Come Hillary or High Water, It’s Just About Hell Week for the Economy

Is Hillary Clinton crazy?

Election week is only about a week away. No matter who wins, rage will break out across the US landscape because, for the time being, the flames are kept minimally under a lid by hope on each side that their candidate will win. If Hellary Clinton loses, the establishment will come unhinged. If Trump loses, the Tumpettes are already sounding their charge against the election results. Nothing is going to settle down no matter who wins; but to give Trump’s supporters some encouragement, should the worst befall them, I offer the following silver lining:

As unendurable as I believe a Hillary presidency would be — with its suffocating smog of endless scandals and swirl of smoke clouds from all the wars she would continue to instigate â€” as she so clearly did while senator and then secretary of state â€” a Hillary presidency would have one great benefit: it would in fairly short order bring clarity for the entire nation to the fact that the nation’s economic ruin is the fault of the establishment that they’ve been electing for years (something about which many are obviously in great denial or they wouldn’t vote for Hillary in the first place).

Hillary is as establishment as you get; so is Obama; so was George Bush (both of them); so are most of the Republicans and Democrats in congress. While that is stating the obvious, the point I am working up to is that a Hillary victory is a chance for a total flush in all parts of government four years from now.

The US economy is beyond saving at this point, anyway, regardless of who wins, and it will take a crash to push the reset button and wake America up. Having that crash hit while the establishment fully holds the reins should leave 100% of the blame at their feet, and it’s not that much longer to wait.

I was thinking of writing about this hope when I read the following from David Stockman about what Hillary will face as president if she wins, with which I entirely agree, though I’d give a much shorter timeframe for the inevitable chain of events to come:

…because things are going to blow up in the next four years, there will be a stock market crash, there will be a recession, the annual deficit will be back in the plus trillion dollar category very soon and it will all come down on her head and on the watch of the establishment….

And maybe that will wake up the public, because it’s going to be bad. And what Trump proved in this campaign is that the establishment, you know, will do anything politically to stop a challenge. But if we have the crisis that I know is coming, then maybe this thing can be busted wide open and we have a chance to clear the decks and start again. (Newsmax)

That, I think, would be the best outcome from this election — national clarity when it all comes down as the US economy is most certainly beyond saving at this point. I am not sure such clarity is worth the other non-financial costs we’d pay), but the crash of the entire economy around Hillary’s feet would galvanize American resistance to the establishment and all but assure an anti-establishment victory across the entire political landscape in the next election.

Signs of indifference that needs to break

The flatlining stock market, which I wrote about in my last article, barely gathered enough energy to raise an eyebrow Friday at the ostensibly good news that GDP growth doubled since last quarter to almost 3% — a number associated with fairly normal US economic growth.

It didn’t go up because “Yay, the economy is finally running at normal speed” or down because “Yikes, that means the Fed will be more likely to raise interest rates.” Instead, like a dying person, the market couldn’t have cared less what was happening economically in the world today. That says to me the crash is imminent.

This same day, it registered the kind of upheaval that will come from the establishment if Trump wins. The market immediately plunged a hundred points when news broke of another FBI investigation that could cause trouble for Hillary. Not to worry, though, the Fed or government fix kicked in shortly thereafter and brought the market back up to its flatline status quo.

My biggest concern, if Hillary wins, is that Trump (and with him all anti-establishment voters) will be made into the establishment’s scapegoat. They have already been preparing for this in consort with their media supporters, through whom they plan to say to American voters, “We told you the stock market would crash and take the economy down with it you elected Trump. See what happens when you don’t listen to us and don’t support the superior establishment.”

Of course, a world raging with wars, as I’ve shown Hellary has planned, is a steep price to pay for the opportunity to lay all blame for our economic doom at the establishment’s feet. That’s why it’s hard to say a Hillary victory — besides meaning I have to endure four years of nausea — is worth the cost. I have no idea how bad the cost in wars might actually become if she wins. So, I couldn’t vote for her, even for the sake of laying everything squarely at the establishment’s feet; just pointing out that there could be a big but unintended upside.

The US economy is sinking fast, regardless of today’s GDP number

Consider the following recent headlines as a sign of the way the national and global economy continue to slide into the abyss of the Epocalypse â€” regardless of what the GDP data indicated today: (The headlines help explain the gradual overall decent that is seen in the flatlining graph of the Dow I presented earlier this week even during a time when the government appears to have pulled out all stops to keep the economy afloat through the election year.)

