Saturday, November 19, 2016

The Anger Grows

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fp_thumb/images/user5/imageroot/hamilton%20teaser.jpg
Government spending and debt must be cut. Period. As this article so correctly notes: "The status quo concealed economic and monetary distortions, the unwinding of which will have unexpected consequences for prices." Some label that central banking.

You might not recognize that but it's other name is inflation. Think for just a second. The pundits missed Brexit. They clearly missed the Red vote. What happened at a Broadway theater last night was the essence of disrespect and intolerance. People go to the theater to be entertained, just as the NFL has to learn they go to football stadiums for the same reason.

In those crowds there are obviously people who have strong opinions, but they go there not to express those opinions but to escape from them. That's what America should be but it isn't any longer. Just today at the gym, a guy probably in his mid-20s, couple of tatted up forearms, shaved head, was wearing a red T-shirt. I didn't speak with him but we exchanged nods as we exchanged equipment. The one thing I know is he wasn't Caucasian, not a pejorative or racial judgment, just a fact. This is a huge gym where on any day you will hear Farsi, Arabic,Spanish and English, just to name a few, spoken.

The red T-shirt said "Make America Great Again Trump" in blue. Though I am not sure why, I was mildly surprised. The guy didn't have an attitude. He just went about his workout and while I was there nobody seem to care one way or the the other as they too went about their workouts. If someone there would've said something to him, I would've said something to them. And if the shirt color would've been  reversed I would've done the same.That's the way America should be, but it isn't any longer.

And this is why what those theater people did yesterday is totally unacceptable. It's also why the demarcation in the sand is becoming clearer and clearer. If the those so-called pundits missed Brexit and the Red vote, what makes you think they will correctly perceive the levels of anger Americans today have toward each other?

Speaking only for ourselves, the only one we can speak for, no president, either coming in or going out,will ever take our gun way, a gun that never found its way into the hands of a child or was stolen or used in a crime any more than we're going to try to tell a woman she can't abort a child. That's on her conscience not ours. Does that mean we're going to give them money to do it? No! Does that mean we're going to support legislation to give them funds to do it? No! Taxpayers should not have to pay for such.

Now for the name callers who will accuse us of being NRA nuts, never gave them a dime, never been to a meeting and only knew one guy in our lifetime, and he was an acquaintance, who belonged to that organization. It's much more complicated that these two phony political parties make it and it's much more complicated than that disrespectful cast of Hamilton tries to gloss over. There's an answer to them though, all those who brought expensive tickets to be entertained can vote the old fashion way, with their pocketbooks, something the NFL might now be learning.

Short of that we can go back to that line of demarcation that keeps getting clearer and clearer.
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Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom described how personal freedoms are progressively eroded by the state in the name of the common good.

His warning is more associated with totalitarianism and dictatorships, than modern democracies, but the statist attitudes he warned about still apply today and lead to the same loss of personal freedom and increase of state control. In the main, the serfs are patient and tolerant of their masters, but in a democracy, the establishment behind the state risks being challenged. And that has happened twice this year, first with Brexit and now with Trump in America.

We can be certain that the establishment in Britain and America will reinvent itself. Theresa May is not out to change the world, but is adapting to the new realities. Donald Trump is still mostly an unknown quantity, but the initial impression is one of appalling economic ignorance, dressed up as the new Reaganomics. He proposes substantial tax cuts and state-directed infrastructure spending “to make America great again”. But unless tax cuts and infrastructure commitments are made in lock-step with reductions in government spending, which seems extremely unlikely, the outcome will be to stimulate latent price inflation to a surprising degree.

The starting point for “Trumpenomics” could hardly be worse. The level of debt in both the government and private sectors is too high to be sustained already, and from this elevated base it is proposed to print and borrow much more. Payment for this profligacy can only come from credit creation, as banks mobilise and gear up on their excess reserves at the Fed to buy government bonds. The accumulation of latent fiat money since the financial crisis will at last be applied to driving up prices on Main Street, instead of mainly on Wall Street as heretofore. The status quo has concealed enormous economic and monetary distortions, the unwinding of which will have unexpected consequences for prices.

Private sector wealth and savings have already suffered considerable dilution from decades of the Fed’s monetary policies. Significant numbers of the American population are finding it hard to make ends meet, and have been in financial difficulties for many years. Accelerated government deficit spending is an added malevolent influence, which can be expected to drive up prices of ordinary goods, all other factors being equal. While Keynesians believe in economic stimulation, the reality is an added round of monetary debasement will increase the impoverishment of the “deplorables” who voted for Trump. It will turn out to be a destructive Keynesian policy additional to existing policy mistakes.
wealth.goldmoney.com/research/goldmoney-insights/the-serfs-have-rebelled-europe-next

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