Monday, June 29, 2015

Is Ben Bernanke an Arrogant Keynesian Dorkface Chump?

Richard Daughty of The Mogambu Guru considers the possibility:

I was ready to hit bottom, having dimly decided to give the glories of gluttony one more try (but this time with less bacon and more pornography), was absolutely delighted to read that Ben Bernanke was paid $250,000 to give a speech. A speech!

I was reborn! The reason for my new-found zest for living is because Ben Bernanke is BOTH a total, monumental failure as a former chairman of the Federal Reserve (I mean, look around you!), and an arrogant Keynesian dorkface chump if there ever was one. Yet, look at the loot!

One speech! A quarter mill! I mean, this guy is absolutely, completely delusional by actually thinking, and believing, that laughable Keynesian econometric gibberish (to replace falling consumer spending with more government spending) can prevent the horrific economic collapse that always comes after radical expansions of the money supply that distorts the whole price structure of everything into a bloated, inflationary insanity.

And what did we get, in terms of the aforementioned bloated, inflationary insanity? Well, buckle your seat belt, because I’m going to tell you!

Peak bond prices so high that interest rates are almost literally zero! The S&P500 peaking at a P/E ratio so high that it is in the “historically high” range! Housing prices that cost an incredible four times the average income! An $18 trillion national debt, more than 100% of GDP! Total (government, business and personal) debt of an astonishing $60 trillion, against an entire GDP of only $17 trillion!

Government spending (federal, state and local), school systems and myriad taxing authorities together spend about 40% of GDP!

And a huge, unfathomable derivatives market that, combined with accrued government obligations, totals in the multi-quadrillions of dollars! This is thousands of trillions of dollars! Quadrillions! Truly incomprehensible sums!

And taxes, taxes, taxes upon taxes everywhere.

And a vast ocean of laws upon laws! Regulations upon regulations! Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles upon bubbles! Excessive repetition upon excessive repetition, which gets complaint upon complaint.

In the late 18th century, of course, you could write stupid sentence constructions like that last one, and nobody would say anything. But at the same time, France sentenced John Law to death for essentially doing this same damned thing: Creating paper money to excess, disastrously expanding the money supply, which ruined France with price inflation and economic misery.

It got so bad that Marie Antoinette (as I understand it) had to advise the French people to eat cake instead of bread.

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