backwardsevolution
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Good chart showing Total US and UK crises, as well as Total World Crises Ex US and UK.
Albert Einstein:
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
How do you measure the teacher or the parent who produces a child with a “C” in math, but who goes on to lovingly hold your mother’s hand while she takes her last breath? How do you measure this, as a failure? If so, we have our values totally twisted.
“Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.”
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
How does one measure “imagination” or “intuition” or “creativity” or “curiosity”? Can these things even be taught?
We’re saved – growth will resume. So says Krugman: “Yes, I think there’s a pretty decent chance that we’ll actually be seeing another wave of technological improvement, that growth will resume. There is a question about whether workers will share in that growth, but that’s a different story.”
Workerless growth. Lovely. How do unemployed workers buy driverless cars? Perhaps the cars come equipped with printing presses.
https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-on-technology-and-the-economy-2013-2
davefairtex – “Perhaps increased enlightenment is a requirement to construct a better world.”
You’re right, but how do you get that? I don’t think you can reach out and grab “enlightenment” or capture its essence by reading about it. It’s got to come from within, and in order to REALLY change your thinking or ways of doing things, it usually takes suffering. Suffering is what etches “enlightenment” into the mind.
If you don’t suffer, and life begins to get better (another crisis is papered over and “growth” continues unabated), you never reach the point of actually seeing or knowing in your gut why things have to change. You don’t get your head up above the water.
Of course, there are many who do not want the masses to be enlightened, as that could seriously cramp the lifestyle of the rich and famous and change the power structure.
The only thing that will wake up the masses is a complete breakdown. Paradoxically, that’s about the only thing that might save them, their children, and this planet.
Niccolo Machiavelli:
“Wise men say, and not without reason, that whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever will be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.”
In my travels around the Internet, I am always amazed by the amount of people who say, “Don’t worry, technology will take care of it,” or “Don’t worry, in future we’ll get our resources from somewhere out in space.” Aaaaah! Nice if it works, but I wouldn’t bank on it. Yet these people DO bank on it. In their minds, it’s not something to worry about – at all.
William Ophuls says that just as matter and energy are governed by entropy, he suggests that there is a moral entropy. He also says that humans have not evolved much past hunter-gatherers, are present-oriented (“present-value” is what matters, the now) and we neglect or devalue the future. “Human beings are barely evolved primates driven by greed, fear, and other powerful emotions.”
He quotes Edmund Burke: “History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.”
He sees modern civilization as doomed, drowned in its own hubris.
Ted – “If he really knew what he was doing I think he would have stopped a long time ago…but then again what choice did he have..? He thought he was saving the system not realizing that the system is morphing into something else.”
You assume he doesn’t know what he’s doing, using words such as “he thought”, “not realizing”. But what if he DOES know what he’s doing? What if this has all been done on purpose? Can you wrap your mind around that?
He works for the banks, Ted. If some of us happen to benefit from his policies, purely as a side effect, that’s all good with him, but that’s not his primary goal.
This is why he’s able to continue – because too many people give him the benefit of the doubt. And they’ll continue to do this until it’s too late.
Ken Barrows – “QE is a huge redistribution program, but I don’t think it’s really siphoning funds from the 99%.”
Did you even read the article? As Ilargi said, if interest rates were allowed to “float,” we’d have a whole different ball game, wouldn’t we? Bernanke IS siphoning funds from all those who have savings. That is a fact.
And how about the money the banks end up getting in the “fair” (ha!) trade for their MBS? It’s not all sitting in reserves. It’s being used to juice up the stock market, allowing all of the elite to get their money out at high prices.
The banks (Morgan Stanley, Goldman, J.P. Morgan) are also hoarding commodities (aluminum, copper) in huge warehouses, driving up prices and, yes, that is siphoning funds from the 99%. (And they’re doing the same thing with oil).
Bernanke has put a bottom under house prices (got to keep those assets up). The insolvent banks (which should have gone tits up) were able to, with the help of FASB, hold inventory off the market, skewing supply and demand.
