It was almost exactly ten years ago that we first predicted that the Fed’s “moronic” QE which has sparked an unprecedented class, income and wealth divide, “positions US society one step closer to civil war if not worse.” This prompted Time magazine to mock our forecast, although we doubt the author, currently at Bloomberg where pretty much every financial op-ed writer eventually ends up, is laughing today after an almost identical assessment of the current situation, if ten years delayed, was published by a far more “respected” by the likes of Time commentator, Ray Dalio.
In the latest installment of his ongoing series on the changing world order published on his LinkedIn page, Dalio finally turned to ground zero in what will be the conflict of the 21st century – class and power struggles – and mused if the U.S. is at a tipping point that could move it from what he says is “manageable” tension to a full-blown revolution.
“People and politicians are now at each other’s throats to a degree greater than at any time in my 71 years,” Dalio wrote noting that disorder is rising in a number of countries. “How the U.S. handles its disorder will have profound implications for Americans, others around the world, and most economies and markets.”
“It is in this stage when there are bad financial conditions and intensifying conflict,” wrote Dalio. “Classically this stage comes after periods of great excesses in spending and debt and the widening of wealth and political gaps and before there are revolutions and civil wars. United States is at a tipping point in which it could go from manageable internal tension to revolution and/or civil war.”
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ATHENS – The Anglosphere’s political atmosphere is thick with bourgeois outrage. In the United States, the so-called liberal establishment is convinced it was robbed by an insurgency of “deplorables” weaponized by Vladimir Putin’s hackers and Facebook’s sinister inner workings. In Britain, too, an incensed bourgeoisie are pinching themselves that support for leaving the European Union in favor of an inglorious isolation remains undented, despite a process that can only be described as a dog’s Brexit.
The range of analysis is staggering. The rise of militant parochialism on both sides of the Atlantic is being investigated from every angle imaginable: psychoanalytically, culturally, anthropologically, aesthetically, and of course in terms of identity politics. The only angle that is left largely unexplored is the one that holds the key to understanding what is going on: the unceasing class war unleashed upon the poor since the late 1970s.
In 2016, the year of both Brexit and Trump, two pieces of data, dutifully neglected by the shrewdest of establishment analysts, told the story. In the United States, more than half of American families did not qualify, according to Federal Reserve data, to take out a loan that would allow them to buy the cheapest car for sale (the Nissan Versa sedan, priced at $12,825). Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, over 40% of families relied on either credit or food banks to feed themselves and cover basic needs.
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