rigorousintuition.ca

So what are we to do in the meantime? Well, obviously the only avenue that's left open to us. I speak of Gambling of course. One should own some crypto because, like the stock market, it is basically programmed to go "up" by definition. If the block-pocalypse does happen you will be a "richer" person for it when the garden gates swing closed. It will still up to the individual to use it for good. Godspeed all, fight the good fight!

Elihu » Wed Mar 13, 2024 7:03 pm wrote: [...]
National Debt (pffft)
[...]
(Sidebar: This 35 Tril is the shortfall they "borrowed". So let's just say the average annual revenue that they were actually able to raise and spend was, i dunno, a trillion per? So in the last 32 years the so-called gov has spent 70 trillion bucks..... uuuuuu... why is everything not perfect? How much would it take?, I jest, )

I realize those digits are notional, the whole thing is a type of ponzi. However this concept of doubling 2,4,8,16,32,64 etc, inexorably means that all borrowing will eventually do nothing but pay the interest which obviously cannot happen without changing the game. That 35, from what I understand, is growing by one trillion every six months, or 90 days? or something like that.

So that's why I chimed in. What's gonna happen? war? aliens? CBDC's? Yall ready? Maybe it can go alot farther than my little mind can think. That would mean we'll soon see budgets like 100, 500, Trillion, $1 quadrillion, etc. I don't know about you, but I think we've been scammed.

Which currency? There are 165 national currencies. Why would there be a "new currency"? What function would it serve?

The $35 trillion is US dollars issued by the federal government but not taxed back. It constitutes the private sector dollar surplus; federal 'debt' held by the public is equal to the money supply.

The dollars used to buy US Treasury securities (bonds, notes & bills; "bonds" for short) comes from prior federal spending, either by Treasury or the Fed; there is no other possible source for those dollars; bank lending cannot account for it. (Nobody takes out a bank loan at 6% to buy a Treasury bond paying 5%.)

Federal finance is not a Ponzi scheme—it's accounting. The interest on Treasuries is paid by issuing additional Treasuries. No taxes are ever used or needed to pay any of it.

The interest payments are currently high because the Fed foolishly jacked up its interest rate, following the precepts of "trickle-down" economic theory. The main effect is a firehose of free interest money to wealthy bond holders—basic income for poeple who already have money, in proportion to how much money they have, just for having it.

What we call "the national debt" is not a burden on governement, it's not a burden on taxpayers, and thus it's not any burden on future generations. These are all myths that need to be dispelled.

The government doesn't sell bonds because it needs our money, it sells bonds to drain excess bank reserves as new spending adds new reserves. Prior to 2008, this operation maintained the target interest rate by adjusting the level of reserves in the banking system. After 2008, the Fed started paying interest on bank reserves, rendering moot the need to sell bonds to offset the effects of deficit spending.

So today, selling Treasury bonds is entirely optional for the federal government. However—the private sector loves Treasury bonds, and Treasuries are the foundation of the financial system. The question is, can beneficial government bonds be designed that aren't matched to deficit spending—and the answer is yes.

The pages below are from the book "Freedom from National Debt" by Frank Newman, a former Deputy Treasury Secretary who's familiar with the operations. It's a short, inexpensive book worth reading.


Treasury bonds exist as securities accounts at the Federal Reserve (printed paper bonds were discontinued). Last year the US Treasury redeemed ("paid back") a total of $140 trillion in maturing Treasury securities. They did this by having the Fed automatically debit the bond accounts and credit the associated reserve accounts when the bonds reach maturity. The dollars that constitute a Treasury bond never leave the bond account at the Fed.
It's more accurate to say the government funds the private sector.

Agent Orange Cooper » Thu Mar 14, 2024 2:12 pm wrote:I think Bitcoin will become the next default world reserve currency and store of value! We will find out what happens when an infinite supply of centralized fiat meets an absolutely scarce supply of decentralized uncensorable digital money. Exciting times.

Let's consider what reserves and reserve currencies are. (Currency will mean any national unit of account, e.g. the US dollar.) Every country has a central bank that issues bank reserves. Banks have reserve accounts at the central bank, and use reserves to clear payments (checks etc.) with other banks. Reserves are used only by banks, and they never leave the central bank that issues them. The reserves are moved from account to account as payments are cleared (this is slightly simplified since separate clearing houses 'net out' a big portion of daily interbank payments).

