I've just returned from the house of good friends
after ending up on the outside of a juicy, organic, free-range turkey with
roast potatoes, peas and carrots. After a very busy week (moving house)
during which we had twice ended up dining on fast food, the traditional
English Christmas Dinner was delicious in the extreme.
On
the subject of turkeys… though the dismal foibles and failures of John
Maynard Keynes' junk economics are manifest, our governments still continue
to apply his wretched nostrums. That is really what is so scary about this
historically crucial time. Our Dear Leaders have so thoroughly swallowed
their own nonsense that they now genuinely have no idea what to do. They
refuse to even contemplate addressing the problem at its source.
Our
'experts' continue to peddle the line that only more government intervention
can solve the problems borne of government intervention. They throw more
money and credit at problems caused by too much money and credit. They act as
village lunatics who having dropped lighted cigarette in the town barn then
seek to make amends by throwing gasoline on the ensuing blaze; all whilst
gormlessly staring around hoping for applause.
Most
(all?) of the world's economies are in truly shocking decline. Manufacturers
are ceasing to manufacture, and consumers are ceasing to consume all but the
bare essentials. Exports and imports are dwindling. The wheels of commerce
roll ever slower, the ships of sea don't even depart their docks. The world's
food stocks have rarely been lower. The politicians become ever more shrill, the announced solutions ever more
pathetically unbelievable. So many Keynesian straws have been clutched at
from the straw house of irredeemable currency that it is on the verge of
collapse.
It is
not all bad news. Self correcting mechanisms will kick in. The slatternly
trollops of the UK and Australia
will forgo their mass breeding of children doomed to neglect and ignorance. The
welfare largesse that rewards such behaviour will cease to exist in a
meaningful form. We are approaching a future where it will be only the
genuinely productive who will be able to afford children. Children will again
be recognised as the future of the human race and will be cared for, nurtured
and educated.
Jolly
group therapies such as global warming, used as a vehicle to while away
surplus leisure time, will become as embarrassingly passé as flared
pants and Brylcreem. So called mental health
experts will have their billions of dollars of funding cancelled and the
closed shop of conventional medicine will be but a bad memory. Gradually the US military
will be forced out of their overseas bases. Such and other profligate
mischief will be stopped for financial reasons, though the change of policy
will be cloaked in moral righteousness. That it will all be curtailed is the
most important thing.
Many
people realised that the utterances of our leaders were lies, but during the
good times it didn't seem important except as a source of jokes. The classis
'Q. How do you tell when a politician is lying? A. His mouth is moving', sums
up the past attitude. As we pass out of that era and into another the jokes
no longer seem so funny.
Politicians
the world over have lied relentlessly about the health of 'their' economies
and the strength of 'their' national currencies. They lined up to take credit
for it when the going seemed good; now, when the flaws of their paper currencies
un-backed by gold are exposed, they line up to point the finger at bankers,
investors, speculators and other assorted crooks… anywhere but
themselves.
When
markets rise it's no surprise,
your government takes the credit.
It's a cleverness and vision thing,
bold leadership that led it.
But
when markets fall and suffering starts
It's business thugs who bled it.
Those greedy corporate crooks are jailed
and your government takes the credit.
The
American Federal Reserve Bank and other central banks around the world
fabricated an illusion of prosperity. They pretended that they could create
prosperity forever by divorcing wealth from production. It was the equivalent
of claiming that they could separate breathing from air. Governments
facilitated it because it suited their own short term interests. Realtors
lied about a mythical housing market that went up forever. With a nod and a
wink a mishmash of derivatives with triple A ratings were flogged to
unsuspecting patsies. Fund managers cajoled investors into investing their
pensions in stocks on the basis that stock markets always went up over the
long term.
Stock
markets may have gone up over the long term in the past, but individual
stocks certainly didn't. Most of them ceased to exist in the long term. This
time there is good reason to wonder if the American stock market itself will
survive, let alone individual companies. I predicted a future DOW at 1500
earlier this year. As the year draws to a close, and after a positive flurry
of political activity, I am no longer so positive.
