Mass Formation Psychosis (2021)

“What the heck happened to Germany in the 20’s and 30’s? Very intelligent, highly educated population. They went barking mad. How did that happen? The answer is mass formation psychosis. When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other, has free-floating anxiety, and a sense that things don’t make sense. “We can’t understand it”. And then their attention gets focused by a leader or a series of events on one small point, just like hypnosis. They literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere…You remember back before, in 2019, everybody was complaining. Nothing makes sense. We’re all isolated from each other. We’re all on our little tools. We’re not connected socially anymore, except through social media. And then this thing happened and everybody focused on it. That is how mass formation psychosis happens, and that is what’s happened here.”

- Dr. Robert Malone

Across the country, because of an interview by Joe Rogan and Robert Malone, the popular phrase is mass formation psychosis. It’s a fascinating phenomenon that I agree is plaguing the United States. I am going to look at it from a different view, to really put some economic context around this subject. And show why society was in this vulnerable position. It is my belief that we have been in a worldwide depression since 2008, but it is a “silent” depression. I will put data behind this theory to show just why our population has been so vulnerable to mass formation psychosis. And this will also help to show why fertility rates have not risen since 2008 even though the economy has “fully recovered”. This plays back into my section on demographics, because people always have fewer children during economic hardship or wartimes.

Mass Formation psychosis stems from the silent depression we have been facing since 2008. If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody is around, it doesn’t make a sound. If a worldwide depression comes along but the business press, financial media, and politicians don’t acknowledge it, does it exist? No, it is a silent depression. This silent depression has contributed to this free-floating anxiety and mass formation psychosis in the population. But, if you look at GDP, it’s at an all time high. Unemployment is at a 50 year low. Everything must be good, because everybody says it’s good. Jerome Powell, the head of the federal reserve, and with all his credentials, says it’s good. According to all the talking heads the economy is booming, but we don’t see it. Where is this “boom” they speak of? I don’t see it, my neighbors don’t see it, and nobody I talk to sees it. At the same time it doesn’t look like the Great Depression either. I don’t see black and white photos of people waiting at soup lines, bread lines, and people lined up for jobs. The good people at the Federal Reserve say everything is perfectly good. So what is really going on here? I think it’s an important question to ask. The answer I’ve most aligned with is a silent depression. 

The first thing to understand is that human activity is non-linear. We’re growing or we’re dying. So a recovery in the economy would mean we return to the trend of growth that we were on previously to a crisis. Recovery is not getting back to where we were, it’s going above the trendline that was previously followed. In the past year’s data, we reached 19.47 Trillion in GDP. But, if we remained on the prior trend, we should have been much higher in terms of GDP. So how long have we been off trend? Since around 2008. GDP has been growing increasingly over this period, hitting continuous record highs, but is nowhere near where it would be if the economy was on trend. The GDP number recorded last year, if on trend, would have been about 25 Trillion, not 19.47. So we are missing around 6 Trillion in GDP last year alone. Not such a big deal, as obviously this must have been due to COVID right? This is what anybody in the financial media would tell you. Let’s look before COVID, and see how much was missing in those years. 

In 2021, we are missing 6 Trillion of GDP in 2021. 6 Trillion that just, didn’t happen. But if we add up all the economic activity that didn’t happen in each year since 2008, it’s around 50 Trillion. $50 Trillion of economic output that just didn't happen, in the U.S. alone. This is such a large number it’s mind boggling. It’s hard to wrap our brains around such a large number, so of course most people who read this may dismiss it. Most professionals I’ve talked to about this have told me if this was the case, we would have obviously heard about it. 

What about if you let the mob report on crime? Crime would probably be at record lows, right? We’d probably need to hire much less law enforcement as it’s not even needed. This is what is happening on the economic side of things. Central banks have hired around 90% of all economists, tasking them with “economic management”. There is a clear bias from all these people reporting the numbers. If there’s ever an economic question, it’s answered by somebody at the Federal Reserve, or somebody talking about the Federal Reserve. Any kind of interpretation of the economy is given by a central bank. This disease has now spread to other fields of study. For example, we are now using these same methods in regards to science. Science used to be reported by the scientists actually practicing. Now, society as a whole just listens to the authority of someone on the television (see Dr. Fauci). That’s not science. Science is the ability to examine evidence and come to reasonable conclusions based on what is found. Anything else is politics, not science. People with all the right jobs and degrees should not be held up as the authority just because of it. If you are frustrated with how “science” is now being conducted in recent years, rest assured, this has been the method for managing the economy for much longer. 

