The level of repression now is significantly higher than it was under the Mubarak regime, and people from older generations say it is worse than even the worst periods of the 1950s and 1960s [under the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Palestinians I meet in the West Bank, all insist that their problem is not with Israelis, or even the state of Israel. Their issue is with being under a military occupation: restrictions to movement through a series of checkpoints (solely within the occupied West Bank, not within Israel); a separation barrier that is not built on the internationally agreed Armistice Line but one that snakes into and annexes private Palestinian land; and almost daily harassment and humiliation.

But when I publicly made similar statements months ago, saying that if the Fed were to raise rates, even by a quarter point, the increase would be sufficient to burst the stock bubble and tip the economy into recession, my opinions were considered completely unhinged. My suggestion that the Fed would have to later reverse policy and cut rates, after having raised them, was looked at as even more outrageous, akin to predicting that the U.S. would be invaded by Canada. Now those pronouncements are creeping into the mainstream.

I was able to see through to this scenario not because I have access to some data that others don't, but because I understood that stimulus in the form of zero percent interest rates and quantitative easing is not a means to jump start an economy and restore health, but a one-way cul-de-sac of addiction and dependency that pushes up asset prices and creates a zombie economy that can't survive without a continued stimulus. In the end, stimulus does not create actual growth, but merely the illusion of it.