Painful Opportunity

 

The home page of the Fed says, “The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, provides the nation with a safe, flexible and stable monetary and financial system.”

So you can’t say bankers don’t have a sense of humor.

However, in a more “normal” cycle, most people wouldn’t see the joke. Usually, the economy’s actors are too busy getting paid off by apparent short term benefits of fractional reserve banking for any mainstream attention to the system’s contradictions and historical failings. That’s one bright spot today in otherwise dark times– a spotlight on the Federal Reserve System while many of its defenders may be feeling ridiculous (and broke).

Economist Jesús Huerta de Soto traces the historical beginnings of fractional reserve banking to exactly that key “buying off” point where government and banks saw opportunity in partnership:

“At first the bankers did this [reduce reserves below 100% on demand deposits] guiltily and in secret, since they were still aware of the wrongful nature of their actions. Only later when they obtained the government privilege of making personal use of their depositors’ money (generally in the form of loans, which at first were often granted to government itself), did they gain permission to openly and legally violate the principle. The legal orchestration of the privilege is clumsy and usually takes the form of a simple administrative provision authorizing only bankers to maintain a reduced reserve ratio. This marks the beginning of a now traditional relationship of complicity and symbiosis between government and banks… by sacrificing traditional legal principles they could take part in an extremely lucrative financial activity…”As in any corrupt system, some of the lucrativeness needs to be shared to establish and maintain a critical mass of support.  Academics in their turn are paid off to think and promote happy, status quo thoughts (or even angry, pseudo anti-establishment status quo thoughts).  No soul searching required, since for any but the most critical thinkers who happen to be thinking about critical pieces, there’s lots of latitude for intellectual self-accommodation.  An economist for example, can say that populist programs are too big, or one is better than another; it’s only when the economist says that the whole system and the rabbit hole it rode in on is absurd that he or she will be largely cast out from opportunities touched by government or banking, (which in a kind of six degrees of Ben Bernanke, is most of them). 

With this support (and as slightly more widely noted and decried), the purchase of complacency with debt continues through the economy, in government programs, contracts, loans, speculative opportunities and tax policies, where (almost) all actors, big and small, at least appear to get their share of something for nothing.  Lately there are some folks saying “Hey, Wall Street and banks are getting special treatment!”  That’s also rather droll.  But a person ready to see that much may be a step or two from seeing that the Federal Reserve was indeed built from special treatment, among other unsavory qualities.

I recently read an article by financial analyst John Rubino at Dollarcollapse.com, (Time to Start Honing the Message), which I found inspiring even as it pointed out a problem: critics of money and banking have gotten used to mainstream society ignoring or even scoffing at their message.

It’s not easy to keep going when explanations of your economic worldview only cause people to call you a crackpot. To make matters worse (or at least mixed from a memetic persistency point of view), the three dimensional economic worldview of the “crackpots” quietly makes money, while the one and two dimensional views of the crackpot critics is causing them to be rather entertainingly stunned by events over and over again.

To me, this opportunity is starting to feel irresistible. It’s more melodramatic and more insulting than I’m comfortable with, but I’m finding the metaphor also hard to resist: for the moment, the lights are on and the cockroaches are scurrying. The bugs in fractional reserve banking and fiat currency systems are as nakedly apparent as they ever get. But if the past is a rough guide (as it generally is), then with even a weak recovery, myths of how we got in and out of the extra deep cycle will start to set, if not sufficiently impeded.

Rubino warns that populism will be speaking loudly, and also puts the coming battle he sees in stark terms: a fight to avoid living in a dictatorship.

So in view of the above and for my own modest anti-dictatorial contribution, I intend to be better prepared for dialogue (assuming I haven’t become too geeky to be in any social settings). When someone says, “I can’t put gas in my car anymore”, or “That’s odd, trading in my bank’s stock has been halted at sixty-three cents”, I’ll forgo the smartass comment and attempt a non-patronizing, cheerful (or as appropriate, commiserative), discussion of first principles.

I intend to keep to this plan until my mother (the probable last holdout) starts calling me a crackpot, or my social calendar is permanently buried. (I hope I don’t have to report back for at least a few days.)

By Les Lafave

Banking Reform – themaestrosrep.org