Charles Hugh Smith.
When you've been lied to, you've been betrayed. Betrayal has consequences.
Unsurprisingly, denying the pandemic is unstoppable and consequential is the order of the day: authorities everywhere are terrified these realities might leak through all their oh-so-obviously desperate firewalls and filters. Why are they terrified? Because they know the entire global economy, including the linchpin Chinese and U.S. economies, was extremely fragile before the pandemic arose: why else the panic-stimulus and panic-repo policies of the Federal Reserve and the People's Bank of China in the pre-pandemic months of Q4 2019?
And so everything is covered up, and if that doesn't work, then outright denial is the default policy. The number of cases globally is absurdly understated, the number of deaths in China is absurdly under-reported, and so on.
But the biggest denial campaign is aimed at masking the fragility of the global economy, as the only thing keeping the rickety, speculative-bubble, insolvent global economy from imploding is the belief and confidence of the masses that everything is going swimmingly, so keep on borrowing, borrowing, borrowing, buying, buying, buying and speculating, speculating, speculating.
While the real-world battle to limit the spread of the virus in China gets the headlines, the battle inside your head to maintain your confidence in the system is just as important....
The key dynamic in recessions and depressions is confidence: confidence that the condo you buy today will be worth a lot more tomorrow, the business investment you make today will generate higher profits tomorrow, your job benefits will increase tomorrow, your house value will rise tomorrow, and so on.
Once confidence in ever-higher wages, benefits, sales, profits and speculative gains withers, all bets are off. The loss of confidence is akin to a loss of faith or loss of credibility: none of these can be restored overnight.
Once your trust in authorities has been shattered by gross incompetence, authoritarian suppression and a laughably unbelievable tsunami of lies, you don't wake up the next morning with your trust in bogus statistics and reassurances fully restored.
Confidence [is] replaced by uncertainty, anxiety and fear.
The tragic irony is that Chinese authorities hid the epidemic to save political face, but their increasingly transparent lies and desperation are destroying what little international credibility remained after their attempt to save political face blew up. Rather than saving face, they've lost the last shreds of credibility they still possessed.
Here's how contagious viruses spread: a traveler who has the virus but doesn't yet have any symptoms rubs his nose beneath his mask and then takes the bus ticket and hands it to the driver. Then the traveler grabs the handrail in the bus, leaving viral particles. Later, in another bus station's bathroom, he lifts his mask because it's hot and uncomfortable and sneezes. Hundreds of other travelers pass through the bathroom within hours.
With the loss of trust and faith comes disorder.
