Market Manipulations that makes you poor, them rich and your children slaves
Economics that stand the test of time (and multiple civilizations) isn’t difficult to understand. Nor is knowing how to make a living in a business or in a job difficult. But throw manipulation and greed into the equation, and you have something altogether different.
To illustrate my point, I will call on a few historical references.
Did you know there was a recession at the end of World War One? There was. It was short lived as government did nothing to interfere with the economy. As a result, the markets and the economy had a market correction and shortly thereafter, within months, the economy was booming again.
Conversely, a local bank President in Cincinnati was investing heavily in Florida real estate from 2001-2006. A personal friend who was working for this President said he was making $50,000 a day on the Florida market during these six years. That’s $18 million a year for six years. This banker recognized the Florida real estate market was overheating in 2006 and withdrew from the market that year, having made over $100 million during that time.
Other savvy investors did similar investing to this bank President. But the economic principles which were played during these six years were made lawful in Washington. As a result, millions and billions were made by the wealthy that then left the market on a high note to less-savvy investors who took a financial bath in 2008-2009.
You see similar things today. For example, the coal industry has been laid to waste due to environmental concerns and climate change. This is allowing savvy investors with the money to play the market long-term to buy the industry at pennies on the dollar, only to reap millions and billions when coal becomes favorable to political entities.
This is similar to investing in the egg producing industry while spending quite a large bundle on marketing how bad cholesterol is. When these investors achieve a near-monopoly on the industry, new research comes out about how healthy eggs are and the problem isn’t cholesterol at all, it’s triglycerides. Now that eggs are good, especially the organic scratch eggs, you can sell eggs for 500 or more percent higher than what they sold for a short time ago.
These are symptoms and as any good scientist knows, you have to get to the core problem to find a solution.
What’s the core problem? Yes, it’s unethical and immoral individuals in politics as well as banking as well as elsewhere, but the core problem is these individuals can create money at will.
Once we got rid of the gold standard, where the US dollar was fixed to a monetary standard that has lasted for several millennia, it was easy to manipulate banking and markets. After all, you have an unlimited supply of money.
And today it’s even more so as, with digital ‘money’, you don’t even print it (although not printing it does lead to a cash shortage (sound familiar??)).
What does all this high phaluting talk mean?
Let’s say I want to borrow $100,000 from you and I use my house as collateral. That’s a reasonable deal, depending on what my house is worth.
But I want much, much more than $100,000. So I sign a similar agreement with 9 other people.
As a result, I got $1,000,000, not one hundred thousand. You and the other nine people have papers that say you have collateral (my house) when in actuality you have 10% of my house as your collateral, or $10,000.
I disappear and change my identity and you and 9 others argue over who gets the house.
How immoral? You’re right.
What a scoundrel? Absolutely.
I should be tarred and feathered and turned over to debtor’s prison until I pay off all 10 of you? That’s reasonable.
Then why do you let your politicians do this to you EVERY SINGLE day to the tune of adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt on an annual basis? That’s $3.2 trillion in new debt every year which your children and grand-children will be paying off, with interest.
Are your elected representatives immoral? I’d say so as they’re spending 78% of the new debt on themselves while only spending 22% on the people they say they are helping…
Is it time to tar and feather the whole of Washington, DC? I think so.
Just make sure you invest in tar and feathers before marching on Washington. You might as well make some money while getting some satisfaction…
