2024: Black Swan Event Coming?
By Michael Snyder/Economic Collapse Blog December 27, 2023
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A "perfect storm" is raging all around us, and our world is so close to plunging into a complete and utter state of chaos that even the mainstream media is talking about it.
The past several years have been a time when multiple major wars have begun, pestilences have paralyzed the entire planet, the worst global food crisis in modern history has erupted, and we have been hit by a seemingly endless series of natural disasters.
But there is a growing consensus that even more difficult times are ahead of us. During a roundtable discussion on "Face the Nation" on Sunday, CBS News correspondent Catherine Herridge actually confessed that she is concerned that "2024 may be the year of a black swan event"...
CBS News' "Face the Nation" held a roundtable on Christmas Eve, affording various talking heads an opportunity to make predictions for 2024. While most of the predictions were relatively banal, one among them stood out, prompting critics to puzzle over its possible significance.
Network correspondent Catherine Herridge, the wife of a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, suggested that "2024 may be the year of a black swan event. This is a national security event with high impact that's very hard to predict."
I agree with her, but I don't think that it will be just one "black swan event" that we will be facing.
A black swan event is considered an unlikely and unpredictable event with significant consequences.
Examples of black swan events include the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and Great depression, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, 9/11 terrorist attacks, the global financial crisis of 2008, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Specifically, Herridge gave several reasons for why she felt the need to issue such a "dark" prediction...
Herridge told the other CBS News panelists Sunday there were a number of concerns that factored into her "dark" prediction, including that "this sort of enduring heightened threat level that we're facing, the wars in Israel, also Ukraine, and we're so divided in this country in ways that we haven't seen before. And I think that just creates fertile ground for our adversaries like North Korea and China and Iran."
Hmmm...
It seems like I have heard all of this somewhere before.
I just can't seem to put my finger on it...
Of course she is right on target.
So much is going to happen during the new year that is about to start.
CNN is getting in on the act too. The following comes from an article that they just posted entitled "How 2023 has been the 'year of the brink' and 2024 could be worse"...
It could have been immeasurably worse. But holding back from the brink in 2023 has simply deferred vast crises to 2024. The post-Covid world is exhausted, cash-strapped, but ultimately more fraught than for decades.
Overshadowing it all will be a flagging hyperpower, at best distracted with presidential elections, at worst tearing itself apart in voting disputes and political extremism.
The likelihood the United States will be occupied by its own traumas amplifies each risk. The geopolitical given of a US response will be absent, fuelling authoritarian ambition, or a radical upending of the global order. 2024 could make 2023 seem rational and sober.
Very well said.
When CNN starts publishing articles that sound like they could have been written by me, that is clearly a sign that time is very short.
Just like Herridge, the author of the CNN article is also deeply concerned about the current state of the conflict in Ukraine...
Having spent two weeks around the frontlines, it is clear Kyiv faces an existential crisis in the coming winter. It will not survive without Western help. It cannot admit to the scale of challenges it faces without being dubbed by some US Republicans a loser, unworthy of US funding.
It is true.
Ukraine will not survive without western assistance.
And even if funding is restored to previous levels, the Russians will continue to gain ground.
At some point the government in Ukraine is going to become extremely desperate, and that is when things will start to get very "interesting" over there.
Meanwhile, the war in the Middle East just continues to heat up.
On Tuesday, the U.S. military conducted a series of strikes on Iranian-backed forces in Iraq...
At President Joe Biden's direction, the U.S. military carried out the strikes in Iraq at 1:45 GMT, likely killing "a number of Kataib Hezbollah militants" and destroying multiple facilities used by the group, the U.S. military said.
"These strikes are intended to hold accountable those elements directly responsible for attacks on coalition forces in Iraq and Syria and degrade their ability to continue attacks. We will always protect our forces," said General Michael Erik Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, in a statement.
A U.S. base in Iraq's Erbil that houses U.S. forces came under attack from a one-way drone earlier on Monday, leading to the latest U.S. casualties.
Iranian-backed forces have already attacked U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria more than 100 times.
Whether the Biden administration is willing to publicly admit it or not, the truth is that the U.S. is already at war in the Middle East.
Could we soon be at war with China as well?
Chinese President Xi Jinping just issued quite an ominous statement about Taiwan...
President Xi Jinping vowed on Tuesday to resolutely prevent anyone from "splitting Taiwan from China in any way", the official Xinhua news agency reported, a little more than two weeks before Taiwan elects a new leader.
China views democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory, despite the strong objections of the government in Taipei, and has ramped up military and political pressure to assert its sovereignty claims.
The Chinese will not invade before the upcoming election in Taiwan.
And I don't think that the Chinese will invade during the early months of 2024.
But an invasion is most definitely coming.
For years, I have been urging my readers to watch Russia, China and Israel.
Now a time of global conflict is upon us, and many believe that 2024 will be the year when we finally pass the point of no return.
Originally published at The Economic Collapse Blog - reposted with permission.
