In Search of “Financial” Common Sense!
A classic Bear-rant for the ages...
I try to avoid getting too “political” on my blog (yes, blog, not “newsletter”), aside from my rants about incompetency & insanity (doing the same things over and over and expecting different results), entitlement-thinking, and thin-skinned ideological-correctness gone overboard.
So today… I’m just going to start out by quoting Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, who famously said:
“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”
While I’d love to use this bulletin to get into an in-depth discussion (and soap-box) about monetary policy, government deficit-spending, Keynesian economics and Ponzi schemes like the Federal Reserve and the Social Security system, I won’t! (another day, on another post — in due time — my fellow renegade inquisitive truth seeker).
Instead, I’m just gonna stick to the fundamentals here — speak a little common sense (wish me well) and bring this down to street-level, home-spun wisdom.
First, the question:
Who should get the most heat — the figurative hickory stick across the ass — for over-consumption?
For instance, when somebody buys something they can’t afford (er, say like a house — yeah, ya know, those things… 16 million of which are now vacant in the US alone — that people strive to keep), should the huckster force-feeding the thing be responsible, or the buyer who could have said ‘no’?
Well, let’s see… to use an easy-to-understand example… in the case of the 2008 financial crisis, which was spurred on by sub-prime mortgages (read: mortgages willingly bestowed upon folks with poor credit histories), if we were to put Encyclopedia Brown on the beat, he might use his boy powers of obviousness and conclude:
“Well, Mr. Goss, on one hand, it’s crazy human nature that makes everybody think they’re a victim when something doesn’t work out, like they thought it either should or would.
"My older red-headed step-brother blamed ‘peer-pressure’ for being a dope-head. Yeah, I saw his point: hot college chicks smoking and downing the crap and then saying stuff like, ‘Aaaaah, come on Alfred, it’s cool, gives you a rush, and makes you look super-hot.’
"But, like the person who doesn’t even have an emergency savings fund in place BEFORE he signs for a mortgage, Alfred coulda also said, ‘What da @#$% am I doing?'”Okay, so our boy investigative genius ALSO has a thing for taking the rap for your own stupidity, too.
“But, whoooaaaa, hold on a minute, Mr. Bear,” you yell to stop me in my tracks, “what about the hucksters who were selling the dream and encouraging the financial leap into homeownership?”
A-hem, ottaaaaaaaay, you know, you’re right, lest we forget:
Before somebody bought into the hype of having everything now — even if they couldn’t afford it — somebody, something, or some group of diabolical madmen… had to make the HYPE sing, dance, and yodel!
Whether government, elite bankers, lenders, insurance companies, monopolistic media, Wall Street traders, congress, or CEOs in cahoots with special interest… somebody had to perpetuate the dreamland (non real-world) state of excessive ‘instant gratification‘!
Maybe one, several or everybody on the list created the easy-credit, no-money-down ‘consumer’ economy that got us into that mess back in 2008 — i.e., The Great Financial Crisis.
Sure, let out your opinions on the WHO, by making your comments below. Yup, I wanna hear ’em… yet, something even more sincerely important on my mind is the HOW!
As in, how do we as a collective deal with individual bad choices — financially irresponsible decisions made? How do we deal with greed, corruption and misinformation being orchestrated from the highest levels?
“I readily concede I chucked aside my free-market principles.”
—President George W. Bush“Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy.”
—President Barack Obama
SAY WHAT ?
Do we just quit whining and complaining, stand up, and take action by joining groups that adamantly oppose giving more money to the very hacks who were part of the hype and insider-propaganda ?
As our boy investigator, Mr. Brown, might say:
“Hey, that’s like openly sanctioning the junk dealer to go out and seduce naive, casual, impressionable, curious, open-minded users and turn ’em into junkies to the extreme… come on, it’s like cajoling the contestants on the T.V. show The Biggest Loser that the best way to shed the major pounds is to chow down as many donuts as possible.”Or, as the intrepid man of all things economics, Bill Bonner (one of several peer researchers and fellow writers I lean on to help garner perspective) would say:
“Where do they get these ideas? What makes anyone think you can solve the problem of excess debt by lending people more money? Who is dumb enough to think that you can cure the problem caused by too much spending… by spending more?”
Who’s that dumb, Bill ?
Well, let’s reverse it to get the answer. How ’bout, who is that intelligent?
Who’s smart enough to know that the masses are practically hypnotized, mentally censored, and in denial about what really happens outside their own little world?
Well, bold reader, if you’re the kind of investigative, big picture thinking person, who likes putting puzzles together — somebody who does as much open-minded research via alternative media as you do through conditioned listening via mainstream media — you’ll readily find the answer.
But, where “they” have it all wrong is in the idea that the MASSES are still asleep.
Nope, we’re NOT!
Like somebody on a long drive, through a straight-away Nevada highway that goes on for miles and miles, we just stuck our head out the window, got some fresh air, and are now fully awake to land at our destination:
Truth-ville!
Conveniently, and most appropriately, by the way, right next to Common Sense-ville.
Yeah, we already “get” that America experimented with large-scale expansions of government spending in the 1930s with the New Deal, and again in the 1960s and ’70s with the Great Society. We “get” that these dramatic expansions of government spending coincided with economic failure.
We also are in tune with the unyielding truth that anything that heads too far away from equilibrium — from balance — has to snap back. If a rubber band is stretched too far, too many times, we know what’ll happen. (Ouch!)
Similarly, if a small business doesn’t focus on sales, revenue, and customer retention in favor of employee parties and expensive furniture, it deserves to go bankrupt, correct?
Or, if a homeowner continues to pay his mortgage with his credit card, he or she’d better find a way to EARN (labor for) money. Because, unlike the government who can borrow money from the unconstitutional Federal Reserve, who prints it out of thin air, the homeowner can only deficit-spend for so long.
Government spending is either financed through 1) higher taxes, 2) higher federal borrowing, or by 3) printing money. Those are the only possibilities. They all create GREATER economic damage than any stimulus effect of new spending.
So, continuing to allow our leaders to do the latter (magically make money appear by printing it) and then — holy @#$%, what are we thinking — sitting by as they give it to the very reckless lenders and investors who extended loans to people who couldn’t pay them back, is wild $h!t (yup, the equivalent of being on economic ‘shrooms).
So here’s the plan that happened (and still is, in different ways) right before our eyes:
1. The government buys up as much collateral, called “toxic assets,” as they can find (or, more appropriately said, as we as a nation allow them to TAKE OVER);
2. They underwrite a trillion dollars using money they haven’t got;
3. They then try to sell these assets back to the banks, which buy them using bailout money;
4. The banks then try to sell them to people who just lost their shirts buying worthless securities that they didn’t understand (or shouldn’t have been involved in the first place);
And, this brain-child scenario is supposed to save the day ?
Toto, I get the feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!