DEFUND BANKS Inflation Undermines LIBERTY!

From Bill Bonner:

Thought Police are First Responders

By Bill Bonner Thursday, June 18, 2020

Myths, lies, and claptrap…

Life, in this period of a late, degenerate empire is not as amusing as it once was. It’s hard to laugh; too many people take their own conceits and delusions seriously.

Politics aside, we just don’t like anyone telling us what to do. Or cheating us with fake money.

And we especially don’t like the humbug they use to justify it; it turns our minds to mush.

Disappearing Liberty

Instead of letting people do what they want, the media, Congress, bureaucrats, academics, experts, and the White House all work away to undermine our freedoms…

…like miners working a catacomb of seams under the USA – everything from health care to foreign trade to stock prices.

Sometimes cautiously. And now, recklessly. Drilling, blasting, and hauling out liberty like tons of iron ore…

…until the whole mountain finally collapses on them.

Do you really need to wear facemasks and lock yourself up at home? Can you really “print” up dollars… pass them out as real money… and make people richer? Do Black Lives really Matter?

Are the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians really out to get us? Are illegal drugs the work of the devil? Is the economy really rebounding beautifully?

Every threat is an emergency… every challenge is urgent… and every issue is a reason to pass a law… call the cops… and print more money.

Thought Police

We are expected to believe two contradictory ideas at once. COVID-19 is such a ruthless killer, we were told a couple of months ago, we all need to stay home. The health scolds said that it was not “freedom” that allowed us to step out into the sunshine, it was “license” – a license to infect and kill our friends and neighbors. 

But then, Black Lives Mattered so much, we all needed to go out and protest. The curiosity of the second imperative was that – according to the experts – Black lives are the ones most likely to be lost to the coronavirus. 

Protestors said we should “defund the police”…

We agreed. But when we suggested “defunding” the police last week, several dear readers wrote in horrified. They see the police as heroes. And nobody likes to see his heroes criticized, his gods mocked, or his myths exposed. Here's the gist of it:

Defund the Federal Reserve, while you’re at it. And the Pentagon… Homeland Security… the Department of Education… the FBI… the CIA… the NIH… Congress… and the CDC.

You see where we’re going with this, don’t you? Drain The Swamp!

The feds are over-fed. All of them. Sloppy. Wasteful. Foolish. And worse.

Big and Bossy

The core of the American experiment was that government should be limited and small… It should be The People’s servant, not its master.

But now, our government is so big and bossy, it decides who gets what… who trades with whom… what we can ingest… what we learn in school… It even tells us when we can go outside.

It undertakes wars against people with whom we have no quarrel. It “sanctions” foreign governments willy-nilly. At home and abroad, it tries to push everybody around.

To make a long story short, the feds have gotten too big for their britches, with too much money to spend… and too much power.

Direct Spending

In the deepest part of the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration never ran a deficit of more than 7% of GDP. Now, the Trump administration is headed for a 20% deficit.

And even in the middle of World War II, the U.S. government spent only 40% of GDP. In the second quarter of this year, the U.S. is borrowing and spending 61% of GDP.

Granted, a single quarter does not a year make. But before the lockdown, the feds were expecting to spend $4.7 trillion this year. Then came an additional $2.2 trillion in corporate and household welfare… with another $1 trillion expected before the end of the summer. This could leave spending for the calendar year at about $8 trillion.

In May, GDP was running at about a $16 trillion annual rate. It’s unlikely the feds’ part of that will be less than 50%.

Spending Limit

And that’s only the direct spending. Add in all the money spent in the private sector complying with the feds’ edicts – tax preparation, regulatory compliance, bobbing and weaving to try to avoid punishment or gain favors – and the part of the economy under the feds’ thumb is probably up to 60% or 70%.

And it’s not going back to “normal” anytime soon.

In the second world war, the feds took a big piece of the pie – 40%. But it was for a single purpose – to win the war. And when the war was won, the soldiers came home and got to work. The economy boomed, and the feds’ share declined to under 20%.

Also, in World War II, Americans paid for the war with real money. They saved. They lent money to the government. And taxes were relatively high.

Government spending was limited, in other words, to what The People were willing and able to provide.

And when the war was over, federal spending fell… and the government itself contracted. Life went back to normal.

Real War

Today, there’s not going to be a return to normal because there’s effectively no limit on what the feds can print and spend… and never any victory in their interminable wars.

Instead, it is just one defeat after another. That’s the point; these are phony wars. Against poverty… drugs… terrorism… COVID-19. They are not meant to be won, but lost. Because the longer they go on, the more wealth and power the Deep State gets.

While the media and mobs focus on the struggle between red and blue… liberal and conservative… Republican and Democrat – Joe Biden goes to the George Floyd funeral… Donald Trump visits the police – the battle that really matters is not even noticed.

It’s the war between the Deep State – with all its beefed-up military hardware, unlimited funding, and self-serving crackpot ideas – and the people of the U.S.

After the Lockdown Crash, for example, investors judged the value of stocks to be only 65% of what it had been before it.

