I take the liberty to summarize an article titled “The Death Spiral” written by John Rubino.
Conventional wisdom tells us that
governments with unlimited printing presses would spend and borrow too much,
forcing their central banks to keep interest rates unnaturally low to make
interest costs manageable, which would encourage even more credit growth and
inflation to spike. And it will spiral
this way until everyone loses faith in the fiat currencies and send these
currencies to their intrinsic value of zero.
We can see that the national debt of US has gone exponential from the chart below, and you can extrapolate the curve to see the debt in another few years. Inflation has jumped by 10% in 2022 causing the central bank to raise interest rates to counter the inflation. The author and I opined that here is where the death spiral kicks in. (The sudden escalation part of the exponential curve is the critical phase to watch in any event. This is explained in Chapter 2 of my book, The Coming Economic Flood.)
In 2023, the annual interest cost bill will
hit USD 1 trillion. Combined with the
soaring cost of Medicare and Social Security, the US government is looking at
USD 2 trillion just in interest and entitlements. The annual budget deficit already stands at
USD 1 to 2 trillion. It will require
even more borrowing and will spiral till it all comes crashing down.
This is the situation of a rock and a hard place the monetary authorities is facing. Either choice of keeping interest rates high or pushing them down leads to the same place of a currency crisis.
Is that how the wealth of Babylon is laid waste in one hour and the kings of the earth, merchants and those who make their living by the sea will weep together since all live in luxury with her and grow rich because of her ? Rev 18.
After the Fed Reserve hiked the interest rates to 3 to 3.25% on 22 Sep 2022, the following events happened very quickly :
Bond bloodbath. We nearly saw a Lehman-like crisis in the UK. The UK pension funds were selling gilts frantically due to margin call on their leveraged bets. And the Bank of England had to reverse course of tightening and did quantitative easing to calm the markets while having the worst inflation in recent history. With the easy money policy that lasted for so long, we would assume that the cumulative lucrative leveraged bets over the years have grown to gargantuan proportions.
Currency rout. The Bank of Japan had to sell treasuries to prop up the yen. The British pound was pounded negative 7.4% in 2 days. They are behind the US curve in hiking interest rates.
Energy crisis. The Russian gas pipe lines Nord Stream 1 and 2 were sabotaged. Many EU economies are dependent on Russian gas. UK is already expecting utility rates to double or triple causing much economic hardship to the lower income groups.
Housing price deceleration. This is expected as the US average mortgage rate has hit above 7%.
Bear global stock markets. All major stock markets are in bear territory. The US stock markets had probably lost USD 8 trillion dollars or more in the slow train wreck in one year. Likewise for the rest of the western capitalism states. All previous market routs paled in comparison.
All economies are caught between the rock of increasing interest rates to fight inflation and the hard place of quantitative tightening in a period entering technical recession or rapidly slowing growth.
You can see the colossal losses in the stock markets just in the US. (See the charts and links below.) Due to media censorship, much hardship faced by the rest of the world is not reported.
The current crisis indeed followed the 7 year apocalypse since Sep 2001, Sep 2008 and Sep 2015 in term of severity of adverse market conditions. But will the whole financial system collapse soon ? Our Lord is sovereign and He alone decides when He will destroy all wealth in one hour. Rev 18:17-19. All glory and honor to our Lord.
Postscript I:
I noticed the sudden intensity of famine, earthquakes and other natural disasters. The Horn of Africa faces the worst drought in history and requires grain relief or will face terrible famine. There were several earthquakes measuring Richter scale 7 happening within 2 weeks in various places around the world. The Hurricane Ian caused the worst economic damage to the state of Florida estimated at USD 260 billion. The Florida governor said it was the worst 500 year flooding event.
Postscript II:
Though the DOW might fall to the lowest in Sep 2022 since the start of the pandemic, we could see the blatant manipulation of the Babylonian system. You can read of how the Biden administration overstated the job growth figure by a full million when the actual growth was just 10,500 jobs. But such information would be enough to cause big swing in the markets when investors cheered believing the economy was doing real fine. (https://nypost.com/2022/12/22/biden-administration-overstated-q2-job-growth-by-1-million-philadelphia-fed/ ). Nevertheless the Lord is sovereign and He alone decides when He will judge this Babylonian system and destroy all its wealth.
