Of Two Minds

Clearly, the Fed reckons the public is foolish enough to believe the Fed’s money will actually be “free.” It’s pretty much universally recognized that authorities use crises to impose “emergency powers” that become permanent. This erosion of civil and economic liberties is always sold as “necessary for your own good.”

The Fed’s rigged-casino stock market will be dragged to the guillotine by one route or another. The belief that the Federal Reserve and its rigged-casino stock market are permanent and forever is touchingly naive.

Whether we realize it or not, we’re responding with passive acceptance of oblivion. You’ve undoubtedly heard rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as an analogy for the futility of approving policy tweaks to address systemic crises.

Better not to risk any radical evolution that might fail, and so failure is thus assured. When times are good, modest reforms are all that’s needed to maintain the ship’s course. By “good times,” I mean eras of rising prosperity which generate bigger budgets, profits, tax revenues, paychecks, etc., eras characterized by high levels of stability and predictability.

In the hyper-real casino, everyone has access to the terrors of losing, but only a few know the joys of the rigged games that guarantee a few big winners by design.

And so we face the ultimate irony: ‘bailing-out-everything’ destroys the entire rotten system.