Then, thanks to Deep State (Federal Reserve) funding, the S&P 500 rose 45% – adding about $21 trillion in new value, almost all of which went to the richest 10% of Americans.

So, the 10% of the American public that owns stocks – that is, those invested in the Wall Street system – had a big payday. A person with $100,000 invested made about $15,000 per month.
Most likely, if the Federal Reserve had not funded the stock market, they would have made nothing… and would be down sharply for the year.

Different Levels

Over in the Main Street system, meanwhile, those who qualified got a $1,200 check. If they were eligible for unemployment, they might have also gotten about $1,000 a week.

This money, too, came from the feds’ inexhaustible supply of fake money. They were funding almost everything and everybody.

But not at the same level. Those in the Wall Street system with $100,000 invested got three times as much “funding” as those in the Main Street system. Those with $1 million got 32 times as much.

And since those in the Wall Street system – the Deep State elite, Wall Street, the professoriat, the commentariat, the jackasseriat of The Swamp – control the government and the printing presses, don’t expect any “defunding” anytime soon.

Last week, it was widely reported, for example, that American talk-show host Tucker Carlson lost advertisers – including Disney and T-Mobile – after warning that the Black Lives Matter program “may be a lot of things, this moment we’re living through, but it is definitely not about Black lives. Remember that when they come for you. And at this rate, they will.”

Tucker was talking about the thought police. There are some ideas you’re s’posed to have… and some you’re not.

More Laws

But we’re too rich to worry about our advertisers… too old to worry about our career… and too cussed to worry about offending people.

And dear readers can stop worrying about “defunding” the police. It won’t happen. Even the protesters aren’t serious about it. They want more police… to police the police… and to police our thoughts, too. They say the U.S. suffers from “institutional racism.”

And, like all the other ills of our society – unemployment, spitting on the sidewalk, confederate monuments… you name it – it needs to be fought, with regulations, restrictions, controls… more busybodies… more laws… and more gun-toting cops to enforce them.

And on the front lines… the first responders in all these fights are the thought police. If you disagree with the “institutional racism” hypothesis, for example, you are a “racist.” Any contrary thoughts are illegitimate, because they come from racists.

And don’t think you can escape being tagged a “racist” simply by getting down on your knees and begging for forgiveness. According to Critical Race Theory (CRT), if you’re White, you are a racist ipso facto. Even if you voted for Obama and now favor Biden (because he is open to the “reparations” hustle), you are still a racist because you are only doing these things for your own benefit (say, to make yourself feel better about being a racist). No contrary interpretations are allowed.

Enforcers

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the ideological aisle, the “conservative” drillers are hard at work undermining our freedoms, too.

While the rights of Americans are steadily being chipped away, they send their enforcers to “protect freedom” in other countries – in Afghanistan, for example (not to mention the hundred or so other countries where they’re at-the-ready).

They want to police private commerce, too (telling American shoppers where they can buy goods… and telling U.S. businesses with whom they can trade)… They even use sanctions to control trade between two foreign, sovereign nations (forbidding trade with any country the U.S. doesn’t like).

They have their border controls… their money controls… their body scanners and required reports… their gun slingers and their accountants – all designed to keep the foreigners in line.

And then, when the mob at home gets frisky, they – President Trump and Republican Senator Tom Cotton, prominently – suggest bringing the freedom troops back to the U.S., presumably to do for America what they did to Iraq.

The whole thing is dizzying… with so much BS, so many delusions, so much nonsense, that we can’t keep up with it.

And there are dozens of agencies and departments… and hundreds of thousands of federales trying to make sure no one gets away with anything they haven’t approved.

Today, no one knows how many laws and regulations are on the books. When federal laws were compiled in the 1980s, they already filled 50 volumes and more than 23,000 pages.

Recently, we’ve seen the number of federal offenses estimated at 300,000 – that’s just the laws that carry criminal penalties. And the average American commits eight felonies (unwittingly) every day – before lunch.

Which is the obvious reason so many people are roughed up or even killed by the police; there are too many crimes, too many criminals… and too many people trying to put them in jail.

It is an obvious reason the U.S. economy is slowing, too – too much time and resources are devoted to pushing people around.

And it is an obvious reason why people are on edge… and ready to go to war with one another. The “two-system system,” where one group gets 33 times as much fake money as the other – is corrupt and unfair.

Simple Solution

Of course, the solution is simple. Defund all the police – the thought police, the COVID bulls, the racial relations scolds, the overseas freedom fighters, the Federal Reserve and its anti-free market shock troops, the sanctions imposers, the trade war enforcers, the drug cops, the anti-poverty fuzz… and so on. Cut them down to a tolerable size.

And here, we pause… and draw breath…

This, of course, will never happen… not as long as the fake money flows. It is this fraudulent wealth that now supports all the miners and their worthy causes – from ending institutional racism… to keeping the troops in the field… to providing the rich (via stock market gains) with trillions in unearned money.

It is (((the Fed))) that keeps this under-mining operation in business. Defund it… ASAP.