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

The one thing in regards to the financial world that never ceases to amaze me is how far behind the curve mainstream economists at all times appear to be. Not way back we had each Janet Yellen and Paul Krugman, economists supposedly on the front of the pack, each proving to be utterly ignorant (or strategically dishonest) on the consequences of central bank stimulus measures and the specter of inflation. Actually, they each consistently denied such a threat existed until they were crushed by the evidence.

This tends to be the modus operandi of top establishment analysts, and nearly all of economists on the market simply follow the lead of those gatekeepers – Possibly because they’re vying for a limited variety of cushy positions in the sector, or perhaps because they’re afraid that in the event that they present a contradictory theory they’ll be ostracized. Economics is commonly absurdist in nature because Ivy League “experts” might be mistaken time and time again and yet still keep their jobs and stand up through the ranks.  It’s a bit like Hollywood in that way; they fail upwards.

Within the meantime, alternative economists keep hitting the goal with our observations and predictions, but we’ll never get job offers from establishment publications because they’re not on the lookout for people who find themselves right, they’re on the lookout for folks that toe the road.

And so it goes. I look ahead to the fast approaching day when all of those guys (and girls) proclaim frantically that “nobody saw this crisis coming.” After things get even worse, they’ll all come out and say they really “saw the crisis coming and tried to warn us.”

The hope isn’t a lot to get credit where credit is due (because that’s not going to occur), but to get up as many individuals who will listen as possible to the hazards ahead, and perhaps save just a few lives or encourage just a few rebels in the method. Within the case of firm yes-men, the hope is that they get that left hook to the face from reality and lose credibility within the eyes of the general public. They need to go down with the ship – Either they’re disinformation agents or they’re too ignorant to see the writing on the wall and mustn’t have the roles they’ve.

The newest US bank failures appear to be ringing their bell the past couple of months, that’s obviously. In a survey managed by the World Economic Forum, over 80% of chief economists now say that central banks “face a trade-off between managing inflation and maintaining financial sector stability.” They now warn that price pressures look more likely to remain higher for longer and so they predict a protracted period of upper rates of interest that may expose further frailties within the banking sector, potentially compromising the capability of central banks to rein in inflation.  It is a HUGE reversal from their original message of a magical soft landing.

Imagine that. The very thing alternative economists including myself have been “ranting” about for years, the very thing they used to say was “conspiracy theory” or Chicken Little doom mongering, is now accepted as fact by a majority of surveyed economists.

But where does this leave us?  After acceptance often comes panic.

The credit crunch is just starting and the absorbing of the insolvent First Republic Bank into JP Morgan is a median step to a bigger crash. The expectation is that the Federal Reserve will step in to dump more stimulus into the system to maintain it afloat, but it surely’s too late. My position has at all times been that the central banks would deliberately initiate a liquidity crisis through regular rate of interest hikes. This has now happened.

The Catch-22 scenario has been achieved. Identical to the lead as much as the 2008 credit crisis, all of the Fed needed to do was raise rates to around 5% to six% and suddenly all systemic debt becomes untenable. Now it’s happening again and so they KNEW it could occur again. Except this time, we’ve an additional $20 trillion in national debt, a banking network completely hooked on low-cost fiat stimulus and an exponential stagflation problem.

If the Fed cuts rates prices will skyrocket much more. In the event that they keep rates at current levels or raise them, more banks will implode. Most mainstream analysts will expect the Fed to return to near-zero rates and QE in response, but even in the event that they do (and I’m doubtful that they’ll) the final result won’t be what the “experts” expect. Some are realizing that QE is an impractical expectation and that inflation will annihilate the system just as fast as a credit crisis, but they’re few and much between.

The World Economic Forum report for May outlines this dynamic to some extent, but what it doesn’t mention is that there are extensive advantages attached to the approaching crisis for the elites. For instance, major banks like JP Morgan will give you the chance to grab up smaller failing banks for pennies on the dollar, similar to they did throughout the Great Depression. And, globalist institutions just like the WEF will get their “Great Reset,” which they hope will frighten the general public into adopting much more financial centralization, social controls, digital currencies and a cashless society.

For the common concerned citizen on the market, this narrative change matters since it’s a signal that things are about to get much worse. When the establishment itself is openly acknowledging that gravity exists and that we’re falling as a substitute of flying, it’s time to prepare and take cover. They never admit the reality unless the worst case scenario is true across the corner.