This article was originally published by Brandon Smith at Alt-Market. 

One thing that is important to understand about the mainstream media is that they do tell the truth on occasion. However, the truths they admit to are almost always wrapped in lies or told to the public far too late to make the information useful.   Dissecting mainstream media information and sifting out the truth from the propaganda is really the bulk of what the alternative media does (or should be doing).

In the past couple of weeks, I have received a rush of emails asking about the sudden flood of recession and economic crash talk in the media.  Does this abrupt 180-degree turn by the MSM (and global banks) on the economy warrant concern?  Yes, it does.

The first inclination of a portion of the liberty movement will be to assume that mainstream reports of the imminent economic crisis are merely an attempt to tarnish the image of the Trump Administration and that the talk of recession is “overblown”.  This is partially true; Trump is meant to act as a scapegoat, but this is not the big picture.  The fact is, the pattern the media is following today matches almost exactly with the pattern they followed leading up to the credit crash of 2008.  Make no mistake, a financial crash is indeed happening RIGHT NOW, just as it did after media warnings in 2007/2008, and the reasons why the MSM is admitting to it today are calculated.

Before we get to that, we should examine how the media reacted during the lead up to the crash of 2008.

Multiple mainstream outlets ignored all the crash signals in 2005 and 2006 despite ample warnings from alternative economists. In fact, they mostly laughed at the prospect of the biggest bull market in the history of stocks and housing (at that time) actually collapsing. Then abruptly the media and the globalist institutions that dictate how the news is disseminated shifted position and started talking about “recession” and “crash potential”. From the New York Times to The Telegraph to Reuters and others, as well as the IMF, BIS and Federal Reserve officials – Everyone suddenly started agreeing with alternative economists without actually deferring to them or giving them any credit for making the correct financial calls.

In 2007/2008, the discussion revolved around derivatives, a subject just complicated enough to confuse the majority of people and cause them to be disinterested in the root trigger for the economic crisis, which was central bankers creating and deflating bubbles through policy engineering. Instead, the public just wanted to know how the crash was going to be fixed. Yes, some blame went to the banking system, but almost no one at the top was punished (only one banker in the US actually faced fraud charges). Ultimately, the crisis was pinned on a “perfect storm” of coincidences, and the central banks were applauded for their “swift action” in using stimulus and QE to save us all from a depression level event. The bankers were being referred to as “heroes”.

Of course, central bank culpability was later explored, and Alan Greenspan even admitted partial responsibility, saying the Fed knew there was a bubble but was “not aware” of how dangerous it really was. This was a lie. According to Fed minutes from 2004, Greenspan sought to silence any dissent on the housing bubble issue, saying that it would stir up debate on a process that “only the Fed understood”. Meaning, there was indeed discussion on housing and credit warning signs, but Greenspan snuffed it out to prevent the public from hearing about it.

Today we have a very similar dynamic. Use of the “R-word” in the mainstream media and among central banks has been strictly contained for the past several years.  In the October 2012 Fed minutes, Jerome Powell specifically warned of what would happen if the Federal Reserve tightened liquidity and raised interest rates into economic weakness.  He warned that this would have negative effects on the stimulus addicted investment environment that the central bank had fostered.  This discussion was held back from the public until only a year-and-a-half ago.  As soon as Powell became chairman, he implemented those exact actions.

Only in the past year as talk of recession begun to break out, and only in the past couple of weeks have outlets become aggressive in pushing the notion that a financial crash is just around the corner. The reality is that if one removes the illusory support of central bank stimulus, our economy never left the “Great Recession” of 2008.  Signals of renewed sharp declines in economic fundamentals have been visible since before the 2016 elections.  Alarms have been blaring on housing, auto markets, manufacturing, freight and shipping, historic debt levels, the yield curve, etc. since at least winter of last year, just as the Fed raised rates to their neutral rate of inflation and increased asset cuts from the balance sheet to between $30 billion to $50 billion or more per month.

The media should have been reporting on economic crisis dangers for the past 2-3 years.  But, they didn’t give these problems much credence until recently.  So, what changed?

I can only theorize on why the media and the banking elites choose the timing they do to admit to the public what is about to happen. First, it is clear from their efforts to stifle free discussion that they do not want to let the populace know too far ahead of time that a crash is coming. According to the evidence, which I have outlined in-depth in previous articles, central banks and international banks sometimes engineer crash events in order to consolidate wealth and centralize their political power even further. Is it a conspiracy? Yes, it is, and it’s a provable one.

