iceburg ahoy!

ICEBERG AHOY

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note: If you were planning on buying it anyway, a small bonus in volume 70, issue 9, page 30 of Shotgun News ( I hate the new name of Firearms News ) is a hilarious truck gun debate.  Clean yet funny put-downs and insults of no small wit.
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I don’t know about you’all, but I for one have been closely following economic events as of late.  And from all I can see, it’s full speed ahead and icebergs ahoy!  Now, nobody wants to be the schmuck who missed calling the 2008 economic implosion, once again.  So ever since then we have had our share of Chicken Littles On Crack running around creating quite the racket and the traffic jam.  I was calling for the collapse of western civilization far before that, and so I do NOT feel really bad about constantly telling you to panic, but even still I have been hesitant at times about joining the chorus of voices screeching that the sky is falling ( at least from an economic viewpoint.  Resource depletion is another matter entirely ).  In fact, I’d hazard a wager that at times many of the warning voices were government run, just to create the frenzy of false fear used to create a Boy Who Cried Wolf deal, putting the herd back to sleep.  Hush, my precious, hush.  Nothing to see here, move along.  The crazy alarmists are just agitated again.

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But let’s review the last six to nine months, shall we?  Chinese growth, reversing for quite a few years but protected by official statistic manipulation ( no doubt taught to an exchange student by the US government ), dipped to such hideous levels as to be noticeable.  Since quantitative easing had always been about enriching the 1% rather than stimulating the economy, we finally reached the point where consumerism was no longer possible as an economic engine.  Banks were reducing consumer credit in fear of losing what few assets they had propping up a teetering doubled down derivatives market, and credit was all that got us through the decade previous to the housing bubble pop.  Credit was contracting, cheaper energy was being replaced by dear and expensive energy and real unemployment/wage shrink was rising ( shrinking pay, shrinking hours, mandatory new healthcare tax, on top of a contracting economy needing credit, consumption and cheap energy ).  As demand for consumer goods shrank, inventory contracted and raw materials orders shrunk ( including oil ).  China had little choice but to contract, the new paradigm of a middle class propelling its own economy patently false.

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You don’t get to pretend that the economy is strong when oil production has been falling for years ( everywhere but the US and Canada, net global production flat.  NOT increasing as our economy demands ) yet prices went into free-fall suddenly ( the fantasy of OPEC trying to crush the frackers at the expense of their own economies full of malcontents waiting to rebel is nice in that it preserves the myth of the Thousand Year Fracking Reich, the myth that the middle east won’t run out of oil and the myth that the economy is doing super duper, all at the same time.  That is what is known as a 3-fer.  But it is three helpings of horse apples, not of good news ).  Oil prices fell below the level of production cost for the obvious reason the economy is faltering.  Not many can any longer afford the extras that took energy to produce and ship.  China just announced its exports dropped 8% in February alone.  Oops-add that to the last Christmas season fiasco.  Does this prove that the economy is about to crash?  Of course not.  The only good economic news we’ve had in the last nine years is that the can is able to be kicked down the road some more.  The latest bout of bad news is just that, the latest.  Not necessarily the last.

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Yet, how many times do you think the gods agree to help out a brother and actually give him a warning to jump into the first lifeboat?  You keep ignoring the signs and soon all the boats are filled up and launched and you are stuck on the deck listening to the band, holding your junk in your hands.  Are you telling me that most of my minions are silly enough to stare dumbly at each other, their reproductive organs firming entrenched in a grasp, not sure what to do?  While it is true that no one can time the collapse, no one can afford to ignore it indefinitely either.  If you don’t know which straw breaks the camels back you need to step away before the heavy bastards collapses on you, squishing you and your junk.  When the volcano starts spitting more and more rocks and smoke, do you really want to ignore it, knowing it has done this a time or two already and nothing major happened?

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I am not saying you should panic.  What I AM saying is that you should be asking yourself if failing to panic is really all that smart this time.  I think this sucker is going down, myself.  Your mileage may vary.  I’ve already written on this, talking about that gut feeling, that subconscious warning.  And it just keeps getting worse.  I hope like hell I am here in a year still writing to you.  But that is hope.  Realistically, I would be surprised.

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