Summary: Massive debt is sealing the fate of
governments and central banks. As the cards collapse, radical
developments in diverse areas of technology, combined with free market
entrepreneurship, will destroy and rebuild the existing social order.
Trouble begins when bureaucracies replace free
markets. In the U.S., we find money, the lifeblood of the economy,
resting in the hands of a board of bureaucrats whose statements the financial
punditry spends their waking hours trying to decipher. What does this
portend for the foreseeable future? Ben Wright, Group Business Editor at
The Telegraph, takes us through one possible scenario.
The total value of all global equities was around
$70 trillion in June last year, according to
the World Federation of Exchanges; meanwhile, the notional value of all
outstanding derivatives contracts was more than $690
trillion. It is worth noting that the vast majority (around four-fifths) of all
existing derivatives contracts are based on interest rates.
Derivatives are “essentially insurance policies -
they are designed to protect the holder from adverse price movements,” such as
a change in interest rates.
Let’s say that US interest rates do rise sooner and
faster than the market expects. That means bond prices, which always move in
the opposite direction to yields, will plummet. US Treasury bonds are like a
mountain guide to which most other global securities are roped - if they fall,
they take everything else with them.
Who will get hurt? Everyone. But it’ll likely be
the world’s banks, where even little mistakes can create big problems, that
suffer the most pain.
Banks are well-aware of this threat and have
negotiated interest rate derivatives to hedge their risk. They bought
these derivatives from other banks.
This creates what is known as counterparty risk.
Bank A sells insurance to Bank B. But then Bank A gets into financial
difficulties (a significant deterioration in their creditworthiness would be
enough) and suddenly Bank B isn’t as well protected as it thought it was. . .
.
Clearing houses are designed to deal with one or
two counterparties going down. But what happens if more go kaput? The clearing
house itself would face collapse, be judged too big to fail and, well, you
already know how this story ends.
We do, but where does it begin?
Governments’ silent partner: Central banking
It originates in the wish of big bankers to create
a government scheme to protect and amplify their wealth, while promoting it as
a necessary corrective to what they say is an inherently flawed free market
that suffers from periodic crises. This is often cited as the rationale
for central banking. The central bank is supposed to eliminate crises by
coordinating and restricting the credit expansion (monetary inflation) of its
fractional-reserve member banks. In the event this doesn’t work, the
central bank bails out the biggest banks under the flag of “lender of last
resort.”
Most economists consider fractional-reserve banking
a sound and ethical business practice. It consists of giving two people —
depositor and borrower — a claim of ownership to the same thing.
The free market penalizes fractional-reserve banking with bank runs and
currency drains from less-inflationary competitor banks. Historically,
bankers resented this. Governments, always looking for revenue, sided
with the bankers and established central banking cartels. Governments
changed money itself from a commodity to something the banks could inflate at
will (paper and digits), with another government agency acting as an “insurer”
of digital deposits to calm the natives. (See Rothbard, pp. 134-137)
The counterfeiting cartel called the federal
reserve system has survived for over a century. What would its economic
report card look like? It penalizes savers through deliberate monetary
debasement. It makes honest price discovery impossible. It
has created numerous financial crises, including two devastating ones.
After the crisis hits it finds fault everywhere except home in its
Keynesian hunt for causes. The bought economics profession becomes the
barking dogs on the hunt. Those closely connected to the Fed, such as the
government, benefit from the Cantillon Effect.
The claim that the economy needs a meddler to
execute “monetary policy” is never seriously
questioned. See, for example, FRBNY president William Dudley’s “Lessons Learned” speech given in 2009 at the
BIS conference in Basel, Switzerland:
Dudley: If one means by monetary policy the
instrument of short-term interest rates, then I agree that monetary policy is
not well-suited to deal with asset bubbles. But this suggests that it might be
better for central bankers to examine the efficacy of other instruments in
their toolbox, rather than simply ignoring the development of asset bubbles.
If existing tools are judged inadequate, then
central banks should work on developing additional policy instruments.
Got that?
Compare his comments to those of Milton Friedman,
who Helicopter Ben once lauded for his view that
the Fed failed to print enough money to offset price deflation following the
Crash:
If a domestic money consists of a commodity, a pure
gold standard or cowrie bead standard, the principles of monetary policy are
very simple. There aren’t any. The commodity money takes care of itself. Salerno, p. 356
Friedman expanded on this thought elsewhere:
If money consisted wholly of a physical commodity
... in principle there would be no need for control by the government at all. .
. .
