Safehaven | No Way Out, Outraged, and Cautiously Bullish on the Fall of Global Empires

December 16, 2008

No Way Out, Outraged, and Cautiously Bullish on the Fall of Global Empires
by Joseph Russo

Notwithstanding the success of a 2nd American Revolution
Politicians, Bankers, Power Brokers, Lobbyists, Wall Street, and Huge Trans-National Corporate Conglomerates have collectively succeeded in delivering their subtle-monopoly deathblows to American Free Market Capitalism. In doing so, they have destroyed the constitutional fortress which once protected and kept shining the beacon of American ideals and free enterprise.

Services no longer needed thank you
Like washed-up streetwalkers, instead of crack-cocaine, global governments and their fascist subtle monopoly interests are helplessly addicted to power by debt-creation, fiat currency, never-ending denials, and shameless empty promises of ongoing change and reform. This fatally flawed generational power-structure-legacy has "tricked" for far too long, and has now reached its point of no return.

Failure of State - The American Nightmare
For nearly one hundred-years, a trusting citizenry of hard-working immigrants, blinded by visions of "The American Dream", fear, and false incentive traps have unknowingly empowered their elected officials to turn a blind eye in their sworn bids to uphold the principles of the United States Constitution. The present and unequivocal result is a decisive, intractable failure-of-state from which there is no way out.

A Colossal Failure of the Big-Three Failure (X-Autos)
Far worse than GM, Ford, and Chrysler combined, Congress, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve Board can no longer stand on their own two feet. Like the automakers, it is only a matter of time before they will be coming back to the table begging for more taxpayer money, while in their next breath pleading false promise of emergency solutions and better days ahead. For all intent and purpose, all three arms of government are worthless, and very much dead in the water.

First item in the rulebook of Centrally Planned Fascist Governments
If we have 100% monopoly on money creation, we can fool them ALL THE TIME. Talk about the fraud of the century. At the end of the day, the result of our Big-3's (X-autos) decades of cumulative and collective actions will fair similar results to Wall Street's latest 50b fraud engineered by Bernard Madoff, former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange - "nothing but a giant Ponzi scheme." Only time will tell, but maybe this time will turn out to be different, perhaps this time, we will not be fooled again.

Americas Government is Bankrupt, Insolvent, and at the Mercy of its Creditors
As the grand-super-sized Ponzi scheme grinds to a screeching halt, all government can to do is try to perpetuate new-deal variations of past failed schemes and bailouts from which America's Nightmare became terminal reality. Under the current system, and over the long haul, no matter how long or high such rallies go - every rally is destined to be a sucker's rally.

Simple as A-B-C - the Triangulated Root Cause
To arrive expediently at the root cause of this complex problem, one need not look any further than the cumulative historic actions of Treasury, Federal Reserve, and Congress. Bursting bubbles, subprime, deflation, inflation, falling prices, rising prices, job losses, and every other imaginable "financial-sphere-generated" crises are all SYMPTOMS rooted exclusively from the decades of cumulative action within these three branches of failed government.

Each Fork in the Road Leads to Ruin
Should America follow in the footsteps of Japan, it shall toil in the throes of deflation for decades to come. Should America follow the current "Bernanke" model of fighting the last war, she will seize and convulse amid the turmoil of civil unrest and hyperinflation.

Unless governments openly admit their epic failure and methodically repent by embarking upon a massive constitutional revitalization effort via a severe and radical reformation, America will inevitably forfeit all of its powers, and fall victim to those with sounder minds and stronger hands.

The first two elements to tear down and rebuild are the destructive fractional reserve banking system and its flawed debt-based irredeemable currency to which there is no standardized weight, value, or measure. Without a balanced currency, valuation metrics across every sphere of finance and economy are useless.

Building Bridges to a Sustainable Future

Governments, Economies, and Banking systems ought to be built like bridges, not like houses of cards.

Consider for a moment, how one could possibly engineer and construct a secure mega-suspension bridge spanning 7,000 feet, if during the design and construction phases, all rules associated with the laws of standard measurement changed values on a daily basis? The architect using one scale, the engineer another and the construction crews yet another scale. Each have similar tools to measure and project, but each set of measuring tools has an inherent floating variable, which deliver different value readings from one day to the next. In other words, all measuring devices are unstable. One-inch today may well be 3-inches tomorrow and only ¼" the day after. The result of which is that ALL VALUES ascertained from such measuring instruments are erroneous and of no practical utility.

Well, that is exactly how global central bankers and governments expect small business and the balance of humankind to plan for their futures and day-to-day lives - with a floating, un-pegged measure of "debt" vs. that of a hard redeemable currency with stable value. Therein lays all the "root cause" one needs to explore in understanding how the global economy arrived at its present impasse.

Back to the bridge; imagine the quality, safety, and durability issues surrounding a mega-bridge designed and constructed with such flawed protocol. Would you drive your family over its 7000' span? If such a bridge managed to stand at all, it would certainly fail all counts of inspection. If such a bridge were opened, and certified for passage despite its flaws, traversing its span would pose fatal threat to those without knowledge of its structural defects, or daring enough to risk it anyway.

People of the World - This one's a Tear-Down
In the case of our bridge analogy, if such a physical blunder should manifest in the real world, once discovered, engineers would have no choice but to order a controlled demolition of the structure, and prepare a new set of engineered blueprints for its replacement. The new replacement structure, designed and constructed from fixed standards of measurement, calibrated with strict uniformity protocols and built with matching precision would then provide optimum assurance of the structures soundness, and long-term security. To avoid its inevitable day of Armageddon, this is precisely the type of structural reengineering that must take place in the global financial system.

