Of Two Minds

Demand isn’t the problem, supply is the problem, and it can’t be resolved by printing more currency or lowering interest rates or cranking up inflation. To the degree that we inhabit an economic order dominated by Keynes and “demand,” then any discussion of inflation has to circle round to Keynes and his magic solution to all economic ills: “demand”, otherwise known as money burning a hole in your pocket.

So sorry, America, but your central bank is certifiably insane, and it’s not going to magically work out. History definitively shows that speculative bubbles always pop–always. Every speculative bubble mania, regardless of its supposed uniqueness–“it’s different this time”–pops.

August 9, 2021 Viewed as a complex non-linear system, the pandemic varinants can only be controlled by drastically pruning the physical connections between disparate global groups, which means effectively ending the unrestricted flow of individuals around the planet.

But once this last pool of wealth–America’s middle class– has been siphoned dry, then who’s left to stripmine and exploit?Neoliberalism loves markets, because markets enable the wealthy to own everything that produces income and capital gains.

This wholesale transfer of risk from elites to the workers is finally becoming consequential as wealth / income / security inequality is reaching extremes that are destabilizing society and the economy. One of the most consequential financial trends of the past 50 years has been ignored to the point of invisibility.

The global economy may have finally run up against hard limits of “infinite substitution” and “infinite expansion” funded by central-bank free money. We are in an interesting, Hall of Mirrors moment: prices are rising, yet we’re assured by the Federal Reserve that this inflation is “transitory,” and other voices are insisting the primary forces of the economy (globalization, debt and automation) are all profoundly deflationary, meaning prices of everything will eventually plummet as supply will outstrip demand.