Keynesian economics

"...we live in an age in which the policies of the past are coming to an end. The Keynesian model does not work, and our Empire does not work. This total failure has to change, and we need to present the alternative."

What better way to mute demands for a return to sound money and the gold standard, than by making them equivalent to jihadist terrorism? Why, there are none, which may explain the hilarious appearance of the "Islamic State's" latest 55-minutes pro gold standard YouTube clip, which is nothing but a crash course in Austrian economics.

The week that passed has left many of the so-called “smart crowd” flummoxed, disheveled, dismayed, and disrobed from their expensive facades of “expert insightful analysis.” It seems all that “expert” as well as “insight” wasn’t all it was made out to be. In less than a week: historic records weren’t only broken – they were smashed to smithereens. And the one’s that were the most historic? They weren’t set for positive things.

The more we think about it, the less the classical division between microeconomics (which studies the behavior of individuals and production entities) and macroeconomics (which deals with the performance of the economy as a whole and not its individual markets and components) makes any sense - certainly not in the 21st century. And in our view it is this disconnect between the two that is at the heart of the failure of Keynesian economics – which at best is incomplete and at worst is all just baloney.

A half-century ago, America - and then the world - was rocked by a mighty stock-market crash that soon turned into the steepest and longest-lasting depression of all time. Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it - except that now, with gold abandoned and each nation able to print currency ad lib, we are likely to wind up, not with a repeat of 1929, but with something far worse...

China believes, with good reason, that she is more politically and economically robust, and has a better grasp over the actions of her own citizens, than the welfare economies of the west in the event of an economic downturn. Therefore, she is pursuing her foreign exchange policy from a position of strength. And the increments that will now be added to gold reserves month by month are a signal that China believes she can destabilise the dollar through her control of the physical gold market, because it gently reminds us of an unanswered question always ducked by the US Treasury: what evidence is there of the state of the US's gold reserves?

Scaremongery... or maybe the whole point, as Obama's former chief economist noted, is to lose reserve status. Take That China!!

For as long as the present economic system lumbers along, Keynesians will control the levers of power and influence. But when at last the system goes down in a heap, and central banks cannot restore the system, there will be a quest for answers. When you live by the Federal Reserve, you die by the Federal Reserve.

With apologies to his fans, Jerry is an evil little mouse who constantly pesters Tom the Cat. Tom tries and tries, but cannot seem to overpower someone who is a fraction of his size and strength.

Ideas Have Consequences... In Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, in Great Britain, in Japan, and in the United States, there was a shift of opinion away from the free market in favor of government economic planning. The supreme mark of this transformation was the acceptance of John Maynard Keynes' unreadable book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, which was published in 1936. A new generation of younger economists adopted this book and its outlook, which prevails today. The fascist economic idea of an alliance between government and business became almost universally accepted.

As we noted in Part 1, this central bank fueled boom will ultimately be paid for in the form of a prolonged deflationary contraction. On the morning after, of course, it will be asked why the central banks were permitted to engineer this fantastic financial and economic bubble. The short answer is that it was done so that monetary central planners could smooth and optimize the business cycle and save world capitalism from its purported tendency toward instability, underperformance and depressionary collapse. In Part 2, the whole case for this sweeping and unprecedented Keynesian demand management by the monetary authorities was a crock. Accordingly, the days of the Warren Buffet economy are indeed numbered.

Ali and Frazier, Laurel and Hardy, Mayweather and Pacquiao, Liesman and Santelli, and now Schiff and Maloney. Peter and Mike join clash of the titan-like to discuss their investment strategies and expose the charts the government doesn't want you to seeas "people like Bernanke are taken seriously still and the people that did predict [the crisis] are dismissed as lunatics half the time." The wide-reaching conversation covers everything from gold and stocks to The Fed and The Dollar - Bernanke "took the coward’s way out because all he did was exacerbate the problems to postpone the day of reckoning." The air is coming out of the bubble, they warn, "Bernanke and Greenspan have absolutely destroyed America. People don’t realize what is coming..."

By accepting the story as told without regard to integrity of truth we have allowed ourselves to become feed for those controlling the story and thus the system. As the charts above clearly depict we have two distinct economic states. One is perceived and the other is real. The perceived state gets sole attention allowing the economic cannibalism to continue and draws us further out to the middle of the lake. And as the ice disappeared so quickly not yet 7 years ago it will again reveal itself only a perception created by policymakers for sycophants so willing to feast and profit on the rest of us and, perhaps more startling, on their own future well being.

• A tendency to examine too few alternatives; A lack of critical assessment of each other’s ideas;
• A high degree of selectivity in information gathering; A lack of contingency plans;
• Poor decisions are often rationalised; The group has an illusion of invulnerability and shared morality;
• True feelings and beliefs are suppressed; An illusion of unanimity is maintained;
• Mind guards (essentially information sentinels) may be appointed to protect the group from negative information.

Having painted themselves into an impossible corner of junk Keynesian economics, they are now clueless about how to get out. So its time to recognize that there has been a monetary regime change. The Fed might well have been your friend since March 2009 or even for the last several decades. But stranded on the zero bound and smothered by a $22 trillion collective balance sheet, the central banks of the world are now fast becoming your fiend.