Monday
The thrust toward ever-greater global engagement was moving ahead strongly until the Covid lockdowns. The effect of the lockdowns was to terminate it.
It was the fracturing of the world’s supply lines that began the fragmenting of the global economy. Yes, without a doubt governments can stop an economy, but no, they cannot start it. Only small business can do that and the market is still busy licking its government-inflicted wounds.
As importantly, the forcible jabbing of the population by almost all governments, despite the loud ringing of multiple medical and human rights alarm bells, began the breakdown of trust. A significant and growing percentage of the population, not just the family and friends of the dead and injured, now actively distrusts their government and health system.
Then along came the latest U.S. display of ineptitude in a proxy war against Russia. It constituted one military defeat too many. It must be clearly understood that it is not just Ukraine that has been defeated, it is the whole of N.A.T.O. It would have seemed unthinkable just a few years back, but the era of U.S. dominance is now behind us. More than the loss of the world’s military and economic hegemon, is the loss of the world’s moral authority.
Sic transit gloria mundi (Thus passes the glory of the world)
The ever-greater concentration of power and wealth has peaked. The world, and its constituent economic, institutional, political and national parts, has begun a fragmentation process. It will develop into an across-the-board disintegration that will happen with bewildering rapidity. The great empire of the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 almost overnight in chaotic confusion. It will be as nothing compared to the Great Fragmentation.
The fall of the western Roman Empire resulted in ‘the Dark Ages’, which lasted for around 600 years. The population of Europe and the Mediterranean area collapsed.
That slowly turned around and was followed by an almost 1000 year trend toward an incremental consolidation of economic, state and political power (globalization). That was the period that just ended.
People build civilizations; governments destroy them.
The time to start rebuilding is before the collapse becomes absolute.
The first step in reversing the situation is to get Gold circulating again. The lack of honest money was also the cause of the decline of all prior civilizations – including the Roman.
It is too late to avoid a painful reckoning, but we don’t have to hit rock bottom.