A couple years ago I observed in these emails that war had become a nearly sterile event for the US. A far cry from the days of Vietnam and Korea, at the peak of the credit Ponzi, Americans would roll in with overpowering money (AKA technology and strategy). The result was that the enemy lost many hundreds of thousands of souls while we lose a few thousand. The ratio has been staggering: 50 or 100 to1 kill ratios mainly due to our overwhelming military equipment. As an example, I remember seeing Tomahawk missiles fly off of a missile boat back in Gulf war 1 and then hearing about the trivial targets that were hit. Those things cost $560k each according to wiki: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35497071/ns/world_news-washington_post/ and we were popping them off as if they were 4th of July firecrackers. In short, we had spent a lot of money building up a huge arsenal of very expensive toys and the generals finally had their chance to play with them. The thinking was that wars could be fought as long as they only cost money. If the military could keep the casualty level down then the people would not awaken to the stupidity of it and put a stop to it. In addition, those supplying the war machine could make a tidy profit overcharging to replace stocks of these weapons during wartime. Thus, the use of expensive stand off weapons shot up rapidly.
In the same email where I touched on the above, I also predicted that as the credit went bust so would the military budget. The result would be a return to more Vietnam style combat: rifle to rifle and hand to hand. In that email I cautioned people to strongly steer their kids away from military service and I say this as someone who proudly served in the Air Force for about 6 years. If you don’t have the budget for stand off weapons then human life has to cheapen if we are to continue having endless wars. The following article gives a flavor for the way future battles will be fought.
Bottom line: keep your kids away from the military and be diligent to rumblings about conscripted military service (AKA the draft).
Having said that, the military budget has not gone bust yet. In fact, history shows that empires (which are run by the military and the commercial businesses which support them for profit AKA the military industrial complex) support the military above all else until the collapse no longer allows it. We can look at Russia during the 90s for recent proof. The USSR military budget crashed their economy and crashed the USSR as a going concern. Reagan got credit for taking down the Soviets but all he did was outspend them in the arms race until they could spend no more. The USSR leaders had to know they could not win because we had the world’s reserve currency. We could just print up money from thin air and get credit from the whole world to fund our arms race whereas they were on their own. But the leaders of the Soviet Empire were living very well on the military spending while normal people stood in food lines and so nothing was going to change until it collapsed under its own weight. While I do not have a link handy, I have read that the Roman Empire had a similar ending. As Caesar clipped coins to debase the currency to pay for the operation of the empire, the Roman army demanded to be paid in unclipped coins “or else”. As a result, the military elite lived better than the common man until Rome finally collapsed under the weight of its own debt.
While most people probably have not figured it out, something similar happened to us very recently. The banks (which fund the military industrial complex) were near collapse. In order to save them (without which the military machine would collapse) we had to do an emergency debasement of the currency and use the money to bail out banks1.
What was the threat given to congress if they didn’t acquiesce to the bail out demands? Martial law. Sounds dramatic, almost like a Hollywood movie, but the proof is a matter of public record: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaG9d_4zij8. As a nearly mirror image of the Roman experience, the USA was directly threatened with a military take over if we didn’t keep funding the military. Our military today is positioning itself again to be the last to fall. They are building domestic “peace keeping” forces in violation of Posse Comitatus yet the people sleep. If history is any guide, the people will continue to sleep until things are just so obvious that they can no longer be ignored. Prechter teaches that if you watch the mood of the herd you can get a better sense of how close the tea pot is to boiling over. If you look at many of the comments on Youtube regarding the Austin light aircraft suicide attack on the IRS you will get a sense of the anger that is out there. Way too many of the comments hail the suicide pilot as a hero and a patriot…
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1 As a result we have nearly tripled the monetary base since then. This chart should be a long term concern to every thinking American: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE. The inflation has not arrived yet but rest assured that it is most certainly coming beyond any shadow of doubt. This is math and logic, not opinion and conjecture. The only question is how long it will take for credit to bottom. When credit does pick up again it will be a multiplier on top of a much larger monetary base.
