In the video below, part two of three as it happens, Glen Beck talks about how the US Federal Reserve is ‘monetizing the debt’ - that is, trying to get the USA out of financial trouble by “quantitative easing,” or in old language, printing money. What’s wrong with this? If it goes wrong, it either doesn’t work much, or inflation goes out of control. The problem with inflation is that, while on the one hand it allows debts to be paid off, on the other, it destroys your savings and even wages, over time. And not much time, if the inflation rate is high enough. And it can get very high. In the video he mentions the Weimar Republic (democratic Germany between the wars), and fascist Argentina in the 1980’s. They printed money and the result was utter meltdown of their economies due to hyperinflation - the most destructive form of inflation, where prices rise at stupendous rates. Many countries have destroyed themselves with this method. Zimbabwe has done it recently under its (communist) dictator Robert Mugabe. There, the annual rate of inflation by December 2008 was estimated at 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent (6.5 x 10¹⁰⁸%, the equivalent of 6 quinquatrigintillion 500 quattuortrigintillion percent, or 65 followed by 107 zeros – one googol 65 million percent). Not surprisingly, unemployment in Zimbabwe is currently running at around 95%. That is, for every person with a job, another 19 are out of work. How do they survive with no welfare state? Those with work where they can earn foreign currency (dollars and the South African rand) have to support them. It’s the only way.

Anyway, my point? The US Federal Reserve is taking a big risk. Any type of government can make this mistake. Glen thinks the US is being brought down deliberately. The part 2 video below introduces his ideas (I left out part 1 as it’s a bit dull - you can see it here and part 3 which is quite interesting, here. There’s more to follow, however, as these are just the introduction. In the three videos following part two, he reveals who he believes to be behind the conspiracy: George Soros. Is he right? Decide for yourself. I’ve read one of George Soros’ books, and he sounded like a reasonable guy to me… but…

Glen Beck Introduces the Puppet Master Part 2

The Puppet Master Part 1

The Puppet Master Part 2

The Puppet Master Part 3

So there you have it. The (or one) conspiracy revealed. Perhaps. Even if Glen Beck is right and George Soros is conspiring to bring down the USA, one then has to decide whether that’s a good thing or not, of course. It doesn’t look so good to me to be going against the democratic wishes of the US people, such as they are, and replacing them with, frankly, a global, undemocratic, corporate state, which is probably what would happen (given that George Soros is a) very rich and b) alleged to be a fan of Edward Bernays). In a previous post I have linked to the astounding videos of “The Century of the Self” which are all about how Edward Bernays’ legacy has changed society into an advertising-driven amoral sheepopolis.

Even if that doesn’t happen, and even if George Soros’s intentions are good (hypothetically assuming Glen Beck is right), it still doesn’t mean it is a good thing. Why? Because many human beings are psychopaths and see the rest of humanity as cattle to be used or abused for their own purposes. Any monolithic power structure, especially an undemocratic one, will sooner or later be taken over by such people as we do not yet have the technology or social barriers to stop them from doing so. A one-world government, until such time as we do, will be a disaster for humanity.

Furthermore, even without the psychopaths, humans are bad at government. While many governments are truly terrible, even the good ones are wasteful and incompetent much of the time - but at least we can to some extent vote with our feet and leave the bad ones behind by emigrating to what we hope may be a better-run country. But what do we do if they’re all more-or-less the same? How likely is a global revolt? Even in small, very badly run countries, revolts are rare events.

We are semi-blissfully going about our daily business thinking that maybe the ‘Credit Crunch’ wasn’t so bad after all… a little hiccup maybe, but not so bad. But, actually, there are a lot of problems lurking, not least of which is the massive debt both governments and individuals around the world are contending with.

The problem with debt, basically, is that it needs to be paid back, or, it is necessary to default on it. Either solution messes up the economy. Either solution messes up your and my finances. If we divert funds to paying it back, that money isn’t being spent on productive capital, or even on goods. It is money down the drain. If we default, well, our creditors have money shortages instead. Either way, we all lose.

Economies historically deal with huge national debts in one of two main ways: economic recession (or its extreme version, depression/panic), or inflation (or its extreme version, hyperinflation). Recession sees prices falling, jobs getting lost as businesses can’t make a profit or jobless consumers can’t consume, and so on. Inflation sees prices rising rapidly and consumers not being able to keep up, and, after a time, jobs getting lost as businesses can’t make a profit because they can’t afford the raw materials or customers can’t afford the high prices… Depression and hyperinflation are extreme versions of these and can be quite terrible.

After the Credit Crunch (caused entirely by slack regulation of the financial markets by governments around the world, encouraged by free-market economic theories (not that the alternatives work so well either)), governments had basically two choices: stand back and watch the economies of the world slump into depression, or print money (sorry, euphemism of the day: “quantitative easing") to try and cancel out the collapsing money supply as shares and banks tumbled. Well, they chose the latter and printed money (or, really, sold treasury bills and reduced interest rates - effectively the same). In the UK they only did this enough to cancel out about half of the slump, however. That is one reason why our economy isn’t recovering much yet the recession hasn’t been so intense either (on the surface). Nevertheless, this amounts to a huge debt which is going to have to be paid or defaulted on. In the US they’ve gone further and the outcome is much the same so far. This video suggests the outcome is going to be hyperinflation. The video makers have their own political free-market axe to grind (and as I mentioned free-market theories led us into this mess in part), but the evidence that the economic ramifications of this mess are still working out seems pretty good. Oh, and if, unlike me unfortunately, you happen to have some spare cash, it might be worth investing in silver, apparently…

The credit crunch is all very well - indeed, I’ve been having my very own credit crunch for most of my life it seems - but in some parts of the world things are, of course, much worse than here. According to Macrohistory, a very good history site, the news for April 9th is: