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It continues to amaze me that people don’t see the rather obvious way we completely ignored any semblance of economics and health in any other context than CoVid. Anyone who tried to warn people of this was seen as not caring about anyone’s life. Yet the exact opposite was true.

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This controlled demolition is a long time in the making. It took 11 years to create sufficient debt that servicing that debt would bankrupt a country as wealthy as the United States. The odious, swamp-dwelling plutocrats in D.C. are all complicit as a consequence of their purposefully impecunious fuckery.

The best part of these truly reprehensible shenanigans? My children will probably never know and appreciate what a wonderful land of opportunity this country has been and, absent these shitheads, could be again. It's not enough that I can describe the abiding hopefulness I had for most of my young and adult life. I have tried to inculcate in them the notion they can, or are far more likely, to accomplish whatever they set out to do if they are disciplined, work hard, and operate by an appropriate moral compass. These shameless, feckless dickbags have made a liar out of me, and I cannot begin to express my resentment and disgust at their lemming-like self-immolation and taking the whole country with them.

Whatever your political stripe, vote out the incumbent office holder. Choose someone who loves America, has an ounce of common sense, and posses a burning desire to constrain government spending at every opportunity and, when that need arises, spends wisely and well. Tall order, I know, but we can no longer accept the status quo, and any improvement is an improvement worth embracing.

Thanks, Jordan, for putting a tidy wrapper on this grab bag of foolishness, and hopefully November heralds a sea change in the quality of our elected leadership in the festering stool pit that is our Legislative branch.

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I'd say it started 21 years ago on 9/11. The trillion$ war on terrah & Patriot Act were the intro.

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I love Steve's comment and totally relate, but agree with you regarding 9/11

That's when, and they openly told us so, 'everything changed'.

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After the "American" people bought that absurd official story (the attacks of Sep 11) hook, line, and sinker, I knew that the vast majority of walking zombies in this country could be told 𝒂𝒏𝒚𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈. Their willingness to sacrifice fundamental liberty and Bill of Rights guaranteed rights (4th Amendment, anyone?) portended the cowardice and obeisance they would manifest almost 20 years later. Yet again -- government scumbags told them a story and like good little boys and girls, they took every word to be true. When told to go into fear and hiding over the possibility of coming down with a severe respiratory infection, they obeyed and rejected and ridiculed anyone who tried to warn them of the devastation to lives and liberty if they complied. How does any republic survive when it comprises utter criminal scum at the "top" and credulous, obedient masses at the "bottom"? The question answers itself.

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Yes. 9/11 changed everything. Things were headed in that direction, but the Patriot Act put laws and a bureaucracy in place that cemented the inevitable. You could even argue that Poppy Bush (41) renewing China Most-Favored-Nation Trade status after Tiananmen was also a significant milestone on the road to destruction. The Bush presidencies did much to destroy this country and set things in place for a bureaucratic police state.

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Nazi Prescott trained his get

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Excellent comment, Steve, but for the description of this as "foolishness". If it were only...We have witnessed abject criminality at every turn over these last 2+ years -- aided and abetted by the "American" people themselves.

As I said at the first hint of this idea of "lockdown" (after I said, are you ph-ukking kidding me??), "This is 𝒕𝒐𝒐 stupid to just be stupid." Sure, the halls of the organized crime syndicate (that thing we call "government") overflow with the well-dressed stupid parroting nonsense, but the actual idea to shut down the lifeblood of life itself -- the economy and shut people away??? That's not foolishness. That is so 𝑶𝑩𝑽𝑰𝑶𝑼𝑺𝑳𝒀 deeply criminal and diabolical that I still shake my head at the idea that virtually everyone in this country -- never mind the "elected" political class -- cooperated with it. That so traumatized me -- the recognition of the kind of people that actually inhabit this country -- what my friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues actually 𝒂𝒓𝒆 -- that I think I will never, ever get over it.

