I've admitted many times that the dollar collapse is taking longer than I expected. But since the underlying fundamentals that lead to a dollar collapse keep getting worse I don't see how the "paper bugs" can claim victory. Suppose I predict a dam will collapse in 5 years. The water behind the dam keeps rising but the dam doesn't collapse in 5 years. Was I wrong despite the fact that the water continues to rise and is expected to keep rising? Would you build a home on the bank downstream from that dam?
I would say that you simply do not understand the fundamentals. You've mentioned QTM theory and stuff before, and that just isn't how the system works.
OMG, and yet Dr, No has blind faith in the openly distorted BLS numbers. Shadowstats calculations are at least based on logic.
Logic being his ass? He literally just adds a fudge factor to his numbe
BLS, by contrast is carefully selected data to bolster the political fortunes of those in power. For instance digging into the BLS reports reveals that the majority of its newly created jobs are in fact low wage or part-time positions. Can you truly say that employment is improving when higher wage jobs and full-time careers are being replaced by low wage jobs and part-time positions.
Plus the recent record setting numbers of Americans that are completely absent by workforce, well in excess of ninety million. These record setting numbers are simply disappeared by definitions from BLS calculations. But hey the numbers are getting better as long as BLS gets to remove the data it does not like, right.
And then of course if you have been unemployed for a year or more, the BLS simply disappears you from the data calculations, whether want work or not, whether you are seeking work or not. They also disappear you from their data if you haven't reported that you actively sought work for four weeks.
And then of course if you had a nice career with a good paying job and lose it, and are forced to work two part-time jobs waiting tables at lower wages with lower benefits to make ends meet, well that's job creation and suppresses the BLS unemployment numbers. So for the BLS that's good news and it means the economy is better. Everything is awesome!
And then there is the BLS seasonal "adjustments" as well as the birth/death of jobs adjustments that are so screwed up they continuously revise their models with virtually every calculation, and always in the direction of making the numbers look better.
And then of course there is that sticky labor force participation that throws a wrnech into the BLS "everything is awesome" charade, and the political elites tell you to ignore and is irrelevant.
But hey, let nothing disturb your blind faith in the cult of political BLS BS, and any facts or logic that might cast a shadow on their "everything is awesome" charade must automatically be fake, right.
http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/Ed-Moy/obama-jobs-unemployment-labor/2016/03/10/id/718500/
http://thelibertarianadvisor.com/2016/09/23/how-the-government-distorts-the-unemployment-rate/
http://www.financialsense.com/contr...ent-rate-a-case-study-of-distorted-statistics
The labor participation rate can be down for many reasons. For example, a huge chunk of that number is an older population. All those baby boomers are retiring. The Social Security administration has been warning about this for two decades.
Gallup estimated the BLs is underrating unemployment by .625%:
http://unemploymentdata.com/unemployment/is-the-government-fudging-unemployment-numbers/
Even the Heritage foundation argued that unemployment was 6% when you included discouraged workers.
In regards to your bit about people taking lower quality jobs, etc. There is much truth to that. But as the charts I posted show, income is up, net worth is up, debt is down (in a relative sense considering the trend is up).
Dr. No's attempt attack on Dr. Paul is outright dishonesty. While Dr. Paul has made many predictions about the direction of the economy (all accurate), he has not made predictions of specific dates of events. No one can accurately predict dates, especially with worldwide reserve currency, backed by worldwide military apparatus. He made no such prediction that we would certainly have a world government and world world currency by today. Nor did he predict the economy was supposed to have an economic collapse each and every single year of the past 40+ years.
He hasn't literally said the economy would collapse on June 7, 2014 or whatever. But he's made dire predictions.
He predicted a 15-year depression in 2009:
https://www.ft.com/content/ee3e07f0-16b2-11de-9a72-0000779fd2ac, saying people will abandon the dollar and interest rates would rise steeply. He predicted this would happen by 2013. He predicted the stock market wouldn't go higher then 8,000 for at least 10 years.
He predicted hyperinflation and oil in excess for 200/barrel by 2014 here:
https://www.thestreet.com/story/110...ejected-as-reserve-currency-of-the-world.html
He predicted a major disaster in 2011, including a sharp rise in commodities:
http://www.infowars.com/ron-paul-gold-commodity-prices-big-event-signaling-economic-collapse/
In a 1981 speech to Congress he predicted there would be economic collapse and hyperinflation in the very near future
There are more and more. Plus the dumb predictions of Peter Schiff (well documented), Tom Woods, Robert Murphy, etc.
And on the rest, everything has been accurate. Default is continuously occurring through inflation, and with the "official" debt doubling in only 8 years now, larger defaults in one form or another are inevitable. This is really no prediction, this is simply mathematics. [BTW, the actual debt using GAAP is already multiples higher than the "official" debt].
