Rising prices, falling wages, and the emerging economic trends: Currency wars, hyper-inflation, currency devaluation, and how to prepare for the coming storm

120% of the wealth created since the economic crisis began in 2007 has gone to the top 1% – meaning, the bottom 99% have fallen and have lost real income to the richest 1%. (Turn off “the news” and watch the Keiser Report for the real facts, or see Gerald Celente or Michael Hudson.)

20% of homes in Detroit now have no indoor plumbing, and 19% of Americans now rely on food stamps to eat – up from 14% in 2006. This is a recovery? No, the bottom 99% are sinking while the richest 1% get more and more wealthy.

Again, 120% of all wealth creation since 2007 has gone to the richest 1% – meaning the other 99% actually lost ground and lost wealth – to the top 1%. The figures are clear. The 1% are eating the rest of us alive. It is that simple and that stark. And the politicians are aiding and abetting the feeding frenzy of the wealthy few upon the many. How much longer are people going to put up with this?

Prices have fallen over the past decades, leading to a flood of cheap food and consumer goods, which has masked the fact that wages and incomes for most people have stayed flat or fallen; but that trend is now reversing, and prices are now rising – and unless there is a revolution, don’t expect wages to rise in North America or Europe to compensate for the price increases: they have been falling and will continue to fall as the top 1% pushes the 99% further down.

Given the trends, it would be wise to stock up on tools, seeds (non-hybridized, non-GMO heritage seeds), solar panels and used clothes now, before hyper-inflation and currency devaluation kick into overdrive – as they are about to do – and purchasing power plummets while prices soar.

Oh, and buy gold and silver, of course, as well as land for a garden if you can, and some form of shelter that you own outright, and do not rent or have a mortgage on.

The “fix the debt” and “balance the budget” propaganda is just that – propaganda. There is a real debt crisis, to be sure, but it’s not caused by spending on social programs, such as old age security, help for the poor, or education: it’s caused by massive spending on the war machine, the military-industrial-security complex, along with banker bailouts totalling trillions, corporate tax cuts and massive subsidies to the already super-rich and the corporate giants. Nevertheless, while the debt issue is being used to foist austerity measures on the people, while the richest 0.01% continue to feed voraciously off the government purse and the other 99.99%, the bursting of the debt bubble is definitely going to happen. It will simply happen for the opposite reasons of what the people are being told.

Personal debt and government debt have been inflated to unsupportable and extreme levels. Worse yet, printing trillions of dollars in paper money to “stimulate the economy” (by giving it to the banking elite) guarantees the devaluation of the currency and its eventual collapse– and Europe, Britain, the US, China and Japan are all doing it, with unrelenting zeal.

Printing great mountains of paper money is, in essence, creating a credit and debt bubble – or further inflating it – because all paper money is, is a promissory note: a note of a promise to pay in the future; and you can only inflate a credit and debt bubble for so long, before it bursts. You can only print so much money, or print so many promissory notes, before your promises and your money become worthless. Printing money to pay your debts is what the Weimar Republic did – and that worked well. The currency collapsed, and it took a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread, as the German mark lost 99.9% of its value. The wheelbarrow was worth more than the money in it, which had become essentially worthless.

There will be a time of reckoning, and a time of radical devaluation of currency is fast approaching, as the market can only be manipulated for so long, before it finally corrects itself – and in this case, in a massive, tectonic shift, otherwise known as a depression; or as Gerald Celente calls it, The Greater Depression, since it will in all likelihood dwarf that last Great Depression.

The entire credit and debt bubble is about to burst, and when it does, the bond market and the fiat currencies will collapse – and when that happens, the poorest 99% will be hit severely hard, as a global economic depression hits, and paper money becomes radically devalued and virtually worthless.

The Shoot-Out at the OK Currency War Corral is on, by the way, as Stacey Herbert, Max Keiser and others have said – and now everybody wants to devalue their currency! Smart! A race to the bottom! How so very intelligent! Print it, glut it, quantitatively ease it, flood it! Churn and burn until it collapses! And the global currency war is heating up. Blam, blam! Who ends up gunned down? Everyone holding mere paper money (such as the G7, and also, the vast majority of the people) – not the ones holding gold and other real, hard assets (Russia and China, and a handful of people who are paying attention to what is going on).

Just some thoughts to pass along to the general world… Hopefully they will be heard by some. Tools, solar panels, a garden, a root cellar, a woodstove and a woodlot will be infinitely more valuable than a new X Box, cell phone or wardrobe very shortly – and many people will be blind-sided and completely unprepared. Kind of like walking out in front of a bus, lost in absorption on your phone, playing a video game or reading facebook posts or surfing the virtual world while the real world races toward you and is about to splatter you across the street – to put it in a perhaps compelling visual metaphor. Perhaps.

But the majority of people are clinging to their illusions still, and that bubble is about to burst – and painfully so for those who have insisted on maintaining their cozy state of denial; and I fear for them.

Remember, if this scenario sounds unlikely, that I predicted the crash of 2007 while virtually everyone was saying things are just rosy. A much bigger economic tsunami is coming folks. We have only felt the first tremors. And as Gerald Celente has said, those who are prepared will do well; while most of those who do not prepared will be wiped out.

Just sayin’. This is a head’s up for all those who would rather live in the real world, and not in a bubble of fantasy. I’m sure there are at least a few out there. Good luck and God bless.

For those who are brave enough to deal with reality, please note also: many people are going to need help. If the more alert among us make the effort to cut their costs and prepare well for the coming difficulties, they will not only be better able to help themselves, but others as well.

Preparation, compassion and mutual aid always make sense – and now more than ever.

J. Todd Ring,
February 21, 2013