  • “Caterpillar Posts Lower Earnings, Cuts 2016 Outlook” Cat has been in relentless decline for the last three years because heavy industry all over the world (including in the US) is in decline, so companies are not buying heavy equipment.
  • “Twitter Said to Plan Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week” Twitter is symptomatic of a decline throughout high-tech. The euphoric ride up for unprofitable companies came to an end more than a year ago, just as happened when the euphoric dot-com boom went bust. Even Apple, which carried the Tech sector on its back for years, just reported its first annual decline in sales since 2001 due to a 17% drop in China, and China was the market that was maintaining some demand for the rest of the world. Not any more.
  • “Italian Bank to Cut 2,600 Jobs, Close Branches in Rescue Overhaul” Some of the oldest and largest banks in the world â€” banks that survived the Great Depression — continue their ongoing train wreck. “The bank published the plan Tuesday as it posted a 1.15 billion-euro ($1.3 billion) loss for the three months through September.”
  • “Ford to Idle Four Factories as Slowing Sales Bloat Inventory” The press was crowing all of last year in their mind-numbing way about how well American auto manufacturers were doing so well. I said it wasn’t so — that US automakers would find themselves in a bad situation this year because they’re counting leases as sales and would soon be getting back millions of used cars and because they repeated all their past financial gimmicks: absurdly slack credit terms on their internal auto loans looked just like what auto manufacturers were doing before the economic crisis of 2007-8 … when I also said automakers would be going down within a year. Those slack loan terms, coupled with an increase in defaulting loans, made me say last year, “What’s your end game for next year once you have pulled sales from 2016 into 2015 with these easy-to-walk-away-from terms?” Well, we’re there … again! Its even falling apart in the area of Ford’s greatest strength — its truck and SUV plants. Mustang sales, too, dropped 32% at the start of this model year (September).
  • “Harley-Davidson Plans to Cut Jobs as US Sales Fall 7 Percent” Things are not looking any better for the nation’s oldest continuously operating motorcycle manufacturer either. “The motorcycle manufacturer cited continued slowed U.S. motorcycle industry growth as the main factor for weaker retail sales.”
  • “RED ALERT: Get ready for a ‘severe fall’ in the stock market, HSBC says” A technical analyst for one of the world’s largest banks now warns that the current stock market pattern looks eerily similar to the pattern that immediately preceded the crash in 1987.
  • “Bank of America has a recession warning that’s downright ‘scary’” BofA joins HSBC to say it sees a chilling trend: “We are seven years into a full-fledged, all out, central bankers doing everything they can to stimulate demand.” Yet demand is beyond evasive. “There are a lot of itchy trigger fingers. There’s lot of violent trades that can really roil a fairly complacent environment.”
  • “China facing full-blown banking crisis, world’s top financial watchdog warns” “The Bank for International Settlements warned in its quarterly report that China’s ‘credit to GDP gap’ has reached 30.1, the highest to date and in a different league altogether from any other major country tracked by the institution. It is also significantly higher than … the US subprime bubble before the Lehman crisis. Studies of earlier banking crises around the world over the last sixty years suggest that any score above ten requires careful monitoring.”
  • “Biggest market crash in HISTORY is coming as HUGE debt bubble bursts, top investor warns” Michael Pento, a bond fund manager who has written for The Huffington Post, Bloomberg, Peak Prosperity, USA Watchdog, and who has often appeared on CNBC says we are now living through “the most dangerous markets I have ever witnessed in my entire life – and I’ve been investing for over 25 years. The membrane has been stretched so wide and so tight that its about to burst.”
  • “Why the Stock Market Could Be Headed for a 1987-like Crash” Chris Matthews writes in Fortune that “we’re in the middle of the longest earnings recession since 2008…. What’s worse, estimates show that they will decline for a sixth straight quarter…. But Jim Bianco, president of Bianco Research argues that even this forecast might be overly optimistic…. Big picture, all the lines are headed down.”

That is far from a list of all that is currently going wrong with the US economy. It’s simply the headlines that caught my eye in the last week or two. The economy is dying to where the establishment can barely even keep the stock market alive at a time when it would be politically devastating for them to have it crash. Nothing has the power to save us from this fate, not even the braggadocios Trump.

If Hillary wins, all hell will break loose. It’s a rage that needs to happen, and it will be next to impossible to deny where the blame lies (I think, although the grip of economic denial has been indefatigable so far). Not saying I wish a Hillary victory on the nation or the world; just trying to be an optimist by pointing out the silver lining on the clouds.

Clarity and breaking out of economic denial so that we get a real grasp of what we need to do are more important for the nation than anyone’s poorly conceived economic recovery plan at this point. Until the nation gets real about what its problems are, its not going to find any real answers to them. We are far, far, far from a point where more trickle-down economics is going to save anything. So, real recovery has to start with the majority of people coming to grips with the fact that the establishment doesn’t have any answers at all. It’s not even looking for an answer.

47 Comments

  1. Ping from esqualido:

    “…because things are going to blow up in the next four years, there will be a stock market crash, there will be a recession, the annual deficit will be back in the plus trillion dollar category very soon and it will all come down on her head and on the watch of the establishment…. And maybe that will wake up the public, because it’s going to be bad.”
    You know, when Obama was running for office, he held the fact that George Bush had increased the national debt by the SUM of all previous debts, (a hard to eat, much less beat statistic for the “compassionate conservatives”) over the Republicans’ heads. He promised, in fact, to halve the deficit. Instead, he doubled it, and yet was re-elected and until a very short time ago, Hilary was the prohibitive favorite to succeed him. So the public is still sleepwalking, which is amazing considering the job “Affordable” Health Care has been doing year by year on their pocketbooks .

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Denial is a wide river and hard to get across. The nation is walking in denial because it doesn’t want hard answers. It want’s easy solutions. The likelihood of it accepting the truly hard answers it wants about what it takes to rebuild is just about zero. Unless the river is parted by a catastrophe of biblical scale, the denial will not be broken, and the nation will not cross. It will simply get swept further down the stream and pulled under the waters. I put the catastrophe much sooner than four years, but whether it can part the way to the other side of denial, I’m not so sure. We probably won’t have to wait long to find out.

  2. Ping from jakartaman:

    If anyone with a moticum of intelligence can’t figure it out then GOD help us.
    Why are the elite media going nuts – why are most of the business elite going nuts Whay are the welfare plantation dwellers going nuts

  3. Ping from Brian McKeever:

    Hard to argue with these points, other than I doubt that ANYTHING will “wake up” the American public. More likely, their ire will be directed towards convenient scapegoats like immigrants.

