Unlimited currency and a society at the precipice of destruction

Friday, 16 December 2022 — Albert Park

[7 min read]

Dear Reader,

One faces a choice when they lie or deceive:

Own up and pay the price now.

Or delay by covering up or doubling down, thereby upping the ante and facing a stiffer penalty when caught.

Human nature shows that people are more likely to own up to a small lie as the price is modest. It’s also more likely that there’s reconciliation in such cases. But a big lie will likely see the need to cover up or double down. After all, the size of your lie is likely correlated to the potential gain you receive if it succeeds. In turn, there is a greater temptation to seize and keep the forbidden fruit.

Today, I want to provoke you to think about something that may blow your mind.

What would you do if you had an infinite amount of money?

Buy a never-ending packet of Tim Tams?

Those who lived in the 1990s would remember this classic ad!

Alright…I’ll be serious.

The correct answer is to buy favour from the people by promising them all sorts of goodies, choose who the people elect to power to change the rules, and eliminate opposition through bribery or eradicating dissenters.

Sounds far-fetched?

I’m sure most of you’d have more sensible ideas…or at least I hope so!

The brutal truth is this is the world we live in now — thanks to the fiat currency system.

Most readers are somewhat familiar with how this system works. Central banks lend to governments to spend while it seeks to maintain the stability of the system by controlling the currency supply and setting the interest rate.

It worked for several decades or appeared as if it had.

Booms and busts, heady bull markets and debilitating crashes.

It’s a cycle of borrowing and spending until the lender asks for payment, whereby the world faces pandemonium. The government comes to the rescue, borrowing from the central banks to ‘save the day’.

Society takes this cycle for granted and does the same thing over again, except for the unfortunate individual who’s screwed over. Then they’re sitting ducks to their lenders, the perfect prey to an unscrupulous politician or bureaucrat who promises them welfare payments in return for their vote.

And so it goes.

He who controls the money writes the rules

Mayer Amschel Rothschild is reputed to have said the infamous quote:

‘Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.’

Think this way; money can buy resources and power.

In a democratic society, people think they elect their leader and representatives. However, those who join a political party in Australia will soon realise that they select the candidates that appear on the ballot paper. And the successful candidates are usually a result of corporations and lobby group donations.

In short, it’s not your vote that counts; it’s money.

It gets more sinister than that.

If you’ve enough money, you can get your representatives into power, change the rules, and ensure you never lose in an election.

Don’t believe me?

Look at the US 2020 election and the massive money trail!

There were the infamous drop-boxes to collect mail-in ballots, sponsored by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and the Center for Tech and Civic Life…

Incumbent state secretaries and district attorneys who turned a blind eye or even launched legal action against people raising concerns over the validity of elections, all of them beneficiaries of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations…

And voting machines that many claimed didn’t count or record votes properly, owned and operated by hedge funds and other financial institutions.

What was deemed a ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘disinformation’ in 2020 didn’t seem so ridiculous in the 2022 midterm elections.

There’re many Western democracies where the incumbent governments are put into power under the same means.

He who controls the money controls reality

Until recently, it’s easy to get away with buying your government and flipping the finger at the voters.

Most wouldn’t even be aware of it. And you can quash dissenters by painting them as ‘election deniers’ and a ‘threat to our democracy’.

Buy up the media and influential members of society to repeat the same narrative and mission accomplished. After all, circular citation across several media outlets creates the illusion of the accepted official narrative.

The matter is settled.

How many of you are aware that almost 90% of the US media companies are owned by a handful of corporations?

In Australia, it’s probably worse. Packer, Murdoch, or Holmes à Court...you soon realise that it’s a very small club weaving the illusion of diversity.

Take the key issues of the day — economic depression, the pandemic, climate change, racism, sexism, the war in Ukraine…they tell you what to think.

That’s because they build their wealth on our ignorance and division.

The day of reckoning

While those who gave us fake money and peddled fake news think they can get away with it, the reality is starting to catch up to them in a confluence of events.

The fiat currency system is groaning under a staggering amount of debt that’ll implode as the central banks seek to rein it in by raising interest rates. The US Federal Reserve announced another 0.5% rate rise on Wednesday afternoon as it seeks desperately to bring down inflation.

However, this rate rise adds one more straw to the camel that’s about to collapse. The markets can sense it, and hence the bearish sentiment has returned.

As for the false sense of reality that governments, media, and other influential bodies seek to paint, that façade is falling apart with Elon Musk releasing the ‘Twitter Files’ (courtesy of Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss) that highlight nefarious activities by key figures of such organisations.

There’s more to come, with many whose reputation will suffer irreparable damage, and deservedly so.

They are staring at their day of reckoning.

Stay afloat with real money and real news

The antidote to fiat currency is real money — gold, to be precise.