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I agree that there have (and continue to be) acts of overt criminality, and that the absence of meaningful investigations and indictments reflect the depth of the capture of our institutions. It is shameful and, I can say without fear of recrimination or being accused of hyperbole, terrifying. The lack of accountability and the shamelessness of these behaviors demands a changing of the guard, and I am hopeful the next several election cycles will yield a net positive change.

I likewise agree those indulging in these despotic acts preyed on American’s sense of duty and community to beguile them into sacrificing their liberty and rights, aided and abetted by the cravens in our media. Hopefully the majority of people learned a valuable lesson from that mind-trickery that quickly pivoted into oppression, and won’t let it happen again.

Thanks for the kind words and thoughtful response, and I do remain hopeful that, if we individually model the values we aspire to and exercise better (and more curious and skeptical!) judgement, we can collectively trudge back to healthy, well informed, and patriotic society. I am probably being irrationally optimistic, but that mind-trickery gets me through the day, and my optimism is tempered by the fact that it’ll take two or three generations to course correct, assuming that is possible, which I do!

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My apologies for sacrificing precision for the sake of brevity...I meant:

1. Modeling Values. Consistently demonstrating, through individual action, behaviors that accord with and align to aspirational values they lend to individual, familial, community, and national success.

2. Collective Outcomes. I am hopeful the aggregate outcome of elevated individual behaviors is better families, communities, and, ultimately, a better country.

3. Judgement. Both electorally and in response to governmental edicts, maintaining high expectations and demanding transparency and accountability for all in positions of authority; investing the time and effort to be adequately informed about our leaders (and prospective leaders) and current events, and maintaining a healthy level of curiosity and skepticism (instead of being credulous and incurious).

Thanks for politely and respectfully challenging my response and offering me a chance to further clarify my perspective. Hopefully I did!

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What do mean when you say "that if we 'individually' model the values we aspire to (I do as it regards liberty.) and exercise better...judgment, 'we' can 'collectively' (I despise that word and all of the horrific examples of it that have been played out in history.) trudge back to healthy, well-informed, and patriotic society."? Better judgment? Are you talking about the mass of people who gave not one second's thought to the absurdity of what they were being told and the in-your-face destruction of human rights that came with the illegal, immoral "lockdown"?

If you think this republic has two or three generations to "course correct", you are optimistic -- or something else. No offense, Steve...As for being terrified of the abject lawlessness and criminality oozing from every single institution in this country, that's not hyperbolic at all. It is terrifying -- and what's appalling is the virtual absence of outrage on the part of the "collective" that you think will help restore this republic.

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Hi, I don't understand why so many Americans are hoping for Trump to return .He did his part to destroy America and a good part of the world .He surrounded himself with his enemies , made the venom shots available at warp speed ,did not fire Fauzzi and his gang . The policies De Santis is using in Florida make much more sense ,so vote for him to be president .

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I agree that we need a new cohort of politicians and policies, and hopefully the next several election cycles result in a positive and meaningful change from the status quo.

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I'm also quite bullish on crypto. The fact that the central banks are going to war against it in order to have their own, tells me all I need to know.

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bitcon is the financial version of Q-

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bitcoin = bitcon

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Not cash, not gold. Not by a long way. Headed to a dollar or less.

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Also costs of transactions are too high, transactions too slow. Lightening is a patch which acknowledges this but seems an afterthought, an attempt to pretend that bitcoin is not pure crap.

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the toxicity of these economic policies replicates the toxicity of the vaxx.

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I agree and the latest rounds of fearmongering that crypto is toast are silly. BTC is a speculative asset for many so as a currency there is still more noise than signal but it will get there.

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This entire thing has been intensely purposeful and very personal against we the people. Especially in North America but it is planetary. Each nation experiences its own particular ills. In the USA it is economics, climate, unrestricted immigration, fentanyl, Covid policies, and the imposition of the dummest government functionaries in history. But the roots go up to those at the top - The World Economic Forum, Bilderberg and to which our government functionaries are simply handmaidens. Those at the top are a powerful synthesis of government, corporations and institutions. This is the International Corporatocracy where all of these policies originate.

