Mainstreet's Worst Demon

Jesus asked [the demon in the afflicted man], saying, “What is your name?” And the demon said, “Legion,” because many demons had entered [the afflicted man]. And [all the demons] begged [Jesus] that He would not command them to go out into the abyss.
Luke 8





In a story riddled with naked and brutal conflicts of interest and mind, the Bible presents a stunning confrontation among

• Jesus,
• a man possessed,
• the SINGLE serial-natured demon who  possessed and controlled the man on behalf of a host of other afflicting demons and
• the community in which they all dwelled.

Of course, as STEM-enlightened moderns with our virtual academies and cloud computers, we no longer believe in evil spirits … they are too intangible. For we are citizens of the physical universe … solid materialists … who believe that, given long enough, we can frame everything in terms of finite immutable laws which sustain, govern and explain the primal force and matter that interact to make our world.

And yet, myth retains its power among us, because often it alone is able to lead us into the  complex and confusing reality that is beyond even our seemingly unlimited cognitive and  comprehensive abilities.

Keynes as prophet

One of history’s great economists, JM Keynes, made an observation about the financial state of the post-WWI world he inhabited that bordered on myth when it was made and continues to haunt us today:

"There is no subtler, no surer means of [destroying the Capitalist System and] overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace

And so as democracy and capitalism disintegrate around us … along with the historically unique and robust confluence of benefits they once promised including liberty and justice for all … we turn from fiscal and financial conjurers to political and military authoritarians who promise cures for our serial socio-economic afflictions which only seem to grow worse with every new therapy we embrace. But who would dare to speculate much less declare that our legion of complicated problems is somehow tied to a SINGLE demon?

Perhaps, what we really need is an unassuming socio-economic exorcist who can see and command the SINGLE serial-natured evil spirit which possesses us to depart along with his host of lesser demons.

Hogeland on the birth of our madness

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

If historical iconoclasm is the first phase of sociological exorcism, we must begin our journey back to health and sanity with William Hogeland’s Founding Finance where the author ruthlessly rips off the sanitized bandaids of revisionist American history to reveal, among other things, the original and still putrid wound through which our worst demon first entered the American body politic … our first federal capital, Wallstreet, with its conscientiously concealed but overwhelmingly fetid practice of commingling and adulterating public and private money, banking and debt.

Selgin on the past and future of our affliction

“The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.” ― Joseph Conrad

What began on Wallstreet as one of Hamilton's more or less discrete adulteries has, over the centuries, become nothing less than a perpetual cycle of orgy and crash.

If you doubt this, you need only read George Selgin’s Money Free and Unfree. The book is a series of separate, self-contained essays written by Selgin over the course of his distinguished academic career. But, for those willing to dig, there is a SINGLE warning that rings in loud and clear affirmation of Hogeland’s revelation … especially for those who are fortunate enough to hear Selgin distill his book into a one hour lecture:

Wallstreet is the dwelling place of evil spirits … from Hamilton through Aldrich to Bernanke … who serve a SINGLE master-demon: fiat currency backed by federal debt.

And although Selgin variously probes and reveals many [sometimes confusing to the non-academic] facets by which this host of evil spirits has been manifested over the centuries of American history, his final message is laser focused … especially when you hear him speak in person:

• Central bank open-ended fiat currency based on federal debt
• disseminated through and controlled by Wallstreet banks
• IS the SINGLE DEMON which has been with us from the beginning
• which must be openly called out and firmly restrained [even if the rules that do it seem crude and cruel]
• while decentralized real-asset [or even honest-algorithm] based alternative [and competing] social media of exchange and their associated banking networks are cultured and allowed to grow
• slowing diminishing and eventually eliminating our current addiction to the monopolistic centrally banked monetary planning that wracks us and, as Keynes prophesied, “[releases] all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction”.

Where can we look for help?

Of course, the practical question that remains is

Where does Mainstreet America find an exorcist that can speak to our worst demon with real authority? Is it Donald Trump? Or Elizabeth Warren? Who?

Perhaps, at this point we must turn away from historians like Hogeland and academics like Selgin and return to mythical saviors like Jesus.

In the biblical account of Jesus exorcising the demons of the Gadarenes, those who were eye-witnesses told those who were not what they had seen … and they were all afraid … and even asked Jesus to depart from their land. Why would they do this? Because they feared further change to their status quo … after all their prize herd of pigs had just been driven over a cliff into the sea by demons.

But the man who was healed was undaunted by the thoughtless fears of his timid and short-sighted neighbors … and he persisted in telling others what he had learned and admonishing them to do the same.

All social movements begin the same way … ONE PERSON at a time … and grow the same way … through one-on-one encounters or in small groups which can be greatly assisted but never replaced by modern mass social media.

If YOU are convinced that those like Hogeland and Selgin are steering us in the right direction … then YOU must alert and join with others to demand change in the way we think and act concerning money and banking in America. It is time to publicly identify and call out the master demon that possesses us [along with his host of associated demons] … before they can do more damage to an already badly weakened body politic.

What if we fail to ACT ?

When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he roams through waterless places in search of rest; and finding none, he says, “I will return to my house which I left.” And when he has come to it, he finds the place swept and clean. Then he goes and takes seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse that the first (Lk 11:24-25).

