Recession

Federal monetary intervention couples with pandemic lockdown policies and subsequent stimulus have created an environment for a protracted recession. This recession will have global impact and will disrupt many industries, most notable residential real estate, commercial real estate, automotive, banking, logistics, construction, and tech companies.

While the CPI remains stubbornly high, sectors like real estate, logistics, manufacturing, automotive and banking have shown signs of substantial weakness with more downside expected. Because of this bifurcated economic situation, we expect inflation to remain elevated until the economy is sufficiently broken and market sentiment readjusts. The best indicator of this is performance of the S&P 500.

Dedollarization

The United States is the creator and enforcer of the existing global monetary system, but that is quickly changing. America has abused this privilege through unsustainable debt financing to maintain a world-leading military and the employment of financial sanctions – cutting America’s enemies out of the global financial system – that have eroded global trust in the American-led system.

Combine this with perceived weakness in American leadership, and this provides a great incentive for nations to start building an alternative global financial system. This rival system is even discussed openly under the umbrella term, multi-polar world order. The nations primarily engaged in pushing for a competing world order are China, Russia, Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The process of moving from the American-dominated financial system to a world governed by two or more competing systems will be long and complicated.

Note these active indicators of dedollarization:

• New diplomatic ties established
• Reopening or construction of embassies
• Increased economic cooperation between former rivals
• Novel and largely symbolic transactions in foreign currencies (Primarily for trust building and establishment of precedent)
• Development of alternative trading blocs and economic development programs which exclude the US
• Development of alternative settlement systems to Swift
• Increased international interest in gold-backed currencies

Expect more action across the noted indicators in the future, however, there are several indicators and milestones which have not yet been fulfilled:

• Development of a new gold-backed currency
• Global de-pegging from the dollar
• Widespread adoption and use of that currency
• Undermine US efforts to stop the rise of an alternative currency

So while significant progress has been made towards removal of the US Dollar as the global reserve currency, there are still significant challenges ahead: It will be some time before potential dedollarization efforts could succeed.

If efforts to dethrone the US-led global financial system are successful, the effects on the United States will be great and terrible. The Us government relies on debt financing to continue funding the American military and social programs like social security and medicare. The end of USD reserve status means these systems could no longer be funded through new debt. Instead these systems would either have to be allowed to effectively collapse, or the US government would have to print more dollars to cover the massive shortfall, a cycle that will result in hyperinflation and the complete collapse of the economy in approx. 3-5 years.

World War III

Western nations are facing degraded ability to project their power globally. This is due to a variety of factors including aggregated bad will, indebtedness, continued public military and political failures, and internal (domestic) pressures on entrenched leaders. A growing contingent of rivals seek to overturn the western-dominated world order and replace in with a multi-polar one. These rivals include China, Russia, Brazil, Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia.

As these rival factions fight for dominance under a new world order, conflict will inevitably follow. So far this conflict is taking the shape of a new cold war, dominated by secret cyber skirmishes and proxy conflicts. However, a miscalculation or provocation could quickly turn the cold war hot. A hot war between technologically advanced nuclear powers will feature new tactics like anti-satellite weapons, drone strikes, cyber attacks, infrastructure sabotage, deniable biological agent releases (including DNA-targeted viruses), high altitude nuclear detonations (EMP) and possibly even conventional nuclear strikes.

The US has become highly dependent on complex and fragile networks and systems that rivals have become quite adept at targeting. While the US military will likely remain the largest and best equipped in the world for some time, new tactics and targets have the potential to shift the battlefield in ways military planners fail to understand.

A key decision point to watch is the invasion of Taiwan. With the current US administration, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be met with a full commitment of US forces, which would quickly escalate to a hot world war. Despite this, we expect China to gradually ramp up pressure on Taiwan over the next 24 months+ as it make preparations for a complex amphibious and air assault on Taiwan.

Rise of the Popular Right

In response to the growing failures of the managerial class in the US, and the rise of woke culture inside key institutions, a new right-wing populist movement is forming. This group is gaining followers from traditional right-wingers, new right, disaffected liberals and libertarians.

This group is primarily reactionary; their focus is on stopping and undoing the cultural and institutional damage being wrought by current US leaders. As a reactionary force, they are not held to same moral or legal constraints of the right-wing of the past. If they succeed in taking over federal power structures, many adherents of this new movements will have no issue violating Constitutional rights or previous moral norms to defeat their enemy.

Most of the power of this movement is limited to state and local-level politics currently: The national GOP is still dominated by political players who do not challenge institutional corruption. For the movement to succeed, it must begin to purge the national GOP of leaders who defend the current regime. This is the next major obstacle to watch: Can this movement take over the GOP nationally? If they fail to take control of the national party, the movement may remain as coalition of state-level politicians and power-brokers, which could fuel further balkanization.

Mass Crackdown on US Gov. Dissidents

Mass crackdown is a term that encapsulates multiple phenomena including genocide, prison camps, forces labor and re-education camps. These are typically associated with authoritarian governments cracking down on dissidents, in an attempt to maintain or consolidate power.

Crackdowns can occur in a variety of ways. In a one-shot crackdown, a government engages in rapid mobilization and oppression of a targeted group, typically a small minority of the population. When targeting a larger segment of the population, incremental crackdowns are employed. These start small and gradually ramp up both in scope and in the violence of tactics.

Another less common tactic is for governments to incite supporters to attack and oppress a targeted minority group. Government officials will fuel hate against the targeted group and create a legal environment where violence against the targeted group is tolerated and even rewarded, at least socially.

There is another, perhaps more dystopian, version of a crackdown, where people are not executed or imprisoned, they are simply unpersoned. Targeted dissidents are cut off from access to financial services meaning that can no longer buy or rent a house or apartment, they can’t go to a restaurant, they can’t even buy groceries at the store. This version of a crackdown is more technologically complicated as it requires universal digital IDs, more consolidation of private businesses, expansive and sophisticated surveillance, and central bank digital currencies.

For more details on different crackdown scenarios and progress view our detailed analysis.

Civil War

The cold civil war is well underway. Entrenched elites are openly spying and prosecuting their political enemies under increasingly fragile pretexts. Meanwhile, political enemies of the state are mobilizing in opposition with a majority forming that we describe as the right-wing populists. This group is large, well-resourced and holds far more power than it realizes. As the right-wing populists seek to gain power and disrupt the entrenched elite’s agenda, conflict follows.

The battle has been fought with proxies like Black Lives Matter, ANTIFA, Proud Boys and Oathkeepers. Violent confrontations remain small, but growing unrest and disillusionment of American institutions and safeguards increase the chance of larger scale violent conflicts. Additionally, left-wing extremist groups are escalating; using more dangerous attacks and weapons including firearms, fireworks and explosives. Meanwhile, government law enforcement agencies continue to find flimsy pretexts to target government dissidents. All of these trends will increase conflict, and any one conflict could become a “shot heard around the world” that galvanizes an aggressive response, turning the cold civil war hot.