Deflation Made Simple II

The Story of Real Money (Entry 186)

La Caisse des emprunts de Paris — the new lending bank of Paris — was opened in the spring of 1702, about a year after the introduction of the city’s popularly received counterfeit. Instead of printing and spending its newly printed notes into existence in order to pay for the city’s expenditures, the city was now printing notes and lending them into existence for others to spend (Entry 171). It would be the interest received on what was borrowed that would become the new source of revenue for the city’s expenditures.

In the first instance we observe an example of money-in-exchange-ex-nihilo, in the second instance we observe money-in-use-ex-nihilo. In both instances the city pretended to have liquidity that it did not have. It issued counterfeit!

Now, we do not mind being deceived by a friend, a sibling, or parent as a joke that makes everyone laugh and teaches us to be wary of the deceit of strangers who do not care about our well-being, but it is quite another to be deceived by someone who would sooner put you into prison for failure to pay your debt or taxes than sacrifice his seat at the royal theater and watch a comedy written and produced by the King’s favorite playwright. Indeed, where was the real-money of the kingdom being spent that the city of Paris pretended that it owned, if not in the Spanish Netherlands in a war that brought glory to the king and one’s nation? The idea of French-told Belgian jokes must have originated somewhere! Surely they were not invented by Jacques Brel (1929-1978)!

One can only wonder how foolish we can be to believe that the state ever has our best interest at heart, for if it did, it would confide in us and beseech our sacrifice, rather than trick us into believing that our own wealth and sacrifice are not our own and can be stolen by the state in the name of some greater good whenever it wants. We are living in a world of Peter Pan; and if we do not grow up soon, we will all finish in the throes of Captain Hook, and there will be no Tinker Bell to inform and save us.

In three centuries we have gone from the petty theft of feudal tyrants to the global grand theft of elected officials whom we foolishly honor in our national congress as defenders of the US Constitution. January 6th, 2021 — no matter what you think about those who participated in the desecration of a national monument — was, at minimum, a symbolic gesture, our first root canal to remind us that we had better start brushing our teeth again! Just how much longer are we, a once sovereign people, going to allow ourselves to be trodden by the ridicule and denigration of our own elected officials and those who elect them?

Now, this does not mean that there is not a role for the state in human society, but it is surely not the one that we have carved out in America in particular and western civilization in general since Lincoln’s War of Consolidation!

If we do not have sufficient self-respect to stand up for what is ours, then what respect do we have for our own self-sacrifice? And, if we have no respect for our own sacrifice, then what respect can we have for our very existence? Are we to keep listening to people like Klaus Schwab, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, William Gates, and an entire assembly of elected officials in Washington, D.C. who would sooner take away our right to own property, our right to a sound medium-of-exchange, our right to speak our own mind, our right to decide what is and is not injected into our body, and our right to bear arms in defense of the rights that they are seeking to take away while they so completely fail in their hallow oath to uphold and defend the principles upon which our nation was founded?

Those who would decry the harm done to others, when they do not decry the harm that is being done to themselves and their own nation, are but fools immersed in their own self-deceit — a delusion manipulated by those who make no effort to disguise their arrogance, only the means by which they sustain and justify it.

And then, reality sets in.

What were the citizens of Paris to do in a market economy without a real medium-of-exchange? Their city fathers, la nobless de robe, were corrupting the life-blood of the very markets on which they depended so that their king could fight in distant wars for the glory of the French nation. Surely, neither the citizenry of Paris, nor the market place on which they depended for their livelihood was at fault for the monarchy’s failure to live within its means!

In liberty, or not at all,
Roddy A. Stegemann, First Hill, Seattle 98104