So if it’s “going out on a limb saying that the end of QE leads to disaster,” how about we give it a try. What do you think they know that you don’t?
Here’s a great in-depth article re the so-called housing recovery: Time to Buy a House? Not on Your Life!
https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/14/time-to-buy-a-house-not-on-your-life/
Oh me, oh my!
And “stonking” is a fantastic word. Stonk: A concentrated artillery bombardment.
Golden Oxen – “…even housing is supposed to be great again.”
Fake Housing Market Recovery Explained:
“The average American Joe isn’t participating in the U.S. housing market. As a matter of fact, according to the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey, investors purchased 69% of “damaged” properties in April 2013, while first-time home buyers accounted for only 16% of “damaged” purchases. […]
Rising prices on homes in various pockets of the U.S. housing market are a direct result of large institutional investors buying in.”
Ilargi – great post!
davefairtex – great investigative work! You said:
“If you had control over the process, and didn’t want your (CORE) banks to suffer losses (since they would most definitely be “uninsured depositors”), putting off resolution until those cross-border deposits were all safely back home would make a great deal of sense. And then once they were gone – bam. The gate comes down.”
And, of course, they do have control over the process. This would require “collusion” or “cooperation” between affected parties. Definition of “collusion”:
“Secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, esp. in order to cheat or deceive others.”
Formerly T-Bear, there’s that damn “conspiracy” word again. Nah, it couldn’t be. Or could it?
Good work, Dave!
“The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Ilargi – excellent article. Thank you. Your artwork is wonderful. Intelligent and artistic too! Stoneleigh, your Scale Matters article was brilliant.
Re “Obama has one last chance to be a great president” – I agree, but I don’t think he’s running the show; just a paid hire. He’s being a great president for some, though, the ones who put him there. I hope he proves me wrong.
Re Dennis Meadows’ quote – “…we are going to evolve through crisis, not through proactive change.” Sadly, I totally agree with this quote. We seem incapable of long-term thinking. Like addicts, we think for the moment. We continue on doing what we’ve always done until we hit the wall at full speed, IMHO.
“Two viewpoints (on revolution) are always tenable. The one, how can you improve on human nature until you have changed the system? The other, what is the use of changing the system before you have improved human nature? They appeal to different individuals, and they probably show a tendency to alternate in point of time. The moralist and the revolutionary are constantly undermining one another.”
George Orwell
I enjoyed the Zeitgeist documentary (the behavioral, indoctrination, planned obsolescence aspects), but it lost me at the 1 hour 30 minute point. Yes, I stupidly posted it before I had watched it all.
I kept waiting until the very end for them to address “limits to growth”, overpopulation, but to no avail. Somehow a central overseer will track and manage everything for us so we don’t run out of stuff – yeah, right! Ridiculous and utopian!
davefairtex – “We all have our pet theories as to why the market doesn’t do what we expect it to. If we expect it to crash, and it doesn’t, its manipulation. Sure, maybe. But that is a lot of energy to expend just so we can prove that either we were right, or that but for Mysterious Intervention, we *would* have been right. The key being of course the very strong desire to feed our egos and “be right.”
Is that why we have a judicial system, to “be right”? Or is it something much more fundamental, such as looking at ALL of the facts in an open and clear manner, determining guilt or innocence based upon those facts, and then, if guilty, the party can be put away so as to limit his/her ability to PROCREATE?
They used to hang people for stealing someone’s horse, trying to get “something for nothing”. Earlier societies used to either kill or eject the guilty parties, which made it a lot harder for them to pass on their genes. You either cooperated or you were out. This went a long way towards ensuring that sociopathic individuals were seen as unsuccessful, not something to emulate. Today, the sociopaths (because no one is going after them) are the “successful” ones. Go figure!
You are correct in saying that people “want to be right,” but this is more than that. The Internet is filled with people much more articulate than I (Automatic Earth, Charles Hugh Smith, Jim Quinn, etc.) who daily write about the injustices the elite have committed. Let’s have transparency. If I and so many others are wrong, I’ll be the first to step forward and say it.