    Personally, I am against all illegal immigration and any legal immigration that takes place for economic reasons and thus displaces American workers. But as this election has so clearly demonstrated, most people in this country are idiots. Violent actions towards immigrants is therefore highly likely, which would indeed be deplorable.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      I agree with that completely. Violence against immigrants is, indeed, deplorable. Like you, I’m against rampant immigration and certainly illegal immigration. It has nothing to do with race or nationality. It’s a simple matter of 1) We have too many people already. Importing people made sense when we had a vast land to fill. We have enough, and going one or two states away to get enough water is ridiculous. So, stop bringing in more people. 2) They certainly do suppress wages. The reason Americans won’t take those jobs is that at the availability of illegal alien workers for so many years has kept the wages from rising for decades in those jobs, so no American is willing to work that hard for so little pay. If that means I have to pay a dime more for a tomato, I truly don’t care. (I’ll probably save that much in all that I pay for the welfare of illegal aliens.

      The solution is simple, and it’s not a wall. Just start putting their employers in jail. End of solution. End of problem. No jobs = no desire to move across the border illegally.

      That said, it is not the immigrants I blame. If I were in there shoes with a family to feed and I knew the US has an unspoken policy of turning a blind eye to illegal aliens, I’d come here to get the work, too. They are good workers, and many of them are great people. My problem is with our government. It does this, once again, to serve the wealthy employers — to bring cheap labor here to do the jobs that they can’t export in order to get cheap labor somewhere else.

      It needs to stop. That’s certainly a good reason to vote for Trump. He won’t do anything good for the economy to solve its real problems, but he will work to end mass migration and to treat illegal people like they actually are illegal.

  4. Ping from jakartaman:

    Its gonna be what its gonna be!
    Our paths are predetermined
    I will just remind all the parable of the 10 ladies and thier lamps – message: be prepared.

  5. Ping from Recyvuym:

    I was surprised this morning to see the GDP numbers. 2.9% is still bad growth, but I was expecting it to be at least as bad as last quarter. 11 days before the election, though, I don’t really trust anything they release about the US economy. Especially considering how notorious the figures are for being revised later.

    My feeling is and has been for a long time that you are correct, the crash is due for the end of 2016. For me though it’s more a thing of intuition. I can point to the Italian Referendum on the 4th of December, which will probably be the spark that finally lights the powderkeg of the European banking system. But I’d already made up my mind before that date was decided. It just doesn’t seem to me like there’s anywhere for the US or global economies to go, and I simply have trouble imagining BSness As Usual dragging on for even one more quarter.

    Plenty of people are saying this crash is coming, but not for another two to four years. What is it that makes you so sure we’re right and they’re wrong? Governments have been able to kick the can down the road for almost a decade now, what makes this the specific point when they won’t be able to keep it up any longer? I know you’ve studiously documented the extent to which the stock markets are rigged, the damage the oil glut is doing, the impact the election is having, the downfall of the Fed, and so on. But for all of this, do you have a particular reason why it’s going to be now and not in 2018? Do you think there’s going to be any particular event?

    At any rate, I expect that in around five to eight weeks, you (and I) will be proven right. Well. So much for capitalism.

    A final note – I did not expect the Fed to hike rates in December, but now with these GDP figures, they might.

    Thanks for your work Dave, I’ve found your blog a great reference point over the past year and I’ve forwarded it to others for exposure, as we are of like mind about what’s coming.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      This is a good morning in the reply section. Good thoughts and good questions. (It probably helps that I’m also eating left-over pizza for breakfast 😉

      1) Like you, I cannot be absolutely certain, but here is my thinking. I was 80% of the way to certain that it would go down this year after they raised interest for the first time. In the very least, I knew they wouldn’t be able to raise interest any more times without crashing their fake recovery. The continuance of the hot-air recovery is utterly dependent on the continuance of free money, and money at a quarter of a percent interest is as good as free. You don’t have to find any return from investing that money to justify paying a quarter of a percent because that’s money that’s available for less than the cost of inflation. Just sit on it, and you’ve made money because the money you’re guaranteed to break even because the money you’ll be paying it back with will be worth as much less as the interest you paid. So, the money is still effectively at zero.

      2) At some point this year, they have to raise money another quarter point, which puts it at or above the rate of inflation, so it may not be free to sit on. It’s still close enough that it will be used for stock buybacks that pump the stock market up; but buybacks appear to be slowing down as companies have now mostly loaded up on debt, and their willingness to take on more debt is getting smaller. Higher interest reduces it more and applies more downward pressure (maybe not a lot) to stock market that you can already see has been traveling along a ceiling and gradually descending for months now.

      3) Like you, I anticipated another quarter of lousy GDP, and according to the numbers (which I haven’t dug into yet), we didn’t get that. It’s not great, but it’s not lousy. However, that may be due to government purchases with all that extra debt spending that happened at the end of summer. That MAY have been the government pushing GDP up. If you look at sales and inventory, the picture doesn’t match what is seen in GDP. So, more downward pressure on a market that has clearly lost its ability to rise. Not a lot, but weight is weight. None of it helps.

      4) The figures the Fed claims it goes by now ALL DEMAND they raise rates now. Everyone in the nation knows that inflation has met its 2% target. Everyone knows that the job numbers THAT THE FED LOOKS AT, have met their 5% target and have held there for a long time. GDP, according to the numbers the government puts out is rising. So, they have no excuse to hold. That means, they either raise interest again, applying that extra downward pressure on a balloon (too big to be called a bubble) that is already running out of hot air, or they prove their recovery can’t make it without them by resetting the inflation target to “3% or higher.” This month their arguments started preparing the world for 3% or higher. So, we know they see they are in that bind, too. The Fed has already lost a great deal of confidence, and confidence is the ONLY thing that gives their fiat money value.

