DUNCE OF THE MONTH
buying. America’s finances were on fire. So, the Fed broke the glass, pulled the alarm, and flooded the market with capital. But now, as we’re in this post-COVID age, central bankers seem lost in the discord of disagreement about how to move forward. There’s increasing division in the Fed regarding its response to the self- induced wounds of soaring asset values and commodity prices. The Federal Reserve operates under the dual mandate of dampening inflation and minimizing unemployment. By its own litmus test, it’s failing. And worse, it’s in denial. Fed Chair Jerome Powell tacitly acknowledges that inflation is now a possibility . It’s also possible for me to be a congressman, but as the Facebook trolls will remind me, that ain’t happening. Powell’s trying to hush an understandably panicked America in the backseat, like a booze-soaked dad on a bender, swerving the puke-green wood-paneled station wagon on Route 66, careening off the Grand Canyon while slurring to his kids that Disneyland’s coming up soon. Are we there yet ? BANK ON IT: RESERVING A PLACE IN HELL Whether the Fed pulls its emergency support too early or too late for our economy is a moot point. The economic pain is coming – it’s just a matter of when and how much. But this is always the case. The life cycles of money are
just that – cyclical. From the Great Panic of 1907 to the
financial crisis of 2008 to the clusterfuck we find ourselves in now, we have an uncanny capacity to be awestruck every time this happens. And yet it happens, every time. Nearly every American decade is marked by a recession. While every boom needs a bust and every life a death, we should stop referring to the inevitable as an emergency and call it for what it is: nature . A proper libertarian believes that free markets are capable of self-correction in times like this. They’d scoff at the mere existence of the Fed: a private-public bastard stepchild who wields all the monetary power of Oz. They’d roll their eyes at this obscene centralization of banking still around a century later, noting that if bitcoin is any indicator, money is moving toward being further decentralized , put in Americans’ hands without the unholy gatekeepers in the way. Distilled to tweet length, the Fed is an unsightly marriage of power-drunk bankers and politicians (with a winking academic’s approval) designed to enrich their self-serving interests. If we have to serve someone or something, let it be ourselves. And while money may be fiction (it’s real enough), it’s time this country writes another narrative.
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