BALTIMORE – We attended a family wedding in Nicaragua over the weekend.
Asked to make a little speech, we opined on the differences between men and women, and the sacred role of marriage… the ultimate and most ancient win-win deal.
As for the more profane matters, we noted that whenever young men get together today, the conversations turn neither to sex, nor politics, nor religion.
In the fall of 2017, a young man’s thoughts turn to bitcoin. (Women, as a mark of their superior wisdom and intelligence, rarely mention it.)
Bitcoin briefly topped the $20,000 mark a few days ago before falling back to $18,200 yesterday morning.
Whatever its other merits and whatever future it may have, bitcoin claims to be a form of money that the authorities can’t control.
Like gold, they can’t increase the quantity or the price. They can’t print it or lend it… or put their dead heroes’ faces on it. Most important, they can’t use it to cheat people.
They can make it illegal, though, like prostitution, gambling, and drugs. Whether or not they can make it unpopular remains to be seen.
Grand Larceny
Yesterday, we decided to consolidate. We explained the U.S. dollar… the fiat (fake) money system… the bubble in stocks and bonds… the GOP tax bill… and the coming blow-up in the financial markets…
…all in terms of One Grand Larceny.
All governments, at one time or another – and some all the time – turn to theft. Inevitably, they spend more than they can raise via honest tax robbery.
Then they diddle the money.
Putting out bogus money inevitably leads to trouble. Sooner or later, the trick is exposed. But the elite gain so much from the counterfeiting that they are unable to change policies – even when they clearly lead to financial catastrophe.
Mr. Barack H. Obama ran for office pledging change. Specifically, he was going to end America’s wars in the Mideast.
But the wars are part of the scam. They didn’t end; instead, the president soon got with the program, just like his predecessor.
Then Mr. Donald J. Trump was elected, again promising more disruption and reform. He offered a new foreign policy and an end to losing wars.
Hardly a week had passed after Mr. Trump was elected, and he, too, was in on the “defense” swindle… which is really nothing more than a way of transferring money and power to armed insiders.
The president not only went along; he went further. He deployed U.S. troops on 149 separate meddles so far this year – a new record for foreign entanglements.
And instead of restricting the flow of money to these people, Mr. Trump increased it – by $70 billion.
Rendezvous With History
In the matter of taxes, candidate Trump promised an overhaul that would make it possible to file your tax return on a postcard.
What happened to that?
The same thing happened to his new foreign policy: After the election, the proposal disappeared into the Swamp.
Then there was the “repeal and replace” Obamacare initiative. That disruption, too, vanished as the insiders of both parties went to work to protect the system.
And now, failing to slow spending at home and abroad, the Empire heads for her rendezvous with comic history – the fate of all empires… the way of all flimsy flesh.
Everyone may know that you can’t spend more than you earn forever. But spending other people’s money is a hard habit to break. None of the Deep State insiders wants to give it up. So the wars continue… Obamacare, too; the system can’t fix itself. The voters are powerless. The game is rigged. And the deciders – including POTUS himself – are all in on it.
The result is always a resort to time-tested frauds – clipping coins, replacing precious metal with base money, printing money… and now, lending fake money to big banks.
But we left out one salacious part: the complicity of economists and the Fed.
Bogus Money
A real economist is an observer. He tries to figure out how things work by watching.
A fake economist is an activist. He wants power, status, and money – along with everyone else – and he is willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get it.
In pretending he can make an economy work better, he is lying. In manipulating interest rates and markets – that is to say, in replacing honest price discovery with price fixing – he is cheating.
And in soaking the world with bogus money (which ends up mostly in his pockets and those of his friends and cronies), he is stealing.
He gets a cushy seat at a university. He writes a bestseller on “inequality.” He explains why the rich are SOBs… why we need a more elastic money and lower interest rates… why the feds should run a bigger deficit… and why the Fed funds rate should be increased.
If he is lucky and persuasive, he gets tenure… or a seat on the Fed’s board of governors… or even his mug on Time magazine as a “hero.”
Then, if he has absolutely no dignity or shame, he writes a self-congratulatory book called The Courage to Act, which fully illustrates his galling cowardice as well as the abiding, swinish pomposity of his whole trade.
But wait… we’re getting distracted. We were describing the role of the Fed…
Why does the Fed go along? Why do these economists aid and abet the larceny?
We’ve already explained it: All of these foul notions – stimulus… data dependence… demand management – are simply activist claptrap.
They allow a smart economist to sound like he knows what he is doing. But they are all nonsense.
The real story is simpler, older, and more sordid: It is another big larceny. The biggest debasement in history.
Regards,
Bill
Category: Central Banks