The Lord had given me two visions concerning the 911 attack and the Sep 2008 financial crisis prior to these events. And I was further instructed to write a book on these visions and the coming economic flood based on Rev 18 prophecy. It was miraculously rushed and published in Nov 2014. The given conviction and the miraculous provision by the Lord then caused me to believe another economic crisis would happen in Sep 2015 as detailed in my book.
From the chart below, you will notice that three times the global liquidity had gone negative were in Sep 2001, Sep 2008 and Sep 2015. It was not obvious then that the global liquidity was worse in 2015 than in 2008 as shown in the chart below, because it was not felt much even though the global stock markets crashed terribly in Sep 2015.
Right now in Sep 2022, the global liquidity has gone negative again and will it extrapolate as shown in the chart ? We will know by the end of this month or early next month. (Notice the incredible 7 year apocalypse event from Sep 2001 to Sep 2022.)
All thanks and glory to our Lord for vindicating my claim again that He alone has given me these incredible visions and insights. They have all come to pass against extremely slim odds.
Rev 18 details God’s
judgment on commercial Babylon. She will
be burned with fire and all her wealth will be laid waste. Plagues of mourning,
famine and death will follow.
Rev 18:9
When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her.
Not all the kings of the earth commit adultery with Babylon and share her LUXURY. Only those who do so will weep when Babylon burns for they have lived in luxury with her. We can clearly see which are the present western capitalism states that are taking the bidding from Babylon today. I call them the Babylonian Alliance.
Rev 18:11-13
The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore-cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.
I read an
interesting article in the web that summarized the above products into 7
categories of LUXURIES in the ancient world.
Precious metals and gems.
Clothing.
Furnishing.
Spice.
Food.
Animals and implements.
People.
(In modern times, the above
categories are still considered luxuries, even people. We see the buying and selling of football
players in the soccer leagues around the world for an example.)
The next group to weep when
Babylon burns are the merchants who are selling all the above-mentioned categories
of luxuries and have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living. Rev 18:3.
Rev 18:17-19
Every sea captain, and all who travel by ship, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea, will stand far off. 1When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, ‘Was there ever a city like this great city?’ They will throw dust on their heads, and with weeping and mourning cry out…
The final group to weep are
the major seaports cum financial centres supporting the globalized trade
orchestrated by Babylon and have also grown rich by her wealth.
Rev 18:7
Give her as much torment and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself. In her heart she boasts, ‘I sit enthroned as queen. I am not a widow; I will never mourn.
This Babylonian Alliance, comprising all the western capitalism states, has been flaunting their wealth and luxurious living for far too long at the expense of the relative poorer nations in the rest of the world . It is an affront to the Lord and He has declared judgment on all these wealth for the sake of the saints and the labourers and harvesters who have been exploited and defrauded by being in the lowest rung of the supply chain. James 5:1-5.
It is a judgment on wealth and luxurious living and it is not mentioned in the seal, trumpet or bowl judgments during the Great Tribulation. Each of these judgments is an unprecedented disaster such as great earthquake (Rev 6:12-14), great warfare (Rev 6:5-6), hail and fire (Rev 8:7), plague of demonic locusts (Rev 9:1-11) and the killing of a third of humanity (Rev 9:12-21). The bowl judgments are even much worse in destruction. All such disasters will disrupt the global economy terribly during the Great Tribulation anyway. As such, I believe the Rev 18 judgment will happen before the Great Tribulation and set the stage for the emergence of the Antichrist to be seen as the savior of the world in resolving this global financial crisis. In Rev 17, we read as well that the beast and the ten kings will arise to destroy the religious system of Babylon. Rev 17:16.
In Acts
11:27-30, we read of a prophet called Agabus who predicted a global famine. From historical records, the global famine
did happen in AD 45/46 and lasted till AD 65.
As a result of the prophecy, the believers in Antioch began to collect money
to send relief to the Jerusalem church.
And Paul participated in this first collection by bringing the relief
funds together with Barnabas.
From several of Paul’s letters, we learned that Paul further appealed for relief funds from other churches in Macedonia and Achaia (Rom 15:25-28) and the Corinthian church (1 Cor 16:1-4; 2 Cor 8:9). Since the famine lasted almost 2 decades, Paul also called for prudent spending in order to have resources to help one another to mitigate this famine crisis. (1 Cor 7:26). Even though the Macedonian church was also in need, Paul commended her giving in displaying their genuine love for the brethren.