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Thank you. All true. I would add to purposeful the word “intentional”, meaning the goal is to collapse the US/Canada/etc. These actions, all you list, aren’t mistakes. Let’s go back to the 2 class system. The Rulers and the serfs.

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I agree up to the point of bitcoin. That may be the best alternative and only current "escape" but any digital-only "currency" is dependent on access via internet which is not guaranteed. Especially now.

The Left's intent is to crash the system--all of it--so they can install the rest of their soc-com crap and do their 'great reset'. Unfortunately the Unipartiers and current exec regime keep helping them along.

The Left's dedication to the dumbing down of society via control of communications and "education"/indoctrination certainly is paying them big dividends now. We may have left the awakening too late though many of us have been trying to shake awake fellow Americans to this for many years.

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Idk anything about crypto but I have a basic question, how do you convert it to cash if government says they can't? I heard here in the UK that the cash converter machines are illegal, I imagine government making it unusable soon

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How did they screw up their analysis on inflation so much? It is called powerful delusional thinking. Which, BTW, is the undergirding of all Keynesians out there. That and greed and corruption. But it is for our own good. After all when you move money from and shut down the productive and move all the money to the government who "delivers shovel ready jobs" and "this year (Biden's handlers tell us thru his grumpy sockpuppet) democrats and the unions (Biden in particular though) deliver the biggest drop on the deficit in the history of the USA"!

People believe this. The only conclusion the sane can reach is the believers suffer from mass delusion.

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"How did they screw up their analysis on inflation so much?"

If you consider it "controlled demolition" it all makes sense.

Same way "global depopulation" explains ass-backwards scamdemic response

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Do we really believe regulation of Bitcoin and the like isn’t coming? The feds will want their hands on that too.

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Or their own ver. of crypto. Sure they are working on it. Better to control than just regulate.

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US democracy? Who voted for Fauchi??

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This country was designed by a group of smugglers with roughly 31 ships of the line working against the Party in charge in Britain during the Revolutionary War.

The British General in charge was sitting his troops and officers down for a cup of tea whenever George Washington was in danger of being captured.

The Bill of Rights was designed to keep the government from having the power to stop that smuggling operation after the war.

In the 1812 war with Britain they cleaned our clocks very thoroughly. Stopping only at the swamps of New Orleans where a pirate fleet actually stopped them with ship guns.

They cleaned us because they had professional army persons capable of doing so and the political backing to do so.

The other wars of Europe made it convenient to give us back our country.

So they gave us a treaty that worked in our favor.

The idea being to keep an ineffective government at the top. It worked! Because this country was able to export goods at a much lower cost than anyone else. Most of the rest of the world was plagued with wars to pay for over the next 40 plus years.

We also went to war several times.

The wisest move we made was to deal with all sides equally as a business.

When we did step in the wars had gone on for years bankrupting both sides in the process.

Until the current 1900s and the current 2022 era when we spent money like there was no tomorrow world wide.

We went to Vietnam and spent 450 billion dollars. For what?

That war dramatically bankrupted this country in about 1971. Our currency went under. We went to a variable currency exchange at about $600 per ounce vs. $35 per ounce. And that is the dollar amount we paid that 450 billion dollar debt back at. We basically devalued the American Dollar big time in the 1970s with runaway inflation.

The way out of all of this is to go back to a gold standard and legislate that any law that creates debt has to include a method of paying that debt back. It is politically unsound as an unconstitutional undeclared tax on everyone if we do it any other way.

I suggest any imports into this country have to pay the difference between what it would cost to produce the product here and what it costs where they came from.

We are looking at runaway inflation right now. So bring the industry back to this country where it belongs.

Then set up a system where our goods are competitive with those of other countries.

The base has to be in the cost off all goods in dollars.

The other policy change has to be what will it cost us to do it. That effectively means politically we mind our own business first. No nation can police the world. It is financially ruin to try to do so.

The reason to cut off the Russians and the Chinese is they intend to ruin us financially.

We have the technology to robot a lot of merchandise right now and do it cheaper than either country against us is capable of doing.

There is a problem. The problem is the cost of defending both ourselves and anyone else.

