Hi George, I dub thee ' Last Man Standing'.
Like the song by The Vapors "I think I'm turning Japanese", the USA is on the path to turning Japanese...not my culture or by ethnicity but by economy.
I recently came back from Japan as was stunned by how cheap some things were by USA standards, I could even get a really good lunch at a take-out place for 680 yen ($5) at the major urban centers. Yes, this is called DEFLATION. Japan has tried for decades to fight deflation by printing enough money to wallpaper the moon but it just did not work. The Fed did the same thing and it worked to a degree, but has stopped working so now they are tightening monetary policy because they have run out of ideas. When Japan tried to tighten monetary policy back in the 90's the Yen jumped in value and Japan went into recession. The same thing is happening to the USA.
We are at the top of the credit cycle, only the very few have any leverage left to explore, world GDP has flattened out, and free money for the elite has not found it's way to the middle-class so none of it is cascading through economies.
Taxes and the cost of medical insurance has stripped discretionary cash from the people who have gone into conservation mode...spend on what they need and nothing else. Deflation is coming.
The offspring of technology has lowered the costs of creating goods of higher quality and now the global physical plant can create more goods in a single year than the entire planet can consume in an entire lifetime. Supply and Demand...Deflation.
With the current administration lowering taxes what you will see next in the USA is not being talked about which is population growth. Lower taxes = more babies being born...this is a good thing because the rest of the world does not have enough replacement population in the mix, higher taxes = depopulation.
The desire to put up border walls is not about keeping immigrants out, it's about keeping the USA consumer in. We are doe sharing the USA consumer with the rest of the world.
So what will happen next? George will be the last central bank fiat standing, and the USA will be the last economy standing. Plain and simple. Will we have deflation? Yes, the current monetary system cannot prevent this. Will markets go down? Yes, but it will go to new highs in the future because the planet doesn't have a better market to take it's place.
Think deeply, act decisively, and cover thy ass....