New Book Explores America’s Pending Financial Crisis
The Mr. X Interviews, Volume 2 by Luke Gromen continues the economic analysis of the US by creating a dialogue about the economy and the future of the United States. This second volume takes a detailed look at the financial troubles and events of late 2017 to early 2019. The book’s opening quote, from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, warns readers that they are in for a revealing revelation: ” It’s important to understand a lot of important things.” stories always hide out in the open.”
The book begins with Luke and Mr. X’s first meeting over dinner. Mr. X opens the conversation by stating that China is no longer an emerging market, but investors are making a serious mistake by analyzing it as if it still is. Mr. X then starts a discussion about how China would only be an emerging nation if the price of oil continued to be in US dollars. However, China is now taking the step to fix the price of oil in its own currency, the CNY, and is forcing other countries to accept payments in its currency, which could devalue and weaken the USD. Mr. X is thorough in discussing him, always citing articles and his sources. An article he cites claims that what makes the US a superpower is really the position of the US dollar, and as long as China and Russia try to devalue the dollar by changing its international use, US power will collapse. Ultimately, Mr. X argues, Russia and China have us in checkmate over the price of gold. Also, China and other countries are no longer paying the US debt burden, so the US has to borrow from US banks and US citizens.
Meanwhile, China is trading USD for control of physical assets around the world and pricing those assets in its own currency. Mr. X fears that the US Federal Reserve and Treasury will weaponize the USD in response, which could ultimately destroy the global economy.
According to Mr. X, things look pretty bleak financially for the world. President Donald Trump has endangered the supremacy of the dollar, Europe’s largest gas field is in decline and will stop production by 2030, and Russia is unlikely to survive as a state for many more years. Meanwhile, the US is losing the trade war with China and the decline in US life expectancy, fueled by suicide, alcohol, drug overdoses and chronic liver disease, reflects “deaths from economic despair. Mr. X discusses all of these factors in his conversations with Luke, leading him to believe that the United States will have to make up for its lending binge by printing more money in the 2020s.
Summarizing this situation, he quotes former federal president Paul Volcker, who said in November 2018: “America is in a hell of a mess in every direction.” Mr. X goes on to quote former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who said: “It is the first time in the economic history of mankind or in history in general that an empire is expanding its kingdom and its power and its strength and vitality by expanding its deficits. Usually when an empire has a deficit, it is the beginning of its decline. Not in the case of the United States.”
At the end of the book, Mr. X concludes that if the authorities continue to weaken the USD, by the end of 2019, people may need to start withdrawing money from banks and stockpiling essentials in their foundations.
The Mr. X Interviews, Volume 2, paint a revealing picture of the US economy over the past few years and into the future. Of course, Mr. X could not have foreseen the coronavirus pandemic that would come a year after the book ends, but the analysis of him in these pages leaves much to ponder, and perhaps fear, about our current global economy, especially for the Americans. It will be interesting to see what Mr. X has to say in Volume 3.
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