Many bloggers, myself among them, have been predicting hyperinflation, socio economic collapse, and violent political change. But a lot of countries are in worse shape than the US, and they have not collapsed yet. Spain has all the US problems, less credit, more of a command economy, and the two Spanish political parties are agreed on reforms too miniscule to make significant difference, which reforms are nonetheless denounced as war upon the poor and the working class. These barely perceptible reforms provoke threats of armed revolution from the unions, which threats are hot air, but might well becomes real if actual reforms likely to actually fix the situation were applied.
The first country to go is Belarus, which has “market socialism†(Spain’s economic system with knobs on) and a government deficit that is sixteen percent of GDP. In Belarus, hyperinflation is starting, and violent political change is in sight.
So if Belarus is only now going, the fall of the US from much the same causes is in sight but not yet close. I would guess Greece is two or three years behind Belarus. Once Greece goes, we will see what used to be called the domino effect, and is now called contagion. Several other European countries will swiftly follow.
After that, my crystal ball goes cloudy.
So will Belarus and Greece tell us exactly how far America is likely to fall?
The US will fall further, because there is no one to bail it out.
It’ll be so very funny when Germany has that ‘Oh shit!’ moment. I guess I’ll find out then if the EU is actually in opposition to the US or not.
The problem is, these systems are dynamic and non-linear, and the US has many trillions of dollar denominated debt obligations around the world that could be sent back here to compete with the other dollars here to bid on real assets. I seriously doubt we have 5-6 years yet.
We could have a complete collapse of the financial system tomorrow. Get your gold now. . .