Guest Post: The Global Economy – It’s All About Increasing Leverage
by Charles Hugh Smith
ZeroHedge.com
07/10/2012
If the global State/finance Empire can’t increase systemic leverage, it will implode.
If we look at the global economy with unclouded eyes, we reach this conclusion: “This whole thing is about leverage.” If leverage doesn’t increase, the system implodes. But since collateral is disappearing from the global economy like sand castles in a rising tide, and disposable income has stagnated, there is no foundation for more leverage.
As a result, the State/finance cartel has only one choice: increase leverage by whatever means are left. There are only two:
1. Allow banks to claim phantom assets as capital/reserves
2. Lower interest rates so stagnant income can leverage ever greater quantities of debt
The State/finance Empire and its army of academic toadies (economists) must cloak this reliance on leverage from the citizenry, lest they grasp the precariousness of the entire financial system. As the economic Establishment is discredited by reality (that their sputtering reflation policies have come at an unbearable cost is now undeniable), their attempts to discredit their critics become increasingly comic: only PhD economists in the employ of the Empire are qualified to comment on the Empire’s policies, etc.
The Rest…HERE