THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA – 2011

Written in September 2011 when I still believed the country could be saved. My passion has dimmed considerably over the last five years. Libertarianism does not work during a Fourth Turning. Maybe after the death and destruction wrought by those in control, people will come to their senses. And maybe not.

 

 

“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.” Ernest Hemingway

“Though the Federal Reserve policy harms the average American, it benefits those in a position to take advantage of the cycles in monetary policy. The main beneficiaries are those who receive access to artificially inflated money and/or credit before the inflationary effects of the policy impact the entire economy. Federal Reserve policies also benefit big spending politicians who use the inflated currency created by the Fed to hide the true costs of the welfare-warfare state.” Ron Paul

Ernest Hemingway and Ron Paul never met. Ron Paul was completing medical school in 1961 when Hemingway committed suicide at his home in Idaho. I think they would have hit it off. I stumbled across the quote from Hemingway above. Those words could have come directly out of the mouth of Ron Paul. Both men spent their whole lives seeking the truth and presenting their ideas in a blunt straightforward manner. Hemingway is one of the most renowned writers in American history, with classics such as A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Sun Also Rises to his credit.

He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. He constructed a new literary style characterized by lean, hard, sparse dialogue. He influenced literature and young authors for decades. As a teenager I was immediately drawn to his gritty realistic novels. There was no nonsense to his novels. They always involved man’s struggle against death and hardship. Most of his best work was done in the 1920s and 1930s, but he produced one of his finest works in 1951 towards the end of his life. Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for his story about an epic battle between an old man and a great marlin.

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CAN THE WALL STREET SHARKS KEEP SWIMMING WITHOUT QE?

Grandma Yellen is supposed to announce the end of QE this afternoon. We all know that sharks have to keep swimming, or they die. We also know that insolvent Too Big To Trust Wall Street mega-banks need QE, or they die. The entire false recovery since 2009 has been built upon a $4.5 trillion mountain of debt sitting on the Federal Reserve balance sheet. They are leveraged 75 to 1. Lehman and Bear Stearns were leveraged 30 to 1 when they failed and brought down the financial house of cards.

Our entire economic system is dependent upon an ever increasing level of debt. How long before the Wall Street sharks throw a hissy fit and threaten to bring down the financial system again unless they get some QE4?

And how many minutes before Grandma Yellen obeys her bosses and complies?