The City of London and Wall Street “solution” to the financial meltdown of 2007-2008 was to further hyperinflate their speculative financial bubble with quantitative easing and zero interest rates—endless “funny money.” This only worsened the problem that led to the 2008 crisis in the first place, which in turn is driving them to try to keep top-down control of a unipolar world through destabilizations and wars—especially of Russia and China, whose BRICS and Belt and Road Initiative are an increasingly solid alternative to the collapsing trans-Atlantic financial system.
Between 2007 and 2023, total world debt of all kinds grew from $150 trillion to $310 trillion—a doubling in those 16 years. Throughout this period, interest rates were at close to zero for most of the time; but then the Fed and other central banks switched over to “quantitative tightening” to try to control a hyperinflationary blowout, and interest rates were raised beginning in March 2022. Today the Fed Funds rate stands at a whopping 5.33%. This interest rate whiplash has caused a meltdown of the bond market and skyrocketing “unrealized losses” on the books of banks on both sides of the Atlantic, since the price of the old, zero-interest bonds they hold would be sharply reduced if they were sold in today’s 5.33% environment.
The other major crisis caused by this “higher-for-longer” interest policy, is that it is nearly impossible for many debtors to refinance their old loans when they come due, and the debt service they have to pay is now skyrocketing. The “everything bubble” could blow out in any number of different debt sectors—developing sector debt, real estate, student loans, commodity speculation, you name it.
