Fed. Woke. Fear.
Reckless government spending enabled by the Fed is paralyzing America and the true source of fear.
Capitalism thrives on the delicate balance between stick and carrot, with work acting as the stick and consumption as the carrot. You trade your time, labor, money, and take risk for the reward of consumption. This subtle interplay between cost and benefit is precisely what has driven capitalism’s success lifting millions out of poverty. Other attempts of human organization—be it feudalism, oligarchies, socialism, or the most disastrous of all, communism—have failed to achieve the same success. That’s because these systems rely on top-down decision-making by a few powerful actors, which, even if they were acting in good faith, are doomed to fail because of the overwhelming complexity involved. What works is a bottom-up system driven by voluntary exchange, market prices, and stable money. Money is the democratic way to keep score. Destroying money equates to destroying democracy. By printing money and monetizing government debt, the Federal Reserve is heading down that dangerous path.
People greedily stare into the capitalist shop window. The desire to consume is an instinct we all share. In fact, the system is predicated on people constantly striving for more. But there has to be a limit, a balancing force. That force is scarcity—put simply, it's the moment you run out of money. When that happens, you return to work, earn more, and start the cycle again. However, this crucial balancing act between stick and carrot has been systematically eroded by the Federal Reserve.
Kill money and you kill capitalism
The risk of a metastasizing cancer has been lingering over the US economy ever since the establishment of the Fed in 1913. For decades the system withstood the temptation to alter the terms of play in favor of cronies close to the Fed. Three crucial steps eventually led to the outbreak of the cancer. First, President Nixon got off the Gold Standard in the early 1970s. Later that decade under President Carter the Amendment to the Federal Reserve Act was signed, which expanded the Fed’s mandate to promote full employment and stable prices. This was basically a blank check for Fed bureaucrats to manipulate the economy as they wished. Roughly 30 years later Fed Chair Ben Bernanke embarked on the third and crucial step that turned the Fed from a central bank into a central planning agency. In order to save Wall Street from collapse after the 2008 crisis, Bernanke chose to directly buy bonds from banks and park them on the Fed balance sheet. The act would later be dubbed quantitive easing.
Pundits still debate the efficacy of quantitive easing (QE). A whole generation of economists has been groomed by elite U.S universities to champion the “New Fed,” which supposedly has perfected the art of economic fine-tuning. This has led to a blend of scientism, intellectual coercion, and even personal harassment, resulting in the degradation of economics as a science and its transformation into a mouthpiece for the monetary cabal surrounding the Fed and Wall Street. Bernanke even got a Nobel price to whitewash his frivolous act.
However, the facts are undeniable. Since the Fed embarked on QE in 2009, the U.S. government has amassed trillions in debt, fueling rampant inflation (just look at how much the house you want to live in has appreciated since then). This inflation-driven debt has nurtured a sense of entitlement, which stands as the nemesis to capitalism. It's no wonder that a new generation of young people is leaning towards socialist, if not outright communist, ideologies—they’ve grown up in a society distorted by the illusion of free money.
Why should this new generation share traditional American values such as "you eat what you catch" when, apparently, you can just "eat"? This is the real root of the damaging -isms we see today—whether it's socialism, wokeism, or identity politics. Everyone is lining up for a slice of the Federal Reserve's helicopter money.
"Work is for boomers”
The problem with this scenario is that it simply doesn't work. We’re all infatuated by the capitalist shop window—whether we’re left or right, or whatever. It’s an instinct that makes us crave more: better houses, prestigious universities for our children, nicer shoes and handbags, and so on. And that’s fine. But with free money, the shop window becomes quicksand. Consumption unchecked runs its course, and that's when fear sets in, turning us into rabbits of no consequence.
If we destroy money, we destroy democracy. If we destroy democracy, we destroy free will. If we destroy free will, we become those fearful rabbits.
We cannot let this to happen.