That Was Quick
By Charles Goyette
In addition to everything else, subscribers to Charles Goyette’s Freedom and Prosperity Letter also get my twice a week podcasts, fast, up-to-the-minute comments about breaking events and news you should know about that affects our freedom and prosperity.
It’s like an early warning system for the things the governing classes intend to do to us. Let me give you the latest example.
It was just the other day that I noted the massive money printing that has been going on by central banks around the globe: The Federal Reserve, of course, but also the Bank of Japan, the People’s Bank of China, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and even the Swiss central bank. Now all that money printing isn’t without consequence. It eventually makes prices rise. So I thought I would give my subscribers a preview of all the sorts of things the governing classes do when we begin to feel pain from their legal counterfeiting.
And here’s part of what I said on the podcast on Tuesday:
"I want to give you a template that you can use to understand some of the typical things that happen in the face of those rising prices. First, consumers begin to complain about their inability to make ends meet as the household budget is squeezed. Their complaints grow louder and they begin asking politicians to do something."
"Of course the politicians already did do something. They spent money they didn’t have and enabled the central bankers like the Fed to print money and cause prices to rise. But anxious to divert attention from their own malfeasance, the politicians begin looking for scapegoats: Maybe it’s farmers, or speculators, or the rich or the poor or even foreign devils."
What you need to know is that they’ll find somebody else â€" anybody else â€" to blame for what they have done. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi wasted no time proving my Tuesday prediction right. The very next day, Wednesday, Pelosi issued a statement on rising gas prices. And she knew just who to blame.
Gas prices were going up, Pelosi said, because of all those evil speculators.
"Independent reports confirm that speculators are driving up the cost of oil, hurting consumers and potentially damaging the economic recovery. Wall Street profiteering, not oil shortages, is the cause of the price spike. In fact, U.S. oil production is at its highest level since 2003, and millions of acres have been cleared for additional development."
"We need to take strong action to protect consumers from this speculation."
Well, that really was quick! It’s all the fault of speculators, right? Let’s see. The Federal Reserve has virtually exploded the money supply. And I mean exploded. M2 money has grown by more than 30% since the recession began. It’s up by 10% in just the last year. M1 is up by 20% in the last year. The monetary base is up by 25% in the same period.
Now, let me put it in simple terms that even members of the governing classes can understand. There’s a lot more paper money around. That makes it worth less. It buys less.
But the governing classes have made things even worse than that. Not only is there a lot more paper money, but what have they done to the supply of oil? They have put a fear premium on the price of oil by constant saber rattling in the oil-rich Mideast and instituted a virtual blockade on Iranian oil. I’ll go into detail on Iran and oil in the March issue of my Freedom & Prosperity Letter.
But for now, it’s sufficient to underscore that they’ve obstructed the supply of oil. And they’ve increased the supply of money. The value of the money goes down. The price of oil goes up. And they blame speculators for higher gas prices? Do they think the people are stupid?
And are they right?
Maybe they are. As far as speculators go, for everybody buying oil for future profits, somebody who thinks prices will move differently is selling. Let me say that again. For every buyer, there is a seller. Somebody makes a dollar; somebody else loses a dollar. But that is not allowed to get in the way of the governing classes’ demagoguery.
Instead, they resort to the same sleight of hand over and over again, diverting attention from what they themselves have done. And it seems to work.
What can you say about people who can be this easily fooled? What can you say about your fellow citizens when the president they elected, President Obama, appoints an energy secretary who has made his position clear. Secretary Chu was explicit even before he took office. "Somehow," he said, "we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." The energy secretary wants our cost of oil to go up and our standard of living to go down. And when it happens, it’s the fault of speculators?
The Nancy Pelosi’s of the world, and hundreds of other Republicans and Democrats like her, are perfectly predictable. Having spent years destroying American prosperity, they not only find scapegoats to blame as the crisis develops, they are ready to offer ways to make things much, much worse.
It’s all predictable. I cover it all in the Freedom & Prosperity Letter, my special subscriber reports, and in the twice a week podcasts.
"We need to take strong action to protect consumers from this speculation," said Pelosi.
And wait until you hear what happens when the governing classes start taking that "strong action." That's when things really start falling apart.
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