This is not a radical idea though many will try to characterize it as such. 100% reserves for banks is actually quite a “conservative” idea.
With 100% bank reserves the credit addicts will scream and holler. The bankers will scream and holler. (Often they are one and the same.) Our economy however would be healthier.
Washington DC is indeed booming. Over the past 5 years billions and billions of tax dollars have been poured into the local economy. Contractors of all sorts fill the mirrored buildings surrounding DC. The roads are choked with commuters, many of whom are new transplants from the less prosperous regions of the country. The wealth of a nation has been aggregated in and around the Beltway. Money is here and millions are being “made.” (Really, being redistributed.)
This is what happens when all the decisions (most anyway) which affect the American economy happen in Washington DC. People with money pay top dollar to know what is going on, and an industry has grown up around this.
Another must read article from Matt Taibbi. Yes, Taibbi still won’t go after the Federal Reserve and the biggest fixer club of them all, the FOMC at the Federal Reserve. But he has done some excellent work over the past 5 years exposing the inner workings of a financial system which is deeply flawed. (To be kind.)
So Biden’s economic advisor Jared Bernstein and David Frum, speech writer for George Bush have both come out railing against David Stockman and his new book. This is a shock.
Though the book is not perfect, it is one of the best books on economic history that I’ve read.
He is dead on in his critique. As we say all the time here. It is not “Right” versus “Left.” It is not “business” versus “government.”
The real battle in American politics today is between those who are inclined toward freedom and free enterprise and those who believe in collectivism (in its many forms). It is between those who believe in “a better mouse trap” and those who believe in the blunt hammer of government power. It is a fight between those who believe liberty and freedom for everyone is an ideal for which this country should stand, and those who believe that might makes right, whether that be GE or Elizabeth Warren.
In this great post by Charles Hugh Smith at OfTwoMinds.com, he explains that life can be lived without debt. I totally agree. But for most of us who are not privy to piles of wealth it does take some work though.
This is not necessarily my advice. It is David Stockman’s, just to be clear. We don’t offer investment advice here.
Attached is an excellent op-ed in the New York Times from David Stockman which comes on the heals of the release of his new book, The Great Deformation, which we reviewed in the previous post.
For all the talk. For all the populist gesturing and the gesticulation, Obama has proven to be a friend of the 1%, as the folks in the now dead Occupy movement might say. Whenever given the chance the president has found a way to help the most financially powerful.
