Trump is not anchored in reality. He starts a war with Iran for Israel with the tab still running and acts like it simply doesn't matter. Also, let's face it; America makes precious little. We are down to one American plant which still makes denim cloth after the other closed a couple of years ago. So while we can still buy American-made jeans, how much longer will this last? Even what we do make we typically use a number of imported goods in the process. We are the Emperor with no clothes and one day, probably sooner than later, the Bond Market is going to call our bluff.
As you say, getting back to 1870s thinking would be a great start. If we stopped escalating the salaries of those who impair productivity and instead stopped penalizing those who strive to direct their own effort productively, prosperity would be around the corner. If we truly saw the government as the criminal element they have become, public outrage would put an end to it.
Thinking back to the words of Frederic Bastiat, the world has done everything possible to ignore and avoid the correct path.
Yes Peter, agreed all. And the EU is pursuing similar policies on steroids - which has resulted in NO growth. So that's consistent with your thesis.
Specifically regarding the Fed and its "dual mandates", the markets (even now, manipulated as they all are - why does the Fed need TWO full Trading floors?) do a far better job of setting interest rates than the Fed and the Bond markets are the largest so more difficult to manipulate. Employment is really only a second derivative of broad economic policy (and rates) so why do we need a hugely costly Fed infrastructure?
And regarding the Fed's control of monetary policy, does it REALLY control monetary policy. I think its jawboning is more important than the actual control it has, but that's only because the jawboning is implemented by the same Commercial Banks who are also the Fed's shareholders. No conflicts there!
Other than that, all the Fed can do is set the Fed funds rate at the short end and artificially manipulate the yield curve with, essentially, QE (And Repo) - reactive Band-Aids on the economy, not fundamental solutions.
And beyond that, the Fed doesn't actually create money - the Commercial Banks do that through initiating loans And the Fed actually has no idea of how much money is in circulation because Eurodollars represent a substantial part of the "money" in circulation. Eurodollars are created by Banks Offshore simply as a Journal entry, beyond the control of any Central bank.
So, in view of all of the above, what is the case for maintaining the hugely costly Federal Reserve system? I rest my case.
It would also mean going against Trump who has proven last term with Covid money printing and this term with forever wars that he too is part of the establishment problem he campaigned against just to enrich his family legacy. It’s disgusting, criminal, and immoral. Everyone needs to be thrown out of Congress save for Massey who lost his seat, Rho Khanna, and as much as I despise Bernie Sanders socialist solutions, he at least has had the balls to diagnose and call out the Crony Oligarchy that runs the world.
Don't return to the country of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle", a description of the Chicago Union stockyards and meat packing district and the people, often immigrants, who worked and often died there, a book review in Wikipedia describing it with "hopelessness, cynicism and cruelty among the powerless", published in serial form in 1905 and by Doubleday in 1906. The novel did generate public initiatives for sanitation reforms.
There are laws and regulations for good reasons.
There needs to be some recognition of the circumstances of the laborers carrying the burden of work, and there needs to be fair treatment and compensation.
It seems where this understanding went off the rails is when American manufacturing, with it's restrictions, was rejected in favor of off shoring manufacturing to countries where low cost and exploitation were the norm, and then the resulting goods and services imported into the US market, where they were purchased largely through borrowing, resulting in massive trillions of dollars of debt, a stagnant manufacturing base and enormous profits going to multinational corporations engaging in low cost goods and services undercutting American produced output.
The results are the "Rust Belt", deteriorating US inner cities, and social unrest with expensive government welfare programs picking up the pieces.
Rebuilding the American manufacturing base is likely the only way the US can work itself out of these disastrous policies. This is no longer just low tech garment factories, which have been largely displaced to even lower wage countries such as Bangladesh, but high tech industries, which the Chinese have opportunistically developed, which threaten American high tech industrial sectors.
Since the US has fallen behind, it will be doubly difficult, meaning twice as expensive, to just catch up, never mind taking the lead in many high tech industries.