Central banks have scrambled to buy more of this recently, even as they’d been ridiculing and disparaging this metal for ages — the true embodiment of hypocrisy.

Gold is finally showing signs of a bull run. 2023 could be the year.

Hopes have faded for a soft landing in the global economy as smart investors brace for a crash.

The US dollar is going to lose its shine, leaving gold with virtually no competitors as a place of refuge.

The days of corrupt governments, professional bodies, and the fake news media allowed to cheat, steal, and kill are numbered. They see the writing on the wall and hence the censoring, threats, and ad hominem attacks.

None of us at Fat Tail Investment Research are sitting by idly.

The Daily Reckoning Australia has been documenting the events and crimes as we gleefully watch the Establishment’s demise.

Join us in the coming era of a better society where people can once again interact in good faith.

We want to get you the most prepared for 2023.

Regards,

Brian Chu,
Editor, The Daily Reckoning Australia

Dear Reader,

Yesterday, we watched the tape, wondering which way investors would take the news.

In the morning, the latest inflation numbers had investors’ attention. They showed prices coming down a little.

And in the afternoon, the Fed raised rates by 50 basis points (one-half of a percentage point)…and said it would continue to raise rates until they were at more than 5%. From CNBC:

‘The Federal Reserve will hike interest rates to as high as 5.1% in 2023 before the central bank ends its fight against runaway inflation, according to its median forecast released Wednesday.

‘The expected “terminal rate” of 5.1% is equivalent to a target range of 5%-5.25%. The forecast is higher than the 4.6% projected by the Fed in September.’

What to make of it?

A new era

At first, the inflation data looked like good news — as long as you didn’t pry into the numbers. But a 5% Fed Funds rate was not good news. No matter how you look at it, consumers, government, and businesses are going to pay more to borrow money. And for people who owe, jointly and severally, US$91 trillion, any increase in interest charges is a bummer.

Our hypothesis is that although the new era began more than two years ago — when the 10-year T-bond hit its all-time high — we are still in the ‘hinge’ period, swinging between old and new…hope and desperation…inflation and deflation. Some prices go up. Others go down. People are confused. And the financial news is mostly noise.

But one thing is sure: this new era won’t be like the old 1982–20 era. More likely, it will be the opposite.

Already, the 10-year Treasury yield is nearly six times what it was back in 2020. Where it goes from here, no one knows, but a lot of investors are betting that softening inflation numbers will allow the Fed to soften up too. Inflation could settle into a 4–6% range…they believe, with a Fed Funds rate right in the middle. With no further threat of interest rate hikes, stocks could go up. They are hoping for a repeat of the last 20 years, but with the backdrop of higher inflation and interest rates.

How likely is that?

A record month

We don’t know, but our guess is that there are too many jagged edges sticking out; like trying to make a pet of a porcupine, it will be hard to get comfortable with it.

The federal government is the biggest debtor in the world. As rates rise, so do its costs, while its income goes down. Higher rates reduce economic activity…lowering US tax receipts. And they make it more expensive for the feds to roll over existing debt or borrow more.

Yesterday, we looked at a record monthly deficit for the US Treasury — US$249 billion. That was almost half the money the feds spent. The Office of Management & Budget is still predicting a deficit of US$1.3 trillion for 2023. But it will almost certainly be far worse.

The bigger the deficit, the more the feds must borrow. And the more they borrow, the more they push up interest rates for themselves and everyone else. If lenders thought inflation was anchored at around 5%, they would insist on an interest rate of around 8%, giving them a real yield of 3%. Few stocks or bonds could compete with an 8% yield on a ‘risk-free’ Treasury note. Zombie corporations, unable to roll over their debt, would go broke, and bad debt should be erased.

A cross to bear

In The Wall Street Journal yesterday, for example, was an update on WeWork. Two years ago, we warned that the business model of WeWork was, well, unworkable. But now we see that the financial strategy was unworkable too:

‘WeWork, saddled with expensive long-term leases and more than $3 billion of debt, recorded a negative cash flow of around $4.3 billion between July 2020 and September of this year.’

WeWork’s stock is down more than 70% this year. Its bonds trade at about 50 cents on the dollar. And if a recession is coming, how many renters are going to want WeWork’s fancy desks?

We don’t know that either. But there are thousands of WeWorks, each with its own cross to bear. Too much debt. Too little cash flow. And no way to survive a recession.

Yes, in this hinge period, it’s not inflation that investors have to fear; it is deflation. People always make mistakes. The Fed makes the mistakes worse by dangling cheap credit in front of them…leading them to borrow too much. But markets correct mistakes by crashing prices, bankrupting overstretched companies, and wiping out unpayable debt. That ‘correction’ is not over; it is just getting started.

Regards,

Bill Bonner,
For The Daily Reckoning Australia