Yes, another Ann Barnhardt post in its entirety(until we can direct-link to her blog, I'll keep doing this). If you'd rather hide your head in the sand and not comprehend how completely boned we are, just don't click the fold.
On Money, Banking and Men
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - February 29, AD 2012 11:22 PM
MST
If you know how bad the situation is and don’t feel the need
to subject yourself to any more of my patented Barnhardt Phillipic and Funeral
Dirge for Civilization, take your leave now, because I honestly think that this
is the the saddest, most profoundly depressing post I have yet written. And I’ve
written a few. A few thousand.
The topic is the US Dollar, and currency in general. The Federal Reserve has
been willfully and systematically debasing the US dollar for a century by
claiming that 2% inflation is the benchmark of a healthy economy. Since the
universities and media have been overrun by Marxists, there is hardly anyone
alive who A.) is in possession of the capacity to independently think and reason
their way through such a question and B.) anyone who cares in the first place.
In addition to the slow grinding debasement by the Fed, the Marxists have
finally fully usurped and overthrown the government of the United States, and
thus have now executed the coup de grace: wild, flagrant money “printing”, and
by “printing”, please understand that we are not talking about the fabrication
of paper bills. We are talking about computerized entries into the Federal
Reserve’s ledger. The Fed literally types in an addition of x billion or y
trillion dollars into its balance sheet – creating dollars out of thin air that
exist as zeroes and ones on a computer server – and then use those new dollars
to purchase US Treasury bonds. In this way, the Obama regime and its
puppetmasters have debased the US dollar by roughly one half the total GDP in
less than four years. This iteration of both the United States and the US Dollar
are over. There is no way to walk back the damage that the Obama regime has
done. They have accomplished their mission, no matter what happens from this day
forward.
After reading and reviewing my texts on monetary theory from Mises, Hayek,
Friedman and contemporary economists including Denninger, I have come to a
profound realization about money and the fiat vs commodity money (i.e.
gold-backed currency) debate – and it bodes very, very poorly for us.
First, a few preliminary points.
1. Going to a gold standard will solve nothing. This is not to say that I
don’t think that gold and silver are good wealth storage vehicles in this
situation. To the contrary, I think they are excellent for these times. BUT,
simply reverting to the gold standard, in and of itself, will not turn us
around. We will, at some point, be FORCED to revert to the primordial commodity
currency paradigm simply because our government and society will collapse, and
thus our currency with it. If and when our culture rebuilds itself, if we remain
as we are, the exact same problems that have arisen under the fiat money system
will emerge again, even under a gold-backed currency.
So why has civilization, up until just within the last few decades, operated
on commodity money systems, and why is it plausible to think that any fiat
currency could ever have any legitimacy? The reason why civilization has used
commodity money, namely gold and silver, up until just recently is because up
until just recently, there was no way to instantly verify money held on deposit,
or the existence of a line of credit. With computers and the internet, such
instant checks are as common as breathing, blinking and walking. We don’t even
think about it anymore. We go to the sandwich shop, get our sandwich, and in
less than three seconds, the vendor has confirmed that we have funds, and then
transferred those funds into his account. In the centuries and millennia past,
people would load chests filled with gold coinage and jewels onto sailing ships
and set out for distant lands. Why did they take their gold and jewels with them
and risk losing that money to shipwreck or piracy? Because they had to take it
with them. The only way to confirm your wealth to others was to physically
possess it. Physical possession and spot exchange was also the only way to
execute mercantile transactions. If we lose telecommunications and computing
ability due to the successful detonation of an Electromagnetic Pulse weapon, or
simply due to the total breakdown of society and the ability to maintain and
power such systems, then indeed, this argument will become moot. BUT, so long as
there is near-instant data transmission, commodity money will be theoretically
optional (*with a qualifier to be addressed later in Part 3).