Why does more debt mean default is going to happen? The US is the issuer of the currency. They cannot go bankrupt. As long as the government is operating and not hamstrung, it can always pay its debts; it can always make its payments.
On inflation, Dr. Paul predicts inflation, but I don't believe he has ever said hyperinflation is guaranteed (although it probably is), but rather we are travelling down the path to an inflationary outcome. And again, he has never assigned specific dates to such economic events. For instance Dr. Paul in some of the strongest of his own words I have heard, "I think the wave of the future is inflation. It's just beginning – to the point that the dollar will be rejected as the reserve currency of the world. If there's a panic out of the dollar you will see the destruction of the dollar rather quickly. The end stages of a currency comes quickly." He continued, "We've seen this in Zimbabwe, Mexico and Central America. Today there's an illusion and false trust in our money."
Just the links I gave above have him naming 2011 and 2013 as timelines for the dollar crash/world abandoning dollar as reserve currency
Likewise the dollar is continuously collapsing through inflation, and will accelerate. But again, no dates are given. Especially considering the dollar world status is unique in history. While there have been prior international reserve use currencies, No other currency has been as widespread and deeply established as a world currency as the US dollar today. Nor has such currency been back by a such a powerful globally reaching military-security-deep state political apparatus as the current establishment. Many factors hinder true free-market evaluation of the currency such as the Petrol-dollar system in the middle east, the destruction/sanctioning/bullying of any nation rejecting dollar use for trade [Iraq/Libya] or any signiianct petrol producing nation that does not cow-tow to the US deep state desires [Syria/Iran]. The path is set. The direction is predictable. The arrival times, however are not predictable.
Again, these claims have been made for a few score decades. The whole petrol-dollar thing...haven't you wondered why as oil consumption goes down around the world, the US dollar is unaffected? Have you ever wondered why ME countries don't have large holdings of dollars? Because the idea that oil has to be purchased in dollars is a myth. It is merely priced in dollars, but OPEC countries will accept numerous different types of currency. That's why they hold more Euros than they do dollars, since only ~13% of our energy comes from the Persian Gulf. See this article:
https://mythfighter.com/2012/10/25/much-ado-about-nothing-the-end-of-the-dollar-as-reserve-currency/
Remember that several countries hold dollars because they
peg their currency to the dollar, and can use the dollar to manipulate the value of their own currency. Remember that several countries do this for political reasons; to stabilize their own currency and give confidence to investors. Transactions occur in many different currencies. Still, 40% of the foreign reserves held by the world isn't in dollars. Why hasn't the US invaded those countries? Don't forget that of that 60% of US holdings, 80% are held by private, foreign individuals, not central banks; they don't hold it for currency-peg reasons, but because they want to own dollars. They can use it to buy US debt. They like its security, scalability, and liquidity.
Now, of course, that demand for the dollar drives up its value. It drives down interest rates, as everyone wants to hold US debt. But even then, there is so much domestic demand for the dollar, that the international demand for it doesn't drive all its value. For example, this article:
https://www.project-syndicate.org/c...efault-would-mean-for-america-and-the-world?: shows that if international dollar demand magically dropped by 100%, the US dollar would only lose about 32% of its value
Interest of course goes hand-in-hand with inflation. While government and the Fed may be able to artificially keep market rates down for a time, and maybe even US debt and Fed set rates artificially low permanently, eventually however market rates will inevitably follow and then lead real inflation when inflation rises. This is not any prescient insight. This again is simple logic.
The issue with your simple logic is that your presumptions are wrong. The Fed never keeps interest rates down; it always keeps interest rates up. The natural rate of interest is zero.
Think about it this way...if the US/Fed imposed no reserve requirements on banks, no liquidity requirements on banks, and stopped soaking up reserves in the system with debt purchases (also known as Open Market Operations), why would banks needs reserves? So, the cost of money would be zero...they would be incredibly liquid, there would be no cost of lending, and they'd only have to worry about the credit-worthiness of the individual. That's why with huge numbers of excess reserves, interest rates are so low; they'd be even lower if the Fed didn't pay IOR.
And of course we have seen massive direct and indirect and covert QE over the past decade. The acknowledged Fed balance sheet has reached an all-time high at an unfathomably massive 4.5 Trillion, a seven fold increase from the prior decade.
This is what I mean when I criticize Ron Paul's understanding of the monetary system. So what if the Fed' balance sheet is so high?
QE was an asset swap. The private sector got liquid, stable, non-interest-bearing assets in exchange for less liquid, less stable, interest-bearing-assets. That's costing the private sector nearly 100 billion in interest each year. That's money that the Fed collects and returns to the taxpayer every year. I see no reason why the Fed wouldn't be able to unwind its balance sheet, either.
