Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom.
The German Guns, by Private Baldrick
The above poem was, of course, recited by Baldrick in the seminal television series Blackadder Goes Forth - you might remember that Baldrick was notably surprised when Captain Blackadder guessed the final line.
Captain Blackadder's comment on it could also probably be applied to the current government's run in office: "it started badly, tailed off a little in the middle and the less said about the end the better — but apart from that it was excellent."
Anyway, why have I started this increasingly sporadic blogpost with it, apart from the opportunity for an early cheap dig? Well, back to that in a second.
Readers of this increasingly sporadic blog (and there could be as many as three in Northern Europe alone) will know that I am somewhat of a - let's face it - tinfoil hat wearing doom-monger. And with some justification, I feel - we are clearly not being governed by people who are entirely sane, and our fiat monetary system is, by its nature, not sustainable.
Take the talk around inflation recently, as a random example of their tenuous grip on reality: our elites are firmly of the opinion now - and this has become a 'sophisticated' and grown-up thing to say - that wage growth is a bad thing for the country, and we need a recession to reign in inflation.
Apart from the fact that, in no sane system, should people on average earning more be a bad thing - it's also complete nonsense, if you think about it for more than about two minutes. The UK's Brahmin caste that run everything think that lower wages and a recession are good for reducing inflation, as they think that people earning less on average means prices dropping: take a factory with ten employees - one worker gets fired, now nine people chase the same amount of goods instead of ten, prices go down, job done.
Except - think about it - now only nine people are producing goods, so the supply of goods also drops in line with the drop in workers. Same amount of goods, same amount of wages to be spent = no drop in inflation. But one less employed worker.
Obvious. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon (ie related to money printing).
The news now is pretty bleak, I think we'd all agree. So, given the above...
...we're going to have a panic and everything - including house prices - is going to collapse now, right?
I actually think, erm, no - and not only because when you're a doom-mongering loon it's a bit unnerving when more and more people start agreeing with you, as it makes us feel uncomfortable and we change our minds. It's not this - don't panic - I still think our monetary system will collapse in the end - all fiat currency systems tried so far have, and we'll have to boil stones for soup in due course.
It's just that, with a now falling money supply as banks crush credit in a panic, and with massive, unprecedented debt levels and huge fiscal problems all over the place - I think we are now primed for some further money creation by government. The one thing indebted governments fear is deflation (as this increases the real size of their debt, and they potentially might not be able to print their way out of the death spiral) - and if this looks like it might even potentially happen, they'll open the money spigot.
This will, I'd wager, lead to a short sugar boom as this money starts to hit the economy - maybe for two or three years - what is called by Austrian economists a "crack-up boom". Labour could well contribute to this.
Hence the poem.
Based on things like, say, the end of the current Kondratiev wave and the law of econonic rents (won't discuss this here, but they're spot on) indicating that there are probably two to three more years to go in the current real estate cycle, I'd say 2026 is a good bet for a crash. A bigee. A whooper. Schwerer Gustav-sized.
At that stage I might write another post - except it will actually be about the German guns.
Boom Boom Boom Boom.
