the baltic dry freight index collapsed with the liquidity squeeze and has stayed flat. banks don’t want to finance anything they can’t sell and retrieve the fiat so they ain’t financing ship cargoes. this is purely back-door protectionism. if it can’t be imported, consumers are forced to buy domestic products. central banks and governments are already talking currency devaluations. my personal opinion is that they are trying to implant the mindset of buy it today because it goes up tomorrow (ala 1970’s). the inflate/deflate cycle will continue until tptb lose control of the system.

at this time, i’m still betting on inflation. every country has a printing press and not a single one has any interest in keeping their currency strong. sooner or later, someone will run out of something that has to be imported and the fiat floodgates will open. the long term trend in gold is still up and there is still none to buy at the retail level. some very deep pockets have traded huge amounts of fiat for physical gold and it appears to have been withdrawn from the market and hoarded.

the federal government “indicated” inflation was present when all the retirees got a raise. sometimes the “martian” approach can put things into perspective. if you landed in the usa and couldn’t read or understand the language but could understand what was going on around you, what conclusion would you come to? people accept some funny green paper for living necessities. some people sacrifice for the funny green paper while other have it given to them. youth go to foreign lands to suffer immediately and for a lifetime while other do nothing but both get the same privileges. these kinds of examples are endless. the middle class is being destroyed while the party for the elite never stops.

if the morons don’t get the fiat moving around soon, deflation will get the upper hand and significant social unrest will be the result. the morons know this so look for another public handout to get the fiat circulating.

this recession/depression will be long and deep as long as the morons keep giving the drug users more drugs. rewarding bad behavior and punishing good will result in more bad behavior. it may take several elections to replace or transform the politicians into statesmen. treat plan b as a necessity rather than a luxury.

rno