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Star Wars 24 plus the novelized version, amusement park ride, podcast, action figure and OnlyFans pages, anyone? I happened to be in a Big Box Emporium, buying two bags of whole wheat flour, when a strange revelation struck me: almost nothing in this giant emporium was made in the USA.

What’s striking about our thought experiment is how little reliable data we have about the transmissibility of our hypothetical and the long-term consequences of its mutations. Let’s run a thought experiment on a hypothetical virus we’ll call Virus Z, a run-of-the-mill respiratory variety not much different from other viruses which are 1) very small; 2) mutate rapidly and 3) infect human cells and modify the cellular machinery to produce more viral particles.

The unraveling of social cohesion has consequences. Once social cohesion unravels, the nation unravels. My recent posts have focused on the systemic financial risks created by Federal Reserve policies that have elevated moral hazard (risks can be taken without consequence) and speculation to levels so extreme that they threaten the stability of the entire financial system.

The Fed’s “choice” is as illusory as the “wealth” the Fed has created with its perfection of moral hazard. The belief that the Federal Reserve possesses god-like powers and wisdom would be comical if it wasn’t so deeply tragic, for the Fed doesn’t even have a plan, much less wisdom.