Exponential Freddie graph in original article. Underestimating 'Them' & Overestimating 'Us' https://www.zerohedge.com/political/underestimating-them-overestimating-us https://www.theburningplatform.com/2019/10/13/underestimating-them-overestim... “Do not underestimate the ‘power of underestimation’. They can’t stop you, if they don’t see you coming.” - Izey Victoria Odiase During the summer of 2008 I was writing articles a few times per week predicting an economic catastrophe and a banking crisis. When the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression swept across the world, resulting in double digit unemployment, a 50% stock market crash in a matter of months, millions of home foreclosures, and the virtual insolvency of the criminal Wall Street banks, my predictions were vindicated. I was pretty smug and sure the start of this Fourth Turning would follow the path of the last Crisis, with a Greater Depression, economic disaster and war. In the summer of 2008, the national debt stood at $9.4 trillion, which amounted to 65% of GDP. Total credit market debt peaked at $54 trillion. Consumer debt peaked at $2.7 trillion. Mortgage debt crested at $14.8 trillion. The Federal Reserve balance sheet had been static at or below $900 billion for years. During 2007, a risk averse senior citizen couple (my parents) who had accumulated $200,000 of retirement savings over their lifetime of hard work, could generate $10,000 of interest income in a Vanguard money market fund yielding 5%. This supplemented their modest Social Security income of $20,000 to $30,000 per year. The interest rate on savings during normal economic times was generally 2% above inflation, which hovered around 3% in 2007 according to the data manipulators at the BLS. As the summer of 2008 progressed, I felt more disconnected. I had been doing everything possible to support Ron Paul’s candidacy for president, but the masses weren’t ready for the truth or the reality of our situation. In my opinion the country was already off-course and headed towards a debt created disaster. But the average American was oblivious. The economy appeared strong. People’s 401ks were soaring. And homeowners in many markets had seen their homes double in value – on paper. I felt stupid as I had exited the stock market and bought some bear mutual funds and ETFs during 2007 and 2008. The stock market had more than doubled since the 2002 lows. The control fraud systematically implemented by the Wall Street cabal and their captured political hacks also drove home prices to astronomical heights, making the average home owner think they were richer than they were. Billions of home equity loans were used by delusional dolts across the land to buy luxury vehicles, take exotic vacations, and basically live far above their means. When that fake equity evaporated like a puddle in the Sahara Desert, the delusional masses found themselves living in those luxury vehicles, until the repo man showed up. The irrationality and insanity of the Wall Street created housing bubble was perfectly captured in Michael Lewis’ brilliant takedown of the Wall Street cabal in the Big Short. When Steve Eisman interviews a Florida stripper doing a pole dance and finds out she “owns” five houses and a condo, he realizes the housing boom is a complete fraud and goes all in shorting the exotic worthless derivatives created by the criminal bankers. September 2008 marked the beginning of this Fourth Turning, with the global implosion of financial markets, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, double digit unemployment, six million home foreclosures, a 50% collapse in the stock market, the deepest recession since the 1930s, and shell-shocked consumers defaulting on credit card and auto loans to the tune of hundreds of billions. As consumer credit contracted, retail stores began going bankrupt in vast numbers. Mall operators were left with 50% or vacancy rates. They couldn’t make the loan payments on their debt. By March of 2009 the country was in a full-blown crisis. My storage area in my basement was filled with food, cases of water and other emergency supplies. I was sure we were at the beginning of an economic period, similar but worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. I certainly overestimated my forecasting ability and underestimated the abilities of the ruling class to take outrageously reckless steps to retain their power and manipulate the masses into believing extreme abnormalcy was actually normal. The first outrage perpetrated by the oligarchs was passing the $700 billion TARP bailout of the feckless Hank Paulson lied and threatened to protect his billionaire buddies. The turning point occurred on March 16, 2009 when the pocket protector wearing spineless weenie accountants at the FASB were threatened by Bernanke and his henchmen into overturning their mark to market rule and allow the criminal Wall Street banks to value their worthless mortgages at whatever they chose. Citicorp, Bank of America, AIG, GE, Goldman Sachs, and most of