There are many who just want to follow the “successful”, who say, “Leave them alone, I’m making bank,” but there will come a time when even these followers realize that they have been wrong. When morality, values, essential resources are stripped to the bone and there is nothing left resembling a society, they may regret the day they said “sure, maybe”. Because when there’s no one else to strip, when the bottom has been picked over, they come looking for followers too.
Pet theories? I think you know better.
“Where Are the Bond Vigilantes?
The outstanding stock of U.S. Treasury bonds held outside American intergovernment agencies (such as the Social Security Administration but excluding the Federal Reserve) is about $10 trillion. The proportion of outstanding Treasury debt held by foreigners—mainly central banks—has been increasing and now seems well over 50% of that amount. Since 2001, emerging markets alone have accumulated more than $5 trillion in official exchange reserves. And in the last two years the Fed itself, under QE1 and QE2, has been a major buyer of longer-term Treasury bonds to the tune of about $1.6 trillion—and that’s before the recently announced “Operation Twist,” whereby the Fed will finance the purchase of still more longer-term bonds by selling shorter-term bonds. So the vigilantes have been crowded out by central banks the world over.”
https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904332804576538363789127084.html
“This multilevel manipulation creates a Boolean either/or for any Bear market: either it is a planned “panic” that profits the banks or a systemic failure of the orchestrated campaign of market manipulation.
Here is B.C.’s commentary:
Consider the possibility that the banksters now effectively control the stock market in ways never before possible, using the NY Fed acting in concert with the dark pools, offshore shell companies and pass-through entities, PTFs, and high-frequency trading (HFT) via the for-profit exchanges.
How much would it “cost” the primary dealers to manage the markets using leveraged derivatives, assuming a complicit counterparty or counterparties?Hypothetically, if the banks wanted to keep the SPX to no lower than, say, 3% to 7% of the 200 dynamic moving average (DMA) indefinitely, thereby keeping the 200 DMA in a steady uptrend, what would it cost? A few tens of billions at the margin?
If one or more parties could leverage 10:1 futures and then 10:1 again with options, it would cost a small fraction of banks’ ~$13 trillion in assets and $1.7 trillion in cash assets.”
davefairtex – “Much as I imagine debt deflation should seize the world by the throat, it hasn’t happened. At least not yet.”
Imagine? Should? Rewrite: “Debt deflation HAS the world by the throat, the owners know this. That’s why there is NO market. Everything is being engineered through corruption, fraud, collusion, manipulation and outright engineering instead. I make my trades, keeping a close eye on the engineers.”
davefairtex – but wouldn’t Bloomberg’s article have been a lot more honest if they had included this:
“For example, the Grand Poo-Bah of the Keynesian Cargo Cult, Paul Krugman, loves to repeat that massive fiscal-stimulus deficits haven’t raised interest rates, confounding doomsdayers, but he never mentions the Federal Reserve’s role in this magic: what would interest rates be if the Fed wasn’t buying hundreds of billions of dollars of Treasury bonds every year?
The honest position would [be] for Keynesians to state that the Central Bank’s role is to print money to enable unlimited, fiscally reckless spending by the Central State. But dishonesty is a modest Keynesian fault compared to the blindspots in their core policies.”
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan13/keynesian-blindspots01-13.html
Bloomberg’s article should have read, “There is No Risk: Dials are being turned, levers are being pulled, everything is being manipulated. So, come on, jump! It’s fattening-up season.
Caveat: Risk returns once enough of you get sucked in – er, pile on. Then shearing season starts, and you will be sheared but good. But don’t worry, we’re good with scissors!”
Naomi Klein gave a 20-minute Ted Talk called “Addicted to Risk”. She spoke of greed, hubris, and men (greater risk-takers than women are). She said we use narratives such as 1) dominating nature is our destiny; 2) nature is so nurturing and so resilient, that we can never make a dent in her abundance, that no matter how much we mess up, there will always be more water, more land, more untapped resources, a new bubble will replace the old one, a new technology will come along to fix the messes we made. There will always be a new frontier, so stop worrying and keep shopping.
