The Whip Hand

The Whip Hand

Why do tigers jump through flaming rings?  They are not afraid of the little man with the chair and the whip but they are in a cage and if they eat him their days are numbered.  And if we complain about the cage or the man with the whip, then, like slaves, we will surely feel the lash.  If we persevere in our intransigence, we will be disciplined.

Those are my thoughts on monetary reality.   Use the legal tender, pay what is asked of you, and if you rock the boat then like Tim Robbins in Shawshank, you could be cast down with the sodomites. 

No one has threatened me with anything.  As far as I know, I am a free man.  I enjoy doing my duty—I work, I pay taxes and I don’t lie or cheat but I would like to point out that for the noble and honorable among us, the fix is in.  Opportunity is currently looking for a scapegoat and if your savings or pension promises are the only source of protein, well, the long knives are after their feast.

Who deserves anything? Aren’t we all sinners and fall short of the glory of God? Well sure but what does that have to do with money? What you think you deserve you will probably not get. You might have been planning for a Florida golf  retirement  after a lifetime of toil and you need a certain amount of money for that.  Perhaps too a cruise or a trip to France.  But  that was all an image in your head,  something like a desert mirage. A lot of people are angling for the same thing and there is not enough “money” to provide it.  Who after all is going to do the work while we “retire”? So if it is time to get serious about politics, what exactly should we ask of our overseers?  A note to myself, I see that the authorities are “unsure” about the constitutionality of eliminating American terrorists on American soil. A drone attack on a Pakistani warlord is one thing but if neighbor Crazy Bill is the target or I squeak too much, then that’s a different matter. Rand Paul filibusters the Senate to protest the new CIA-chief who cannot categorically deny that drones could be used on American citizen terrorists, however that is defined.  Police work used to involve “arrests” (with warrants)  and trials (by jury?) but what exactly constitutes treason against the State?  Is my “hope and change” subject to misinterpretation?

Let me spell it out.  The State has gradually, due to careless decisions, worked itself into a box.  It has enjoyed dispensing the favors of royalty, it has enjoyed the trappings of legitimacy, and it is  nearing the end of its useful life.  The State wants to determine what is done and what has importance.  The rest of us are along for the ride and will be paying the bill.  The State “means” well which is to say it has an ethic of public service as long as they get to call the shots.  Freedom is defined as the opportunity to do what you are told or pay the consequences. The nub of the problem is that we CANNOT have real Freedom if manipulation of the value of the money is allowed. If careful stewards were to try their best to maintain and support the dual functions of money, both as a medium of exchange AND as a store of value, then perhaps their scrupulousness would permit our freedom.  But if the government says a dollar is what the government says it is (in short political money), then all our work and saving is measured by a scale that can be changed at any time.  The power to usurp is gradually exercised, financial repression is instituted and eventually tends toward absolute control.  It ultimately takes more and more money to make everyone do what they are told. 

Political money can be given or taken away.  Big banks with unfortunate losses have been subsidized with “asset purchases” by the holders of the Aladdin’s lamp of monetary largess.  Underwater homeowners are relieved of their home and large hedge funds acquire them to rent or re-sell at a better price.  Political money goes to who needs it to keep power.  The hot spring of money printing supports the crowding, teeming LIFE that the cold outer darkness freezes out.  If the question is how little you can pay a man and still get work out of him it is wise to remember that they do shoot horses when the maintenance costs get high.  I may be stupid enough to work for a carrot but I am not stupid enough to continue to plod after a carrot on a stick dangling 3 inches off my nose. So who to vote for in this multiple theatre of charades?