The problem is the one defined overseas when the Russians bankrupted themselves with the loss of technically sophisticated aircraft shot down with 1,000 dollar missiles from horseback.

The same thing is happening to the Russian Industrial Complex right now in their current war.

You do not bring a billion dollar ship to a nickel and dime war.

It simply does not make natural economic sense.

We did the same thing in Vietnam and lost.

If you do not learn from numerous errors of the past, then our leadership is doomed to repeat them.

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Don't be a fool. Bitcoin is an intelligence operation slowly normalizing entirely digital transactions - nevermind that most of our "money" has been gradually digitized for decades and that is a yuuge part of the problem here - prior to the fourth currency swap in the past 100-ish years. I'm sure that totally won't go the same [kill the poor] way the last three did. A brief history of what's the first action the US government officially took ... to the '96 NSA "digital mint" white-paper and the very public contemporary push toward CBDC's? Do you have any response but to call me a fogey and boomer and Luddite? 'Cause I'm in my 40s.

So don't be a fool, and don't be so short-sighted if you're gonna trash-talk other economists' intellects.

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Something to remember regarding Keynesian theory is when it was developed, and what economic and societal context it refers to. This is true of all economic theory: none of them are always right, and none of them are comprehensive, and none of them stands the test of time for a very simple reason:

Start a program, let's say a Keynesian one such as the US did in the late 1930s to combat the recession and gear up for war. After a decade or two, the markets and the economy at large will in almost all aspects have adapted to wring the most advantages it can from the policies enforced, with no thought to makro-scale consequences or knock-on effects. Add to that politicians using public means to buy votes via tax breaks, subsidies and welfare programmes/stimulus checks, and society's economy immediately quagmires. With a different program, we wind up in a different quagmire. Laissez faire capitalism creating private corporate monopolies acting as de facto states in their own right, but with no representation or sufferage for the herd of labourers, f.e. Different sh*t, same smell so to speak.

That's the problem: any theory made practice changes the circumstances that made the theory a valid, possibly even a good choice in the first place. And that's true in other fields as well:

Creating a system of welfare with guaranteed housing as a citizen's right, add on basic dental, basic health, and a basic level of income-substitute money and you will immediately create sectors of business the sole interest of which is to maximise the price paid by welfare recipients since the bill gets fobbed off on the rest of the taxpayers.

That's not the intent of such a program, it's just a sad consequence of rational choice: for the welfare recipient, the system is good because his chance of landing a job paying more than welfare plus the value of free time are Slim & Nun; for the service providers it is good because they have a captive market and guaranteed profits; and for the politicians it is good because they can wallow in "doing good deeds" - for society as whole especially seen over time it is very, very bad.

A common tragedy, to flip the phrase. And that's a bigger problem than Keynes' not properly understanding the Wigfors school of economic thought (where Keynes got his inspiration, though the point is contested) - even if governement spending sometimes can kick-start a grid-locked economy in recession (and the "ifs and buts" of that statement you can see from orbit sans telescope), it then becomes politically impossible for it to redress the issues when times are good.

Imagine trying to run for office in during a boom, on a platform of reducing tax breaks, reducing welfare and reducing subsidies. Dead in the starting blocks, that would be - even if you promised getting rid of taxes and fees to a greater degree than the removed breaks etc.

And that's, to finally let go of the belaboured point, the main and major problem of Keynes' theories, something he himself acnowledged but never solved. (No surprise there since it is in effect not solvable.) They work short-term under the right set of circumstances and only then, and must be dropped as soon as they take effect - sort of like having a nitro installed in the car. For a boost it's fine - always keeping the car jacked up on it... well, no.

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Ever hear of Modern Monetary Theory? Well, it's something they said was great. AOC even claimed to understand how it works. Now, it's as if it was never a "thing".

The power-bots saw it as a way to buy more influence than ever. The financiers saw it as a way to borrow 10 units of value and then pay back 1 - inflating away the debt. They were both right. But wrong about the non-linear effect on the right side of the ledger.

No surprise here.

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