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by Free Market Duck

Money, money everywhere, nor any drop to drink…
U.S. Dollar is pulp fiction
(Sep 15, 2008)

Claiming that the non-backed, irredeemable U.S. Dollar is real money is like claiming that a picture of a locomotive is a real engine.  Pretending that you can print up as many Dollars as you want and enrich the economy is the same as pretending you can draw as many pictures of locomotives as you want and use them to haul tons of freight down the B & O Line.

Washington, DC – Whoa, girl friends, pull up the floor and pour yourselves another hot cup of Rocket Java.  The stock market’s Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) just fell over 500 points today.  We’re in a Recession that everybody denies and nobody in Washington wants to state what the real crisis really is.

   We know the Effects but what is the Cause?  Why do we have inflation?  Why are companies going broke?  Why is the global economy crashing?  Is it the fault of the Republicans or the Democrats or the Terrorists or George Orwell or Mickey Mouse or all of the above?  Or is it a mysterious virus from Mars?

   The answer is really simple but nobody wants to say it.  So I will spill the beans:  the current market crisis is a crisis of irrational philosophy, not economics.

   It’s a classic case of denial and pretending:  namely, denying that there is a difference between gold and paper and pretending that paper Dollars obtain value by the sheer act of printing them up out of thin air in some building in Washington DC.

   Claiming that the non-backed, irredeemable U.S. Dollar is real money is like claiming that a picture of a locomotive is a real engine.  Pretending that you can print up as many Dollars as you want and enrich the economy is the same as pretending you can draw as many pictures of locomotives as you want and use them to haul tons of freight down the B & O Line.

   But in reality, since the current U.S. Dollar is not backed by gold, it’s nothing but pulp fiction.  It’s like the bankers on Wall Street pretending they can jump into a picture of a Porsche and drive it to work.  Then, when their virtual engine doesn’t start, they try to jump into a picture of a Ford.  When that doesn’t work, they try to jump into a picture of a Honda, then a photo of a Toyota, then a photo of a Chevy, then a picture of a Chrysler 300, until finally they turn to the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Dept and proclaim that the problem is a severe shortage of automobile pictures.  So the Feds print up trillions and trillions of pictures of automobiles and issue them to investment bankers and the population at large to jump-start America’s transportation “problem.”  Still nobody can start up their virtual automobiles.

   Finally, some little kid pops up and says, “Hey, these ain’t real cars.  They’re only pictures.  Where’s my real Corvette, goddamnit?”

   Likewise, until Americans recognize the difference between driving a real car and a picture of a car, i.e., the difference between using gold money and a non-backed picture of Benjamin Franklin, the U.S. economy is headed for a huge, huge Depression. – FM Duck

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