By Doug Casey, Chairman
“America is a marvelous idea, a unique idea, fantastic idea. I’m extremely pro-American. But America has ceased to exist,” says Doug Casey. Watch him in this fascinating interview with Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie discuss the political, social, and economic challenges the US must conquer as well as lessons we can learn from failed states.
A severe economic and/or political crisis can sneak up on you before you know it. Learn from the three harrowing stories of international crisis survivors—and the insightful comments of experts like Doug—how to recognize a crisis in the making. You may need those skills soon because it can, and will, happen here… Watch Meltdown America, a 30-minute free documentary that predicts the economic and political unraveling of the US.
He's also been bearish US equities since 1987. If you don't ever want to make money but would rather be able to tell yourself that you have been "right" all along, then he's your guy. Sticking with an agenda and being a stalwart purist is better than seeking profits to objectively better yourself and your family anyways.
He seems to hint around at government "stealing" and inflation being the source of problems, but he doesn't get specific, though.
He also mentions the possibility of US breaking up into about 6 smaller countries, which has some interesting attributes about it that many would overlook. First note that the different countries would have border autonomy. In today's US, if one state decides to save money in producing goods by setting the minimum wage to zero, cutting all social services, and removing all environmental protections, etc. (assuming all this was possible), then it would have far and away the lowest costs of production, but it would be parasitically dependent on other states to provide a middle class to sell to. To the extent that such a state does require taxes, companies with the threat of moving to another state would get a free ride while Joe the Plumber and his strata end up paying the lion's share of the taxes. Of course states dedicated to a higher standard of living would start to lose key industries and would basically become "service economies" for as long as they can maintain the import imbalance.
If they have border autonomy, then it becomes a simple matter of declaring import tariffs on import goods to equal out the taxes that the corporation would have paid if they had produced the goods for a state's market locally. Then when corporations are no longer in a "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free" position with respect to gaining markets for their products, they will make their location decisions based on other factors, like the education and skill training services offered by prospective government partners.
Of course the big problem with this idea is whichever country was "lucky" enough to get Halliburton would eventually declare Westlandia "not ready for Democracy" and we would have a war to liberate the semiconductor fields of California that would probably start with a movement to secure members of "Al-Berkela".
Well ok, probably not exactly like that, but the point is, there would certainly be threats to the autonomy you hope for in such a situation.