Sunday, April 17, 2011

Another Good Econ 101 Cartoon - Inflation

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Check it!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL7V9BnJXO8

I love how this guy boils it down.  If you aren't one of the Gods of Greenwich you will probably both cry and laugh at this.  If you are a saver, get extra kleenex.

The Federal Reserve experiment is almost 100, but the wheels didn't really come off (for regular folks) until Nixon eliminated the gold-backed dollar.  The Clinton era sealed the deal by undoing the Glass-Stegall Act that kept banks and brokerages separate, which allowed the "financialization" of EVERYTHING, with a huge increase in systemic risk as a natural consequence.   Our whole focus shifted from production to finance.  Gee, what a great idea; go eat some derivatives.

Now we have insolvent too-big-to-fail banks, insolvent governments and a lot of misleading statistics and spin emanating from centers of power telling us everything is fine/good/recovering/no inflation, etc.   What a load. Stay tuned for $5 gas this summer.  Even Walmart has run out of tricks to keep shelf prices from going up.  But please, do take comfort, our politicians and banksters say no inflation and all under control.  Kind of like Fukushima?   The charade may play out a while longer as Ben the Bernank keeps monetizing treasury debt and providing interest-free loans to the TBTFs to put into the stock market.  Buuuuuut.....

History is not on Benny+Washington+WallStreet side.  Every time wealth has been concentrated so much, and so much debt has been piled on to an underlying productive economy, a collapse of one sort or another (hyperinflation or deflation) has followed.  We are on that doorstep.  There is no soft landing in the real economic world, it is just another crazy dream that economists hold onto because it "could happen".  Sure.  Have a great week.

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