Editorial
Bernanke, a Wise Man, Creates Order Out of Chaos...
Saturday, August 27, 2011 – by Anthony Wile
Anthony Wile
The meme of his ineffable wisdom is established yet again. What the free markets have undone, government can ravel.
This is the value of Ben Bernanke, a shill for Money Power. He is trotted out like the proverbial potted plant to make right statist noises, to verbalize the statist nostrums that will then be elaborated on by the manipulated media of the mainstream. The goal is to keep people believing in the system until world government is established.
It is harder and harder, of course. The Internet Reformation carries on apace, informing people of the futility of government solutions to private problems. This is a tremendous problem for the power elite that is deathly afraid of losing its grip over central banking – the ability to print money from nothing to fund its various depredations, anything from "green growth" to serial wars and scarcity promotions (food, water, etc.)
This is the war in which Ben Bernanke has enlisted. It is his job to make people believe in government. Of course, it is never enunciated in this fashion. Bernanke is supposed to be a prime exponent of free markets and private sector competition. As usual when it comes to the mainstream, Bernanke's actual function is entirely opposite to his REAL task.
You could see this building all week long. Warren Buffet, the Sage From Omaha, was busily at work suggesting that the rich close the US deficit with a one-time emergency tax. He even had numbers to prove it would work. Later in the week, he decided to invest US$5 billion in the Bank of America.
Buffet made a cool US$250 million in one day by buying into Bank of America and no doubt he stands to make more as the American economy (such as it is) struggles in its endless death throes. Buffet, too, is a wise man. He, too, is held up as an example of successful private enterprise when everything that Buffet suggests or participates in these days involves government of one sort or another.
The real point has to do with the continual establishment of wise men. This dominant social them is one of the biggest and most important of all the power elite's memes. The world needs to be run by a few good, gray men in expensive, understated suits. Ben Bernanke is the oracle of the day (and it is an oracular phenomenon) but there are others.
They are infinitely important and endlessly replaceable. What is important is the meme itself. These men are plucked from Harvard, Yale and MIT. They often undergo the transformative experience provided by Cecil Rhodes and his Rhodes Scholarships. They learn the lingo, come to understand the hot button issues. They are launched into society to save the world.
The most successful men are doubtless those who are able to lie to themselves the most effectively. One cannot be a successful liar if one does not BELIEVE. Bernanke is a true believer. How could he be anything else? He has spent his whole life in a made-up environment, reading fake economic literature and getting paid increasingly large amounts of money to regurgitate economic falsehoods.
Gold and silver, historically, are money. But Bernanke doesn't understand that. He doesn't know – or won't admit to knowing – the first thing about how money works. Gold and silver basically won the money competition, according to hard-money economist Murray Rothbard. But don't tell that to Bernanke. He thinks people value gold and silverbecause of "tradition."
There is method to his madness. To admit that money is private product and that government has nothing to do with it would be to undermine the basic premise of the elite's Wise Leaders – that those with big degrees from top universities can handle the economy.
Bernanke, for instance, wrote his college thesis on how the Federal Reserve handled the Great Depression and what it could have done better. Turns out when Bernanke himself was tested he had the bright idea of printing TWENTY TRILLION DOLLARS to loan to his cronies at home and overseas.
Thus, we see the fruits of Real Wisdom. Print US$20 TWENTY TRILLION, give it away to make sure the current insanity is properly leveraged and then explain to the world that you "saved the system." One is not supposed to ask, of course, whether the current system is worth saving.
In fact, the current system of "capitalism" is nothing but an aggressive form of mercantilism that uses the power of the state to prop up the privileges of a few. Everything about this system is established by government monopoly power, from the corporation itself (a judicial entity) to the paper money monopoly itself (implemented by government force). There is almost nothing about the system at a fundamental level that partakes of the free market.
So why should we expect Bernanke to suggest private solutions to public problems? The whole system is established to ensure that government remains an integral part of the economic process. Without government, the elites would lose control of the system they have established. And without government, there would be no fiat-style paper money. There would be, in fact, no money power.
Bernanke is going to do his best to make sure it never occurs. He will do this by emphasizing government's necessity at every turn. In yesterday's speech, he emphasized that it was government's responsibility to make sure people have jobs. Bernanke doesn't want any Greek-style riots in America and neither do his backers.
