“…Trump clearly intends to deliberately create a world economic crisis lasting at least four years — as World War I and World War II did. He thinks this will put America in the driver’s seat: America is self-sufficient in gas and oil. Other countries will have to buy from us. And if they do, we’ll require them to impose sanctions against Russia, Iran, and anyone else we’ve designated as an enemy.
Meanwhile, the ten-year US Treasury bond rate has gone over 4.5%, and the 30-year rate is over 5%. Wall Street has figured that if oil export prices double, that’s inflationary. But all of this is junk economics.
Of course oil prices are going up — so much so that Asia and the Global South will look like Germany after the US stopped it from buying Russian gas. Germany’s glass industry shut down. The fertilizer industry shut down. The automobile industry is cutting back — Mercedes and others are moving to China.
Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum are raising the price of agricultural combines and tractors. Farmers in the US face the same problem as farmers everywhere: higher fertilizer costs, higher harvesting equipment costs, higher gasoline costs.
What Wall Street doesn’t take into account: Yes, energy and energy-related prices are going up. But this will shut down industries and cause a huge depression. Layoffs. Governments will have to divert revenues to help families afford electricity and gas — which means cuts to social spending. Unemployment. People getting poorer and poorer. That’s not inflation. That’s deflation.
Prices will rise for oil, steel, aluminum, fertilizer, gas, and helium, while other prices in general fall. We’re facing the biggest collapse since the Great Depression. That is the deliberate aim of US foreign policy. They’ve gamed it out. They think that no matter how much this hurts the American economy, it will hurt labor by lowering its wages, by causing unemployment and making people desperate. It’s a godsend for the class war.
When companies have to cut production, how will they pay their debts? Workers — euphemized as “consumers” — are already paying over 30% interest on credit card fees and penalties. Student debt defaults are rising. Medical debt is the fastest-growing cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Mortgage rates have gone way up.
This is a new form of class warfare. It’s not employers against labor, because industry and labor are suffering together trying to survive. It’s the financial class against the rest of the economy. Finance, insurance, and real estate — the FIRE sector — is where almost all US GDP growth has occurred, while the real economy has shrunk.
Thisactually is a replay of debates from the mid-eighteenth century: How was Britain going to deal with the fact that creditors spend their money on luxury imports rather than domestic production? London was getting rich, not the rest of England…”