While we are looking at history, it bears mentioning that metals-backed
currencies have not prevented other economic calamities. Just in the United
States, the Great Depression of the 1930’s and the post-Civil War depression of
1873-1879, now called the Long Depression, which was actually caused by the
manipulation of silver demand by the German Empire, were not magically prevented
by metals-backed currency. Returning to a gold standard would not prevent
recessions from happening. In fact, recessions are a necessary fact of
economies, and serve to deflate bubbles and restore equilibrium. The only people
who promise to eliminate economic recessions are Marxists, and that is because
Marxists are liars. Just as all respiring beings on earth must both inhale and
exhale, so too must economies. A person who perpetually inhaled would eventually
burst their lungs and die. Conversely, a person who could only exhale would
asphyxiate and die. But both actions, in a balanced, moderate cycle, are the
definition of health. It is the same with economies: periods of expansion
followed by a healthy, normal contraction that deflated any bubbles and restored
equilibrium, thus setting up the next expansion phase.
2. Metals-backed currencies can be corrupted, too. There are two ways to
corrupt a metals-backed currency, and it has happened many, many times
throughout history. The first means pertains to coinage, and is to corrupt the
metal itself with cheaper metals, such as zinc. The Roman denarius was debased
from 4.5 grams of pure silver to less than one tenth of a gram of silver.
Hyperinflation was the inevitable result, and the currency had to eventually be
totally replaced.
The second means, which pertains to paper and electronic currency, is for the
government to lie about the reserve quantity. This could either be done by
explicitly lying about the number of ounces in storage, OR could be done by
clandestinely issuing dollars to cronies of the oligarchy, which were NOT
actually backed by any metal, and thus would be a de facto lie as to the supply.
Since the people would be unable to demand a daily audit and reconciliation, the
ability to police and reconcile the supply of metal and dollars would be
impossible, and exactly the same things that are going on today, namely
government looting of the Treasury and debasement of the currency, would
continue apace.
A reasonable, non-zero reserve ratio is workable, but only so long as banks
are required to carry one dollar of reserves for every one dollar they lend out.
These reserves can be either in the form of the bank’s own capital, OR in the
form of FAIRLY VALUED booking of the assets purchased with the loan. All
unsecured lending must stop. This means that all home mortgages must be
marked-to-market every single day, and if the home is worth less than the loan
outstanding, the bank must post its own capital against the shortfall. This also
means that credit cards, which are totally unsecured because they are used to
purchase mostly non-assets, such as meals, gasoline, vacations and pure service
commodities, must be backed by bank capital dollar-for-dollar. The bank could
sell bonds to raise capital if it wants to make unsecured loans and then would
be arbitraging the spread between the interest rate it must pay on the bonds and
the interest rate plus default risk on the credit cards. In this way, the worst
that could possibly happen, namely every unsecured credit line totally
defaulting, would result in the bank owners and investors losing their money –
but the customer deposits would be safe because all of the loans against hard
assets, which would be properly valued and marked-to-market, could be sold to
other banks in the market, and that revenue would fully cover all customer
deposits.
In not posting capital against unsecured loans, the banks are indeed naked
short selling our currency – and it matters not whether that currency is
gold-backed or not. The credit card customer is promising to pay back (deliver)
a loan with money that they do not have and does not exist, and they won’t be
able to borrow. So, the bank and the customer together are colluding in the
naked short sale. The long on the other side is the citizen and taxpayer who
will subsidize the inevitable “need” to print more dollars to “bail out” both
the bank and the customer. Taxes will be raised and the currency will be further
debased, causing price inflation – a one-two punch to the citizen. This is
EXACTLY what is happening to us today.
Well, the reality today is that banks are both writing massive quantities of
unsecured loans and doing nothing on their side to balance the ledger, AND they
are failing to honestly and realistically book the values of their hard-asset
loans. The big banks are still booking home values at their original purchase
price – not the fair market value today. Given the housing bubble, most
mortgages today are underwater and are worth far, far less than the principal
balance to say nothing of interest. This is why I say, echoing others, that the
major banks in this country are not just totally insolvent, they are insolvent
multiple times over. If the government wasn’t criminal and the favored banks of
the oligarchs actually had to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, the entire system
would implode into a singularity tomorrow.
