FEDERAL RESERVE Fed Chair Powell says interest rates are likely to be higher

CNBC ^ | 3/7/2023 | Jeff Cox

[Owen]

Not a gold advocate. You can’t eat gold. Its value is also in the imagination of counterparties. Backing pieces of printed paper with gold only aligns money supply with decisions by single individuals who are CEOs of gold mining companies and their production. So no one rational focuses on gold backing.

And not a Bernanke hater. What was done had to be done to prevent people outright dying. The problem was it revealed the fundamental truth:

It is a substance created from nothingness. In fact, it just meant even more was created from nothing.

Mostly, the overall, underlying point is 2009 onward made it very clear that capitalism failed. Money was created to obfuscate the failure of capitalism. That doesn’t mean communism or socialism or other money focused ism’s succeeded. It just means capitalism failed.

GDP $s of growth are actually lower than total govt debt increments. Govt spending is part of the GDP equation. Even with that, GDP grew slower than debt. Capitalism erased numbers. $4T GDP increase 2018 to 2021. Govt debt increase same time frame, $10T.

The pump wasn’t primed. They pump went slower and slower. Capitalism has failed.

Buy farmland.

[Pelham]

I’m open to the idea that our current American version of finance dominated capitalism is failing badly. I’d say it’s been the driving force behind deindustrializing the United States to the detriment of the many and the benefit of a tiny few. I’m not sure if that’s the point that you are making, but I think it’s one that Paul Craig Roberts has made. This isn’t the old industrial and manufacturing economy America had in its prime. Years ago National Review used to run articles by or on German economist Wilhelm Roepke which I always found appealing. I think we would have been wise to listen to him.

[Owen]

We are converging to understanding.

Behavioral finance is a byproduct of this. It’s an attempt to measure imagination. The old school folks reject it, because they pretend there is some other basis for money’s value, other than counterparty imagination.

[Pelham]

This is about Paul Craig Robert’s “The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West”; I see that I have the kindle edition and forgot that I own it:

“The one percent have pulled off an economic and political revolution. By offshoring manufacturing and professional service jobs, US corporations destroyed the growth of consumer income, the basis of the US economy, leaving the bulk of the population mired in debt. Deregulation was used to concentrate income and wealth in fewer hands and financial firms in corporations “too big to fail,” removing financial corporations from market discipline and forcing taxpayers in the US and Europe to cover bankster losses. Environmental destruction has accelerated as economists refuse to count the exhaustion of nature’s resources as a cost and as corporations impose the cost of their activities on the environment and on third parties who do not share in the profits. This is the book to read for those who want to understand the mistakes that are bringing the West to its knees.”