations like the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF),non-government organizations (NGOs), institutions, and think tanks are primarily leftist, statist, and collectivist. In summary, they are destructive, elitist parasites who operate against productive people in their societies.
The size of the government continued to grow in strength and numbers to historical highs, with powers to control and dominate the masses tyrannically.
There are 2,000 agencies (including 438 agencies and sub-agencies) and 15 cabinet departments, creating what is referred to as the fourth branch of government, filled with labor union bureaucrats with monopoly powers. Weaponizing police forces, IRS agents, the National Security Administration, Homeland Security, the FBI, Treasury, Labor, Energy, Education, Defense, Energy, Transportation, and most government agencies have become standard practice. Harassing folks in the minority political party and brutally penalizing objectors is a common practice.
Money and profits spewed out of every corner of the land, directly resulting from unlimited injections of artificial fiat currencies created by the government. Mega corporations could borrow from the federal reserve at 1% and buy back their stocks, which would increase by 10% or more. Super high-leveraged investments were available to the wealthy subset and large corporations. Inflation rose to 10% over time, even though the government attempted to keep it a secret, calling it transitory, non-existent, an illusion, and criticizing those who questioned it.
Juicing (like injecting steroids) the economy with monopoly-mandated zero-interest rates was a strategy for elected elites to get reelected. As the stock market hit all-time highs, Wall Street routinely practiced high leverage, financial regression modeling, and investing in derivatives contracts, with the prospect of many times greater profits. The possibility of runaway inflation caused some rational minds to call a halt to the insanity.
The systemic Repo market failure on September 17, 2019, was a significant event in the financial world. It was a situation where the repurchase agreement (Repo) market, a vital part of the economic system, experienced a sudden and severe shortage of cash. This required a massive bank bailout and 29 trillion dollars of fiat money to stabilize the markets. In almost all cases, the highest-level elite government officials in control of the economy at that time were senior partners from Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and other mega-sized corporations.
As the government injects free fiat money, corresponding inflation occurs, which in turn causes a devaluation of the dollar. The costs would become much higher if the unbelievable financial circus acts were allowed to continue. With the depreciation of each dollar, all goods and services cost more, perhaps much more. Car owners may need to carry a large suitcase of dollar bills.
They can pay for gas refills and recharging, provided they can find a working gas and charging station with electricity.
Financial repression, an economic term that may sound complex, refers to governments indirectly taking money from industries to pay off public debts. The term 'repressive' is used because these actions harm savers and only enrich governments.
Rational Minds Chairman Gerome Powell from the Federal Reserve Board) began raising interest rates to reduce inflation. Unfortunately, as governments always do, they were three years too little and too late, creating the mess we are in today.
The Fed took its foot off the accelerator and systematically raised interest rates. The byproduct is that financing costs more, financial evaluations have changed, and income minus expenses, minus debt service, has caused net profits to go down. Cash-on-cash yields have decreased, and Capitalization rates for income valuations have risen. Both result in property values going down.
With increased economic insecurity providing a direction for the economy, millions of investors have moved to the sidelines and are not purchasing anything. Correspondingly, sellers must sell at reduced prices. Discounted pricing and reduced property values are occurring nationwide, and the same is happening worldwide. Tenant rents are going down rapidly for residential and commercial properties—and the prices of products, goods, and services will follow.
After the above rosy picture of how society works and why it fails us, how do we accept the facts and accomplish multiple tasks to reinvent ourselves? Part II covers Ideas on reinventing ourselves.
Recognizing when a career tune-up becomes necessary: