And it's all over ... Donald J. Trump has been elected the 45th President of these United States of America. Thankfully, the sharp personal contrasts during the campaign spared us from technocratic debates about plans and policy, with the CBO weighing in occasionally to vet the numbers of one "plan" or another.
Because narrow
policy does not matter. At the end of the Long Credit Cycle, policy is nothing. Soon enough we will be at the mercy of the forces of wild nature in the bond markets, the lifeblood of our abstracted civil society.
The deflationary spiral is a feature, not a bug. Our money came to us
ex nihilo, and back there it shall go, as debt-defaults mount and
Irving Fisher's nightmare is realized. The strategy to prop up asset values until
growth and
animal spirits return is a terrible failure. Now we have to face the consequences of the even greater malinvestment of capital than before, and the experience will be brutal.
The object, the great task, the World-Historical Mission of Donald J. Trump is to keep the United States whole, to maintain its order and integrity as we pass through the great crisis of Kondratieff winter on the credit cycle. Debts that cannot be paid -- won't be paid -- and that includes perks like Social Security, defined-benefit plans, pensions, your bank account. They are all dust, as we will learn soon enough. Guess what -- Donald already understands this, he knows we are dead broke.
Trump is in Abraham Lincoln's shoes now; his job is to preserve the Union, to reassert the Republic, and to enable us to survive as a nation. Debt-deflation will trigger a monetary collapse and final implosion of the fiat $USD, causing widespread disorder and the destruction of many of our institutions.
Browse
the S&P 500 for a moment. How many of these debt-burdened companies will survive such an event? How about you? How will you manage? What are your plans?
Specialization and the division of labor are an easy bet that works out well
most of the time. But when things go sideways, you're left hanging as a cog in the Great Machine. There is no nice way to unwind modernity -- see
James Howard Kunstler's novels for an idea of what that might be like.
There is another system after the 20th Century experiment in debt-backed money, maybe even an older, more honest and real one that we left behind. We may get there, if we are lucky, after the current system collapses. Donald Trump's sacred duty is to shepherd us through this coming Time of Troubles, to keep our once great nation intact, whole, and secure as it passes from empire.