We seem to be heading into similar territory. This last decade has been a lost decade. Yet they seem to trumpet how wonderful the financial booms have been, ever since. Yes, exactly! Which ones? The only booms happened to the banksters laughing all the way to their banks bailed out by an ignorant taxpayer led by Central Bankers cartel and incompetent Politicians.
Is it any wonder that people do not trust the powers that be or the ones apparently in charge? Most people have wandered towards the far left or the far right. The political centre ass-licking their masters' whims are demonstrating their loyalties don't lie with the people who voted them to power. The far left and the far right also seem to have more in common than not. Perhaps the political curve is doing a full circle, where the far left and the far right extend further out while bending and curving towards each other.
Economy has been shrinking rapidly ever since, weighed down by opaque/hidden toxic bad debts and unresolved corporate scandals. Yet stockmarkets, property, and other asset classes have sky-rocketed without any fundamentals to back up those prices. Somehow, the real economy and the shadow economy have become inversely proportional.
Creative accounting techniques might hide the truths for a while, but not forever. Toxic contamination eventually blows out… Deeper you hide those, bigger the blowout!
Yes, Sweden Is A Domino[1]
These elections are, obviously, confusing for the mainstream. The only thing any of them really know is that they despise the "far right".
The mainstream has walled off all discourse into these neat little boxes. The reason a far simpler explanation can't be put forward, one that encompasses all these entrenching passions, is the stink of Economics.
There will always be extremes. These aren't typically palatable options because most people want to be in the center[2]. It's only when the center doesn't or can't offer plausible, sensible solutions and ideas that extremes however distasteful can become the only realistic options. Swedes, as Italians or Brazilians, know that meaningful change must today be forced on the reluctant political establishment of "both" sides.
If the status quo won't even admit there is a problem, the problem is insurmountable by usual means.
Time and again we see this same pattern all over the world. Economists will have you believe macro history in Europe began with the ECB's NIRP in 2014 or QE in 2015. Things are mostly positive since, and in 2017 they were more positive than usual. This is a false sense of economic progress because it omits the wider context that instead declares how each economy, save a few like Germany, has actually shrunk.
In fact, the "good times" that began in the second half of 2016 actually prove the opposite case of Europe's presumed boom. It has been thoroughly lackluster by historical standards. What that says is Europe's economy, Sweden within the paradigm, is stuck in the same condition as it has been over the last eleven years. It swings between downturns, always "unexpected", and unusually mild upturns. Nothing more than that.
There is, by virtue of such little absolute progress last year, a clear ceiling on economic growth which is devastating in its own right. What that proves is this economic shrinking is permanent, or at least so long as the status quo is maintained, the one that gets all its economic narratives from the local central bank office.
Following repeated downturns often quite severe this is where the political story isn’t really about the far right or the far left. Itss about Economists who refuse to allow they really, really don’t know what they are doing.
In macro terms, we know where this goes. The economy appears to take a step forward, in 2017 employing a slightly elongated gait, but then it falls backward. The result is both an economy that ends up going nowhere as well as repeated confusion among the general population wondering where this boom could possibly be. Mistrust is the least surprising element in all of this.
The real danger is in how all this plays out under the increased social pressures of a shrunken, chronically sick economy where nobody trusts anyone because the status quo just refuses to accept that reality. Central bankers and Economists would rather the world burn than admit they’ve screwed everything up so badly.
The way out is, therefore, right where it's always been: central banks. Not in the next big central bank idea (that's just recycling what Japan has already failed at), but in cleaning house and rethinking the whole thing from the ground up. The only question is which breaks first: Economists' collective conscience, or the political structure?
Once may be random (though it was a really, really big one). Twice is a pattern. Four times? Unassailable proof.
[1] Yes, Sweden Is A Domino
[2] Centrism is Dead
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