According to the Globe and Mail, Ben Bernanke made the case Friday for more fiscal stimulus, though "supporters of short-term government spending haven't been willing to push with force."
Fiscal stimulus is a gobbledygook term that means the government should spend money to "create" jobs. Government can do this by building roads, airports and other unnecessary items.
John Maynard Keynes, the British economist, was the one who came up with the idea of such government "pump priming." But Keynes advocated that government should save in the good times and spend in the bad times. The concept still doesn't make much sense, but Keynes wasn't interested in making sense, just in providing government with a rationale for existing and for acting in bad times.
Keynes justified his General Theory with loads of incomprehensible mathematical "proofs." Of course, free-market Austrian-type economists will point out that such econometrics has little to do with reality. Any time government sets out to create a policy that policy is doomed due to human action.
Misesian human action is a concept of the most profound importance. It is the idea that people can take of themselves and solve their own problems, as they always do. It is an enunciation of the reality of how life actually operates. People facing issues having to do with hunger and shelter don't wait for the government to provide "solutions." They take matters into their own hands.
This is not a popular perception for obvious reasons. Much better to suggest that government can provide the requisite solutions. Here's some more from the Globe and Mail article:
The extraordinarily high number of Americans who have been out of a job for more than six months represents a serious threat to long-term vitality in the U.S., Mr. Bernanke said, arguing that helping them and putting Washington's finances on a sustainable path are not incompatible goals.
Normally, efforts to boost economic growth in the short term can take years to produce tangible results. But this time might be an exception, the Fed chief said. Unless the long-term unemployed are soon put back to work, they risk languishing on the jobless rolls as their skills erode. Such an outcome would represent a social scar, a drag on the U.S.'s economic dynamism and a burden on the country's social safety net, he said ...
"Although the issue of fiscal sustainability must urgently be addressed, fiscal policy makers should not, as a consequence, disregard the fragility of the current economic recovery," Mr. Bernanke said.
The Fed chief's call for a fiscal boost comes as a consensus grows among economists that the power of monetary policy to prop up the recovery is muted, with so many consumers and businesses unwilling to borrow at any rates, and banks still wary about lending.
Stimulus measures could include anything from another infrastructure program that aims to re-employ jobless construction workers and repair America's crumbling roads, bridges and schools, to cuts in personal and corporate taxes. Most leading economists say any stimulus should be paired with deficit-reduction measures that would kick in once the economy is back on track.
Financial markets gyrated most of this week as investors speculated that Mr. Bernanke would use his speech to central bankers and economists at the Kansas City Fed's yearly symposium to herald a third round of "quantitative easing," the term Wall Street assigned to the Fed's efforts to lower market interest rates by creating billions of dollars to buy financial assets ...
Markets, we learn, are bound to be disappointed by Bernanke's lack of stated support for QE3 – the inaptly named process whereby government prints the money it then uses to buy its own debt issuances.
Instead, according to the Globe, Bernanke urged Congress to avoid such spectacles, "arguing that political gridlock and the downgrade of Washington's triple-A credit rating by Standard & Poor's combined with the European debt crisis to hurt household and business confidence."
Importantly, the Fed chief's unusually pointed jabs were clearly designed to give some political cover for Mr. Obamato address the current malaise through fresh spending." The Fed "is still very much prepared to employ more measures to prop up the economy but, unlike last year, Mr. Bernanke seems frustrated by politicians," said Paul-André Pinsonnault, senior fixed-income economist at National Bank Financial Group in Montreal. "He is calling for Congress to complement his actions instead of rendering them less effective."
This is, indeed, where the conversation inevitably concludes. Much hot air will continue to be expended to make these points. It is very important to establish that government is the necessary ingredient in the recipe to nurse the economy back to health. In fact, the opposite is true.
The more government involvement, the less the economy rebounds. And this is the real plan, isn't it? Make the economy so dysfunctional that only world government can provide the requisite solutions. Out of chaos, order. Bernanke is the current high priest of this madness.
Editor's Note: Don't miss tomorrow's exclusive interview. Special insights from a Daily Bell gnome (senior staff journo) trapped in a Yemeni prison for 30 days! Never before revealed details of that failed nation-state's all-encompassing American-supported police state and the larger US secret Gulag now embracing the entire Middle East. This is a real-life story, not a fantasy or fictional account – one you need to read to believe.
