Lux Lucet

Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny.

• Matthew 5:26

“Trump administration is ‘willing to spend whatever it takes’ to mitigate coronavirus crisis says Steven Mnuchin as he continue to facilitate bipartisan negotiations – but admits unemployment could hit 25%.”

That somewhat longish headline leads a story from today, May 10, 2020, in the Daily Mail.  A few things are worth noting here.  First, the current economic crisis is called, inaccurately, the “coronavirus crisis.”  The massive unemployment and terrifying declines in industrial production that have hit the U.S. and other Western nations has not been caused by the coronavirus.  It is the government’s response to the coronavirus that is the immediate cause of the 20 + million private sector jobs lost in month of April.  To put that number is some perspective, the previous record monthly job loss number was 800,000 + which occurred during the height of the 2008 financial crisis in March 2009.  The virus did not shut down the economy and cause record job losses; the politicians and bureaucrats did.  By calling it the “coronavirus crisis,” politicians are attempting to shift the blame from themselves to a virus.

Second, the negotiations in which U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is immersed involved more money printing by the Federal Reserve and more deficit spending by Congress.  The truth, that Fed money printing and prodigal spending by Congress are the root cause of our current economic crisis, is nowhere to be seen.  Treasury Secretary Mnuchin wants you to believe that the cure for our financial woes us is doing more of the same things that put us in this mess in the first place.

Third, note well that Steve Mnuchin is facilitating “bipartisan negotiations.” As a lifelong Republican – I’m from the Tea Party/Ron Paul wing of the Republican party, not the mainstream, but nevertheless I am a Republican – I hate to admit that the my own party is in part responsible for the incompetent and immoral response to the coronavirus, a response that has included doling out literally trillions of dollars, dollars all which had to be borrowed into existence by the combined efforts of Congress and the Fed.  I would like to blame all of this on the Democrats, but that simply would not be honest.  It is Democrats and Republicans conspiring together to spend money we don’t have in ways that were never authorized by the Constitution.  With a few exceptions, nary a peep of protest is heard from either party concerning the shockingly large spending programs already put in place, programs which Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) called, “the largest wealth transfer in history.”  And now Congress is colluding with the Trump administration on even more deficit spending.

Fourth, Steve Mnuchin admits that unemployment could hit 25%.  Here’s some news for Mr. Mnuchin, most likely unemployment is already well north of that figure.  Actually, it’s probably not news to him at all.  One suspects he already knows this.  What a lot of people don’t know is that the government changed the way it calculates unemployment.  In 1994, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stopped counting long-term discouraged workers – a long term discouraged worker is someone who has not attempted to find work in the last four weeks – as unemployed.  Previous to that, such persons were included in the unemployment calculations released by the BLS.  John Williams is an economist who runs his own website called Shadow Stats.  Among the services he provides is a monthly calculation of the unemployment rate using the government’s old method.  Want to take a guess at where he puts current unemployment?  Try 35%!  If Williams’ numbers are anywhere near accurate, we already have a far worse employment situation than what occurred during the Great Depression, which is usually estimated at 25%.  Presumably, that’s the reason Mnuchin picked the number that he did.

So much for the Daily Mail’s headline.

In all fairness to the Daily Mail, I didn’t pick their headline to criticize because it’s worse than any other.  I picked it because it’s all too typical of the sort of flawed reporting that we get on coronavirus, the economic crisis, and just about everything else of any importance.  John Robbins made the important point that events do not explain themselves but must themselves by explained.  The explanations given to the events of the day by the mainstream news media sources are not designed to tell you the truth, they are designed to support the programs that establishment interests want to see put in place.  Generally, truth is not a high priority for such interests.

As has been clear for some time to anyone who closely follows the financial markets, the economy has been doing poorly for some time.  Round after round of bad economic news has hit the tape.  But, oddly, the worse the news, the higher the stock market would go.  That is still the case today.  For example, just a few days ago CNBC ran  this headline, “Dow rises more than 400 points despite record job losses, posts first weekly gain in three.”

Why is this the case?  In the first place, stimulus bills from Congress and official Fed money printing.  You see, the worse the economic news, the larger will be the bailout package.  Wall Street knows this from the 2008 crisis and prices stocks accordingly.

A second reason for rising equity prices during the greatest economic meltdown in our nation’s history is the work of the Plunge Protection Team (PPT).  The PPT is not something you’re supposed to mention in polite circles.  The financial establishment prefers that people don’t even know about it, much less talk about it.  But the PPT, more formally the Working Group on Financial Markets, is a real thing.  And the job of the PPT is to boost favored markets such as stocks, bonds and real estate by actively intervening in these markets to purchase securities, thereby driving up the prices of stocks, bonds and real estate.  The PPT was created in the wake of the 1987 stock market crash by an executive order signed by President Reagan on Mar. 18, 1988.  Columnist Paul Craig Roberts holds that one purpose of the PPT was to ensure stock market stability through the presidential election that was to be held in November 1988, so George H.W. Bush could be elected to succeed Reagan.

The PPT has never gone away, and despite the fact that the mainstream press rarely if ever talks about it, there is every reason to believe that it is active in producing the rising equity markets we see today, and that in the face of an economic collapse of enormous proportions.

Closing Thoughts

Speaking of the Northern Kingdom, the Lord said through Hosea, “Aliens have devoured his strength, but he does not know it; Yes, gray hears are here an there on him, yet he does not know it” (Hosea 7:9).  The Northern Kingdom was in a state of denial and delusion about its status.  The people thought they were strong, but their condition was, in fact, perilous.

Something like this seems to be the case in America and in the rest of the Western world.  Our government officials, academics and news media give off the message that they have things under control, but our condition, and here I have our financial condition especially in view, is perilous and could become obviously critical at any moment.

Here’s the real state of things.  We are in a debt crisis enabled by a corrupt central banking cartel, justified by ungodly academics, and pushed by lying politicians, all of whom have worked to sell people on the lies that thrift is foolishness, that debt is not a problem, and that we can deficit spend ourselves to prosperity.

The current financial crisis – in  truth, it is not a new financial crisis we’re dealing with; it’s the return of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the root cause of which, central bank created debt, was never dealt with – is a sort of bad news good news situation.

It’s bad news, because it already has caused a great deal of pain.  Most likely, there is a lot more to come.

The good news is that it gives those of us who believe in sound money and limited government another opportunity to make our case.

The lies of politicians, government officials, the mainstream media and secular academics are all designed to shift your focus from the real cause of the problem – our corrupt financial and political establishment – and put in on a virus.

Nonsense.

Our current crisis is over 100 years in the making, if not longer.  I say 100 years, because it was on Christmas Eve 1913 that Congress passed, and President Woodrow Wilson signed, the Federal Reserve Act, establishing America’s central bank.  Since that time, the dollar has lost 98-99% of its purchasing power.  This has not been an accident.  It has been by design.

Even today, government officials seek to convince the public that it’s possible to fix a debt problem by going further into debt.  This can be accomplished only by having the Fed print money at an ever-faster rate, further destroying what little remains of the dollar’s purchasing power.

Lord willing, over the next several posts, I hope to detail the unbiblical, evil theories and practices that have led the United States and other nations of the West to the brink of economic collapse as well as show from Scripture what can be done, not only to preserve what remains of our liberty, but to enhance it.

Reversing 100 years of disastrous, fiscal, monetary and political policy is not going to be painless.  This is going to hurt.  But if we learn to honestly face our bankruptcy, rather than continuing on our current practice of money printing, deficit spending and bailouts, the sort of thing Steve Mnuchin wants to do, at least the pain will be curative.