In 2008 I created The Crash Course.  If you haven’t seen it, well, you really should.  It’s both very outdated and still spot on.

In it I made the case that by looking through a resource lens we could come to this conclusion:  The next twenty years are going to be completely unlike the past twenty years.

There are lots of ways to look at the world – geopolitical, spiritually, ecologically – but I’ve found that resources have both power predictive and explanatory powers.

Now that we’re more than half-way through that 20-year period it’s fair to ask how the Crash Course predictions have held up.

The record reveals that…

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I care a lot about the future.  I wish it to be as abundant, hospitable, & prosperous for as many people as possible.

Of course, how it actually turns out is not up to me.  It’s up to us.

Where we need unity to accomplish some really huge, if not heroic, things over the coming years and decades, we’re as fractured as we’ve every been culturally and politically.  That there are certain parties actively driving wedges and seeking disunity bothers me greatly.  I believe history will once again be very unkind in how it remembers such people, but that’s another story for another day.

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Executive Summary

• China is rolling over
• Contagion will eventually take down the core economies, including the US
• We are witnessing a full-blown collapse of the commodity complex
• Deflation will win the day over the next year, but then get ready for helicopter money hyperinflation

If you have not yet read Part 1: Deflation Warning: The Next Wave available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

The Chinese GDP Lie

Right off the top, China is not growing anywhere near the 7% it claims.  That’s just a politically useful lie that the Chinese tell to the world as much as they tell to themselves.

Fortunately, hardly anyone is falling for that particular fib any longer.  Let’s start with the completely obvious manufacturing slump that has hit China:

Chinese Factory Gauge Slumps to Lowest Level Since March 2009

Sept 22, 2015

A private Chinese manufacturing gauge fell to the lowest in 6 1/2 years, underscoring challenges facing the economy as its old growth engines splutter.

A global sell off in riskier assets gained pace after the preliminary Purchasing Managers’ Index from Caixin Media and Markit Economics dropped to 47.0 in September. That missed the median estimate of 47.5 in a Bloomberg survey and fell from the final reading of 47.3 in the previous month. Readings have remained below 50 since March, indicating contraction.

Premier Li Keqiang’s growth target of about 7 percent for this year is being challenged by a slowdown in manufacturing and exports even as services and consumption show resilience.

(Source)

The way a PMI reading works is anything over 50 indicates expansions and anything under 50 indicates contraction.  Anybody care to explain to me how China can be sporting sub-50 readings every month since March — that’s five full months — and still be claiming to be aiming for a 7% annual growth target?  You know, because China is…

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