This is the value of Ben Bernanke, a shill for Money Power. He is trotted out like the proverbial potted plant to make right statist noises, to verbalize the statist nostrums that will then be elaborated on by the manipulated media of the mainstream. The goal is to keep people believing in the system until world government is established.
It is harder and harder, of course. The Internet Reformation carries on apace, informing people of the futility of government solutions to private problems. This is a tremendous problem for the power elite that is deathly afraid of losing its grip over central banking – the ability to print money from nothing to fund its various depredations, anything from "green growth" to serial wars and scarcity promotions (food, water, etc.)
This is the war in which Ben Bernanke has enlisted. It is his job to make people believe in government. Of course, it is never enunciated in this fashion. Bernanke is supposed to be a prime exponent of free markets and private sector competition. As usual when it comes to the mainstream, Bernanke's actual function is entirely opposite to his REAL task.
You could see this building all week long. Warren Buffet, the Sage From Omaha, was busily at work suggesting that the rich close the US deficit with a one-time emergency tax. He even had numbers to prove it would work. Later in the week, he decided to invest US$5 billion in the Bank of America.
Buffet made a cool US$250 million in one day by buying into Bank of America and no doubt he stands to make more as the American economy (such as it is) struggles in its endless death throes. Buffet, too, is a wise man. He, too, is held up as an example of successful private enterprise when everything that Buffet suggests or participates in these days involves government of one sort or another.
The real point has to do with the continual establishment of wise men. This dominant social them is one of the biggest and most important of all the power elite's memes. The world needs to be run by a few good, gray men in expensive, understated suits. Ben Bernanke is the oracle of the day (and it is an oracular phenomenon) but there are others.
They are infinitely important and endlessly replaceable. What is important is the meme itself. These men are plucked from Harvard, Yale and MIT. They often undergo the transformative experience provided by Cecil Rhodes and his Rhodes Scholarships. They learn the lingo, come to understand the hot button issues. They are launched into society to save the world.
The most successful men are doubtless those who are able to lie to themselves the most effectively. One cannot be a successful liar if one does not BELIEVE. Bernanke is a true believer. How could he be anything else? He has spent his whole life in a made-up environment, reading fake economic literature and getting paid increasingly large amounts of money to regurgitate economic falsehoods.
Gold and silver, historically, are money. But Bernanke doesn't understand that. He doesn't know – or won't admit to knowing – the first thing about how money works. Gold and silver basically won the money competition, according to hard-money economist Murray Rothbard. But don't tell that to Bernanke. He thinks people value gold and silverbecause of "tradition."
There is method to his madness. To admit that money is private product and that government has nothing to do with it would be to undermine the basic premise of the elite's Wise Leaders – that those with big degrees from top universities can handle the economy.
Bernanke, for instance, wrote his college thesis on how the Federal Reserve handled the Great Depression and what it could have done better. Turns out when Bernanke himself was tested he had the bright idea of printing TWENTY TRILLION DOLLARS to loan to his cronies at home and overseas.
Thus, we see the fruits of Real Wisdom. Print US$20 TWENTY TRILLION, give it away to make sure the current insanity is properly leveraged and then explain to the world that you "saved the system." One is not supposed to ask, of course, whether the current system is worth saving.
In fact, the current system of "capitalism" is nothing but an aggressive form of mercantilism that uses the power of the state to prop up the privileges of a few. Everything about this system is established by government monopoly power, from the corporation itself (a judicial entity) to the paper money monopoly itself (implemented by government force). There is almost nothing about the system at a fundamental level that partakes of the free market.
So why should we expect Bernanke to suggest private solutions to public problems? The whole system is established to ensure that government remains an integral part of the economic process. Without government, the elites would lose control of the system they have established. And without government, there would be no fiat-style paper money. There would be, in fact, no money power.
Bernanke is going to do his best to make sure it never occurs. He will do this by emphasizing government's necessity at every turn. In yesterday's speech, he emphasized that it was government's responsibility to make sure people have jobs. Bernanke doesn't want any Greek-style riots in America and neither do his backers.
According to the Globe and Mail, Ben Bernanke made the case Friday for more fiscal stimulus, though "supporters of short-term government spending haven't been willing to push with force."