     The rightful definition of a citizen is a participant in the choices that the government needs to make. Money and votes are a citizens two tools to impact TPTB.  The last refuge is “doing your own thing”.  Opting out.  Voting has long since become meaningless.  The duty is flogged mercilessly but barely half the electorate makes it to a major decision.  When the vote is local--the voting participation falls below 20%.  And if the government can create all the money it wants or needs, why do I need to pay taxes?  The government looks bad creating its own money and our overseers need "buy in" to the system that allows them to gain control of incentives and permit their oversight.  Everybody needs to be on their little treadmills generating wherewithal(taxes) and allegiance (loyalty) to the State. Are we free? Any thoughtful observer when asked about freedom necessarily must mention obligation.  As in rights have responsibilities. We have this idea that our freedom allows us to consent to the oversight of the state but practically the state assumes it.  There is no other state so you have consented to this one. 

   Well, I don’t need any more monopoly money for my pretend retirement.  I am trying to figure out the “best” investments in an environment where the rules can be changed at any time.  Many countries' citizens have coped with their governments malfeasance by using dollars as a store of value:  Argentina, Venezuela, Ukraine, Nigeria, and others.  Now we Americans have a similar but more difficult problem--there is not another fiat currency that is any BETTER than ours.   How to navigate safely over the cataract that is coming is a knotty problem. I'll speak about that later. The world we have is not where we are going.  I would have to say the hippies of the 60’s were a little early.  All of their utopias blew up on the failures of human nature especially when confronted with the blandishments of a wanton culture.  And we are still living the dream but are getting closer to awakening.  In the 70’s I was grabbed by the ideas of the neo-Malthusians:  Ehrlich and Lester Brown.  I internalized the concerns of limits to growth, propounded the lessons of Earth Day, railed against militarism in Vietnam, admired Seymour Melman in his argument for a 75% reduction in the Defense Department to invest in social capital rather than destruction, and contemplated alternative development strategies to bring greater justice to desperately poor 4^th world countries.  As a world community, we needed some sacrifice by the rich to create the conditions for the poor.  In my mind Reagan’s jingoism blew all that out the window.  We were in it for us.  We Americans were  the exceptional free people and had a God given right to grow as rich as possible and everybody else could come along if they could.   The neo-Malthusians have been around a long time and are just the sort of do-gooder scolds you can really believe in but a funny thing happened on the road to Apocalypse Now—we learned how to print money and sprinkle it on every asset so that now we could no more say what a horse is worth than why a dollar buys anything at all. 

  And as for my kids and their choices:  they are walking in two worlds—the world of their parents and grandparents and the collapsing future.  There is the world of progress and a belief in a technological future but I think they need to be prepared for a resource constrained future of contraction and a slow slide to de-industrialization.  What will it be? Onward and upward or systemic and cascading failures due to resource limits, population pressures, and financial criminality.  The rich got theirs but we middle class sods are pack mules on the Oregon trail to nowhere.  

What can the young people do? They are ready to work but leadership needs to put them to their task.  College is a dangerous investment.  Fun, but costly and potentially lethal.   Those loans cannot be shucked in bankruptcy and what about the real return?    I still think it wise to go to college even though there are precious few jobs worth pursuing.  You could chase aeronautical engineering, or architecture, or genomic counseling and still end up thousands of dollars in debt and 10^th in line for an interview.  So though I would recommend going to college, you need  to think, really think (and talk to class-mates) about the future.  Read a lot of great books, make a lot of intelligent friends, get a “peer group” you trust, and then sally forth into the blast furnace of reality.  Don’t spend too much and don’t party too much.  Learn what is worth knowing and then get busy—no one said adulthood was easy.  That’s why in the insect world it’s the last stage.

   We really don’t know what kind of mixed up social order we are going to brew up as the high priced escapades become unaffordable and only the 1% are in a hurry to catch a plane.  Is the capital we have at all useful?  What are we going to do with a tanning salon, or a big box outlet with empty shelves-repurpose it as a homeless shelter with hammocks? What is the average miles travelled for every item in Walmart—8,000? Or what about your neighborhood grocery store  – 1,000 miles?  Does any of this work with gas going up or becoming as expensive here as it is in Europe?  Perhaps it might be a few years before that uncomfortable day but remind me again of the date that fracking will make the USA a net EXPORTER of fuel? We still IMPORT 50% of our energy.  I believe our last year as a net energy EXPORTER  was in the mid-50’s.