If an automatic commodity standard were feasible,
it would provide an excellent solution to the liberal dilemma of how to
get a stable monetary framework without the danger of irresponsible exercise of
monetary powers. Salerno, pp. 334-335
Of course, this is not the Friedman
Bernanke-the-Keynesian extolled.
All folly must be funded, and the Fed is front and
center with its “accommodating” printing press. But the Fed is not just an
economic calamity for most of us — it has blood on its hands. Mostly,
it’s the blood of everyday people, the ones who ultimately bail out the big
boys involuntarily, with their money and their lives. Central banking is
the pillar of the welfare - warfare state.
Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota, Chairman of the
Senate Munitions Committee, concluded that “We didn't win a thing we set out
for in [World War I]. We merely succeeded, with tremendous loss of life, to
make secure the loans of private bankers to the Allies.”
Thanks to Thomas Woodrow Wilson and his
warmongering handlers, and the Federal Reserve Act Wilson signed into law, perpetual war has become the norm in foreign policy,
as long as the wars are conducted in sufficiently obscure and distant locations
so as not to rattle the folks back home.
Keep the names, change the meaning
Keynes became an international hero among interventionists
when he published an opaque treatise justifying government control of
markets. In the preface to the German edition of The
General Theory (1936), he wrote:
Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which
is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to
the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of the production
and distribution of a given output produced under conditions of free
competition and a large measure of laissez-faire.
I agree that his “theory of output” is appealing to
totalitarians. It’s also appealing to totalitarian-lite politicians and
economists such as exist the world over. Little totalitarians’
fingerprints are everywhere we look.
As we’ve witnessed with Assange, Snowden, Manning,
and others, those with the courage to expose government wrongdoing are
immediately in its crosshairs as traitors.
Many of these same kids will later be drawn into
the military to kill on command for the state, while the alarming suicide rate
of young veterans is brushed aside with “concerned” rhetoric. According
to one site, 49,000 veterans killed themselves between 2005
and 2011, more than twice the number of civilian suicides.
Where there’s perpetual war there’s perpetual
spying. The NSA spies on everyone in virtually everything they do.
As Snowden remarked in a recent radio speech,
referring to the Sydney siege and Charlie Hedbo attacks, “[mass surveillance]
is not going to stop the next attacks either. Because they’re not public
safety programs. They’re spying programs.”
The government invokes Orwell with the Patriot Act,
the Affordable Care Act, and now Net Neutrality, and most people,
intellectually stunted from their government school experience, applaud or don’t care.
We can expect more of the same and worse when the
next AIPAC- and CFR-approved candidate becomes president.
The trends favor liberty
The above scarcely begins to touch on the disaster
the American state and its central bank have created. For libertarians,
matters grow worse with each passing day. Fortunately, there are two
unmistakable trends working in liberty’s favor: Massive debt and
advancing technology.
Technology is ripping a hole in centralized social
control and its Keynesian underpinnings, bringing power and freedom to
individuals the world over.
Both Keynesianism and technology are on a
cusp. One is on a road to collapse, while the other is about to kick into
high gear.
Why? Because the U.S. has a $210 trillion
fiscal gap. How can the government close this gap? Right now, it
would “require an immediate 58.5 percent increase in all federal taxes or a
37.7 percent permanent, across-the-board decrease in federal spending.”
It’s not going to happen. Congress will kick
the can. Creditors will get stiffed. Government promises will be
broken. The bill for the Keynesian free lunch will come due, and the
government check will bounce.
Where will that leave us? With a weakened and
discredited government, and the bogus Keynesian ideas that supported it, we will
have to become more self-reliant. The cry for the government to “Do
something!” will be answered with an echo. Free markets will emerge where
they’ve been suppressed because much of government will be ineffective or no
longer exist. A free market in combination with a revolution in
technology will remake our world.
The technology revolution: Subversive and seductive
Unlike other revolutions, the revolution in
technology will not end. It started when someone first used a stick to
extend his reach. It is ongoing, ever accelerating, and reaching into
virtually every area of life. Nor does it centralize power. As
we’ve witnessed with computers, it is radically decentralizing and price
deflationary.
Information technology has been growing exponentially
since the 1890 US census. More technologies have
become information technologies, putting them on an exponential growth curve.
The exponential is not easy to grasp.
Futurist and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil explains why:
1.
Linear growth is steady, while exponential growth
becomes explosive.
2.
Exponential growth will always seem linear when
viewed over a short-enough time span.
3.
Exponential growth is seductive. In its early
stages it acts like linear growth. It becomes explosive after it reaches
the knee of the curve. Most of us still view the distant future from a linear
perspective.
4.
The rate of change is itself accelerating. We
won’t experience one hundred years of technological advance in the twenty-first
century; we will witness on the order of twenty thousand years of progress (at
the rate in the year 2000).
