Haha.... no it's as dark as it gets (that's why almost nobody is wiling to consider that I may be correct).

The CEP has evolved over a 12+ year period. It started soon after the GFC... recall how everyone was calling Bernanke stupid/corrupt/incompetent?

Initially I blamed him and the financial institutions for GFC... and thought they were fools.

But then I reconsidered when I watched a documentary on the GFC and old school mortgage operators were saying it normally takes a month or so to approve a mortgage - but these new outfits were approving them on the spot - it forced his hand - he had to match them or he's have no business.

Then there was the discussion of Liar Loans... and I'm sitting their thinking --- one of the primary rules of finance is do not loan money if you don't think you are going to get paid back. Anyone think the honchos were not aware of Liar Loans?

That sent me down the rabbit hole -- why would the banks 'burn their houses down' Why would they allow -- or better still why would they want - Liar Loans? Obviously that was always going to end in tears.

They are not stupid or corrupt or incompetent --- so why do this? Then I thought ... to do this you must fear something really horrifying...

What do they fear???

I spent many hours trying to figure this out - and then one late night in a hotel in Edinburgh -- I stumbled across the Perfect Storm paper

I suggest reading from p 59 and if that gets your attention read it all:

The economy is a surplus energy equation, not a monetary one, and growth in output (and in the global population) since the Industrial Revolution has resulted from the harnessing of ever-greater quantities of energy. But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel

https://ftalphaville-cdn.ft.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Perfect-Storm-LR.pdf

In a nutshell - we were running out of affordable oil --- expensive oil kills growth -- do the PTB just sit back and watch the system collapse? Or do they try to offset the collapse in growth caused by high oil prices (remember $147 oil just prior to GFC)...

Of course it makes sense to mitigate -- with stimulus --- you drop interest rates -- you pump up the housing market (a hot housing market drives the economy -- people need stuff to put in all those houses)... etc etc...

I spent hours reading and digesting Perfect Storm and had an aha moment ... not a aha I've discovered electricity moment ... more aha - we are f789ed moment.

It took me a long time to get to sleep...

Soon after that I pretty much retired (I was 43 - sold off one business in Asia - and handed over the day to day to another person in the other business) and my wife and I spent the next decade (right up until Covid hit) on major bucket list trips... 4 multi month trips per year.

I tried to alert a few mates to the situation but of course they dismissed me as a chicken little. Amusingly one of them said to me last year - you know - when we get through this Covid thing I am going to come off the gas a bit and spend more time outside work.

I didn't say anything ... but I was thinking ... it's too late for that.

We are not going back to 2019.... this is ... and I have zero doubt about it --- literally - the end of days....