"How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?"
by Bill Bonner
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "Last week was a delight… at least from a cynical perspective. On Thursday, the U.S. president went on TV to announce that henceforth, people who work for businesses with more than 100 employees would be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
CNN was on the story: “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us,” Biden said, his tone hardening toward Americans who still refuse to receive a vaccine despite ample evidence of their safety and full approval of one – the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine – from the US Food and Drug Administration. He said vaccinated America was growing “frustrated” with the 80 million people who have not received shots and are fueling the spread of the virus. And he acknowledged the new steps would not provide a quick fix.
The feds have long claimed the right to tell Americans what they must NOT put into their bodies. Certain drugs have been illegal for many years. And the feds are so adamant… so sure that this is a good thing… they’ve put millions of people in the hoosegow for breaking the prohibition.
Currently, there are some 450,000 people locked up for non-violent drug offenses. But this is the first time the president has taken it upon himself to tell people what they must put into their bodies… whether they want to or not. Will the federales start breaking down doors, throwing unvaccinated people to the floor, and putting them in prison to enforce the drug mandate? Or will they just take away their jobs?
Elite Lifesavers: Last week, we were exploring the idea of “freedom.” We wondered what good it is. After all, if the elites who control the government know what drugs we should take… and what drugs we shouldn’t take…what prices we should pay (they should increase 2% per year, not more, not less)…what kind of car we should drive (electric)…if they know good from evil, true from false, left from right…why do we need the freedom to decide for ourselves?
As Joe Biden pointed out on Thursday, freedom just gets in the way. He says it prevents the elite from saving our lives.
Inflation Is Still Here: Let’s come back to that subject tomorrow… It’s too heavy for a Monday morning. Instead, we turn to the news for more light-hearted nonsense. And what’s this? What happened to that “transitory” inflation? It must have missed its bus; it’s still with us. Here’s Breitbart’s Economics and Finance editor, John Carney: "Prices charged by U.S. businesses jumped higher than expected in August, data from the Department of Labor said Friday. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Producer Price Index rose 0.7 percent compared with July. Compared with a year ago, the index is up 8.3 percent, the fastest pace of price increases in data going back to 2010."
Note that these are producer prices. Typically, these increases show up in consumer prices in the months ahead. Note, too, that they are running four times higher than the level the Federal Reserve has blessed as meet, right, and so to do. Which suggests that there will be more “tapering” talk… until the stock market sinks… and the tapering talk tapers off.
Tokenize Everything: Meanwhile, the $120 billion per month in non-tapering money-printing is producing its inevitable chaos and confusion. For example, afoot is a movement to “tokenize” almost everything. We’ve read several articles about the trend. As best we can make out, when things are “tokenized,” the tokens can then be bought and sold, on the internet, without going through brokers or retailers. At least, that is the line of talk from the token entrepreneurs.
Let’s say you own a car wash in Mahwah, New Jersey. It’s much too small to “take it public.” But you’d like to cash out. So, you somehow “put in on the blockchain.” Not the suds and sprays, but the enterprise. As a token. And now, you can “fractionalize” the token into lots of pieces, maybe millions of them. And all the people who’ve been waiting years to own a piece of a fractionalized, tokenized car wash in Mahwah can now get in on it.
Token Wealth: We have no idea how that works. But to people with more imagination, or at least a better sense of humor, tokenized wealth is like catnip. In case you missed it, last week, the world discovered the most valuable work of art – ever. Yes, it was a picture of a dog. To be more precise, it was a tokenized picture of the Shiba Inu dog on the dogecoin.
The token sold for $4 million three months ago. But this past week… are you ready for this?… the owner fractionalized it into 17 billion pieces and sold 20% at auction. If the thing were worth $4 million, and you were selling 20%, you wouldn’t even need a calculator to see that the sale should have brought in $800,000. Instead, the price rose to 11,000 ether coins… worth about $225 million. Or maybe it was 17,000 ether and 11 billion fractionalized bits of a dog. Or maybe it was a cat. Or a lark. We don’t know. Our head is spinning.
The whole thing is so screwy. The tokenized Shiba Inu picture might just as well be worth nothing as a million dollars. You can’t put it on your wall. You can’t hold it in your hand. It doesn’t earn any money, wag its tail, or fetch sticks. And the story, while reported as truth by the major media, might just as well be a total fantasy. It makes more sense as a fantasy. But then, so does most of the news."
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