Dear Reader,
The Secretary of the United States Treasury — Yellen — is “sorry.”
Sorry, that is, for her atrocious stewardship of the nation’s finances.
Thus she sinks to two knees… all sackcloth and ashes… and confesses that:
- I am concerned about fiscal sustainability and I am sorry that we haven’t made more progress. I believe that the deficit needs to be brought down especially now that we’re in an environment of higher interest rates.
Yet the lady need only gaze into a very clear mirror.
She co-bossed the Federal Reserve from 2010-2014. She bossed fully the Federal Reserve from 2010-2018.
Since 2021 she kinged the United States Treasury Department.
That is, she held a combined 14-year custodianship of American finances.
Whoa!
The result of her tenure? As the wags at Zero Hedge note:
- Yellen has personally presided over a gargantuan $15.2 trillion increase in US debt, or about 42% of all US debt ever issued! No one other government official can make even a remotely similar claim.
42% of all United States debt ever issued — in 14 years!
Behold:
Source: Zero Hedge
The Queen of Debt
The United States is 248 years of age.
Its history includes the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the New Deal, the Great Society and the Cold War — costly all.
The United States government issued debt to fund them all.
Yet the lady primarily or secondarily authorized 42% of all United States government debt ever issued.
And I must repeat it — in a mere 14 years.
Thus I stagger and reel… in gobsmacked awe… at Ms. Yellen’s stupendous attainment.
Yes, she inherited Mr. Bernanke’s botchwork. Yes, she was dealt a pandemic.
Yet the facts are the facts. And the fact is she helped distribute 42% of all United States debt ever distributed.
Former and future President Trump has labeled himself the “king of debt.”
If he is, Ms. Yellen is well and truly queen of debt (here I assume she identifies as a woman. I have heard no rumors otherwise).
And the queen of debt is sorry.
I Reluctantly Accept Yellen’s Apology
Well friend, this fellow sinner accepts the lady’s contrition.
I extend her an understanding and forgiving hand — if somewhat reluctantly.
That is because I recognize she is merely one cog in a deeply lunatic machine.
Into that machinery she stepped long ago… and was enveloped.
The entire apparatus runs on debt. Each dollar in existence — in fact — is a manifestation of debt.
She could no more influence that machine than a minnow can influence a whale… than a mosquito can influence an airplane… than a good idea can influence a United States congressman.
She was merely performing her role. And as argues economic commentator Bill Bonner:
- You and I must play our roles, not because we have thought our way to them, but simply because of who we are, where we are, and when we are.
Ms. Yellen’s role has been money manager of a disordered nation and decaying empire.
Disintegrative Cycles
Historian Peter Turchin has chronicled historical cycles of social disintegration and integration over 50, 150 and 200-year cycles.
He investigates them fully in his book Ages of Discord.
This Turchin fellow identifies three primary forces spinning the disintegrative cycles:
An oversupply of labor that suppresses real wages… an overproduction of parasitic elites… a deterioration in state finances.
Do any of the three pertain to the United States?
Real American wages have remained largely flat for decades.
Evidence suggests the bottom half of American adults earn no more than they did in the 1970s — in real terms.
An overproduction of parasitic elites? Must I comment?
A deterioration in state finances? Again: Must I comment?
I will merely note that the American state groans under a $36 trillion national debt that is expanding with each tick of the grandfather clock.
Meantime, unfunded liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare currently exceed $50 trillion by some estimates.
$50 trillion liabilities cannot be met. They can only be repudiated in one form or another.
Natural and Inevitable
The cycles mentioned are as natural as the seasons — and perhaps as inevitable.
Ms. Yellen did not originate them. They were long in operation when she came on station.
What could she do? To return to the aforesaid Bonner:
Yellen played her role. Not because she thought her way to it. But simply because of who she was, where she was, and when she was.
It is fashionable in some quarters to compare the present United States to ancient Rome.
The comparisons are often overwrought. Often — but maybe not always.
Rome was peopled by women and men who played their roles, not because they thought their way to them, but simply because of who they were, where they were, and when they were.
What separated the Roman at republic’s peak from the Roman in empire’s valley?
Merely the circumstances in which he found himself.
The two were simply born in different eras.
Consuetudo Fraudium
From The Empire of Debt, written by the again-cited Bill Bonner and co-author Addison Wiggin:
- In Rome, the institutions evolved and degraded faster than people’s ideas about them. Romans remembered their Old Republic with its rules and customs. They still thought that was the way the system was supposed to work long after a new system of consuetudo fraudium — habitual cheating — had taken hold…
- As time went on, the empire came to resemble less and less the Old Republic that gave it birth. The old virtues were replaced with new vices.
Here, I cannot help but think of these United States.
It appears a similar scourge of consuetudo fraudium has seized it.
When did it commence? I do not know precisely.
Yet I incline to argue its origin traces to the 1970s… after the gold standard’s murder.
A debt-based system facilitates a corrupt system… and ultimately a bankrupt system.
Do not blame Janet Yellen. She is merely a symptom.
At least she is sorry…
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
