The Emperor Has No Clothes

The Emperor Has No Clothes
Are these "greedy companies" in the room with us right now?

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The price inflation situation in the US has become so ridiculous that people who formerly shrugged their shoulders and allowed it to happen are speaking out about their frustrations and demanding an explanation. In all of this inquisition as to the true root of price inflation, known colloquially as just inflation, the majority of Americans are still completely oblivious, and this is by design:

Pie chart showing that 44% of Americans believe government is the leading cause of inflation, with 32% saying corporate greed and 23% citing supply chain issues.
Source: DollarSprout

Joe Biden, whose approval is crashing through the floor as the United States' price inflation remains hot and the border remains wide open, launched a propagandistic ad campaign to point the finger and gin up anger towards "greedy companies" for reducing the size of their products while keeping prices the same:

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He blames greedy corporations for pulling a fast one on Americans and shrinking the size of their products for no good reason at all other than to pad out their pockets with wider profit margins. If not for the profit incentive, people would not be compelled to allocate capital efficiently, and Western civilization would be over as we know it today. Of course, the economically illiterate do not know this, so the tactic of depicting capitalism as an abstraction of a portly man smoking a cigar and sleeping on a pile of money is effective at repelling most Americans from discovering the true source of price inflation.

Corporations aren't to blame. The central bank and U.S. Treasury are to blame. You're blaming the wrong avenue if you're looking down Wall Street. The perpetrators of the largest heist in history are located in that big building located in the Eccles Building in Washington D.C. There is only one entity to blame.

It is the Federal Reserve.

The Biden administration, the current front for the perpetual ruling class, fails to see the irony in making a video that points out the devastation wrought by their monetary and economic policy.

People are coming around to the reality that price inflation is caused by monetary inflation. The term "money printing" has entered the modern vernacular and is here to stay as people's pockets become thinner and social media allows for information to be disseminated between peers, without a network of media outlets in cahoots with the government to conceal their actions.

As it becomes more noticeable and prices race far away from wages, the propaganda loses its potency, so its volume and frequency are dialed up to compensate, until one day, it stops working entirely. The latest term in the long history of central bank scapegoating is "shrinkflation", a term designed to be derogatory towards businesses that reduce the size of their products to avoid having to raise prices as input costs rise due to money printing. With clever marketing and the government-media goliath behind it, the ruling class has successfully demonized the productive members of the country while absolving itself of the blame for the price inflation that it is the sole origin of.

Don't be fooled, it's not the truth.

Following 2020, the magnitude of monetary and fiscal stimulus was so comical that it allowed central banking to become a pseudo-mainstream topic of discussion, officially entering the Overton window for the first time ever.

Following the detachment of US dollars from gold, when dollars brought up their anchor on physical reality, the rate of increase in the money supply has only risen. The dotted green line is the projected growth of the money supply had we maintained the gold standard, under $4 trillion in the year 2024, compared to today's $20.8 trillion, some 5x the natural order of things:

What has this led to?

A dramatic increase in the price level of goods and services, shown by CPI in blue, and a dramatic reduction in the personal savings rate, shown in white. Prices have risen 10x since we started printing money freely in 1971, and the personal savings rate has dropped from 15% to under 4% in that same time:

United States citizens are now at the end of their rope, as the volume of debt that people are taking on accelerates year after year. It took 17 years for the US to add $340 billion of credit card debt, but less than 4 years for it to add another $340 billion. Price increases are outpacing wage increases, and people are resorting to piling on credit card debt to pick up the difference:

The delinquency rate on credit cards at large banks has almost doubled in 26 months from 1.48% to 2.85% and at small banks, is at an all-time high of 7.51%. Translation: an increasing number of people can get by through borrowing money that they don't intend to pay back:

On the flip side of this real economic data come economic surveys, loaded with questions that are largely irrelevant to livelihood. Take the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey, which is at a 3-year high. It contrasts so heavily with the dismal outlook painted by the price, savings, credit card, and delinquency data because survey respondents are optimistic about the stock market; seeing as it is hitting new all-time highs, they are more optimistic about being able to retire. Had there been a survey strictly about economic conditions and not about asset prices, the results would look a lot different. The utility of econometrics is to obscure and dissemble, which is precisely what is happening here:

The stock market is not the real economy. Most people don't have a substantial amount of appreciating assets, and what little they do have is decreasing as price inflation outpaces wage inflation so people have less to contribute to their 401k. However, with the President's approval in the toilet, the roaring stock market is the very last thing he has to cling to, so he is doing his best to disingenuously conflate the stock market with the health of the American economy:

The elite are running out of ammo and the hypocrisy is on full display. Here's Joe not 4 years ago explicitly stating the exact opposite of his remarks today—the perfect allegory for the perpetual ruling class: they do not work for you, and will say whatever they can to capture and remain in power:

The problem is so bad that it has escaped the subconscious and entered the public discourse, at a time when information has never traveled faster or been more accessible. The ouroboros of monetary and fiscal policy that fund and enrich each other by siphoning off of your productivity and livelihood are now out in the open for all to see. We must leverage these same networks to propagate the superior hedge against monetary inflation: bitcoin. Adjusted for the M2 US dollar money supply, bitcoin is up 2909% in the last decade, compared to gold's -9.2%:

People are catching on and holding it for dear life, with almost 80% of bitcoin having not changed hands on-chain in the last 6 months. With the fiscal situation getting out of control and the Fed likely to step back into the market in a big way to support the U.S. Treasury and fragile banks, holding a hard asset that stands to appreciate in the face of it all has never been more attractive. Don't be the last one to figure it out:

@DylanLeClair_ on X

Hope you all have an excellent start to the week,

Joe


Theya is an app for simplified Bitcoin self-custody. With its 2-of-3 multisig custody solution, you can enjoy maximum security for your Bitcoin and the peace of mind that comes with it.

Download Theya on the App Store and declare your sovereignty today.