The bright boys and girls in the national government, along with intellectual aristocrats in the media and what former President Donald Trump disparagingly called “the swamp”, the nation’s permanent government, think they may control inflation forever by turning a few knobs at the Federal Reserve, but inflation may be controlling them. In any master-slave relationship, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish, as the best of the Greek comic writers well knew, between master and slave.
“If your primary concern right now is inflation,” President
Joe Biden assured the nation a few days ago, “you should be even more
enthusiastic about this plan. It will take the pressure off of inflation.” Biden plans to spend $4.7 trillion in tax
revenue to take the pressure off of inflation.
We’re already experiencing inflated prices for goods and
services. Jumps in consumer costs are a consequence of inflation.
In post-World War II Germany, a wheelbarrow full of near worthless
currency would have bought you a loaf of bread. A loaf of bread in Berlin that cost
around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 (two-hundred billion) Marks
by late 1923.
When hyper-inflation takes root in a country, it touches
every facet of life. And it always comes on like gangbusters – quick and
socially disabling.
The overly harsh post-World War I conditions imposed on
Germany and the humiliation of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles gave rise to
Hitler. In Russia, heavy war losses and
raging inflation gave rise to Marxist-Leninist communism and, in short order,
Stalinism. When the Western Roman Republic collapsed, Gaius Julius Caesar arose
in all his splendor from republican ashes. We may recall from reading
Shakespeare that Caesar did not die of old age in his bed. When the Romans
devalued their coins, they clipped them, reducing their size. Roman coinage was based on gold,
silver, bronze and copper. Merchants could actually see the ravages of
inflation in their physically reduced coins.
When money is based on the full faith and credit of
government, as it is in the United States and much of the Western World,
inflation becomes invisible in the actual currency. From 1956-2021, inflation in the United States had risen 871 %. The price of a
4 door Buick Sedan in 1956 was $2, 416. The price of a 4 door Buick Sedan today
is $55,240. Inflation, too many dollars chasing too few goods, reduces the
purchasing power of money.
Inflation is expected to rise from 5% to 9% by the end of
the year, and neither Biden administration solutions -- print, borrow, tax and
distribute more fiat money -- nor a partial post-Coronavirus recovery will much
alter the figures. In fact, the $4.7 trillion spending spree of the current
administration, to be followed in short order by a taxing spree, will deepen
and prolong a worsening recession.
In Connecticut, prolonged recessions have averaged about ten
years, much longer than in most of the country.
The business shutdowns during Coronavirus, more severe in
some states than others, sharply reduced goods and services. Printing money,
the last resort of spending scoundrels, pumps inflated dollars into a goods and
services weakened economy. The classic definition of inflations is – too many
dollars chasing too few goods.
When President Joe Biden says that the post-Coronavirus
recovery will forestall inflation, he is whistling past the graveyard. The surest
way to slay the inflation dragon is to reduce spending and stop pilfering the
private market of the dollars it needs to boost business activity, create jobs
through the creative uses of entrepreneurial capital, and manufacture more
products, services -- and millionaires.
Millionaires have been good to and for Connecticut.
Occasionally, decision makers in Connecticut are visited by a dim perception
that Connecticut is a financial hub. It would seem that Lamont does not want to
destroy a lucrative pot of state revenue by ridding Connecticut of its revenue
producers. For this reason, Lamont has manfully held off progressive barbarians
at the gates, but their numbers are daily increasing. And the only thing that
matters more in politics than verbal gobbledygook, purchased at any number of
progressive lemonade stands, is numbers.
Not all the news is dispiriting. Two paranormal impresarios,
Charles Rosenay!!! -- the exclamation points are part of the gentleman’s
legally adjusted name -- and Nick Grossmann, co-founders of ParaConn, have
chosen the Ansonia Armory, said to be haunted, as the site of the first Connecticut Paranormal Convention.
Apparently, the gentlemen could not be persuaded to choose
Connecticut’s State Capitol building as the site of their conference, which is
a great pity. The progressive infested Capitol has been haunted by the ghost of
former President Woodrow Wilson (born 1856, died 1924) for the last half
century. And , of course, Coronavirus has made of the vacant building a howling
wilderness where small “r” republicanism has gone to die. The Capitol building, full of virtual or ghostly legislators, would be perfect place, progressive President Wilson no doubt would agree, to
hold a paranormal gathering.
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