Reserves are liabilities of the central bank, and assets of the member banks (basically all banks in the US have reserve accounts at the Fed). Reserves are created when the central bank credits a bank's reserve account. A few other institutions also have reserve accounts at the central bank, but the reserve system primarily serves the system of clearing payments.)

"World reserve currency" status means that many countries will accept US reserves in payment for exports, oil trade, and other debts. Other countries use USD reserves to purchase things for sale that are priced in US dollars—including US Treasury securities. Again, the reserves never leave the Fed, the countries' reserve accounts at the Fed are debited & credited as payments are cleared.

World reserve currency status also means that the US government must provide the rest of the world with US dollars. The real reason for this, of course, is to extend US hegemony and facilitate Wall Street wealth extraction schemes. I'd say we can do well without it. Other countries' currencies are just fine without being the "world reserve status," and so will the US dollar if it's managed properly during the transition away from world reserve currency staus..


Now we come to how a commodity like bitcoin could possibly serve the reserve function, let alone achieve a world reserve currency status. Reserves are numbers on a spreadsheet, liabilities of the central bank that issued them. The liability is extinguished when reserves are moved to the Fed's balance sheet (or federal taxes are paid). Bitcoin is a fixed-quantity digital object that emulates scarce metals. The two things are of entirely different natures.

If you believe bitcoin is a good store of value—go for it! National currencies aren't a great long term store of value since expanding economies generally see low, slow, inflation over decades (Japan being the outlier—is it their 0% CB rate?), and they're subject to fluxuations in resources and not least, subject to the pricing power of large firms with market power.

The dollar is first and foremost a unit of measure—a unit of account define by law. Other functions like medium of exchange and store-of-value follow from the unit of account function, which existed before the others. Store of value is pretty low on the list. Money was invented as a tool for measuring, organizing, and mobilizing resources to direct some desired outcome. I don't think bitcoin fits this description.

Elihu » Sun Mar 17, 2024 4:25 pm wrote:zerohedge comments on the story about the whale becoming 14th largest BC holder whatever. yesterday

Zero Hedge is probably the worst possible source for anything related to macroeconomics. Beware.

Zero Hedge is probably the worst possible source for anything related to macroeconomics. Beware.

Elvis! what's up man? I generally wait around for a headline of interest and then zoom in on the comments. Like ESPN used to be, the hedge is a rarity in that it still allows wide open wild west comments. From those I can sift and collate relevant points of view and occasionally discover new info and new tangents.

I didn't know much about crypto but that section of comments kinda sketched it out for me. It was fascinating how anyone competent in the subject could trace those transactions through South Korea and across Asia and tell which entity is loading up and how. There's a whole world going on out there beyond our msm playpen.

The hedge is "right wing" but its journalism fits into a nauseating mold I admit.

I know I come off as a dick! but I don't believe in macro economics as a discipline unless it can be looked at in the light of scamming, stealing, and plundering under the guise of compassion or protection.

All else follows. imo....

The interest payments are currently high because the Fed foolishly jacked up its interest rate, following the precepts of "trickle-down" economic

I appreciate you looking into all this. I wasn't prepared to go that deep. But I think maybe I didn't get my point across. If it is accurate, it is an elementary point. Yes, they are borrowing and circulating etc, etc, etc. I remember this point (and it was a mathematical one) from business college years ago: that new borrowings to pay interest on old balances will self immolate in an accelerating fashion. Interest payments will consume everything. That is the spanner that is going to blow the currency up. This is an epochal event when it inevitably happens. It is outside the scope of the system you described. I think they know it and they're trying to prep alternative systems. I dunno maybe it won't be any big deal. Heck Mexico just knocked three zeros off their pesos back in the 90's called it a nuevo peso and everything went on just fine.

the government doesn't need our money. The government needs us to need its money

I agree with that.