We submit, there is a time and a place for everything, however any realized benefits associated with debt-based economies and currencies have long outlived their practical utility. In fact, they now pose more of a hindrance and systemic threat to progress than just about anything else does.

Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Paulson, Mr. President - Game Over
If the esteemed Mr. Bernanke is banking on his 30-year old PHD thesis on the "last great depression" to steer our economy through its current malaise, all that Mr. Bernanke will achieve is to prove that figuring out how to win the last war provides little in the way of effectiveness in dealing with the current set of conditions. That was then Ben, and this is now, there are no do-over's - what we have here is a drastically different set of variables, a completely new league - new world, with a unique set of global dynamics. One cannot solve today's dilemma with a hypothetical solution to an old puzzle.

Reversal of Polarity
Financial markets are supposed to reflect and measure economic reality. The real economy should not be hostage to the health, stability, or risks associated with financial markets. If one agrees with this fundamental concept, one will conclude that for decades, the global financial sphere has usurped all power from real economies, and has in-effect held such economies hostage to its will and ambition in destructively exponential fashion.

Taking this line of thinking one-step further, the urgent necessity for the recent $700-billion US banking bailout was unequivocal proof that cumulatively, the United States Department of Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board, and the United States Congress have collectively failed in stewardship of their fiduciary responsibilities and constitutional mandates.

Sadly, thus far, this crisis is turning out to be a lost opportunity for the people and the "real economy" to reassume control of fraudulent banking systems, mortgage lending practices, pension fund schemes, and other widespread Wall Street fraud.

One critical opportunity this crisis should yield is to force the (now quasi-national) banking/finance/credit systems to restructure as permanent non-profit public utilities. Such a forced restructuring would impose a strict set of regulated fiduciary obligation to which banks, lenders, and pension funds must comply in order to survive and receive the subsidized mercy of taxpayer support. All financial, government, and lobby-related entities refusing such explicit terms of adequately regulated compliance would become extinct.

A global victory for all people, small business, and the real economy
The result of such a major restructuring of the financial sphere will engender a sustainable banking, mortgage, and retirement system to serve the long-term interest of global societies vs. leaving such stewardship to the globally interconnected Wall Street casino operators, bankers, politicians, behemoth corporate interests, central bankers, and all of their respective lobbies.

A Second Coup d'état in progress
So far, instead of seizing this immense opportunity, it is likely that Paulson of Treasury, and Bernanke of the Federal Reserve, scared the living daylights out of Congress with absolute guarantees of widespread anarchy, civil unrest, rioting, and the certain collapse of the United States as a viable union.

What they told Congress behind closed doors was too alarming for anyone in Congress to share with the public. We shall never know the extent of the doomsday scenarios presented by the Fed and Treasury. What we do know is that Congress was severely shaken, and buckled to the dire warnings of consequence from Treasury, and the Fed. The results are now unfolding before us, and the future has never been more uncertain.

How Might Investors React
Simple - STOP INVESTING for the long haul, and START TRADING! Seriously, what are the long-term viable prospects for the United States, or any of its globally interconnected markets? Short of radical change, which transforms social security, retirement/pension funds, and the entire national banking system into highly regulated (non-profit) public utilities - there is no sound reason to invest in securities ANYWHERE for the long haul. Occurring with shorter and shorter intervals of illusory reflation results, the inherent architecture of the present system (as illustrated by current events) will continue to decompose indefinitely under its ever-growing weight.

Build Anew
The only way to break free from the shackles of a failing monetary system and securities industry is to first design an entirely new system, and then tear down the old. The first place to begin is with a brand-new redeemable currency system of standard weight and measure. Until signs of the above are firmly in place, all long-term bets on securities with no standard of redeemable valuation measure should remain PERMANENTLY OFF LIMITS for the long-term.

Trade On
Instead, TRADERS with proper guidance should assume no guilt in extracting steady streams of trading returns from the crumbling system. Without bias, it matters not which side of the market one trades, only that one's trading posture and time-frame properly align with the current set of market dynamics.

Case in point is the three-year dot.com crash, another symptom of a failing financial system. Despite the NASDAQ's complete failure defined by the tech-heavy index registering a near 90% wipeout by 2002, five-years later, its headline counterpart, the Dow Jones Industrial average, nominally reflated in a contrived bull market to the tune of almost a 100% gain from its 2002 lows. From the Industrial's peak in October of 2007, in just 13-months, the near 100% contrived gain in the Dow had completely vanished by November 2008. Shorter intervals of bull market sustainability exemplify yet another symptom of a rapidly failing financial system.

Where do we go from here?
Have we just marked another contrived cyclical low in November? Will the Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ quickly return to their respective 2007 highs or beyond? With a hyperinflation, the answer could be yes. However should deflation stick around, those chances are slim. Symptomatic of either outcome, both are undesirable, as each would contribute to the continued destruction of small business, individuals, and real economies all over the world.

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Trade Better / Invest Smarter...

Joseph Russo
Chief Editor and Technical Analyst
Elliott Wave Technology

Joseph Russo, presently the chief editor and analyst for Elliott Wave Technology, has been studying Elliott Wave Theory, and the Technical Analysis of Financial Markets since 1991 and currently maintains active member status in the "Market Technicians Association." Joe continues to expand his body of knowledge through the MTA's accredited CMT program. Having passed the Level I examination in November of 2004, Joe is now preparing to begin study for his Level II exams. Upon successful completion of an exhaustive level III examination he will have earned the industries highly regarded designation of Chartered Market Technician.