With its inherent exploitative weaknesses, our economic system is designed to cause many of us to fail, keep us on an economic survival treadmill, and extract most of the benefits from our successes.

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Our personal and financial futures are within our control, empowering us to navigate the turbulent economic system with confidence, power, and a sense of purpose. This understanding reduces feelings of disillusionment, making fear and insecurity wasted emotions.

Understanding these built-in barriers is not a hurdle, but rather the first step in navigating the system. It empowers us with knowledge and preparedness, making us feel more informed and less vulnerable to economic challenges. This understanding is our shield, our tool for empowerment in the face of a complex financial system.

Everything in the USA is tightly controlled through licensing, regulations, liability, litigation, surveillance, propaganda, gaslighting, cancellation, persecution, prosecution, and the continuous expansion of the administrative state, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and institutions such as public education.

Since the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913, the USA has a 112 + year history of financial manipulation by the bankster oligarchs, a term used to describe powerful and wealthy individuals in the banking industry, who have screwed over everyday folks. This system, often criticized for favoring the rich and powerful, has contributed to economic inequality and the feeling of economic stagnation among many individuals.

Issuing fiat currency (creating money out of thin air with nothing backing it up) causes inflation and the corresponding dollar debasement. Cumulative inflation has exceeded 3,400% since 1913. Inflation leads to price increases and a reduction in the purchasing power of the dollar, which affects ordinary people the most.

Financial elites benefit the most because they utilize highly leveraged investments, such as hedge funds or private equity, which enhance yields and generate profits from inflation. Inflation is their friend.

With recent increases in interest rates and the downward forces of market dynamics, the need to reinvent ourselves and our careers 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, igniting a sense of motivation and readiness to take on the future.

Economies and stock markets reached incredible heights that no one had ever dreamed possible. Stock pickers and real estate investors were jubilant. Low- or zero-interest borrowing, while property owners charged renters or tenants more than 40-50% of their disposable income, appeared to make geniuses out of average investors, simultaneously creating enslavement and debt serfdom for 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 professionals in the world, such as those from Wall Street, Invitation Homes, Inc., and Zillow. Twenty-five percent of the institutional purchasers felt exuberant until the market crashed because the Federal Reserve began increasing interest rates in an upward trajectory, returning to something close to normal. Correspondingly, the volume of home purchases dropped. The speculative property purchasing cycle came to a sudden halt. A new problem has arisen.

Governments often promote delusional rhetoric that the hopeful, gullible masses will accept. Deposits in a savings account earn one percent interest, while borrowing on a credit card and paying 20-30% interest is a more costly option, as the rigged market allows. Central banks and large banks generate most of their profits in this manner. A significant profit center is late fees, which are additional charges imposed when a payment is not made on time.

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 incentivizes 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 adversaries to the establishment. The U.S. hires Spy tech firms like Palantir, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft to extract personal data without consent. They serve as hatchet people for the establishment. But people have become aware and are responding by changing their habits. This response is our power, our way of reclaiming control in a system that seeks to manipulate us.

What appears to be a free-market democracy has quickly evolved into an idealistic, surveillance-based, democratic socialist utopia. For the greater good 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 oligarchs, as it has historically been for the last 112 years.

Internationally, organizations such as the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), institutions, and think tanks are primarily leftist, statist, and collectivist in orientation. In summary, they are destructive, elitist parasites that operate against the 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 in a tyrannical manner.

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, which is filled with labor union bureaucrats wielding monopoly powers. Weaponizing police forces, IRS agents, the National Security Administration, Homeland Security, the FBI, Treasury, Labor, Energy, Education, Defense, Transportation, and most government agencies has become standard practice. Harassing folks in the minority political party and brutally penalizing objectors is a common practice.

There is some downsizing occurring under the Donald Trump administration, but not enough. Every agency should be cut by more than 50% to right-size and be required to return to the office.

Money and profits spew 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-leverage investments were available to the wealthy subset and large corporations. Inflation rose to 10% and higher over time, despite the government's attempts to downplay it, labeling it "transitory," "non-existent," and an "illusion," while criticizing those who question it.

Only five years ago, billionaire wealth was 14.1% of GDP. Today, it has risen to 21.7%, primarily due to Fed policies. One failed policy after another is being foisted on the American public. Look at California! Radicals have spent $24 billion on the homeless problem, only to get more homeless. The fiasco train to nowhere is a boondoggle, but someone got paid with taxpayer dollars. Look at electric car subsidies, climate change fraud subsidies, war equipment, drugs, the COVID-19 fraud, welfare programs, public schools, and colleges all selling illusory promises while someone is raking in taxpayer dollars. Witness social engineering as a method to control the people and limit their movements and available societal necessities, such as petroleum and gas appliances in homes.

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 employed high leverage, financial regression modeling, and invested in derivatives contracts, with the prospect of potentially achieving profits many times greater. The possibility of runaway inflation caused some rational minds to call a halt to insanity.

The systemic Repo market failure on September 17, 2019, was a significant event in the financial world. It was a situation in which the repurchase agreement (Repo) market, a vital part of the economic system, experienced a sudden and severe cash shortage. 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. If the unbelievable financial circus acts were allowed to continue, the cost would become much, much higher. 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 Jerome Powell from the Federal Reserve Board)began raising interest rates to reduce inflation. Unfortunately, as governments often do, they were three years too late and too little, creating the mess we are in today. However, Powell is showing incredible strength today, refusing to lower interest rates, which would lead to runaway inflation.

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 the income minus expenses, minus debt service, has resulted in a decrease in net profits. Cash-on-cash yields have declined, 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 making any purchases. 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 declining rapidly for both residential and commercial properties--prices of products, goods, and services will likely follow suit.

After the above-not-so-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.