Friday, July 28, 2017

Doug Casey: Trump Will be Blamed When the US Economy Falters

This is a view I see quite often. The premise being that those who are part of the entrenched system who don't like Donald Trump will make sure that the next time the economy falters, Trump will get the blame. 


Some go even further and suggest these same forces will actually try to encourage the economy to falter so they can blame Trump. Here is the link to the video interview on Kitco. Below is the interview summary as shown on Kitco.com.

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When The Economy Fails, Trump Will Be The One Blamed: Doug Casey - PART 2/3

“[President Donald] Trump is not a Libertarian, he is an authoritarian,” says best-selling author Doug Casey in part two of his interview with Kitco News, critiquing the U.S. president’s track record. “The good news about Trump is that he has some business instincts; so he’s trying to cut expenses, he’s trying to cut regulation, that’s the bright side. On the not-so-bright side, he is playing chicken with Syria and North Korea -- the last thing we can use at this point is nuclear war.” Casey went on to note that ‘praetorian’ agencies including the CIA, members of the financial world, academia and the media all ‘hate’ Trump and are actively working against him. “So how is this going to work out? I don’t know, but when the economy inevitably does collapse, and I still think it will happen this year, he will blamed for it -- so I think it is going to be an ugly situation.” Watch PART 1 here. (show less)

My added comments: The whole landscape has been altered with Trump in office. This makes it much harder to try and project what may happen. On the one hand, if the economy does falter (or worse moves into a full crisis mode) under Trump, the public may very well blame him for it. That could then impact markets and financial system stability in general. 


On the other hand, a dynamic has evolved around Trump such that his supporters (and a very large segment of the total US population) are so distrustful of the "entrenched system" such as the mainstream media etc. that they are likely to place the blame instead on those who they think are trying to subvert him. That could lead to its own set of risks to systemic stability. 

Who the public blames is absolutely very important in any kind of serious faltering of the economy. It will directly impact who the public trusts to try and fix the problems. They are not likely to be interested in listening to those they believe caused the mess.


Looking at this situation today, it appears that we should all really hope that the economy does not falter (and of course that it does not collapse into a new crisis). It is hard to imagine that scenario ending up well for either the pro Trump forces or the anti Trump forces. The most likely result now would be to ramp up even further the finger pointing and distrust on both sides. Jim Rickards told us recently here that what we have now is "tantamount to a civil war." Under economic crisis conditions, I can only imagine how much worse this could get.

If the economy does start to falter, it is legitimate to question whether an already fragile monetary and financial system can hold up under the stress with all this political fighting going on. All I see coming from that is a lose-lose scenario where everyone gets hurt. Perhaps the forces at war seemingly every day politically over all this should at least pause to think about that possibility?

Perhaps a better approach would be to try and set aside political differences and start working together on ideas about how to reform the monetary system if and when the time comes that would be needed. There are good people with good ideas on this. Perhaps we should give them a chance to explain those in a public forum. I would love to see a forum on credible ideas to reform the monetary system that allowed the proposals that exist now (like we have covered here and here) to be presented followed by a panel discussion of experts coming from a variety of points of view on the pros and cons of the various ideas.
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Added note: Andrew Maguire & BullionCoin Update: I had the opportunity to sit in on a pre launch webinar today (Friday July 28th) that featured both Andrew Maguire and also the CEO of ABX, Tom Coughlin. While there was not a lot of new information that we have not already reported, there were a few tidbits:

- they described the launch of BullionCoin as "imminent", but prefer not to give an exact day for launch yet

- Andrew Maguire repeated during the discussion that there is significant institutional interest in BullionCoin and also said it is the most exciting new product in the gold and silver space he has seen during his 40 years of working in it. The enthusiasm for BullionCoin was very evident by all the participants in the webinar

- Andrew Maguire talked about BullionCoin in terms of adding tons of additional demand for physical gold and silver monthly once the product is launched

- they stressed that a lot of thought went into designing BullionCoin to create an incentive for everyone who participates in it to win by promoting the use of it as money and to encourage velocity turnover for the coins

- I did not hear anything during the webinar that would cause me to change any information reported in our recent article on this

Andrew Maguire also added these 3 comments to his Twitter feed today:

#1 - implies more details coming soon
#2 - suggests gold is about to move higher
#3 - suggests gold is about to move higher

More information when it becomes available.

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