She said another narrative is at the very last minute we’re going to get saved and endless growth can continue.
It’s a great listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZhL7P7w3as
Excellent article again, Ilargi. Thank you!
Ilargi – great article. Thank you. Here’s the New York Fed’s report from August, 2010 (scroll down three pages). Comparing the two, you can see that student debt has increased from 4% to 8% in the last two years, auto loans have increased from 6% to 7%, HE revolving has gone from 6% to 5%, and mortgages from 74% to 71%.
They’ve just rearranged the deck chairs.
https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/national_economy/householdcredit/DistrictReport_Q22010.pdf
Karl Denninger spoke about GDP and inventories today:
“That (government deficit spending) is bad, not good. But it’s reported as good and people lap it up. And inventory build is indeed GDP, but building inventories mean that manufacturers are not selling as fast as they’re producing — this typically happens right in front of recessions!”
Scott – “…chimps and humans share 98% of the same DNA. Seems pretty obvious to me that there is a lot more to being human than DNA.”
But what’s contained in the remaining 2% is most likely very important. Humans, unlike all other animals, have regret about the past and fear for the future. We have egos – big ones – which we protect like a mother bear protects her young. But I agree with you, there is more than just DNA involved.
It’s called fear.
Adam Goodwin – “It could be argued that it’s because of the social control powers of money–and materialism, itself–that we suppress who we are. Jung wrote that hierarchy, especially the state, repressed the inevitable process of individuation in a mature adult. The process of individuation, where the unconscious is brought together with the conscious mind into a concurrent whole….”
This is what Maslow said, that you cannot step up the ladder if your needs are not met. I agree; with the treadmill-type existence that most families live under, under constant stress of losing their jobs, their homes, their families, it’s no wonder they remain on the lower rungs. TPTB most likely are very aware of this fact and want to keep it this way. The surest way to keep people dumbed-down is to keep them under constant chaos and stress because then they have no time to think, to evolve.
Ilargi – brilliant piece, so true. Thank you.
“Why we don’t teach Freud throughout all our school systems, all the time, is a far deeper mystery than any of us alive today care to ponder.”
Yes! I have said this very statement many times over. If we only knew and understood our biggest enemy (ourselves), we just might have a chance against everyone else. When I look at what my children learn in school, what’s considered important, I often wonder what good it will do them if they don’t understand themselves.
We prefer the big “lie” because in our minds it keeps us safe and secure. The group hammers this “truth” into our minds, and pummels any nail that sticks out. It takes a hero who is unafraid of the group’s reaction to break free.
davefairtex – thanks very much for your great explanation. That’s what I thought she meant, but in the back of my mind was hoping wasn’t true.
I will not sleep well tonight, but this information is very helpful. Thanks again.
Stoneleigh: On the last thread you said this:
“Savers will have all the buying power, IF they have managed to get their savings away from dependence on the solvency of middle men.”
Would you please tell me who you are referring to when you say “middle men”? Mutual funds, or do you mean banks?
“European Central Bank President Mario Draghi defended his plan to buy government bonds in the German parliament today with a warning about deflation risks. The ECB’s so-called Outright Monetary Transactions “will not lead to inflation…”
Draghi is seeking to win support in Europe’s largest economy for his plan to purchase government bonds to stem the debt crisis and safeguard the euro. Some German policy makers including Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann have said the proposal is tantamount to printing money to finance governments, which is prohibited by the ECB’s statutes.
“OMTs will not lead to disguised financing of governments,” Draghi said. “All this is fully consistent with the Treaty’s prohibition on monetary financing. Moreover, they will focus on shorter maturities and leave room for market discipline.”
Mish said:
“That is a direct lie as is his opening gambit of claiming that breaking the treaty is within mandate. Yes, the ECB sterilizes the bonds it buys. However, the ECB will also accept those bonds right back as collateral for cash, thereby pumping up base money supply. The ECB has no intention of absorbing liquidity in actual practice.”
“Recession. It’s baked in the cake and the oven timer is about to ring.”
