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by integricho 237 days ago
At the same time millionairs and billionairs are doing just great.
1 comments

Buying gold and silver to get through the inevitable stock bubble pop is out of reach for normal people with normal wages and savings.

Houses and stocks got cheaper per ounce of gold last 20 years. But in terms of dollars they got way more expensive... inflation has been robbing us for more than 2 decades.

Since 1971. The world economic system became what I term financialism, where money is simply a debt instrument. The Treasury issues a debt note, in exchange for which they receive Fed Notes, and that debt obligation becomes the backing for more loans issued by the Fed to member banks. The Fed Notes handed to banks are then loaned too. Thus, debts in a single sector (if large enough) can crash the entire system.

The issue is, things that are tied to debt will go up first: housing, cars, etc. Stock inflation occurs because inflation forces people to speculate to stay ahead of the inflation rate.

To fix inflation when using a debt based currency, you’d need high interest rates (a high price of money), or you’d need the government to pay off debt which takes money out of circulation. Neither of these will happen as the politicians in power would cause serious short term pain. They all have an incentive to kick the can and hope the next guy is in power when it all falls apart.

What we are seeing now is the result of the price of money having been lower than the inflation rate for over 20 years. Effectively free money. This subtly skews the perception of risk, and therefore increases dollar velocity and drives inflation even higher.

I disagree with the statement that politicians are averse to short term pain or even long term pain. Trump certainly doesn't seem to mind.

Pain doesn't buy anything, by the way.

The pain doesn't buy anything but the requisite costs of raising rates and/or cutting spending enough to allow debt pay-down would cause pain. Pain enough to sacrifice legacy, pain enough to sacrifice re-election, and pain enough to hurt lobbyists offering up that sweet lucre.