5.
Many scientists are skeptical of the
exponential. They are trained to be skeptical. When progress moved
along the linear portion of the exponential this was understandable.
We’re at the knee of the curve today in many areas of technology (see chart).
6.
Awareness of exponential phenomena sometimes
produces overly-optimistic expectations. Exponential growth picks up
speed over time but it is not instantaneous.
It’s the economic imperative of a competitive
marketplace that is the primary force driving technology forward and fueling
the law of accelerating returns. In turn, the law of accelerating
returns is transforming economic relationships. Economic imperative is the
equivalent of survival in biological evolution. We are moving toward more
intelligent and smaller machines as the result of myriad small advances, each
with its own particular economic justification. Machines that can more
precisely carry out their missions have increased value, which explains why
they are being built. There are tens of thousands of projects that are
advancing the various aspects of the law of accelerating returns in diverse
incremental ways. The Singularity is Near (2005)
The price-competitiveness of entrepreneurship will
spread technology in various forms around the globe. Recent headlines
reveal major technology companies working to bring internet service to regions that have
been without it, using airborne devices such as drones, satellites, or
balloons. With internet service and affordable devices will come
educational opportunities for millions of people who have never had any.
The massive impact of 3D Printing
Two years ago Allister Heath of The Telegraph wrote about 3D printing and what it will do to
our world.
Remarkably, 3D printing allows actual objects to be
designed and created (or “printed”) surprisingly quickly with a computer
connected to a printer-like device, using special material (often plastic, but
increasingly almost anything) as “ink” and “paper”. With the costs of the
machinery nearing mass-market levels, 3D printing is poised to take off,
blurring the distinction between digital and physical realms, democratising
manufacturing and turning large chunks of the global economy upside-down. . . .
Making things using one’s own equipment may even
become almost as common as cooking one’s own food or uploading one’s own
pictures to a social network. . . .
Given that economies of scale will no longer be so
essential, 3D printing will drastically reduce the barriers to entry to
start-ups. Anti-trust policy will become obsolete. The influx of new
competitors will shake up many industries, just as old oligopolies built around
intellectual property have already been smashed.
Choice will have no bounds. Already, 3D
printers can manufacture things like furniture, cutlery, and machine tools, but
this is only the beginning.
Far more complex items will become printable, a
development which would truly change the world. Anthony Atala, of the Wake
Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina, recently
harnessed a 3D printer with living cells as the “ink” to create a
transplantable kidney. Even restaurants could be partly automated. Jeff Lipton,
of Seraph Robotics, argues that food will be 3D printing’s killer app, and has
demonstrated how scientifically precise cakes can be produced, feeding all the
usual ingredients into the machine.
This is Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction”
in action. But it applies to more than markets.
Eventually, even governments will be threatened by
the 3D printing revolution. In a world of endless choice, who will put up with
one size fits all public services and flawed, bureaucratic decision making?
Atomically Precise Manufacturing (APM)
Eric Drexler, the father of modern nanotechnology,
sees 3D printing as a precursor to a more exacting manufacturing method he
calls Atomically Precise Manufacturing (APM). Because APM will use common
feedstocks instead of scarce materials, its full development will result in radical abundance.
According to Drexler the science of APM is
settled. We are not waiting for some “Eureka!” moment.
We’ve come a long way, and there’s a long way to
go, but the road has no gaps, no chasms to cross. . . . The fruits of
[APM] research appear in scientific journals, with more papers published daily
than anyone could read.
Zyvex was founded in 1997 with the goal of
developing atomically precise manufacturing. Several of its products had
been commercialized by 2007. Its website describes nanotech in everyday
terms.
Todays manufacturing methods are very crude at the
molecular level. Casting, grinding, milling and even lithography move atoms in
great thundering statistical herds.
It's like trying to make things out of LEGO blocks
with boxing gloves on your hands. Yes, you can push the LEGO blocks into great
heaps and pile them up, but you can't really snap them together the way you'd
like.
In the future, nanotechnology (more specifically,
molecular nanotechnology or MNT) will let us take off the boxing gloves. We'll
be able to snap together the fundamental building blocks of nature easily,
inexpensively and in most of the ways permitted by the laws of nature. This
will let us continue the revolution in computer hardware to its ultimate
limits: molecular computers made from molecular logic gates connected by
molecular wires. This new pollution free manufacturing technology will also let
us inexpensively fabricate a cornucopia of new products that are remarkably
light, strong, smart, and durable.
