Who Are These People?

18 Aug

Who Are These People?

How Different is 20 Years of Afghanistan from 13 Years of Quantitative Easing?

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?  The Deep State geniuses behind our foreign and monetary policies?

It was reported that just days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, President Bush knew nothing about Sunnis and Shia.  “I thought Iraqis were all Moslems,” said the president according to a US ambassador.

Now a correspondent wonders whether the people making all the decisions about Afghanistan over the past 20 years know the difference between a Pashtun and a Tajik?  Or going a step further, how much do members of our permanent foreign policy establishment know about the history that gives Afghanistan its name as “the graveyard of empires?”  About Alexander on his way to India, the British experience, the Soviet’s misadventure, and now America’s calamity?

We prefer to leave these questions unanswered.  Our specialty is money, and it is all any one person can do to keep up with the authorities’ malperformance on that front.  But it does have us wondering: 

Are the Deep State authors of monetary policy any more competent than those who gave us decades of the Afghan money pit? 

We don’t see any reason to think so.  Just as they foreign policy mandarins have littered the trail with costly regime change wars that end badly (for us), the money manipulators have left behind the wreckage of one financial bubble after another:  the dot com bubble, the housing bubble most memorable among them.

Now we have another bubble, one fueled by trillions of dollars of made-up money, reaching its inevitable end.  And true to form, the later this bubble’s hour, the more frantic the bubble blowers become.  Never mind that US debt, now $28.5 trillion, has grown by an incredible $5 trillion in just the last 17 months, there is more spending where that comes from.

There is the $3.5 trillion Jobs Act.  And the budget resolution measure.  And the biggest bump in food stamp spending in history, a 27 percent jump for 42 million Americans.  And all this inflation lately means a Cost-of-Living jump in Social Security payments right around the corner; 69 million people receive Social Security benefits.

Where will all that money come from?  The US government is already borrowing $2 million a minute!  And who is it borrowing most of that money from these days?  The Federal Reserve.  And where does the Fed get the money it lends the government?

You know the answer.

We’re in a mess.  You must take steps to protect yourself and your family with gold and silver. Don’t wait for a C-17 transport plane to lift you off the tarmac when the fiat money game is over.  Or for a helicopter to lift you off the roof when the next bubble pops.