Ilargi – great article, well written. Thank you.
“In the prescient words of Leopold Kohr in his 1957 book Breakdown of Nations, “There seems only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness. Whenever something is wrong, something is too big.”
That’s a very truthful quote. It’s from a really good article entitled, “Major Powers versus Small Nations: Globalization and the issue of National Sovereignty.” The article makes a really good case for going smaller, and is full of good stats and arguments.
“Since 1972 the king of Bhutan has been trying to make Gross National Happiness the national priority rather than Gross National Product. Although still a work-in-progress, policies instituted by the king are aimed at ensuring that prosperity is shared across society and that it is balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment, and maintaining a responsive government.”
Now that’s a novel idea!
“Transnational megacompanies not only tell so called emerging market countries (most of the world) what they will produce, how it will be produced, when it will be sold, and at what price, but they also influence local working conditions, wages, benefits, and labor laws. They often dictate local government monetary, fiscal, trade, and banking policies. International money managers decide which foreign currencies are overvalued and which are not, as well as which countries should be punished for not playing by their arbitrary, self-serving rules. This is truly a one-size-fits-all game.”
Major Powers versus Small Nations: Globalization and the Issue of National Sovereignty
For those who think cutting tax rates for the wealthy spurs economic growth, think again:
“A new study by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) using data from the past 65 years found that there is no correlation (PDF) between top tax rates and economic growth. But it doesn’t stop there. The study also found that there is a correlation between the reduction in top tax rates and the increasing concentration of wealth toward the top of the income distribution. The report, Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945, is also clear that this is not only about tax rates on regular income, and points out (PDF) that “changes in capital gains and dividends were the largest contributor to the increase in income inequality since the mid-1990’s.”
This practice leads to income inequality.
https://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2012/09/its_official_cutting_top_tax_r.php
jal – my daughter’s hairdresser raised her prices from $15.00 to 22.00 for a trim, so my daughter trimmed her own bangs the next time and did a very professional job.
Leaving the riffraff behind, we move on to the pillars of society, those bastions of morality and fair dealings.
“Thanks to motions filed by the New York Times, a federal judge in Boston released court filings this week that had previously been under seal in a class action, anti-trust lawsuit — Dahl v. Bain Capital Partners — against the eleven biggest and most blue-chip names in the private-equity industry, including Blackstone, Carlyle, Goldman, and TPG. […]
No wonder the defendants had been keen to keep the case under wraps. The 221-page complaint goes through 27 transactions, and with each, presents not only persuasive economic analysis, but more important, damning e-mails showing how the heads of each of the firms were involved in submitting sham bids, sharing information about their offers, working with management of the target companies to restrict the sales process, enforcing elaborate systems of quid pro quos (for instance, not submitting a bid with the expectation of being cut in on that deal or future deals), and other forms of market manipulation. The messages make clear that the intent was to reduce competition and buy the companies on the cheap. […]
Private equity firms concentrate enormous financial power in comparatively few hands. Their $2 trillion of assets under management, which they augment with a typical $3 of borrowed money for every $1 of their investors’ money that they put down, translates into $8 trillion of buying power. Compare that to the roughly $16 trillion value of the U.S. stock markets at year end 2011. More people in the U.S. work for companies owned by PE funds than belong to unions. More than half the corporate debt in the U.S. is rated junk, and the high leverage used by PE firms in their deals is far and away the biggest culprit. […]
I wish there had been more space in the TNR post to provide extracts from e-mails, which are typically among either the heads of the mega buyout firms, or other managing directors. They show a clear understanding of what they were up to. These players were engaged in an effort to collude, by submitting sham bids, not bidding in the auction but being invited in as a co-investor on that deal later or getting a slice of a future deal, all clearly intended to buy the target companies at more favorable prices. You really need to skim the filing. If you thought the quotes from the Libor traders in the FSA’s letter to Barclays were damning, they pale in comparison to this. […]
As Matt Taibbi has pointed out, bid rigging is not like what the Mafia does, it IS what the Mafia does.”