      5) I give the Donald better than a 50% chance of winning, despite what the polls say. a) we know many of the polls are cooked by oversampling of Democrats; we’ve seen that in the Dem’s emails; b) I think there are more likely to be Trump voters who are too embarrassed to come out of the closet and admit they are voting for someone who looks like such a buffoon at his own doing; c) I believe Hillary’s crimes are a slowly tightening noose around her neck. If the Donald wins, that is the best time for the Fed and the Gov. to give up their hopeless cause and blame the crash of the market on the Donald. There is a caveat to that last one, as Obama would not want to see it crash while still on his watch or it dents his legacy pretty bad, so they may try to hold things up until after the inauguration.

      6) It doesn’t appear they even have the strength to do a good job of holding it up now, given how the stock market is slowly losing altitude.

      7) I knew global economic pressures would only continue to get worse this year, which they have certainly done.

      8) I expected oil to drop back down again, but it didn’t. I’ve been right that OPEC would not come to the kind of promised cutbacks that individual players keep intimating. The market keeps foolishly thinking they will, and they don’t. But that hasn’t been enough to bring down prices. I still they they will come down and add pressure to a cracking-up oil industry again, but I’ve been wrong on that one so far. So, strike one. The rest is going just as I though it would, except that IF GDP is an accurate number (which I highly doubt), strike two. I think I’d call GDP a “ball,” neither a strike nor a good hit, but a number that we really can’t make anything out of.

      None of that adds up to KNOWING the economy is going to crash this year. For example, if Hillary does win, that takes a large factor out of the equation because they’re going to want to keep doing all they can to patch things along for her. (I don’t think the Donald is as willing to play those sugar-coated games.) But the weights keep piling on, and we can see the stock market becoming suppressed under it all. (If Hillary wins, it may get a brief burst of hot air, but that won’t have any endurance behind it.)

      Thanks for the inspiration. I may decide to expand on this and turn it into an article.

      • Ping from Recyvuym:

        Thanks for your answers. I agree with all of that. All year I’ve oscillated between whether Hillary or Trump will win. Now, to my astonishment, it’s looking like it really is going to be Trump. Public anger is at fever pitch, nobody’s enthusiastic about voting for Hillary, and most importantly, the establishment must recognise by now that the system is going to crash very hard soon and they need a scapegoat. A couple of weeks ago, I didn’t take that theory too seriously. Now, with the conveniently timed re-opening of the email investigation? It’s starting to look bizarrely plausible.

        I don’t really count either the GDP or oil glut to be a ‘strike.’ The claim I made to my friends a year ago was simply that we will be in another global recession by March 2017 (I figured December 2016 but wanted a bit of breathing room) and that it will prove to be worse than the Great Depression. And that to me is the main point, because as you’ve said, we’re going to hear afterwards how nobody could have possibly seen this coming, and I want something in writing that I can point at and say “Bull.” I always took the oil glut to simply be an exacerbating factor, not the trigger for disaster itself. And it has indeed dutifully taken down half the industry in a very short time. As for the 2.9% growth, like you say, it’s probably just going to inspire more false hope and complacency, and encourage the Fed to raise rates, and make the inevitable correction even rougher.

        All of this times up neatly with the imminent collapse of the European banking system. The recent earthquakes in Italy make a ‘No’ vote even more likely. There’s no telling when China’s going down but I don’t think they’re too far behind. In November, I expect it to become essentially official that we’re all in deep trouble. We’ll have one or several Lehman Brothers moments sometime in December after the referendum. And by the time 2017 rolls around, we’ll all be in steep decline with no prospect of recovery. Oh well. Who wants fake prosperity anyway?

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          It’s important to be able to say “bull” to the many who will say “No could have seen this coming” because that argument is exactly what the Fed and the government will say to cover their own hind ends when things do blow apart. It’s also what economists will say as they’re excuse when they should have known better. Make it seem like an unknowable.

          The only thing that is unknowable about it is the exact timing. While I knew the first interest rate increase would be a major event — and it was — it didn’t trigger the whole landslide, and I never thought it would. I always said this will go down in chunks, not all at once, BUT I thought the chunks would fall closer together, except for the extraordinary efforts likely in what has certainly been an extraordinary election year. So, once the election happens, I anticipate things will start to move in big chunks again.

          There are, as you say, many big events like the oil-price crash that will take things down. The oil-price war wasn’t just something that scared the stock market. It took the stock market down because it was reeking havoc in the boom towns of the midwest and throwing numerous companies out of business and into bankruptcy and threatening banks to such a high degree that the Fed ordered banks not to write down the value of their collateral, even though its value was down and certainly not to foreclose, lest they go into a drain spiral where each foreclosure drops the collateral value more by pushing more assets onto the market at fire-sale prices.

          One of the big reasons from my believing that that the size of this collapse would become obvious this year is that there were so many events like the oil-price war lining up to fall — several big banks (each big enough to take down several others if they went), currency wars, real wars, our own stock-market bubble (with the possibility that algorithms will exaggerate the fall now that the market runs on them), the huge bond bubble, student loans, the auto industry, China, Brexit and other Exits. The list of major economic overhangs that look ready to break off has become enormous.

          I cannot say when any of those will give way (like I could with a Fed interest change where you know it will happen on the date of a Fed meeting and your 99% certain they cannot skate through the end of 2015 without finally doing what they continually told everyone they would do). But I can be certain those things are going to fall, and that each one creates its own avalanche when it goes. And then there are “black swan” events, the kind of completely unexpected things that can hit in any year but that become much more likely when so many things are in crumbling condition. (In other words when entire economies and monetary systems are in peril, damage is happening behind the scenes and in faraway corners that no one even sees happening; so the probably of unseen problems like Bear Sterns becomes much greater.)