The appeals
of Paul, mentioned fairly frequent in Scripture, presented us with a principle that
we ought to encourage and instruct the church to give in times of crisis. And all the more to prepare when it is looming
and prophesized in Scripture, for example in Rev 18.
Furthermore, our Lord had mentioned the various tests of our genuine faith and faithfulness to care for His people in such times in the 4 parables mentioned in Matt 24 and 25. The sheer number of 4 parables should tell us how emphatic is our Lord’s warning on this same test of faithfulness.
We are seeing the following unprecedented adverse economic conditions right now in congregating to form the perfect storm of global economic collapse. Can this be the judgment of all wealth as predicted in Rev 18 ?
Supply
chain disruption and distortion.
Soaring
global inflation.
Rising
interest rates.
Catastrophic
food shortages.
Sovereign
debt crisis of more than half of the world’s poorer nations.
Regardless if it is the said judgment, it is prudent to prepare. For brethren in some countries such as Sri Lanka, Laos and Pakistan, their nations are staring at bankruptcy right now. If we prepare and the crisis never comes, we are none the poorer, but if we do not prepare and the crisis comes, we will be helpless.
The present global supply chain is complex in nature being built up over the years after the second world war. It has been simultaneously strained at all nodes in the last 2 years due to global forcible lockdowns. Usually some nodes may be disrupted due to natural disasters such as earthquake hitting a major city or regional wars affecting energy and commodity supplies, but the supply chain can self regulate to compensate for this loss with supply from other nodes. But this time, the whole world went into lockdown and disrupted all nodes. The sudden lockdown, subsequent easing of restrictions and the return back to restrictions to contain different waves of the virus variants further compounded the crisis.
Covid 19 has disrupted the demand and supply at all nodes. And also distorted demand and supply. Distortion affects demand and supply of final products at the onset while disruption affects the demand and supply of the supply chain nodes that go into producing the final product. People, who normally go to movies and eat out, will stay home instead and spend on goods instead of services as a result of the global lockdown. This is an example of a forcible distortion. Manufacturing and logistical systems are designed to run at high utilization and they are now forcibly disrupted too. In this unprecedented pandemic control, all the three abovementioned factors come together to create this perfect storm of global supply chain crisis.
To compound the current problems are the looming sovereign debt crisis of emerging economies which represent more than half of the nations of the world, inflation caused by all kinds of monetary stimuli from quantitative easing, and the Russia-Ukraine war disrupting a great proportion of global gas and fertilizer supplies. I foresee the supply chain problem to drag on for years and many nations will be unstable. It is the rate of inflation that is frightening for we do not know how quickly inflation will go up and further distort or disrupt the supply and demand.
Postscript : 29 Nov 2022
Glad to find a video of a famous economist, Jim Rickards, explaining so well about the current supply chain disruption.
In Matt 24, our Lord gave 4 signs to His disciples when He was asked about His coming and end of age.
Birth pains of calamitous events – wars and rumors of wars; famine; earthquakes.
Adverse events in the church – persecution; reduction in numbers; gospel will be preached in the whole world.
Great distress in Jerusalem with the coming of the Antichrist.
Unnatural cosmic events.
We have been in the last days for the past 2000 years. When we see wars, famines and earthquakes happening that are of biblical proportion and with exponential frequency unlike in the past centuries, it is very likely to be the first sign. When the church starts to encounter persecution in all nations and many false prophets emerge to deceive the church to compromise, many will turn away from the faith. The faithful will be betrayed and will also leave the deceived church. The faithful will then disperse and form the small and less conspicuous Philadelphia local churches in those days and will be used mightily to preach the gospel to all corners in the whole world, together with the suffering Smyrna local churches. For those who are left in the other mainstream churches, especially the Ephesus churches, their love will grow cold and wickedness will increase. That will be the second sign. When the third sign of the appearance of the abomination that causes desolation comes, the end will be very near at the door. Immediately after this distress, the heavenly bodies will be shaken, the sun will be darkened and the stars will fall from the sky. And our Lord will return. Hallelujah !