   We have some mighty careless leadership.  My own belief is that they are grabbing what they can and want to tiptoe around all the problems until they crash on the unsuspecting.  Please, don't let IT happen on my watch.  Just like the dumbfounded Bush--"this sucker could go down".  Yes, Virginia.  IT could happen.  But even if the interlocking global world financial system doesn't pancake like a World Trade Center tower, it is on the Darwin short list.  Big changes are coming and we will see who or what holds "the whip hand".

Some Reflections About Debt and Gold

Several FACTS  about gold are  not often considered.

1)    If each American had a 1 ounce gold coin that would be 316  million ounces. There are 32,150 troy ounces in a metric ton. Do the math. That is 9,829 T of gold.  The US government is supposed to hold 8,500 T of gold in Fort Knox and at the NY Fed.  The entire world supply ever mined is about 175,000 T.  All gold holdings by all national governments(central banks, IMF, etc.)  worldwide are about 35,000 T.  About 2,800 T is mined every year.  So if everybody in America had ONE gold coin it would take more than 3x what is mined every year to get them TWO...... 

2)    In 1920 a 1 ounce gold coin was equal to $20 and having TEN would not be uncommon.  Any person could go into any bank and exchange a $20 bill for a one ounce gold coin.

3)   It is estimated that there are 9 million financial asset millionaires in the USA today.  If half of them put 10% of their savings into gold it would be a minimum of $450 billion.   With 1 ton of gold worth approx $42 million, their gold would be approx 10,000 T or more than US government holdings.   There are millionaires in a lot of other countries too….

4)   The Federal Reserve “emits” $85 billion every month to purchase MBS and Treasury bonds.  That is approx equal to one year’s total world production of gold.  Which is easier?  To find, mine, and refine $85 billion worth of gold or push a button to ‘acquire’ a financial “asset”? 

5)   If a dollar is worth a dollar, what is gold worth?

The government likes political money because they can create it as needed.  That puts those of us who need to work to earn it in something of a quandary. The government’s position is that for the greater good it can create whatever money is necessary. They have developed a pretense of accounting by talking about “The Debt” but there is actually no “accounting” if debts can be created and then paid back with MORE debt.   Just as there is no “debt” associated with a counterfeiter that produces perfect hundred dollar bills , there is then  no difference in “good”(trustworthy)  or “bad”(counterfeit) money.

Printing whatever money is necessary to pay expenses and then requiring everyone to use that money is the antithesis of “sound” money.  It is legalized counterfeiting.  The government can create bonds and sell them or hold them itself and then cancel them at will.  It is a right pocket left pocket scam. Who can protest?  Once you have accepted that it is the right of the State to issue as much money as it needs to do what it must, what control, besides a pitiful little vote every 4 years, is possible?  The whole concept of money itself dissolves into irrelevance.  What you hold and what you work for is a political construct determined at every moment by the power that can issue it at will.   Why, in fact, do we pay taxes if the government can create whatever money it needs?

The “Debt” is actually a moral partnership between the government and the people.  The moral part comes in when considering how the new money is to be used and how the Debt is to be paid back. Many analysts have commented that the current debt is too large to be paid back and it is inevitably going to be defaulted on or inflated away. I think that likely.  If it is cancelled or defaulted on, then, through the money power, the government has the full and complete power to do whatever it wants irrespective of citizen’s votes.  It can create National Security State, American Empire, Nanny State, or it can just pay itself whatever it wants. It can pay newspapers to write nice stories. The result is that we “citizens” are all beggars for crumbs from the Kings’ Table.