          While its kind of you not to hold my strike and my ball against me, no one will ever remember either if I hit the ball out of the park on the third or fourth swing. My third swing is that you see the slide start to happen again shortly after the election is over, likely even the day after. In the very least, it will be hell week, and its hell will carry on into the weeks that follow. If it doesn’t, that’s strike two.

          This week should be pretty interesting politically, too; but notice how the market remains on its targeted flatline, regardless of the news that came out Friday about Hillary. Market watch writes today: “The stock market, which had been gripped in torpor so powerful even peak earnings season couldn’t wake it up, got something of a jolt Friday from an unexpected corner when the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed it would review newly discovered emails related to its probe of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private email server.”

          Yeah, it got a jolt, but the jolt was immediately corrected to take the market right back to its ceiling. Did it just happen to correct perfectly to that exact level … where it continues to hang out today, too? Why does it always do something it has never done before and happen to correct to same level, even when it takes a jolt by the thought that scares the establishment the most — the possibility that Trump will win? Coincidence? Again and again?

          • Ping from Recyvuym:

            The election was the real spanner in the works here. The lesson to learn is, never underestimate the capacity of a rigged system to cheat when their balls are on the line. This crash should probably have started months ago. But they can only delay the inevitable for so long. Every new day, the collapse is more likely than it was yesterday.

            Everyone’s saying the stock markets will crash if Trump wins, but I’ll be interested to see how it unfolds if Hillary gets in. Either way, maybe it’s my own hype and bias, but there’s a sense that this is the quiet before the storm. It’s eerie. Nobody I talk to has any confidence things are about to get better… and a lot of people are coming around to the idea that things are about to get a lot, lot worse.

    • Ping from Peter Shoobridge Ù†:

      If you want to see the line item in the Q3 GDP numbers most open to question, look at exports of agricultural products. BEA data shows this to be up by more than 200% quarter over quarter, which runs counter to both seasonality and the overall trend. Stand by for a substantial correction down the road.

  6. Ping from Peter Shoobridge Ù†:

    There seems to be no way out of the looming collapse of the global financial system. The latest GDP numbers betray yet more manipulation of the data. The economy is not recovering and the US is in zombie mode, the merest semblance of residual life being provided by the central bankers’ drug of choice – loose money finding its way into speculation – that contributed to the patient’s parlous state in the first instance.

    The vast majority of the population is worryingly oblivious of the scale of what’s coming. I wish making America great again could be accomplished in a relatively quick turnaround. Once that might have been practicable. Now it’s not. A general collapse of fiat currencies will, however, impose realism on an unsuspecting public. The Globalists will probably accelerate the crisis, but it will have happened anyway.

    So, being realistic about the future, one of the key questions people need to ask themselves is, in my view, the one that should decide their voting intentions.

    We will experience enormous hardship when the wheels come off. Who do you want in government when that happens? Do you want an honest administration that cares about the wellbeing of the nation and its citizens, even if its room for maneuver is limited? Or do you want the puppets of those who brought this calamity down upon us? Do you want a military directed to maintaining order and calm and defending the weakest? Or do you want to be subjected to a military/police state where you are viewed as a potential or actual enemy?

    These are the sort of choices we face, and they are unpalatable to contemplate. But they must be thought about.

    Be under no illusions: the criminals within and behind our structures of governance will think little of stoking civil unrest or even war. This scenario has been planned for. With an administration in thrall to malevolent powers those plans will be activated. Do we want a government that adds to our economic woes their jackbooted tyranny? Do we want civil strife fomented among us, as a pretext for repression and government violence against the people, the like of which we have never before seen?

    In light of what is at stake how can anyone be indifferent to the outcome of this election? Clinton is a willing agent of her psycopathic overlords. Trump is a patriot who genuinely cares about this nation. Of course he’ll be blamed for economic meltdown by the presstitute media when it comes, but in a time of intense crisis who pays attention to political point scoring? And I suspect that people are not so naïve as to hold him responsible for the instability of a financial system decades in the making.

    What we need is leadership to carry the country through economic collapse to rebirth. What we need is leadership that will spare us, and the rest of the world, from full-on Armageddon. There is really only one choice in this election and the outcome really does matter.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Wow! Those are some really good thoughts, Peter. In my own mind, it was all going down anyway, so it didn’t matter who you put in charge because either one is going to see that happen. Neither one has a plan that is even remotely close to what we need to turn around. So, might as well let it fall on the shift of the person who represents those who are to blame. But I hadn’t thought of it in the terms you are: O.K., since we know it’s going down, and we know neither one has what it takes to turn the country around economically when it does all come down (not so far anyway), who do you want in charge of the military DOMESTICALLY when that happens. Who will be most likely to conclude in the chaos of such an event that we need to become a police state?

  7. Ping from Lisa Khan:

    This article is a fantasy. If Hillary wins, all the infrastructure of elections and government will be rigged to ensure nothing but liberal fascist regimes reign until the country collapses completely or is destroyed in a war. Consider that she wants open borders. Who do you think all those millions of refugees are going to vote for? Conservatives? They will vote for government handouts paid for by you and me. They will vote Hillary or whatever Hillary surrogate is put before them. Hillary will finish what Obama has started … the complete perversion of our electoral system to ensure nothing but liberal victories for decades to come.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      If not for the fact that the economy will be blowing up all around her, it would be a fantasy. It still may be a fantasy. I’ll grant you that, as I don’t have much faith in America gaining clarity; but it’s not going to be the clear-cut situation you present if Hillary to do what she wants if she wins either.