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=212719
https://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/14/david-stockman-mitt-romney-and-the-bain-drain.html
“No, Virginia, Consumers Deleveraging by Default is not a Reason for Economic Cheerleading:
Unfortunately, the economy bulls are leaving something very significant out: defaults. The data is pretty clear. In the latest quarter, first and second lien charge-offs were $303.7 billion (with Home Equity Lines of Credit defaults high and continuing to rise). Meanwhile, aggregate consumer debt dropped by $53 billion. That’s better than 2012 Q1, but the drop in debt from defaults is six times larger than the total drop in debt.
Consumers aren’t paying down their debts, they are simply defaulting. And here’s another way to look at the problem. One in seven Americans is being pursued by a debt collector. And the average amount of that debt pursued has increased by about 8% in just six months.”
Police flee from Madrid protestors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7spGtXJ-DOM
Nice to see them going the other way!
Sorry, forgot the link to Charles Hugh Smith’s article.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct12/artificial-economy10-12.html
Professorlocknload – From Mish’s article:
“The Fed [ECB] simply does not care whether its actions are illegal or not. The Fed [ECB] is operating under the principle that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. And forgiveness is just another means to the desired power grab it is seeking.
Politicians in high power as well as central banks do not give a damn about concerns, nor do they care about obvious illegalities. They do what they want because they consider themselves to be above the law.”
They ARE the law. All central banks are colluding. If politicians don’t go along, they are removed and puppets are installed. Madness.
Charles Hugh Smith speaks of this madness in his article entitled, “If You Prop Up an Artificial Economy Long Enough, Does It Become Real?” He concludes with:
“It’s not difficult to predict an eventual spike of instability in such a system; the only difficulty is predicting the date of the instability.”
Tao Jonesing – I just used a partial quote from Karl Denninger’s article. Here’s the full quote:
“The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.”
In other words, we’ll do whatever we want and pretend it’s for employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. If things don’t work out that way, we’ll manipulate and fudge the numbers until they do work out. There.
Tao, I’d like to see the Federal Reserve gone! It couldn’t come too soon.
Professorlocknload – does it get any more ridiculous, that an unelected group of bankers and academics could wield such power? It’s criminal, but I’m sure they’re not crying any tears over it.
It’s a well-oiled machine of carefully orchestrated booms and busts, privatizations, law changes where necessary, civil (not criminal) penalties and fines, etc. Their motto: “Let the fraud begin!”
The wine is flowing, and everybody’s happy in the Hamptons!
All corporations and banks are interconnected, but we still have some power: STOP BUYING ANYTHING FROM THEM! Just go on strike. Don’t buy houses, cars, whatever. Bleed them.
Do not play their game.Karl Denninger frequently talks about Bernanke’s mandate to provide “stable” prices. The actual language in The Federal Reserve Act states:
“…to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.”
Karl says: “STABLE means unchanging. It does not mean “the rate of increase in consumer prices (is) low and stable” — it means the target rate of change in consumer prices is zero.
This is the “Grand Lie” told by Bernanke, by Greenspan and by those who came before them. It is an active and intentional act of law-breaking by every single member of the FOMC and has been serially since 1913!
Congress could change the law. It could specify that inflation should be “low and stable.” But Congress said no such thing. Congress mandated stable prices, not “slowly-increasing” prices.
And let’s not kid ourselves as to the actual impact of such a policy. The so-called “2%” inflation rate that is allegedly “low and stable” sounds like it’s a pretty harmless thing. After all, how can 2% hurt you?
Well, over 100 years, what does 2% inflation turn a $100 item into? If you said $100 + ($2 (2% of $100) * 100), or $300, you’re wrong. Because an inflation rate is an exponential function that item will cost $710.26 one hundred years down the road.
In point of fact, however, the actual inflation rate has been approximately 3%, not 2%. That doesn’t sound like such a bad “miss”, does it?
Well that same $100 item under a 3% inflation rate costs $1,865.89 100 years hence.”
“Stable” means: steady – firm – steadfast – constant – fixed – solid.
Inflation = perpetual slavery
