"Three shells and a pea is portrayed as a gambling game, but in reality, when a wager for money is made, it is a confidence trick used to perpetrate fraud."
Let's see. The country has an unsustainable debt load, exacerbated by a trillion dollars thrown randomly into the economy in an effort to curb the effects of a recession that George W. denied the existence of until the financial system basically collapsed, not to mention two (and now three - what a coincidence!) wars, decades of irresponsible spending by congress and a ponzi scheme called Social Security. Add Medicare and a bunch of entitlements to earn votes, and you have a bona fide debt crisis.
So let's wager on the shell game and see if we can find the pea that makes all of these problems go away, shall we?
Under Shell Number One, lower interest rates to keep people borrowing (therefore spending) more. This was great for 20 years. Anytime the economy sneezed, lower interest rates again. But don't say the "I" word, because if inflation raises it's head, lower interest rates are counterproductive. And don't worry about whether people can actually repay what they borrow. It'll all work out when the economy grows and everyone makes more money.
But rates can't drop below zero - you can't pay people to borrow (and spend) money. The math doesn't work. No pea here.
Under the second shell, we have the Feds buying our debt back (with money that doesn't exist) to falsely prop up its value. The result is the devaluation of the U.S. Dollar, but who cares? Everybody feels better if they have more of them. It doesn't matter that each is worth less. That stops June 1. Then US debt will have to be purchased by real investors that want to make a real profit proportional to their perceived risk.
And who's gonna buy it? China has enough of it to foreclose on the USA already, and has said they don't want to buy more. Japan has their own problems just now. Western Europe is in worse shape the the US. Pig farmers in Chile don't have nearly enough money. Hmmm...Maybe the drug lords in Mexico would be interested. No pea here either.
Shell Number Three was outlined by the Feds this last week. Their contention is that there is no inflation, despite the fact that everything we have to buy costs more. Their justification? You can buy an IPad with twice the memory and speed of last year's model for the same price. That means the price is actually lower year over year for an IPad, which offsets the increased costs of food and energy (gasoline, utilities, transportation, production). So let's all bury our heads in the sand and tell ourselves that we're OK. (It didn't work for Dubya, and it ain't gonna work for Bernanke either.)
Obviously if you discard things that increase in price and only count things that stay the same or go down, you will never report inflation. But that just proves the reports are flawed, not that prices aren't going up for energy, food, transportation, health care and all of the other things we have to buy. There's no pea here, just a bunch of college educated idiots with titles and graphs and no sense. And these are the folks that are supposed to be the guardians of the money supply.
And our president, the ambassador for Change, stands there with a stupid grin on his face cause he doesn't have the first clue what I said in this post. Besides, he's too busy trading snipes with the Donald, five time bankrupt, all bravado and no substance, wannabe president with bad hair.
I feel for all of those who have their trust in their retirement plan or their bank account. I feel that these things are about to show each of us their inadequacies. Even those who don't believe in God need to pray at this point. Cause the way things are going, there's gonna be hell to pay.