The current Russia-Ukraine war may cause a global catastrophic famine. And it may fuel many smaller wars as the poorer nations grapple with the looming sovereign debt crisis. Meanwhile we see the mainstream churches compromising with the state on vaccine mandate without even questioning if it is against God’s designed order. The western capitalism states are likely to be coerced to accept all kinds of abomination in the coming years due to pressure from Babylon (America) since they all grow rich because of her. The churches will be persecuted then for her defiance. Many false prophets will come on stage to deceive many then to compromise. I believe the Lord’s judgment stated in Rev 18:17-19 will happen before the third sign after which the Antichrist will appear on the world stage as “savior” of the world in resolving many of the problems plaguing the nations after the Lord’s destruction of all wealth. The current situation of high inflation, unprecedented supply chain disruption, sovereign debt crisis, and continual quantitative easing may set the initial stage for the eventual global economic collapse.
In my book,
The Coming Economic Flood, I stated that the Babylonian alliance of nations is
unmistakably the western capitalism states who all grow rich because of Babylon
(America represented by New York City). In
these two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, we can see clearly their concerted
effort together to implement the mRNA vaccine mandate exclusively and the
sanctions against Russia. (Though other
nations also implemented the vaccine mandate,
they allowed the use of all WHO approved vaccines including the killed
virus vaccines, unlike these western capitalism states.) We can easily identify these nations closely
aligned with Babylon.
Two small nations stand out in taking the vaccine mandate lead for they often claim that they punch above their weight. Both tried to prove to their Babylonian leader that they could subdue their people easily to accept governmental control through digitization technologies for the greater good. Never mind even if the vaccines are not meant for the better good and probably harmful for they only intend to test out if the official dissemination of information, through official propaganda and alternative media censorship, is effective enough to garner popular support and acceptance. The successful roll-out of the vaccine mandate proved beyond reasonable doubt that such control in future can be achieved easily for now. One day, the mark of the beast will be implemented and such prior experiment is necessary now to test out the acceptance of the populace. Another piece of evidence is the heavy investments in data centers and digitization technologies of the global companies of Babylon in these two small nations which is necessary to facilitate future implementation of behavioral control of the populace.
Another development in the looming “economic flood” is that this Babylonian alliance is finally caught between “the rock and the hard place”. Since 2001, these western capitalism states have been relying on quantitative easing to tide over chronic budget deficits. Either they continue to print money and risk runaway inflation which is finally happening now, or raise interest rates on a quicker pace and join all nations in economic hardship. The likely choice, in my opinion, is the former path but it will worsen the looming debt crisis faced by more than half of the nations in the world. Sri Lanka and Pakistan in Asia have already defaulted on their debts joining Lebanon, Turkey, Africa and South America. The supply chain disruption has already caused much shortage havoc. Just read in the news that the US parents are desperate to find baby formula amid shortage. Either way, it is economic hardship all the same eventually.
I do not know what will be the trigger that will cause the economic flood or collapse prophesized in Rev 18:17 and James 5:1-5, but it will surely happen. The command to come out of Babylon (the Babylonian alliance of nations and that includes the city states that make their living by the sea) may be literal after all. Rev 18:4,8,17-19.
How will
our Lord judge Babylon by destroying all wealth in one hour as revealed in Rev
18:17 ?
I am
convinced that Babylon
is America and is represented by New York City. It is the haunt of every unclean bird, animal
and spirit. Many nations grow rich
because of her. She leads the global
alliance of governments (kings of the earth), global companies and all small
and medium enterprises in the global supply chain (merchants) and the global
shipping lines and ports cum financial centers (those who make their living by
the sea) engaged in globalized trade.
Rev 18. When God judges Babylon,
these three groups allied with her will weep as described in Rev 18.
The current
lockdown in many nations as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic has disrupted the
supply chain badly and the energy crisis is compounding the problem
further. Prior to the pandemic, the US
was already staring at the collapse of the financial system and had to do QE to
the tune of trillions of dollars. The
pandemic induced economic slowdown was the good excuse to do so because the other
major economies would also face similar economic slowdown and would have done
the same, and the dollar would be relatively unscathed.
