“If I were a rich man,
Daidle deedle daidle, Daidle daidle deedle daidle dumb…”
President Trump’s relentless attacks on the independence of the Federal Reserve help remind us why the Constitution established a totally different monetary system than the one under which we have all been born and raised.
The reason that the Federal Reserve — or central bank — was established as an independent federal agency was because it’s a very bad idea to have a president deciding monetary policy. That’s because presidents inevitably want to use the monetary system to benefit themselves politically, which ordinarily means expanding the money supply to create an artificial sense of economic prosperity, which then enables a president to exclaim, “Do you see how beneficial my tariffs and other economic policies are?”
Then, when prices of things start rising in response to the expanded quantity of devalued money in the system, a president can easily blame the rising prices on such things as greed, profiteering, Big Oil, and so forth, with hardly anyone realizing that the president’s monetary policies are the reason for the price rises. Continue reading
While not obvious, it is amazing, and a bit concerning, how great an impact monetary policy has on our lives. Decisions that an “independent” Federal Reserve makes have profound implications for future generations. Monetary policy decides the fate of our economic well-being, good or bad.
I kept warning about what would happen to our economy if we stayed on the path that we were on. For decades, our leaders have been making unbelievably bad decisions, and now the consequences are really starting to catch up with us. The cost of living has become incredibly painful, a larger housing bubble than the one that we faced just prior to the Great Recession is beginning to burst, and large companies are conducting mass layoffs all over the country.
For centuries, the Byzantine Empire’s gold coin, known as the solidus, had been the backbone of global trade in the medieval world; nearly pure gold, the solidus was trusted by merchants from Baghdad to London.
The government, federal or otherwise, has no business model because it is not a business. We know this at the outset because government does not compete on the market for people’s money, as every other business must do. As a monopoly of violence it seizes the money it needs through taxes and monetary inflation. As long as the government doesn’t get carried away by taxing and inflating too much, most people – some of whom call themselves libertarians – regard this setup as the best we can hope for. 
The ‘stay-put penalty’ contributed to constrained housing supply, industry experts said.
Social Security’s retirement fund is set to run short in just seven years — which could end up slashing benefits for millions of Americans by thousands of dollars a year.
As recently as three years ago, for example, China held $1.3 trillion worth of US government bonds. Today they’re down to around $750 billion.
