Luke Gromen’s The Mr. X Interviews, Volume 2 continues US and world economic analysis by creating a dialogue about the economy and the future of the United States. This second volume takes a detailed look at financial troubles and events from late 2017 to early 2019. The book’s opening quote, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, warns readers that they are in for a revealing revelation: ” It’s important to understand a lot of important things.” stories are always hidden out in the open”.
The book begins with Luke and Mr. X’s first meeting over dinner. Mr. X opens the conversation by saying that China is no longer an emerging market, but investors are making a serious mistake by looking at it as if it still is. Mr. X then starts a discussion about how China would only be an emerging nation if the price of oil continued to be in US dollars. However, China is now moving to price oil in its own currency, the CNY, and is forcing other countries to accept payments in its currency, which could devalue and weaken the USD. Mr. X is thorough in discussing it, always citing articles and his sources. One article he cites claims that what makes the US a superpower is really the position of the US dollar, and as long as China and Russia try to devalue the dollar by changing its international use, US power will collapse. Ultimately, Mr. X argues, Russia and China have us in checkmate over the price of gold. Also, China and other countries no longer pay the US debt burden, so the US has to borrow from US banks and citizens.
Meanwhile, China is exchanging USD for control of physical assets around the world and pricing those assets in its own currency. Mr. X fears that the US Federal Reserve and Treasury will weaponize the USD in response, which could ultimately destroy the global economy.
According to Mr. X, things are looking pretty bleak financially for the world. President Donald Trump has jeopardized the supremacy of the dollar, Europe’s largest gas field is in decline and will halt production by 2030, and Russia is unlikely to survive as a state for many more years. Meanwhile, the US is losing the trade war with China and the decline in US life expectancy, driven by suicide, alcohol, drug overdoses and chronic liver disease, reflects “deaths from economic despair.” Mr. X discusses all of these factors in his conversations with Luke, leading him to believe that the United States will have to make up for its binge on borrowing by printing more money in the 2020s.
Summarizing this situation, he quotes former federal president Paul Volcker, who said in November 2018: “America is in a hell of a mess in all directions.” Mr X goes on to quote former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis who said: “It is the first time in human economic history or in history in general that an empire is expanding its kingdom and its power and its strength and vitality. by expanding its deficits. Usually, when an empire runs a deficit, it is the beginning of its decline. Not in the case of the United States.”
At the end of the book, Mr. X concludes that if the authorities continue to weaken the USD, by the end of 2019, people may need to start taking money out of banks and stockpiling essentials in their bases.
The Mr. X Interviews, Volume 2 paints a revealing picture of the US economy over the past few years and into the future. Of course, Mr. X could not have foreseen the coronavirus pandemic that would come a year after the book ends, but his analysis in these pages leaves much to ponder, and perhaps fear, about our current global economy, especially for the americans. It will be interesting to see what Mr. X has to say in Volume 3.
