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by rvba 1092 days ago
"In the good times" when dollar was backed by gold, bankers would borrow at 3%, lend at 6% and go to a golf course at 3 o'clock.

The economy is working incorrectly - due to central banks.

Being punished for saving is just insane.

2 comments

There were major banking panics in the US in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1899, 1901, 1907 & 1908. All while the US was on a hard gold standard with weak central banks.

That’s of course without considering any of the pre and during depression era panics, where there was a quasi gold standard.

Savings can either be punished by inflation or risk. That’s an immutable financial fact. The only time you aren’t being punished for savings is if you exist in an economy where money can’t be put to productive use and is thus deflationary. Sometimes that’s good for savers but generally it means you are experiencing bad stagnation more broadly in the economy.

> Being punished for saving is just insane.

The economy is a prisoner's dilemma. If everyone saved, we'd all be worse off.

As such, it makes sense to punish defectors.

Doesn't that depend on what you mean by "if everyone saved"? If everyone saved to the exclusion of entrepreneurial activity, we would indeed all be worse off. However, we'd all be just as badly off if everyone bought stocks to that extent.

On the other hand, if everyone saved instead of buying stocks, wouldn't banks and entrepreneurs have a common interest in making loans replace stocks in funding entrepreneurial activity?

Central banks already "play" on the market. They arent neutral.

So maybe they could stop their inflation policies which screw the little people.

I am not writing about socialism. I am writing that central banks should stop the policies that rob the poor and give money to the rich.

Yes, there were crisises in the past. There are crisises now. And there will be crisises in the future. But in the past, at least the interest rates on savings beat inflation, so common people could build a safety net. Now you are punished for saving. You can play the stocl market casino (which btw. is connected to price of money from central bank...).

Is the central bank for average people, or another corrupted institution made to make the rich even richer?