I'm doing what I can to arrest an infantile ideological reaction to this post and leave the facts on display. There is info in the Hedge's articles but the rare serviceable articles need to be picked up and have the crap scraped off of them to get clarity. So, I've edited the following. Any reference to contemporary politics or politicians is distraction. I pray they will be by-passed, looked over, forgiven. If not, you're not any worse off. If you do, this is all bad news. You're welcome.

We've been pointing it out for so long - in fact, for most of our 15 years in existence - that it has become more of a chore than actual reporting, especially since the "number only go up", as it hits a new all time high virtually every day. We are talking, of course, about the exponential curve that is the US debt, arguably one of the most boring and at the same time, most exciting topics of all time (because one day the "number go up no more" and you want to be far, far away when that happens).

Perhaps the catchiest observation we made on the trajectory of US debt was last September when we first noted that it is rising by $1 trillion every three months, or every 100 or so days..... a soundbite which has since been picked up and stolen by pretty much everyone else in the media, if with the usual 6+ month lag behind us.

Not only has it gotten boring to be ahead of the curve by almost half a year, but pretty much every possible warning that could be said about the exponential increase in the US debt has been - well - said.

And yet, every now and then we are surprised by the latest developments surrounding the unsustainable, exponential trajectory of US debt. Like, for example, the establishment admitting that it is on an unsustainable, exponential trajectory.

That's precisely what happened overnight when in an interview with the oh so very serious Financial Times (which has done everything in its power to keep its readers out of the best performing asset class of all time, bitcoin), the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Phillip Swagel, issued a stark warning that the United States could suffer a similar market crisis as seen in the United Kingdom 18 months ago, during former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s brief stint leading Britain - which briefly sent yields soaring, sparked a run on the pound, led to an immediate restart of QE by the Bank of England and a bailout of various pension funds, not to mention the almost instant resignation of Truss - citing the nation’s "unprecedented" fiscal trajectory.

The striking words from the head of the CBO, best known perhaps for publishing doomer debt/GDP projection charts such as this one... warned of the dangers of the U.S. facing “what the U.K. faced with former prime minister Truss — where policymakers tried to take an action, and then there’s a market reaction to that action", comes as US government debt continues to break records, fueling concerns about the burden that places on the economy and taking a toll on America’s credit rating.

As a reminder, in September 2022, Truss roiled markets as she pressed for significant tax cuts, including changes lessening the tax burden on wealthier individuals without offsets, as well as other economic measures. The budget proposal spurred a major selloff of British debt, forcing U.K. interest rates to decades-long highs and causing the value of the pound to tank. While Truss defended her agenda as a means to spur economic growth, she stepped down as prime minister after less than two months on the job following the market revolt to her administration.

Meanwhile, it was up to the Bank of England to bail everyone out: the central bank intervened in the market, pledging to buy gilts on “whatever scale is necessary” with Dave Ramsden, a senior official at the central bank, saying at the time that "were dysfunction in this market to continue or worsen, there would be a material risk to UK financial stability.”

Needless to say, by bringing up the catastrophic rule of Truss, who for at least a few days tried to impose a regime of fiscal and monetary austerity which immediately blew up the UK bond market and led to an instant market crisis, Swagel is admitting that there is nothing that can be done to reverse the growth of US debt and to make what is already an exponential chart less exponential. Quite the opposite, in fact.

And while Swagel said the U.S. is “not there yet,” he raised concerns of how bond markets could fare as interest rates have climbed. Specifically, he warned that as higher interest rates raise the cost of paying its creditors, on track to reach $1 trillion per year in 2026, bond markets could “snap back."

Well, we have some bad news, because if one calculates total US interest on an actual, annualized basis... we don't have to wait until 2026, we are there already and then some.

Indeed, it seems like it was just yesterday when everyone was talking about US debt interest surpassing $1 trillion (and more than all US defense spending). Well, hold on to your hats, because as of this month, total US interest is now $1.1 trillion, and rising by $100 billion every 4 months (we should probably trademark this before everyone else steals it too).

According to the CBO, US government debt is set to keep rising.“Such large and growing debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of US debt, and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook,” it said in a report last week. “It could also cause lawmakers to feel more constrained in their policy choices.”