The greatest temptation we all face is the status quo ... to DO nothing ... but this is a recipe for certain destruction. America may well be past the point of no return on almost everything that is essential to the future life of the republic ... in other words, the republic is already terminal and, perhaps, even deceased.

And that is a sobering thought. What will YOU DO about it?

Webs and waves

"O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!"
― Marmion, XVII, Walter Scott

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

It is late November 2018 ... and a wave of Democrats is headed to Washington ... to replace a wave of Republicans that arrived some years ago but managed little more than to make "the swamp" deeper and more fetid. Many are aghast at how swiftly and pervasively the Republican party has devolved and can only wonder what deviant machinations lie ahead as the inevitable reactions to its untethered apostasies begin to unfold.

... hope springs eternal

And although some claim that, though the hour is late, the academy is finally waking up to the evils of central banking ...
https://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2018/10/21/distributional-effects-of-monetary-policy-an-opportunity-for-austrian-economics/
... I think any such hope is profoundly misplaced for two reasons.

1. Pervasive Perversion

It is one thing to follow a few linkages thru an economic model in a university quant-lab full of  computers, but it is quite another to try to "model" an entire, dynamic global inter-generational socio-ecological system. Some things must finally be accepted as "wrong" without conclusive proof. And because money is one of the oldest and most pervasive social media known to and embraced by man, the perversion of money has perverted everything else and destroyed man's socio-ecological baselines. Keynes said it all ... and will, perhaps, fare badly in eternity if he is judged by his own words:

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency [and] ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." Keynes 1919

2. Deep Denial

The other thing that will prevent timely progress is denial ... and it is so deep-seated that nobody is willing to look back past the last few decades to find the point at which we departed from the straight and narrow. Bernanke's closing quote from the ThinkMarket article says it all:

"The degree of inequality we see today is primarily the result of deep structural changes in our economy that have taken place over many years, including globalization, technological progress, demographic trends, and institutional change in the labor market and elsewhere. By comparison to the influence of these long-term factors, the effects of monetary policy on inequality are almost certainly modest and transient.” Bernanke 2015

The vain Bernankes of the world are not willing to admit that long-standing monetary perversion long-ago infected every aspect of socio-ecological development including, without limitation, "globalization, technological progress, demographic trends, and institutional change in the labor market and elsewhere." He is a shallow thinker because he does not love either truth or mankind. At least Keynes [like the prophet Isaiah and others] was honest enough to condemn himself.

... as the hammer falls

And so, as the deceit of central banking works out the full global consequences of its evil, others are beginning to see the outlines of an inescapable web of destruction which this monetary madness has woven and continues to weave. https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/financial-crash-and-climate-crisis

That mere financial perversion should become inextricably and causally connected with cascading social and ecological destruction is the kind of epic tragedy that requires a Homer, a Sophocles, a Dante, a Shakespeare or a Tolkein to even begin to fully explain. And whom do we have ... a Trump?

And although everyone knows deep down that "something" is VERY WRONG ... as Keynes correctly noted, properly diagnosing a fundamental cause is not easy ... especially when a plethora of catastrophic symptoms are presenting themselves simultaneously.

Perhaps, we have gone past the point where diagnosis can make a difference. But if we must die ... wouldn't it be better for history [if anyone is left] to know what really happened?

“Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.” ― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer and other stories  

Adults in the Room

For those of you who find it hard to put the wide-ranging and seemingly unrelated issues of monetary, fiscal, economic, foreign and global policy into historical and sociological context, an encounter with some "Adults in the Room" by Yanis Varoufakis [2017] may provide some of the missing pieces in the puzzle.

Predictable Ruin: A Review of "Adults in the Room" is a brief review of the book which might be of interest and may help you organize your broader thinking. Too many of us agonize about "how" to manage ... instead of asking "when" to manage [and when to let liberty manage for us] ... much less counting the costs that may arise "if" we attempt to manage something beyond our control.

Another source to examine from time to time is Thoughts for the Post-2008 World ... a blogsite maintained by Varoufakis himself.

As we watch powerful authoritarianism rising out of our narcissistic descent into central economic planning [which is rooted in central banking], we need to know that ours is not a new tragedy ... but an old one that may finally be nearing its climax. The "beast from the sea" [described by Ovid and John the Revelator] is the author of a tsunami of fiat debt which, circulating in powerful currents of illicit currency [koinonia], simultaneously connects and subverts economic activity across all continents and in all nations on earth by sucking the life out of the future ... foreshadowed by Minos' Minotaur [and Varoufakis' troika] which consumed [and is still consuming] the living children of Greece [and the world]. And yet we continue to offer as-yet untold human sacrifices to the monster ... the blood of all the martyrs.

The global power brokers attempting to manage this shameful monster by confining it in their opaque, extra-legal, labyrinthine halls of power are desperately resorting to reckless stimulation and relentless austerity to inflate their collapsing international ponzi system of institutionalized debt. But the problems are getting worse and Greece is ready for its 4th bailout this fall ... when will these authoritarian monsters finally be loosed on the world ... and who will save us then?

We are undoubtedly on the cusp of a point when desperation will suddenly [but not unexpectedly for those who are informed] force even more deviant, systemic and irreversible change ... permanent and unlimited debt in return for permanent and unlimited centralized control. There is no reason why any thinking person should wonder about what must lie ahead ... whether you can do anything about it or not !!

Spread the word and keep the faith.