The Categorical Insanity of Central Banking

Posted on February 1, 2019 by MN Gordon

Currency debasement.  Asset price inflation.  Booms, bubbles, and busts.  Yes, folks, central bankers have succeeded at making full hash of the world at large.  This goes for the Federal Reserve too.

Tracing back recent financial disasters we find the mortgage meltdown coincided with the Fed’s interest rate raising cycle.  The Fed had dropped rates following the dot com bust and, in return, puffed up a massive housing bubble.  So they raised rates to let some air out and – pop! – the bubble exploded.

The dot com bust also coincided with Fed rate hikes.  Rates had been dropped to bailout financial markets from the Long Term Capital Management fiasco and to stem contagion from the 1997 Asian financial crisis.  The cheap credit was then channeled into the delusion that the internet would make everyone rich.  So the Fed raised rates to impart some reality back to the stock market and – kaboom! – the Pets.com sock puppet was blown to bits. Continue reading →

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An Honest and Easy Solution to Wealth Inequality

Posted on January 25, 2019 by MN Gordon

Here we are, less than one month into the New Year, and absurdity levels have broken above 120 decibels.  Society, it seems, has spun itself up to a fever pitch.  The common culture is working towards a common freak-out.

This week, for example, we discovered, courtesy of U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that: “The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”  This gifted insight was mixed between meticulous news analysis of a peaceful exchange between a smirking teen wearing a MAGA hat and a drum beating Native American wearing a costume.  But this ain’t the half of it…

The annual hootenanny for the elite, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, took place this week.  The gathering successfully delivered many high-volume absurdities.  An impartial program listing includes:

Globalization 4.0, how cities can fight back against climate change, radically reinventing social systems, plastic pollution, safeguarding our planet, the rise of techno nationalism, media freedom in crisis, averting peak Europe, escaping extinction, when global order fails, a new deal for nature, shaping the future of democracy, and much, much more. Continue reading →

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Kicking Xi Jinping While He’s Down

Posted on January 18, 2019 by MN Gordon

On a beautiful midsummer day, roughly six months ago, two distinguished men, of distinguished stature, crossed paths under precarious circumstances.  They are very much alike, these two distinguished men.

Both are men of enormous ego.  Both are filled with ambitious delusions for the future.  Both are masters of persuasion.  Both offer a cause and conviction people can rally behind.

Both deliver frequent promises of greatness.  Both hold up historical allusions of eminence, and do so with confidence and flair.  Both claim destiny is on their side.

Does one read The Wall Street Journal?  Does one not?  We don’t know.

But we do know there’s one great big significant difference between these two men.  A difference far beyond either of their control.

One has an eye to the past, and a futile desire to return to greatness.  The other has an eye to the future, and a burning ambition to own it.  The difference, in other words, is that between descent and ascent.  And the intersection of this difference is a natural point of conflict. Continue reading →

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Washington’s Latest Match Made In Hell

Posted on January 11, 2019 by MN Gordon

One of the more enticing things about financial markets is not that they’re predictable.  Or that they’re not predictable.  It’s that they’re almost predictable…or at least they seem they should be.

The economy, like financial markets, ebb and flow in rhythmic cycles; though, they never quite repeat with perfection.  A shortage of wheat one year should compel production and an abundant harvest the next year.  You can darn near count on it, so long as there’s not a late season frost, a mite infestation, or some other act of God that wipes out the crop yield.

Indeed, the economy’s dynamic.  It expands.  It contracts.  But it does more than that.  For it’s more biotic than abiotic.  It changes.  It evolves.  It continuously reshapes and readjusts to the countless and ever changing inputs, innovations, and interactions of the people and resources that compose it.

The economy also adjusts to government intervention and the conceit of central planners.  An economy with a soft government touch is lively, energetic, and innovative.  Conversely, a heavy handed government calibrates an economy to be slow moving, lethargic, and predictable. Continue reading →

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