Debt could be considered “the negative” of the positive that is known as money.  Practically speaking we consider money a unit of comparative value.  A dollar is  defined by its purchasing power. It is not based on anything.  It has a customary value that is understood to change gradually.  I do not think people consider how immoral debt cancellation by the State is.  A person goes bankrupt and fails his creditor but a government that goes bankrupt fails the entire citizenry.  How can a State fail its people?  When it mismanages so stupendously that it must cheat them to remain in power.  Here have a dollar—it’s not worth anything. The government defines what money will be – a dollar- and defines what it will be worth.  Does it reserve the right to change these determinations at any time if repaying its obligations is difficult? The Fed could theoretically expand the balance sheet to $10 T.  Then cancel it.  Of course the Fed would then be insolvent but would the Treasury?  No.  The Treasury could create another Fed or take the money creation role in house.  Old bonds held by others would be redeemed with new bonds and the Treasury would lose the income from the old cancelled bonds but what does a counterfeiter care if people burn the money he issues them?

Debt cancellation sounds like a good thing but it is a flagrant injustice.  It  certainly seems so to me who have saved what I have. What loyalty does the government deserve if it is busy picking favorites to benefit? Let’s consider an alternative scenario that would benefit me but not as much as some others:  why don’t we cancel everyone’s mortgage?  We have just made some Americans $5T richer.  But then we require the government to pay its debts and balance its books. WWG(Government)D? The same lousy options it has now would still be facing the government:  it could change some of its future promises, trim some current expenses, and increase taxes on its suddenly wealthier citizens. Its huge debt would still be there and our government representatives  would still have to work out which of the poor options available to them would be chosen.  But of course some would have already benefited. So cui bono?  The specific debt holders that are forgiven.  Everyone else pays. 

A counterfeiter does not need or care about “accounts”.  He produces all that he can get away with.  Why does the government not allow counterfeiters to make people ‘richer’?  At that critical point—it is all about the power.    I make the money, I call the shots, you do what you are told.  That is how it works.  In this model, the concept of freedom extends only to consumer choices not the social contract we live under.  That is where we are fellow citizens, do we like it?

Why is honest money like gold or silver not playing a larger role in our current monetary arrangements? People don’t understand the problem and they do not WANT to understand it. Essentially, gold is inconveniently rare, they don’t have any, and have no reason to prefer dollars (that they don’t have enough of) to gold(that they can’t actually BUY anything with).  If you ask most people, who is responsible for deciding how much money needs to be printed for everybody to use?  The answer will be, the government.  If you ask them how does the government know how much to print, they will answer, that is their job and why they have all those economists and departments full of civil servants.  If you ask them can the government print as much money  as it wants?  They will say yes. I ask, so YOU cannot print money or it is 10 years in the slammer as a counterfeiter, but the government CAN print as much as it likes and buy whatever it likes?  Do you feel there is a problem with this system?  No, they say, it is complicated and the government knows best. 

This makes for a very long and involved process of education.  What percent of the population actually thinks the government has the right and OUGHT to have the right to print all the money it wants and spend it on whatever it wants? I think it is at least 75%.  To them, it is like a “perk” of being a government official.  A majority of people unwilling to think or become informed citizens would necessarily reduce the value of gold and silver as money.  People are satisfied with how things work, even if they have to work 3 jobs and don’t themselves have any money.  It’s OK that some rich people get to fly private planes to Tahiti because they know the government official that makes up the money.  If they could get a job like that, they would do it for their friends too.  Is this where we are?   75% of the populace completely clueless about the benefits of a money that functions as money i.e. a store of value?  What will it take for a majority of people to become aware that their interests are being ignored and desire to do something about it?  Why don’t people engage more with politics?  I can answer that question, all those meetings that lead to no substantial changes are boring.  Politics would have to be REAL for people to put any time or effort into it.   