In 2020, the income of 50% of all American workers was USD 34,612 or less. While the elites and their corporations are amassing so much wealth through manipulation of the financial system with all kinds of tools such as QE, repo, reverse repo, bond purchases and backstopping of all bonds. The poor and rich divide could not have been greater at all times. The current supply chain disruption and the energy crisis will cause the relative poor further pain through high inflation. The financial collapse will happen sooner or later and chaos will erupt. The elites have the most to lose if it happens. So it is better for the elites to be prepared now through using political, financial and military tools to prevent the collapse and to control the relative dissenting poor. We are actually seeing such preparation as the US and her allies continue to make use of digitization technologies to control the supply chain and pass discriminatory laws to exert total control over the population in the name of protecting public health. (In contrast, China invests in the physical production of every link in the supply chain of products and energy.)
Charles Hugh Smith in his blog explained that the current exponential bull market run is caused by the Fed incentivizing the biggest gamblers that they will be bailed out, should they somehow lose, by offering them unlimited lines of credit and eliminate transparency in market pricing to mask their losses. This implicit guarantee that any bet on markets lofting higher will be a winning gamble rewards those making the riskiest bets. All the risks piling up as trillions of dollars are leveraged into ever larger can’t-lose bets have not evaporated, they’ve been transferred to the financial system. So when risk exceeds the carrying capacity of the system, it will be the system which implodes, not just punters’ riskiest, most highly leveraged bets.
Since the Lord has already foretold that He will judge Babylon by destroying all wealth in Rev 18:17, it will happen. Governments will not be able to control trigger events like an earthquake hitting a major financial city, or solar flare disrupting all transformers, or global coordinated cyber attack, etc. How will our Lord destroy all wealth ? Will it be a system implosion ? Wil it be a calamitious natural disaster ? How can we weather this event and even rejoice over His judgment ? Rev 18:19.
This is the summary of another article on preparation in
anticipation of the US dollar collapse, Dollar Collapse Preparation Plan, by Mr
Jim Rickards. His free report can be
found in https://dailyreckoning.com.
There are four scenarios that can usher in the collapse
– inflation, deflation, market collapse
and financial warfare.
Inflation
In the scenario of inflation, it is simply the value of your
money is diminishing. Between 1977 to
1981, the US dollar lost half of its value in just five years. The losers will be those who hold dollar
deposit, insurance, retirement income, pensions, annuities and savings. That is, any kind of fixed dollar amount is
going to devalue in the event of inflation.
Presently with so much printing of money by the Federal Reserve and yet
there seems to be very little inflation.
But it can come suddenly and we have to be ready for it.
Deflation
Deflation is the opposite of inflation. Money actually worth more while other asset
classes lose value. But governments hate deflation because the value of their
debts goes up. For people who borrow a
lot from the bank to buy houses for example, and the value of the houses go
down, they will be caught with margin
call from the bank.
Market Collapse
We had seen three such collapses in 1998, 2001 and
2008. In 2008, people lost 50% of the
value of their stocks and houses. And it came very quickly and almost out of
nowhere. Contagion can happen very
quickly. When the subprime loans were
having problem, the US hedge funds were selling Japanese stocks to raise cash
for margin call. That is the kind of
contagion which cause other stock markets to suffer as well.
Financial Warfare
Inflation, deflation and market collapse have happened
before. But financial warfare is
new. The British ever blockaded France
during the Napoleonic wars to cut off French access to imported goods and war
materials. In the current environment,
states can use stocks, bonds, commodities, derivatives and foreign exchange to
fight other enemy states. Financial
warfare can also include cyber-warfare to hack computer systems. Today, we are
so digitized that if these computer systems running the economy are hacked,
everything can be brought to a halt.
Sidestepping The
Crisis
In 1920, the Weimar Republic of Germany was the best example of a major industrialized economy that faced hyperinflation in history. A load of bread, which used to cost one Reich mark, eventually cost 4 trillion marks. Outrageous, isn’t it ? One German guy, Hugo Stinnes, made a fortune instead and became the richest German then in 1922. He had the right assets in energy and transportation. If you have these hard assets such as factories, you don’t get wiped out. So how do we diversify ? We can start with 10 to 20% of our investment portfolio in gold. Gold is physical and not digital and cannot be wiped out unlike being in the digital accounts in banks. Gold is a very good insurance policy. Gold should be kept in independent storage places and not in banks in case banks get closed down. Keep some cash as part of the portfolio. It is a good deflation hedge. Gold and cash are hedges against inflation and deflation respectively. Cash can also give us opportunity to buy important assets at the right price. We can keep money in the bank up to the insured limit only. Investing in energy and transportation assets are great hedges against inflation.