      The Trump supporters won’t go away. Neither will the Bernie supporters. Claims of a rigged election will become intense. Trump will probably engage the DNC in law suits. Hillary’s scandals may continue to unfold, even though she and Barrack will have capacity to shut a lot of investigation off if she wins; but that all appears to be edging out of their control, given that the FBI’s last move happened out of Obama’s control. No one side holds absolute power. There are always counterforce, even within an established administration; and they are getting stronger.

      You can see the battle lines and fractures between the establishment and disestablishment forming everywhere. Neither side is going to back down. So, it is going to be chaos descending from this point forward. (It’s not that anything will be good if Hillary wins, but the failures will be hers to own as heir to the establishment (especially now that establishment Republicans have thrown in with her, showing their true colors by campaigning for her and voting for her).

      People think that getting the election past means things might settle down. I believe the opposite. Right now the election is keeping a lid on things by giving people hope that their side will win and be able to change things.

      –David

      • Ping from QEternity:

        I predict if nothing comes of this current, updated investigation, some FBI 0r ex-FBI agent will fall on his 9mm and let the whole goods out in the end. They’re PO’d over there, and rightly so. And they are not going to want to spend their time working for a criminal gang in the WH.

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          Probably a bet that Comey made, too. He knew he would bear the slings and arrows of raging Democrats for doing this, and he was already hated by Republicans for not recommending criminal charges after the first round. So, why would he take on the Democrat heat at this late juncture unless he was sure someone else in the FBI would speak up and reveal that he was sitting on some seriously bad stuff. I mean, would you put yourself at risk of being taken to court for interfering with an election if you hadn’t already read some of the emails so that you knew there was something serious in there … or knew someone was almost sure to speak out about what you found the first time around?

  8. Ping from Sam Oconnel:

    What you have just provided is the reason the globalists will allow Trump to win. It gives them an out for the collapse they will cause and blame on Trump and conservatives in general, as well as the cheating they have been caught at and engaged in as far as the election itself goes.

    Regardless of what happens on Nov 8, the country will collapse as only so much fraud is possible in any monetary system and this one has been maxed out.

    Get ready to take care of yourself, and stay clear of the empires goons as it falls apart.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Exactly. If he wins, the economy will probably start to fly apart the day after the election because I think they have about exhausted their ability to hold it together. Right now, it’s an amalgam of pieces barely holding together.

      Those who are running the government and the Fed will probably up their time scale from “It happened on his watch as president” to “it happened because voting him in was so obviously terrible that all the smart money fled the market.” They’ve thoroughly prepared the way for saying that if it does fly apart after he’s voted in. So, that’s why I’d rather not see him voted in, so they take the blame entirely.

      Just as we have reached peak debt to where we cannot afford taking on more debt and cannot turn around and undo the debt either, I think we’ve also reached peak fraud, which is when evil starts to fly apart. Because evil is solely destructive, by its nature, it’s center cannot hold. If it reaches a certain angular velocity (RMP), it will fly apart.

      Hell week is likely right around the corner, and things will look a lot spookier this coming week, too; and I’m not talking about Monday’s trick-or-treaters.

  9. Ping from Gordo:

    I would by far prefer Trump be president in the times we are in. I can tell you what a clinton would do. They would print money like newspapers, keep the rich from losing money, the ones that never pay for their poor mistakes. The result is we would slip into hyperinflation before Clinton was booted out of office. The problem is we would be over the cliff.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Please see my added comment to fullarmor below. Trump needs a major spiritual reboot like few people I’ve ever seen (and I’m not talking about something he’s going to get by just going to church); but if that happened, those qualities that are raw and self-serving and that can be very destructive also have greatness in them. He could be a Nebuchadnezzar. But, without that, disaster will be his to own if he becomes president and a great loss of confidence to his supporters.

      • Ping from Gordo:

        You fail to understand God does not always use Godly men to accomplish his desires. I am a business person and I know the mess we are in. I also know the Clinton is completely void of Godly character and that her policies will continue to lead to millions of abortions, cause wars (my son in in the military) and the long, long list of scandals will continue to follow her. If you vote for a leader only because they are Godly, you fail to understand God does use as He desires. I know many Godly men that would fail the position the first day.

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          Apparently, you did not read the comment you are replying to, or you would note that I did indicate God can even use a man like Trump and that Trump’s worst traits could become his greatest if he is reformed from the inside out, just as God did with a conquerer like Nebuchadnezzar. It doesn’t change the fact that it will take a miracle that hasn’t happened yet. I hold no delusion that is going to happen just because you wish for it or because I do. I also know that it can happen, but that doesn’t mean it will, and it doesn’t mean Trump is God’s chosen man.

          So, until then, I evaluate Trump based on what he IS, not on what he could be. Wishful thinking is exactly what has created the economy we now have. Until wishful thinking stops, we will not recover. At present, I’m not going to vote for either candidate because the nation will certainly fail under either one as they are.

          After all, God could transform Hellary, too, if he wanted to; but I’m not going to determine my vote based on wishes, as I don’t know what God intends to do any more than you do. Until then, either candidate brings certain destruction because of monumental character flaws, but its actually easier to see how Trump could be transformed than Hillary.

        • Ping from Deplorables R Us:

          Amen!