El Trumpo is 90% brain fart gone berserk. He says so many things that do not make sense in the real world. Did he give a detailed outline of how 15% growth could be achieved? Like his Venezuela oil scheme that will take at least 5-15 years to evolve (if ever) that he claims will bring down the price of gasoline tomorrow. Next he will be telling us that every American family needs a check for $500K (courtesy of the Fed) to prop up the economy. Heck, where's my $5,000 tariff check? Lost in the winds of China.
You need baseline infrastructure investments for the long term (say 20 years) where constant changes in the political realm cannot disrupt them. You need confidence that 20 years from now your investment will yield more than gains from inflation (which are an illusion).
El Trumpo and his war games and data center buffoonery do not inspire confidence. He tells me I am stupid and must leave the country if I don't agree with him. Oh my, what inspiring leadership. If half the country is now stupid and decides to leave, what happens to the economy? POOF. Government cannot get any more retarded and he is the king of government.
Connect the dots.
..."So where did the growth go? How did we go from a 7% economy to a 2% economy"...the answer to that is EASY. Percentages are so derogatory and misleading. Back 150 years ago, the economy could grow at 7% because in 1875 GDP was in the $9 billion range. From a smaller base, it wasn't difficult to grow the economy. We were beginning the machine age.
Today, GDP is some $32 trillion. A 15% growth rate would need about $5 trillion of additional economic activity. In actual inflated dollars we are growing far greater than in 1875 even though the percentage is much lower. Never mind that as corporations are now so greedy they will only expand if they get taxpayer dollars or can borrow at discount rates. The bond market is saying to hell with that. And don't get me started on that commie of Soros, Bessent.
Besides, the only things government can ever grow is tyranny and terrorism. It sucks the life out of everything else.
M2 grew by an astounding $1.2T last year, about 6%. That’s a lot of extra tokens sloshing around driving prices up.
I used to quote deflation between 1800 and 1900, and say look at what human progress can provide, but the issue is Bismarck, and money supply shenanigans between the Germans and the French.
If we got rid of USG grift, there wouldn’t be anything left. It’s grift all the way down.
Trump is not anchored in reality. He starts a war with Iran for Israel with the tab still running and acts like it simply doesn't matter. Also, let's face it; America makes precious little. We are down to one American plant which still makes denim cloth after the other closed a couple of years ago. So while we can still buy American-made jeans, how much longer will this last? Even what we do make we typically use a number of imported goods in the process. We are the Emperor with no clothes and one day, probably sooner than later, the Bond Market is going to call our bluff.
As you say, getting back to 1870s thinking would be a great start. If we stopped escalating the salaries of those who impair productivity and instead stopped penalizing those who strive to direct their own effort productively, prosperity would be around the corner. If we truly saw the government as the criminal element they have become, public outrage would put an end to it.
Thinking back to the words of Frederic Bastiat, the world has done everything possible to ignore and avoid the correct path.
I wish you would still do the reading Peter. The AI voice is far less engaging as you
Great article Peter! The amount of petty restraints that bureaucracy piles upon states and cities never fails to amaze me! Lol
Yes Peter, agreed all. And the EU is pursuing similar policies on steroids - which has resulted in NO growth. So that's consistent with your thesis.
Specifically regarding the Fed and its "dual mandates", the markets (even now, manipulated as they all are - why does the Fed need TWO full Trading floors?) do a far better job of setting interest rates than the Fed and the Bond markets are the largest so more difficult to manipulate. Employment is really only a second derivative of broad economic policy (and rates) so why do we need a hugely costly Fed infrastructure?
And regarding the Fed's control of monetary policy, does it REALLY control monetary policy. I think its jawboning is more important than the actual control it has, but that's only because the jawboning is implemented by the same Commercial Banks who are also the Fed's shareholders. No conflicts there!
Other than that, all the Fed can do is set the Fed funds rate at the short end and artificially manipulate the yield curve with, essentially, QE (And Repo) - reactive Band-Aids on the economy, not fundamental solutions.
And beyond that, the Fed doesn't actually create money - the Commercial Banks do that through initiating loans And the Fed actually has no idea of how much money is in circulation because Eurodollars represent a substantial part of the "money" in circulation. Eurodollars are created by Banks Offshore simply as a Journal entry, beyond the control of any Central bank.
So, in view of all of the above, what is the case for maintaining the hugely costly Federal Reserve system? I rest my case.
