The USA of today is less like the USA of the 90’s than the USA of the 90’s and (insert any foreign country). But like a frog in a slowly boiling pot, he never jumps out until he is finally cooked. 
People living in US who do not regularly spend time out of the country or who do not have connections to other countries don’t necessarily have the perspective to see this objectively. So let’s do some guided visualization.
For those of you who are older than 30 years old, imagine it’s the 90’s (pick your favorite time) and we meet in your favorite coffee shop (Starbucks not widely proliferated yet, and there is a huge nationwide problem of obtaining real coffee, with a few exceptions in major cities and Miami where Cubans sell real espresso). I’ve traveled back in time from 2013 and I’m speaking my own reality, telling you what the future will be like. Would you believe me then, if I told you that:
- The US debt is $17 Trillion US Dollars, but the real debt is estimated to be $70 Trillion and even some estimates as high as $211 Trillion. (In 1990 it was $3.2 Trillion)
- China is the largest trading nation in the world, not the US. They are also the largest importer of Oil.
- The NASDAQ stock market is crashing nearly every week due to computer glitches.
- Certain bank accounts have capital controls, that limit the amount of cash you can withdraw to $50,000 per cycle and forbid international wire transfers.
- The retail Forex market is regulated, and it’s illegal for a US Citizen to have a foreign Forex brokerage account. But in the US, 90% of brokers have moved offshore or closed, but they don’t offer hedging, leverage is limited to 50:1, and are filled with fraud (see Refco, PFG, Coes FX, FXLQ, ad infinitum). But if you think it’s just a retail problem, the largest Forex hedge fund (and one of the most notable) in the world has just filed for bankruptcy, with abysmal recent returns.
- Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns do not exist.
- There are 100 Million working age Americans who are not working (but technically not unemployed), making the effective ‘real’ unemployment rate near 50% (131 Million employed).
- More people receive US Government benefits than are employed.
- Thousands of drones are being deployed over the US mainland, while local police are acquiring military weapons such as armored vehicles, assault rifles, tanks, and are using them.
- A spy scandal created by a lone whistle blower, Edward Snowden, has revealed that the NSA is recording nearly every electronic activity of US citizens and many international citizens, as well as engaging in blackmail, espionage, spying on allies, and diplomatic conferences.
- An earthquake which caused a Tsunami at Fukushima, Japan, caused a nuclear reactor there to meltdown. Since then, tons of radioactive material has been and is being pumped into the pacific, while a radioactive cloud is floating towards California, and has already shown up in organic foods grown in California.
- The current President is African-American, and is not a US Citizen; but he was widely popular when he was elected.
- There is a new government mandated health program “Obamacare” that will force everyone to pay for health insurance (even if it’s inferior to your current plan and more expensive). If you fail to register the IRS can seize penalty fees directly from your bank account. But don’t worry, because the website where you are supposed to register is completely dysfunctional.
- There is a growing secession movement, whereby regions are proposing to form their own states, which is legal under the constitution.
- Marijuana is legal in 20 states! And the movement is growing like a weed, there are bills to legalize in nearly all states!
- The Fed has announced a Quantitative Easing program where they said there’s “No Limit” to the amount of the money they will print. Stock market all time highs is a regular heading on CNBC.
- A record number of US Citizens are giving up their US Citizenship. Mexicans who previously risked life and limb to cross the US border are now going back to Mexico. There are now more Mexicans going home than immigrating to US (illegally or not).
- In a country with previously the most developed infrastructure in the industrial world, bridges are collapsing at a record pace, more than 65,000 are in need of repair. Meanwhile, several countries including China have built high speed mag-lev trains.
- In a country that created the automobile industry, the latest American auto “innovation” a car run on batteries named after the guy who developed A/C power “Tesla” are bursting into flames. As if that wasn’t enough, their factory then burst into flames and employees were injured by hot metal.
The change seems to be accelerating. Main stream news sources are biased and have also deteriorated. Investigative Journalists such as Dan Rather have been fired or otherwise forced out of their positions.
According to Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh:
Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.
It doesn’t take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as “the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist”.
He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.
Don’t even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would” – or the death of Osama bin Laden. “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true,” he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.
In a country that prides itself on “It’s not what you know, but who you know” – it’s not surprising that in one generation no one know anything. But they know people. How many times did you ask someone a question and they said “Well I know a guy…”
So if I had told you all these things in 1990 would you have believed it, that this is not only possible, this was the future? We live in that world now, and it’s changing on an ever rapid basis. Points mentioned here are only examples, but the known unknowns are not so important as the unknown unknowns! Or in other words, if a Tsunami is coming, would you want to know?
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