Chronicle of a Collapse Foretold (Which Still Doesn’t Have to Happen) Part 2

Everybody saw it coming. It was an open secret for years. Then all of the sudden the human race was blindsided by the novel CV, and the masses forget. Everybody forgot about the economic collapse that was coming and became obsessed with face masks, flattening curves, fantasizing about V-shaped recoveries, and calling the police if they observed violations of social distancing. It is a strange time.

Alexander Mercouris, editor of the Duran, said (4:35) while walking his dogs in the park he saw “people loafing around. I see them playing football. I see all kinds of extraordinary things. And incredibly, yesterday I saw they were still cutting the lawn. This doesn’t seem to me to be the time to cut lawns!” He laughs rather nervously. This is the brave new world we live in. Those familiar with the Preservation Society know the emphasis We put on the sacrifice the masses make to the ruling class, including the comfortable middle class. They are willing to accept this lock down without batting an eyelash. The masses are being true to their subject herd nature.

One can also see the guilt society come into bold relief, a major property of ruling class society. Without the conditioning of a general sense of guilt and undeservingness among the masses, it may be that CV would not be so easy to pass. But it is nothing to the well bred that one day playing in the park is a healthy wholesome activity, and the next it is a selfish borderline illegal activity without asking questions. The herd accepts it, the apathetic make excuses for it. The people say, “hold on there”.

This brave new world of quarantining and economic collapse takes the place of the dystopian world in which the American economy was supposedly on a long booming recovery. In May of 2018 CNN celebrated, “The slow but steady recovery from the Great Recession just hit a milestone: It’s tied for the second-longest economic expansion in American history.” Here’s the NY Times’s assessment of the economy in March of 2018:

There is no sign that the rebound will end anytime soon. Unemployment is low, job creation is strong and the overall economy seems to be gaining momentum, not losing it. Most economists expect the expansion to continue well into next year, which would make it the longest ever. Many think it could last for years, raising the possibility that President Trump could run for re-election amid the most sustained economic growth in a generation.

But the dystopian propaganda did not fool everyone. It was not a secret to the informed that the employment rate was not, as purported at the time, 4.1% but really at around 20%. The rumblings were there. The CNN article cited above quotes economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s. ” ‘By mid-2020, we will be most vulnerable to the next recession,’ Zandi said, pointing to the fading impact of government spending and tax cuts.” The Times article comes closer:

But many economists also argue that the seeds of the next crisis are being sown today, even if it is several years before they poke above the surface. Good times are meant to give governments an opportunity to get their fiscal houses in order and address long-term challenges. Instead, the United States is piling on debt and adopting policies — immigration restrictions, increased trade barriers, looser financial regulation — that many economists view as counterproductive.

The masses could have known what economic disasters awaited if they wanted to know. Way back in 2015 Fortune enumerated “12 signs America is on the decline”. The author citing a recent paper listed key the takeaways:

• America’s child poverty levels are worse than in any developed country anywhere, including Greece, devastated by a euro crisis, and eastern European nations such as Poland, Lithuania and Estonia.
• Median adult wealth in the US ($39,000) is 27th globally, putting it behind Cyprus, Taiwan, and Ireland.
• Even when “life satisfaction” is measured, America ranks #12, behind Israel, Sweden and Australia.

Most Americans can’t afford a four hundred dollar emergency. The US ranks below Morocco and Albania in people living below the poverty line. “America is declining, in large and important measures, yet policymakers aren’t paying attention,” wrote the author. Indeed they weren’t and aren’t.

We’ve written on the Great Middle Class Massacre. Then there is the outrageous student debt, massive middle class suicide rates and soaring opiod addictions which lawmakers are not in any hurry to deal with. Sadly, to the masses these facts have become nothing more than cliches which they hope they don’t fulfill. Under ruling class society terrible social indicators are not an indication of something seriously wrong with society, but are merely by-products of the best gosh-darn humans can do! But signs of collapse have been there. And those are only the social indicators of a weak, unstable system.

The first world has long been used to burgeoning homelessness. And it can still be a distant concept for these masses. It’s in the realm of finance and business where one see the cataclysmic destruction vividly. The collapse of Boeing alone would be heralded as a milestone in its own right. Before CV, CNN reassured the herd, “Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said that effect [of CV] is likely to throw an additional twist into his generally optimistic outlook for the aviation market in 2020.”

Things are not going so well for Boeing. As far back as 2016 Reuters reported, “Boeing Co braced investors on Wednesday for a rough 2016, forecasting lower-than-expected earnings and fewer plane deliveries largely because of production changes needed to boost output later in the decade, news that sent its stock down sharply.” Boeing also spent $43 billion on stock buy-back in six years. Their criminal 737 Max venture also resulted in canceled orders. The value of its liabilities exceeds its assets.

The airlines have been perpetually troubled. In 2017 CNBC reported Profit declines expected for airlines after storms, costs bite. How can you make profit if they can’t deal with the normal course of industry? As usual decline profits were blamed on other “things”, like 737 Max and fuel price.

In April 2018, BC (Before CV) Business Insider reported optimistically on the airline industry:

The state of the airline industry is strong. Around the world, the number of people flying increased by 6.6% in 2017.

In fact, the world’s 20 busiest airports, alone, saw roughly 1.5 billion passengers pass through its terminals last year, trade group Airports Council International reported.

Consolidation, coupled with relatively affordable fuel prices and increasingly savvy management teams has resulted in record profits for the industry.

But AC (After CV), it is a different story. The NY Times:

Airline stocks dropped sharply on Thursday as investors reckoned with the prospect of canceled flights, lost sales and substantial reductions in service for months to come. Several carriers — including United Airlines, JetBlue and Lufthansa — announced new route closings in recent days. An industry trade group said the coronavirus could wipe out between $63 billion and $113 billion in worldwide airline revenues this year.

Just like that? What a turn around! They blame a phantom virus for the actions of policymakers and their puppet masters.

Likewise, the Trump recovery was tauted. Unemployment was supposedly low. Liberals called it the Obama recovery. But whatever you called it all agreed it was good time.

After CV, the Paul Krugman gives the grim prognosis:

In our last economic crisis the economy shrank around 6 percent relative to its long-run trend, and the unemployment rate rose around five percentage points. At a guess, we’re now looking at a slump three to five times that deep.

And this plunge isn’t just quantitatively off the charts; it’s qualitatively different from anything we’ve seen before. Normal recessions happen when people choose to cut spending, with the unintended consequence of destroying jobs. So far this slump mainly reflects the deliberate, necessary shutdown of activities that increase the rate of infection.

We are to believe the the deliberate destruction of society is necessary and unavoidable. That’s like destroying the village in order to save it. Who believes the ruling class has any intention of saving the village. If society is collapsing, the ruling class wants it on its terms. We are more afraid of torches and pitchforks, than managing a third world hellhole. Maybe . . . .