END THE FED.
It would also mean going against Trump who has proven last term with Covid money printing and this term with forever wars that he too is part of the establishment problem he campaigned against just to enrich his family legacy. It’s disgusting, criminal, and immoral. Everyone needs to be thrown out of Congress save for Massey who lost his seat, Rho Khanna, and as much as I despise Bernie Sanders socialist solutions, he at least has had the balls to diagnose and call out the Crony Oligarchy that runs the world.
Where can i see and track the adrenaline portfolio? can I try it too?
Don't return to the country of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle", a description of the Chicago Union stockyards and meat packing district and the people, often immigrants, who worked and often died there, a book review in Wikipedia describing it with "hopelessness, cynicism and cruelty among the powerless", published in serial form in 1905 and by Doubleday in 1906. The novel did generate public initiatives for sanitation reforms.
There are laws and regulations for good reasons.
There needs to be some recognition of the circumstances of the laborers carrying the burden of work, and there needs to be fair treatment and compensation.
It seems where this understanding went off the rails is when American manufacturing, with it's restrictions, was rejected in favor of off shoring manufacturing to countries where low cost and exploitation were the norm, and then the resulting goods and services imported into the US market, where they were purchased largely through borrowing, resulting in massive trillions of dollars of debt, a stagnant manufacturing base and enormous profits going to multinational corporations engaging in low cost goods and services undercutting American produced output.
The results are the "Rust Belt", deteriorating US inner cities, and social unrest with expensive government welfare programs picking up the pieces.
Rebuilding the American manufacturing base is likely the only way the US can work itself out of these disastrous policies. This is no longer just low tech garment factories, which have been largely displaced to even lower wage countries such as Bangladesh, but high tech industries, which the Chinese have opportunistically developed, which threaten American high tech industrial sectors.
Since the US has fallen behind, it will be doubly difficult, meaning twice as expensive, to just catch up, never mind taking the lead in many high tech industries.
Prof.
You are doing great work detailing the complex realities we are encapsulated in. Keep up the great work. your communications add value to our nation.
El Trumpo is 90% brain fart gone berserk. He says so many things that do not make sense in the real world. Did he give a detailed outline of how 15% growth could be achieved? Like his Venezuela oil scheme that will take at least 5-15 years to evolve (if ever) that he claims will bring down the price of gasoline tomorrow. Next he will be telling us that every American family needs a check for $500K (courtesy of the Fed) to prop up the economy. Heck, where's my $5,000 tariff check? Lost in the winds of China.
You need baseline infrastructure investments for the long term (say 20 years) where constant changes in the political realm cannot disrupt them. You need confidence that 20 years from now your investment will yield more than gains from inflation (which are an illusion).
El Trumpo and his war games and data center buffoonery do not inspire confidence. He tells me I am stupid and must leave the country if I don't agree with him. Oh my, what inspiring leadership. If half the country is now stupid and decides to leave, what happens to the economy? POOF. Government cannot get any more retarded and he is the king of government.
Connect the dots.
..."So where did the growth go? How did we go from a 7% economy to a 2% economy"...the answer to that is EASY. Percentages are so derogatory and misleading. Back 150 years ago, the economy could grow at 7% because in 1875 GDP was in the $9 billion range. From a smaller base, it wasn't difficult to grow the economy. We were beginning the machine age.
Today, GDP is some $32 trillion. A 15% growth rate would need about $5 trillion of additional economic activity. In actual inflated dollars we are growing far greater than in 1875 even though the percentage is much lower. Never mind that as corporations are now so greedy they will only expand if they get taxpayer dollars or can borrow at discount rates. The bond market is saying to hell with that. And don't get me started on that commie of Soros, Bessent.
Besides, the only things government can ever grow is tyranny and terrorism. It sucks the life out of everything else.
M2 grew by an astounding $1.2T last year, about 6%. That’s a lot of extra tokens sloshing around driving prices up.
I used to quote deflation between 1800 and 1900, and say look at what human progress can provide, but the issue is Bismarck, and money supply shenanigans between the Germans and the French.
If we got rid of USG grift, there wouldn’t be anything left. It’s grift all the way down.