    • Ping from Deplorables R Us:

      Agreed, Gordo. Add in the war with Russia that she is pushing for, and the destruction of the USA would be complete. Anyone that thinks or believes Clinton is somehow more suited for the Presidency than Trump is smoking crack. Clinton is the epitome of evil, she is the proverbial “devil with a blue dress on”. All one has to do is research her past, count all the bodies in her wake, ask the Haitians where their disaster relief money went (the Clinton Foundation), see the dead Ambassador’s body in Benghazi (he knew he was in trouble, but Clinton wouldn’t allow him more protection -she set him up), comb through the pay-to-play emails, ask Podesta and Abedin (and a slew of her minions) what her true intentions are (she’s admitted to having a “public” and “private” persona”, oh, and let’s not forget her contempt for most of us “useless eaters” otherwise coined “basket of deplorables”, “bucket of losers” and so forth. Trump isn’t polished, SO WHAT! I’ll take his unrefined locker room talk over an admitted crook and human hater any day of the week. Sick of these twits wringing their hands over locker room talk, having nervous breakdowns over such nonsense, but they don’t bat an eye over the numerous scandals that HRC is involved in, they aren’t worried about the 100 plus body count trailing behind her, they don’t seem to care about her position on WW3 and the no-fly zone that will bring it about. Talk about the USA being upside down! We’ll reap what we sow because too many people are unable to think for themselves and see the Truth….

      • Ping from Knave_Dave:

        You don’t see anyone here wringing their hands over locker room talk or indicating they would ever vote for Hillary. In fact, you read my articles here, you will see my opinion of Hillary runs pretty close to yours. So, I’m not suggesting anyone vote for Hillary in that I’ve already said I won’t be. But that doesn’t leave me in favor of Trump either. Just see the truth, which is that neither one is going to save the US from anything.

  10. Ping from fullarmor:

    Trump warned us about a bubble in the economy last year. He more than Hillary will know how to dig us out, and he will if necessary. TRUMPLANDSLIDE 2016

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      I warned you about a bubble economy last year, too, and the year before that and the year before that. In fact, I warned you of it before Trump ran last time and then faked to the left and bowed out. And I said the bubble wouldn’t pop during the early part of those years, and finally that it would pop this year (which remains to be seen).

      I also said all along what kinds of massive changes need to happen. Unfortunately, Trump’s plans contain almost none of those changes and was written by establishment neocons. His tax plan is the most massive gift the 1% have EVER SEEN. It’s an unbelievable gift to himself and the top 1% with just enough trickling down to you to get your vote because of the crumbs you get in tax relief. But that tax relief will finish the nation off in a massive debt explosion. (Not that it matter much because the explosion is coming anyway because the debt is already past the point of no return.)

      If Trump gets elected (which wouldn’t surprise me at all), the economy will still fail, BUT the failure will wind up resting squarely on him because establishment Democrats and establishment Republicans will both seize the opportunity to put it there, and because he’s said he can solve the problems and make America great again. I’m telling you that IN ADVANCE, even though I know you won’t believe me, so that when it happens, maybe you’ll think back and say, “Who was the anti-establishment writer who didn’t jump on the Trump bandwagon because he said a Trump victory will still end us in economic ruin even though he didn’t think Hillary would do any better?”

      Neither one will save us because neither one is doing the right things, though its possible Trump will revise his plan and then could do the right things just because he has the guts to do them.

      There are things I like about Trump, such as his willingness to pound against the establishment relentlessly and his willingness to speak out about the enormous risk of our nation’s sloppy immigration policies and his willingness to prosecute Hillary; but the most important thing he should be offering — his economic plan — has nothing in it that will save this nation. It may give a temporary boost to GDP and employment; but it will be devastating to the national debt so will undo the nation faster on that end, even as it improves things on the other end. It will do nothing to stop banks from being too big to fail and failing anyway; it will make the top 1% richer than they have ever been while it helps you scarcely at all (unless you’re one of the rich ones, which I doubt you are, as most of the rich don’t read blogs like this). And YOU gladly make the 1% fabulously more wealthy because of the tiny crumb of a tax break that falls back to you; but you’ll break the nation with debt doing it.

      Until America wakes up to HOW MUCH really needs to change and to the reality that MONEY NEVER TRICKLES DOWN; IT ONLY BUBBLES UP … there will be no recovery — not under Trump and not under Hillary. You have to inject all money in at the bottom of the economy (the demand side) if you want it to run equitably up through the ranks to the top because money bubbles up, and the rich have innumerable filters to stop it from trickling down.

      • Ping from Gordo:

        God is not running for President. There is no man that can meet your expectations I think.

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          I think there are plenty, but we have yet to see one on the ticket. I’m not looking for a perfect man or a godly man, just a man or woman of any color who is not so riddled with deep character flaws that I think he will be hugely destructive to the nation.

          However, I might even vote for Trump with his deep character flaws if he had put forward a plan that actually showed he DOES know what it takes to turn the country around. Instead, he put forward the same thing we’ve seen time and again, and just amped it up on drugs. Huge tax cuts targeted 80% to the rich, and massive increases in government spending to stimulate the economy. Its just an accelerant for the fire that is about to come anyway. It’s throwing oil on a grease fire.

  11. Ping from Chuck Morrison:

    Really? David Haggith actually believes that if Hillary is elected, and the inevitable reset occurs, that there will actually be an election four years from now?? Your normalcy bias is showing, and it’s adding fuel to your state of denial. There will be blood no matter who wins this. I expect Trump to win the popular vote in a landslide. If he is actually allowed to take the oath of office, and no one murders him, I suspect that this will be because TPTB needed a scapegoat for the impending crash. All that said, nuclear war would be less likely, and the turnaround much quicker under Trump. Buckle up: it’s gonna be a bumpy ride!

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      I won’t comment on most of what you’ve said; but we can agree on one thing: from this DAY forward, there is going to be a lot of turbulence. While I was referring to the week of the election as “hell week,” I think this week is going to be a wild ride, too.