But
whilst it was seemingly working, who cared whether it was immoral and
dishonest? Not many. The wealthy and gullible investors who blew their money
with Bernard Madoff receive little sympathy, and
deserve even less. Ditto for those who are banking on the dizzy duo of Hank
and Ben to steady the US
economic ship of state. Those who are still involved in this gigantic paper
money con game are a part of the problem, not the solution. It is not only
financially prudent to buy gold and silver bullion, it is a moral imperative.
The
simple truth is that our paper money is crooked and is not real money at all.
It has nothing of substance backing it. The edifice that has been constructed
upon that crooked money is also necessarily crooked. Thus the people who
operate within that system need to be crooked to succeed. The collapse that
is upon us is the end of the era of blatant dishonesty. The wonder is not
that it is collapsing, but that it was ever taken seriously in the first
place.
When
the money itself is dishonest then all of society's activities become
dishonest. Money is how we fairly exchange with each other. When it is not
possible to exchange with each other honestly and fairly, then the whole
spectrum of society becomes morally weakened. Visible evidence of this is all
around today.
Who
can you believe? Believe the people whose views conformed with
reality over the long term. Not the Johnny-come-latelies
who finally twigged that something was wrong only about eighteen months ago,
but the people who have cried that the Emperor had no clothes for many years.
"All
truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is
violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
The
estimable Peter Schiff and D.R. Schoon have been
oft mentioned in this regard, but without doubt the most courageous of all is
the brilliant mathematician, monetary scientist and humanitarian Professor
Antal E. Fekete. He called today's precise happenings in his award winning
essay 'Whither Gold'.
It is
not hard to imagine the professional reaction that Professor Fekete endured
when the article was first published in 1996.
Professor
Antal E. Fekete is a true intellectual warrior who stood tall against the
professional peddlers of Keynesian claptrap. He spent his career
disseminating the truth despite all professional inducements and incentives
to not do so. His reward was the opprobrium of almost his entire profession.
Now
of course his views are much sought after, but it would have been far better
had his call for truth and honesty in money been heeded decades ago. Despite the alluring inducement of the sirens' song,
Professor Fekete remained bound to his mast of truth and, has arrived at
Schopenhauer's point of self-evidency with his
integrity intact.
How
many economists can say the same? Certainly not the many who peddled their
integrity for well funded careers in government and academia.
They were a disgrace to themselves and their profession. Quite simply they
lied for money and prestige. Now the prestige is waning fast, and their
money? … that was probably invested with
Bernie Madoff, or one of the other SEC approved
crooked organisations.
Does
it accord with reality that a person could spend a lifetime living on
borrowed money and have an honest and prosperous existence? Of course not, it
is a preposterous idea. No more or less so for governments and nations. Lies
do matter, whether they are at the individual or the national level. Many
people have already found that out, many more are about to. Truth is that
which accords with reality, no matter how hard we may wish that it were not
so.
We
are thankfully leaving behind the world where economic truths are determined
by the political process and then enforced through legislation. That version
of truth is a malign and warped reality that violently clashes with truth and
honesty. That which appears to be true, but in fact is not, is an illusion.
"The
fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is
not utterly absurd."
Bertrand Russell
We
are the last of three generations who have lived in an utterly absurd era. We
have believed in absurd ideas about money and economics and been governed by
absurd people. Soon the illusion will be over.
Gold
is money, that is the truth. Experiments with paper
money divorced from a gold or silver backing have never succeeded, that also
is the truth. The US$
has lasted 37 years without gold or silver backing. The US$ is going
to fail.
Those
who remain invested in the paper money market in any way, shape or form are
going to do their dough. Keynesian junk economics and the regime of
irredeemable currency will destroy people far more effectively than junk foods
could ever do.
Sam Mathid
sammathid@yahoo.com
Also by Sam Mathid
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