We’re being financially waterboarded by George W. Bush
To deal with inflation, according to Kevin Phillip’s book Bad Money:Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, governments used to debase currency thru hard times by literally not putting as much valuable silver into coins.
Here are the wikipedia definitions:
Debasement is the practice of lowering the value of currency. It is particularly used in connection with commodity money such as gold or silver coins. A coin is said to be debased if the quantity of gold, silver, copper or nickel is reduced.
Reasons for debasement: The main reason a government will debase its currency is financial gain. By reducing the silver or gold content of a coin, a government can make more coins out of a given amount of specie.
Effects of debasement: Debasement lowers the value of the coinage, causing inflation. Over time, it may even lead to a new coin being adopted as a standard currency.
In the late 1990’s, the US debased its currency by altering the CPI index, in a statistical debasement maintained by the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The politicians did so, so that the US dollar would not be replaced as standard currency for much of the world’s business. And so that the US would appear to be robust, even though it was mid-stages in severe contractions.
By 2007, most heads of Central Banks and Sovereign Wealth Funds, with large US currency holdings or currencies pegged to the US dollar, realized that the REAL CPI is actually above government figures and the real GDP is actually less than government figures.
So the lies foisted on the American public in the last decade, that low inflation is under control, are not true.
We have not been ‘in control’, for years.
We’re being statistically waterboarded. Laid at a negative incline, face covered, darkness around us, stress elevated, then poured on with burgeoning reality, choked with terror as the economy stumbles around us and the only solution being offered to us is MORE OF THE SAME, giving money to the people who got us here.
Torture of all kinds is wrong. We need to sweep aside the ‘old boys’ and start over again. Naomi Klein was on Colbert Report, with her book ‘Shock Doctrine’ about how our leaders take advantage of us in moments of crisis.
Larger vision is our only hope.
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