We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

Together with other central banks, the ECB is flooding the market, posing the question not only about how the ECB will get its money back, but also how the excess liquidity created can be absorbed globally. It can’t be solved by pressing a button. If the global economy stabilises, the potential for inflation has grown enormously

Jürgen Stark

4 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Perry Metzger

    The good news is that the madness can’t go on forever. The bad news is that we get to watch how it ends up from entirely too short a distance.

  • JohnB

    It is self-evidently the process of not getting nor having any intention of getting its ‘money’ back, but simply stealing real wealth from the savings that exist by inflation.

    And, no, it can’t go on forever. We are in for bad trouble and they know it.

    Here comes the next Reich and those who are served thereby.

  • Laird

    Precisely correct. The world is awash in liquidity, and the only reason we haven’t yet seen hyperinflation is because the banks aren’t lending, but rather are holding only massive amounts of excess reserves. In any ordinary lending environment that money would be pouring out into the system and massively inflating all fiat currencies. The fact that it is not is solely due to the global depression, which is the only thing holding the world’s economy together. For now.

    The central banks can’t withdraw that excess liquidity because to do so would create massive deflation, which is the one thing central bankers and politicians are terrified about. Deflation would be ruinous to the debtor class (which is all governments). So they’ll continue trying to inflate their currencies until the whole house of cards collapses under its own unsustainable weight. Then, as Perry M says, we’ll all get an up-close-and-personal view of what real economic chaos looks like.

  • Paul Marks

    The situation is far more serious than the quotation suggests.

    A Christian knows (or should know) that one should never tell someone to “go to Hell”.

    One should never suggest that someone deserves to to to Hell -whether that be the ever lasting fire and torment of traditional undertanding, or the “eternal seperation from God” of the modern understanding of Hell.

    However, with the Central Bankers (and those who produce and spread the ideology they practice) there is a strong temptation to wish them in Hell – for all eternity.