Only that will never happen, because a politician who is "constrained" in their policy choices - one who doesn't feed the entitlements beast in hopes of winning votes (while generously spreading pork for friends and family) - is a politician who is fired.

Perhaps afraid he would sound too much like ZeroHedge, the CBO director left a glimmer of hope, saying that the nation has “the potential for some changes that seem modest — or maybe start off modest and then get more serious — to have outsized effects on interest rates, and therefore on the fiscal trajectory.” But we doubt even he believes it.

In the CBO’s long-term budget outlook report released last week, the budget agency projected the national deficit would rise “significantly in relation to gross domestic product (GDP) over the next 30 years, reaching 8.5 percent of GDP in 2054.” Which of course, is laughable: the US deficit is already at 6.5% of GDP - a level that traditionally implied there is a major economic crisis - and yet here we are, with unemployment *reportedly* at just 3.8%. Said otherwise, the US deficit will - with 100% certainty - hit 8.5% of GDP during the next recession which will likely be triggered as soon as Trump wins the November election.

The budget scorekeeper attributed the projected growth to rising interest costs, as well as “large and sustained primary deficits, which exclude net outlays for interest."In short, everything is already going to hell to keep "Bidenomics" afloat, but when you also throw in the interest on the debt, well.. that's game over man.

Socialists, and other liberals who are only good at spending other people's money and selling debt until the reserve currency finally breaks, quickly sprung to defense of the debt black hole that the US economy has become.

Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the communist-leaning Center for American Progress think tank, pointed to improved deficit projections in recent years, as well as forecasts from the CBO he said “don’t project anything that looks like a panic.”

“If someone were thinking about, ‘Should I panic or should I not panic?’ I would just say, ‘hey, the underlying situation has gotten better, right?’” Kogan said, adding “there’s been lower, long-term projected deficits in the Biden administration.”

Instead of responding, we will again just show the latest CBO debt forecast chart and leave it up to readers to decide if they should panic or not.

What Kogan said next, however, was chilling: “You either should have been worried a long time ago, or you should be less worried now,” he said. “Because we’ve been on roughly the same path for forever, but to the extent that it’s different, it’s better.”

Actually no, it's not better. It much, much worse, and the fact that supposedly "serious people" are idiots and make such statements is stunning because, well, these are the people in charge!

But he is certainly right that "you should have been worried a long time ago" - we were very worried, and everyone laughed at us, so we decided - you know what, it's not worth the effort, may as well sit back and watch it all sink.

And now bitcoin is at a record $72,000 on its way to $1 million and gold is at a record $2,200 also on its way to... pick some nice round number.... in fact the number doesn't matter if it is denominated in US dollars because very soon, the greenback will go the way of the reichsmark.

And just to make sure that nothing will ever change, even after the US enters the infamous Minsky Moment, shortly after the close we got this headline::

*UNITED STATES AA+ RATING AFFIRMED BY S&P; OUTLOOK STABLE
Because when nobody dares to tell the truth, why should anything change?

the crack up boom! it's coming

Elihu wrote: Yes, they are borrowing and circulating etc, etc, etc. I remember this point (and it was a mathematical one) from business college years ago: that new borrowings to pay interest on old balances will self immolate in an accelerating fashion. Interest payments will consume everything. That is the spanner that is going to blow the currency up. This is an epochal event when it inevitably happens.

But you see, the point is, the notion that "new borrowings to pay interest on old balances will self immolate in an accelerating fashion" isn't really a supportable assertion in the real world. Interest payments will not "consume everything"—in fact, interest payments on Treasuries consume no resources at all.

The interest payments are made by crediting bank accounts. There's literally nothing "unsustainable" about it. It costs no one anything. Any "exponential trajectory" owes to needlessly high interest rates. Again, the only real effect is to give more dollars to people & institutions who already have lots of dollars. That's a policy question of wealth inequality, not "sustainability."

What's unsustainable is not having enough dollars in the economy.

I remember this point (and it was a mathematical one) from business college years ago

Of course I don't know when or where you went to college, but chances are good they taught you that banks loan out customer savings. This simple misconception leads to a host of faulty analyses, including the "crowding out" arguments and fears of sovereign debt "unsustainability" and federal government "insolvency."

