Remapping Debate: Journalists in the service of Pete Peterson
This entire debate seems to all depend on the definition of terms.
If you rewrite everything they say in context-appropriate terms, we end up with a primal fear of having our fiat and using it too.
What's a deficit in fiat? Fear? Didn't FDR say that all we had to fear was a deficit in that itself? Ignorance too? Stupidity? Lack of practice? Very prescient of him, but it went right over the heads of gold specialists.
It's up to sociologists to uncover the hierarchy of most common reasons for distributed fear of fiat. Based on all prior lessons, the exact form at any one time may be a function of population size.
Do we have to fix it again, Tony?
We NEVER imagined we'd see the day when the POTUS stands before the people and states: "We are running out of fiat." At that point, any sane person would look around, rub their eyes, and wonder if everyone was drunk or stoned. Has someone slipped something worse than horsemeat into our hamburgers? Worse than putting something in the water supply? They slipped some bullshit into our school curriculum? The bastards! This means war! Who do we wage it against?
What! We did it ourselves? That's what happens when you let "process owners" manage their own process in isolation. Forget the little old V8 engine. How are we supposed to tune a V315million economic engine if every component acts like a Libertarian Hermit all the time, even during component development? This is some special kind of stupid we're seeing. Whatever we're running out of, it ain't stupid. We're floundering in that.
Stupidity surplus, intelligence deficit?
ReplyDeleteIt's up to sociologists to uncover the hierarchy of most common reasons for distributed fear of fiat. Based on all prior lessons, the exact form at any one time may be a function of population size.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can tell, it boils down to inflation fear and in the extreme debasement (hyperinflation) fear.
As Michael Hudson has observed, historically there is no basis for thinking that "money printing" is a causal factor in previous inflations or hyperinflations. It's always other factors that government then attempt to address with poor policy.
Runs the other way, too, to deflationary depression.