Learning to love strikes. Strikes and inflation are like married couple. They go hand in hand, even though we should know that they should never have gotten together in the first place! This is what happens when love strikes policymakers - we have to fall in love with strikes.
Yes I recall some of your "concerns" in SIGNALS. Honest and forthright article Pippa; you have clearly inherited your fathers genes (don't hear enough from him but I suspect Twitter might annoy him).
For me the critical sentence in your missive is "Today we see governments moving towards CBDC, sovereign digital money. One reason is because it gives policymakers control over not just money but also over behavior."
I firmly and fully believe that CBDC are coming, are coming sooner than most believe and will unquestionably be used to exert "control" within society by governments (just as Trudeau previewed in Canada) against those who don't step into line with the ruler elite narratives.
As a child of the late 60s and 70s in the UK I am fully aware of the impacts of inflation, strikes and the public responses. Ultimately in the UK Margret Thatcher was elected to combat the political mess created by the left and their love of using strikes to try to defeat elected government policy.
My concern today is that a combination of several factors including Central bank failures, a Millennial Generation that has little of the opportunity that the Boomer generation had, the ending of the generalized major power peace that has tenuously reigned since the fall of the Wall, the looming failure of the Sovereign Debt markets, the potential carnage on Boomer pension and social security safety nets and more, will lead to chaos. I think we are about to enter the "Two steps back" portion after the "The three steps forward" bit, post 1945.
I can already sense the masses getting restless and slowly but sure huddling in quiet corners sharpening their pitchforks and putting together their torches.
Strikes.... wow I have not thought about strikes for about 50 years. First hand experience: I was working through college and was threatened by a guy with a crowbar who emphatically informed me that bad things would happen if I crossed the strike picket line. Today, given our labor shortage, I would substitute "electing to not go back to work" for strike. Protesting economic disparity by electing to not work is facilitated by safety net programs that in fact pay people to not go back to work. Follow the bread crumbs: give people money (outright or through low interest rates), people spend money, supply and demand get out of equilibrium, resulting in inflation, which all forces a very painful withdrawal from those very addictive easy money policies. Loved the article.... don't love strikes.
A very important article here. The opportunity for nations to weaponize CBDCs against their own citizens is vast. The concern is that the current leadership in virtually every nation appears to be chomping at the bit to do so. One need only look at Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the covid passports that made their way around Europe to see that authoritarianism is the default setting once officials are elected into office. Once again, it speaks to the importance of the 2nd amendment in the US as the ultimate check on political power. Because absent that, and the legally owned 300mm weapons in private hands, I fear that this government would be forcing its policies on every citizen, at least those not in the inner circle.
Another excellent piece, we do get spoiled. I do want to nitpick about CDBC's. I am Canadian. We have proven ourselves incapable of building anything recently, pipelines, ships, planes, mines, heck we can't even upgrade our military side arms purchased in the mid 1940's. Or build a payroll system to pay our federal civil servants. So thinking the government can build a CDBC, that would be robust and secure, I have to say don't think so at all. The intellectual capacity is in the country - we just can't organize anything well enough in our governments to build anything so complex. Even the Bank of Canada has discussed not implementing full blown block chain in their CDBC analysis. They will take shortcuts and we will wind up with the same problems we witnessed this past 2 weeks in crypto land failures based on algorithmic matching to stable coins only with a national currency. Not a prediction, it will be a fact once they move down that path.
Super interested on your explanation of how CBDC’s will help governments control supply and demand, as well as punish price gougers- ty for your thoughts and writings - much appreciated
Yes I recall some of your "concerns" in SIGNALS. Honest and forthright article Pippa; you have clearly inherited your fathers genes (don't hear enough from him but I suspect Twitter might annoy him).
For me the critical sentence in your missive is "Today we see governments moving towards CBDC, sovereign digital money. One reason is because it gives policymakers control over not just money but also over behavior."
I firmly and fully believe that CBDC are coming, are coming sooner than most believe and will unquestionably be used to exert "control" within society by governments (just as Trudeau previewed in Canada) against those who don't step into line with the ruler elite narratives.
As a child of the late 60s and 70s in the UK I am fully aware of the impacts of inflation, strikes and the public responses. Ultimately in the UK Margret Thatcher was elected to combat the political mess created by the left and their love of using strikes to try to defeat elected government policy.
My concern today is that a combination of several factors including Central bank failures, a Millennial Generation that has little of the opportunity that the Boomer generation had, the ending of the generalized major power peace that has tenuously reigned since the fall of the Wall, the looming failure of the Sovereign Debt markets, the potential carnage on Boomer pension and social security safety nets and more, will lead to chaos. I think we are about to enter the "Two steps back" portion after the "The three steps forward" bit, post 1945.
I can already sense the masses getting restless and slowly but sure huddling in quiet corners sharpening their pitchforks and putting together their torches.
Strikes.... wow I have not thought about strikes for about 50 years. First hand experience: I was working through college and was threatened by a guy with a crowbar who emphatically informed me that bad things would happen if I crossed the strike picket line. Today, given our labor shortage, I would substitute "electing to not go back to work" for strike. Protesting economic disparity by electing to not work is facilitated by safety net programs that in fact pay people to not go back to work. Follow the bread crumbs: give people money (outright or through low interest rates), people spend money, supply and demand get out of equilibrium, resulting in inflation, which all forces a very painful withdrawal from those very addictive easy money policies. Loved the article.... don't love strikes.
A very important article here. The opportunity for nations to weaponize CBDCs against their own citizens is vast. The concern is that the current leadership in virtually every nation appears to be chomping at the bit to do so. One need only look at Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the covid passports that made their way around Europe to see that authoritarianism is the default setting once officials are elected into office. Once again, it speaks to the importance of the 2nd amendment in the US as the ultimate check on political power. Because absent that, and the legally owned 300mm weapons in private hands, I fear that this government would be forcing its policies on every citizen, at least those not in the inner circle.
Another excellent piece, we do get spoiled. I do want to nitpick about CDBC's. I am Canadian. We have proven ourselves incapable of building anything recently, pipelines, ships, planes, mines, heck we can't even upgrade our military side arms purchased in the mid 1940's. Or build a payroll system to pay our federal civil servants. So thinking the government can build a CDBC, that would be robust and secure, I have to say don't think so at all. The intellectual capacity is in the country - we just can't organize anything well enough in our governments to build anything so complex. Even the Bank of Canada has discussed not implementing full blown block chain in their CDBC analysis. They will take shortcuts and we will wind up with the same problems we witnessed this past 2 weeks in crypto land failures based on algorithmic matching to stable coins only with a national currency. Not a prediction, it will be a fact once they move down that path.
Super interested on your explanation of how CBDC’s will help governments control supply and demand, as well as punish price gougers- ty for your thoughts and writings - much appreciated