John Williams is the founder of the Shadow Government Statistics Newsletter found at Shadowstats.com, the excellent web site which uses old US government methods to work out current US government statistics, to give the rest of us multi-decade visibility on what’s really happening to this global gorilla-in-the-room economy.
Mr Williams was interviewed recently by Eric King and delivered some illuminating and wonderfully politically-incorrect thoughts about current world events and where he thinks they are taking the rest of us. These thoughts may be sobering, but as he says himself, it’s better to know the worst and to get prepared for it and to protect yourself from its possible deleterious effects, than to sail blithely over a watery precipice in oblivious government-worshipping merriment and wonderment:
The main points in this interview are summarised below:
- There will be a marked contraction of economic activity in the US over the next quarter, which will continue unabated into next year, as the depression re-intensifies
- This next leg down will be extremely painful and the most severe downturn since the 1930s
- Using un-doctored US government statistics, the average weekly US wage is down 10% since the 1970s, which has led to often more than one person working in most households, whereas one person generally earned enough in the 1970s, in each household, to pay the bills
- This doubling-up of incomes is still not enough to make ends meet for most people, because the former easy route out of debt borrowed against rising property prices has been cut off at the spigot
- This means that the US economy must contract, particularly because Mr Williams expects another hefty downturn in the housing market
- The US government solution to this will likely be the printing of more helicopter currency to keep prices gorged up
- The Federal Reserve has been successful in holding off a predicted day of reckoning till now, dumping money out of helicopters, however this day of fiscal reckoning will not be restrained in its cupro-nickel cage much longer
- Confidence in the Dollar is now finished and its collapse is therefore imminent, especially once the first fire sale entrepreneur shows up
- What has been mistakenly judged to be recovery has merely been bottom-bouncing
- The second leg down should make it clear what is really happening
Mr Williams also mentions a special report on hyperinflation, which you can read here:
Sounds about right. This is more or less what I’ve been expecting. Can’t wait for that hyperinflaction, though! That should kill off whatever is left of the economy.
> Can’t wait for that hyperinflaction, though! That should kill off whatever is left of the economy.
If the depressionary bit of ‘hyperinflative depression’ doesn’t get us first! $-)
We should cry, of course, instead of laugh, but the only thing that’s going to get us through this paper-printing mess is black humour! ;-)
And gold money (or silver money), obviously.