Recent scholarship has uncovered a cache of private letters & papers written by Charles Koch and James Buchanan—the "public choice" economist Koch funded, the Nobel laureate(!) who called the poor "a subset of the species"—revealing their multi-generational plan to steadily dismantle US representative government and transfer all economic decision making to a few oligarchs like himself. He wrote that their true goal must be "concealed" because "the American people would never agree to it."

Using their outsized fortunes, the Koch family and their network of like-minded oligarchs, together with the neoliberal economists they funded—all in accordance with the infamous Powell Memorandum—managed to take over the teaching of economics in academia and the press. Koch alone "funded so many hundreds of scholars" (his words)—all trained in the neoliberal "trickle-down" economics that became today's prevailing policy restraint. It's all designed to constrain public policy using phony economic "science" touting unimpeachable, even elegant, math models that are nevertheless fatally flawed by their bad starting assumptions.

Read all about it in this amazing book:
Democracy in Chains - The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America
Nancy MacLean 2018
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/book ... y-maclean/


One of those bad assumptions is that taxpayers are "ultimately responsible" for any debt of the government; this is stated or implied in most textbooks (based on my survey of 20+ introductory economics/macroeconomics textbooks from the 1980s to the present); the problem is, that isn't even possible in the real world.

Another bad assumption used in neoclassical economics (math-based attempts to describe and predict human behavior, starting in the 1880s) is that investment comes from savings. If the opposite is true (as is the case), then the entire analysis that follows from it is meaningless—except to skew perceptions of the economy away from public spending.

More recent neoclassical economics gets fancier, trying to iron out the problems with the earlier crap theories that are never going to work anyway. I recently heard a great joke:

An economist at Columbia was offered a job by another university. Unsure, he asked a colleague, "Should I stay or should I go?"

The colleague said, "You've written whole books about this!—just maximize your personal utility!"

The economist said, "C'mon—this is serious."

They don't even believe their own shit anymore. At economic conferences around the world, economists are saying, "We know our models don't work, but they're all we've got." I think Thomas Kuhn would call it a failed paradigm. It's a way of seeing the world that doesn't reflect the real world—it's a distorted lens, a funhouse mirror.

Econ students describe being told by their third-year professor, "Stuff we taught you in first year?—it's ninety percent bullshit."

Eighty percent of the members of the UK Parliament say they have "no idea where money comes from." Amazing, isn't it?
It's not an accident.



To sum up:

There is no Day of Reckoning when US sovereign debt will become such an unbearable burden on government that its currency will collapse, or implode, or explode, or blow up, nor will any future generations be saddled, burdened, enslaved, or indebted by it in any way.

Wealth inequality is worsened when the central bank chooses a high interest rate. Future generations will suffer from increasing wealth inequality—thanks to bad monetary policy based on hocus-pocus rightwing economics—and a matching neglect of fiscal policy as the proper tool for managing the economy.


with apologies to the original artist:

Well my cultural hero (the Elvis), one or both of us are mistaken about how things work. Mine is the orthodox understanding, ironically because that elephant in the room is being pretended not to matter lo these 75 years. I lack the chops to refute MMT. I don't know why they continue to publicize that number either because it doesn't matter or to hide their shame. Either way you can't deny that the rate of increase is about to go New-QLer. It may be 35 now but it's about to get a lot bigger a lot faster. From one point of view, I certainly hope you are right for the sake of my own hide. I would wish it to collapse for the sake of the rest of the world but I don't think much would be better if that happened and maybe a lot worse. Stay tuned.

Interest payments will not "consume everything"—in fact, interest payments on Treasuries consume no resources at all.

The interest payments are made by crediting bank accounts. There's literally nothing "unsustainable" about it. It costs no one anything. Any "exponential trajectory" owes to needlessly high interest rates. Again, the only real effect is to give more dollars to people & institutions who already have lots of dollars. That's a policy question of wealth inequality, not "sustainability.".

Again ironically we are both correct. Where we are today is policy. If MMT can deliver money anytime anywhere, policymakers should be condemned for what they've done. And if it can't they should still be condemned. I guess the difference between us is you have hope for the system. I don't. Still we're both victims so we should be friends.

