It is the crowd that is asleep. The crowd that is in denial.
Some in the crowd are unpersuadable. These are the Jacobins and 21st century Robespierre’s supporting their varietal “Committee for Public Safety”. They are already lost. They’ll only come round as Robespierre finally did when he caught the blade’s gleam as it raced towards his neck.
But there are others in the crowd. Others that would be receptive to corrective action if they understood the dire reality we all face. But they’re steeped in apathy, indifference, or self absorption. It is these people in the crowd that need to be awakened and sobered.
And it can be done.
I have seen glimpses of the rheumy eyed clear white. I’ve seen people begin to recognize the hitherto uncommon and lengthy hardship our society has been in and ask themselves about how things don’t seem to work anymore, how things are more expensive, how it’s harder to get even the simple things done. As they ask themselves, they follow up with the inevitable and wonder if things will ever get better. And its dawning on many, that the answer to that may be “No”. More of the crowd must be awakened.
So it’s with the seizing of Cypriot assets that has me wondering if this alarm bell will jar the masses. We’ll see. This is how I see it unfolding.
I know I’m not alone in suspecting our current “leaders” capable of following the Cypriot approach. The next step we’ll see in the sequence to nationalization will be application of the same approach in larger countries and larger banks. Somewhere along the line it will take place on a national bank. The tumult that follows every seizure will be spread throughout the media ad nauseum. Scenes of fires, brutality, and fractured buildings, windows and bones will visit television screens and computer monitors in living rooms, homes, and offices throughout the world.
Accompanying the nausea will be arguments, made in America, about the dire need to help the public secure its assets. That the poor, elderly, and weak are vulnerable and their assets need to be secured and it’s the Federal Government’s job to do it.
There will also be concurrent discussions revolving around the thesis that the U.S. Treasuries are the safest investment in the world. Absent in these discussion will be the mentioning of the $17,000,000,000,000 national debt.
“Anyone that doesn’t have his or her assets secured in U.S. Treasuries is a fool.” will be said firstly as a simple intimation. Then it will be followed by strong urging. Ultimately, the zeitgeist narrative will change and it will be explicitly stated. So much so that there will be hearings about how the public needs to be protected and the Guaranteed Retirement Accounts will be discussed. The GRA’s essentially mandate that everyone must invest in the government Treasuries for their own good. In effect this is the seizing of your assets.
Once you’re mandated to invest in U.S. Treasuries, you’ll be funding the U.S. debt which can be leveraged to acquire more debt. From the Washington Times:
“Nationalizing the personal retirement accounts would allow our government to borrow even more from its largest debtor (U.S. citizens) without further devaluing the currency.”
The Treasuries are the “safest investment” because the U.S. has never defaulted, but it’s only the safest to the point that it isn’t. Once the payment on the debt meets the interest rates historical average the service on the debt will be crippling.
Think increasing the debt can go on in perpetuity? Even if you are funding it? Me neither. Something has to give, and that will be American prosperity, standard of living, and peace etc. Society at large as we currently know it, will change and not for the better.
Paranoid? Perhaps. But as I heard somewhere from someone, “It’s only paranoia until it happens, then it’s prescience”*. Hopefully it’s not too late, and we’re not already too far over the cusp.
* I think I heard this or read this paranoid line before, unless I’m imagining that I did. However, I can’t recall the source. I think it might be Rick Olsen, but I’m not positive.