Forget all the jawboning. Fact is, over the long term mob stooges in Washington always spend more than they rake in. Always have, always will. Viewed across the span of a typical political lifetime, tax revenues never foot the whole outrageous bill.
This means Treasury has to borrow that money from somebody. To do so, the Department issues paper IOU‘s, and lawmakers pass convenient legislation forcing financial institutions to buy these bonds, notes, and bills. Foreigners selling more Wal-Mart stuff to us than Boeing and Caterpillar do to them end up with dollars left over and reason to keep that rip-off going, so their governments buy our IOU’s too. As does conservative money, and there’s all kinds of that around, domestic and foreign, institutional and individual, smart and dumb.
Yet all this does is make politicians want to spend more. That part is kind of cyclical, however the cyclicality itself appears permanent, meaning there will always be a need to cover massive Government boondoggles, just not every single year throughout the nation‘s history. Sort of now and then, but with more now’s than then’s once a body gets to counting.
And that’s where inflation steps in. After Congressmen and the occasional Chief Executive have run amuck.
Among other things, the Federal Reserve Bank is Washington’s financier of last resort. When we can’t even borrow enough money to cover all the pork barrel spending, Greenspan Bernanke, or whatever his name is, gooses price levels up across the economic spectrum.
Double tax revenues by doubling prices, and Washington brings in twice as much core dough, meaning loot they don‘t have to borrow. Triple them, and you’ve got three times as much. Quadruple, and … well somewhere in here your debts shrink to half or a third or a quarter of what they used to look like way back before Greenspan Bernanke started screwing with the prices, and ….
Voila. Pork barrels paid for. Comfortably so.
All right, comfortable for everyone except the suckers whose incomes can’t keep up with the price hikes, including marks stuck with all those Treasury bonds purchased back there under Phase 2. Their lives get ravaged to the same extent Washington is bailed out. Savers, financial institutions, retirees, anyone locked into a fixed income stream, all lose big time. Salaried workers too.
Many paper investments get torn to shreds while this is happening, then some return to sort of normal. It’s a Hell of a thing to go through, runaway inflation.
Now go and read Greenspan Bernanke’s position. Okay, that’s a joke. They’re a slippery bunch over at the central bank, charged with something about inflation, but won’t tell us what. I‘ll quote Wikipedia for you. “The ability to maintain a low inflation rate is a long-term measure of the Fed’s success“.
Low? What Wikipedia thinks Greenspan Bernanke is telling you there, or would if he’d let us wrap our fingers around his greasy butt, is that Washington will never rein in exorbitant spending. Phase 3 (beyond what they can even borrow for) spending. He has to finance it, and let politicians go ahead and bleed us dry, and take some families down - just collateral damage, you understand - by revaluing our currency through inflation.
Low rates of maybe 1-2% let him coddle us into accepting a tad more than low, say 3-5%, and not completely freak out when he brings back the totally not low 6-13% that his brother, Greenspan Volker-Bernanke, or whatever, decimated our parents’ savings with in 1973-1981.
Bella Abzug is the only politician we ever heard of who admitted to this in public, and if her personality, political philosophy, bizarre name, delicious New York accent, physical presence, and all those goofy hats didn’t make Abzug a Monty Python character, we‘d credit Bella with the corroborating role she otherwise deserves in any piece on inflation actually explaining inflation.
The day History turns kind for the former Congresswoman, The Post will go ahead and throw Bella Abzug into the fray about here too.
As it is, we’ll just go with what we’ve got. Low regard, a tad more than low indulgence, and totally not low contempt for Greenspan Bernanke and his cronies, and the whole flatulent mess they’ve got us in down there in Washington, DC. Or is that inflatable mess? No, inflation mess maybe….
Oh, forget it. Like we said, we’re just going with what we’ve got. Today anyway.
These liars are too ridiculous for words.
Note: Everyone talks about tax dollars, but those run out fast. What we’ve spent on the wars are borrowed dollars, and the nation will have to cover Obamacare with inflatables. No way does our current projected National Debt get paid without Greenspan Bernanke spiraling prices out of control. If Washington reduces spending, we’ll consider rephrasing this note.
