Puxi, The Bund and Pudong Lujiazui, Shanghai, China
"New World Order"
As 'The West' continues slip-sliding away,
a new civilization reaches for the clouds...
by Bill Bonner
'Mankind'… has no aim, no idea, no plan, any more than the family of butterflies or orchids. 'Mankind' is a zoological expression, or an empty word. … I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history which can only be kept up by shutting one’s eyes to the overwhelming multitude of the facts, the drama of a number of mighty Cultures, each springing with primitive strength from the soil of a mother region to which it remains firmly bound throughout its whole life-cycle; each stamping its material, its mankind, in its own image; each having its own idea, its own passions, its own life, will and feeling, its own death."
~ Oswald Spengler
Poitou, France - "It’s big. It’s grand. It’s pretentious. Does it have any real world meaning? We’re talking about today’s theme – about the slip-sliding of ‘The West.’ After more than 1,000 years, western civilization – or, what Spengler called “Faustian culture” – is facing a serious challenge. The BRICS…the developing countries of Muslims, Slavs, Chinese and Africans…are jockeying for leading roles. They’re growing faster. They’re buying more, spending more, and saving more. They’re still benefiting from fossil fuels. They’re dodging sanctions. They’re making new alliances…and finding new sources of financial aid and technical guidance. They’re resisting NATO in the Ukraine…and denying the West’s moral superiority in Israel. They are forging a new world order…one without the USA at the top of it. Does it matter?
Place Your Bets: Warren Buffett says you should never bet against America. But never is a long time…even for Buffett. What’s this? MarketWatch: "Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway cash pile hits record $157 bln with deals scarce."
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway ended the third quarter with a record cash pile and reported a deeper overall loss due to weakness in the stock market…You’re either long or you’re short. You own it, or you don’t own it. You bet on America’s businesses…or you hold cash. Buffett is now betting against America. He’s ‘short’ its stocks (not owning them) by a wider margin than ever before.
What to make of it? And what to make of the bond market? US bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. Banks, insurance and retirement funds hold big wads of US paper…debt, that is. Corporate treasuries, non-profits, university and hospital endowments – almost the entire capital structure of stocks, bonds and real estate is directly or indirectly supported by US bonds.
So what happens when investors lose faith in the issuer? What happens when the credit quality declines? What happens when a nation…an empire…or a whole ‘civilization’ hits the skids? CNN reports: "Moody’s sends a warning to America: Your last AAA credit rating is at risk." The United States is one step closer to losing its last perfect credit rating after Moody’s Investors Service changed the outlook of the nation’s debt to negative on Friday after markets closed. Even the prospect of a US downgrade could hurt Americans’ investment portfolios, make it even more expensive for them to borrow money, and make it more costly for the government to pay off its debts.
Decline and Fall: Let’s return to Oswald Spengler. We’ve heard of his ‘Decline of the West,” published in 1918, all our lives. But we have never read it. Dan reports that it is unreadable…written in heavy, academic German, which translation scarcely improved.
But since the core of Spengler’s pensée corresponds to our own, we take the man for a genius. The idea of it is that history proceeds not by chronological eras…but by cultural or ‘civilizational’ epochs. Each ‘civilization’ is like an organism - unthinking, unprogrammed, uncontrollable - with a beginning…and an end. The caboose end of ‘the West’ is nowhere in sight. But the powerful engine went by years ago.
We mentioned American politics yesterday. It is the “same stupid clown car with a different driver,” says Representative Dusty Johnson. Democracy works tolerably well when it is done at a local level. But it is not scalable.
In the famous painting by Norman Rockwell above, a working man stands up at a town meeting and says his piece. It could be about the new school…about moving the town dump…and an ordinance that bans spitting on the sidewalk – whatever it is, the man can have an informed opinion on the matter. But suppose he is one of 150 million voters? And suppose he has to choose his candidates from TV ‘debates’ and mainstream media coverage? Suppose he is asked his opinion on AI…or the need for a new fighter plane…or a quarter-point increase in the Fed Funds rate? What are the odds that he will have a coherent, well-informed view?
The larger the scale, the dumber the policies…and the more real policy making is hijacked by elites for their own purposes. Who benefits from America’s non-stop wars? Who benefits from DEI/LBGQT+ spending? Who benefits from anti-racism indoctrination…from tariffs…from laws, rules, and regulations – often thousands of pages long…costing trillions of dollars – that no one (save the insiders) has even read?
The result is an unaffordable, corrupt and incompetent leadership. Every ‘Europeanized’ government – including Japan – is now deeply in debt. Each spends more than it can afford. Each has made promises that cannot be fulfilled. And each muddles along making things worse with every move. How much faith can you have in such a government? How much credit can you give it? More to come…"
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