Back to the silent depression, most people would rebuttal that it sure doesn’t seem like a depression. We’ve all seen the black-and-white pictures of people waiting in bread lines and soup lines. I would argue even this has been hidden. Back then, they didn’t have “EBT” cards. Basically, the government just automatically hands out money to people to buy food, which they can spend on anything they want. So the next time you go grocery shopping, the person in front of you could be using one of these cards, and you’d never know it. In 2019, about 38 Million people used these cards. That is a whopping 12% of the population here in the United States. More than one out of every 10 people you see in the grocery store are not shopping with their own money. Now if we took away those cards and free handouts, I believe we would see those pictures we see of people lined up for food today. I volunteer at a food pantry weekly, and there are about a hundred people lined up before the doors even open. I believe this would be much worse if there weren’t free handouts. It is all hidden as the person at the grocery store can just swipe their card and carry on. 

Most people would be surprised to learn that in the 1930’s in the Great Depression, the economy performed better than the 2010’s. Real GDP during the Great Depression, outperformed real GDP from 2007-2019. If you measure real GDP from 1930-1942, during that time the economy grew by 63%. From 2007-2019, the economy grew by 22%. Many economists say the economy only grew so much during the Great Depression because of massive fiscal stimulus to fight WW2. That’s a fair argument, but we just had a record amount (% wise, and nominally) of fiscal stimulus to “fight” Covid-19, and we are still not back on trend. 

The numbers get bigger the further you look. Since 2007, we are missing 62 Trillion in foreign direct investment. If you look further back, overall, there is 105 Trillion in global trade missing since 1990, and that’s just merchandise trade. We’re conditioned to not believe such large numbers are even possible, but the data speaks for itself. It’s astronomical. The idea that this has resulted in a depression is also shown through the numbers. Deaths, overdoses, suicides, when measured by rate of change, have skyrocketed since 2007-2008. Fentynal, and the opioid crisis emerged out of 2008 and have not gotten much better. In the United States, life expectancy fell dramatically in 2012-2013. It fell again in 2015, and again in 2016. It’s remained unchanged ever since. With all the technology and innovations in healthcare, you’d expect life expectancy to be continually growing, but instead the opposite has happened. Life expectancy has been the same story for all developed countries as well, it’s not just a problem in the United States. In Canada, life expectancy fell off in 2013, and again from 2015-2017. There’s been no improvement in any other year since 2013. In the U.K., same story, they experienced a fall in the 2010’s, and no improvement since. 

Fertility rates have been constantly declining across the world as well. Low fertility rates almost always coincide with economic hardships like the Great Depression. It’s important to understand fertility rates are tied to economic wealth. Women have fewer children with less wealth. Many demographers saw the fertility rates drop off a cliff during the Great Financial Crisis, and predicted they would rise again when the recession was over. Well, the recession “ended” (I put quotes because it’s only ended by central bank standards), and fertility rates haven’t improved. The United States, for example, had a fertility rate of 1.97 in 1997. It grew to 2.12 by 2007, and in 2019 was reported at 1.7. Same story again when you look across the world. Canada, in 2000, had a fertility rate of 1.49. By 2008, it had grown to 1.68, and in 2019 it fell to 1.47. The U.K. in 2002 had a fertility rate of 1.63, by 2008 it had grown to 1.91, and is now at 1.65 presently. Australia in 2001 had a fertility rate of 1.74, by 2008 it had grown to 1.98, and now is reported at 1.66. New Zealand in 1998 had a fertility rate of 1.89, it had grown to 2.18 by 2007, and is now reported at 1.72. I could go on and on with almost every country that reports these statistics, but the point is proven. This is not a problem local to the U.S., it is a global depression. 

In regards to mass formation psychosis, this is how it happens. Nobody has told us there is a global depression, but we all know there is something wrong. There’s something missing that we cannot understand. When everybody is confused and doesn’t know what is happening, it’s very easy to take control of them. And maybe, that’s the goal of those in charge. In 2020, an event came about, and everybody focused their attention on it, following whatever they are ordered to do. We were in that vulnerable position because globally we’ve been experiencing a global depression, but nobody has recognized it as such. If we understand what has been upon us we can all have some acceptance for what it is. The people during the Great Depression were very aware that it was a depression, and so they were able to build out of it. Unfortunately that is not the case today. I’m not sure what the intentions of the "authorities" are in times like this. Maybe their intentions have been good. I don’t judge people based on their intentions though, I judge their results. I like numbers and so I put all the pieces together, and when I do, it seems there has been something very crooked going on. What exactly that is, I cannot honestly say.