The entire society works because people think they have an idea of what money is.  What if they realize they everything they buy and work for is determined by what the government says it is worth?  There is no “number” for financial security.  Financial security only exists under rules of the game that are going to have to change .  If everybody’s money is someone else’s debt then it is surely the case that someone is not going to be paid.  How will this be determined?   Let me ask another question.  Should you “save” money if it is government policy to  reduce it’s value?  It is axiomatic that prudent people save for a rainy day but what exactly are they “saving”?  They are saving the government the aggravation of balancing its books by stealing current income and repaying with false promises.  Does the government “know” it is going to default?  Who is the government?  The Treasury Secretary will say growth in the economy will repay all debts just as a person in hoc will say their raise next year will pay off their credit cards.  If the economy does not “grow” it is already bankrupt.  So to what end working and saving?  The quicker people remove their money from systemic risk the better they will feel when the System implodes. 

So how can the government keep the unsustainable rocking along?  Boil all the frogs in different pots slowly….  Squeeze everybody and pay the army and the police....

  

God, Gold, and Fairy Tales

I would prefer to talk with God, the words crackling out of the burning bush, rather than store a tennis court-sized cube of gold in my back yard.  So, A conversation with God or all the Gold in the World?  What would YOU rather have?  Let's just think about how many people would really like to talk to God and how many would rather have all the gold in the world.  I say 50-50 but everyone's a lawyer now so we must frame the question carefully. Many Christians already claim to speak with God so presumably they would take the gold.  Atheists might insist on a real conversation, like Abraham or Moses had, or they would take the gold too.  I would be afraid the conversation could turn banal (due to my own stupidity) and I might regret not taking the money.  So do you think people are desperately spiritual and  90% would talk with God or are there more cynics out there, God? meh--Show me the money.  Do you think most would rather have the cash?  I propose this question speculatively since the answer would be illustrative.
     Is gold money or is it just a pretty hunk of metal?  Gold WAS money but most people have been talked out of considering it so.  Today gold (or silver) could be money but money is what most people will take in payment for something else they want.  Anything can be a unit of account (there is a presumptive wheat price for television sets) but the key is medium of exchange and store of value.  But today you cannot use gold at the store so it is NOT a good medium of exchange.  Paper money is shriveling fast and so is a poor store of value.  Gold might be better because of its scarcity BUT it first has to be certified as a medium of exchange.  If trading it is not allowed, then its natural value has been modified by state action.  If government says, "Use dollars" or I'll put you in prison like Bernard von NotHaus, then most are going to be compliant.  What if we insisted that taxes be paid in government money but otherwise freedom was the watchword--there would be an exchange rate between gold and other currencies.  Is that what we have today?   Can't you take dollars and buy all the gold you want?  I believe the answer is yes.  So is the current exchange rate between gold and dollars accurate? Or is it manipulated to make dollars look better than gold?  Gold is a commodity that gains and loses value with respect to dollars and is taxed on that change. We pay capital gains like on anything else if it goes up.  We are legally obligated to value everything in relationship to dollars, so changes in the value of the dollars themselves is merely a 'cost' to using it. It loses some value every year.  Each of us has a different dollar "decay rate" and I calculated mine at 9.5%.  The CPI or the GDP deflator are government statistics that show a smaller dollar loss but they may be biased.  Their average may not be your average.  Calculate your own.  I did the following:  I took a one year old Costco receipt with 25 items I buy periodically and found the new prices.  No prices had fallen, a case of Yuengling beer was still exactly the same, $18.97 and everything else was more.  9.5% on average more.  In July I get my Blue Cross/Blue Shield premium increase notice for my family policy.  Last year it was up 10%.  I received my daughter's college tuition bill in August--increase 8.4%.  State Farm wants 7% more for its premiums. In October the Utility Company went up by 6%.  I have a fixed mortgage and didn't buy a car so depending on how I weight my expenses, that will determine my personal inflation (or dollar decay) rate.
