Economic Crash news from a friend. Met a smart guy in Airport a few years ago, and we hit it off quite nicely.  He sends me a copy of his newsletter that goes out to small crowd.  He provides a unique and insightful  prospective on  cabal/elitist influenced economic events.  Enjoy! As my first missive of the new year, I want to draw your attention to two excellent summaries of last years alternative news:  first, here is a link to the ZeroHedge year end report (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-31/2018-greatest-hits-most-popular-articles-past-year-and-look-ahead), which lists the 20 most popular stories they reported last year (a good overview of what the sheeple are interested in, so a summary of current social memes).  ZH has become my primary source for news, as I no longer watch TV.   Their views on the world are quite accurate, making them one of the best Economic Observers available, and at 1,000,000+ page views per article, one of the most popular alternative news web sites.   Also very worthwhile is the Year in Review by David Collum, (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-22/david-collums-2018-year-review-year-everything-changed), a chemistry professor at Cornell who is also a very alert observer of world geopolitics, and a very highly educated man.  His article is long, takes an hour at least to read through it all (763 cited sources), but is humorous and entertaining as well as educational; must be a blast to have him lecture a class.   As my views are developed from the ideas reported in these and similar sources (Moon of Alabama, Global Research, Natural News) , my views consequently match up with them in most areas.  One important meme which is not well covered in either of those sources is the concept of energy supply and demand (do a search on Adam Taggart for more on this issue, and see this (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-28/brexit-stage-one-europes-slow-burn-energy-collapse) for a good overview article).  The progress of the last 100 years was based on the availability of cheap energy, mostly in the form of low priced oil.  However, we have now reached the point where we are consuming the oil so fast (90 million barrels per day) that the industry is not able to find and develop new sources fast enough to replace the rapidly depleting existing fields.  Mexico's oil production has dropped by 80% over the last 8 years; you can argue that corruption can account for the poor performance, but the depletion is real, and new, carefully managed investment in the big Mexican fields will never bring production back to levels achieved mere years ago.  The Alaskan fields are so depleted that the pipeline will soon have to be shut down, as the oil flow is so slow that the oil is now in danger of freezing in transit.  So what we have now is only higher cost oil is being developed and produced, such that the oil industry needs an oil price above $75 per barrel to break even, while the economy and consumers need an oil price below $50 per barrel to maintain their standard of living on their meager wages, or what is left of said wages after all the taxes the government steals.  The French, who pay $9 per gallon for gasoline, have informed Macron that they cannot survive in the current economic regime.  We have also reached a point where capital now has more capacity to produce 'stuff' than the population can afford to buy.  This is most clearly reflected in the share buybacks which have driven stock prices to record highs, even as corporate profitability has peaked and begun to crash (here is an analysis of Apple's 9% stock crash yesterday  (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-03/kass-lessons-learned-apples-collapse), and a view of that move's impact on global currency markets (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-02/multiple-fx-pairs-suddenly-flash-crashing).  Since Apple is one of the bell cows (FANGs: Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google) which together contributed 80% of the S&P's gains since 2008, there is unlikely to be a clearer bell rung to signify that we have reached peak financialization of our fake economy.   Increasing our unpayable debt is merely borrowing from future demand, but I guess it doesn't matter if you have no plan to ever pay it back.  The expansion of industrial capacity was facilitated by money printing by the worlds' major central banks (Fed, Bank of England, Deutsche Bank, Bank of Japan), who have ponied up $40 trillion in zero or negative interest loans since 2008, most of which went into the major stock bonuses; hardly any went to build productive manufacturing capacity, since industry is already overbuilt.   When the world economy turns down, all this funny money, which was loaned into existence, will disappear by default and bankruptcy, crushing the banks and destabilizing governments and currencies (see the global currency markets link above for a sneak preview of what this will look like - it is deflationary).  What is actually happening is that the money elite, the old banking families and their sycophants, have captured most of the world's governments, and imposed policies which are designed to insure that the moneyed elite retain their position of power indefinitely, including the creation of huge monopolies in all important areas of economic activity.  Thus in the US, 6 companies control all media, 5 companies control all major food production, 4 companies control all health care insurance, 5 banks control 80% of all economic assets in the US, 4 companies control all US arms sales, etc.  And these major companies all have interlocking Boards of Directors, with the same key players appearing on many different boards.  Thus no conspiracy is required for them to take concerted action; elimination of competition, which limits their pricing power, is the path they choose to maximize profits, which they then intend to skim away from labor and towards capital by distributing all the profits as stock dividends, thus going to the 1% of the US population who own 80% of the stock market.  Using this monopoly power, they have changed the distribution of wealth away from labor and towards capital (8% of the world's adults own 85% of total assets on the planet link).  Thus all the economic gains obtained in the US since the end of WWII have been divided between the banks and the military-industrial complex, with labor's share of these gains negligible.  What these greedy (meaning insecure) capitalists fail to realize is that the economy is a closed system with two parts, which respond to each other in a yin and yang type balance.  Like the population dynamics of the rabbit and owl, or the battle of the sexes, if either side actually 'wins,' the game ends and both sides lose everything.   So adjustments will occur to the current socio-economic structure in the developed world.  Based on the proven ability of our political elite (Nancy Pelosi, Hellary, Biden, Bernie, Alexis-Cortez, Fauxcahontas, etc, legions of worse examples), I am sure we will be skillfully guided through the coming difficult transitions, so "What, Me Worry?" And yes I do use a calendar put out by The Onion, and all the rooms in my house are painted black, for those of you still wondering...  Best Wishes for a Happy and Successful New Year to all my devoted readers (wherever both of you are)