Monday, March 20, 2023

Theft Doesn't Solve Theft

 Got lost in the metaphor there.

>"But if your Indian food is packed in some kind of plastic pressure vessel, you can microwave it for fifteen minutes, converting all the water to steam, and nothing will happen. Allow five minutes to cool and open very carefully."
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-golden-age-of-informal-securities

 Um, that whole 'wait to cool' step is the very thing the Fed can't ever do. If [wait to cool] was an option they could just raise interest rates or whatever. 

 Tiresomely, Moldbug himself says so earlier: "if you take any money-losing machine, big or small, and you stop lending to it, it explodes." The money-losing part isn't the right phrase, but you see what he means. Debt must grow or everything will explode. 

 Also, if debt grows, everything will explode, as per the header quote. So that's nice.

 The problem with a recession is that the wealth is missing. The goods have already been stolen, and the question is who is going to be left holding the bag. Everyone's books are wrong, so whose books are going to be forced to correct, and who will be bailed out? Note that by 'bailout' we mean steal from Peter to pay Paul. I don't know if this is hard to understand, but more theft is not a solution to widespread theft. 

 If you wait all that happens is more goods make off with themselves in the night. Book value diverges further from real value. The financial or pricing issues are downstream of the real problem.

 Trigger warning: tiresome. Hey, who said it: "it has escaped their attention that when you stop shooting heroin, you feel awful."

 There is no way off the heroin except pain. Do you want withdrawal now, maybe with some methodone, or do you want to OD? Fair warning: right now it's going to be a Great Depression. If you do it later you get a Greater More Depressing. There's no 'very carefully' option IRL. You can't go back and not have become addicted to heroin. 

 

 Ironically, earlier Moldbug proposed a decent start: the Fed buys everything. All stocks, all debt, all deposits, all derivatives, everything. Book value is now Benjamins. All risk was just eliminated. Then it closes down the stock market and itself...so we can this still too timid solution is still well, well beyond the possible.

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