[e-gold-list] Re: waving the wand...

[Paul Davis]

Yesterday I did two principal things:  

In the morning, I helped a guy with emphysema move some heavy equipment.  He
couldn't exert himself in the slightest without lapsing into a wheezing fit,
which he did a couple of times even with me on the job.  I told him, "that's
gotta suck."  He agreed that it did indeed.  He said, "I used to be a very
active guy, now look at me, I just sit around the house all day."  He no
longer smokes.

In the evening, I went to a lawn party attended by -- exclusively, other
than me -- twenty- and thirty-somethings.  I was the only non-smoker there.

I felt some compassion for the old guy because I'm about the same age and I
remember that when we were young the knowledge about the link between
smoking and these later diseases was not yet fully developed.  So, for him,
there is some excuse.  

I feel no compassion for the future emphysema patients I partied with last
night.  All the information they need is freely available to them, and
they're making their fully-informed choice to enjoy whatever there is to
enjoy from their cigarettes now and pay later as they suffer the agonizing,
slow asphyxiating death of emphysema or enjoy life from a wheelchair as a
heart attack or cancer patient.  They must get a lot more enjoyment from
their cigarettes than I ever did to make this a worthwhile choice.  But
that's the nice thing about free choices, isn't it ... we're all different!

To bring this parable back to our discussion, the information about the role
of money in economic life is all there, freely available to anyone who wants
to observe it.  There are those who are handling billions of dollars of
assets who apparently have decided to ignore the inevitable effects of
central banks pumping counterfeit money into the marketplace and calling it
"liquidity", as if that made the mathematical underpinnings irrelevant and
we could all sail blithely along to the icebergs in our unsinkable ship.

Perhaps the money managers are slightly more excusable than my partygoer
friends last night.  The partygoers could, after all, simply observe the old
people around them to see the decades-later effects of the choices people
made when they were younger.  In the case of our rampant monetary
foolishness on the other hand, our contemporaries don't have any living
examples -- they would have to read history books.  Maybe they don't have
time for that, what with their billions of dollars of assets and all.

Oh well, I took the time.  I've been assiduously clearing out my
dollar-denominated assets for some time now, even taking on debt to do so.
I figure making payments on 5% loans will be a pretty good deal when
"inflation" is running around 50%.

But that's just me.  Ain't choice wonderful!

Paul Davis




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