    • Ping from Deplorables R Us:

      Agree with you Chuck Morrison. The TPTB are ten steps ahead of every single possible scenario, they are not going to go quietly into that good night. There will be no turn around with Clinton, there will only be chaos, destruction and death in order to bring about the complete and utter downfall of the USA in order to bring in the NWO. Hillary Clinton is another George Soros/Elitist Minion just like Obama who has actually been successful in furthering his agenda. The only thing Obama did not complete was the confiscation of guns from the average American Joe. HRC will go after those first. But hey, I’m beginning to think that the brain-dead, unaware, low information voter (code for “stupid”) needs to reap what they sow and allow the Devil to finish what they started.

      • Ping from Knave_Dave:

        I agree with all of that. In fact, your closing statement was my theme here. Since neither Trump or Hillary is going to save us, I am starting to think the best to happen (not that I will like going through it) is for the Devils to finish what they started. Let the inevitable destruction fall upon those who keep voting for TPTB so the powers that be and the millions who keep voting for them can have the inevitable destruction happen on their watch.

        I’m not going to vote for Hillary, or that would make me one of them; but I may sit back and watch Hillary get voted in on the basis that Trump isn’t about to save us either. Maybe the best that can happen from the choices we have available is that TPTB run their course, and the failure all lands on them. From there we can begin to talk about what it really takes to rebuild, which is a whole lot different than anything anyone is talking about so far.

  12. Ping from philip gunby:

    GOD HELP US ALL.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Then, if that is going to happen, may God transform Trump into the man he needs to be for this job — not the man evangelicals will say he needs to be based on their molds and not the man who now certainly serves himself as his highest calling, but a man individually and uniquely transformed by God to the task at hand. (Because none of what you are hoping for is going to happen with what I see so far; so, indeed, God help us all.)

      –David

  13. Ping from QEternity:

    Been selling off the equities. Made a few bucks this year, not much but whatever. Still holding the corporate bonds. They all mature in 4 years or less. I think they can make it that long, though one never knows.

    They say we get the kind of government we deserve. With a population distracted by the width of Kim Kardashians ass, and meaningless drivel by the political class that always fails to address the real issues of the nation, it’s no wonder why nothing good comes from DC.

    Putin was kind enough to point out the US is heading towards “banana republic” status. There are many here, buying the Russian hysteria, who would claim that’s just another Putin plot. What they fail to understand is we have been a “banana republic” for quite some time now.

    Huxley envisioned a “Brave New World”, while Orwell saw the depressing “1984”. What we have achieved is both — a distracted populace spied upon and tracked, mostly willingly, for “free” diversions. Meanwhile the State grows stronger, and any challenge is met immediately with armed force. We’re fed the BS of countless evolving enemies. ISIS is “the enemy”, but the moderates are out friends. Meanwhile, our own population is also “the enemy”, as witnessed by the countless draconian laws that apply doubly hard to crimes against any member of the State.

    A serious reboot would be welcome at all levels. I never believed Trump could handle this — that even if he tried he would be stymied along the way. So maybe it’s best Clinton wins and we get on with the reboot when it all blows. I only hope that, as a dying empire, we don’t try to take everyone with us in a nuclear glow.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Written like a proper epitaph for the world we once knew. What we take with us and what comes during a change of ages is hard to see in the fog of endless lies and smoke of endless wars.

      • Ping from fullarmor:

        Trump is winning and we will be just fine, thank you.

      • Ping from Deb:

        My husband and I likes to watch this gentleman that gives good Godly sermons and has very good understanding on how the world operates …Prof. Walter Veith…you can find him on YouTube. Listen to his presentation “All Together Now 1-2-3” to see where things are leading. It does not matter who you vote for …it’s rigged. As Walter says …the devil in pink …or the devil in blue…I try to tell that to fellow Christians and they don’t seem to understand …they don’t want to understand. Once you see how things really work ..then your bubble burst and you must make hard decisions on your belief system. Another great listen is a DVD called “Secret Mysteries of America’s Beginnings”…the new Atlantis. I think we are in for a very rough road …and we are the cause of it…either by turning a blind eye or adding to the evil by our actions.

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          Hi Deb. Welcome to the blog. I’ll check out the good professor and see what he has to say. Indeed. Instead of tainting myself by voting for the lesser or too evils, I’m going to let evil run its course because we’re almost to that climax anyway, and neither of these two alternatives is going to change that anyway; and I don’t later want to have to say, “I voted for that” because I’m not going to like what happens with either one.

          I think the economic evil of those already in charge (TPTB if you want to call them that) is blowing up right now, as is their political evil around the world. The economic evil is only kept superficially under control by extraordinary means. I’ve said all along that the establishment (Democrats and Republicans who are in power) will pull out all the stops to keep the stock market from crashing and the economy cooking, and we saw a massive increase in government spending in the last month reported with an equally massive run up of additional debt.

          So, I think they’re doing exactly that. I’ve also said periodically this year that I doubt they can even hold things together until the election, but so far they have. I think it’s getting harder and harder to keep it from flying apart, so I am inclined to think we’ll see it happen any day now, rather than holding on until the next president actually takes office.

          • Ping from Deb:

            My sentiments exactly….we have to travel away from home on the 3rd of November and I am concerned about being 2 hours from home. I am 62 and sick with Lyme Disease (biological weapon-Plum Island) and my husband is 73 and in failing health from trying to be nursemate to me for the last few years. We’ve been preparing for such times as , I feel, we are entering into and just don’t like the thought of being gone. A few years back we could have made the walk back…now don’t think it is possible…but everything is ultimately in the Lord’s hands . I just am concerned it is time that America pay for her choices and ignorance to the evil that is abounding more and more each day. We live in a fantasy land and now reality is about to set in …and it ain’t going to be pretty!!!!!!

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