Peter wrote:
Borrowing from the future is the mantra of every central bank, government, the Keynesians and the prominent economists (who seem incapable of understanding the unintended consequences). The cost of money is currently free for the wall street casino. This has lead to massive capital misallocation for speculation and scarce capital formation for productive activities. The current policies discourage saving, and make speculators (and debtors) of us all. What kind of message are we sending our children? What kind of world are we leaving for them? Do you think Obama or Bernanke cares?
The US can afford to print ad infinitum (for now) because we are the reserve currency. Thankfully much of that money has not come out in the open yet, but rather went into recapitalizing the bank balance sheets. Else a gallon of milk and gasoline would easily be $10 or higher today. Even then, have you ever wondered why college tuition or healthcare costs have been increasing annually at double digit percentages? Inflation is also hidden in smaller packaging, inferior quality goods and such.
India has had massive inflation in the past 20 years. Did it start after the rupee devaluation in 1991?
There is nothing good that can come out of the current Central banks. They exist to serve their masters (in high finance) and make peons of the rest of us all. We need to return to honest money, based on something tangible. But Austrian economics is treated with scorn because it will collapse the current house of cards.
Peter - thank you so much for bringing (or at least attempting to bring) a proposition of "value" to this discussion. Otherwise we just go on & on assuming that people in power must be knowing what they are doing - which is almost never (I daresay) case.
I have been a supporter of Senator Ron Paul for several years now for his no-nonsense approach to each and every issue that this country is facing. However, as you allude to - "collapse the current house of cards" - the whole modern economic system is built on a premise that more money and more "things" will eventually bring "HAPPINESS" - which is another assumption that is not based on any factual evidence.
I urge people to visit Dr. Ron Paul's website and hear from his directly his propositions.
I remember reading a nationwide survey around 2003 or so in BusinessWeek (or similar magazine) where an attempt was made to draw out the inter-relation between money and "perceived" happiness. "Perceived" - since different people have different yardsticks for this. The survey result represented as a graph was a bell curve wherein households earning between $50k - $75k were the ones that were most satisfied with their lives. In the last 10 - 15 years similar surveys have been conducted in most countries with similar results - of course with an adjustment for the local currency and living standards.
Few months ago I met one spiritual teacher recount how a few years ago he was addressing / lecturing about 200 students in a University campus somewhere - not sure where it was - probably in South Africa. In this lecture he cited the above survey results and many similar large surveys done on this subject across the world. Over the past 10 years the conclusions of these surveys are now universally accepted in the global academic circles. Most of the students attending the lecture also had knowledge of these surveys.
After confirming from the 200 odd students (& faculty) present there that they agreed with the survey results - he asked the
BIG Question: HOW many of you are willing to earn only this base amount of money in your life and not try to "earn more & more".
Can you guess how many people raised their hands??? Only 2 persons raised their hands.
What does this mean? This signifies that even though all the 200+ people were intellectually convinced of the results of these studies - still they were
either not prepared to OR not able to implement in their own lives what they learned from this.
In the final analysis sane-r people will (hopefully) come to the realization that the modern civilization is not really based on any kind of human
"need" - but is based solely on
human "GREED".
Which begs the question - wherefore does this greed come into the majority of human being? Well, that's an entirely different discussion - and one, I am sure most people in this forum would not be interested - since it revolves around the subject matters that are internal (as opposed to external) morals, ethics, religion etc etc....and challenge our core values of life - something akin to your point "collapse the current house of cards".
Sanjay