.

I remain in awe of anyone that currently subscribes to the notion that current financial systems operate precisely as indicated by MMT/related theories, and 'that's all there is to it.'

May as well preface all such comments with:
"Elementary, my dear Watson!"

I mean, imagine still believing -- now, in 2024 -- that there's nothing else going on. No other machinations, drivers, manipulations, methods of influence in play. Am I reading this take right? That the premise --for those that subscribe to this -- is there are no other shenanigans going on Re: monetary policies/decisions other than whatever is the academic interpretation of how 'money' (FIAT, in this case) works?

(Edited to remove added editorializing.)

Given this forum's origins in weeding through conspiracies sown by the powerful against whomever else, I tend to see cryptocurrencies as more market manipulating money making schemes in the short term and the (surprise?) pivot to the cash-free dystopia when the infrastructure is "ready", with help of the self-styled crypto revolutionaries who so champion its claim of autonomy but remain ignorant of its authoritarian possibilities. But I'm just a hayseed troglodyte suspicious of all the cool new trends and loathe how the market sinks all boats not yachts... yet.

I do have an honest question, though, to anyone who has profited from the rise value of Bitcoin: To what extent has it led liquid conversion into real world non-monetary assets?

.
What would you consider an example of non-monetary assets? You mean like a House, car, etc?

I mentioned here before and will briefly reiterate that I initially attempted to purchase Bitcoin back in 2013 when Mt. Gox was still around, but didn't quite complete the transaction. It then collapsed shortly thereafter and I felt, at the time, that I dodged a bullet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox

I later ended up purchasing crypto in 2017, and at various points thereafter. I've mostly held on to all of it since then, but have exchanged a small subset back to FIAT a couple of times, which would then be utilized as preferred.


Spiro typed:

I tend to see cryptocurrencies as more market manipulating money making schemes in the short term and the (surprise?) pivot to the cash-free dystopia when the infrastructure is "ready", with help of the self-styled crypto revolutionaries who so champion its claim of autonomy but remain ignorant of its authoritarian possibilities. But I'm just a hayseed troglodyte suspicious of all the cool new trends and loathe how the market sinks all boats not yachts... yet.

I tend to align with this position, though of course we can only speculate as plebes.

.

Also, for whatever it's worth:

Michael Burry Stock Tracker
@burrytracker

The U.S. debt has picked up pace and is rapidly growing by $1 Trillion every 100 days

Today it stands at $34.4 Trillion



Mar 27, 2024

https://x.com/burrytracker/status/17730 ... 13459?s=20

Michael Burry, for those that may not know:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Burry

Michael James Burry (/ˈbɜːri/; born June 19, 1971)[2] is an American investor and hedge fund manager. He founded the hedge fund Scion Capital, which he ran from 2000 until 2008 before closing it to focus on his personal investments. He is best known for being among the first investors to predict and profit from the subprime mortgage crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010.

Regardless of what the above chart actually means or how much value one may assign to it, the primary issue isn't so much what's real, but: WHAT [information or events, however valid] CAN THEY UTILIZE TO JUSTIFY AFFRONTS Against The People?

Ever thus.

Belligerent Savant wrote:I mean, imagine still believing -- now, in 2024 -- that there's nothing else going on. No other machinations, drivers, manipulations, methods of influence in play. Am I reading this take right? That the premise --for those that subscribe to this -- is there are no other shenanigans going on Re: monetary policies/decisions other than whatever is the academic interpretation of how 'money' (FIAT, in this case) works?

MMT describes the real-world institutional operations that create & destroy money; these differ in significant ways from the orthodox 'academic interpretation' found in most textbooks & courses. I've pointed out some of the key prevailing myths about modern money systems, and how they constrain social/economic progress.

The "machinations, drivers, manipulations, methods of influence in play" are rather a separate matter of regulation. Knowing how the money system works (as opposed to mainstream teaching) enables smarter solutions, i.e. better use of resources. Also, the analysis reveals the folly of using interest rate hikes to avert or fight infllation—the monetary policy currently in play at the Fed.

All state money money systems are essentially fiat; commodity standards are just arbitrary, self-imposed restraints—choices made by fiat.