Posted on 03/16/2023 5:00:37 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Money is all theoretical… until it’s not. Paper money is bad enough, as France learned under the tutelage of the rascal John Law in the early 1700s. The nation was broke, exhausted by foolish wars, and heaped under unbearable debt. Monsieur Law, a Scottish genius-wizard (the Jerry Lewis of political economy), landed in Paris, cast a spell on the regent Duc d’Orléans, set up a magic credit engine fueled by dreams of untold riches-to-come burgeoning out of the vast, new-found lands called Louisiana up the Mississippi River, and modern finance was born!
The stock-and-money schemes known as the Mississippi Bubble soon ruined France and put finance in such a bad odor that the word “banque” could not be used in polite society there for a century to come. Monetary inflation became a thing for the first time since Roman days — a much easier trick with printed paper banknotes than with silver coins — but the effect was the same: the evaporation of “wealth” (which is what money supposedly represents). At the height of the crisis, trading in gold was criminalized, though that was so easily worked-around due to sheer custom and habit that the Crown had to re-legalize it. The frenzy from start to finish lasted only a few years, but the nation was set on the path that would eventually lead to revolution. Law ended his days dolefully running card games in Venice.
Likewise, the creaking polity called the USA in our time spawned many new incarnations of John Law as it transitioned from being “the arsenal of democracy” — you know, making real things — to a land of make-believe, where unicorns galloped over rainbows conjured by computer magic and utopian wishes of equity, diversity, and inclusion. The overhang of previously amassed wealth kept those dreams going long after we discontinued the rough and messy business of making stuff, and thereby generating real wealth. But now a klaxon blares, signaling the end of dream-time, and the nation wakes up in a ramshackle house with the floor giving way under the bed.
The rot was plain to see in the banking architecture built on US treasury paper (bills, notes, bonds) as rising interest rates undercut the price of all the debt paper issued previously at lower rates. And this was the collateral that banks generally held the depositors’ money in. So, when it became necessary to declare a problem with the balance sheet, and cash had to be raised to cover it, the treasury paper could only be sold at a loss, liabilities exceeded assets, word got out, depositors rushed to secure the money in their accounts, and that was all she wrote for yon bank, in this case, Silicon Valley Bank, the first to crumble.....
You mean like Harry Reid, or Biden, or the Clinton’s, or Manchin...
-This one was a classic: https://theintercept.com/2016/08/24/epipen-uproar-highlights-companys-family-ties-to-congress/
-So was this one: https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-paid-speeches/index.html (It was obvious years past that if you wanted personal and prompt attention by the US State Department headed by HRC, you pay her husband or to their foundation.)
Most of Congress, literally MOST, are on the take. I’m not saying it’s illegal, because most of the games they play have been carefully gamed using accountants and lawyers to where they “technically” are breaking no laws.
If you want to drain the swamp you need to start with two things:
-1. Term limits for Congress. The career politician is buyable, essentially for sale to the highest bidder.
If you put in place term limits, the endless pursuit for campaign money ends and it becomes extremely difficult for special interests to continually buy the new guy. The corruption cycle (albeit mostly legal) as we have today would be greatly reduced.
What you really have today are politicians that pander to the public, pop-culture, but are doing the splits and trying to appease their corporate and oligarch financiers who also own the news and social media.
-2. Make it to where the heads of all your departments and administrations are not political appointees. These guys are simply loyal to their political master and use the organizations authority to support the guy whose coat train they are riding on. They are SELDOM apolitical, objective and consistent. Comey, Lynch, Holder are all examples in the past.
These guys are mostly political hacks, some with very little actual experience or education, usually outsiders that know little about the actual organization where they are now the top executive. Examples:
-Pete Buttigieg: In the news now. What were his qualifications?
-Eric Fanning in the past: the poster child, ZERO education and experience in anything defense related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Fanning
In some cases they would never qualify for an entry/low level position because they wouldn’t even make a background check or polygraph, but now are the #1 guy in charge of an organization they never served a day in. Usually these sort of appointees meet the right demographic profile, i.e. woman, black, LGBTQ, and to a lesser degree Latino.
The Swamp loves the revolving door. So many ways to make money in DC. That’s an area that begs for reform but I have no faith that it will ever happen.
Corruption in DC is now endemic.
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