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