This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group

As I predicted just after the 2016 presidential election, a sordid theater of blame has exploded over the state of the U.S. economy, with fingers pointing everywhere except (in most cases) at the true culprits behind the crash. Some people point to the current administration and its pursuit of a trade war. Others point to the Federal Reserve, with its adverse interest rate hikes into economic weakness and its balance sheet cuts.

Some blame the Democrats for doubling the national debt under the Obama Administration and creating massive trade and budget deficits. And others look towards Republicans for not yet stemming the continually increasing national debt and deficits.

In today’s economic landscape, the debt issue is absolutely critical. While it is often brought up in regards to our fiscal uncertainty, it is rarely explored deeply enough.

I believe that economic crisis events are engineered deliberately by the financial elite in order to create advantageous conditions for themselves. To understand why, it is important to know the root of their power.

Without extreme debt conditions, economic downturns cannot be created (or at least sustained for long periods of time). According to the amount of debt weighing down a system, banking institutions can predict the outcomes of certain actions and also influence certain end results. For example, if the Fed was interested in conjuring a debt based bubble, a classic strategy would be to set interest rates artificially low for far too long. Conversely, raising interest rates into economic weakness is a strategy that can be employed in order to collapse a bubble. This is what launched the Great Depression, it is what ignited the crash of 2008, and it is what’s going on today.

The massive debt burden makes recovery difficult, if not impossible, and thus the system becomes increasingly dependent on the banking elites to resolve the problem.

Debt is the fuel that keeps the centralization machine running. I am not talking about standard lending, though this can be a factor. What I’m talking about is debt created through policy; debt that’s created in an instant through the use of subversive and arbitrary measures, like central bank balance sheet initiatives or interest rates. And, debt that’s created through collusion between central banks, international banks, ratings agencies, and government using the removal of regulations, or the implementation of unfair regulatory standards.

Debt is a drug. The banks have known this for quite some time and have exploited the opiate of easy money to leverage entire nations and cultures into servitude or self-destruction. To illustrate this point, let’s look at the debt numbers today.

The national debt is closing in on $22 trillion, with over $1 trillion a year currently being added for the American taxpayer.

Corporate debt is at historic highs not seen since 2008, with S&P Global reporting over $6.3 trillion in total debts and the largest companies holding only $2.1 trillion in cash as a hedge.

U.S. household debt currently stands at around $13.3 trillion, which is $618 billion higher than the last peak back in 2008, during the credit crisis.

U.S. credit card debt surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in 2018, the highest single year amount since 2007 (once again, we see that debt levels are spiking beyond the lines crossed just before the crash of 2008).

So how can this debt be exploited to engineer an economic crisis? Let’s start with household and consumer debt.

One would think that with so much lending and creation of consumer debt, we would see a massive expansion in home and auto markets. And for a time, we did. The problem was that most home purchases were being undertaken by major corporations like Blackrock, as they devoured distressed mortgages by the thousands and then turned those homes into rentals. In the auto market, there was a large spike in buying driven by lending, but this lending was accomplished through ARM-style car loans, the same kind of loans with lax standards that helped cause the mortgage crisis in 2008.

Today, both in the housing market and the auto market, a crash is indeed taking place as the Fed raises interest rates and makes holding these loans ever more expensive.

Pending home sales have tumbled to a four-year low, as one in four homes on the market is now forced to lower prices. Debt is becoming expensive, and therefore demand is slumping.

Overall U.S. auto sales began a precipitous decline this September, which has continued through November, mostly due to higher interest rates.

It is clear that an economic crash, which some are merely calling a bear market, is indicated in the swift decline in housing and autos, two of the most vital consumer sectors.

But what about corporate debt? Let’s use GE, GM and Ford as litmus tests……more here