Within the prophesies of Revelations, we can find those that can be actually tracked in the real world. This is possible because those prophesies relate to events that take years, if not decades, to develop and mature. The prophesies I am referring to relate to the Beast. The Beast, or otherwise known as the Anti-Christ, will come to head a ten nation confederation, and when he rises to power over those nations, he will command that a mark be given, so that nobody can buy or sell anything without that mark. This prophecy is of a unique type, as it relates to geo-politics and global economics. It says that there will be a ten nation confederation that will form, and it will become a single state, with one leader to rule over all ten nations. This new entity will have one national economy, with one currency. This prophecy also implies that there will a new radical monetary system imposed. The prophesy says that the Beast will force all those under his dominion to place his mark on their right hand or their forehead, and people will not be allowed to enter into any financial transaction without this mark. Many believe that this means a pure electronic monetary system would be imposed. The technology and infrastructure necessary to implement such a system are already in place. However, the actual introduction of such a radical and totalitarian system (the government would be able to track every dollar spent), would be impossible under normal circumstances. Its forced implementation would require an economic and financial catastrophe of global proportions. The current economic, fiscal, and monetary policies being pursued by America and Europe can very well serve to be the drivers for such a catastrophe.
There are three main factors that are driving the economies of America and Europe into the hands of the Beast. The first factor is the governments acceptance of the current form of “globalization” of their economies. The second factor is the fiscal policies pursued to counter the negative affects of globalization. The third and most negative factor relates to the activities of the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed) and the European Central Bank ( the ECB).
For the first factor, I will focus on America, though every applies to Europe as well. When the media refers to globalization, they are generally inferring to the ability of large corporations to readily sell their products to countries all over the world. For example, Caterpillar has nearly 70% of their sales outside of America. American movies and music are readily found in most countries. Microsoft and Intel dominate the global PC market. Many examples of large European companies can also be found. The media would and the politicians would have us believe that globalization has been good for the American people, because it is good for American corporations. This is the Big Lie, wrapped in a partial truth. Economic theory rightly argues that trade between countries is good because both countries benefit from doing so — this is the partial truth. The countries do benefit. However, this economic truth does not touch on the issue of how that benefit is distributed between the capital (the owners of the companies) and labor (the workers). In the current form of globalization, capital captures 110% of the benefits — i.e. capital has captured all the benefits and labor has actually suffered. The workers in America, on average, have suffered losses over the past twenty years because of the flip side of globalization — the shifting of production to cheaper overseas locations. This movement of higher paying jobs to overseas locations has been an ongoing drain on the US economy. To make things even worse, America has allowed millions of legal and illegal immigration, which has made the situation even worse for the domestic economy. Politicians understand that they can lie all they want and get away with it, but they also know that if people are unemployed and hungry, then they will get lose in the elections. The politicians will take millions of dollars from wealthy individuals (people who have large economic interests and who can gain greatly from globalization), but to actually win elections, they must keep the economy in a sufficiently strong condition. The politicians have used fiscal and monetary policies to provide temporary relief for the workers, but those same policies will result in even greater suffering by the workers in the long run.
The politicians have used the easiest and most insulting fiscal policy to offset the ill affects of globalization — deficit spending on a massive scale. Currently, the federal government must borrow 40 cents for every dollar it spends. Since the onslaught of globalization, the rate of increase of the US national debt has soared exponentially, worsening even more dramatically since the financial crisis of 2008. The insulting thing is that the politicians are spending the money of the voters, in order to buy their votes. What is more, the are spending the money of the voter’s children as well. The federal government is not alone in this economic manipulation. State and local governments are also borrowing massive amounts of money. Several large states would be facing bankruptcy without special money transfers from Washington. The past year has seen municipal entities declaring bankruptcy. Whereas this debt problem is reaching epic proportions in America, it has reached the end of the line for countries like Greece and Italy — bankruptcy. Nations have defaulted on their debts since the Middle Ages without causing Armageddon. However, it is the third driver that has made the current economic crisis so dangerous — the monetary policies of the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank.
The Federal Reserve, or commonly referred to as the Fed, has a political mandate to adjust interest rates to seek full employment on one hand, while simultaneously keeping inflation low. Greenspan, the previous Fed chairman, would aggressively lower interest rates and flood the financial markets with excess liquidity every time the economy threatened to slow down. Interest rates steadily fell for nearly 20 years, in conjunction with the acceleration of job losses due to globalization. The economy was suffering due to trade and economic policies embraced by Washington, and the only real way to fix the economy was to change the policies that was hurting it. The Fed’s attempt to stimulate the economy through massive monetary stimulus (i.e. excessively low interest rates and excessive money creation) was to create waves of financial bubbles and collapses. The first high tech stock bubble blew up in 2000. The Fed responded with even lower interest rates and more money printing. This led to the real estate bubble that blew up in 2008. Another bubble that nobody talks about was the banking bubble. The tremendous amount of liquidity that the Fed created washed through the banking sector. Banks borrowed hundreds of billions of cheap dollars and then bought many financial instruments — and made billions of dollars when the markets were rising due to the Fed’s liquidity surges. The banking sector’s share of the US economy doubled over this period. As the economists say, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The collapse of the real estate market and the mortgaged related securities that helped drive bubble triggered the financial crisis of 2008 that saw Lehman Brothers and other global banks either go bankrupt or become nationalized. More would have gone bankrupt without the help of the government, the Fed, and taxpayer money.
The excessive liquidity that the Fed and ECB had one other disastrous consequence. It allowed governments to borrow more money than they normally would be able to. The central banks forced interest rates lower by creating tremendous amounts of money and funneling that money into the financial markets. If markets were functioning without this central bank activity, then as government borrowing reaches high levels, then those governments would be forced to pay higher and higher interest rates. If allowed to rise, these interest rates would serve as an early firewall, slowing down or stoping the rise in borrowing before it reaches crisis levels. By creating excessive liquidity, the central banks have thwarted the markets self-regulating mechanism, there by creating the situation that Greece and other Eurozone governments now find themselves. These governments were enabled to borrow more money than they can support. What is more, the banking sector has sought to further inflate their profits by accessing the excess liquidity provided by the central banks by borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars (or in this, Euros) and then using those borrowed funds to buy the bonds issued by these over stretched governments. Nations like Greece now find that not only is their government on the brink of default, but also the entire domestic banking system should be bankrupt given the large amount of Greek government bonds they have bought. This is the one truth that everyone continues to ignore — the central banks excessive money creation has been the one factor that threatens to turn an economic down turn into a global depression and financial market meltdown.
As long as the role of the central banks remains ignored, the crisis will not only remain unresolved, but like labor pains, the financial markets will rise and crash in ever growing frequency and with ever growing intensity until everything crashes like a Bernie-Matloff-type of ponzi scheme. Just this past Wednesday the ECB allowed its banks to borrow directly from them, an unlimited amount of money at basically zero rates, for 3 years. European banks borrowed over 430 billion Euros, and some banks used that borrowed money to further increase their holding of European government debt. This will result in the total collapse of the European financial markets and will plunge the world into economic chaos. I believe that this will be when the final 10 nations will merge and form a political union. The Beast will rise to lead this new entity and impose his mark upon those people who fall under his dominion.
The economic, fiscal, and monetary policies that have led the world to its current crisis are still in full force and those forces are actually becoming stronger — especially the harmful activities of the Fed and ECB. Do not fear but be happy that Christ’s return will be in our lifetimes. Live today and show God’s love to others — but be strong and fight the good fight.