       Since gold is NOT MONEY it can be regulated.  A law can be passed that you cannot own it, buy it or sell it and so its moneyness may be adversely affected.  Gold today is an uncomfortable reminder of what money used to be. It is currently a money only for precious metal wingnuts.
    What is cash?  When financial advisors say to "hold cash" I mentally picture placing suitcases of small bills in the back of my closet or stuffing banknotes in the mattress.   I do not envision digits in a bank account.  A bank account is a loan to the bank.  Bankers dress up a big vault with a brick veneer building and open the vault so you can see how thick the door is and they put a lot of people with suits scattered around in cubicles but your money is not there.  It has been loaned to someone and you can have  some of your money now and the rest of your money next Wednesday if no one else is asking.  If it is in a Cash Account at some brokerage(Schwab or e-trade) they have swept it into some vehicle they can loan on and they could tell you to get lost, find a lawyer, we have other uses for your money.  John Corzine anyone?  So cash to me is a little nebulous.
Personally I love fairly tales.  They say it all about money.  Consider the story of the goose that laid the golden egg.  Richly human.  A sure thing if there ever was one and the dude kills the goose to get all the eggs--right now!  Could he do math?  Was he a Piaget simpleton--like not even 5 years old?  Couldn't he see that AT THE MOST there were six or seven eggs in there and the damn goose could lay eggs for years!  No I guess he couldn't do any volumetric analysis or simple math and so he cuts the duck open.  I think that is exactly what we have done to the environment--I am not going to get into global warming, pollution, peak everything, and other environmental disasters but I would like to point out that there are approximately 2,000 wild bengal tigers and 7 billion people in the world now.  I am worried about us becoming more numerous that honeybees. ( I don't think we will ever catch ants.)
Take Rumpletiltskin. Perhaps a handbook for women or maybe just a reflection on money.  Be very careful of ALL the men in your life--they may be stupid or exploitative.  Who wouldn't have sympathy for the miller's daughter?  Big blowhard dad goes bragging about what a swell daughter he has and ends up almost getting her killed pushing her on a savvy prince.  The prince doesn't care about HER but about her TALENTS and so she has to put out to be queen.  (Where have we heard this story?)   The prince is a complete jerk--requires the girl to prove her competence 3 times. And then she's GLAD to marry him!  Guys--always looking for the sure thing. And then there's the troll.  The little man knows he's a troll and could never find a wife BUT what about a kid?  So he deals for the child.  Women plays him as well as could be expected and then ends up having to pull out all the stops to retain the child she should never have promised but had to or she would have been strung up or back in Palookaville baking bread at 3:00AM with a brood of hateful children. The little man has a kind and gentle streak and a hateful streak but is amazingly stupid living in a hut in the forest when he could spin straw into gold.  In fairy tales everybody's an alchemist--think nothing of producing all the gold they need, like rubbing Aladdin's lamp, and getting a camel train of jewels as big as oranges. What did they think was going to happen to the scarcity value of their talent?  They think themselves  blessed by the gods and end up living happily ever after.  Happily ever after is where the stories should start.
        But I like the Midas story too.  What did King Midas think would happen to the value of gold if he could create it by just touching something?   Did he consider that to make the most valuable things-common-might reduce its value?  Does Ben Bernanke worry about these things?  Is money good because it is all around, like air, making people do valuable things like work?  Can you make too much of it and people suddenly realize there is no point in working?  I think the answer is yes.  Lets agree we CAN have too little of it.  So in a depression no one has any money but is it not true that there is a lot that needs doing?  How do you get people busy at what needs doing?  Pharoah I suppose said, "hey, you, tote this stone to the top of the pyramid."  but our handlers are more subtle-do whatever you like and send me half.  That would be fine EXCEPT they have so many big important projects being elites they have gotten to where they need more than half.  They need it all.  So the top 1% have almost half the money and the bottom 50% have only 1% of the money.  Whoops...
     Karl Marx has been out of favor so long it is hard to remember what he wrote but I think the big principles were something like the rising accumulation of capital in the hands of the owners and the gradual impoverishment of the Industrial Reserve Army (called workers).  Something like we have now.  If we get a dictatorship of the proletariat out of obese SSI recipients I would be flabbergasted.  So who will inherit the earth?  Those with money or those that can do without it?