The empty streets are familiar if you saw The Omega Man, the 1971 zombie movie starring Charlton Heston. So is with the flu. It is not exceptional, on the numbers so far, compared with flu outbreaks in previous years. People are dying the same way, WITH not FROM flu, with pneumonia and on a ventilator if they are lucky.
The implosion of fiat money IS A REALITY, however, and it is not being reported to the masses while the media is redirecting everyone's attention to the flu. There is another pandemic that is much more devastating in terms of lives destroyed, and which also tends to recur every few generations.
GREAT CRASH OF 1929, 2008 and... 2020
The tinder this time is the unfinished business of 2008. The policy response was to devalue the currency so that it took more dollars to buy a given asset. This artificially propped up prices so that banks never had to confront their own insolvency. Allowing for inflation and devaluation, the events of 2008 met the definition of a depression. As did real unemployment.
The Fed has been propping up nominal prices, not feeding the creation of capital or value. Likewise corporate executives whose priority is/was stock buybacks. This is why it’s never been possible to turn off the money creation tap. If that's called restoring financial order, I’d have to disagree.
If you do it long enough, however, a new generation comes along to whom it’s the new normal. Thus there are now economists and financial professionals who observe the boundaries of discussion laid down by the Fed.
Academics might think to ask how a depression can coexist with apparently rising stock prices. That would be eye-opening research.
The match being applied to the kindling right now is the tottering of hedge funds beginning last fall – the response a bailout of trillions - a replay of LTCM IN 1998 - along with the implosion of emerging market debt derivatives - reckoned in the hundreds of billions.
The Fed has been propping up nominal prices, not feeding the creation of capital or value. Likewise corporate executives whose priority is/was stock buybacks. This is why it’s never been possible to turn off the money creation tap. If that's called restoring financial order, I’d have to disagree.
If you do it long enough, however, a new generation comes along to whom it’s the new normal. Thus there are now economists and financial professionals who observe the boundaries of discussion laid down by the Fed.
Academics might think to ask how a depression can coexist with apparently rising stock prices. That would be eye-opening research.
The match being applied to the kindling right now is the tottering of hedge funds beginning last fall – the response a bailout of trillions - a replay of LTCM IN 1998 - along with the implosion of emerging market debt derivatives - reckoned in the hundreds of billions.
“It’s not even a bazooka -- it’s more like a nuclear bomb."
The Federal Reserve responded with a bailout described by one fund manager in the above terms. He might have said radiation treatment because in cauterizing the wound it may end up killing the body.
Regulators have frozen the physical markets in order to try to regain control - by means not yet fully clear.
As in 2008, governments seem ready to sacrifice the real economy in order to save the banks. British economist Professor John Kay has demonstrated that banks don't drive the economy. Most large companies bypass banks to raise their own funding and any small business owner will tell you what they think of banks. Why, again, does the real economy get bankrupted to save the banks?
Little chance of 2008-style protests like Occupy Wall St, either. This time the streets were cleared in advance and people are busy spying on their neighbors. The police have even created tittle-tattle apps.
There may yet be a backlash if people see that governments can print all the money in the world for these bailouts when they were mothballing hospitals... "because of the cost".
If flu deaths fail to exceed those of a normal year, governments are likely to attribute that "success" to the bonfire of civil liberties. The media will applaud in any case. It already looks like they will blame the flu for the unavoidable bailout which came from the goodness of the bankers' heartfelt desire to save us from ourselves.
Regulators have frozen the physical markets in order to try to regain control - by means not yet fully clear.
As in 2008, governments seem ready to sacrifice the real economy in order to save the banks. British economist Professor John Kay has demonstrated that banks don't drive the economy. Most large companies bypass banks to raise their own funding and any small business owner will tell you what they think of banks. Why, again, does the real economy get bankrupted to save the banks?
Little chance of 2008-style protests like Occupy Wall St, either. This time the streets were cleared in advance and people are busy spying on their neighbors. The police have even created tittle-tattle apps.
There may yet be a backlash if people see that governments can print all the money in the world for these bailouts when they were mothballing hospitals... "because of the cost".
If flu deaths fail to exceed those of a normal year, governments are likely to attribute that "success" to the bonfire of civil liberties. The media will applaud in any case. It already looks like they will blame the flu for the unavoidable bailout which came from the goodness of the bankers' heartfelt desire to save us from ourselves.
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