For more info and a much better explanation of the concepts covered to this point, do purchase "Leverage" by Karl Denninger - a very easy-to-grasp, detailed explanation of the whole, stinking mess. CLICK HERE TO BUY "LEVERAGE".
At the end of the day, any currency is backed not by physical commodities or
a collective abstraction called “a government”. No. A currency is backed by the
character and integrity of men that constitute the issuing nation or body. In
short, WE ARE THE GOLD. We are the bearers of the “full faith and credit” which
backs our Federal Reserve notes today. And that, dear readers, is why this
country is not going to turn itself around anytime soon, and is almost certainly
doomed in the short-run.
Every text I read over the last few days always included a very brief caveat
that all of the preceding theory was, of course, contingent on a moral society
with a functioning rule of law, honest regulation and a populace that was mostly
honorable and trustworthy. This caveat was phrased differently in each instance,
but it was always there, hanging over everything else like a fine mist. If you
have a nation of moral degenerates, all bets are off. If the people are more
dishonest than honest, and the government is nothing more than a mafia, then all
economic systems and all postulations fly apart at the seams. If there is no
rule of law, and if theft, graft and looting are the prevalent systems of
economic activity, then no matter what your banking system, no matter what your
currency – fiat or commodity-backed, your system and your economy will
absolutely, positively fail eventually.
Sadly, that is where we are in this country. Sure, there are still good
people, but as a percentage it isn’t even remotely enough to bear the burden of
the massive moral degeneracy of the others. Even among those people who would
never steal or loot, there is a decided lack of courage to stand up to those who
do steal and loot. The MF Global confiscation proves this. People have mostly
rolled over and taken having their money stolen, shrugging their shoulders and
telling themselves that there is nothing they can do – and then going back for
more, continuing to patronize the very exchange that facilitated the theft and
fraud. To my knowledge, only one broker has exited the field on purely moral
grounds in a pre-emptive action to protect clients, and as a protest to the
injustice of the system itself.
Our government is saturated with corruption, looting and outright treason and
criminality, and yet most people simply cannot be bothered to care, much less to
act, and are thus passively complicit. A non-trivial percentage of the
population are planning and maneuvering to best “benefit” or profiteer from the
criminality and fundamental dishonesty of the paradigm. Others are attempting to
enter the oligarch class themselves under the guise of running for political
office – and make no mistake, this encompasses both the so-called left and the
so-called right on the political spectrum. The degeneracy is everywhere.
The fall of a society can happen very quickly. Our society has taken roughly
50 years to topple. If the previous example of the Russian culture is any
example, we can expect it to take many multiples of 50 years to undo this
damage, if and only if the pendulum has reached its maximum amplitude and now
begins to swing back, which I fear has not yet happened. Morality cannot be
legislated. Cultures cannot be purged of evil, selfishness and sloth overnight –
even with a war. I cannot lie to you and tell you that short of Divine
Intervention, this situation will resolve itself in any of our lifetimes. We had
“it.” We had “it”, and we squandered “it”, and now “it” is gone, and no
governmental, economic or monetary policy will get “it” back. “It” can only come
from God, dwelling in the hearts of men, and God only comes to men if they
specifically ask Him.
We, the people, always have been and always will be the ultimate backing
commodity of our currency, because at its core, money is merely the
representative device for a man’s capacity to produce and create. Dishonest men
do not create or produce. They steal. Thus, the currency of a morally
degenerated society is by definition degenerate itself. The currency of a
degenerate society is the proxy not for a man’s ability to work and think, but
rather a proxy for a man’s capacity to steal and evade work.
We used to be like gold – beautiful and warm. Now we are like pig iron -
cold, brittle and good-for-nothing. And THAT is what constitutes the “full faith
and credit” that backs the U.S. Dollar. So long as our culture remains
degenerate, our currency can never be anything but spiraling, worthless trash.
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