the other “Too Big To Trust” goliath banks were bankrupt. They should have been liquidated using the bankruptcy process, with their good assets sold to banks who did not undertake fraudulent risks, and their executives and investors suffering the consequences. The fear mongering and fake accounting propagated by Bernanke, Paulson, Geithner, and their corporate media fake news propaganda machines had the sole purpose of shifting the fraudulently created Wall Street private losses to the taxpayers through deficit funded handouts, free money, accounting fraud, and throwing senior citizen savers under the bus. Wall Street became richer than ever while Main Street got fucked again. As a Ron Paul, Austrian school of economics believer, myself, along with many other logical minded rational thinking people, believed a short violent recession where bad debt was expunged from the system through liquidation and the economy was reset based on corporations and consumers acting conservatively and living within their means – using debt sparingly for long-term purposes, was the best road going forward. I overestimated the intelligence, critical thinking skills, self-restraint and math aptitude of the masses by believing they had learned their lesson after experiencing the second Fed induced market crash in an eight-year period. I thought the American people and their leaders would come to their senses and realize the parabolic increase in debt since the 1990s had to end. I underestimated the level of fear amongst the Fed, financiers, politicians, mega-corporations, and billionaire oligarchs when just a leveling off of credit market debt resulted in global financial implosion. And I clearly underestimated the illegal lengths Bernanke and his fellow puppets would go to in order to save their Wall Street owners and corporate, political and media parasites reliant upon the ongoing Ponzi debt scheme being sustained. If I had only believed in the power of massive debt issuance, nine years of zero interest rates for Wall Street banks, $3.6 trillion of Fed QE to relieve Wall Street of its bad debt, hundreds of billions of debt financed corporate stock buybacks, luring millions into 7 year auto loans, and allowing Wall Street hedge funds to buy up the millions of foreclosures and rent them back to those who they had booted onto the street. If you told anyone in 2007 the national debt would go from $9.4 trillion to $22.8 trillion in twelve years, they would have called you a loon and laughed you out of the room. Now the national debt is 105% of GDP and consumer debt exceeds $4 trillion. Millennials are enslaved with $1.6 trillion of student loan debt, up by $1 trillion since 2009. The ruling class and their propaganda machine have convinced the masses $1 trillion annual deficits are normal and sustainable. Nothing bad has happened – Yet. Our so-called leaders have implemented the exact opposite “solutions” to a debt crisis than what was required. Of course, this is true only if our leaders were interested in the long-term sustainability of the nation and its unborn future generations. If the ruling class is only concerned with their wealth, power and control over the masses, then their actions make complete sense. If I hadn’t underestimated the evilness, greed and egocentricity of the entrenched establishment oligarchs, I would have stayed invested in the market, reaping the 300% returns since the 2009 lows. It has certainly paid to bet on the continued treachery of the traitorous central bankers, politicians, mega-corporation executives, and the fake news media. Only truly devious, deceitful, demented wizards of financial fraud could drive total credit market debt from $54 trillion to $74 trillion as the solution to a debt crisis. After eight years of emergency level financial suppression, the latest Fed puppet, Jerome Powell, dared to raise rates above zero and suspend the continued buying of government debt. If we were really operating in a normal economic environment, market rates would be in the 4% range. But, miniscule .25% increases over a couple years pushing the Federal Funds rate to 2.25% was too much for Wall Street and the president to handle. They have both been throwing hissy fits for the last year, intimidating and threatening the weak-kneed Powell into cutting rates with unemployment at all-time lows, the stock market near all-time highs, and the economy in its tenth year of expansion. Powell’s cowardly surrender is proof the Fed is nothing but Wall Street’s bitch, subservient and pliable to pressure from its owners. “They’re keeping the rates down so that everything else doesn’t go down. We have a very false economy. At some point the rates are going to have to change. The only thing that is strong is the artificial stock market. The U.S. economy is in a big, fat, ugly bubble. I will get rid of the nation’s more than $19 trillion national debt over a period of eight years. I’m renegotiating all of our deals, the big trade deals that we’re doing so badly on.” – Donald Trump, September 2016. ...