Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #431: Acceleration

A personal interjection again.

Things are moving faster than I expected.

For eleven months I have been screaming about the disaster ahead. No one believed because it was unbelievable. But now it's getting to the point where people are being forced to believe.

I did not expect the collapse of CitiGroup to even be hinted at this year. Now it's out in the open. Eleven months ago, no one would believe it would happen. I knew it would.

I had hoped that the Collapse Of All Things (which is what C.O.A.T. means) would happen in 2009, so I'd escape blogging it (reminder: this blog expires on 12/31/08, and I intend to have a break).

Now it looks like things will start really happening before this blog shuts down.

This is going to be a treacherous week in the financial markets, with even more bad news.

Enjoy this Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday. Next year's will be nothing like it.

Before the end of this year, at the rate things are going, it will be clear to everyone -- even the densest eejit on the planet -- that not only has everything turned to shit, but that we're actually in a very, very deep pit of shit. A quadrillion dollars of global fraud doesn't go away overnight. (Although it can be made to.)

President Obama will be handed the reins of a wreck.

I expect him to flail fruitlessly for two years, as the misery gets only worse and pronounced beyond anyone's expectations (except mine!).

It's too bad it's going to take that long for everyone -- which includes the Chinese, who are the key -- to understand things have reached the point of All Sink or All Swim.

All Sink: We can continue on the present course of economic orthodoxy until nations, societies, and populations are ruined beyond all repair.

All Swim: We can recognize that orthodoxy is over, finished, and preserve our nations, societies, and populations -- and businesses.

We can either choose a time of unprecedented wreckage, privation, and upheaval or we can choose to do something unprecedented and bold in economics and save existing assets and snatch the world away from absolute doom.

Debt is going to go to zero no matter what. But under the existing orthodoxy, it will collapse assets too. Because we're only allowing a certain portion of debt to evaporate. And that removal of debt will create a future distrust -- a distrust already at work within the global financial markets as credit seizes up and businesses topple from lack of operating capital. The financial world (which is in fact the world itself) cannot function with pervasive distrust.

The only solution is to erase all debt. All three levels of it: National, Corporate, and Consumer.

I'm not going to sit here and detail a plan of action. That's up to people with that expertise. Such a plan of action is not going to be easy to formulate. It will require diplomacy on a scale never before enacted in human history. It will require cooperation and coordination of action only possible with today's electronic currency flows and accounting methods. The urge to cheat will be an immense temptation and discovery of such cheating could provoke literal open warfare between nations and within nations.

Yet this is the only solution and it must be across all three levels: National, Corporate, and Consumer. No other way will work. Wiping out Corporate debt alone will enslave Consumers and further devalue assets. Wiping our Consumer debt alone will wipe out Corporate assets. Wiping out National debts only will zero out Corporate assets and Consumer assets.

Save the assets! Save what exists. Preserve national sovereignty, societal functioning, the ability to continue business, and create a new foundation for everything to move forward again in a burst of productivity mankind has never before experienced.

It will come to All Sink or All Swim.

Choose All Swim.