When the Dragon Comes

Three months.

Those two words have kept repeating themselves in my head, day after day, for over a week now:

Three months.

What brought it on?  Mike Ruppert, the fucker.  Found his latest "warning" video via Dave at Decline of the Empire.  Dave, for his part, thinks it's bullshit.  He may be right, but...

Ruppert's warning?  We "have until July at the latest."  For what, you ask?  Why, nothing less than the next stock market crash.  Yep, another boy crying "wolf," folks.  Nothing to see here, move along... move along.

Right?

Well, I guess.  Only, I can't shake the feeling that he might be right.  Ruppert bases his claims on the fact that second quarter earnings reports are due out in July.  The second quarter of 2011 includes the period of the disaster in Japan, the world's third largest economy.  He expects the reports will be especially dismal -- dismal enough, even, to send investors scurrying away from the markets in droves.  Dow 6,000, or something like that.  The Next Leg Down.

Now I was, in all honesty, not particularly ruffled when I first listened to him.  After all, this is a guy who charges people for disaster porn.  Kind of.  He's been right before.  His video Collapse was, well, riveting.  But, as Dave reminded us, Ruppert makes his living broadcasting "alerts" from time to time.  So, there.

Nothing to worry about.

Then I hear that the Fed's second round of Quantitative Easing, or QE2, is set to end June-July-ish.  What does that mean?  It means the stream of hundreds of billlions of dollars that are being created and funneled into the banksters' coffers, which in turn are largely responsible for the current stock market bubble, will end.  The phony bull market will have to fend for itself.  Unless, as most prescient watchers suspect, Bernanke will proceed with QE3.  This will have the effect of creating even more excess "liquidity" in an economy already drowning in increasingly worthless dollars, possibly leading to a hyperinflationary scenario.  We are already seeing rampant inflation in the commodities markets (watch the price of corn for a few days -- you'll be amazed at its wild fluctuations), even though Bernanke does not count food and energy prices when he calculates the rate of "core" inflation; the latter, it seems, is mostly to do with the price of iPods, which are apparently not expensive enough.

Move along, move along.

THEN there is the matter of the Debt Ceiling, which we are going to slam against rather presently -- May, I think.  There, I believe we are screwed either way.  If the debt ceiling is raised, then our debt continues past Mars on its way to the asteroid belt, and our already shaky credit rating will likely take a hit, making the cost of borrowing even more onerous, leading of course to insane additional amounts of debt.  If the debt ceiling is not raised, then more programs will be cut, driving down GDP (government spending accounts for much of our GDP these days) and making life miserable for the thousands of public sector workers who would presently find themselves out of a job -- not to mention the cuts to programs that many poorer Americans (that is, nearly everybody) rely on.  So, yes, "Fooked, laddie," either way.

All this will play out against a backdrop of insane unrest in pretty much every country from Morocco to Pakistan, where we are engaged in three wars, and where most of our oil comes from.

And all this will play out during the North Atlantic Hurricane Season.

And all this will play out by August.

So, yeah.  Me=Worried Man.  And I have talked to absolutely no one about it.  Why?  Other than the fact that I am probably worried over nothing, there is this:  no one wants to hear it.  They really, really don't.  I think they are sick to death of my warnings, my troubled looks, my strange behaviors.  But here, in the blogosphere, anything goes, right?  Here, on my own blog, I can say what I want.  So here, now, I will say this:  prepare, while you still can.  I hope I am wrong, and if I am, it will not be the first time.  It surely will not be the last.  But I believe things are coming to a head, and right soon.  We are about to experience the Next Leg Down.  It will be bad.  Not "Mad Max" bad, but bad.  I may lose my job.  Many of my friends and family members may lose their jobs.  I hope it does not play out the way it is looking to, as I am not ready, and will not be ready in three months. 

But there it is.  Do with it what you will.  Ignore, laugh, question, I don't care.  I guess I just really needed to get the worry off my chest, even if it is to the great faceless Interlink. 

     "Perhaps the King under the Mountain is forging gold," said another.  "It is long since he went North.  It is time the songs began to prove themselves again."

     "Which king?" said another with a grim voice.  "As like as not it is the marauding fire of the Dragon, the only king under the Mountain we have ever known."

     "You are always foreboding gloomy things!" said the others.  "Anything from floods to poisoned fish.  Think of something cheerful!"...

     ...But there was still a company of archers that held their ground among the burning houses.  Their captain was Bard, grim-voiced and grim-faced, whose friends had accused him of prophesying floods and poisoned fish, though they knew his worth and courage...

     -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, Chapter XIV:  "Fire and Water"

Keep your bows handy, and your quivers full.

Wassail, friends. -- C.