Fiscal stimulus is a gobbledygook term that means the government should spend money to "create" jobs. Government can do this by building roads, airports and other unnecessary items.
John Maynard Keynes, the British economist, was the one who came up with the idea of such government "pump priming." But Keynes advocated that government should save in the good times and spend in the bad times. The concept still doesn't make much sense, but Keynes wasn't interested in making sense, just in providing government with a rationale for existing and for acting in bad times.
Keynes justified his General Theory with loads of incomprehensible mathematical "proofs." Of course, free-market Austrian-type economists will point out that such econometrics has little to do with reality. Any time government sets out to create a policy that policy is doomed due to human action.
Misesian human action is a concept of the most profound importance. It is the idea that people can take of themselves and solve their own problems, as they always do. It is an enunciation of the reality of how life actually operates. People facing issues having to do with hunger and shelter don't wait for the government to provide "solutions." They take matters into their own hands.
This is not a popular perception for obvious reasons. Much better to suggest that government can provide the requisite solutions. Here's some more from the Globe and Mail article:
The extraordinarily high number of Americans who have been out of a job for more than six months represents a serious threat to long-term vitality in the U.S., Mr. Bernanke said, arguing that helping them and putting Washington's finances on a sustainable path are not incompatible goals.
Normally, efforts to boost economic growth in the short term can take years to produce tangible results. But this time might be an exception, the Fed chief said. Unless the long-term unemployed are soon put back to work, they risk languishing on the jobless rolls as their skills erode. Such an outcome would represent a social scar, a drag on the U.S.'s economic dynamism and a burden on the country's social safety net, he said ...
"Although the issue of fiscal sustainability must urgently be addressed, fiscal policy makers should not, as a consequence, disregard the fragility of the current economic recovery," Mr. Bernanke said.
The Fed chief's call for a fiscal boost comes as a consensus grows among economists that the power of monetary policy to prop up the recovery is muted, with so many consumers and businesses unwilling to borrow at any rates, and banks still wary about lending.
Stimulus measures could include anything from another infrastructure program that aims to re-employ jobless construction workers and repair America's crumbling roads, bridges and schools, to cuts in personal and corporate taxes. Most leading economists say any stimulus should be paired with deficit-reduction measures that would kick in once the economy is back on track.
Financial markets gyrated most of this week as investors speculated that Mr. Bernanke would use his speech to central bankers and economists at the Kansas City Fed's yearly symposium to herald a third round of "quantitative easing," the term Wall Street assigned to the Fed's efforts to lower market interest rates by creating billions of dollars to buy financial assets ...
Markets, we learn, are bound to be disappointed by Bernanke's lack of stated support for QE3 – the inaptly named process whereby government prints the money it then uses to buy its own debt issuances.
Instead, according to the Globe, Bernanke urged Congress to avoid such spectacles, "arguing that political gridlock and the downgrade of Washington's triple-A credit rating by Standard & Poor's combined with the European debt crisis to hurt household and business confidence."
Importantly, the Fed chief's unusually pointed jabs were clearly designed to give some political cover for Mr. Obamato address the current malaise through fresh spending." The Fed "is still very much prepared to employ more measures to prop up the economy but, unlike last year, Mr. Bernanke seems frustrated by politicians," said Paul-André Pinsonnault, senior fixed-income economist at National Bank Financial Group in Montreal. "He is calling for Congress to complement his actions instead of rendering them less effective."
This is, indeed, where the conversation inevitably concludes. Much hot air will continue to be expended to make these points. It is very important to establish that government is the necessary ingredient in the recipe to nurse the economy back to health. In fact, the opposite is true.
The more government involvement, the less the economy rebounds. And this is the real plan, isn't it? Make the economy so dysfunctional that only world government can provide the requisite solutions. Out of chaos, order. Bernanke is the current high priest of this madness.
Editor's Note: Don't miss tomorrow's exclusive interview. Special insights from a Daily Bell gnome (senior staff journo) trapped in a Yemeni prison for 30 days! Never before revealed details of that failed nation-state's all-encompassing American-supported police state and the larger US secret Gulag now embracing the entire Middle East. This is a real-life story, not a fantasy or fictional account – one you need to read to believe.
No comments:
Post a Comment