Wednesday, October 7, 2020

“In America Money Does Grow on Trees”

“In America Money Does Grow on Trees”
by MN Gordon

"Full Commitment: This week provided additional confirmation that America is fully committed to a program of currency destruction. Decades of terminal intelligence have gotten us to this special place. We will have more on this in a moment. But first some words on being fully committed.
Say hello to the provider of bacon… lots of bacon, in this case. [PT]

We have never gutted a hog. But we hear it is a bloody mess. The volume of blood that gushes out – as in, ‘bleeding like a stuck pig’ – is profuse. Contemplating a bacon and egg breakfast plate reveals two types of commitments. That of the chicken. And that of the pig. You may know this allegory. The chicken is involved in providing for the breakfast. It provides the eggs. But the pig is fully committed to it. For the pig must perish to provide the bacon.

America is presently bleeding like a stuck pig. Public and private debts are hemorrhaging a bloody mess. For example, the budget deficit for fiscal year 2020 which concluded on September 30 was $3.3 trillion. By this, the federal government spent double what it generated via tax receipts and other confiscatory measures. And the federal debt held by the public is now well over 100 percent of GDP.
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The federal budget deficit, quarterly, as of Q2 2020. [PT]

There is no way the debt will be honestly paid. It is mathematically impossible. Nor will it be paid through an honest default. That is politically unacceptable. The debt, however, will be paid dishonestly. It will be paid through dollar debasement. America is fully committed to this. Here’s why…

Words of Omission: Last Tuesday’s presidential debate has been called many things. Most descriptions have cast it in a negative light. Some political pundits used French to describe, in colorful terms, what type of show it was. Here at the Economic Prism we offer a different assessment. Namely, we found the presidential debate to be invigorating. Like a New Year’s Day polar bear plunge, or a predawn distance jog, it was so painful that it was enjoyable.

President Trump’s grumpy bombast and bluster. Biden’s scratching attempt to overcome his slide toward senility. Utter disregard for facts. And Chris Wallace, once again, striving, yet failing, to be Mike Wallace.
Presidential faith healers… [PT]

It was the sort of spectacle that demonstrates public degradation is integral to democratic government. To be president, you must simultaneously sell your soul and roll around in the gutter. For this reason, we give the debate a five star seal of approval. However, the debate also offered another critical insight… There were words that should not have been said. There were also words that should have been said. You see, words, and the absence of words, can be distractions. And within a sequence of words there are sometimes obvious omissions.

Nowhere within the 98 minute presidential debate was there a single word of the country’s burgeoning $3.3 trillion budget deficit. Nowhere was there a single word of the great $26.8 trillion national debt default that is conflagrating like a savage windblown California wildfire.

Nowhere was there mention of the fake money system and the insidious way it concentrates wealth in the upper most end of the wealth spectrum. Nowhere was there mention of the $157.7 trillion in unfunded liabilities, which includes the sacred cows of social security and Medicare.

Not from Trump. Not from Biden. Not even from Wallace the Younger. What gives? Where is the opposition?

The real issue at hand – the one omitted from debate – is the present crisis brought on by 50 years of relentless debt accumulation. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, the federal government has spent more than it takes in. Now the debt has piled up past the point of no return; there is no longer an expedient way to reverse course. This is the real topic for debate. This is the story that is entirely ignored by both presidential candidates. This is the story of America’s decline. This is a story that is too grim to mention. And this obvious omission from Tuesday’s debate is what makes the affair nothing more than a great big distraction.

“In America Money Does Grow on Trees”: The U.S. government, and by extension the American people, are fully committed to a program of currency debasement to inflate away the debt problem. They believe executing an implicit default via inflation is the easier and softer way.

Intelligent minds, from John Law to Charles Ponzi to Bernie Madoff, from John Maynard Keynes to Milton Friedman to Ben S. Bernanke, from Benjamin Strong to Alan Greenspan to Jerome Powell, and everyone in between, have promised something for nothing. They have put their intelligent minds to the task…

Counter-cyclical stimulus spending. Interest rate suppression. Quantitative easing. Elastic currencies. Money shuffling. Inflation targeting. Smoke and mirrors… all so governments, and individuals, can spend well above what they can afford, and then welsh on the debt without consequences. The ultimate gift of this intelligence is terminal.
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At the end of Q2, the US debt-to-GDP ratio has reached a new high of 135%. [PT]

But why stop now? Americans, like a pig supplying bacon, are fully committed. The hottest incarnation of terminal intelligence is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). According to its purveyors, the USA can print all the money it needs to amplify the economy – debts and deficits be damned. MMT, no doubt, is a system of big government statists. A system where governments can hatch boondoggles without limits. The whole theory, or lack thereof, is absurd. But a growing base of supporters finds it alluring.
Well, here it is – the money tree! 
Apparently the government has been hiding it all these years… [PT]

The latest MMT messiah, Stephanie Kelton, has a new book. It is called, “The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy,” and it is getting rave reviews from unlikely places.
Ms. Kelton explains MMT: first take this pile of free money, 
then add that pile of free money, and presto, there’s free sh*t for everybody! [PT]

Upon reading the book, gangsta rap pioneer, Ice Cube, for example, tweeted the following means of salvation: “America loves to cry broke. But in America money does grow on trees.”

You can already see what is coming… When financial markets crack and the economy collapses and the populace pleads for someone to “do something,” the President and Congress will oblige with full commitment. MMT – or QE for the people – will be granted with money from nothing. Debts will be paid in full. And like the pig, the dollar will perish. Enjoy the bacon while it lasts."

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