Eliminating disease and rejuvenating our bodies
“[Biologically,] we are fundamentally information,”
Ray Kurzweil tells us in his movie, Transcendent
Man. “At the core of our ten trillion cells are genes, and
genes are sequences of data. And they evolved thousands of years
ago. Many of them go back millions of years.”
The software in our bodies is ancient but we’re
learning how to change it. Changing it will revolutionize medicine.
A hybrid scenario involving both bio- and
nanotechnology contemplates turning biological cells into computers. These
“enhanced intelligence” cells can then detect and destroy cancer cells and
pathogens or even regrow human body parts.
Biotech programmers will treat aging as they treat
diseases.
Biotechnology will provide the means to actually
change your genes: not just designer babies will be feasible but designer baby
boomers. We’ll also be able to rejuvenate all of your body’s tissues and organs
by transforming your skin cells into youthful versions of every other cell
type. . . .
Already, new drug development is precisely
targeting key steps in the process of atherosclerosis (the cause of heart
disease ), cancerous tumor formation, and the metabolic processes underlying
each major disease and aging process.
Technology and medicine
Advances occur almost daily in a wide range of
technologies. What follows is a random sampling of medical research and
applications.
Three years ago researchers at the University of
Michigan 3D printed a windpipe that held an infant’s
airway open. It likely saved its life. Glenn Green, an ear nose and
throat specialist, helped develop the device.
The use of 3-D printed devices and body parts is
still in its infancy. Cartilage and bone will be the first solutions to reach
wide use, Green says, adding there is a "gigantic potential," for the
future.
While nanotechnology still has years of research
ahead of it, there are some promising developments for the near future. Dr
Thomas Webster, the chair of chemical engineering at Northeastern University in
Boston, is conducting research that attaches drugs and
possibly metals and minerals to nanoparticles that then bind themselves to
cancer cells and viruses, leaving healthy cells unharmed. They’re not at
the level of the nanobots in Michael Crichton’s novel Prey that “roamed
through patients autonomously hunting down medical problems,” but they’re
getting close.
Meanwhile, researchers the University of Manchester
have used graphene oxide, a non-toxic material, “to
target and neutralize cancer stem cells (CSCs) while not harming other
cells.” CSCs spread cancer within the body and are responsible for 90% of
cancer deaths.
Another study using gold nanotubes integrates
“diagnosis and therapy in one single system.”
The researchers injected the gold nanotubes
intravenously. They controlled the length of the nanotubes for the right
dimensions to absorb near-infrared light (which penetrates tissue well) from a
pulsed infrared laser beam.
By adjusting the brightness of the laser pulse, the
researchers were able to control whether the gold nanotubes were in imaging
mode or cancer-destruction mode.
Lung cancer is the number one cancer-killer in the
U.S. Detection of lung cancer is usually done with an invasive biopsy
when the tumor has reached a diameter of 3 centimeters and is often
metastatic. Yong Zeng and his fellow researchers at the University of
Kansas have developed a lab-on-a-chip that could detect lung cancer
much earlier using a small drop of the patient’s blood. “In theory,” Zeng
says, “it should be applicable to other types of cancer.” They are
continuing research with this goal in view.
Conclusion
Things can always go wrong. Nuclear war could
erupt and wipe out humanity. Smart robots could take over the world and
wipe out humanity. Terrorists could invent a killer virus that wipes out
humanity. The possible downsides to sophisticated technology are
seemingly endless.
But as noted earlier, there are two trends today
that are real and visible: Massive debt and advancing technology.
Follow the implications. There will be pain, but then recovery and real
growth.
There are other facts working in favor of positive
outcomes. People generally want to live long, healthy, enjoyable
lives. Technology is working to make that a reality. People
generally don’t like dealing with bureaucracies, paying taxes, or making war on
their neighbors. Collapsing governments will make this a reality.
And there are other thoughts to consider.
The free market is the expression of economic
law. Keynesianism consciously violates it. Governments the world
over have bet the farm on Keynesianism. They’re about to lose the farm.
Technology, meanwhile, will continue its
accelerating advances, benefiting most people in the process. The
benefits will become increasingly radical, remaking our world.
It will be a world where killer diseases can be
detected and treated quickly at low cost.
It will be a world where aging is more of a choice
rather than an imposition of nature.
It will be a world where people can afford to own
machines that can make just about anything they want or need from ordinary
materials. Abundance will replace scarcity. Poverty will cease to
exist.
It will be a world in which energy is plentiful and
cheap. War for oil or other scarce resources will be relegated to
history.
It will be a world where people are easily
connected through technology, where real-time
translation software destroys the language barriers that exist
today.
It will be a world in which people will be able to
get the education they want through digital technologies.
I, for one, look forward to it.