When they do finally release the facts, or allow their puppet media outlets to report on the facts, it seems that they allow for around 6-8 months of warning time before economic shock events occur. In the case of the current crash in fundamentals (and eventually stocks), the time may be shorter. Why? Because this time the banks and the media have a scapegoat in the form of Donald Trump, and by extension, they have a scapegoat in the form of conservatives, populists, and sovereignty activists.

The vast majority of articles flowing through mainstream news feeds on economic recession refer directly to Trump, his supporters and the trade war as the primary villains behind the downturn. The warnings from the Fed, the BIS and the IMF insinuate the same accusation.

Anyone who has read my work for the past few years knows I have been warning about Trump as a false prophet for the liberty movement and conservatives in general. And everyone knows my primary concern has been that the globalists will crash the Everything Bubble on Trump’s watch, and then blame all conservatives for the consequences.

To be clear, Trump is not the cause of the Everything Bubble, nor is he the cause of its current implosion. No president has the power to trigger a collapse of this magnitude, only central banks have that power. When Trump argues that the Fed is causing a downturn, he is telling the truth, but when he claims that recession fears are exaggerated, or “inappropriate”, he is lying.   What he is not telling the public is that his job is to HELP the Fed in this process of controlled economic demolition.

Admissions of crisis in the media are coinciding directly with Trump’s policy actions. In other words, Trump is providing perfect cover for the central banks to crash the economy without receiving any of the blame. Trump’s insistence on taking full credit for the bubble in stock markets as well as fraudulent GDP and employment numbers, after specifically warning about all of these things during his election campaign, has now tied the economy like a noose around the necks of conservatives. The tone of warning in the media indicates to me that the banking elites are about to tighten that noose.

Another factor on our timeline beyond Trump’s helpful geopolitical distractions is the possibility of a ‘No-Deal’ Brexit in October.  I continue to believe this outcome (or something very similar) has been pushed into inevitability by former Prime Minister Theresa May and EU globalists, and that it will be used as yet another scapegoat for the now accelerating crash in the EU.  With Germany on the verge of admitting recession, Deutsche Bank on the edge of insolvency, Italy nearing a political and financial crisis, etc., it is only a matter of months before Europe sees its own “Lehman moment”.  The Brexit is, in my view, a marker for a timeline on when the crash will hit its stride.

To summarize, the mainstream media and global banking institutions have two goals in informing the public about recession right now – They are seeking to cover their own asses when the next shoe drops so they can say they “tried to warn us”, and, they are conditioning a majority of the public to automatically blame conservatives and sovereignty proponents when the consequences hit them without mercy.

As the truth of a recession smacks the public in the face, the media will likely pull back slightly, just as they did in 2008, and suggest that the downturn is “temporary”.  They will claim it’s “not a repeat of the credit crisis”, or that it will “subside after Trump is out of office”.  These will all be lies designed to keep the public complacent even as the house of cards collapses around them.  The fact is, the hard data shows that economic conditions in the US and in most of the world are far more unstable than they were in 2008.  We are not looking at the crash of a credit bubble, we are looking at the crash of the ‘Everything Bubble’.

The pace of the narrative is quickening, and I would suggest that a collapse of the bubble will move rather quickly, perhaps in the next four to six months. If it does, then it is likely that Trump is not slated for a second term as president in 2020. Trump’s highly divisive support for “Red Flag” gun laws, a move that will lose him considerable support among pro-gun conservatives, also indicates to me that it is likely he is not meant to be president in 2020.  This is another sign that a massive downturn is closing in.

As events are unfolding right now, it appears that Trump has served his purpose for the globalists and is slated to be replaced next year; probably by an extreme far-left Democrat.  There are only a couple of scenarios I can imagine in which Trump remains in office, one of them being a major war which might require him to retain the presidency so the globalists can finish out a regime change agenda in nations like Iran or Venezuela.  This could, however, be pursued under a Democrat president almost as easily as long as Trump and his elitist cabinet lay the groundwork beforehand.  As in 2007/2008, it is unlikely that the mainstream would admit to a downturn that is not coming soon. Using the behavior of the media and of banking institutions as a guide, we can predict with some measure of certainty a crisis within the economy in the near term. Clearly, a major breakdown is slated to take place before the election of 2020, if not much sooner.